When there isn’t a pandemic on, slasher-loving cineastes who are so inclined can visit Camp Crystal Lake, the site of so many recurring horny-teen massacres depicted in Friday the 13th movies.
But why bother? Those movies, while fun and perversely satisfying during quarantine, are supernatural slaughterfests bearing no relation to reality. Horror lovers looking for machete scares on those particular campgrounds will likely walk away as disappointed as the requisite teen who gets sexually rejected in the Friday the 13th films, often just before getting eviscerated. True fright aficionados prefer to walk the path of John Cusack’s character in the Stephen King adaptation 1408 and visit places that are actually said to be haunted. That’s the chilling appeal of the so-called Conjuring house.
The degree to which the events of the Conjuring movies are embellished is up to the eye of the beholder (this beholder’s eye says, “very embellished”), but what’s not up for debate is that they’re based in (some sort of) fact. In the 1970s, paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in the films) did indeed attempt to ghost-bust an 18th-century Rhode Island home they declared haunted by evil spirits. Since the franchise exploring the pair’s adventures blew up over the past decade, spawning no less than three separate mini-franchises thus far, that original spooky house has been purchased by latter-day paranormal investigator Cory Heinzen—who claims it’s still haunted.
Now Heinzen is opening up the so-called Conjuring house’s doors for the quarantined masses to see for themselves.
Starting on May 9, the online supernatural community the Dark Zone Network will live-stream the inside of the house for a weeklong, 24-hour-a-day spookathon. For the mere price of $19.99 (with a portion of the proceeds headed for COVID charities), couch-bound thrill seekers will be able to gaze around the multi-cam setup for signs of unsettled spirits. According to the website Dark Horizons, the Heinzens will spend the week “conduct[ing] paranormal investigations, seances, Ouija board sessions and invite some of the most well-known and respected luminaries in the paranormal community to pop in remotely and share their most bone-chilling experiences from the house.”
For fans of the Conjuring series and its many offshoots, this opportunity may sound like a beautiful nightmare come true. Before getting your hopes up, though, here are some things you probably should not expect from this week-long live-stream event:
- Violent projectile levitation
- An exorcism
- Blood-loogies
- Mangled pigeon invasion
- Demonic nuns with razor-sharp teeth
- Murder by tree branch
- Possessed dolls
- Crooked Men
- Disembodied ghosty hands
- Surprise British accents
- A babadook
- La Llorona
Have a look at a teaser video below.