Halloween 2019: The 10 most chilling things to ever happen on a film set
Call yourself a believer or a non-believer, tales of ghouls, ghosts and other supernatural entities have always been able to haunt the smallest fragment of your consciousness. It has a mysterious power to overshadow all your factual thought processes and leave you with goosebumps. If you think you have ever encountered a spirit or felt its presence, its occurrences somehow cannot be explained since there is very little science that can explain the reasons and it all boils down to your faith and belief system.
Horror movies are great to watch until you know that they have been inspired by real-life incidents. That's when shivers run down your spine and you never know if there's an ominous entity watching you. When it comes to experiencing paranormal activities, there are several instances where these terrifying entities have made their presence felt. Film sets of horror movies seem to be a hotspot for these entities and filming these films is no walk in the park. There have been several reports of the crew members and the production team experiencing some unexplained mysteries. We are talking about events as little falling equipment during intense scenes to deaths of actors and other massive things like a set going up in flames!
Since Halloween is around the corner, this is just the right time to summon the spook. Moving beyond the conventional horror flicks, we bring to you 10 best or worst unexplained mysterious phenomena from real-life experiences of people from the sets, which will either make you want to run out and see the film again or never go near it for the rest of your life.
10. The Lords of Salem (2012)
There was a point when the crew was filming at Linda Vista Hospital in Los Angeles, infamous for its haunted stories and ghastly rumors. According to the production designer, when the filming was happening in the basement, it kept making people sick and everybody almost felt deeply unwell. There were times when one particular buzzer of the hospital room kept going off when there were no staff or patients present.
9. Annabelle
The movie is based on a true story and to make the experience more surreal, the cast did a blunder by making a visit to the real-life doll before filming. Soon, they started to notice claw marks on the sets especially in places that had not been dusted in a while. As claimed by the crew, not a single soul had been to that area! Moreover, the prop dolls of the real Annabelle littered around the set were the least terrifying part of the whole experience. The worst part was alleged unknown energy on set, which caused one member of the cast to fall and hit their head in the exact place where their character would die in the movie.
8. Brandon Lee was killed on the set of The Crow
A stray bullet from a prop gun led to the untimely death of Brandon Lee. The crew attempted to make their own prop bullets and loaded them only to fire them out of a real gun. Nobody knows why or how it happened. Were the bullets swapped or was it just fired incorrectly?
7. Ghost of Goodnight Lane (2014)
The premise of a film that turned out to be a real-life horror for the entire cast and crew of this movie. The movie is centered around a cursed film set filled with terrifying and confusing accidents, based on director Ali Bijan's own life. One of the crew members allegedly ended up being assaulted by a violent spirit too! The set was constantly being disturbed by flickering lights and faulty equipment. There were occasions when the equipment started to fall from heights, and the cast was constantly disturbed by disembodied voices and whispers.
6. The Possession
Whichever unholy spirit cursed the set of this movie, started off with little things like exploding light bulbs. Things escalated quickly when the entire prop storage department burnt down inexplicably. The prop for the movie’s demonically-possessed relic, in the movie the source of all evil, was completely blackened and destroyed. Turns out, it was nowhere near the fire!
5. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Actress Jennifer Carpenter who played Emily Rose in the film claimed that she was being followed one night and her stereo kept turning on by itself through the night. Somehow, the stereo only played one line "I'm Alive" from Pearl Jam's 'Alive'.
4. The Conjuring
According to the people on set, the real-life couple, Ed and Loraine refused to come to the sets because they believed that the spirits would not take it kindly to be mimicked and would probably appear in person. The couple's fears come true as Warrens' descendants arrived on set and strange things kept happening immediately. The hotel in which the cast and crew stayed caught fire, and they were constantly surrounded by furious winds that only shook them and not a single leaf that was around them.
3. The Amityville Horror (2005)
The director should have left this film alone. Before the filming, a body of a fisherman mysteriously washed up on the sets. With just 1 month before the film's release, George Lutz, the man on whom Ryan Reynold's character was based on suddenly died. It may have links with the fact that Ryan kept waking up at '3:15 am' every night during the filming. While people tried to pass it off as insomnia, '3:15 am' is the exact time when the horrific murders were committed.
2. The Omen
One of the most terrifying scenes involved a character losing his head in a car accident, in the film. Coincidentally, the exact thing happened in real life to a special effects artist, John Richardson, who set up the scene. On Friday the 13th, he met with an accident that decapitated his wife's head identically to that scene in the movie. To add to it, it happened near a road sign that read "66.6" km from the Netherlands city of "Ommen." The horrors continued as the film's star, Gregory Peck, almost got on a flight that crashed with no survivors. he survived because he canceled at the last minute.
1. The Ghost Whisperer
When Jennifer Love Hewitt was trying to film a scene, her crew spotted something moving right behind her shoulders. When they reviewed the footage, she was horrified to find that something that looked like a ghost was turning around just behind her! Not only that, she claimed to have felt a "playful spirit" tug on her dress while shooting. The crew also reported having seen lights moving on their own and exploding randomly. They have even witnessed objects vanish only to reappear in different locations.