MOVIE SETS, STUDIOS, AND SOUNDSTAGES

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What could be worse than making a television show or movie about something scary and having ghostly activity occur on set? For cast and crewmembers, it can be a terrifying blur between reality and the story they are creating and leave a lasting mark on those involved. Some movies seem to be associated with a high level of accidents and problems, and although they may not be paranormal in nature, they still left the cast and crew feeling as though something beyond the normal had occurred.

THE AMITYVILLE SET

During the filming of the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror (the original film was released in 1979), several cast and crewmembers reported waking up at 3:15 A.M., the same time the notorious murders took place at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island, New York. Those brutal murders were committed in 1974 by a man named Ronald DeFeo Jr., who, while living in the two-story, Dutch Colonial home, claimed he heard voices that urged him to kill his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters.

According to Tasteofcinema.com’s “Ten Famous Movies That Were Haunted on the Set,” the house was then purchased by the Lutz family, whose story is documented in the fictional Amityville movies. George Lutz, the father, also found himself seeing ghosts and experiencing demonic activity in the house before getting his family out. In the original movie, made in 1979, James Brolin played George Lutz, and Margot Kidder played his wife. In the 2005 remake, Ryan Reynolds played the part of George, and he reported how during filming, he would wake up at 3:15 A.M. just like the character he was portraying. He also reported feeling strange sensations during filming and felt there was something unsettling about the house itself.

Both versions were based on the book by Jay Anson, which Brolin claims he happened to be reading when a pair of pants he had hung up suddenly fell to the floor. He took it as a sign to go ahead and do the movie!

IS BATMAN REALLY CURSED?

So, Batman is cursed. That also includes The Dark Knight and associated movies, where awful things seem to happen to those involved. Everyone remembers the horrible death of Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in The Dark Knight. Allegedly, Ledger was warned not to take the role by Jack Nicholson, but he ignored it and suffered sleepless nights, a battle with depression, and the darkness cast by the film’s storyline itself.

On the last page of the script, Ledger wrote the words “Bye, Bye” next to a photo of himself in full makeup. There were on-set accidents involving filming equipment, including the death of a technician during a stunt, and even noted actor Morgan Freeman suffered a car accident and a divorce shortly after filming.

The scariest connection was nothing ghostly at all but continues to perpetuate the curse. On July 20, 2012, a mass shooting occurred during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado. The shooter, James Eagen Holmes, killed twelve people and injured over seventy others during the sold-out premiere that went down in history as one of the deadliest shootings on record.

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Actor Heath Ledger, whose brilliant portrayal of the Joker will always be remembered, was warned not to join the cast of The Dark Knight. He died of an accidental overdose of medication.

THE MAKING OF THE CONJURING

The story of the Perron family became a popular horror movie that documented the strange goings-on in their Rhode Island home during the 1970s. The actual wife and mother of the Perron family, Carolyn, refused to even visit the movie set with other members of the family. During filming, cast, crewmembers, and actual Perron family members experienced strange winds that would swirl around them but not affect nearby trees. Carolyn experienced an evil presence in her home, and the director, James Wan, stated his dog would growl ferociously at some unseen presence in his office when he was working late at night.

The hotel the actors and crew stayed in caught fire, although everyone safely evacuated.

Both Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, the actors who played the paranormal investigator team of Lorraine and Ed Warren, founders of the New England Society for Psychic Research, experienced their share of strange sensations. Wilson, in an interview with The Independent in June 2016, also reported seeing one of the movie’s young stars, Joey King, in a doctor’s office he was in with his son. King was bruised all over her body, despite not being involved in any stunts. In the film, Lili Taylor’s mother awakens with similar unexplained bruising.

Farmiga even reported strange claw marks on her computer that appeared during the filming!

THE CROW

Actor Brandon Lee, who was the son of martial arts actor Bruce Lee, became an overnight legend after the release of The Crow in 1994 not just because of his haunting performance but because of his untimely death on the movie set. He was struck and killed by a real bullet fragment from a prop gun that accidentally fired eerily during a scene that was a flashback of his character Eric Draven’s death. Lee predicted his demise, too, and he believed his entire family was cursed because of bad business dealings with his grandfather. Numerous other injuries were sustained by the crew as well. A carpenter was injured when his crane drove into power lines. An equipment truck caught on fire, and a major storm almost destroyed all of the sets.

THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE

Star Jennifer Carpenter reported that during the filming of the 2005 movie, in which she portrayed the German woman named Anneliese Michel, who died of poor health after a botched exorcism, her radio would turn on and off. She stated it would turn on loudly, usually when she was trying to sleep in the middle of the night. The song playing on the radio was always Pearl Jam’s “Alive,” and the lyrics “I’m still alive” would be repeated over and over again, as if on a loop.

GHOST

Though the filming of this movie was pretty much ghost free, it is fun to note that the movie was shot on Stage 19 of Paramount Studios, which has a reputation of being haunted itself, possibly by the ghost of Heather O’Rourke, who starred in the Poltergeist movies, which were shot on the same stage!

THE GHOST WHISPERER

Jennifer Love Hewitt starred in this hugely popular television series about a young woman who communicated with spirits and helped them cross over into the light. But during the filming, Hewitt believed the set was involved in some paranormal activity, especially in 2007. There was video footage taken to back her up of a particular scene where crewmembers noticed a shadow figure behind Hewitt. The shadowy spot showed up on the footage once they replayed it. Cast and crewmembers also reported their clothing being tugged on, lights exploding and moving around on their own, and objects vanishing from one spot and reappearing in another.

THE INNKEEPERS

This 2011 movie was filmed in a haunted location, the Yankee Peddler Inn in Torrington, Connecticut, so the fact that during filming there would be strange activity doesn’t come as too much of a surprise. Director Ti West was a skeptic but soon reported doors closing by themselves, television sets turning on and off, lights burning out, and cast and crewmembers having unusually vivid dreams. Actress Sara Paxton even reported waking up at night and sensing a presence in the room with her.

INTRODUCING DOROTHY DANDRIDGE

According to Taste of Cinema’s “10 Famous Movies That Were Haunted on the Set,” actress Halle Berry had a positive ghostly encounter when she was cast as the lead in the 1999 biopic story of Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American ever to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Berry decided to take home the original gown Dandridge wore on her Ed Sullivan Show appearance. At her home, Berry reported lights going on and off, doors opening and closing, and that even her housekeeper reported dragging sounds coming from the bedroom.

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Actress, singer, and dancer Dorothy Dandridge, who was the first African American woman to be nominated for an Oscar, died in 1965 either from an embolism or an accidental overdose of depression medication. She was only forty-two.

Halle Berry stated that she kept the gown in the den covered in plastic and one day heard a crackling noise. She saw a little baby doll dress floating in front of the Dandridge gown! Berry was so shocked, she ran into her bedroom and hid there. But she felt a true sense of pride and responsibility, once she returned the gown, that she truly understood what Dorothy Dandridge stood for and that her haunting was a positive experience.

ON THE SET OF THE EXORCIST

No movie could have been more associated with curses and hauntings than the one movie most often voted “the scariest movie ever made.” The Exorcist was released in 1973 based on the best-selling novel by William Peter Blatty and directed by William Friedkin. The box office smash starred Ellen Burstyn as the mother of a possessed girl, played by Linda Blair. On set, the cast and crew reported numerous objects moving on their own, a telephone whose receiver would fall to the floor and float around, and other noisy shenanigans. That was nothing compared to what was to come, including a mysterious fire that burned down the actual set that was the home of the mother and daughter characters. The only room that did not burn was the bedroom where the infamous exorcism of Regan MacNeil, played by Blair, took place that terrified millions of movie-goers.

Burstyn later wrote in her 2006 autobiography of the anxiety many on the set experienced, especially with numerous reported electrical problems.

There were nine deaths associated with The Exorcist, including several actors whose characters died in the movie. There were accidents on set that injured both Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair, and the film’s religious technical advisor, Reverend Thomas Bermingham, was asked to perform a real-life exorcism. While shooting scenes in Iraq, director William Friedkin encountered actual devil worshippers who wanted to know why Friedkin was taking raw meat to a statue of their demon Pazuzu (it was to attract vultures for a particular scene)!

GHOSTS IN THE MATRIX?

More of a curse than a haunting, bad luck permeated the cast and crew of the huge box office success. Star Keanu Reeves lost his girlfriend, Jennifer Syme, who gave birth to a stillborn child during the filming, then later died in a car accident. Aaliyah, who played Zee in the film and was then twenty-two years of age, died in a tragic plane crash. Gloria Foster, who played the Oracle, died during filming. Reeves had a motorcycle accident that landed him in the hospital and later injured his foot enough to be hospitalized. Reeves also ended up giving up $24 million of his own salary to keep the production afloat. Luckily, the movie was completed and became a big hit, spawning sequels.

