TEN HORROR MOVIES PLAGUED BY BIZARRE AND FRIGHTENING ON-SET INCIDENTS

Entertainment Weekly

 

10 horror movies plagued by bizarre and frightening on-set incidents

By Samantha Bergeson  October 30, 2026 6:30 a.m. ET

 

Horror movies are only supposed to scare the audience — but sometimes the cast and crew find themselves facing unexpected terrors of their own.

 

Perhaps these are simply the rules of the game when you’re depicting demonic forces, portraying horrifying tales of possession, or even telling ghost stories. By the time filmmakers are done with their fictional stories, they may almost be convinced of the veracity of the supernatural worlds they’re bringing to the screen. Urban legends of “cursed” film sets are a dime a dozen — but who can say what’s real, and what’s too spooky to believe?

 

Two cast members of Poltergeist (1982) died tragically after the film’s release, while production was marked by dangerous on-set mishaps. The Omen producer wore a cross for spiritual protection throughout filming. Meanwhile, the cast and crew of the Conjuring franchise have reported numerous strange occurrences — to say nothing of the real-life cases that Lorraine and Ed Warren investigated.

 

Keep reading to see Entertainment Weekly’s full list of spine-chilling stories from famous horror movie sets.

 

The Exorcist (1973)

 

If any horror movie set needed to be exorcised of demons, it’s William Friedkin’s classic The Exorcist. The original feature earned a reputation as a “cursed film.” In fact, when Shudder produced a docuseries on exactly that subject — Cursed Films, which premiered in 2020 — it was The Exorcist that kicked things off with the premiere episode.

 

The film revolves around Regan (Linda Blair), the 12-year-old daughter of an actress living in the nation’s capital, who begins to show signs of demonic possession. Two priests are brought in to take care of the situation — and try to save the girl.

 

It’s a harrowing ordeal, to say the least, and that was mirrored by the making of the film. During production, a fire of uncertain origin broke out on set and destroyed most of the MacNeil family home — except Regan’s bedroom, where the film’s demonic activity took place.

 

On an even more harrowing note, two actors from the film — Jack MacGowran and Vasiliki Maliaros — died after completing their scenes, while at least two crew members reportedly died during the grueling 200-day production. In separate on-set accidents, one crew member lost a thumb and another lost a toe.

 

Friedkin ultimately asked a priest serving as a technical advisor to bless the cast and crew.

 

Tragedy continued to haunt The Exorcist after filming wrapped. Paul Bateson, who appeared in a small role as a radiographer, later murdered Variety journalist Addison Verrill in 1977. While he was only convicted of that slaying and never charged with any additional crimes, he was also suspected of killing six other gay men between 1975 and 1977 — a series of killings known as the “bag murders.”

 

Friedkin visited Bateson in prison, and their conversations helped inspire his controversial serial-killer thriller Cruising (1980), an adaptation of Gerald Walker’s novel that also drew from the bag murders.

 

The Omen (1976)

 

When dealing with the devil, holy water must be on hand. Indeed, the little antichrist Damien, played by child actor Harvey Stephens, with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick as his (adoptive, unwitting) parents, seems to have rubbed off on the production of The Omen.

 

Producer Harvey Bernhard opted to wear a Coptic cross on set for protection from evil forces. He even got a warning from Bob Munger, an ad exec and devout Christian who had the idea for the film in the first place.

 

“He warned us that he thought the devil didn’t want us to make the picture,” Bernhard later told the Los Angeles Times, “and that we would have problems.”

 

He may have been on to something. During production, cast and crew dealt with scary near-misses and untimely tragedy. An animal trainer who worked with the crew during the safari sequence, when baboons besiege the car carrying Damien and his mother, died almost immediately afterward.

 

“He was killed the day after we shot there,” Bernhard explained. “He was killed by a tiger. He grabbed him by the head and killed him instantly.”

 

Several frightening aviation incidents were also reported, including lightning strikes on planes carrying Peck and screenwriter David Seltzer. Bernhard also recalled an emergency landing in Nova Scotia on a flight carrying footage from the film.

 

Later, in August 1976, just weeks after The Omen premiered in theaters, one of the film’s special effects specialists, John Richardson, got into a car accident while working on A Bridge Too Far in which his girlfriend was beheaded.

 

Poltergeist (1982)

 

What’s the key to making a movie about ghosts and burial grounds feel more authentic? Using actual corpses, apparently. Poltergeist actress JoBeth Williams discovered years later that the muddy pool her character falls into was filled with actual human skeletons — because real bones were cheaper to source than plastic props.

