There’s a new movie about the famous talking board that is due to be released in October! If you’re like me, you’re surprised that you didn’t even know this was a thing. And unless you had a date at a movie theater this last weekend, it’s likely you haven’t seen the trailer, since it hasn’t been released online.
Appropriately named, Ouija was directed by Stiles White andstars Olivia Cooke (who is fantastic in Bates Motel), Ana Coto, Daren Kagasoff (The Secret Life of the American Teenager), Bianca A. Santos, Douglas Smith (Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters), Matthew Settle (Gossip Girl), Vivis Colombettie (Paranormal Activity 2, Patch Adams), and Robyn Lively (The Karate Kid, Part III, Teen Witch), according toIMDb.
From our 2nd Annual Thanksgiving Ouija Session.
Hasbro, the owner and manufacturer of the board, has been working since 2008 to get this movie produced, according toWikipedia. Remember that if you see the film. The Wikipedia page also describes it as a “low-budget film” and mentions that it only started production seven months ago. Currently, thefilm’s websiteseems to be… well, a little under construction, and you won’t find much more on their certifiedFacebook page, either, other than the lovely banner I’ve included above. That, of course, could change by the time you see this.
I happened to catch the trailer before watching the painfully sad The Fault In Our Stars on Saturday. It did look spooky and exciting. But where’s the trailer online? According to ShockTillYouDrop.com, this is “an unusual move these days”. In this trending social media age, it seems very bizarre to me that they haven’t already made it available for tweens (and nerds like me) all over the country to “like” and “share”. Clearly, the trailer exists. When it is released, I’ll do my best to embed it right below this paragraph.
UPDATE! The trailer is here and embedded below! Also, check out my most recent post on the filmHERE.
I’m not going to lie, I’m very excited about this movie (duh!), but I have mixed feelings. Most likely, this will once again make “experts” out of people who will say it’s an evil tool. And how will they know? Because they saw this movie, or because they used a Ouija board “one night at a party when I was a kid.” As I’ve mentioned several times recently, over the past two years I’ve experimented off and on with the Ouija board under several different conditions, and it’s so very exciting to stare at a piece of cardboard and a chunk of plastic that does nothing.
Does anyone have any thoughts? Will I see you at the theater?
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The Spirits of Ouija: Four Decades of Communication (Big Séance)
I don’t remember who recommended it or brought it to my attention. It may have been one of you. So I purchased No One Dies in Lily Dale, the 2010 HBO Documentary, from Amazon and it arrived on the doorstep this evening. I didn’t waste much time before settling down with some coffee and a blanket, and throwing the DVD in the computer.
I’ve wanted to visit Lily Dale since I learned about it for the first time a few years back. I know several of you have been… I enjoy seeing the pictures. I can think of three major reasons I want to go: to surround yourself by open and enlightened people, many who are psychics and/or mediums who have the ability to give readings or deliver messages from loved ones; to see the physical beauty of the homes, the nature, and the surroundings of the peaceful community; and lastly, to be in a place with so much history and so many artifacts from the early days of the spiritualist movement.
This documentary captures everything that I was curious about, like just what is a reading like there? Are there community members that just live there all year? Is everyone nice and friendly? Is there a gate? (Seriously, that has been one of my questions.) You’ll also see skeptics or open skeptics roaming around. But for sure, it seems that in the documentary, many of the visitors had recently lost loved ones.
Check this documentary out. I think my Lily Dale book might just be next.
Before my review below, an honest discussion about Andrea’s trilogy and The Conjuring movie.
Since the first part of July of this year, a lot of my blogs and reading have had to do with either the House of Darkness House of Light trilogy by Andrea Perron orThe Conjuringmovie. Even though the movie is based on the investigation case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, Andrea, the eldest real life Perron daughter, tells the story of the very real events in her books. Though I have not seen or read the actual case files, after reading Andrea’s first two volumes, I’m fairly confident in saying the movie is VERY loosely based on the events from that farmhouse outside of Harrisville, Rhode Island during the 1970s. I didn’t have knowledge of just how loosely it was based when I wrote the review of the movie. At the time, I was very excited about researching the back story and seeing an advanced screening of the film. I’d read that Lorraine Warren was pleased with the final product (she also makes a very brief appearance that many people, including myself, missed). Also, in aYouTube videoAndrea reviews the film and states “I expected something entirely different. I expected Hollywood to do what Hollywood does, and yet in some ways this is a very quiet and studious film. You would never know that from the trailers, but that’s their job… to entice an audience. It’s also about the love of a family. It’s also about people who came to help, who felt that this was the most significant and compelling, and dark and disturbing story that they had ever heard in the course of a fifty year career.” She also mentioned that the film “truly captured what we endured.”
