Cursed

Cursed movies. Haunted objects. Places you probably shouldn’t go. In this episode, we explore The Omen, Poltergeist, the Nevada Triangle, the Jersey Devil, Annabelle, and more—trying to figure out what’s real… and what isn’t.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome to the Midnight Debrief, Carl, episode two.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

How you been? I've been great. I feel good. I'm glad that we got this stuff working after a lot of hours of painstaking uh trial and error. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Well, as always, we're always gonna focus on interesting topics. We're gonna talk about maybe what's on the news, maybe some conspiracies, what's going on pop culture news. Um, last week we talked about a paranormal investigation that you went on, and I think that was really interesting. You shared some um deep insights, and we went kind of through the uh video that you did. So it was a great production, and part of that conversation that we had, we were talking about horror movies that we grew up with, one of them being the omen. So we're gonna talk about a few things today, but some stories don't end when the credit rolls, and that's kind of what we were talking about last week. Some don't stay where they're told, and some you know don't let go. And tonight we're gonna go a little bit deeper. So it's not just about strange coincidences, this is really about patterns, repetition, uh, events that start to feel intentional. This is episode two, cursed. So The Omen. Um, let's really sit with this one. The Omen, 1976, directed by Richard Donner, starring Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, and Harvey Steemens as Daveen. Um really a film about the Antichrist being raised in secret. Uh now from the beginning, people involved felt pretty uneasy about it, especially with Gregory Peck reportedly hesitated before taking that role. He's just one of the many actors and people behind the camera, too, that have had some incidences. So there was a few things that happen in particular where he actually gets on a flight to London, mid-air, lightning strikes the plane. Not unheard of. You know, planes are built to withstand that sort of thing, they're built tough. But then the strange part is producer Mace Newfield experienced the same thing: separate flight, separate time, lightning strike. Wow. Um, and then the screenwriter, too, David Seltzer. Again, um, same thing. At this point, you can kind of explain it because yeah, it's statistically rare, but plausible to a degree. During the filming, a hotel um crew, if you will, so the you know, the crew of the cast was staying somewhere, and um part of the hotel housing crew members were actually bombed by the IRA. Right. So different target, same building, wrong place, wrong time, that sort of thing. Uh crazy. Do you remember the first time you saw this movie?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

I I do. I remember actually watching it with my dad, and my mom came out and she's like, What the hell are you guys watching? Turn off this garbage. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

I uh I had to sneak it. So my dad would go to sleep early, my mom was working, and I would sneak downstairs. This is the day of the huge TVs that would sit on the floor. They had the cabinet in most homes. Once that TV broke, you would just put another one on top of it. So it was that type of situation. But it was during the HBO era, and so I would sneak down and I would catch um some late-night horror movies, and that's that's where I fell in love with it initially. But um, as I mentioned, Omen came across my uh my eyesight, you know, my lexicon of horror films when I was a teenager, and I gotta say, um, even for being, you know, at that time almost 30 years old or so, it still held up. And I think that movie along with Exorcist are the two for me that stand the test that time, really. So um, but you know, so they had the IRI bombing, the IRA bombing, they had the uh two separate plane incidences, and then these are all connected to the movie. So one of the most iconic deaths in horror history was that part where someone's decapitated. I think it was like a piece of glass or something that um cut someone's head off. The man responsible for that scene, John Richardson, months later, he was in a car accident in the Netherlands. His assistant was with him. Um, Liz Moore was her name. She's killed, decapitated after filming.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

That's brutal.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Uh, not to make light of the situation at all, but it's it's hard to say that there's necessarily um definitively an evil attached to a film or to an artifact, and we'll kind of dive into that as we move forward. But you know, there's another one where reportedly there was a street sign from this accident where there was the decapitation, and it read omen with two M's, O M M E N 66.6 kilometers. So I don't think that's been proven, but I don't think it's been disproven either. It's one of those urban legends that is attached to a film that already has so many tragedies attached to it, it's just it's hard to fathom. So, you know, if you don't believe anything supernatural, uh, that's the kind of detail that that sticks with you.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

I remember watching the special features of the omen, and um uh what was it? Is it Richard Donner was the director, right? That's right. Yeah, Richard was talking about how when the people at Fox and the uh publicity department got their hands a hold of uh all these all this information, they're like, oh well, it's well it's the omen. Yeah, and that was a great uh um marketing material for them, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:41

