The curse of “Poltergeist”: how the actors of the cult horror died one by one

The first film in the Poltergeist series was released in 1982. Written by Steven Spielberg and directed by Toub Hooper. The story tells about the Freeling family, which is haunted by ghosts. The exciting story was a success with the audience and the professional public – the film received three Oscar nominations.

However, the success story is overshadowed by a series of deaths of film actors, which have led many to talk of a curse. So, whose lives did the Poltergeist take?

First on this chilling list was actress Dominique Dunn, who played the eldest daughter of the Freeling family named Dana. She died shortly after the premiere of the first volume in 1982, and her death was violent. The young actress was strangled by her jealous boyfriend Thomas Sweeney two weeks before her 23rd birthday. The girl was taken to hospital but never regained consciousness and there was no brain activity. A few days later, the parents of the actress had to make the difficult decision to disconnect their daughter from the life support system.

Actor Julian Beck, who played preacher Henry Caine, died during the filming of the second film in 1985. He was 60 years old and the cause of death was stomach cancer, which he had been diagnosed with two years earlier. That’s not to say that this death was completely sudden, but it does feel somewhat grim in the general context, given that Beck wasn’t quite playing a preacher in the film, but rather a demon taking on his form.

His colleague Will Sampson, who was a representative of the indigenous population of America, also died. Formerly a painter and rodeo champion, Sampson began his film career relatively late. He was already over forty when he acted in his first film, but what! It was Miloš Forman’s painting “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. In the last years of his life, the actor suffered from a severe autoimmune disease that had an adverse effect on his internal organs. On June 3, 1987, a year after the release of the second “Poltergeist,” Sampson died of complications from heart and lung transplant surgery. He was 53 years old.

The latest victim was the youngest actress of the saga, Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Ann, the youngest daughter of the Freeling family. She was just 12 years old when her life was tragically cut short. Heather died in 1988 of cardiac arrest during surgery to remove an intestinal obstruction. The correct diagnosis and the cause of her poor health was determined too late – for almost a year, the symptoms the girl was experiencing were attributed to Crohn’s disease – inflammation of the digestive tract. Heather was buried in the same cemetery as her on-screen sister Dominique Dunn – such a mystical coincidence.

The only survivor among the young actors who played the children of the Freeling family was Oliver Robins. By the way, he was very skeptical about the story of the curse and considered everything to be nothing more than tragic coincidences, which, however, attracted the public for decades. He did not build a successful film career, he stopped filming in 1986, but later became a screenwriter and director. Today he is already 51 years old.

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