Carmen Reed seems like a perfectly normal person, but some elements of her past are far from it.

Recently, a horror film has been made about an episode in her life.

“A Haunting in Connecticut is a movie based off my true-life experiences in a house in Southington, Connecticut 21 years ago,” Reed said. “I had four children and the oldest one was 13. He developed a lump in his neck and a dry cough. I took him to the doctor and he said he didn’t like it and wanted to biopsy it.”

The lump turned out to be cancer. There wasn’t treatment readily available for him locally, so they began cancer treatment at UCONN Medical center.

“We were driving 306 miles a day and we just couldn’t do that. He was getting so sick I started getting scared that the treatment would kill him,” Reed said.

Reed and her family moved to Southington and rented a home that was once a funeral parlor. Everybody chose their rooms and began settling in. Reed began moping the floor in one room when something strange happened.

“I put the mop to the floor and the water turned a deep red and it started to smell,” she said. “I don’t ever call it blood because I don’t quite know what it was. I assumed it was the dye coming out of the floor but it was thick like blood.

“At the time I was trying to figure out what was going on my son came into the room and said we had to leave. I said why and he said the house was evil.”

She tried to comfort her son and told him it was going to be there new home, but he insisted they leave.

“‘Son, this house could tell great stories if it could talk,'” Reed said. “‘It’s pretty old. Evil lives in the hearts of man and the house couldn’t be evil.’ I said that was going to be our new home and he said, ‘You’re going to find out the hard way.’

“He started hearing voices the first day we moved in there. He was asleep in his room and I thought it was his treatments in his neck because I never saw anything and never heard anything.”

After a while, Reed became concerned with the mental health of her child and had him placed in an adolescent psychiatric facility.

“I put my son in a mental hospital,” she said. “The day they took him and put him in a straight jacket…and put him in that closet, he looked at me and said, “Mom. Don’t leave me.” That was so deeply embedded in me that I have dedicated my life to making sure no 13 year-old boy will ever go through that again.”

He stayed for some time and was eventually released, but after he came back, things started happening.

“I didn’t really see anything until the end about 10 weeks before we had the exorcism,” Reed said. “Then that was the night the rosary levitated off my nieces neck and shattered when all heck broke loose that night-more than I can list here. It was a constant after that night.”

Reed still talks about the haunting with her son and the rest of the family. It still affects her to this day.

“When you experience something like that is paranormal that something so extreme that other people don’t experience, you don’t question life after death; you know it; you don’t question if there is a God; you know it,” Reed said. “You’ve felt true evil so you know there is evil in the world. I’ve dedicated my life to trying to help other people.

“I still apologize to my son for what happened. I didn’t know what was going on. After all this time I still want to tell him I’m sorry.”

Reed said the film is not a “blow for blow” account of what happened in the house because Hollywood had to add their twist, but she is still happy with the film.

“I was very happy that they added the message,” she said. “You can’t control the entities and spirits around you so its best to just leave them alone.”

Reed will be speaking at 7 p.m. on Oct. 29 at Missouri Southern in Corley Auditorium. Reed will be showing clips of the film and discussing her experiences in the house.