I mean, the movie itself sells itself just by everything outside the screen. If you were telling me that there is a movie, uh no real detail about it, just a horror movie, but you tell me all of this stuff happened outside the movie behind the scenes. I'm gonna go see, just out of pure curiosity, what's going on in this film and what's tied to it making all these occurrences happen. So, you know, step back. We got multiple lightning strikes, a bombing, a fatal animal attack, a death mirroring a scene right out of the movie. So, at what point do you stop calling it a coincidence? You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

No kidding. Well, they you know, uh it's been said that the devil didn't want the film to be made, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

And I think there's been other movies, and again, we'll kind of break this down, where that thought has been attached to the movie where there's some evil demon or something just not right that's attached to this. It's almost life imitating art, right? So you have a movie about not necessarily devil worship, but the antichrist, and you're pretty much taking liberties at that point with the universe, whatever your belief is, you're putting it out there, and it's almost an invitation for something you know demonic or evil to come in. So I think at the end of the day, you really gotta look at some of the evidence and say this is more than just a coincidence.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

I mean, it it's really chilling and um and disturbing to hear about all these stories about these actual occurrences that have happened. And it's like you said, it's not just one, two, or three. I mean, we're talking about how many is Kevin.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

We're looking at a good half half Baker's dozen at this point, and there's probably a few more, maybe that we haven't uh touched upon. Some of our listeners are gonna let us know. But right, as far as I know, this is one of the most um prolific or you know magnifying type events that's happened in a movie, and there's a few more, and I think one that you wanted to touch on, which was really interesting to me because I only knew of a couple things about this movie, but The Wizard of Oz.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Yeah, The Wizard of Oz. Um, but going back in time now, when I was a kid, it was my all-time favorite movie when I was growing up. I mean, I've watched it so many times that I think we wore out the VHS tape and I had to buy another one. Um uh I love that movie, and I even had uh the collectible figures, all of them and whatnot. And uh, you know, it was made in 1938 and it opened August 17th, 1939, uh when America was at the cusp of World War II. So World War II was happening, the Wizard of Oz was this uh it was a hopeful uh outcome of that dark energy because the witch is dead and Dorothy gets to come back to Kansas, right? Um, but then you start looking at all these mishaps that happened on set. Uh, for instance, the Tin Man, right, uh who was originally uh cast uh Buddy Epson, the makeup they used had ground-up aluminum in it, right? So he started getting cramps in his fingers and his hands and feet, and it spread to his arms and legs, and he couldn't breathe. So he'd been inhaling these aluminum shards, um, and it eventually I put him in the hospital. Um so those aluminum particles had been like floating around, he inhaled them. It put him in the hospital with pneumonia. He was in an oxygen tent that uh ended his time with the film short, and it it literally scarred his lungs. Wow. I mean, and then from there he had a tendency to get bronchitis for the rest of his life.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

So did he pass from lung cancer, anything possibly related to that? I mean, I know he wasn't exposed to it for years, but there's enough exposure you'd think there was some something that would complicate his health from it.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Well, I'll leave that to our listeners to uh comment on because I'm not exactly sure how Buddy Epson passed away. Uh, but there's there's other instances I'd like to talk talk about here. Um so Margaret Hamilton, who played the the wicked witch, got severely burned on set. Did you know about this? I don't I think I heard something, but I don't know the the details. Okay, so Margaret Hamilton got severely burned, and it was in the scene where she appears in the Munchkin village, and when you first see her, that's her stunt double. But when she actually disappears onto the stage, we actually use Margaret Hamilton for that, uh, because the director uh he wanted to get it all in one shot, and it was a pretty complicated shot. So she had to hit her mark exactly right, and then they they had the fire effect, um, it went on too quickly, actually. Uh, and her hat and room caught on fire, causing third-degree burns on her hands and second-degree burns on her face. Wow. So the makeup they used, it well, it gets even worse. So the makeup they used was copper based, and it had to be removed with rubbing alcohol, and they had to press down hard on these fresh burns to remove the makeup to clean her pores completely. So it made it ten times worse. Exactly. And it they said that Margaret Hamilton said she would uh never ever forget the pain that she felt in that person. Uh no. So there's more. Uh uh Betty Danko, uh Margaret Hamilton's uh stunt double, right? She agreed to do the scene where she's flying on a broom while the smoke mechanism on the back of the broom exploded and it caused these metal shards to get stuck in her leg, and she was hospitalized. Of course, there's more and it keeps on going. So the most disturbing thing of all is apparently there was a munchkin that hung himself from one of the lighting grids.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah, I remember trying to find that one particular scene. Um you know, you'd hear about it, everyone would be like, Oh, it's definitely in there, and your friends you'd go try to watch it, but I don't remember vividly seeing it. It's always like, Oh, there it is, you're gonna pause it at the right moment.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Right. Well, the that's the thing, it wasn't in the the version of the film that you would see today. Okay. You have to go hunt down this particular collector's VHS edition to actually see it. Okay. So it's out there somewhere. Right. It's out there. You just have to get that uh rare VHS copy. But you can actually see it in that in that uh VHS copy of this body swinging back and forth. It's it's pretty disturbing. Um and it was uh so far off into the distance at first when they originally released the film that it was only these true film buffs that had watched the film so many times that finally noticed it. Um and then there was other editions of the film uh that actually replaced the munchkin with an alternate shot of a bird from the LA zoo. So if you go back and watch it now, you're gonna see this bird off in the distance. You'll you're not gonna see the actual hanging.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

