Cursed Movies: Injuries, Deaths, Paranormal Activity; Can Ghosts Injure and Kill After All?

By: Joel v.d. Reijden | Date: Dec. 5, 2025 (draft) | Supernatural Research Center

Contents

"Demons come in many different varieties. There are some who belong to the lower chorus of angels and are tormented with minor penalties as if for small offences, in addition to the penalty of loss through damnation... [They] are misleading tricksters with the restriction that while they constantly haunt certain places and roads, they cannot harm passers-by in any way. Instead, they are content with derision and deception and strive to harass rather than harm... Basically they just play jokes."

The 'Malleus Maleficarum' (1486), a huge influence on royal courts and the Vatican in witch burning. What about the "higher chorus?" And seemingly innocent bystanders?

^^

Intro

Ghosts are not supposed to injure and kill...

In the ghost article published earlier, after reading over 1,500 accounts of haunted house and related ghost stories, I had to draw the conclusion that there is zero evidence that ghosts can - or are allowed to - kill either humans or animals. Injuries from ghost encounters tend to be extremely rare, and relatively mild - as if they only happen by accident.

Similarly, 95%-plus of cases involve ghosts that are stuck in a certain location, often just one or two rooms, or a floor. They do not, and-or cannot, follow people around from location to location. Accounts certainly do exist of ghosts following people from one place to another, but these accounts are very rare compared to location-based hauntings. A lot of people report fearing that a ghost in their house might follow them to the next home, but I've read almost no accounts of this actually happening.

Ouija similarities

Enter a movie as 'The Omen': all of a sudden all the "regular ghost" conclusions come with a major exclamation mark: "but!" That is, if the accounts of actors, directors, producers and film crew members are genuine and accurate. That's a big "if", of course.

What happened with 'The Omen' actors though isn't entirely incompatible with Ouija board experiences though. Having read several hundred of such Ouija board accounts, all of a sudden ghosts following people to their own homes, although often only causing temporary issues, become more common. Also much more common become peculiar deaths, but rather consistently you get into this strange netherzone in which time doesn't exist to ghosts, and both scary almost-deaths and actual deaths seem to have a faithful "always meant to happen"-vibe.

I tried documenting 'The Omen' story as well as possible. I actually did so while still being quite green on the subject of ghosts, and without having read a single Ouija account. From there I ran into the usual superficial "let's get some Google hits"-type articles talking about anomalies at other movie sets as well. So I had to research those too, because complete sources, original sources, and first-hand accounts often were not available in these articles. Even here the information isn't perfect, but I plugged a lot of gaps and included a lot of first-hand testimony.

Theoretical but useful

In the end, this is another theoretical article, more "out there" maybe than the regular ghost stories. Under all circumstances it is a very useful article though. More than a few haunted house and possession stories have been based on the films discussed below, so if you're like me, as someone who doesn't care one bit about horror movies, that leaves quite a gap in crucial knowledge. The article also is very useful in "kinda seeing what's out there" in terms of ghost tales, what the statements have been of various actors, directors, producers and film crew members; and also to what extent these movies actually have been promoting Satan instead of - as they claim - opposing it. Some ended up being quite prophetic in a variety of ways in terms of the decline of western society.

In the end, I'm not embracing any of the accounts cited in this article until I experience these things myself, or until a lot more reliable first-hand testimony comes out.

^^

The Omen

Anti-Satan or anti-Christ?

'The Omen' was a supernatural horror movie released in 1976, involving Satan having been reincarnated on Earth in the form of a little boy. Originally titled 'The Anti-Christ', the movie's name was switched to 'The Omen' after it turned out that 'The Anti-Christ' title already was taken by another movie.

The first cast and crew were on the ground in the UK preparing scenes by the first days of September 1975. Actual filming took place from October 6, 1975 to January 9, 1976 - for about 10-11 weeks. 1 It appears that in October-November 1975 the UK scenes were shot; the Italian ones from late November to Early December 1975; and the ones in Israel in Mid-December 1975.

Very quickly the entire cast and crew got spooked by the number of apparent 'bad omens' that befell top cast and crew members: "everyone involved in the production was freaked out to some extent." 2 Top directors and producers involved in the film have repeatedly made the case that the 'omens' appear to signify that "the Devil" didn't want this movie made. As producer Harvey Bernhard put it:

"All during the picture, there was strange things happening. And it was an aura of not being welcomed. ... I really, sincerely believed that the devil didn't want the picture to be made." 3

However, the fact that the movie's plotline involves completely bogus scripture, and a father having to stab his Satan-possessed (step)son on the alter in a Church of God to "save the world", likely did not put God on their side as well. You're not "exposing" Satan. Arguably you're promoting him by child sacrificing in name of God. Considering it's shockingly obvious by the names alone that the producers and directors of 'The Omen' all were Jews, they, despite appearing quite laid-back, do manage to strike a bunch of truths and stereotypes all at once, including that Jews generally only accept the child-sacrificing Old Testament version of "God". They are not fans of Jesus or the New Testament.

The way over: lightning strikes ... multiple times

One thing is certain, the number of 'bad omens' associated with this movie truly is incredible. In fact, there were so many, I was forced to integrate a variety of sources into a timeline to get a full, proper list:

1. June 1975: Gregory Peck, the selected lead and the one who has to kill his (step)son in a church in the movie, has a personal tragedy happen around the time he accepts the movie role: one of his own sons, the very successful and well-liked Jonathan Peck, unexpectedly 4 commits suicide. 5 The main reason appears to have been still-mainly-invisible, but increasingly debilitating health issues: "The autopsy showed an enlarged heart and the arteriosclerosis of an old man." These issues are fascinating, considering Peck was an athlete who seldom drank. 6 It makes one wonder what this 30-year-old athletic man was eating.


2. Early Sep. 1975: Gregory Peck's TWA airliner, while underway to London to start shooting 'The Omen', is struck by lightning, setting one of the engines on fire 7, necessitating a landing. Executive producer Mace Neufeld, a pilot himself, thought it extra odd, because even if lightning strikes a plane, "the only thing it may do is knock out some electrical systems. Rarely is a plane [emergency] downed by lightning." 8


3. Early Sep. 1975: Eight hours later 9, or according to director Richard Donner, 3 days later, the TWA flight of David Seltzer, who wrote the screenplay for the movie, also is struck by lightning. 10


4. Early Sep. 1975: The plane of Mace Neufeld, executive producer of 'The Omen', similarly is reported to have been struck by lightning - although possibly he was on one of the previous planes: "It was the roughest five minutes I've ever had on an airliner." 11 The Telegraph in 2024 concluded that Peck, Seltzer and Neufeld involved separate incidents, but the article makes at least one major mistake, so it appears they don't really have a clue either.


5. Early Sep. 1975: The plane of director Richard Donner reportedly also is "roughed up". 12

Arrival in London: IRA bombings, car crashes, tiger death

1. Sep. 5, 1975: The IRA bombs London's Hilton Hotel, where producer Harvey Bernhard and director Richard Donner are staying to prepare the shooting for 'The Omen'. 13 Executive producer Macy Neufeld is lodged there too, with his wife. The bombing in the lobby takes place shortly after the group walks out of the hotel. Neufeld's wife initially thinks it's an earthquake. 14


2. Early Sep. 1975: According to Richard Donner, two days after landing in Great Britain 15, he steps out of Harvey Bernhard's car, as another car slams into the door of Harvey's car: "Miracously I didn't lose a leg." 16


3. About Oct. 6, 1975: During the opening scene of the movie, part of the film crew "barely escaped injury in a head-on car collision." Filming apparently started on October 6. Around this time, produces Harvey Bernhard "got a cross. And I wore the cross every day, because I wasn't about to take any chances." 17 Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, 'The Omen' creator Bob Munger not only prayed for his friends, but got a whole prayer chain to try and protect the crew. 18


4. Oct. 9, 1975: According to executive producer Macy Neufeld, "The Greenpark subway station was blown up - as we were walking toward it." 19 This is a reference to an IRA bombing that took place on October 9, killing 1 and injuring 20.


5. Oct.-Nov. 1975: Actress Lee Remick - died in 1991 at age 55 from kidney cancer - got so nervous about all the mishaps that she demanded extra safety measures to be put in place during the stunt of her falling from a balcony. 20


6. Nov. 5, 1975: Windsor Wild Safari Park ranger Sidney Bamford, seemingly in total coincidence, is mauled to death by a tiger 21, one day after having overseen the "crazy baboon" scene in 'The Omen' at the same park. 22 Producer Harvey Bernhard: "He was with us all the time when we were filming. It was horrible. It was shattering." 23
   
   Director Richard Donner has caused confusion when in at least one of his interviews he talked about two lions instead of one tiger, and also about a guard sitting in "a little booth" instead of in between fences out in the open. 24


7. Nov. 12, 1975: IRA bombing of Scott's restaurant at Mount Street, Mayfair, London. 25 Apparently it was Gregory Peck's favorite restaurant. He had invited director Richard Donner and the producers there that same evening. In the words of executive producer Mace Neufeld: "We had reservations at a restaurant, an hour before - Scotts - it was blown up. ... They blew up the restaurant just before we got there." 26 That's the third IRA bombing crew and cast could have been injured or killed in.

