Dark Details From The Set Of Poltergeist — And How One Young Star’s Grim Fate Was Sealed

JoBeth Williams, who played Diane Freeling, said she experienced strange goings-on at her apartment. She was troubled by how the pictures on the walls would become crooked each time she left for filming no matter how often she straightened them. In 2014 she admitted to having solved the mystery on Reddit, writing, “I finally realized… that the pictures would shift because I slammed the door!” But not all happenings are so easily explained. 

Many strange incidents have happened to the cast and crew of the Poltergeist movies. So many, in fact, that it’s led to an urban legend that the films are somehow cursed. There’s much speculation about what might have caused it, but the theory is so widely believed it even prompted a 2002 E! True Hollywood Story called Curse of the Poltergeist. 

Heather O’Rourke famously played Carol Anne Freeling, but the movie could have been markedly different — because child actress Drew Barrymore auditioned for the part instead. She nearly got it too, but writer and co-producer Steven Spielberg spotted O’Rourke at the last second. In the end Barrymore went on to star in her breakthrough movie E.T., with Spielberg at the helm as director. 

The novelist for the Poltergeist book, James Kahn, had just finished writing a storm scene when a real one broke outside his office. “All the lights went out,” he said on YouTube in 2019. “The front of the window air conditioner blew off across the room and almost hit me.” And when the power came back on, it simultaneously sparked all the nearby videogames back into life at once. Pretty weird, right?

Spoiler alert! At the end of the movie, a supernatural vortex absorbs the Freeling house. Now, since otherworldly vacuums are hard to come by, the crew had to simulate the effect with a real-world machine on a model house. Ironically, the model was almost as costly as a full-scale home. And if rumors are to be believed, Spielberg now owns the diminutive replica. Or what’s left of it, anyway.

O’Rourke was fearless throughout Poltergeist — except for the bedroom scene with the haunted closet. The effect was achieved using a wind machine to blast O’Rourke’s toys around with the actress herself holding onto her headboard for dear life. It terrified the girl on the first take, but Spielberg — who was behind the cameras for this scene — instantly stopped filming, hugged her and never asked her to re-shoot the scene. 

James Karen played Mr. Teague, the man behind both building the Freelings’ house and unleashing its curse. His performance must have been a good one, because it bled into his other job. At the time he was also shooting commercials for Pathmark supermarkets, which got written complaints. They weren’t criticizing Karen’s ad performance, but Teague’s treatment of the Freeling family and all he put them through. 

Did you notice the choppy scene change during Steven and Diane’s discussion about spirits in Poltergeist’s first hour? That’s because there was more to the conversation that was edited out. Initially, the movie has Steven expressing his dislike for Pizza Hut, but the company complained. The line was cut, but it’s obvious a slice of the scene is missing. 

Did you know that the Freelings’ Cuesta Verde neighborhood is actually based on Spielberg’s home town? “I really based the neighborhood on suburban Scottsdale, Arizona, where I grew up,” he said in a press release. “It is the lifestyle of suburban America… The Freeling family in Poltergeist is not atypical of the people I knew and grew up with in Scottsdale.”

The Poltergeist franchise features a medium called Tangina. The actress who played her, Zelda Rubinstein, is also a medium in real life. What’s more, she claimed to have experienced a strange phenomenon during filming. A persistent blur of light ruined one of her Poltergeist III photoshoots. Rubinstein later reported it coincided with the time of her mother’s passing, and she doesn’t believe it was a coincidence.

During Poltergeist III special effects became all too real when a prop explosion injured three crew members. In 1987 Anton Barton, the fire chief who was on the scene, told the Chicago Tribune newspaper, “A ball of fire chased everyone out of there. There was black smoke all over the place… This was all supposed to be done with the best of taste, but somehow it got away.” 

Heather O’Rourke was serendipitously discovered in the MGM studio restaurant. In the 2000 book Steven Spielberg: Interviews the famous director recalled, “I walked over to the table and I said, ’Who’s the proud mother or agent of this child?’ And two hands went up: the mother’s and the agent’s. So I pulled Heather aside, and I think we made her the deal the next day. She’s wonderful.”

Despite daily involvement in Poltergeist, Spielberg’s contract for E.T. stated he had to give the latter film his undivided directing attention. So he worked on Poltergeist alongside Tobe Hooper, who sat in the director’s chair. But some conspiracy theorists believe Spielberg used Hooper as a ghost director, and media attention fanned the flames of such speculation. Of course, Spielberg vehemently denies the claims. 

