The Most Horrific Behind-The-Scenes Stories From Horror Movies

The Omen (1976) is about a couple that adopts a little boy, Damien, only to learn he's the Antichrist. Talk about a raw deal. 

While filming, actor Gregory Peck and executive producer Mace Neufeld had their planes hit by lighting. Yes, planes - one carrying Peck and Seltzer, another carrying Neufield. Later, the hotel Neufeld was staying at in London was bombed by the IRA, and so was a restaurant at which several cast members had reservations.  

The most chilling incident occurred in Holland in August 1976. John Richardson, the film's visual effects consultant, and his assistant, Liz Moore, were in a car accident. Moore was decapitated in a manner similar to a way that is depicted in the film. Richardson crawled out of the wreckage, looked around to get his bearings, and found a road sign reading, "Ommen, 66.6 km." 

The Exorcist was plagued by bad luck, leading many to believe it was cursed. If you haven't seen it, the film revolves around the MacNeil family, whose daughter Regan (Linda Blair) is possessed by the demon Pazuzu.

Right from the start, the production was bedeviled by creepy problems. Filming was delayed because the set for the MacNeil home caught fire. It was mostly destroyed, but, eerily enough, Regan's bedroom was spared. The fire was attributed to a pigeon that got into a circuit box.

There were a number of deaths and injuries among the cast, crew, and their loved ones. Actress Ellen Burstyn, who played the matriarch of the MacNeil family, was injured by a mishap (in the video) with her harness during a fight scene; the scream she unleashes in the film is real.

Actor Jack MacGowran and actress Vasiliki Maliaros both passed away shortly after the filming. In 1973, MacGowran perished of the flu and Maliaros of natural causes. Linda Blair's grandfather and actor Max Von Sydow's brother both passed during production. The son of Mercedes McCambridge, who voiced the demon, took out his family before taking his own life after being accused of fraud in November 1987.

The Conjuring is based on a supposedly true story, as told by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, about a case they took on in 1971, at the behest of the Perron family. The film was successful upon its release in 2013, but the production was plagued by bizarre occurrences. 

Lorraine Warren consulted on the film. When screenwriters Chad and Carey Hayes tried to speak with her on the phone, they had a hard time getting through, which could be attributed to spirits attempting to get in the way of their storytelling. During production, the hotel the crew stayed at caught on fire. Director James Wan said his dog seemed upset by an invisible entity, growling and tracking something unseen around his office. And actress Vera Farmiga, who plays Lorraine, said claw marks mysteriously appeared one day on the screen of her laptop without any explanation.

The Perron family claimed that, when visiting the set, wind whipped around them, but nearby trees remained still. That same day, a member of the Perron family who elected to stay away from the set fell and broke her hip. 

The Amityville Horror came out in 1979 and has its roots in truth. On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo took the lives of his mother, father, sisters, and brothers in their home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island, New York. George and Kathy Lutz later moved into the house and, over the course of 28 days, claimed to experience paranormal phenomena.

While the DeFeo slayings are true, the truth of the Lutzes' experiences, as documented by Jay Anson's book The Amityville Horror, have long been subject to debate. Of the various claims made by the Lutzes is that George woke up every night at 3:15 am, the time of the DeFeo slayings. 

In 2005, Andrew Douglas directed a remake of the original film starring Ryan Reynolds as George Lutz. Shortly before filming began, a dead body washed up on the set. Reynolds claimed he and others working on the film kept waking up at precisely 3:15 am. 

This may make you never want to fall asleep again. Did you know A Nightmare on Elm Street was based on a slew of actual “nightmare deaths” that affected male Southeast Asian refugees? During the 1970s and 1980s, dozens of male Asian immigrants perished after experiencing extreme night terrors.

As Dr. Robert Kirschner, a Cook County medical examiner, explained: 

In the Philippines, it’s called bangungut, in Japan pokkuri, in Thailand something else. But it all translates as the same thing: nightmare death... These are all healthy men with no previous symptoms; the average age was 33. The situation is almost always the same. It only occurs in men and it only occurs in their sleep. The report is they cry out and die or are found dead the next morning.

Roman Polanski's 1968 psychological horror masterpiece Rosemary's Baby stars Mia Farrow as the eponymous Rosemary. In the film, she and her husband move into a new building, the Bramford, and decide to conceive a baby. But the neighbors sure are weird.

William Castle, the film's producer, wrote that he received a deluge of angry letters accusing him of witchcraft and other evils after the film's release in 1968, and was later stricken with bout after bout of kidney stones. The film's composer, Krzysztof Komeda, perished of a blood clot in the brain in April 1969. His passing eerily mirrored that of a character in the film.

About a year after the film's release, on August 9, 1969, Polanski fell victim to one of the most notorious crimes in Hollywood history. His wife, a pregnant Sharon Tate, and four of their friends, were slain by the Manson Family while Polanski was out of the country. Charles Manson claimed to be inspired by the Beatles, in particular, the track "Helter Skelter." John Lennon was taken out by Mark David Chapman in December 1980 in New York City, in front of the Dakota Building, which appears in Rosemary's Baby as the Bramford.