THE NUN

Released in 2018 as a spin-off prequel to the successful Conjuring franchise, The Nun was billed as a terrifying ghost story, just as its predecessors. And just as the other franchise films that came out before it, ghastly happenings were reported on set. Director Corin Hardy claimed that while filming a key sequence of scenes called the Corridor of Crosses at an actual fortress in Transylvania, he had set up monitors in a small cell on the side of a long corridor. He went into the room and saw two men sitting around. Presuming them to be sound guys, he said hello and then turned the other way to watch one of his actresses perform her scene.

Despite there being only one way in or out of the cell, in which case they would have had to pass by Hardy while he was directing the scene, when he turned back to the cell to ask the soundmen how they liked the take, it was empty. According to the monitors, the room had been empty all along.

THE OMEN

A movie about a child who ends up being the Antichrist is bound to be cursed, right? In this case, the original, directed by Richard Donner and released in 1976, and its remake thirty years later, directed by John Moore (release date was 6/6/06!), both had their spooky issues. About two months before the original even began filming, lead actor Gregory Peck’s son shot himself in the head in a suicide, and Peck barely escaped a harrowing plane crash when he canceled his reservation at the last minute. Everyone on board the flight died.

David Seltzer, who wrote the screenplay, was in a plane that was struck by lightning, and a few weeks later, producer Mace Neufeld experienced the same thing during a terrifying flight back to Los Angeles. In 2006, director John Moore shot a day’s worth of film footage of the scene where the mark of the Devil, 666, is found on the boy, Damien, who is to become the Antichrist. The resulting film footage—about thirteen thousand feet of it—was somehow mysteriously destroyed by the processing lab, whose employees were in tears, lost for an explanation.

But the two most horrific deaths associated with the film involved bizarre coincidences. The animal handler for the original movie, who worked with a scene involving a baboon going crazy, was himself later attacked by a lion and reportedly eaten alive. The worst death occurred when the set designer for the 1976 original, John Richardson, created a scene that depicted a character being decapitated during an automobile accident. That very same year, in Holland, Richardson and his set assistant Liz Moore were in a head-on auto collision, and Moore was cut in half in almost the same way as in Richardson’s film depiction. Scarier still, this happened on a Friday the 13th near a road sign that read: “Ommen. 66.6 KM.”

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST

Mel Gibson’s powerful and controversial drama depicting the life of Christ had its own alleged curses. Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus, was struck by lightning during filming, and on set, cast and crewmembers reported it appeared as if his whole body was illuminated. But if that wasn’t scary enough, director Jan Michelini was also struck twice!

POLTERGEIST

This 1982 blockbuster horror film was directed by Tobe Hooper and written and produced by Steven Spielberg. The story of a young family who moves into a new home built upon an ancient Indian burial ground and plagued by poltergeist activity raked in millions at the box office and spawned several sequels. It also came with its own fair share of spooky, behind-the-scenes, paranormal activity that had the cast and crew believing the movie was cursed from the first take.

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JoBeth Williams played Diane Freeling in the 1982 horror film Poltergeist. According to her, she apparently took work home with her, finding pictures on the walls of her home moved at odd angles for no reason.

According to several sources, the corpses used in the infamous pool scene were real skeletons, as they were cheaper to obtain than fake, plastic ones and involved a lot more work to make them. If that didn’t set the creep factor high enough, there were strange goings-on while filming, including the near-death of young actor Oliver Robins, who was filming a scene where he was being attacked by a clown. The prop clown had a malfunction and the boy was choking before the crew realized what was happening.

JoBeth Williams, the actress who played the mother of the haunted family, reported that she would find pictures on the wall hanging at strange angles when she got home from filming each day. She would make sure they were straight the next morning, only to come home and find them hanging crooked again that night.

Several actors died close to the time of the movie’s filming as well as the two sequels in 1986 and 1988. Julian Beck died of stomach cancer after portraying an evil spirit. Will Sampson, who played the shaman, died of complications from a kidney transplant a year after he attempted to rid the set of the “curse” by performing a makeshift exorcism. Other deaths included Zelda Rubenstein, who played the psychic medium, and Brian Gibson, who directed one of the sequels, although they died years later and of not-so-mysterious causes. Since every movie has a large cast and crew, it is inevitable that some deaths may occur around the same time and close to the filming date.