Wife and 5 little girls die in faithful plane crash

1. Nov. 20, 1975: Director Robert Donner, "a camera man" and the "producer" (which would be Harvey Bernhard) escape another potential death, after a Hawker Siddeley charter jet they originally ordered for later that day at Dunsfold Aerodrome, to the south-west of London, crashes. They had been looking to hire the jet to do skyline and seemingly some ground shots as well. They were called by the charter company explaining that "they had a better deal on that day if we gave up that plane for that day and did it another time, they would give us a big discount." They would get the plane "for practically nothing," Donner explained on another occasion. Running into severe budget limitations, Donner told the charter company, "Hey, take the plane." A trade delegation with Chinese officials took the plane instead. 27 No one on the plane was killed, and yet, the accident was particularly tragic. According to Donner:
   
   
   "They took off. The plane hit a flock of birds. The engines quit. They lost airspeed. Crashed onto the end of the runway, went down into the street, hit a car and killed everyone in the car. In the car were the wife and two children of the pilot. True story. [Quotation marks with finger:] "The Omen." "The Omen." I mean, it could have happened to us." 28
   
   

   

   Checking up on the incident, it most certainly did happen:
   
   
   "Unfortunately, the broadcasting equipment had not been operating correctly and the Lapwing tape, which was suspect, had been taken to the Pest Infestation Control Laboratory (PICL) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for examination the day before the accident occurred. ... Prior to take-off no concentration of birds had been seen near the active runway but a large concentration of Lapwings flew across the aircraft's flight path just as it became airborne. ... Both engines ingested birds and lost power... One of the two crew members was injured; the seven passengers were not hurt. During the overrun the aircraft crossed a main road and struck a passing motor car; the car was demolished and its six occupants were killed." 29
   
   The only mistake of Donner is that the pilot, a World War II ace and Hawker Siddeley director; and co-pilot, a Hawker Siddeley executive; were not related to the victims. Instead, they plowed into a car containing the wife and two daughters of a fellow-Hawker Siddeley pilot and employee - who was watching the event unfold from the traffic control tower... The car also contained three other teenage girls, all ranging in the age of 12 to 17. As the plane hit the car, their bodies were thrown all over a field. The father and husband had to be put under medical sedation. 30 1,500 people attended the funeral of the woman. 31

Italy: more lighting, more out-of-control animals

1. Late Nov. 1975: Soon after the crew arrives in Italy to shoot one of the scenes of the movie, lightning strikes Hadrian's Arch, right next to the hotel room of producer Harvey Bernhard - apparently "something natives swear has never happened before." The article mentioning it at the time states this happened in Rome. 32 Rome does not have a Hadrian's Arch though. Capua has, which is the nearest major town to the movie scene at Badia di San Sebastiano. Alternately, Rome's Castel Sant'Angelo (The Mausoleum of Hadrian) and the Ponte Sant'Angelo (Bridge of Hadrian) in front of it were meant.


2. Late Nov. - early Dec. 1975: Stuntman Terry Walsh, doubling for actor David Warner, is seriously hurt during the filming of 'The Omen' after trained rottweilers - the ones portraying Hellhounds in the movie - go into a frenzy, ignore the commands of their trainer, and bite through the protective gear of the stuntman - which includes a thin layer of steel. Injured "quite seriously", Walsh is rushed to hospital. This appears to have happened in Italy, during the filming of the Hellhound attack scene at the Etruscan Necropolis of Cerveteri.

The way back: more plane trouble

1. Jan. 1976: The airliner of Harvey Bernhard and crew, on its way back, has to make an emergency landing in Newfoundland, immediately after crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Bernhard: "We had an emergency landing in Newfoundland, and we were carrying the negatives, and I said... "I just don't think we're gonna get back."" 33 Luckily, they do make it back. 34


2. June 6, 1976: The curious "666" release date of this movie was not not really prepared beforehand. As director Richard Donner recalled, Alan Ladd Jr., then the new president of 20th Century Fox that sunk $15 million in promoting the film, told them: "You know, guys, if you wait three more days, you'll come out on June 6th, this big preview night: 6th month, 6th day, 1976. 666." This was another coincidence that blew everybody's minds. 35

Former 'Omen' staff haunted by injury and "666" death

1. May-June 1976: 'The Omen' stunt coordinator Alf Joint joins the set of 'A Bridge Too Far' (1977), a movie that was largely shot in the Netherlands and became quite a World War II classic. On day one of filming already Joint is seriously injured as he falls about 40 feet / 12 meters down in between two large airbags. The crew is mystified as to how this could have happened. George Gibbs, part of the special effects team on 'The Omen' and a special effects coordinator at 'A Bridge Too Far', explained his surprise:
   
   
   "Couldn't understand it. A well-known stuntman in the business for many years. And the airbags were quite big. And for some extraordinary reason he fell in between them. And nobody can explain why." 36
   
   Special effects coordinator for both 'The Omen' and 'A Bridge Too Far', John Richardson, added:
   
   
   "Right in the middle of the take, when we were doing it, he sort of fell off rather strangely and awkwardly. ... He said he felt as though he was pushed. But there was nobody near him at the time. He was completely there on his own. ... Alf was lying in hospital in exactly the same way when he was doubling Lee Remmings. He had the same arm in a cast and the same tubes up his nose. And there was a very, sort of spooky similarity. [In 'The Omen'] when Lee Remming falls out of the hospital window [due to being pushed by a protector of the Anti-Christ] onto the roof of the ambulance, the stuntman Alf Joint jumped [for her as her stunt double]." 37


2. Aug. 13, 1976: Liz Moore, a former special effects assistant and sculptor at 'The Omen', is decapitated in a car crash in the Netherlands, after a tire crashes into her. The person driving the car is Liz's boyfriend, John Richardson, the special effects coordinator mentioned in the previous entry. They are in Europe, because both have been hired to do the special effects for 'A Bridge Too Far'. As producer Harvey Bernhard later explained it:
   
   
   "He was driving and he had a head-on accident, and beheaded his girl. And he, John, he's the one who invented the beheading of our ['The Omen'] picture [of a person being beheaded as a glass plate slides off a truck]. And so his girl was beheaded [as well]. And he woke up and he saw [inaudible] 66.6 kilometer." 38
   
   

   

   
   Bernstein missed a few details. The accident occurred on Friday the 13th, on the road to Ommen and apparently close to the 66.6 kilometer marker. The term "apparently" is purposely used here, because there's some controversy over the exact location of the crash site. Richardson has explained the crash site was on the N348 at the intersection with the N35 across a 66.6 hectometer marker:
   
   
   "Right near the point where the accident happened was an old mile post with nothing but 6s on it. And in view of what Harvey had said to me about everybody praying for us, that immediately came to my mind. And what spooked me even more was when I discovered it was on a road to a place called Ommen." 39
   
   George Gibbs, part of Richardson's special effects team on 'The Omen' and a fellow special effects coordinator at 'A Bridge Too Far', added:
   
   
   "The accident was on the road to a town called Ommen and it had 66.6 kilometers on the sign - because I drove back over to the place where the accident happened." 40
   
   A check through Google Street View reveals that Richardson's and Gibbs' accounts seem accurate enough. Moving north on the N348 one sees continuous signs with "Ommen" straight ahead. One also sees the (separate) hectometer markers increase: 65.8, 65.9 ... 66.3, 66.4... The final two markers on that N348, which at least today aren't visible due to a very thin and very crowded roadside, should be 66.5 and... 66.6. Carefully measuring in Google, the next marker would be right on a large intersection, where hectometer markers are not placed in the Netherlands. At the intersection there are more signs with "Ommen" on it. The hectometer markers actually are based on the route from Zuthen to Ommen.
   
   

   

   
   Now, some recent controversy has emerged here. In 2015 the admin of a questionable pro-immigration conspiracy (disinfo) site enlisted the help of a journalist of the Christian De Stentor newspaper to research the accident. According to a copy-pasted email from this (apparent) De Stentor journalist, an old police officer remembered the accident having taken place on that same N348, but about 6 kilometers south, at an intersection with the Overmeenweg. 41 This officer also looked up some old details on the incident, showing that the accident had happened because Richardson - an Englishman - was used to driving on the other side of the road. Of course, at this particular crash site there never has been a 66.6 hectometer markers that Richardson could have seen.
   
   Who knows what the details are. Maybe the crash did happen more north. Or maybe Richardson was brought to the nearest hospital, which at least today easily would be in Raalte (almost half the distance to Deventer to the south), on a town road 400 meters beyond the 66.6 intersection where Richardson and Gibbs said the accident (really) took place. If Richardson was conscious, which he was, because he witnessed his decapitated girlfriend, he could have seen continuous road markers counting up to an eventual "66.6", interspaced with "Ommen" straight ahead signs.
   
   Hence, whatever happened here remains a bit of a mystery. What we can say with certainty is that the crash happened on Friday the 13th, on a "666" road (its last mile marker), and also is where Richardson's girlfriend was decapitated in roughly similar fashion less than a year after the two of them worked on the infamous decapitation scene in the supposedly cursed 'The Omen' movie - with its own very strong 666 theme and "666 release date" just two months before.
   