I really did love The Conjuring and I think it’s truly a new classic, but after reading volume one and two, they don’t seem to be connected. You know how it is when you get sucked into reading a novel AFTER you watched the movie it inspired? Do you allow yourself to visualize the setting and the actors in the situations you saw in the film? I usually try to shake the temptation, because as soon as I allow myself to watch the movie in my head while reading, something ends up being slightly or majorly different. Once that happens I’m hopelessly confused till the very last page. Well… let’s just say I didn’t have this problem with House of Darkness House of Light.
Volume Two (Warning: a few spoilers below)
At around 500 pages each, volume one and two aren’t for light and quick reading. Volume one had my intense attention for most of the book. I really enjoyed how detailed Andrea was. I don’t think there’s any chance of her leaving out any of the details. After a blogger and Big Séance reader commented onmy review of volume one, mentioning how the book jumps back and forth in time, making it very confusing, I had to agree. Though it didn’t bother me as much in the first book, I frequently got lost in the timeline of the story in volume two. Not only that, but you have to try to keep track of the five siblings, the order of their ages, and how old they are at that particular moment. Was this chapter before or after a particular event I just read about? Had the Warrens been there yet? In my opinion, even though I think Andrea is a fantastic writer, and I very much enjoyed the books, the back and forth in time thing is the biggest flaw in these two volumes. With that being said, perhaps an explanation for this style has to do with these events lasting a whole decade. It may have been impossible to get points and information across in a simple chronological style. The reader might also want to be aware that Andrea writes in a very flowery and poetic style, which might not be something everyone resonates with.
By the time I got midway through volume two, it had my serious attention, just as volume one had. It was the moment the Warren’s arrived on the scene (their involvement is only hinted at in volume one). They made several appearances in the book, but the infamous séance chapter, which I can only assume was the direct inspiration for the exorcism portion of the film, was so very powerful. Dramatic and intense, after being carried away with real life and reading short chunks at a time for a week or two, it brought my focus back to the book. This was the height of the supposed “oppression” (making its way to “possession”) of Carolyn Perron (the mother). Before the séance was over, Roger Perron (the father), who incidentally is painted horribly in the books, ended it all and threw all non-family members out of the house.
Speaking of being painted horribly, what I didn’t know and was surprised to find out, was that the Warrens aren’t portrayed at all to be the saviors that they are in the movie. In fact, the family seems to end their relationship with the Warrens on bad terms. For the most part, they’re blamed for making everything worse. Prior to their first visit, Carolyn took quite a few notes on her early haunting experiences at the house. She did lots of research on the history of the farmhouse and the residents that appear to be haunting them. Apparently the Warrens either lost these documents or just never returned them. Possibly the biggest strike against them was the fact that they apparently broke their confidentiality agreement with the Perrons, discussing details of the fascinating haunted Harrisville farmhouse in the talks they gave around the country. For a while the Perron family’s privacy was continually violated by curious travelers dropping by to catch some kind of paranormal activity first hand. Ironically, the popularity of the movie caused the same thing to happen for the current residents. I sincerely hope that problem is old news by now.
In the remainder of volume two there are some very heartfelt moments, some incredible stories involving the sisters, and a big life-changing realization by Carolyn. The paranormal activity (which isn’t always negative) apparently got milder as the family learned to give respect and practice “live and let ‘live'”. In the end, Roger and Carolyn split up, though it’s unclear to me whether this happened before or after they move out of the farmhouse for Georgia, leaving a decade of haunting experiences behind. I’m only guessing this will be cleared up in the last volume.
Volume three has not been released yet, but I imagine you’ll hear from me at some point after it arrives and after my bookmark has the chance to make its way through the pages.