So it's true to an extent about the urban legend, because you would hear, yeah, there was a munchkin that hung himself, and then other people would talk about the bird, but I think that was the misinterpretation, or someone would say, Oh no, that's just a bird. That wasn't actually this person, but in reality, it was that person that hung themselves, but they you know edited it to put the bird in that shot.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Yeah, exactly. Uh I mean this is back in the day when safety standards on the set just basically didn't exist, you know. Yeah, and uh aside from that, uh you know, according to uh certain reports, the the munchkins were kind of a rowdy bunch. Um and uh they they tended to drink and party. I heard they had short tempers. Right. Uh you know, uh whether that was entirely true. I know the there has been interviews with the munchkins, and they've they've disputed the fact that there were any drunken orgies and uh rowdy parties and swinging from chandeliers and everything else, and uh a lot of those uh stories were uh debunked by them. But it you know, who's to say what actually really happened? Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

I think Judy Garland came out and said some pretty um eye-opening, surprising things. She was harassed, she was to a degree bullied. There was a lot that went on behind the scenes that really we didn't know about till I don't know, 10, 20, 30 years ago, I guess. But there was uh there was a lot to it, and you would think that this magical movie that we all really grew up on, no matter how old you are, um I don't want to say sinister, but there was you know certainly some negative, ominous things going on there. Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Yeah, there were, and um yeah, I mean it just it's crazy to think that right, you're like this is such a you know a childhood gem, and now we we know about all these things that happened, it's like dude do you really you know kind of think differently about the film? I mean, it was one of the last films that my mom watched with us as a family, and she loved that film so much. Um uh she would always talk about it, and then she loved how much that I loved it when I was a child. So I think even despite knowing the things that maybe MGM let you know go under the rug or um just let happen or where's it careless, it it for me it hasn't changed my perspective of a classic that it is.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

So from one movie to another, and then for me, this was a childhood quote unquote classic tape trading, uh, you know, go over your friend's house to watch this because your parents wouldn't let you watch it was Poltergeist. So I brought that up last week, but this is one of those films that really stuck with me. Even till this day, I can remember so many iconic scenes from it. Um, seeing Reverend Kane, seeing the uh skeletons come out of the pool. Um, you know, obviously see Carol Ayon sitting in front of the TV in those ghostly hands, the apparition comes out. So it's this movie's a little different. It doesn't just have incidences, it has a pattern of loss. So the original Poltergeist, because they made a really shitty remake that maybe only a few people saw, the original came out in 1982 as a huge success. Steven Spielberg was part of that movie, um, but behind the scenes, behind the success, there was a lot that was going on. This sort of dark entity or dark vibe, if you will, was following the cast. Um I think a lot of people are familiar with Heather O'Rourke, who passed away. She played Carol Ann. I think that's uh probably the more of the well-known incidences right behind the did they really use skeletons, human skeletons, as part of that uh scene where we see you know the bomb in the um in the mud where the pool was going to be. So right. But there is something else. There was uh Dominique Dunn, she's a young rising actress, she plays Dana, so she's the older sister, but in real life, she becomes involved in an abusive relationship with John Thomas Sweeney. In October 1982, he strangles her. So her boyfriend strangles her, she falls into a coma. Five days later, she passes. She was 22 years old. That's um I brought up Reverend Kane. So if you remember what this guy looked like, I mean, it was you would think they used a lot of special effects and makeup to think of Skeletor from the uh Masters of the Universe movie when um uh Frank Langella put a put the Skeletor mask on, it was very bony, and that's really the type of uh figure or and complexion that Reverend Kane had. It was like sunken cheeks, you could see the bones, and it was super creepy, but that's actually what he looked like because at the time of filming, he had stomach cancer, so he was actually going through it, and he knew it was it was his time. Um, Julian Beck was the actor's name, but um really unsettling performance overall. Uh there's also Samson, who you may remember him for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. So he if you've seen that movie, yeah. So he was the one at the end. Classics, by the way. Yeah, puts the pillow over pillow over Jack Nicholson, and that's it. That's all she wrote. So he reportedly performed a real spiritual cleansing on the setup poltergeist because of the growing fear among Cass and Cruz um that all of these things were were happening. Um not long after he died from complications of surgery. So you have, of course, uh Reverend Kane, you have uh Will Sampson, you have um Dana, they're all gone. And the most famous one is young Heather O'Rourke, which

