If you think of haunted houses as lots of fun, you’ve probably only experienced the annual, local imitations — those yearly efforts intended for charity that offer up harmless screams and preplanned thrills.
The odds are that you didn’t grow up dealing with the living nightmare of your own home being haunted. Darrell Gene Motal is an ordained Texas City minister who says his childhood residence near Blocker Middle School was just such a place: A real haunted house. Motal tells his story in both a book and a TV episode of the Discovery Channel series, “A Haunting.”
The trouble all began, he wrote in his book, “The Witch’s Son,” when his mom, Sandra Waldron, decided to invest herself in the practice of white magic. The book’s summary refers to Motal as “the paranormal preacher” and a “demonologist.” It states that he previously worked at the mysterious Area 51 — an area in southern Nevada at the center of UFO controversy — and then characterizes his mother as someone who sought to “destroy him with all the fury of a woman (whose Wiccan religion Motal) scorned.”
The two disagree on the cause of the manifestations, but not on their reality.
“Supernatural things did occur — things I would have never dreamed possible,” Waldron said of her former home in Texas City. She now lives in Seattle. “Gene feels that my interest in Wicca brought it on. I see things in a different light.”
She described the haunting itself as having the impact of a freight train. She said that she isn’t sure of the cause of the dark clouds, colored orbs and other phantasms that appeared to both her and her son.
“I might have accidentally opened a door,” she said.
Lisa Lacerta, a researcher at New Dominion Pictures, which filmed the “A Haunting” series, said no taping was actually done in Texas City. Instead, the broadcast will feature actors and sets that recreate events from the book. “Spellbound” will also include interviews with both Waldron and Motal.
The two have not screened “Spellbound,” nor seen the script. But Motal said while he expects the TV people to exercise some license with his story, he hopes the vivid essence of his violent experiences will be retained.
Anne Rothwell, series producer for “A Haunting,” said the story would be more about the mother and son than the house itself.
“We chose this story because it deviated from the formula,” she said. “So it is about a woman whose lack of experience with the occult gets her and her son into serious trouble.”
Rothwell also said the show was intended to be as accurate a depiction as possible of the events as Motal and Waldron had related them, within the constraints of a single hour of TV time.
Texas City Haunting
Texas City Haunting