anatomicdeadspace:

The Poltergeist Curse

One movie plagued by catastrophe was 1982’s Poltergeist. The film takes place in a new California suburb occupied by the Freeling family. Shortly after moving into their home, the family begins experiencing all sorts of increasingly sinister paranormal activity which eventually culminates in the family’s youngest daughter, platinum-blonde Carol Ann, being whisked off to the spectral realm. In the years following the movie’s release, death followed. Some insist that thePoltergeist curse stems from the fact that the filmmakers used real skeletons in one climactic scene—rather than fakes, which would have been prohibitively expensive—thus unleashing the wrath of the spirit world.

On October 30, 1982, Dominique Dunne, who played the family’s eldest daughter, got into an argument with her ex-boyfriend John Sweeney outside her home in West Hollywood, California. Things soured and Sweeney choked Dunne, stopping her heart. She was revived but was declared brain dead. Her family removed her from life support on November 4, five months to the day after the release ofPoltergeist. Sweeney essentially got away with murder—he was convicted only of voluntary manslaughter, for which he served less than four years in jail.

The next victim of the curse was Carol Ann herself, Heather O’Rourke, who became violently ill on January 31, 1988. This was not entirely unexpected, as she had been diagnosed the previous year with Crohn’s disease and was suffering from an acute bowel obstruction. Despite being airlifted to Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego and undergoing emergency surgery, O’Rourke died of septic shock on the operating table. She was just 12 years old. Her early demise made marketing the yet-unreleased Poltergeist III a very dicey proposition for the studio. When the film was released, it was dedicated to her.

Other deaths sometimes attributed to the curse include that of 60-year-old Julian Beck (Beck was actually diagnosed with cancer before he even accepted the part in the franchise) and 53-year-old Will Sampson. Apparently, not everyone takes the Poltergeist curse seriously—a reboot starring Sam Rockwell is due out in 2015.