Originally, Spielberg wanted to work with legendary horror writer Stephen King on Poltergeist’s script, but it just wasn’t to be. The novelist was “on a ship going across the Atlantic to En­gland” and couldn’t be contacted in time for the collaboration. Instead, Spielberg penned the screenplay with Mark Victor and Michael Grais, but it all worked out well in the end. 

Ever wonder why Poltergeist taps into so many fears? It’s because Spielberg’s nightmares influenced him, as he revealed in Steven Spielberg: Interviews. He explained, “Poltergeist is about my fears: of a clown doll, of a closet, of what was under my bed, of the tree in New Jersey I felt moved whenever there was a wind storm and it scared me with its long, twiggy fingers.”

Arguably one of the film's most gruesome scenes, paranormal investigator Marty’s face-tearing vision really is a sight to behold. But how did they achieve such life-like gore? Well firstly, Martin Cassella’s head had to be replicated as a destructible bust for the whopping sum of $100,000. And then came the make-up team. They slaved for ages to achieve the nightmarish oozing. It's a shame the three hours spent being made up went to waste as they'd worked on the wrong side of his face. Ouch! 

The spooky stacking kitchen chairs was director Hooper’s favorite part of Poltergeist to shoot. Crew members replaced the regular chairs in one room with a pre-stacked assortment super-quickly while just staying out of the camera’s view. In 2014 Hooper told YouTube channel Mick Garris Interviews it was “more like a magic trick than a special effect.”

When a possessed steak crawls along Marty’s kitchen counter, viewers’ skins crawl with it. The effects behind the scene are much less scary, though. The meat was actually just a normal steak set over a slot in the counter. Beneath that sat a crew member who used two wires to simulate the prop’s crawling motion. Now that’s fast food! 

Before Pennywise, Poltergeist’s evil doll personified creepy clowns, and it nearly killed Oliver Robins, who played Carol Anne’s sibling Robbie Freeling. Without special effects, Robins had to pull the clown’s arm around his neck to simulate strangling. “The contraption caught around my neck,” he told website Icons of Fright. “[Spielberg] saw that...and he pulled me away from it. Who knows what might’ve happened otherwise.”

The entity behind the Poltergeist haunting — known initially as The Beast — only showed itself twice in the original film. It was scripted for a third appearance caught on tape, though. It would have unveiled its human face, that of crazed preacher Henry Kane. This reveal was postponed for the franchise sequels instead.

For her swimming scene, Williams was understandably hesitant about climbing into a pool under heavy electrical lights. To put her at ease Spielberg himself joined her in the water, saying, “Now if a light falls in, we will both fry.” His trust in the crew paid off because both he and Williams walked away from the shoot unscathed.

Richard Matheson, who wrote The Twilight Zone episode “Little Girl Lost,” noticed similarities between his own work and Poltergeist. In the story, the titular girl travels to another dimension via her mirror, just like in the movie. In 2011 Matheson told website Ain’t It Cool News, “Poltergeist was inspired by one of mine, and I never got credit for it. ...They sort of used that idea and made their own concept of it.”

The first Poltergeist is arguably the most successful entry in the franchise, and it left a lasting imprint on MGM: the studio still uses a sound effect featured in the movie today. You know the roar from the famous MGM lion shown before all its movies? That’s the same noise that comes from The Beast during the movie’s climax. 

Despite being a horror film, Poltergeist was rated PG when it hit movie screens. But this almost wasn’t the case; there was more adult content in the original screenwriting until Hooper and Spielberg agreed on the tone. Michael Grais told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph in 2020, “Tobe would want to go harder, Steven would want to go softer and they met in the middle. They complemented each other.”

Before Poltergeist was finalized, it wasn’t just a different tone — it also had a different name. It was called either It’s Nighttime or simply Nighttime, but the planned ending was perhaps among the biggest differences. The finale featured a dark fate not just for the Freelings, but the entire neighborhood. Spielberg didn’t like the doom and gloom, though, and wrote a more hopeful finale.

The first 15 minutes of Poltergeist features an Easter Egg for eagle-eyed watchers. The Freeling parents are watching a movie in their bedroom. You might recognize it as 1943’s A Guy Named Joe, a film about a stubborn ghost who refuses to move on. Spielberg actually remade the same film in 1989 under the name Always. How’s that for coincidence? 