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Which I think is the most tragic of all of them. It's I mean, what a young, talented, brilliant actress she was, and for her life to be taken so so abruptly. Tell us more about um the medical misdiagnosis, if you will, to it. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

So she believed it, they believed she had Crohn's disease, which I'm familiar with with uh family members having that. She had a congenital intestinal issue. It went on notice until it was really too late. In 1988, she uh she collapsed, she died of cardiac arrest all because of this misdiagnosis, and she was only 12 years old. Only 12.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Yeah, that's that's tragic.

unknown 22:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

It's it's tragic and it goes on and on. And we'll talk about arguably one of the biggest urban legends, or you know, something where did they actually use real human skeletons in this in the shot? And the answer is yes, they did. And there's been people on record part of the film that said, well, it wasn't uncommon for you human skeletons to be used in films back then. Do you know about that or have you heard that?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Yeah, I I did hear that, and I I had no idea that apparently, yeah, using like real human skeletons was a was a thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Well, the reason is because it was cheaper. So go figure. They're just digging up bodies and saying, let's just throw this one in the shot, and they don't have to pay them. So right. Jeez. Um, but you have to ask something uncomfortable. You're making a film, a film about spirits and restless energy, um, about something really being trapped between two worlds, and you're bringing human remains on the set, even if you don't believe in curses, you can understand why people sort of started feeling a certain way, um, like someone was watching or waiting. It was all it's pretty weird, but yeah. So we'll move away from movies for a second because we could really go on and on about this if we can talk all day about it. Um, so talking about haunted locations, and one thing that I didn't know about, and I'm from the northeast, I never heard about the Jersey Devil. So you actually brought this up. You said, hey, this might be interesting to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

So yeah, absolutely. Uh, so yeah, the the pine barrens in New Jersey um covers over a a million acres. Did you know that a million acres? Uh it's almost a quarter of the entire state. Uh, and this I want to say a mythical creature because it's been seen dating back all the way to the 1700s. It's basically a bipedal kangaroo-like body with hooves, a long neck, and elongated head like a horse, uh, crowned with a set of horns or antlers, a whip-like tail, and massive bat-like wings and two glowing red eyes. So the origin story of the Jersey Devil, right? So it goes back to the early 1700s. A woman named uh Jane Leeds of Esteville, New Jersey, was a mother of twelve children, and when she discovered she was pregnant with a thirteenth child, uh supposedly she cried out in despair that this uh yet to be born child would be a devil. So on uh the night of 1735, Mother Leeds was in labor on a stormy night, and when she gave birth, the child appeared to be normal, healthy, infant, but almost immediately it transformed into this demonic like creature and attacked the people in the room, and then it flew up through the chimney out into the pine barrens. So it's it's not only a I mean it sounds like a crazy story, right? Right. I mean, you can really believe it. Who knows what actually happened, but that's the according to legend, that's where the Jersey Devil came from. But what's what I found really interesting is there's a a prominent historical figure named Commodore Stephen uh Decatur encountered the Jersey Devil while testing uh cannonballs at a foundry near the Pine Barrens. He reportedly fired a cannonball directly at this thing while it was flying and it passed through with no effect. Uh before colonization of New Jersey, uh the Lenape Indians actually referred to that area as what we now call the Pine Barrens as the place of the dragon. So it it goes back to to these uh Native Americans before we even got there, you know. So they had been talking about it, warning us of it. Um, and now it's a mascot of it. Their state, their hockey team.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Right, exactly. So it's it's funny because I feel like this carries more um possibility and than than Bigfoot, than the Loch Nest Monster. This feels like more than just a couple sightings and hearsay and old wives tales, whatever. This sounds like it actually has some legs to it, literally figuratively.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