   Richardson continued to oversee the special effects of a total of 9 James Bond movies, all the Harry Potter movies (2001-2011), plus the first 'Aliens' movie (1986).

Do 'omens' haunt everyone looking into this mystery?

April 2015: As mentioned, a dutch person, with help from a journalist from De Stentor, did research into the accident near Ommen, as he always lived in this neighborhood. As he was researching the story, he thought it odd that his stock portfolio total amounted to 1,313 euros, and soon was lost. In addition, his wife had to start visiting a doctor at the hospital in Sneek for heart issues in the period he was researching the story. The doctor she received, and continued to visit until at least 2019, was "Dr. Oomen". 42 A quick check reveals that indeed a leading cardiologist named A. Oomen has been working at Sneek's Antonius Ziekenhuis, apparently from at least 2008 43, and still as this article is being written in 2025. 44

Personal post-'Omen' experience

This author is quite open to "omens" happening to whomever researching a story like this. There are multiple reasons for this. One, I have experienced them very strongly for years - in a slightly different context. I'm not writing about that here at the moment.

In addition, I now twice have had very bizarre dreams while listening to different cases of Ed and Lorraine Warren (despite having major issues with reliability) - similar to actress Joey King. In my case, the first time, I woke up to a voice whispering in my air - with "more" happening after that. The second time I was lifted into the air in my dream and dragged through Hellfire. My own mind? Who knows, maybe. But I have too much experience with this weirdness to simply dismiss it as such.

In this case, in the days between writing this section and finishing up the grammar corrections, I myself managed to watch 3 episodes of the final season of 'Married With Children', including episode 18 in which Al, his family and neighbors all manage to spend 300 years in Hell. They're only able to escape after the 'Al's Angels' football team is able to beat the Devil's 'Devil 666' team that includes Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun and Caesar-assassin Brutus. While thinking the episode was bizarrely intense with much more work on the whole setting than just about any other episode, there weren't any 'omen' word plays though. The main omen was the 'Red Hots' candy Al found in his pocket after waking up from his apparent dream, similar as given to him by the Devil in Hell.

^^

Other movies

Origins of the Anti-Christ movie franchise

'The Omen' was part of anti-Christ-type horror film franchise that developed in the late 1960s, starting with 'Rosemary's Baby' (1968) and 'The Exorcist' (1973). With several of these films paranormal activity and-or odd coincidences were reported. Apart from 'The Exorcist', I had no clue any of these films even existed until 2025. When I saw them and researched them, it was a bit of a shock. But not necessarily for your averagely-mentioned reason. Let's briefly discuss them.

1968: Rosemary's Baby: pedo rapist director soon has his own baby and girlfriend murdered by Manson Cult

This actually was the last of the horror movies I watched, only after a while learning that there was "something" preceding 'The Exorcist'. I may have first heard about it in 2023, watching (for good reason) Kim Kardashian's 'American Horror Story: Delicate', in my impression clandestinely based on Lilith. In that show Kim, in a flashback, is seen on the set of 'Rosemary's Baby'. I still couldn't be bothered to check out this film though.

First of all, 'Rosemary's Baby' is an apocalypse-type movie alright. Right from the start you see a clean, all-white New York City with everyone speaking politely and behaving well-mannered. Watching this film over half a century later certainly does make you feel that you must be living in some kind of apocalypse dimension, and that what transpired in the film, continued and played out in real life.

'Rosemary's Baby' is not a pedo movie like 'The Exorcist'. It involves a secret Satanic cult of Devil worshippers, who manage to drug star actress Mia Farrow and have her copulate with the Devil, in order to create the anti-Christ. The end managed to freak me out a bit, but largely due to "outside experiences" that I haven't publicly written about yet. The end scene had this distinct black baby crib, with a Greek person part of this secret cult who clearly was based on Aristotle Onassis or Stavros Niarchos. You know, of the Kennedies and "my" 1001 Club with the Rockeffellers and Rothschilds?

As for "bad omens" with this film: The star of 'Rosemary's Baby', Mia Farrow, had her adopted children preyed upon to some extent by famous film director Woody Allen, her long time partner since 1979. There's been quite a bit of controversy there over the years.

Looking up the director: that was Roman Polanski. The movie was released in June 1968. Roman's house was broken into in August 1969, during which his pregnant girlfriend Sharon Tate was butchered by the infamous Satanist Charles Manson, including their unborn child...

Then, more his own doing (or was it "the Devil"?), in 1977 Polanski was caught drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. Other girls accused him of doing the same thing. He fled to Great Britain and then France in 1979, after he was informed that the judge was going to break a plea deal and sentence Polanski to a decades-long prison sentence. Still, living in Europe, he made a number of successful and less successful movies from the 1990s on, with big names, or names he contributed in building up. Examples:

1. 'Death and the Maiden' (1994) with a post-'Aliens' Sigourney Weaver.
2. 'The Ninth Gate' (1999) with Johnny Depp.
3. 'Bitter Moon' (1999) with Hugh Grant.
4. Adrien Brody received the Academy Award for Best Actor for Polanski's 'The Pianist' (2002).
5. For 'The Ghost Writer' in 2010, with Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Jon Bernthal and Jim Belushi, Polanski won a "Best Director" award.
6. 'The Carnage' (2011) with Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz.
7. Predictably, 'The Palace' (2023) was an epic disaster due to pedophile controversy, but did feature John Cleese, Joaquim de Almeida, and Mickey Rourke.

1972: 'The Possession of Joel Delaney'

A film that is based on a 1970-released book, in which a person becomes possessed by the spirit of a serial killer. It featured actors Shirley MacLaine and Perry King. It wasn't a particularly successful film. William Peter Blatty tried to recruit his "good friend" MacLaine for the role of the mother in 'The Exorcist'. She declined though, due to already having starred in this preceding movie.

1973: The Exorcist

'The Exorcist' was released in December 1973.

CIA and Vatican propaganda

One reason I can't take anything at face value with regard to supernatural controversy surrounding this movie, is because the book, and subsequent movie plot, were written by William Peter Blatty, a psychological warfare expert who literally has all the hallmarks of having been an Eastern Establishment-tied Catholic CIA spook initiating a domestic psychological warfare operation. The "liberal" Society of Jesus, which sponsored Blatty's education, formally supported the movie by allowing the Jesuit Georgetown University to be used as a key location in 'The Exorcist' movie, with at least three Catholic priests being hired as consultants and actors. Blatty's biography:

• Catholic Lebanese immigrant with a maternal great-uncle who was a bishop in Baalbek.
• Raised by his mother in extreme poverty, but was given a scholarship by Brooklyn Preparatory, a Jesuit school, from which he graduated in 1946 as class valedictorian, meaning he was the highest-scoring student of his class. 45
• BA in English in 1950 and an MA in 1954 from the Jesuit and very much national security-tied Georgetown University. Given a Jesuit scholarship to this university when his mother's female friend, after Blatty gradudated his Jesuit prep school, brought over a Georgetown University professor named Neil Sullivan. His high scores played a key role in getting the scholarship. 46
• Official Who's Who: "Military service: U.S. Air Force, Psychological Warfare Division, 1951-54; attained the rank of first lieutenant." 47
• Official Who's Who: "United States Information Agency, Beirut, Lebanon, editor of News Review (weekly magazine), 1955-57; University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, publicity director, 1957-58; Loyola University of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, public relations director, 1959-60; full-time novelist and screen-writer, 1960." 48
• Won $10,000 on Groucho Marx's 'You Bet Your Life' TV show. The money gave him the independence to focus full time on his writing and screenwriting career. Blatty was brought to the show through his friendship with Marx's sidekick, George Fenneman, and pretended to be an Arab prince initially. Eventually he explained: "I am Bill Blatty. I was born in Brooklyn just a few blocks from American Legion post 804. ... You're not alone [I played this joke on]. I did this to a lot of Hollywood celebrities some time ago. I'm an old friend of [your sidekick here] George Fenneman." 49
• Outed by Counter-Spy in 1973 to have created 'The Exorcist' as an extension of his work for the CIA (under USIA and likely USAF cover) and the USAF's Psychological Warfare Division in creating Catholic anti-communist propaganda. 50
• Certainly for the year 1973, a donor to the Smithsonian, together with Pilgrims Society elites as Nelson Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller III, Henry Heinz II, Paul Mellon, S. Dillon Ripley, and Arthur Hays Sulzberger. 51

Transsexualism and pedophilia

Similar to 'Rosemary's Baby', the main thing I picked up from watching 'The Exorcist' for the first time in 2025 is that we actually might be living in a Satan-controlled apocalypse dimension. Apart from the general whiteness, the scene in which the Virgin Mary has received transsexual surgery by a demon is supposed to shock us - except on social media half a century later those surgeries are promoted everywhere, and Christianity is something to largely be mocked.

Strangely, the movie is superheavily pedophile-focused too, something ISGP has demonstrated also has become quite normal in Instagram and TikTok algorithms half a century later. As these social media suggestions were kicking off, there also were the November 2022 Balenciaga scandal 52 and subsequent December 2022 "child mattrass and pink teddy bear" controversy surrounding Gucci and straight-turned-supergay Harry Styles. 53 Quite a few social media "leftists" were heavily defending the mini-scandals.

