1) Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Anne in the first three Poltergeist movies, died aged 12 from complications following flu-like symptoms.
2) Dominick Dunne, who played the older sister, was killed by her boyfriend just before Poltergeist II went into production.
3) It was reported that actor Will Sampson, who starred in Poltergeist II, performed an exorcism of the set after so much bad luck. He died a year after the film was released.
5) Shortly after the film was released, the special effects director was involved in a car crash which killed his girlfriend. She was decapitated in a way that was identical to a death in the film.
6) Allegedly, a sign by the wreckage read Ommen 66km. The creepiest thing? It happened on Friday 13 August, 1976.
8) Jack McGowran, who portrayed alcoholic director Denning Burke, died suddenly just one week after he completed his role in the film.
9) During the notorious masturbation scene, Ellen Burstyn hurt her back and had to lie in bed for weeks.
10) The location trip to Iraq was pushed from spring, when the weather is milder, to summer, the hottest part of the year, which meant that half the crew were struck down with sunstroke or dysentery.
11) Both a night-watchman died and a special effects expert died during the making of the film.
12) Things got so bad that the director asked a Jesuit priest to exorcise the set; however, he decided to bless it instead. There were no other disturbances after that.
13) In LA, it was estimated that every screening of the film prompted four blackouts and six cases of vomiting – and many people leaving the film halfway through.
14) In New York, several people suffered heart attacks during the film, it has been claimed, and one woman had a miscarriage.
16) Shortly after, he collapsed and he required immediate surgery. However, the condition was persistent and returned over several months: During one admission, Castle was heard to scream: “Rosemary, for god’s sake, drop the knife!”
17) The composer of the film’s score, Krzysztof Komeda, died in hospital from a haematoma of the brain in a way which eerily resembled Hutch’s death in the film.
18) It has long been rumoured that Anton LaVey, the Black Pope of the Church of Satan, acted as “technical advisor” in the film, and he played the devil in the scene where Rosemary is raped by the devil. This is not true.
19) In fact, LaVey was friends with Susan Atkins, a member of the Manson Family, who was sentenced to death for her role in the murder of Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, one year later.
21) Assistant director Jan Michelini was also struck twice by lightning during the film’s production.
22) Playing the role of Jesus Christ took its toll upon Caviezel; he dislocated his shoulder while performing the crucifixion scenes, struggled against hypothermia, and got a lung infection and pneumonia.
23) Caviezel also suffered painful skin infections from the makeup used to depict his gruesome injuries in the film.
25) A construction driver drove a screwdriver through his own hand; a set sculptor drove his car through the props room and completely destroyed it; and most of the set was destroyed by a storm.
26) The most devastating tragedy occurred when the young star, Brandon Lee, was shot dead while shooting the film. A metal tip from a fake bullet had been lodged in the prop gun that they were using for the scene, which lodged in his abdomen.
27) Shortly after Lee’s death, a film was produced by his mother about his father’s life, titled “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story”. In a scene at the end, Bruce Lee is fighting a demon, but it loses interest in him and goes after his son instead. The film was released just two months after Brandon’s death.
28) Bruce Lee died in 1973 after shooting a film called Game of Death. In the film, he played an actor who is shot after gangsters replace a fake bullet with a live one, in circumstances similar to those of his son’s death 20 years later.
30) A year before his death, Morrow had taken out a $5 million life insurance policy after having a premonition that he would die in a helicopter crash. The film’s concept artist mistakenly included a burnt-out helicopter in the middle of the river in his sketches, foreshadowing the details of the accident.