My previous House of Darkness House of Light posts (most recent first):
A year ago I very much wanted to watch the classic 1944 haunted house film, The Uninvited, based on a 1941 novel by Dorothy Macardle. I even included it on my list ofMovies I Plan On Checking Out This Fallfrom last year, and I was interested in reviewing it here at The Big Séance. I couldn’t find it anywhere. Not even a bootleg version on YouTube. Well I decided to search for it again tonight and was excited to see that thanks toThe Criterion Collection, The Uninvited is finally being released to DVD in late October! The film has a new and improved cover that you can see here (a major improvement). According to Criterion, the features also include a new visual essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda, two radio adaptations from 1944 and 1949 (both starring Ray Milland), the trailer, and a booklet featuring an essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme and a 1997 interview with director Lewis Allen. I’m so incredibly pumped to receive my copy on October 25th, just in time to get a review posted before Halloween!
A pair of siblings from London (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) purchase a surprisingly affordable, lonely cliff-top house in Cornwall, only to discover that it actually carries a ghostly price—and soon they’re caught up in a bizarre romantic triangle from beyond the grave. Rich in atmosphere, The Uninvited,directed by Lewis Allen, was groundbreaking for the seriousness with which it treated the haunted-house genre, and it remains an elegant and eerie experience, featuring a classic score by Victor Young. A tragic family past, a mysteriously locked room, cold chills, bumps in the night—this gothic Hollywood classic has it all. – Synopsis fromCriterion.com
Check out the super spooky trailer!
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The Conjuring, a film that hasnow grossed over 125 million dollars, has been ranked by Box Office Mojo as #6 for top grossing horror films of all time. Last month I had the opportunity to see an advanced screening of the film and was researching the story to write my review. In my research, I quickly became fascinated with learning about the very real family behind the true story. This led me to Volume One of Andrea Perron’s trilogy, House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story.
The author, who is the eldest Perron daughter, writes in a beautiful style that leaves no detail behind. After all, volume one alone is 504 pages. As I’ve mentioned before, she puts you in that house with the characters. Roger and Carolyn Perron, along with their five daughters, moved to the infamous farmhouse (built in 1736) in Harrisville, Rhode Island in 1971. They remained there for nearly ten years. For decades, the world knew very little about the incredible events that happened in that farmhouse. What little we knew was probably due to the fact that the famous Ed and Lorraine Warren, pioneers in the field of paranormal investigation, came to the aid of the family and documented their experiences. This was all before the famous Amityville case that involved the Warrens as well.
Forty years later, the family’s story is finally told.
The book begins with the Perron family in their former suburban home, before they even knew the farmhouse existed. But fate seems to take over and leads them there, like it or not. They experienced paranormal activity in the farmhouse from day one, and even though it is hard for the reader to believe, the family’s acceptance of their reality – the fact that they share their home with others – is a slow and gradual process.
As a reader, I felt I had the opportunity to get to know each of the seven members of the Perron family. Mrs. Perron (Carolyn) seems to have experienced the worst of the activity, having been directly attacked by a jealous ghost named Bathsheba, the nastiest and most complicated spirit (with quite a history) in the farmhouse. Mr. Perron (Roger), a hard worker who spent much of the time traveling to provide for his family, for the majority of the book is in complete denial about the activity in the house. This causes a lot of friction in the family, and it frustrated me to no end. One of my favorite moments involved an incredibly brave and blunt Nancy, the second daughter, who finally had enough and told her father what was what. Everyone else knew and accepted it. It was time for him to wake up. That seemed to be the beginning of his awakening, and also the moment that I tried to silently cheer in the middle of the night while the rest of the world was asleep. Roger Perron’s family was indeed learning to survive in an incredibly haunted house.
Another character that I felt like I got to know and related to was Cindy, the 4th daughter in line. Growing up in the house, she experienced hundreds of visits from the spirit of a little girl. She was always crying for her mother. As she grew older, the little girl didn’t. Cindy cared for her, giving her space whenever she came around, and even letting her play with her toys.
We occasionally get bounced around in time when it is necessary, and the Warrens never make an official appearance, but I have no doubt that by the third volume (not yet released) we’ll know it all.
Author, Andrea Perron
It is important to note that Andrea Perron began writing the trilogy in 2007 and this volume was released in 2011, well before the movie. It also must be noted that the movie is based on the case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren and not Andrea’s books.
