Horror Movies Aren’t Only Scary For The Audience

Have you ever wondered about what happens behind the scenes of horror movie sets? Were there points in production where the actors themselves got the chills or experienced a moment of fear? After all, being a part of a horror film must leave some scars. Go through some of these creepy facts about horror movies and the sort of things that happened during their creation to find out.

If you ever thought that the actors must never get scared during their own movie, you’re wrong. There have been many instances of fear spreading through their own veins and sometimes, to get that “scary” feel of the movie, drastic measures have been taken. Lets begin with –

1: Bram Stoker’s Dracula

In one scene Dracula turns into a bat-like creature and flies off. Gary Oldman ( actor ) didn’t feel the scene was coming off as scary so to make the others look properly terrified, he whispered something – no one knows what – into each of the other actors ears. It was apparently something awful because all of them had the look of horror on their faces.

2: Paranormal Activity

Steven Spielberg got spooked so badly that he had to finish it in the morning. A round of applause for the actors though because the movie didn’t have a script. All the actors were given some direction and ad-libbed their lines. Some scary factor they added huh..

3: Hostel 

Instead of making the set seem more horrifying, the set of Hostel had to be made cozier. This is because the film was shot in an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Prague which was highly popular for housing very violent patients. So the eerie feel had to be toned down to make the cast and crew comfortable enough to shoot.

4: Poltergeist

Heather O’Rourke, aged 7, fell completely apart from fear during the scene where she had to hang onto the headboard in a vortex of strong wind. Filming had to be stopped as the director, Steven Spielberg personally comforted her.

5: The Exorcist 

For the bathroom scene, the temperature had to be kept very low which made it extremely uncomfortable for actress Linda Blair as she was in a thin nightgown. However, her startling performance made such an impact that the other actor completely forgot his lines in fear.

6: Candyman 

There were real bees in Tony Todd’s mouth during shooting. The only thing preventing them from being swallowed was a mouth guard and a sense of unreal calm prevented them from stinging.

7: The Shining 

The actress Shelley Duvall spent most of this movie in a state of hysteria that included a lot of crying. She had to keep bottles of water on set to keep her hydrated.

8: The Possession 

Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who has been acting for 25 years, was a skeptic but now admits to being freaked out due to some unexplainable things on set. Lights would explode for no good reason and chilly breezes felt through closed sets. The creepiest of all things was how the storage facility – all the props stored including the Dybbuk box – caught fire and burned to the ground. There is even a real Dybbuk box and the owners of it offered to bring it to the set but the cast and crew very clearly declined.

9: The Ghost Of Goodnight Lane 

This horror movie was inspired by a haunted movie set that’s owned by Media World Company. The staff would have visions of an unknown male while on set, film equipment would be moved around when no one was there and in fact, someone even got slapped in the face. The producer Alin Bijan and his crew then kept a record of all these unexplainable incidents. Paranormal Investigators confirmed the set was haunted and some even heard their names being called by disembodied voices.

10: The Omen (1975)

Bad things didn’t only happen in the movie but also on set. These tragedies began when the son of Gregory Peck committed suicide two months before filming was to start. Then, a crew member met in an accident (survived), the scriptwriters plane was struck by lightening, the plane with Gregory Peck and executive producer was also struck by lightening only eight hours later. One of the most upsetting tragedies was when the crew decided to hire a private plane to use on set. The scheduled flight had to be postponed since a couple of businessmen needed it but after take off something went wrong and the plane crashed onto a road, killing everyone in the accident.

11: The Conjuring 

This horror movie was too based on the true story of the Perron Family who experienced unexplainable ghost activity in their house during the 70’s. The family, except mother and wife, Carolyn Perron, visted the set a few times. When they were on set, a strong wind came up and seemed to swirl around them. There were no trees moving in the area. As Carolyn stayed home in Atlanta, she claimed to have felt an evil presence in her house again and moments later, fell down and taken to the hospital.

Soon after, the hotel in which the cast and crew were staying caught fire, everyone was to be evacuated. The director too had a creepy experience when he was working late in his office one night and his dog started growling at air while there was nothing to antagonize him. But the actress Vera Farmiga was surely frightened during filming. She never took the script home since it made her feel uneasy and if she read it at night, she’d become paralyzed by fear. She remembers opening her laptop once and seeing three slashes across the screen as if some kind of creature dragged its claws across it.

12: The Amityville Horror 

The first Amityville movie was made in 1979 starring James Brolin. This horror movie was also based on a true story which made Brolin uneasy about doing this movie until something strange happened. As he was reading the script early in the morning and came close to a terrorizing part of the story, a pair of his pants suddenly fell off a hanger. Yes, he did jump straight out of his chair. When the movie was remade in 2005 and just before the filming was to start, a dead body washed up on shore right by the movie set. Ryan Reynolds – starred in the remake – and the rest of the cast and crew kept waking up at a quarter past three each morning while filming. This was the time that the real murders took place.