The Insidious Sallie House

I saw Insidious the other night at the cinema, after hearing all the talk about how scary it was, and how people were leaving the cinema in tears ... they were that scared. 
My boys loved it, and while there are a few good scares along the way, I felt the story line was almost comical.
The story starts off as your standard haunted house type movie, but as we get into the movie, we find out that it's not the house that is haunted at all, because the family moves house, only for the haunting to continue.
That's when we find out that it's the boy on the movie poster for this film (above) that is being haunted.
It's because he is in the habit of astral projecting and flying around, and just thinks that he is dreaming instead.
But he wanders too far from his body and gets caught out.
Then he appears to be in an unexplained coma, as far as his family and doctors think.
That's when other disembodied entities start battling to take control of the boy's body, and psychics are called in to help fight the nasty spirits .

That all may sound pretty plausible to someone who hasn't had an out of body experience, but to someone who has, it seems pretty laughable.
That would be like fearing that entities were going to take over your body because you just happened to sleep too soundly.

The Sallie House

Anyway, aside from the fact I think it's a very unlikely scenario that you couldn't get back into your body without actually dying, something else was bugging me, while viewing this movie.

I had finished reading Christopher O’Brien's book  
 Stalking the Tricksters  a few weeks ago, and in it is a chapter about the Sallie House, billed as America's most notorious haunted house.
I had never heard of it before reading Christopher's book. 
So, I tried looking for the video series Chris had worked on, as a cameraman, and found this "documentary" about The Sallie House.

It became apparent to me that the writers/director of  Insidious  got more than a few ideas from The Sallie House doco.
I won't spoil the fun by telling you which ideas were taken from  
The Sallie House  film, and mixed into the Insidious movie.
But if you watch them both closely, it won't be that hard to see what I'm writing about here.

BTW, I found Stalking the Tricksters to be quite entertaining (apart from the  hundreds of typos throughout the book ... it has to be just about one of the best examples of all time, of why it is so important to have a good editor, writing a book) and would recommend it as a thought provoking, although a slightly tricky read;-)

Oh ... and if you sit through all of the credits at the end of  
Insidious, there will be a surprise waiting for you.

P.S. 
If you thought Tiny Tim singing Tiptoe Through the Tulips wasn't scary enough, Insidious takes it to a new creepier level.

It does for Tiptoe Through the Tulips what A Clockwork Orange did for Singing In The Rain. 

You'll never tiptoe through the tulips the same again;-)

Clockwork Orange Mc Happy Meal Anyone???