Examples of pedophilia from the 1973 movie:

1. Regan going to the doctor, "Keep your fingers away from my Goddamn cunt," as the doctor describes it to the mother, who both laugh.
2. Nothing but 12-year-old panty upskirts as Regan is demonically bouncing on the bed, and as the group is trying to tranqualize her, in between screaming "Fuck me! Fuck me!", while lifting up her skirt and mock sexually riding a man.
3. A little later the mother finds Regan screaming, "Let Jesus fuck you! Let Jesus fuck you!", while stabbing her 12-year-old pussy over and over with a cross, blood squirting everywhere. Next Regan sticks her mother's face in her bloody pussy, going, "Lick me! Lick me!" As Regan slaps her mother, the mother seems to scream unrealistically loud as she lands on the ground. The reason? In real life, despite her warning of the dangers, she actually permanently damaged her spine at this point. The director loved the intensity of the screaming, so he just used the footage. Next Regan twists her head backward, the Jimmy Savile-type pedo-sounding demon voice going, "Hear now what she did? Your cunting daughter?"
4. Demon inside Regan to an exorcist: "Stick your cock up her ass."

Sure, Regan is possessed and these times were less politically correct in that regard, but certainly the repeated upskirts weren't necessary. That seems to have been a (demonic) kink of whoever created those scenes.

Later hoaxes 'The Exorcist' inspired

There are other aspects of the movie that are important to document for research purposes, as various later, invented cases appear to base themselves off 'The Exorcist'. In the movie, Regan:

1. became possessed after playing with an Ouija board, of which it was suggested that it mysteriously appeared.
2. has a throat that is all bloated at one point, as she is making demonic guttering sounds.
3. has green slime oozing from her mouth and nose during exorcisms.
4. is physically floating above the bed.

True or not, the first point above can be found too in countless internet testimonies of today regarding Ouija. The latter three aspects appeared in the later, faked 'Amityville Horror' case.

Peculiar circumstances

While the details in many cases are impossible to find back, from the start 'The Exorcist' was associated with what may have been an unusually long list of mishaps. It appears that director Billy Friedkin spoke about this in a Newsweek interview of 1972, "blaming it all on devils" 54 that first triggered a widely-reported mystique about the film 55, with studio executives later playing up these anomalies to sell ticket sales - with success.

That doesn't mean that nothing out of the ordinary happened. While original and old sources are very hard to come by, various cast members and director Billy Friedkin have spoken about various anomalies. Let's start with the words of Friedkin. He spoke the following words in the presence of Linda Blair, the woman who played Regan in the film, and who was nodding along with everything Friedkin said, clearly knowing what he was talking about:

"I do remember getting a phone call one morning at 4 a.m. from the production manager who said, don't bother to come to work today. And I said, why? Am I fired? And he said, no, but the set has just burned to the ground. It was four o'clock in the morning and the night watchman saw smoke coming out the door of the soundstage. And interestingly, it was while we were shooting 'The Exorcism' scene and the place was refrigerated overnight. ... But with those air conditioning units, one day the set caught fire and burned to the ground. The sets were separate. The house was a separate set from the bedroom, but they were in the same building. The set involving the house burned... We had to rebuild the entire set, and the insurance company paid off on the basis that because it was an old building, and there were pigeons flying around in the rafters, a pigeon flew into a light box, causing a short circuit, and thus the fire. That's the only thing that happened during the entire film that I thought was some kind of bad karma.

"I will say one other thing I thought was strange. We made the statue of [the demon] Pazuzu in Burbank, in the workshop at the Burbank Studios. It was 15 feet tall and with the wings spread it was about 8 feet wide. And it was put into a box and shipped by a very famous group of ex-fighter pilots: ... the Flying Tigers. And we had this statue of Pazuzu addressed to Warner Brothers' care of the Ba'athist party in Mosul, Iraq. And somehow or another it got to Denmark. It went to some - it was lost. We couldn't start shooting in Iraq for three or four weeks waiting for this statue... And I don't know how the Hell that happened. Finally it got to us. But that is probably the only other thing I think was strange." 56

Back in 1973, somebody associated with the make up crew, confirmed that the statue indeed went missing. Although she explained the cause, and that the statue eventually was unloaded in Hong Hong:

"What we made here in New York [was] shipped over along with a lot of other stuff via air freight. It was supposed to be taken off at Bagdad Airport and trucked up to our location. The truck arrived with everything else, but no statue. I mean, how can you loose a 6-foot statue? It seemed like the demon had taken off by himself - it was really great! And, of course, how odd that they found it in Hong Kong. There was a logical explanation. It had been packed in the wrong compartment of the cargo plane because there wasn't room in the correct one. By the plane's route, it wound up in Hong Kong, and when they got there and still had a package, they took it off there. One other story that I like also involved the statue." 57

Billy Friedkin added at the time:

"[So] the statue of Pazuzu was lost, causing a two week delay. The entire location trip was delayed from the spring ... to July, to the hottest part of summer when the temperature there soars to 130 degrees [Fahrenheit, or 54 degrees Celsius] and more. Friedkin reports that out of an 18-man crew, he lost the services of 9 at one time or another due to sunstroke and dysentery." 58

As for the deaths, Burstyn, a woman who played Regan's mother in the movie, has explained:

"There were nine deaths, which is an enormous amount of deaths connected with the film. Some very directly, like the actor Jack MacGowran, who gets killed in the film, completed shooting and died. ... The assistant cameraman whose wife had a baby during the shoot — the baby died. The man who refrigerated the set died. The young black night watchman [died]."

In the film, Jack MacGowran is the drunk who heckles a German butler with accusations of being a "Nazi bastard", only to be killed by the demon inside Regan. Shooting his scenes in 1972, MacGowran died on on January 30, 1973, age 54, from a flue epidemic.

Not mentioned here is actress Vasiliki Maliaros, who in the movie played the mother of Father Karras and died on February 9, 1973, also just after finishing shooting. At that point she was 89 years old though, so nothing overly mysterious there.

Joe Hyams, the movie's publicist, was unnerved by all the unexpected loss happening around him.

"These weren't casualties from stunts or things like that. These were men standing behind the camera and all of a sudden dropping dead..."

[More later]

1976: The Omen: real anomalies?

A film discussed earlier.

1979: The Amityville Horror: a total fabrication

Ultrafamous case, but fully based on a scam by George Lutz, who clearly borrowed heavily from 'The Exorcist' film, with the "green slime" and the "floating through the air" - none of it compatible with "ordinary" haunted house activity. Residents before and after the DeFeo family was murdered at the home in 1974 was explained that absolutely nothing out of the ordinary ever was going on at the home, in turn exposing a variety of well-known "paranormal investigators" as scam artists.

Despite this, it might be interesting to list the following string of supposed bad luck related to promoting the bogus work. It really hinges on whether the story of Writers Digest is true, whether or not there is anything of interest to be found here. If that story doesn't check out, the rest of the bad luck simply isn't enough to pay attention to. In the end, I cannot vouch for the Writers Digest story.

1. March-April 1976: The Lutzes work out a book contract of their own through Tam Mossman of Prentice Hall publishing house. Mossman assigns author and screenwriter Jay Anson to their case. Anson had been a screenwriter of 'The Exorcist', among other things.


2. April 28, 1976: Benjamin "Benny" Mattana, Jr., a good friend of George Lutz and a motorcycle dealer, is murdered by a hitman hired by his girlfriend, Frances "Vikki" Ardito. A week before, Benny had been an hour in the Amityville house with George. His girlfriend waited in the car, briefly walked into the garage, felt uneasy, and waited outside again.


3. April-August 1976: Anson is having trouble of his own:
   
   
   "Two reporters from People magazine were unable to interview Anson because when they had finished photographing the house and were going to drive over to interview him, their car caught on fire as it sat empty in front of the house and emitted quantities of orange smoke. A reporter from Newsday who was to appear on television and debunk the book phoned in sick on the way to the studio, a man from the Chicago Tribune, also a debunker, also got sick and did not appear on another TV program. A woman Jay Anson gave some early chapters to took the manuscript home and she and two of her children were suffocated in a fire that night. The only item in the apartment that was not damaged by the fire was the manuscript. Another man put the manuscript in the trunk of his car and attempted to drive home. He drove through what he thought was a mud puddle; it turned out to be a 12-foot deep hole into which his car slid and was completed immersed. When the car was fished out the next day, the only dry object in it was the manuscript. When Anson's editor picked up the completed manuscript at Anson's office to drive it to Prentice-Hall, his car caught fire and he discovered that all the bolts on his engine had been loosened." 59


4. Sep. 13, 1977: Jay Anson's book 'The Amityville Horror' is published, followed by a movie script, the rights having been sold to him by the Lutzes.