And you you can't ignore the thousands of um eyewitness sightings of this thing. I mean, people are seeing something. Now, what exactly it is, we don't really know, but uh there was an interesting um uh video I saw online of a exorcist talking about how this is a demonic creature, and it would make sense if it was a demon because this thing has never been captured really on camera before and definitively identified as okay, this this creature is a Jersey devil. Here you go. Well, it a demon would have the power to manifest and then disappear at will. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

You wonder why it chose New Jersey, though, right? You know, there's a lot of other places he could have gone to. I just feel like that's there's other there's better decisions, right? In Ghostbusters 2, you know, Vigo could have chosen the San Fernando San Fernando Valley, instead he chose New York City, and Peter Wakeman questioned him on that. So yeah, there's some about there's something in the water there in Jersey and New York, I guess. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and then so from you know, one place of degeneracy, I don't know if that's a word, but it is now, um, to another, and that's Nevada, Las Vegas specifically. The Nevada Triangle, so you know about the Bermuda Triangle and all the uh planes that have gone down, ships have gone missing. There's folklore about that, and you can go on and on about it. And there's another one, the Nevada Triangle, which is surprisingly less unknown, but actually is more deadly. And when I was doing research on this, some of the numbers blew me away. I was like, this doesn't make sense. There's no way that these many planes go missing and no one knows about this. Part of the reason why is because it's so close to Area 51, or at least that's part of the belief as to why. So it's actually a re a region spanning from Las Vegas, Reno, and Fresno. Um, you know, remote, harsh, but beautiful. If you've ever driven through like areas like the Mojave Desert from Vegas out to LA, um, it goes on and on and on and on. And so this terrain is very similar, obviously, and it's dangerous. So apparently, uh, since the mid-20th century, over 2,000 aircraft incidents have been recorded there. Some explainable, others not so much. Steve Fawcett is an experienced pilot. He's wealthy, by all means calculated from um all accounts. In 2007, he takes off routine flight, good conditions, he vanishes. No distress call, no signal, search teams call in the area, nothing. For over a year, they looked, couldn't find anything, then wreckage is found, just out of nowhere, but no clear cause. So generally, pilots who fly through this region describe strain sensations. So sudden drops in altitude, instrument failure. One can make the argument you're flying through a mountainous region, obviously, you're gonna have some pretty uh you know bumpy, you know, a bumpy road, basically. You're gonna have a lot of turbulence and instrument failure to a degree, but moments where everything is just lost and stops making sense, that's a little different. And that's what um some people describe this like. So, you know, again, blame those, blame the mountain waves, powerful air currents, whatever, but just to go down unexpectedly, especially with newer aircraft where they have um some of those features that you know autopilot, of course, but there's ways to be able to um either fly around that system or at least anticipate it so you're not affected by it. Planes are made to withstand this type of uh type of turbulence. So you even have pilots that are military trained. So again, Area 51 isn't too far. There's advanced aircraft there, you can make the argument there's alien cover-ups and conspiracies, there's electrical interference everywhere you go there. My question was, and I brought this up to you, you know, more hypothetically, why is that an open airspace? If you're if you've lost 2,000 aircraft, why isn't someone saying something about this? So maybe some of our listeners know more about this. Uh, maybe it's common knowledge. I I had heard of it, but I didn't know much about it until really doing some research. So those those explanations really don't cover everything. I mean, these are happening in clear, stable conditions. So no storms, no warnings, just disappearance. So is it environmental? Is it mechanical? Is there something about that region? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Uh, that's a great question. To be honest with you, uh, it reminds me of well, obviously, the Bermuda Triangle. We don't know why the hell planes and ships are disappearing there, but um, who really knows, to be honest? Uh, and I don't know. Uh I mean whether it's something paranormal and uh aliens are involved. I mean, could that could that be?