There’s an interesting detail behind the creation of Diane Freeling’s spectral bedroom attack. It might look like something’s pulling Williams all around the room, but it isn’t the actor who’s moving. A spinning box was set up around the camera which, when rotated, created the illusion of the spooky spectacle. The special effects team were really thinking outside the box!

Believe it or not, but reported real-life events of the Herrmann family who lived in Seaford, Long Island, inspired Poltergeist. This family experienced some strange happenings, including lots of bottles apparently moving around and uncapping themselves, some of which were allegedly witnessed by police. No explanation was ever found, though the phenomena stopped after a priest blessed the Herrmann home. They’re heeeeere! 

Who can forget that bathroom scene? You know, the one where Marty says goodbye to his face! But even taking special effects into account, not everything’s as it seems. See those hands doing the dirty work? They’re not actor Casella’s. Yup, those enthusiastic digits doing the digging are, in fact, Spielberg’s.

In the movie’s climax, some realistically gnarly skeletons emerge from the ground to attack the living. And they’re so convincing because they’re real! That’s right, the Poltergeist crew used genuine skeletons as props, which led many to speculate it brought the curse down on all involved. This was actually common practice in older Hollywood flicks since they were cheaper to acquire than fake ones.

Actor Casella was retired from Hollywood when he auditioned for the part of Marty in Poltergeist. He’d gone into teaching but applied on the off-chance. Spielberg, who had an inside joke with Casella where he’d throw car keys to him like a valet, delivered the news about the actor’s success. After tossing a ring of car keys to him, of course. 

Among the many ways The Beast tormented Robbie Freeling, being eaten by a tree was up there. Yet when you see the plant playing hungry, hungry hawthorn with Robbie, you’re actually seeing events in reverse. The scene was shot with actor Robins being flung from the tree mouth then played backwards for the final cut. 

Grais told the Poltergeist fan site, “The tree grabbing Robbie is based on an incident that happened to me when I was a small boy and woke up in a storm in our house… Lightning struck the tree in our yard. A huge branch crashed through the window close to where I was seated.” So it literally has its roots in his memories. 

Can you think what it would be like to live in the Freeling home? Well, some people don’t have to imagine! It’s a real property located in Simi Valley, California. Although it sounds like it would be exciting to visit, don’t get any ideas about having a look around. It’s owned and lived in, but you might be able to get a decent glimpse at the exterior. 

Adding fuel to the fire of the Poltergeist curse, Sampson passed away shortly after he finished filming on Poltergeist II: The Other Side. He unfortunately experienced surgery complications from which he never recovered. Among Sampson’s other roles, he also played Chief Bromden in 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and outside acting was a shaman for three tribes. 

Richard Lawson, who played Poltergeist’s Ryan, is known as both an actor and Beyoncé’s stepfather, and his fame once saved his life. As thanks for signing an autograph, a fan upgraded Lawson’s plane ticket to first-class. The flight crashed and claimed the lives of over half the passengers on board: gruesomely, one of the victims had been sitting in the seat Lawson had originally booked. 

In the original film Dominique Dunne portrayed Dana Freeling, but she was prematurely taken from the world. Dunne’s ex-boyfriend took her life following an argument which her friend overheard. Some people believe this friend used the Poltergeist soundtrack to block out the argument, but that’s never been officially confirmed. It could just be rumors stemming from the film’s legendary curse.

Lou Perryman played Pugsley in the movie, where he was credited as Lou Perry. Unfortunately, he also had his life taken from him in 2009 in tragic circumstances. Although he rarely took center stage, Perryman still played instrumental roles in some big films including Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 and The Blues Brothers.

Heather O’Rourke’s passing is perhaps one of the more infamous happenings associated with Poltergeist. Young O’Rourke was just 12 when she lost her life in 1988 due to septic shock from a health condition. She’d not long finished filming the horror trilogy, so the popular movies stand as an unofficial tribute to her acting legacy.

Will Sampson, who portrayed a medicine man in Poltergeist II: The Other Side, was a real-life shaman who performed an on-set exorcism. Staff couldn’t climb a hill featuring a real-life skeleton-filled cave, which Sampson explained was because “the skeletons are not happy.” Writer Grais told The Daily Telegraph, “The next day, there was no problem... That’s absolutely a true story.” If you do the research, you’ll find it’s actually very common for scary incidents to occur on horror movie sets. And hearing about them somehow makes all these films even creepier...