5. March 1980: Jay Anson dies from heart disease, at age 58, "shortly after he received his first million-dollar advance for another book." 60


6. March 1984: Paul Hoffman, a close ally of Anson in the 'Amityville Horror' franchise, dies at age 49 in a fire in his home, suspected due to having dropped a cigarette while falling asleep. 61


7. June 9, 1995: Stephan Kaplan, the self-proclaimed "vampirologist" and old nemesis of George Lutz, dies at age 54, immediately before his debunker book 'The Amityville Horror Conspiracy' is published.


8. May 2006: George Lutz dies. 62

2005: The Amityville Horror - remake

Movie with actors Melissa George and Ryan Reynolds. A number of anomalies were mentioned on set, but details are missing, and because there's no evidence that the Amityville Horror house was haunted after the DeFeo murders, the wake ups around the time of the original deaths might well have been psychological, just as Reynolds said.

1. Melissa George:
   
   
   "[The real Kathy Lutz] died the first week of filming. Yeah. She wasn't well. She had a breathing problem. She was 50-something, very young. We didn't expect it. It was a little weird. There's a lot of weird things that happened on that movie, actually. We were filming at the boathouse, and the police came by. They were on the water there, and they said that they found a dead body that had floated to the surface.
   
   "[The movie's house] freaked me out enough, that I wasn't about to get on a plane and go and see that [original] house. It was enough for me. I believe something went on. I don't know how much is made up and how much isn't..." 63


2. Ryan Reynolds: "I think a lot of people make that stuff up to sell their movie, but there was some weird stuff that happened. A lot of the crew were waking up at 3:15 in the morning, which was when all these atrocities in the house took place each time. I think it was a subconscious thing. You read the script and suddenly pop awake at 3:15 in the morning." 64

2013, 2016: The Conjuring I and II

Months after having organized the claims below for ISGP's ghost article and also becoming quite intrigued with the actual Conjuring House, I tried watching the movie 'The Conjuring' (2013), this on June 13, 2025. To me, it's just a ridiculous horror movie, and expected little else due to the director coming across as a total groupie of paranormal disinformer Lorraine Warren, visible when she visited the set.

I shut off the movie halfway through. I already largely finished the ghost article, hadn't seen a single instance in which a pet was killed by ghosts, and yet that is the first thing that happened in 'The Conjuring' movie. It immediately put me off. Then some usual and very cheap clown and doll horror is inserted - putting me off even more. When I saw a witch jumping and flying through the air, I decided to call it quits. Apart from that, it also strongly appears that the Warrens have been slandering the name of Bathsheba Sherman (1812-1885) as a murderous, child-sacrificing witch who hanged herself.

So, if anything, the movie is totally immoral, making a mockery of a seemingly real mystery surrounding the Conjuring House. And I'm far from the only one saying that.

The heavy-duty disinformation / "entertainment" of the movie makes me wary of anything the cast has claimed about anomalies on set. And that is quite a bit. It actually is so much that people must have been imagining or lying a whole lot for no anomalies to have happened. If we include the set of 'The Conjuring II' (2016) as well, there are all kinds of different aspects:

1. Anomalies at the home of screenwriters while writing 'The Conjuring', in the form of mysterious water pools appearing.
2. Anomalous claw marks on the body and at the home of Vera Farmiga while she was studing for the role of Lorraine Warren, and deciding whether or not she was going to take the role of Lorraine Warren.
3. Actual anomalies on set, such as moving and disappearing items in relation to a replica of the Warren's Artifact Room of haunted items; and Joey King's blood anomaly.
4. The anomaly of the Perron family visiting the set and quickly having to go home again, because their mother fell off a ladder at that point and had to undergo surgery.
5. Anomalies related to an already haunted Warner Brothers set.
6. Anomalies related to crew sleeping in old houses in the neighborhood of the set.

The last two reported anomalies are very common among ghost stories. The rest is unusual, because you're dealing with curse-type hauntings: something being attached to the Perrons and Lorraine Warren that is able to reach out across distances: to movie sets and homes of crews and actors. I'm not sure what to make of that, but it sits in line with some of the earlier-discussed movies - which I'm also not sure what to make of. The difference with 'The Omen' would be that there's not enough overlapping testimony, combined with outside verification. At the moment, for example, there's no confirmation from any cast members for Joey King's described blood anomaly. Also with Vera Farmiga, when she talked about her claw marks and showed pictures of them to reporters, no one else has talked about it - on top of looking like she's on meds, just lip-smacking throughout the interview. 65 So I don't know what to think of any of it.

A list of reported anomalies:

1. Vera Farmiga: Actress in 'The Conjuring' (2013), who claimed she had anomalies happen to her during filming: "I opened my computer... and there were these claw marks across. ... After we got back from North Carolina, where we filmed, the same claw marks appeared on my thigh." She has shown photographs of the marks to interviewers, but they could be anything. 66


2. Shanley Caswell, who played Andrea Perron in 'The Conjuring' (2013), reported that during the last stage of filming, the cast would wake up every night between 3 and 4 a.m., adding: "Every time I woke up, I just felt like I was being watched." As a result, she and fellow actress Hayley McFarland ended up sleeping in the same room. 67


3. James Wann, the director of The Conjuring series, hasn't said much about any anomalies. At some point he was asked: "Some of the crew members have said they've encountered some strange happenings on set and around North Carolina during filming. Have you had any weird experiences?" He replied:
   
   
   "I don't want to make up fake stuff, but it has been really weird some of the stuff that I have been hearing. Even Vera has said that from the moment she came on to do this movie, she'd always wake up between the period from 3 to 4 in the morning. ... Even now, though, she still says that she has a hard time sleeping between those hours." 68


4. Chad Hayes and his brother Carey reported that Carey had had a major anomaly at the house of a pool of water repeatedly manifesting in the same spot while they were screenwriting 'The Conjuring'. Lorraine Warren tied it to a "water poltergeist", apparently accurately guessing there was an emotionally steered-up child in Carey's house whenever this phenomenon occurred. Eventually the issue went away.
   69


5. Chad Hayes recalled how it went when the real-life Perron family, who endured the original haunting, came to the set. Apparently one of the "Perron girls" told Chad that, "Something really bad is going to happen out here today," with susequently the entire Perron family having to leave early, "their mother, Carolyn, fell and broke her hip. She was the only one not there, but they all had to leave. It was pretty nutty." 70


6. Ron Livingston similarly recounted the Perron family's set visit with a sense of disbelief: "The day [the Perrons] were there, they had to cut their visit short, because [the mother at home] fell off a ladder and broke her hip or something. It was just one of those weird things that everybody was looking around, going, "Okay, did that really happen?"" 71


7. Rob Cowan, the producer of 'The Conjuring', recounted some of the peculiar things that happened on and around set:
   
   
   "You know, there's been actually a fair amount and not necessarily even on set. We've had a lot of crew members come in from out of town and living in these old homes around here and feeling like they're seeing things. One of our hair persons, you can talk to her, has many stories about things that she believes are going on in her house, like seeing people and feeling like she's being tugged in her bed when she's asleep at night.
   
   "There's been some stuff, particularly we have this artifact room which we've created. I don't know how much you know about this story, but in real life, the Warrens have... you can look it up on the internet... they have a room that if there's a cane or something that they feel is possessed, and the most famous is this doll Annabelle, they take it and they put it in this room. It's kind of a museum now but it's also where they keep their haunted artifacts. So we recreated that in our... we just shot it yesterday. Everybody who went in there had something where they were like [that doesn't make any sense]...
   
   "One of our camera guys was in there alone going to pick up a camera piece and saw a lid of a jar drop onto a table and he said, "I'm not going back in that room."
   
   "And a bizarre thing, there's a pig, there's a wooden pig that we had in there. They had all manner of things: masks and little religious artifacts and things like that. But there was a pig that everyone attests would move around the room; it would be there and they'd come back and it would have moved over to there. ...
   
   "There's not been any big incident, but everybody has things just stopping and it feels like... we always have problems on the set anyway, but it feels like there's a lot more of that on this set than normal." 72
   
   Cowan also described the visit of the Perron family in the most detail:
   
   
   "The family came to the set and they came for one day and it was like a family reunion; they haven't been together for quite a little, but they collected from all over the place to come to our set on that day. The only person who didn't come was the mother, who they said doesn't leave much where she lives and doesn't fly well. There was a moment where she might come anyway, but she didn't come. So they come to the set and literally right after the incident with Cindy [Perron identifying with our] witch, they got a call that the mother had tripped and fallen and broken her hip and had to have an immediate operation. Literally when they went down to her she said this is Bathsheba, the witch, doing something to her. But it was that day, that afternoon, they're all standing on our set and the mother trips and really quite seriously broke her hip and had to have it replaced. They operated that day." 73


8. Joey King: Mentioned earlier in ISGP's ghost article. A populair actress who starred alongside Brad Pitt in 'Bullet Train' (2022). She had apparent paranormal experiences when involved in filming the 2013-released movie 'The Conjuring', based on a real-life (but heavily criticized) haunting investigation of Ed and Lorraine Warren (just the fact that she has been allowed on Coast to Coast AM should mean she is a major con artist). As King explained it to Howard Stern in 2020:
   
   
   "In the story, as the mom gets possessed, she gets all these bruises on her. And so during the filming of those particular scenes, I started to have a lot of bruises show up on my body - in bizarre places. On my stomach, on my chest. ... The make up ladies ... didn't believe me. They tried to take my real bruises off with rubbing alcohol and oil. ...
   