SPEAKER_01 33:00

I mean, aliens is a hot topic right now, and of course we just saw the Artemis II come back from their uh from their moon mission, which is incredible. But prior to that, we have former you know government officials saying uh the things that I know, if I told you, would completely blow your mind. You wouldn't be able to handle it. These are people that work closely within the um you know, FBI, CIA, those type of agencies that know more than we do, of course, that know something we don't. I don't know if I'd go as far as to say, yeah, Arian F Area 51 is involved in these um interferences or these disappearances, but 2000, like come on, that's just crazy.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah, that's that's mind-boggling. I mean, uh, and why haven't we really heard about this Nevada triangle? And and when we started researching this episode and trying to find uh cursed locations, I mean we both saw this, we're like, whoa, no one ever talks about it, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Yeah, and again, why is it an open airspace? I don't know if we can go back and do some more research on it. We didn't want to spend hours and hours, of course, on one topic, but maybe some research covers that up or clears that up rather and says, um, you know, the 2,000 is an inflated number. I don't know. Or, well, actually, there's certain times you can fly there, there's certain times you can't fly there. Is it restricted? So um, there may be more to it than meets the eye, but you know, that's something if our listeners know more about it than us, certainly let us know.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

So, Kevin, uh, I'd like to move on to cursed objects, in particular the Annabelle doll, which most people know from the the conjuring films. Well, the real Annabelle doll is nothing like the we would see in the conjuring films. It's actually a raggedy Ann doll that looks nothing like the Annabelle that you know. Uh and Ed and Lorraine Warren, the two infamous paranormal investigators, deemed Annabelle to uh be demonically haunted. And they had actually the doll locked up in their occult museum in Connecticut. Uh and uh despite warnings from several people never to move her, uh, as of late 2025, the real animal doll has left the Warren's Occult Museum and it is currently traveling as part of the Devil's on the Run tour with appearances scheduled at various paranormal conventions. Seems safe. No. Horrible idea. Yeah. Horrible. Uh so apparently uh in West Virginia she was transferred to a new display case, and that's when people believe the real trouble started happening. Uh since her last stop in New Orleans, uh fires, jail escapes, and even damage to Marie Lavoe's uh historic property has sparked fears that the supernatural abilities are stirring up all over again.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Uh yeah, I mean this is one of those, I don't relics, not artifacts, but you know, one of those items that is notorious. I think if you put it up against really anything else in popular culture history, I guess pop culture history, you're not gonna find anything that is as talked about in terms of being cursed, or you even have you have a lot of people that are always on the fence, whether they believe or they don't believe, but there's I think a lot more people that who generally don't believe that think, yeah, okay, there's something with this particular item, because as you mentioned, anywhere it goes, it something happens. Right.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

Exactly true. Uh in fact, uh I have my own personal Annabelle story. Okay. I don't know if you told me. So I do a little side gig business with eBay. I sell uh rare collectibles, movie memorabilia, props, and uh I had an Annabelle doll from Spirit Halloween when Spirit Halloween was in their last days of uh closeout uh a few years ago, right after Halloween, they do a 50% off sale on all their inventory, and I saw Annabelle, and I'm like, whoa, that looks pretty cool. I'll I'll pick that up for my collection. So I picked it up, I held on to it for a while, and uh then I eventually sold her, and the buyer uh contacted me and said, Hey, there's a problem, and gave me uh negative feedback without even me letting me respond to him and said that he had received two palm trees in a box. Two palm trees were they real palm trees or plastic palm trees? Like, how are you gonna put palm trees in a box? Yeah, well, they they were miniature palm trees, apparently, but he never actually took pictures of the palm trees. He just took a picture of a box that by the way wasn't my box. Uh, it had my label on the box, but whenever I send out any eBay packages, I always put the the eBail emblem uh sticker on there, and I put a customer service sticker on there. So neither of those stickers were even on there. And um it wasn't the same box. So of course I wrote back to this guy and I said, Hey, first of all, that's not my box that I sent you, and I'd like to open up an insurance claim and get you your money back. Well, he never responded, and uh that haunting negative feedback is like the worst thing an eBay seller can get. Sure. Uh, and it hurts the business and everything else, and this guy to this day is not responding back, and uh the it's hey, it's the curse. It really is the curse of Annabelle.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

Yeah, she got you, she got you good. Um, and that's weird because he didn't get a refund, so it's what were the motives behind this? Like what was his what was he doing? Yeah, I don't know if that's common on eBay where you replace an item, you put you, hey, I didn't actually get this, or there was something else in there. I just don't know what someone's motivation would be other than to give you a bad review for some reason. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

It it's bizarre to be honest with you, because there's kind of a um anspoken uh code of ethics on eBay. Well, you just don't do that to somebody, you know, you don't give a negative review unless you absolutely have to. And this guy just right off the bat gave me the negative review and then sent me the message, and I'm like, oh come on, man. And it lead it leads credence to the Annabelle curse because I've been uh I've been cursed.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