But it was the mysterious deaths of two young, female actresses that elevated the strangeness sky high. On November 4, 1982, only six months after the filming ended on the first Poltergeist movie, actress Dominique Dunn, who played the family’s older sister, was found strangled to death in her Hollywood apartment. The murderer was her then boyfriend, John Sweeney. In 1988, actress Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Anne, the little girl who appears to be at the center of the activity in all three Poltergeist movies, died of a septic infection from a bowel blockage.

THE POSSESSION

Jeffrey Dean Morgan of “Negan” fame in the hit television series The Walking Dead starred in a 2012 horror film with Kyra Sedgwick in which their daughter becomes obsessed with a Dybbuk box, a cursed box that has the power to kill. During the filming of the movie, lights would explode on set for no reason, and there were often chilly breezes that could not be explained during key scary scenes. The storage facility that housed the film’s props caught fire mysteriously and burned to the ground, along with the prop Dybbuk box.

ROSEMARY’S BABY

When director Roman Polanski, who was no stranger to controversy himself, made the 1968 hit film Rosemary’s Baby, he probably had no idea what a cult classic the film would be. It is consistently on many lists of the top ten horror movies of all time. Ironic because the story is about a young, pregnant woman who discovers she has been set up by a Satanic cult to have the Devil’s baby! Nor would he and the cast and crew have known of the strange events that would be associated with the making of the iconic horror film, including the mysterious death of film composer Krzysztof Komeda, who died of a brain clot a year after the film was made, or the uremic poisoning and kidney failure of producer William Castle, who received hate mail after the movie’s release. As Castle was being admitted to the hospital, he allegedly yelled, “Rosemary, for God’s sake, drop the knife!” He died later from a heart attack.

But the really creepy connections came from the setting of the story—the Dakota apartment building in New York City, where Rosemary lived with her husband and her devil-worshipping neighbors. The Dakota apartment building was also where Beatle John Lennon was shot and killed years later. To make matters even spookier, the Beatles released their White Album in 1968, the same year Rosemary’s Baby was released. The album included the song “Helter Skelter,” which was later used by notorious cult leader Charles Manson as a name of the ritualistic killing spree his “family” committed in 1969 … that included the horrific stabbing of pregnant actress Sharon Tate in her Benedict Canyon home in Los Angeles. Tate was the wife of director Roman Polanski.

THREE MEN AND A BABY’S CARDBOARD BOY

Though it was later debunked, this blockbuster comedy from 1987 gave Hollywood its own urban legend for a while. Starring such big names as Ted Danson, Tom Selleck, and Steve Guttenberg and directed by Leonard Nimoy (“Spock” of Star Trek fame), the movie spawned a huge rumor of the appearance of an apparition of a boy behind a curtain in a window in one scene. The boy, it was alleged, had died of suicide in the same house the movie was filmed at. The story even made the nightly news!

But alas, it was all proved to be sheer nonsense. There was no suicide, and the movie was filmed on a studio soundstage, not in an actual home. As for the “apparition,” it turned out to be a large, cardboard stand of Ted Danson’s character someone had forgotten to put in its right place! But while it lasted, it was a fun television urban legend.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE AND ON-SET ACCIDENTS

In 1983, director John Landis’s remake of the television classic resulted in one of the most horrific on-set incidents in movie history. During a scene using heavy explosives and a helicopter, actor Vic Morrow and two children actors, who were both illegally hired, were decapitated and crushed when the helicopter spun out of control and crashed to the ground. Landis was suggested by producer Steven Spielberg as being partially responsible, and their working relationship ended after the incident.

Just because a movie set suffered horrific accidents doesn’t necessarily mean it was haunted but certainly cursed. The sheer fact that movie and television sets require so many people and equipment, involve dangerous stunts, multiple set pieces, and just plain human error makes these locations ripe for problems. Yet, those that truly seem to have been the stomping grounds of ghosts, apparitions, and poltergeist-like activity add a depth and richness to the acting performances and moods of the movies.

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Actor Vic Morrow (shown here on the 1960s TV show Combat!) died in a freak 1983 helicopter accident on the set of The Twilight Zone movie.

Perhaps just being involved in something scary breeds paranormal activity or makes those involved more aware of it and susceptible to it. Maybe the collective beliefs and expectations of the cast and crew have a role in manifesting actual physical events that haunt them long after the final “and cut!” is called by the director. Maybe the demons are entirely human, as in the case of the 1960 thriller Psycho, in which a handyman named Kenneth Dean Hunt who was obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock and his movies murdered Myra Jones, the uncredited body double of star Janet Leigh. Maybe the curse is really an actual bad accident, as in the fire that destroyed most of the sets involved in the making of the Stephen King classic The Shining. Interestingly, the Overlook Hotel, which is the setting of the chilling story, burns down at the end of the novel.