 

“I always assumed that the skeletons were made by the prop department,” Williams told Vanity Fair in 2022. “A few years later, I ran into one of the special effects guys, and I said, ‘You guys making all those skeletons, that must have been really amazing.’ He said, ‘Oh, we didn’t make them, those were real.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Yeah, they were real skeletons.’ I don’t know where they were bought from, but that really grossed me out. I’m glad I didn’t know that then, because I would’ve really been screaming a lot — for real.”

 

Call it bad juju, but more sobering tragedies subsequently fueled talk of a supposed curse. Two of the stars who played the fictional Freeling children died tragically in the years following the film’s release.

 

Dominique Dunne, 22, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in the fall of 1982. Heather O’Rourke, who was cast as Carol Anne at age 5, died at 12 years old in 1988 from complications of a congenital intestinal disorder, following a long and mysterious health battle.

 

The lore surrounding the so-called Poltergeist curse grew with the 1986 sequel. Julian Beck, who starred as Reverend Kane in Poltergeist II, died from stomach cancer during postproduction, and Will Sampson, who reportedly performed a spiritual cleansing ritual on the set of the film, died in 1987.

 

The Amityville Horror (2005)

 

This gruesome murder saga is rooted in a true story. And while the stars of the 1979 original Amityville Horror later revealed that the studio had fabricated stories of strange occurrences on set, the 2005 remake had its own share of unsettling incidents.

 

Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George play George and Kathy Lutz, who move into a house with Kathy’s three children — knowing that a previous tenant had murdered his parents and family after allegedly hearing voices. George soon begins exhibiting signs of a sinister influence himself.

 

It didn’t help that a real dead body was discovered in the water near the set. George told Radio Free Entertainment that the cast at least had a sense of humor about it. “We were like, ‘Awesome! That’s making everything much more comfortable in this movie!’”

 

Reynolds, meanwhile, told MovieWeb that several crew members were waking up at 3:15 a.m., the same time his character does in the film — and the time associated with the real-life murders in the Amityville legend.

 

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

 

The Exorcism of Emily Rose doesn’t just capitalize on the possession subgenre that has been a pop-culture staple since 1973 — it’s also a sobering legal thriller based on a real-life case.

 

The eponymous Emily (Jennifer Carpenter) is based on Anneliese Michel, a young German woman in the 1970s who had epilepsy and whose family became convinced she was possessed by a demon. Michel died of malnutrition and dehydration after undergoing 67 exorcisms. Scott Derrickson’s movie is based on the aftermath of her death and the resulting negligent-homicide trial.

 

The actors in the cast experienced their share of inexplicable coincidences during filming. Carpenter told Dread Central that her radio would randomly turn on, and costar Laura Linney’s television would also mysteriously turn on by itself.

 

“I thought about that when it happened, and two or three times when I was going to sleep my radio came on by itself,” Carpenter said. “The only time it scared me was once because it was really loud and it was Pearl Jam’s Alive.”

 

Derrickson later confirmed Carpenter’s story on social media, writing, “This is true.”

 

The Innkeepers (2011)

 

Years before helming his recent X trilogy, filmmaker Ti West found inspiration for one of his most popular movies… while in the midst of making a different movie altogether.

 

West was filming The House of the Devil (2009) when he encountered the eerie halls of the historic Yankee Pedlar Inn, where he and his crew were staying during production. The experience would later inspire another movie.

 

What he realized, as he detailed to IndieWire, was that there’s a whole “mystique” to that particular building: “The staff at the hotel believe it’s haunted. The whole town believes it’s haunted.”

 

That kernel of an idea became The Innkeepers, which is essentially West’s fictionalized take on local legends. Sara Paxton and Pat Healy play employees at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, more or less bored with the day-to-day workings of the soon-to-close hotel, but fascinated by the lore associated with their haunted place of employment.

 

And though the filmmaker counts himself a skeptic, the hotel didn’t disappoint as far as eerie experiences go.

 

“I’ve definitely seen doors close by themselves; I’ve seen a TV turn off and on by itself; lights would always burn out in my room,” West said. “Everyone on the crew has very vivid dreams every night, which is really strange. ”

 

The Possession (2012)

 

Naming your movie The Possession seems to be tempting fate, doesn’t it? True to form, both the film’s star, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and director Ole Bornedal reported various spooky incidents during production. That includes everything from exploding lights during the shooting of key scenes to unexplained gusts of wind barreling through soundstages.

 

“I’ve never stood underneath a neon light before that wasn’t lit, that all of a sudden exploded,” Bornedal told EW in 2012.