But your life's improved since you've sold it because you don't have it anymore. And so this is true.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

Silver lining. Yeah, the well, hey, there is a silver lining to the story, actually, because uh because he never responded, I said I thought to myself, well, I'm not gonna send you your refund if you're not gonna remove the negative feedback. So I got paid by the insurance company, and then I also was paid by the buyer, so I made twice after the 46% that eBay takes.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

Of course, yeah, yeah. So from that, bring it inside a little bit, uh a painting, not Vigo, the Carpathian, but an actual painting. The Crying Boy. So I don't know if you've heard about this, but I haven't. Okay. So if you see it, it's I mean, it's this older looking painting that it uses kind of uh a brown, beige, gold type mixture to it. So you're not it's not a full spectrum of colors. There's only a few, but it's very you look at this painting, and it's literally a boy crying, but his eyes are really big and watery, and he's got this big pouty face, kind of like we would make when we're uh infants or you know, two years old, where you kind of get that pouty lip and it starts to quiver and you cry. And that's kind of what this painting looks like, but it's very strange, it gives you a really strange feeling. It's almost like um it if you're even not an empath, they're taking on the feelings of that painting. You start to feel a little bit sad, I guess. Um, so this was mass-produced, it was cheap, it was common. It's not like uh you know a rare a rare thing. Uh it's not as common as you know, the Starry Night or Mona Lisa, whatever, but it's one of the more well-known um paintings. So this crying boy, it's created by Bruno Amario. It's sold across the UK, thousands of homes, and then there was fires in these homes where the painting um existed. No kidding. House fires stated uh house fires started being reported as a total loss, everything gone except the painting. So the painting would remain. Firefighters noticed it at first. Same image, same result, over and over again. So Ron Hall, he's part of this uh South Yorkshire Fire Service, publicly warned people. So after a while, they said, Hey, this painting, we don't know whether it to be true or not, but there seems to be some connection. Probably, you know, just a coincidence, like everything else we've talked about today. But for him, he mentioned he's seen too many cases to ignore it. Um, then the media got involved. So the Sun newspaper, so everyone knows the Sun, publishes the story. Suddenly panic spreads, and that's what they're good at, but still it it catches the attention of the public. People begin mailing their you know, paintings back, they're sending them back, thousands of them. Mass burnings are being organized, um, entire piles of these paintings being destroyed at once. It's pretty remarkable. Um that's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:47

And the legend doesn't stop because the story evolved. So some say the boy was real. His name was uh Don Bonio. He was an orphan, survivor of a fire. Every place he went, burned down. So no kidding. Kind of a problem child, it seems like. No, you know, it's probably going from home to home. No one wants to keep him. Every place he went, burned down. So no verified report records can necessarily confirm this, but the story persists. And more importantly, so does the pattern of people, you know, experiencing this. So if you ask yourself if something survives fire repeatedly, if it shows up in the same way over and over and over again, at one point do you stop calling it coincidences, right? Yeah, exactly. So four stories, different places, different people, different circumstances, that same feeling, something repeating, something lingering, something not fully understood. Maybe it's coincidence, maybe it's probability. Who knows? Um, but these are some of the topics that we found interesting. They're easy to talk about. People are more familiar with. There's a couple, maybe not as familiar. Um maybe it's probability, maybe it's something that carries weight. And once they answer your life, it's it's like they don't leave easily. So I guess out of all of these, what would you say stands out the most? What's the most probable of some of the topics that we've covered?

SPEAKER_00 45:21

Well, the the crying boy is fascinating to me. I didn't know much about this one at all, to be honest with you. Uh, so that one uh really is piqued my interest, and I'd say I'd I'd like to know more about that one. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 45:37

And any so we would go look up some you know, research material items that we know a little bit about, want to know some more, but this Crying Boy painting popped up over and over and over again for a cursed artifact. There was a couple other ones that were interesting, but this like you, it stood out for me. I hadn't heard of it. And fires don't necessarily just start spontaneously, there's there's a reaction, right? Right, and unless you're really dealing with something like spontaneous combustion. I was thinking the exact same thing, but uh for it to be repeated and the painting to be just fine seems a little uh more than coincidence, right? So I wanted to save the more interesting for last, at least from my perspective, and that's the Twilight Zone movie, because I really enjoy the TV shows, and you know, I heard about this when I was um really starting to dive into horror movies. I didn't know they had made a movie, but sometimes they would show it on like USA or something like that. The Twilight Zone movie was certainly interesting. I thought it didn't do very well just because of you know what it was, it was an anthology, and um, you know, maybe some of the people didn't find the stories as compelling, but I think it was a different reason, right?