One of the most intriguing haunted sets goes back to 1953 and involves a television set used to make a show called Ding Dong School, which was a precursor to Sesame Street. A Long Island resident named Jerome E. Travers was watching with his three children when they saw a “spectral woman” appear on the screen and heard her voice echoing out from the television. This continued even after the television set was unplugged!!! Reporters flocked to the scene, and the family decided the best way to deal with the haunted television set was to turn it to face the wall as punishment for scaring the children! However, this appears to be more a story of a haunted “television set” than a haunted set where a television show is filmed. Be warned!

SPOOKY SOUNDSTAGES AND STUDIOS

There are hundreds of haunted places in Hollywood alone, and a few of them are soundstages where the movies we know, and love, were filmed. Whether haunted by the dead ghosts of past performers or those who lost their lives in accidents during filming, these facilities have garnered quite a reputation as notorious as some of the films that were made there.

CHARLIE CHAPLIN STUDIOS

Motion picture legend Charlie Chaplin started the studio with his name on it in 1917. Located on La Brea Avenue, the studio had a rich history that included movies and television shows such as Perry Mason and The Adventures of Superman. Years later, it would change hands, suffer a fire, be broken into lots and partially sold to outside interests, serve as the headquarters for A&M Records, and eventually become the Jim Henson Studio, which it remains today, where the Muppet empire was created.

In 2007, the SyFy Channel series Ghost Hunters paid a visit to the now designated historical/cultural monument to investigate stories of cast and crewmembers encountering ghosts and apparitions over the decades. One particular apparition was in the form of a man wearing a top hat and coat, and a female form was often reported walking through doors. Doors opened and closed by themselves, and the ghost of a man with a handlebar mustache was often seen on the soundstage. Voices could be heard coming from the catwalk when no one was around. Other people who have worked at the site reported knocking on glass windows in the children’s schoolhouse along with a plethora of reports of people seeing the ghost of Karen Carpenter, the famous singer/musician and half of The Carpenters, who was signed to A&M Records.

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Stage 28 on the Universal Studios lot in Hollywood is where the 1925 movie The Phantom of the Opera was filmed. Since then, weird happenings, including the ghost of Lon Chaney, have been reported there.

THE INFAMOUS STAGE 28

Universal Studios has a long history as one of the biggest soundstage and production facilities in world. Over the years, many of its famous stages have been destroyed by fire, demolished, and changed to adapt to the times. One stage in particular, Stage 28, lasted from 1925 to 2014, when it was demolished. But it had quite the reputation for being haunted.

Known as “The Phantom Stage” because one of its biggest claims to production fame, Lon Chaney in the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera, used the stage for its Paris Opera House scene, and it became a permanent fixture on the Universal lot. Casts and crewmembers of various films reported ghostly apparitions and strange goings-on, including a black-caped figure running around the catwalk above the stage many attributed to being Lon Chaney’s ghost in his performance garb as the Phantom.

Lights turned on and off, and doors opened and closed on their own. In 1925, an electrician fell to his death, and many people later thought it was his ghost that haunted Stage 28. Security guards over time have reported hearing voices when no one was around filming. The soundstage stood up to various earthquakes and fires and hosted tours for the public for years.

CULVER STUDIOS

Thomas Ince was a big name in the filmmaking world. In fact, he was considered the “Father of the Western,” but few people have ever heard of him. Ince, a silent movie star, started Culver Studios in 1918. The Mansion was the first building to be constructed on the lot. But Ince’s death in 1924, on board a yacht owned by none other than William Randolph Hearst, was mysterious. It was Ince’s forty-third birthday, and there was a big party on board the Oneida with guests such as Louella Parsons, the gossip queen, and Charlie Chaplin. Ince was the guest of honor and missed the boat when it set off from San Pedro, meeting up on the yacht later.

According to the official news stories of the time, Ince partied a bit too hard and died of acute indigestion. But rumor has it that some witnesses on the Oneida said they saw Ince being taken off the ship with a bullet hole to his head! Ince may have gotten caught in the jealous crossfire between Hearst and Chaplin, who were both interested in actress Marion Davies, also on board, and that the bullet may have been meant for Chaplin.