 

But that doesn’t even touch the most alarming occurrence. Just five days after filming wrapped, a warehouse in Vancouver containing the movie’s props burned to the ground. Among the props incinerated? The replica of the possessed dybbuk box around which the movie revolves. According to Bornedal, the fire department couldn’t determine the cause.

 

“I’m very skeptical,” Morgan told The Hollywood Reporter, “but not only would I not want the box around and to tempt fate, but there were enough weird things going on around our set that I’ve never seen happen on sets before.”

 

Interestingly, the production team had also been offered the actual dybbuk box that inspired the film, but nobody volunteered to be its caretaker — including producer Sam Raimi, who admitted he was frightened of it.

 

The Conjuring (2013)

 

Filming The Conjuring may have felt like being on a haunted set, but that hasn’t stopped the franchise from going strong for nearly a decade and a half. Even the core cast, namely Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, haven’t been able to stay away, otherworldly energies notwithstanding.

 

But don’t discount their creepy on-set encounters just because of their dedication to the movies. Farmiga said she discovered massive claw-like marks on her computer screen and later, similar marks in bruises on her thigh.

 

Farmiga and other cast members reported waking up randomly between 3 and 4 a.m. while filming, while cast and crew also described strange occurrences, including sudden gusts of wind, flickering lights, unexplained cold spots, and doors slamming shut without explanation.

 

Joey King might have had the creepiest experience with the presumptively cursed set: She developed numerous bruises on her body that mirrored another character’s possession in the film. The actress said on The Drew Barrymore Show that she was ultimately diagnosed with a blood disorder called immune thrombocytopenia (ITP). After production wrapped, she said the condition went away.

 

“It was pretty intense,” King said. “I developed this bizarre, rare, out-of-nowhere blood disorder, and basically my body, like all the red platelets from my body were like drained. They were just gone. So I had a high risk of internal bleeding and I was potentially gonna need a blood transfusion… So I had to, every day before work and after work, go to the hospital, get my blood taken. Then, all of a sudden I got home and I’ve never had a problem with my blood since.”

 

Before filming The Conjuring 2 (2016), director James Wan brought in a Catholic priest to bless the set.

 

Annabelle (2014)

 

Further into the Conjuring universe, the prequel film Annabelle spins an origin story for the disturbing doll featured in the opening sequence of the original film.

 

Similar to the claw marks that Farmiga cited seeing during The Conjuring, three finger-shaped marks were discovered on a dusty window during preparations for filming — matching the demon’s three fingers and talons in the film. On the first day an actor appeared in full demon makeup, a heavy glass light fixture reportedly fell directly onto the head of another actor playing the building’s janitor.

 

Director John R. Leonetti told The Hollywood Reporter that it was a “really creepy” production.

 

“The first [incident] was when we were prepping,” Leonetti said. “We went into the apartment where we were shooting, and in the transient window above the living room window. It was a full moon, and there were three fingers drawn through the dust along the window, and our demon has three fingers and three talons. [The markings] were being backlit by the moon. I have a picture! It was sick.”

 

The Nun (2018)

 

The supernatural just can’t quit the Conjuring universe, it seems.

 

The Nun — a spinoff/prequel of The Conjuring 2 and now a burgeoning sub-franchise of its own after The Nun II (2023) — had a frightening on-set experience not unlike those of its franchise predecessors.

 

Director Corin Hardy recalled seeing two mysterious men on set in Romania — who wound up disappearing. Were they ghosts, perhaps?

 

“As I stepped into the room I saw a couple guys sitting in [the back] of the room,” Hardy told Yahoo Entertainment. “I presumed they [were from] the sound department. I said, ‘Hi,’ and I quickly turned around — I had my back to them. And I was watching the monitors, I was watching Taissa [Farmiga], I was watching the camera, and it was quite a difficult scene to coordinate, and it took about half an hour. So I was sitting there, there’s only one doorway in and out of this room, and we finally got the shot. I turned around to say, ‘Oh, did you see that? What did you think?’ And there’s no one in the room. And there never had been.”

 

Hardy expanded on the story to Starburst magazine, adding that despite his personal skepticism, he couldn’t rule out the possibility that he’d encountered something supernatural.

 

“I did have what I can only amount to a supernatural experience while I was making the movie,” Hardy recalled. “This was an old military fortress… so I feel they must be Romanian ghosts checking in on what was going on while we were making The Nun.”

 

The production company wasn’t taking any chances: New Line Cinema had a Catholic priest bless the set, a practice Hardy said was standard for its Conjuring and Annabelle productions.

AH: Satan and his fallen angels are dangerous to fool with, people!