Source: Bored at home and looking for a (virtual) escape? The Dark Zone wants to help with a live-stream of the real-life haunted (?) house that inspired The Conjuring. From May 9 to May 16, the 24-7 interactive live streaming event will document the lives of the Heinzens, who are the current owners of the house. The house will be “rigged with multiple cameras so the audience will have a completely immersive experience.” And that’s not all. The Heinzens will “conduct 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.”
I know this quarantine is driving everyone crazy. You can only watch so much television, play so many video games and read so many books. And I know there's been some novel entertainment to come out of all this like the special Parks and Rec episode and the NBA HORSE competition which has been cool. But you can count me all the way out on this Conjuring house livestream.
It's not like I don't have a stomach for horror. I've seen most of the Conjuring movies and I definitely enjoyed the original. And as creepy as some of the stuff is I'm generally able to go home and sleep without having any nightmares; I'm always able to remind myself of the distinction between fact and fiction--especially when that fiction is coming from Hollywood.
You know what I have zero interest in doing, though? Messing with all that demonic shit in real life. And that includes sitting on the couch in sweatpants, sipping an IPA, watching a livestream of a haunted house whose current owners have spoken of unexplained footsteps and knocks and self-opening doors. I mean what better way to upset the demonic forces existing within the house than to be treated like one of those rooftop falcon nest cams by a bunch of bored assholes shoving ice cream down their throats and laughing at every door creak and flicker of the lights.
The house is actually only a 40 minutes or so from where I live and I know some people who have actually made the drive to go check it out in person, the same types of nutcases who like to explore abandoned mental hospitals for fun. But when it comes to the unknown--the haunted, the possessed, the demonic--I have always followed and will continue to follow a policy of self-preservation. Growing up, I refused to play the Bloody Mary game in the bathroom mirror despite being deemed a coward. In middle school, I was mocked by my cousins for refusing to partake in 3 a.m. Ouija board sessions. And I'm never going to visit the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River despite how "cool" my girlfriend thinks it would be.
I just don't mess with it. Obviously nobody knows what's really out there but as far as I'm concerned I'm going to keep my chances of attracting the disdain of a malevolent being as close to zero as possible, and I'm certainly not going to pay money to watch a program that's almost guaranteed to provoke the wrath of pissed off spirits that have been haunting the same house for decades. I've already got the existential terror of a pandemic hanging over my head--the last thing I'm going to do is mock the dead.