The terrifying true story behind Steven Spielberg’s ‘Poltergeist’
Headed up by Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper, and written by Hollywood icon Steven Spielberg, the 1982 domestic horror film Poltergeist plays on the everyday fears of suburban life, setting the film in an overly normal American home. Occupied by the Freeling family, consisting of parents Diane and Steve, and their children, Dana, Robbie and Carol Anne, Hooper’s film splits this typical family dynamic in two, causing disturbing rifts in the safe structure of the home.
But whilst viewers may think that they can sleep soundly in the knowledge that it’s ‘just a movie’, the reality is far different, with Hooper’s 1982 classic being loosely inspired by a real-life tale of disturbing paranormal activity. Celebrating 40 years of the iconic movie, we thought we’d go way back to 1958 to uncover the true story of the Herrmann House and the events that would later inspire the Hollywood film.
The night was long for James Herrmann from Seaford, Long Island, N.Y., on February 3, 1958, when he received a phone call at work from his wife Lucille, who told him that she and her two children had heard a number of popping sounds coming from around the house. Eventually investigating the sounds, the family found multiple uncapped bottles of fluid around the house, including a vial of Holy Water, which had spilt over in one of the bedrooms.
Still at work, Herrmann told his family to stay calm, believing that his family were victims to local pranksters who were trying to scare them. The noises and general sense of unease subsided in the coming days, but then around a week later, more strange occurrences occurred, with Mr. Hermmann seeing bottles move around his bathroom of their own accord. Terrified, he called the police.
The chaos didn’t cease once the police arrived either, with the sound of more bottles popping throughout the home heard among all members of the house. Performing a number of tests to see whether the pops were the result of electrical disturbances or something similar, no answer was officially reached, and on February 17th, a priest came round to the house to bless it in an attempt to expel all spirits.
Publicised in Life Magazine, the story spread like wildfire across the USA, with many people writing to the family to try and explain away their concerns. But after logging 70 documented reports of paranormal activity between February 3rd and March 10th, the family eventually moved out of the suburban home.
The story isn’t too dissimilar from Hooper’s 1982 movie, with the film following the story of a young, enthusiastic family moving into a new home, only for their lives to be disturbed by a number of eerie noises and terrifying sights. Indeed, the film itself is far more terrifying, sensationalising many of the real-life events, with the spirits being large fantastical creatures who used portals to another dimension,
Though, whilst the film is rife with supernatural horror, there is much real-life tragedy connected to the film, most notably the murder of 22-year-old actress Dominique Dunne in 1982, five months following the release of the movie. Later in the film series, 12-year-old Heather O’Rourke also tragically died from an undetected bowel obstruction, with both her and Dunne’s deaths being linked to the use of real-life skeletons in the swimming pool scene that bookends the film.
40 years after the release of the horror movie that terrified a whole generation, there remains much mystery to the story of Hooper’s Poltergeist.
