Cast Deaths From The Poltergiest Films
Duckie
Urban Legend: The Spielberg film "Poltergiest" was cursed with the
deaths of cast memebrs. This isn't really an Urban Legend but it is
interesting since it's true. The film "The Exorcist" was also plagued
with problems but that's another story.
The Story: An unusual amount of deaths have occured around the three
"Poltergiest" films, icluding three of the stars. These incidence have
given way to rumors that the films were cursed because of their
content. This seems a little silly, there are always explainations to
"curses" like this. Or are there??
Two of the stars from the first film have died at young ages, two
from the second film at not so young ages.
22-year old Dominique Dunne, who played oler daughter Dana Freeling,
died on November 4th,1982, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los
Angeles, California. She had been chokced intoa coma by her boyfriend.
12-year-old Heather O'Rourke died of septic shock on February 1st.,
1988, at the Children's Hospital in San Diego, California.What was
thought to be the flu turned out to be a bowel obstruction which
caused toxins to enter her system. She died at Children's Hospital
while undergoing surgery to remove the obstruction.
60-year-old Julian Beck, who played the evil preacher Kane in the
second film, died of stomach cancer on September 14th,1985, at Mount
Sinai Hospital in New York, NY. Like Heather O'Rourke, he died during
the period between filming and release, but in his case the film in
question was Poltergeist II, which was released in May 1986. O'Rourke
died before the release of Poltergiest III.
53-year-old Will Sampson, who played Taylor in the second film, died
on June 3rd., 1987, in a Houston, Texas hospital after receiving a
heart-lung transplant 6 weeks earlier. The cause of his death was
attributed to severe pre-operative malnutrition and post-operative
kidney failure along with a fungal infection.