The airwaves may be packed with shows about brave (and some not-so brave) souls investigating haunted locations, but when it comes to attention-grabbing, intriguing titles, Travel Channel’s “Portals to Hell” has got them all beat. And this season, well, it’s gonna be a doozy.
Avid paranormal investigators Jack Osbourne (yes, Ozzy and Sharon’s kid) and Katrina Weidman head into Season 2 on March 13, scoping out historically haunted locations in the U.S. to seek concrete evidence that a spirit world exists. As Weidman puts it, “This season is intense.”
In the two-hour season premiere, the fearless duo investigates the 150-year-old Old Paulding Jail in Ohio, where they attempt to uncover the truth in a sea of rumors, cover-ups and theories of what happened to the young woman who was murdered there. They break down the last remaining sealed jail cell in the basement and not only find startling new evidence, but Osbourne is rocked by a paranormal experience that he won’t soon forget.
“Katrina and I are breaking down walls — literally,” Osbourne said. “We have unprecedented access to a number of locations and are also the first team to ever investigate some of them for TV. They’re incredibly active sites for the paranormal, and we’re going all-in to try and capture substantial evidence.”
“Jack and I purposefully explore locations that embody the darker side of the paranormal, as we try to understand why certain places evoke more sinister activity than others,” Weidman added, warning those faint of heart. “It’s exciting to see what new discoveries we can make in the paranormal field. Yet as we explore the unexplained, we can only presume to know what we’re working with. At the end of the day we really don’t — and that’s the scary part.”
Sure, ghost hunting can be a fun — although kinda weird, you have to admit — thing to do on a dark, stormy night, but going from, “Gosh, ghosts really interest me” to “I’m dedicating my life to investigating them” is quite a leap. But for both Osbourne and Weidman, they didn’t choose that career path… it chose them.
“I’ve tried to get out of the fields before a couple of years ago and it just pulls you back in and now it’s like I’m so into it that…I could never leave it because now it’s like, it’s almost a vendetta now,” said Weidman, who went from being a ghost enthusiast to a diehard researcher.
Osbourne is evolution as a paranormal investigator evolved in a similar way.
“I grew up watching paranormal shows, ghost hunting shows, ‘X-Files,’ all that genre, and I loved it,” Osbourne said. “When I was a kid, any opportunity to go check out a haunted house or go do a séance or to go do any of that kind of dumb stuff you do when you’re a kid, I love. So, for me, I kind of came into this as a fan of the genre and I was given the opportunity.”
Weidman added: “t just really gets under your skin and it gets into your blood. And I think once it’s there, I don’t know that you can ever rid yourself of it”
It goes without saying that ghosts and all things paranormal are a hot commodity right now. Just a quick glance at Travel Channel’s lineup will tell you that. But one can’t help wonder what came first: more ghost shows or more ghosts?
“I think people have always been interested in this, but it’s always been such a taboo subject so people don’t talk about it,” Weidman explained. “Especially in America, you go to another country and it’s not as taboo as part of their history. It’s part of their culture and America is very different. I think now, because of the media being out there, people are saying, ‘Oh, OK, that’s kind of cool. I can talk about it.’ And, ‘Oh, there’s other people that have had experiences like me. I can find them.’ And when the big boom of paranormal shows happened in like the late-’90s, early 2000s, you saw all the groups popping up because they were finding other people that had the same interest and they weren’t alone anymore.”
Upcoming locations for Season 2 of “Portals to Hell” include:
• Fort William Henry (Lake George, New York), the site of one of the bloodiest massacres in Colonial America
• Croke-Patterson Mansion (Denver, Colorado), a 130-year-old building plagued with paranormal activity since its creation
• Ohio State Reformatory (Mansfield, Ohio), a deadly prison also known for its role in The Shawshank Redemption
• Thomas House Hotel (Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee), a once-thriving natural springs resort where guests fell victim to deadly waters
• Iron Island Museum (Buffalo, New York), a century-old building that is rumored to house not one, but two, portals
• Haunted Hill House (Mineral Wells, Texas), a hellish location plagued by rumors of demonic activity
• Shanghai Tunnels (Portland, Oregon), a network of underground tunnels notorious for its role in slavery and kidnapping victims
Season 2 of “Portals to Hell” begins Friday, March 13, with a two-hour premiere at 9 p.m. on The Travel Channel.
15 Facts About the 'Conjuring'-Verse Hauntings, Including 'The Nun' (Photos)
“The Conjuring” has led to spin-offs and sequels based on the experiences of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. But what actually “happened” and what was invented for the movies? Here’s a rundown of where real accounts and Hollywood screenwriting meet in “The Conjuring," the “Annabelle” movies, and 'The Nun."
“The Conjuring” is based on a real reported haunting | The first film in the “Conjuring”-verse is mostly an actual, reported event, if you believe in that sort of thing. As demonstrated with photos during the end credits of the movie, the Perron family really did exist, and reported they were being attacked by some kind of entity. The Warrens did, in fact, investigate. Both Lorraine Warren and the Perron family signed off on the movie as well (Ed died in 2006).
New Line
The Warrens really do have that museum of creepy things | The Warrens began their research in 1952 and decided to open the museum in the early 1980s, after their collection of haunted objects began to accumulate. The Warren Occult Museum is housed in the basement of the Warrens’ actual home in Monroe, Connecticut, and is full of haunted artifacts and images taken from their cases. It’s home to an organ that plays itself, a mirror that is said to summon spirits and a coffin owned by a “modern vampire.” To keep the evil at bay, a local priest comes once a month to bless everything on display.
Warner Bros.