   "I went to the doctor. I got a couple of blood tests. I get told I have this blood-thinning condition called ITP, where basically most of my red platelets drained from my body, mysteriously. I never had a blood problem in the past. I never had a blood problem since then. No one in my family has that. So I was at risk of needing a blood transfusion and they were worried about even letting me work, because if I touch something, I could get a bruise there. It was weird. And so I had to go to the hospital, every day, twice a day, before and after work, to get my blood taken and to try rebuild my platelets on my own by taking a lot of iron. And they were just creeping up for the duration of the shoot.
   
   "Shooting finishes and I get to go home, and I still need to keep up with this bullshit. And then when I came home my platelets were completely fine." 74
   
   King already talked about it back when the movie was released. 75 It was just pretty much ignored until Howard Stern picked up on it 7 years later. It seems no one else has talked about any aspect of this story though.
   
   One funny thing is that Joey King appears to have been told about my private work along these lines years ago. A second funny thing is that in May 2013, about 9 weeks before 'The Conjuring' movie came out, I was watching of Discovery Channel's 'A Haunting', with each season containing one demon-type case of Ed and Lorraine Warren: S01E03: 'Hell House' and S02E06: 'Where Demons Dwell', the latter case, with the Warrens already well involved, leading to a "demonic murder" and the subsequent 'Demon Murder Trial' of 1981. As I wrote in ISGP's Coast to Coast article, most notably the 'Opusian Catholics and Fake Demonologists' chapter, the Warren case episodes are easily recognizable due to being "the most extreme, with holy water, crosses and Catholic priests as a first line of defense, and often group prayer as the final remedy."
   
   Skeptical as the world may be about the Warren cases (including yours truly), I had something weird happen as well in this period: suddenly getting very scared at night, like some evil entity was present. Could be my imagination until I woke up with a voice whispering in my ears, even feeling the breath. My (partial) log for May 28, 2013 - 'Demon ear whisper':
   
   
   "I used White Sage twice. ... First to cleanse the home. [Then] stating that any demons and negative entities attached to me should leave, saying the warfare prayer, creating white light for any entities that should either go into the light or be cast out of my home, drawing olive oil crosses on doors and windows while claiming only God and positivity is allowed in this house...
   
   "All of this "witchiness" is inspired out of nothing really but me watching hours and hours of the series "A Haunting" and reading online reports of haunted houses. It didn't mess with me much in previous days, but this time I began feeling uncomfortable at night, like something was watching me... This is strange as the living room was still pretty thick with White Sage smoke.
   
   "Some time after I fell asleep I began to dream a bit about hauntings. Then I wake up while very clearly something is being whispered into my ear. I could even feel the breath on my ear. I've never had that in my life. The uncomfortable feeling persisted and I hardly slept during the night. Lots of very dark, bloody images and thoughts for some reason. I tried to imagine a white light and send it to others, but I kept envisioning this gray energy in me. It surprised me. I woke up when it became light and it felt angelic.
   
   "This is all very weird. Even if the White Sage pissed off dormant entities why was this supposedly evil entity so active with White Sage smoke still in the room and White Sage aches close to where I perceived the entity? White Sage is supposed to drive them away! ... Mugwort was [even near my head...!"
   
   It's an odd coincidence. I've been wondering about that ear whisper and its timing for almost 12 years when running into King's account. It's same with me smelling sulfur upon wake up, which I noticed days ago, Ariana Grande has claimed as well.

The Conjuring II (2016)

The second installment of 'The Conjuring' movie also had a number of paranormal things happen, although this may have been reduced because the set was blessed beforehand. It also is more of a generic haunting story, because apparently the used Warner Brothers sound stage already was considered haunted before the movie was shot.

1. General reports about a February 28, 2016 set visit of 'The Conjuring II' for various media, included a mentioning of paranormal happenings:
   
   
   "Supposedly, at least according to Warner Bros' security guard Johnny Matuk, who doubles as a real life ghost hunter, some of the stages that The Conjuring gang are shooting on [especially sound stage 4] are notoriously haunted by playful ghosts, who will mess with the living in a variety of ways, including locking the cleaning crew up on the roof of the building, and emitting hammering and drilling noises from places where no one is working at the time.
   
   "They had a priest come bless the set" laughs Frances O'Connor, "Which made me more terrified than kind of relaxed, like, ‘Great!'" ...
   
   As for Vera Farmiga, she has a much stricter way of dealing with her superstitions from working on the film. "I have to learn lines in my trailer, during daylight. I don't take it home with me." Although there is still some lingering paranoia hanging around Farmiga, she swears it's lightened up quite a bit in comparison with the first Conjuring." 76


2. James Wan, the director of 'The Conjuring' series, has barely said anything about any anomalies during filming of the 'The Conjuring' (2013), apart from confirming that he had crew members come to him with various stories. But to Seoul-based outlet Star2, in 2016, with regard to 'The Conjuring 2', he said:
   
   
   "[The night crew] saw that at the end of the sound stage, there was these huge curtain drapes. They started swaying on their own... They just kept moving. None of the doors were opened, the air-conditioning was switched off. They just moved on their own. ...
   
   And I just watched the video [lead actor] Patrick [Wilson] showed me and this person who was filming just walked right up to the curtain and he saw the whole thing swaying non-stop. And he goes to look behind the curtain and there's no one there swaying it and there's no wind in the room.
   
   [It's] supposedly one of the most haunted sound stages [at Warner Brothers Studio]." 77

Make of it what you will.

