A Haunting on Dice Road - The Hell House (2016)

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Flack
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A Haunting on Dice Road - The Hell House (2016)

Post by Flack »



Throughout the years I've watched hundreds of UFO, cryptid, and supernatural documentaries, and spent the majority of those years hoping to see something in real life that would convince me any of those things existed. I have stood at the bow of a ship traveling through the Bermuda Triangle, scanning the water something, goddammit anything, to persuade me into believing all those stories I read as a child were true. I've been to Mt. Rainier, Gulf Breeze, Roswell, and half a dozen other UFO hotspots in hopes of catching any hint of a flying saucer zooming across the sky. Not a one. I even bought a book full of magical spells at a garage sale when I was a teenager and hid in my closet reading supposedly ancient gobbledygook in an attempt to summon demons to smite my enemies. None ever showed up.

It turns out the secret to experiencing the supernatural is forming a ghost hunting crew, buying some night vision cameras, and making a documentary. While despite my begging they've never shown themselves to me, it appears ghosts can't resist coming out of the woodwork to make their on-screen debut.

Steve T. Shippy directed, produced, and edited the documentary A Haunting on Dice Road - The Hell House. Not only is Shippy a filmmaker but also a paranormal investigator and former professional rapper known as "Prozac." If that's not a combination of skills you can trust, I don't know what is.

The titular house resides on Dice Road in Saginaw, Michigan and originally owned by the Pomeraning family. According to the film, the house is one of the most haunted places in America, which I find to be odd as every single Google search I could come up with lead back to this documentary. The strange activity began back in the 1970s, when the original owners reported "loud knocks on the walls" to the local police dozens multiple times. Despite multiple stakeouts, investigations, and the fact that the family had two teenage boys, no one was ever able to determine the source of the knocks. Current and former residents, neighbors, police, firement, and other random people all line up to give their first hand knowledge of the case. Based on the number of people interviewed and the events witnessed this house should be as famous as the one in Amityville.

The interview footage is intercut with Shippy and his ghost hunting pals snooping around the property. Half the footage is of Shippy alone, telling spooky tales about the home to the camera. The other half is of all three stooges performing their own ghost investigation with random handheld gadgets that flash and light up. It's not important to know what these things do or how they work. All you need to know is that flashing lights means there's a gh-gh-gh-ghost! Half a dozen times an entity (read: shadow) passes by in the background. Don't worry if you miss it because the film rewinds, magnifies the grainy footage up 10x, and plays it again in slow motion. All of Shippy's footage is filmed at night, either by flashlight or with night vision cameras. Incredibly, Shippy and his team were able to capture more paranormal activity on camera than every professional paranormal investigator combined has caught on film in the history of paranormal investigations. On cue, walls knock, shadows appear, doors creak open, radios turn on, and so on.

About an hour into the film during one of these segments, Shippy breaks out the ol' Ouija board and starts asking questions in the dark. "Who are you!" he demands to know in the dark, both hands controlling the planchette. The former rapper doesn't get a reaction until he asks if the spirit is upset they are there, at which point the planchette doesn't merely lead Shippy's hands across the board but leaves his hands completely and slides across the board under its own power, stopping dramatically on the word YES. And it's at that moment that the viewer has to make a decision. Either MC Prozac and his tribe of goons have captured unequivocal evidence of paranormal activity, or this scene is fake and everything in the entire "documentary" becomes suspect. Based on my use of quotation marks around the word "documentary," you can guess which side of the pearly gates I land on.

The investigation footage eventually goes off the rails when a PK readers leads the researchers to a jar buried underneath the house that contains evidence of a witch's curse. The longer the investigation goes on the more things begin to feel like the Blair Witch. The fact that I can't find a single reference to this case online that doesn't also mention this film makes me think that this entire thing was made up, or if not, extremely exaggerated. I don't have a PK meter or an EMP scanner, but I was born with a bullshit detector and it was going off the entire time.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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Flack
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Re: A Haunting on Dice Road - The Hell House (2016)

Post by Flack »

PS: My favorite comment on the YouTube trailer:

"Just finished the full documentary last night. Very interesting, specially being a Michigan native myself and growing up in a haunted house... I'm surprised an exorcism was never performed on the house its self. I strongly believe it has to do with the land as a hole however. When we had our childhood home investigated we were told it absolutely was the land keeping spirits there.
In this case however I'd be willing to bet this "witch" opened a portal to let demons in. Making this haunting demonic, which would explain why blessings only made things worse. Supper cool stuff! Thanks for sharing"
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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Jizaboz
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Re: A Haunting on Dice Road - The Hell House (2016)

Post by Jizaboz »

Hahah yeah that looks pretty bad.

Some of these shows are better than others, and some are more realistic than others. Spoiler: If a lot of shit is found within a short span of time yup it's fake.

While there is some science behind things like EMF readers (as I mentioned before home inspectors and other professionals use them) and EVP sessions (if you make a recording and play it back and hear voices that you didn't hear with your ears it's a bit un-nerving), most shows just sort of glaze over how it even works or have ridiculous looking apparatuses. Motion sensors going off for no reason indoors can also be a solid indicator of an anomaly.. though obviously aren't reliable outdoors due to wind and wildlife.

I like the term anomaly in general rather than "ghost" or "spirit", "demon", etc. It's really the only scientific way to think about this sort of thing. If for instance you are in middle of nowhere in the woods walking around with an EMF meter, it should read zero mG unless you have electronic devices on or near you. If something happens like you walk towards a large rock that seems odd to you and the EMF meter spikes to 22 mG or so or higher.. that IS an anomaly. That shouldn't be there and it's pretty cool to discover it. Certain hertz tones in the area can cause a side effect to your eyes that literally makes you see shadow forms in the corner of your eyes. Neither of these sort of situations warrant "closing portals" or "exorcisms" or any of this other quackery most of these frauds talk about.

I should also add that "spirit box" type devices seem to me like sophisticated Magic 8-Balls. They work by either scanning temp, EMF, or other environmental readings to sometimes randomly spit out words from a dictionary or they quick sweep through a radio band (AM I think but not sure) in hopes it will randomly spit out relevant random words from broadcasts.
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