The Culver Studios were said to be haunted by the ghost of Ince, often seen climbing the stairs of the administrative building or walking the catwalk wearing a bowler hat. One special-effects man named Eugene Hilchey was told by the ghost, “I don’t like what you’re doing to my studio,” before the ghost vanished into the walls on Stage 2-3-4.

The studio changed hands over the years, at one time owned by Cecil B. DeMille and then RKO. Today, Culver Studios is a thriving production facility, and although most of it has been rebuilt, much of the original studio is the same as when Ince first envisioned and built it in 1918. Stage 1 was demolished in 1988, and Ince was heard on the catwalks just moments before the wrecking ball struck.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES STUDIOS

On Los Angeles’s famed Melrose Avenue, one of the few streets to ever have its own dramatic television series, sits one of the biggest and most successful movie studios ever built … and one of the most haunted. Behind the huge, wrought iron gates sits Paramount Studios, the home of many of the most iconic films in history since it was built in 1912. Directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Steven Spielberg, and Alfred Hitchcock and performers from Elvis Presley to Angelina Jolie and Harrison Ford graced the soundstages and created a legacy of movies and television never to be forgotten. The back lot was home to shows such as The Brady Bunch and Happy Days, shows that have stood the test of time and become as much a part of history as the place they were filmed.

Paramount Studios has a long history of hauntings and strange goings-on, which have become as legendary as the people who worked there making films. The studio is located next door to another haunted Hollywood location, Hollywood Memorial Park, which serves as the final resting place of some of the biggest stars who ever lived, including Rudy Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks. The Memorial Park is close to Stages 29 through 32, which are said to have been the most often visited by ghostly apparitions, many wearing the clothing of the 1930s and 1940s, including one of Valentino himself walking through the exterior gate into the studio lot (sometimes wearing the white costume from his movie The Sheik).

Security guards and other workers state the most active haunted locations were Stages 30 and 31, which were rampant with doors being opened and closed, stage lights flashing on and off, apparitions, and the sounds of footsteps where no one was around. Even after security guards would secure the facilities, they would hear things going on that indicated someone was walking around, but further inspection always revealed there was no one there. Some people suggest that ghosts from the next-door Memorial Park enter the soundstages via the walkin gates at Lemon Grove, which are only feet from the cemetery. Reports include guards seeing the heads of ghosts peeking through the cemetery wall and then vanishing!

The Hart Building is said to be the most paranormally active location. It is one of the oldest buildings and was once a part of the famous DesiLu Studios started by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. It is in this building the ghost of a woman was seen floating around the upper floors and giving off a very strong scent of flowery perfume.

The Hart Building is also home to slamming doors and lights going on and off, people being touched on the arms and shoulders, and even glowing, red eyes appearing in the bathroom mirror of one section of the studio! The building is small, and the people who work there all know each other by sight, so imagine their shock when one late night, a man and woman left their second-story office together and walked past an old woman. Neither one of them recognized the old woman, and when they turned back to ask if she was lost, she had vanished into thin air!

Some of the folks who worked on the popular TV show Wings during the 1990s, which was shot on Stage 19 (where Happy Days was shot) reported seeing the ghost of Heather O’Rourke on many occasions. O’Rourke was the child who played Carol Anne in the Poltergeist movies and died tragically young. Ironically, O’Rourke guest-starred on some of the final episodes of Happy Days. Her ghost could be heard laughing and running across the stage in the dark late at night when the soundstage was empty but for a worker or two. Other locations alleged to be haunted are Stage 25 and the Schulberg Building.

Another famous ghost story involves the “New York” area of the back lot. A security guard there is said to have seen a young man walking around. The guard approached the man and told him he needed to leave. The man smiled at the guard and then proceeded to walk through a wall. When the guard later gave a description of the man in his Incident Report, he described him as looking like Rudolph Valentino, who was buried in the cemetery on the other side of the wall the ghost walked through!

RALEIGH STUDIOS

Built in 1914, this studio has a long history of films featuring some of the top stars of the time, including Charlie Chaplin and Frank Sinatra. Stage 5 is a hotbed of paranormal activity. In 1932, an electrician fell to his death from the catwalk above the stage, and many workers have sensed his presence there. Heavy equipment moved on its own, and cold spots would appear out of nowhere. Lights turn on and off and voices could be heard near and around Stage 5.

Three-hundred-pound (136-kilogram) overhead lights would often begin swinging back and forth on their own, according to studio employee Don Kane, who experienced ghostly activity after hours when the soundstage was locked up for the night.