Earlier this month, while researching for areview I was writing before seeing an advanced screening of the new and exciting film, The Conjuring, I learned of the very real family behind the true story. The Perron family moved to the infamous farmhouse (built in 1736) in Harrisville, Rhode Island in 1971. It didn’t take long to find a wealth of information online about Andrea Perron, the eldest of the five Perron daughters. For decades, the world knew very little about the incredible events that happened in that farmhouse. What little we knew was probably due to the fact that the famous Ed and Lorraine Warren, pioneers in the field of paranormal investigation, came to the aid of the family and documented their experiences. This was all before the famous Amityville case that involved the Warrens as well. In 2007 Andrea Perron began writing what is now a trilogy and titledHouse of Darkness House of Light. The movie is based on the Warrens’ case files, but I can only assume that if we’re looking for an accurate account of the events that happened during the span of a decade, this is where we’re going to find it.
Author, Andrea Perron
I have to tell you, each of the first two volumes, released in 2011 and 2013 (the third volume hasn’t been released yet), are quite intimidating, as they are around 500 pages each. But you quickly find that it’s because Andrea’s beautiful style of writing leaves no detail behind. She puts you in that house with the characters.
This is not a review. In fact, I’m only 66 pages into the first book. One thing is for sure, though… I’m sucked in already, and I foresee several blog posts about these books in our future.
To be continued…
I know several of you have already been reading the books. What are your thoughts? No spoilers, please.
In my last post, I listedMy Top 10 Spooky Movies For Fall. After doing some research, I’ve come up with five classic spooky movies that I haven’t seen but would like to see in the coming months. Does anyone know any of these? It was nice to get many of your opinions or additions to my last list. Any suggestions or movies that I should add to this list?
Linked titles take you to IMDb. Photos take you to Amazon.com
I’ve never been to San Francisco, but I’ve often wanted to visit because it looks so beautiful, plus I’ve always been a HUGE fan of Armistead Maupin and his Tales of the City series of books that take place there.
But… have you seen this video?
I’ve gotten trapped into watching this whole thing many times in the last few years after I found it initially. It is a trip down Market Street. It was apparently originally thought to have been filmed in 1905, but was really filmed four days before the big San Francisco earthquake in 1906.
It isn’t paranormal at all, but it is so haunting to watch for several reasons. First off, who isn’t impressed with footage from 1906? You can learn so much about history just from the video. For instance, these people were reckless and not afraid of getting run over or trampled by a horse! Apparently there weren’t any traffic laws. I am fascinated by the children chasing the cars down the street or running ahead of the camera. I wonder how many kids in 1906 would have even been able to identify a video camera and knew what it was? The heavy coats and dresses are interesting to me, considering it was filmed on April 14th (my birthday… it’s a stretch… but it’s another thing that makes it haunting). Also, maybe it’s just me… but it is strange to see a video from so long ago that shows people strolling, walking, and strutting just like we do today! You mean people didn’t walk differently 100 years ago? 🙂 I wonder if these people imagined we’d be watching and learning from them over 100 years later?
Secondly, imagining the destruction and lost life that happened just four days after the hustle and bustle of a normal day in San Francisco is truly haunting. According to USGS, it is estimated that 3,000 lives were lost and 28,000 buildings were destroyed.
I’m not sure if the same people who filmed the above video filmed the footage after the destruction, but it seems genius that it is filmed in the same manner. Both videos have been paired next to each other so that you can compare.
And lastly, a trip down the same street in 2005. The same hustle and bustle… only different. To me, the neatest things about this version are the cyclists and passersby that seem fascinated with the filming, just like in the original footage. And even cooler, it finishes off with the same historical building at the end of the street that apparently survived. I don’t know enough about San Francisco to tell you anything else about it… but it’s cool.
Since the first part of July of this year, a lot of my blogs and reading have had to do with either the House of Darkness House of Light trilogy by Andrea Perron or
At around 500 pages each, volume one and two aren’t for light and quick reading. Volume one had my intense attention for most of the book. I really enjoyed how detailed Andrea was. I don’t think there’s any chance of her leaving out any of the details. After a blogger and Big Séance reader commented on
A year ago I very much wanted to watch the classic 1944 haunted house film, The Uninvited, based on a 1941 novel by Dorothy Macardle. I even included it on my list of