SPEAKER_00 47:02

Yep. Absolutely. So there was a uh horrific, horrific, absolutely horrific um uh death of three actors on the film. So it was uh Vic Morrow and the two children that he was carrying during the uh the escape from the Vietnamese uh village. So uh it was illegal to work children after eight o'clock at night. And the casting director said, you know, this scene sounds kind of dangerous with explosions going off. Uh, there's a helicopter flying over them, and John Landis said, Well, we'll get them off the street ourselves. So when they shot the test scene of the explosions going off around the helicopter, it actually rocked the helicopter really violently back and forth, and the people in the helicopter said, Wow, uh, that kind of seemed kind of rough. And then John Landis uh reportedly said back, You think that was big? You ain't seen nothing yet. Well, that's how you know it's not gonna end well. That's not good. No. Uh so in the scene where Vic Moro is rescuing the two children from the village, they actually used real bullets when Vic Moro's character is asking for help from the soldiers, and and John Landis insisted on doing that.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

I don't know the reasoning behind that. I don't know if that's a common thing in movies. I always thought they used special effects or blanks or something like that. I know uh, you know, just from what other people have said, other actors on interviews, that John Landis is kind of um more old school, he wants more realism. That's the type of director he tends to be.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

Right. Uh yeah, and you're you're right, because they they don't use real bullets on sets anymore, and that that was for the the realism factor, but it you have to draw a line between, in my opinion, what what's gonna be realistic and what's just downright dangerous to your casting group, right? It's a it's certainly a far jump from Animal House to Twilight Zone. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Uh so going back to that scene, so the explosions were too close to the helicopter, ultimately it damaged it, it brought it down into the river, killing Vic Morrow and the two children while their parents were standing there watching all of it happen. This is a hard one to talk about, to be honest. Um what do you think about John Landis uh after you know watching and hearing about uh about this horrible incident?

SPEAKER_01 50:11

Well, I know he was shaken, and this is through you know uh interviews and other people saying it, and even his own words after it was obviously a moment that nobody wants. It's absolutely terrible. I mean, it's a tragedy, but I do I did see him at uh it was actually Vic Morrow's funeral, so he made it a point. He being John Landis made it a point to go to all the funerals of the three deceased. He went to, of course, Vic Morrow's and gave a speech. And I don't know that everyone there was a hundred percent, I don't want to say on board, but I think there was some blame to be thrown around, of course. But he said something um as a eulogy to the effect of well, um, while Vic Morrow isn't here with us, his work goes on for eternity, something like that, and right kind of was tearful and quick and walked away after. So I'm sure there's a lot of remorse. Um yeah, terrible situation.

SPEAKER_00 51:19

Well, ultimately he he was uh not convicted, he was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter because that's what the the charges were that he was brought up on. And you know, I what I find really interesting is uh Spielberg wasn't on set that night because had he been involved, he would have been drugged into that uh that courtroom as well.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Yeah, they filmed all three segments separately, it was three different directors, so yeah, he wasn't there, but I don't remember much about Jaws being such an issue as far as poor work standards, things like that. There was it was demanding out of the actors, but it wasn't physically so it wasn't putting them necessarily in harm's way. Um surprising to an extent that he was quote unquote not convicted after your test run was terrible and it should tell you maybe we should go to plan B. Instead, they didn't this happened.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Well, I know the the special effects uh coordinator, it it ruined his career. Sure, yeah. And it's uh it's very sad because it if you go back and watch the Twilight Zone in that scene, I mean the the set design was brilliant. Yeah. It it it looked like Vietnam.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

So some of our personal favorites we get to talk about. For me, it's the omen in Pulser Geist Wizard of Oz for you, hits home and holds a special place for you, of course. Any anything that we've talked about, any questions, comments, any concerns? I mean, there seems to be quite a bit out there, and this is just you know, we're we've only done a few of these, but there's hundreds of incidences that we could have talked about.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Right, absolutely. There's so many out there. It's it was hard to put this episode together because there are you're right, there are so many of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:24

Well, again, we appreciate everybody tuning in. This was the cursed episode. With that said, Carl, it's been a pleasure. Look forward to it next time. It's almost midnight. That means it's time for us to go. The world gets a little stranger after midnight. Till next time.