^Notes

---

1. Gregory Peck (No clue about the source anymore): "This picture cost about a fourth of what The Exorcist cost. We made it in 10 weeks."
2. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen': "The crew that we spoke to had a sense that everyone involved in the production was freaked out to some extent. They all felt that something wasn't quite right and that included the cast. These were seasoned professionals - they had seen a lot of productions and doubtless a lot of production accidents. Yet they themselves pick this film, more than any other, as having something extraordinary about it. ... We [ourselves] went from being quite cynical to at least having doubts."
3. youtube.com/watch?v=zmsNWmKqsAY (accessed: April 28, 2025; 'The Omen: Curse or Coincidence?'; interviews with the leadership team: Harvey Bernhard, Mace Neufeld, Robert Donner and Robert Munger)'.
4. Aug. 24, 1975, Detroit Free Press, 'They Chose To Die; John Peck: He Covered His Fears': "Jonathan Peck seemed like the last person who would ever kill himself. A tall, handsome guy, he was bright and accomplished and everyone seemed to like him. ... He was graduated from college and an outstanding track star, "one of the best in the country," recalled a friend, and went into the Peace Corps. He spent two years in Tanzania... He had fulfilled his military service with seix years in the Marine Corps Reserve... This [other] man describes Jonathan as "one of the nicest kids..." and added that everyone else at KNX liked him, too. ... "He was very, very well liked by everybody, and there was no evidence at all of his being the screwed-up child of a Hollywood movie star. He seemed very normal to me." ... He was one of the most pleasant people I've ever known," begins Bob Read, the news director at KCOY-TV... Another friend, a young black newsman named Jerome Naives... "He was a happy person. We always had a good time joking around and acting up. ... He was always calm and cool despite all hell breaking loose around us. He never seemed to have any jealousy over his father's success." The fact that he was a gun buff was something he rarely talked about. "He had 10 guns and eight or 10 rifles, all under lock and key, but I never saw them and I was at the house all the time," reports Read. ... "He never took drugs, abhorred them in fact, and drank only on occasion and only lightly," adds Rob Read."
5. June 28, 1975, New York Times, 'Gregory Peck's Son Dead'.
6. Aug. 24, 1975, Detroit Free Press, 'They Chose To Die; John Peck: He Covered His Fears': "One of Jon's closest friends... Lillian Tell [said:] "One time I asked Jon why he had never married. ... He said, 'I can't take care of myself, let alone anyone else.' ... He called me the day before he shot himself and he was really down. ... Once he mentioned to me, 'I can't play tennis like I used to any more. ... Now I realize he meant he wasn't physically able to do it. And after being an athlete, that must have been diffcult. I think hardening of the arteries like that can cause mental depression... The autopsy showed an enlarged heart and the arteriosclerosis of an old man. And if you're gettig half the blood supply to your brain - which is approximately what the situation was - I could imagine that would be a severe problem."
7. *) 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen': "[Producer Harvey Bernhard:] Gregory Peck had big problems flying over. The engine caught on fire. That was very scary, because it was the start."
   *) 1998, Michael Munn, 'Gregory Peck', p. 202: "In October 1975 Peck flew from Los Angeles to London to start filming. Across the Atlantic a bolt of lightning knocked out one of the plane's engines. Eight hours later another plane, this time with David Seltzer on board, was also struck by lightning."
8. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen', 8:10.
9. Ibid. Notice the "two other planes" below, making it clear that (at least) three planes were hit by lightning in total, including the one of Seltzer.
10. youtube.com/watch?v=zmsNWmKqsAY (accessed: April 28, 2025; 'The Omen: Curse or Coincidence?'; interviews with the leadership team: Harvey Bernhard, Mace Neufeld, Robert Donner and Robert Munger)'.
11. Oct. 23, 2005, The Herald, Scotland (HeraldScotland.com), 'Curse of the OMEN and other Hollywood hexes': "The actor set off for London in September ... when his plane was hit by lightning high above the Atlantic. A few weeks later, executive producer Mace Neufeld also left Los Angeles. You think lightning doesn't strike twice? It does in this story. "It was the roughest five minutes I've ever had on an airliner," says Neufeld." Other sources say the lighting strikes already happened to three others involved in the movie set.
12. April 26, 1976, New York Magazine, 'Did the Devil make them do it?': "Gregory Peck's plane was struck by lightning when he flew to London to make the film. Two other planes, containing David Seltzer (the film's author) and director Dick Donner, were similarly roughed up.".
13. 1998, Michael Munn, 'Gregory Peck', pp. 199-202: "He was saved by The Omen. The idea for the story of a young boy who is the devil incarnate came from a Los Angeles advertising executive, Robert L. Munger, who pitched it to producer Harvey Bernhard. Bernhard raised some development money and assigned David Seltzer to write the screenplay, which went under the working title of The Anti-Christ. [It invented its own scripture.] Director Richard Donner came across the script... Fox bought the script for Donner... Charlton Heston... considered [to become the lead star], then backed out [and it became] Gregory Peck, who saw through its many faults to recognize the seeds of a good [film.] Fox set a budget of $ 2.5 million , and Donner prepared an eleven-week shooting schedule [with a backup plan if the] unpredictable British weather would force out changes in the schedule. Then it was discovered that a European film called The AntiChristo was on release, so a working title of The Birthmark was substituted, in reference to the three sixes that supposedly appear on the bodies of the Devil's servants.
    In October 1975 Peck flew from Los Angeles to London to start filming. Across the Atlantic a bolt of lightning knocked out one of the plane's engines. Eight hours later another plane, this time with David Seltzer on board, was also struck by lightning. Those involved with the film joked that there must be a jinx on them all. Then an IRA bomb exploded at the London Hilton, where Bernhard and Donner were staying. On the first day of shooting, one of the film crew barely escaped injury in a head-on car collision. The idea of the jinx suddenly seemed less funny. Some scenes were shot in Israel, where a private jet was hired to collect Peck from the location. He cancelled it at the last minute and it was rented by five Japanese businessmen. The plane crashed, killing them all. Despite the mishaps that seemed to have developed into a full-blown curse, Peck enjoyed making the film, and especially liked working with Lee Remick..."
14. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen', 25:00.
15. April 26, 1976, New York Magazine, 'Did the Devil make them do it?'.
16. youtube.com/watch?v=zmsNWmKqsAY (accessed: April 28, 2025; 'The Omen: Curse or Coincidence?'; interviews with the leadership team: Harvey Bernhard, Mace Neufeld, Robert Donner and Robert Munger)': "[DONNER:] I was being led out of my car by Harvey Bernhard - out of HIS car - to go to my house. And some guy came along and whammo, door-slammed me in between the two. Miracously I didn't lose a leg. ..."
17. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen', 1:15.
18. Ibid., 24:00.
19. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen'. The documentary interviews Neufeld, in this case at 26:15.
20. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen', 21:15.
21. Nov. 6, 1975, Louisville Courier-Journal, 'Tiger born in captivity kills unarmed ranger' (Screenshot).
22. April 26, 1976, New York Magazine, 'Did the Devil make them do it?'. Extra: Harvey Bernhard said, "He was killed the day after we shot there. He was killed by a tiger. He grabbed him by the head and killed him instantly."
23. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen', 21:00.
24. youtube.com/watch?v=zmsNWmKqsAY (accessed: April 28, 2025; 'The Omen: Curse or Coincidence?'; interviews with the leadership team: Harvey Bernhard, Mace Neufeld, Robert Donner and Robert Munger)': "The guard was in...the little booth. [I] guess he left the door open. Two lions came in, attacked him and killed him. THAT day."
25. professionalsecurity.co.uk/blogs/unas-blog/una-in-may-2013/ (accessed: April 27, 2025): "He described how in 1974 and 1975 London was subjected to a 14-month campaign by the Provisional IRA, including gun and bomb attacks. In the capital bombs exploded, killing 35 people and injuring many more. There were four members of what became known as the ‘Balcombe Street Gang’ – who were all part of a six-man IRA Active Service Unit (ASU) that had shot dead a police constable, Stephen Tibble, in London. The Balcombe Street siege started after a chase through the streets after the gang had fired gunshots through the window of Scott’s Restaurant in Mount Street, Mayfair. They had thrown a bomb through the restaurant window a few weeks before on November 12, 1975, killing one person and injuring 15 others."
26. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen'. The documentary interviews Neufeld, in this case at 26:15.
27. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen'. The documentary interviews Donner, but does not make it clear that no one onboard the plane died.
28. youtube.com/watch?v=zmsNWmKqsAY (accessed: April 28, 2025; 'The Omen: Curse or Coincidence?'; interviews with the leadership team: Harvey Bernhard, Mace Neufeld, Robert Donner and Robert Munger)': "We chartered an airplane. A Hawker Siddeley. We had no money. We were going to shoot with it on the ground at this small airport. We got a call from the [charter jet] people and said, "Listen, we've got a full charter for that day. If you let us charter out we'll give you the plane for practically nothing." "Well, sure, go ahead and use it [for that charter].""
29. Feb. 8, 1977, Dep. of Trade: Accidents Investigation Branch, Aircraft Accident Report 1/77, 'Hawker Siddeley HS 125 Series 600B G-BCUX Report on the accident near Dunsfold Aerodrome, Surry, 20 November 1975'.
    assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/ 5422f0c6ed915d137100030f/1-1977_G-BCUX.pdf (accessed: April 28, 2025).
30. Nov. 21, 1975, The Guardian, 'Six die as jet plane hits car' (Screenshot).
31. Nov. 20, 1975, Daily Mail, 'Six killed as jet plunges on to car' (PDF, plus extra funeral notice).
32. April 26, 1976, New York Magazine, 'Did the Devil make them do it?': "Harvey Bernhard, the film's producer, arrived in Rome to shoot Italian sequences, the top of Hadrian's Arch, next door to his hotel, was struck by lightning — something natives swear has never happened before."
33. youtube.com/watch?v=zmsNWmKqsAY (accessed: April 28, 2025; 'The Omen: Curse or Coincidence?'; interviews with the leadership team: Harvey Bernhard, Mace Neufeld, Robert Donner and Robert Munger)'.
34. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen', 32:00.
35. Ibid., 33:50.
36. Ibid., 34:30.
37. Ibid.