Annabelle is a real doll | The opening portion of “The Conjuring” deals with Annabelle, a doll possessed by a demon. The story about two nurses who wound up with a haunted doll is a real case the Warrens dealt with. Ed and Lorraine really did take the doll back with them to their museum and keep it in a glass case.
Warner Bros.
That’s not what Annabelle looks like | Among the liberties taken with bringing the Annabelle story to the screen, though, is changing the doll itself. The eerie American Girl porcelain look isn’t like the doll from the real case — instead, it was a big Raggedy Ann doll with red yarn hair and button eyes.
YouTube
The exorcism in “The Conjuring” never happened | Although the people involved claim many elements of the haunting of the Perrons really happened, the movie’s climactic possession and exorcism by Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) isn’t among them. Lorraine Warren said her husband would never have tried to perform an exorcism, since he wasn’t a priest.
Warner Bros.
But Andrea Perron, one of the Perron children, who was 11 at the time of the events in the movie, said she did see her mother Carolyn (played by Lily Taylor in the movie) possessed. Andrea said she secretly watched a seance during the haunting and saw her mother speak a language she didn’t recognize in a different voice -- before her chair levitated and Carolyn was thrown across the room.
Warner Bros.
“Annabelle” is not the true backstory of the doll | The first spinoff of “The Conjuring,” “Annabelle,” serves as an origin story for the creepy doll. But none of the stuff that happens to Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John Gordon (Ward Horton) has any documentation in reality — it was all created for the movie. The Warrens’ case with Annabelle starts in the hobby shop seen at the end of the film, where the doll was purchased by the mother of one of the nurses.
New Line
Annabelle might have a real victim, though | It wasn’t in any of the movies, but Annabelle might have a real victim. After it was in the Warren museum, it might have inflicted its evil on someone. According to the Warrens, a man came to the museum and banged on Annabelle’s case, mocking the doll until Ed Warren threw him out. Lorraine Warren claims the man’s girlfriend told him the pair were laughing about the doll afterward while riding away on his motorcycle — until he mysteriously lost control and crashed into a tree.
New Line
“The Amityville Horror” is also based on a Warren case | Mentioned in “The Conjuring 2” is another haunting the Warrens worked on in Amityville, N.Y. In that case, the Lutz family was haunted after moving into the home in which Ronnie DeFeo Jr. shot and killed six members of his family the year before. Bits of the story of the haunting are part of the story of "The Conjuring 2," and the case went on to inspire all of the movies in the various “Amityville Horror” franchises. (The Lutzes' story is now known to be a hoax.)
MGM
Amityville was also a hoax | The Amityville haunting story has been widely debunked. Ronnie DeFeo's lawyer, William Weber, admitted the story was a hoax he and George Lutz dreamed up. Weber had hoped to use the haunting to get his client a new trial, and the Lutzes profited from the story's widespread notoriety and fame.
New Line
“The Conjuring 2” is based on another real haunting | The Enfield Haunting is one of the most famous and best-documented supposed hauntings ever, and a lot of what’s seen in “The Conjuring 2” is part of the record of what’s actually supposed to have happened. For one thing, the recording of Janet Hodgson allegedly speaking in the voice of Bill Wilkins does exist in some form, as do images that allegedly show the children levitating. Police responding to calls from the family say they did see furniture move on its own, just like in the movie.
New Line
But there’s debate surrounding it, too | The Hodgsons really did get caught faking evidence of the Enfield Haunting. Janet Hodgson said she faked a very small amount of the evidence in the case, claiming it was because so many people were investigating and sometimes spooky things wouldn’t happen on cue. And according to at least one investigator on the case, the Warrens’ involvement was much less than in the movie — supposedly they showed up “uninvited” and stayed only one day.
New Line
“The Crooked Man” is a real English nursery rhyme | And it’s distinctly less sinister than in "The Conjuring 2." It was first recorded in the 1840s. The monster seen in the movie was actually just a manifestation of the demon antagonist Valak used to attack and scare the Hodgson family. But the Crooked Man is getting his own movie spinoff, and so is Valak, so expect some new backstory for "The Crooked Man" likely not based in any real hauntings or cases.
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“Annabelle: Creation” is another Hollywood addition to the mythos | Since the movie “Annabelle” is a Hollywood creation and not the actual, true backstory of the real-life doll in the Warren museum, the same is true of “Annabelle: Creation.” The second movie is another prequel to “The Conjuring” that goes back even further in the doll’s life, to track where it first came from, but it's pretty far removed from the Warrens' cases at this point.
New Line
The Demon Nun Valak is a “real” demon... | The demonic nun that’s a major antagonist in “The Conjuring 2” is mostly an invention of director James Wan based on a conversation he had with Lorraine Warren about “a spectral entity that has haunted her in her house.” Valak, though, is based in demonic lore and mentioned in several books on demons from the 14th and 15th Century.
New Line
...but "The Nun" isn't based on a true story |
The story of Valak gets fleshed out in "The Nun" a bit, explaining how the demon haunted a convent in Romania and giving something of a reason for it appearing as a nun, but it's all invented for the series and not based on real history or the Warrens' cases. Valak is known as "The Defiler," so turning positive religious imagery scary fits that description. The demon lore Valak is based on doesn't say anything about appearing as a nun, though -- it's described as a cherub-looking child with wings and rides some kind of two-headed dragon. It is associated with serpents and snakes, though, something that makes it into the movie.
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Here’s what’s based on real-life hauntings, and what isn’t
“The Conjuring” has led to spin-offs and sequels based on the experiences of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. But what actually “happened” and what was invented for the movies? Here’s a rundown of where real accounts and Hollywood screenwriting meet in “The Conjuring," the “Annabelle” movies, and 'The Nun."
New Line