38. youtube.com/watch?v=zmsNWmKqsAY (accessed: April 28, 2025; 'The Omen: Curse or Coincidence?'; interviews with the leadership team: Harvey Bernhard, Mace Neufeld, Robert Donner and Robert Munger)'.
39. 2005, Channel 4 documentary, 'Curse Of The Omen', 44:15.
40. Ibid., 44:25.
41. theplanforthefuture.org/index/email-exchange-with-de-stentor/ (accessed: April 28, 2025; questionable pro-immigration conspiracy (disinfo) site; 'Email exchange with De Stentor'): "We have done some research and talked with a former policeman which has resulted in the following: there is in Raalte on the N35 [CORRECTION: N348] an exit Ommen where the N348 and N35 join a place that [crossroad] corresponds to the kilometre marker 66.6 on the route Zutphen-Ommen [CORRECTION: It corresponds to 66.7, and therefore 66.7 would not be placed, but 66.6 100-110 meters back should have.] Concerning the accident, it indeed took place in Raalte on the N348. But not on the junction N35 / N348 but on the part of the N348 between Raalte and Deventer where the N348 makes a pendulum, just past the Overmeenweg that was what former police officer Johan ******** told us. He remembers that accident still very well, it happened at the weekend [MINOR CORRECTION: Friday], he was on duty.
    His story: a man and woman were sitting in a car parked in a parking lot along the N348. They drove away to Deventer, but went to the left side of the road so the wrong lane and collided head-on into an oncoming vehicle which came from Deventer direction Raalte. The road has limited view there because of a pendulum (two gentle curves). The woman was killed, the car completely destroyed, and disposed to a fire station. Later it turned to be a foreign couple that was involved in the shooting of the film ”a bridge too far”. ******** suspects that Richardson was used to left-driving traffic was distracted when he left the parking lot. He collided with a car driven by a resident of Nijverdal, named ********. It is highly unlikely that there was a road sign near the site of the accident with the town of Ommen and 66.6 can also not be explained. [CORRECTION: Yes it can, if he was driven to hospital, and it's technically a 66,6 road.'
42. theplanforthefuture.org/2019/11/01/the-curse-of-the-omen/ (accessed: April 28, 2025'.
43. kindergeneeskundesneek.nl/index.php/Kindercardiologie.html (accessed: April 27, 2025): "Antonius Ziekenhuis: ... Sinds 2008 bestaat er een intensieve samenwerking tussen de cardiologie (dr Oomen), de kindergeneeskunde (dr. Tibosch) en de kindercardiologie van het UMCG. Door deze samenwerking is specialistische kindercardiologische zorg nu ook in Sneek en Emmeloord beschikbaar.".
44. *) zorgkaartnederland.nl/zorgverlener/cardioloog-oomen-a-146013/waardering (accessed: April 27, 2025): "Cardioloog Oomen, A. ... Werkzaam bij Antonius Ziekenhuis, locatie Sneek, Sneek."
45. Jan. 20, 2017, The Hoya (Georgetown University’s oldest and largest student-run newspaper), 'Blatty Remembered for Contributions to Horror Genre, Georgetown'.
46. *) Ibid. *) 2015, William Peter Blatty, 'Finding Peter', chapter 4 opening.
47. encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/blatty-william-peter-1928 (accessed: July 13, 2025).
48. Ibid.
49. June 20, 2015, Groucho Marx - You Bet Your Life, 'You Bet Your Life #60-20 The Arab Prince who wrote "The Exorcist" ('Work', Feb 9, 1961)'
    youtube.com/watch?v=xrnzDMbFHkY (accessed: July 12, 2025).
50. Late 1973, vol. 1, combined issues 4 and 5, Counter-Spy, p. 3, 'Examining the Exorcist': "Blatty worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in Lebanon inthe 1950's, under US Information Agency cover. Later, he returned to Washington to become Policy Branch Chief of the Psychological Warfare Division of the US Air Force. As such, his job involved the military's promotion of popular anti-communist sentiment around McCarthyism at home and Cold War foreign policy abroad. An example of the work carried out by psychological warfare in US foreign policy is the orchestrated exodus of Catholics from North to South Vietnam in the mid-fifties. In collaboration with Dr. Tom Dooley (whom Blatty quotes in his book) and others, an extensive campaign was carried out by the Catholic Relief Service, local Catholic leaders and an American psychological warfare team to drive peasants south of the DMZ by telling them "the Virgin Mary has departed from the north" and Christ has gone to the south." Amateur as this appears now, "The mass flight was admittedly the result of an extensive, well-conducted, and in terms of its objective, very successful American psychological warfare operation." (quote inThe Indo-china Story,Bantam, 1970). ...
    For religion, activatedas a mass response to an externally conceived threat, can be a powerful ideologicaltement to keep the masses spellbound in a time of profound social crisis. For Blat- ty, the lessons of the 1955 Vietnam campaign have not been forgotten. Only the place and time have changed.(Old Mole, No. 10, Mar. 1974)"
51. 1974, U.S Congress: House, 'Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1975: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-third Congress, Second Session. Part 2.', pp. 255-258.
52. Nov. 29, 2022, The Guardian, 'Balenciaga apologises for ads featuring bondage bears and child abuse papers'.
53. Dec. 19, 2022, New York Post, 'Gucci and Harry Styles slammed for ‘sick’ ad with child’s bed and teddy bear shirt'.
54. 2020, Mark Kermode, 'The Exorcist', p. 79: "All those rumours of a curse were total nonsense," laughs Blatty now, recalling how they began: "Billy Friedkin had fallen vastly behind schedule, and he gave an interview to Newsweek magazine blaming it all on devils. The next thing, reports about all these troubling occurrences started circulating. But for God's sake, if you shoot something for a year, people are going to get hurt, people are going to die ... these things ... just happen."
55. June 30, 1972, Variety, ''Film Review: The Exorcist'': "A compendium of production delays, some of puzzling origin (shooting alone occupied more than 10 months [of the 16-month period]), and rush to completion upped final costs to $8 million-$10 million."
56. youtube.com/watch?v=r4d42ukCEKs (Oct. 23, 2018, '"The Exorcist" at 45: Fire on Set'; Director Bill Friedkin talking, with Linda Blair, who starred as Regan in 'The Exorcist' looking on and agreeing with everything.
57. 1973, Cinefantastique, interview with someone from 'The Exorcist' tied to set make up and working with a "Rick Baker". Google Books won't allow readers full access or the precise date or title.
58. Ibid.
59. March 12, 2020, WritersDigest.com, 'Vintage WD: Jay Anson, The Man Who Wrote The Amityville Horror'.
60. Oct. 26, 2002, Sarasota Herald Tribune, 'Amityville House: A horror story, or a horrendous hoax?'.
61. March 28, 1984, New York Times, 'Paul Hoffman, 49, an Author And Former Reporter at Post'.
62. May 11, 2006, New York Times, 'George Lutz, 59, Who Found Horror in Amityville, Dies'.
63. April 1, 2005, movies.radiofree.com, 'Melissa George'.
    https://movies.radiofree.com/interviews/theamity_melissa_george.shtml (accessed: July 11, 2025).
64. Nov. 8, 2004, Movieweb.com, 'Ryan Reynolds talks about The Amityville Horror remake'.
65. July 15, 2013 YouTube upload by 'checalamovie', 'Vera Farmiga & Lorraine Warren strange things around The Conjuring.'.
    youtube.com/watch?v=V4WvDfLYr74 (accessed: Oct. 20, 2025).
66. Oct. 23, 2019, Entertainment Online (eonline.com), 'Did the Making of The Conjuring Cause Vera Farmiga, Shanley Caswell and Others to be Haunted In Real Life?'.
67. Ibid.
68. June 26, 2013, Collider.com, 'James Wan Talks THE CONJURING'.
69. June 29, 2013, Collider.com, 'Screenwriters Chad and Carey Hayes Talk THE CONJURING, Finding the Film's Point of View, Real Life Paranormal Incidents and the Appeal of Horror': "Hell yes [paranormal stuff has happened while screenwriting]! Lorraine helped Carey. ... My wife [Carey] called me and said... “Alright, this is really kind of crazy…” And she sent me a picture of this strange water formation that just kind of appeared on the floor. We have cement floors and it’s just all open floor plan. Now in my mind, we have an old dog. She’s got bladder issues. You gotta take her out. “Who didn’t take her out?” “No, no, no. We took her out.” My wife literally cleans it up with like three huge beach towels. And it didn’t stink or smell. She rinses it out literally in the sink. She thought it was the dog. But the dog’s in its bed. And there’s another one in literally the exact same place. So it’s like, okay, this is a little weird. And it happened two more times in that approximate same spot.
    I called Lorraine, and said, “Alright, you got to tune into something here. There’s something going on.” First thing she asks is “Do you have any adolescents in your house?” “Three teenage boys, yes.” “Is there any angst going on?” “Yeah, the youngest one’s fifteen going through crazy stuff.” She goes, “Well, a water poltergeist will feed on the energy of an adolescent. That’s usually when it materializes. Does it happen after an uprising?” I asked my wife and she said, “Yeah, he was really upset the other night. Some things went down with some friends.”
    So he happened to come out here with my wife and my other son. And we had a friend stay at the house and it happened again. We happened to be out to dinner with Lorraine. My fifteen year old thought he was bringing this on the house. He was a little flipped out. And she looks at him and goes, “Oh honey it’s not you.” He goes, “Thank God.” But it stopped. It hasn’t happened since.
    But you have to have a pretty good faith in protecting yourself, because when you write about stuff like this you can be somewhat of a beacon. But in our movies, like The Reaping and this movie, it’s like, faith prevails. The strength of divine intervention. So I don’t worry too much about that at all. Unless something freaky happens to me, and nothing has."
70. June 26, 2013, ComingSoon.net, 'From the Set: A Report from Our Trip to The Conjuring'.
71. June 26, 2013 YouTube upload by 'HitFix', 'The Conjuring - Ron Livingston, Shanley Caswell & Hayley McFarland Q&A'.
    youtube.com/watch?v=RmUxjeddYTY (accessed: April 6, 2025).
72. July 7, 2013, Collider.net, 'Producer Rob Cowan Talks THE CONJURING, the Reaction of the Perron Family, Bizarre Occurrences on Set...'.
73. July 7, 2013, Collider.net, 'Producer Rob Cowan Talks THE CONJURING, the Reaction of the Perron Family, Bizarre Occurrences on Set...'.
74. Aug. 12, 2020 YouTube upload by 'The Howard Stern Show' (Aug. 11, 2020 interview), 'Was Joey King Haunted on the Set of “The Conjuring”?'.
    youtube.com/watch?v=eu-0Zxa3bAY (accessed: April 5, 2025).
75. July 16, 2013, bucksfreepress.co.uk, 'Conjuring cast reveal spooky set': "On set something weird happened to me. When Lili Taylor [who plays her mother] was filming some scenes where she starts getting possessed, with bruises on her body. At the same time she was filming those scenes I started getting bruises all over my body. I went to the doctor and it turns out it was a low blood thingy..."
76. March 1, 2016, Bloody-Disgusting.com, '[Set Visit Report] James Wan’s ‘The Conjuring 2’'.
77. June 9, 2016, TheStar.com.my, 'Scary things really happened during the filming of The Conjuring 2, says director '.
    thestar.com.my/lifestyle/entertainment/2016/06/09/james-wan-shares-the-spooky-story-that-happened-behind-the-scenes-of-the-conjuring-2/ (accessed: Nov. 8, 2019).