6 scary movies with scarier supernatural encounters on the set
Horror movies are fascinating. Everything about them is crafted to go against our basic human instincts, and yet all of us are drawn to the genre.
For some, it’s because of plain curiosity. Others find it interesting to see mysteries and strange events come to life on screen. After all, there’s always the security that the nightmare stops once the end credits start rolling. But what if you found out the stories lived beyond the cuts and takes in the film?
Below, some real-life encounters during movie filmings that will keep you up at night.
1. The phantom child in ‘Dalaw’
The plot of the horror and thriller film Dalaw (2009) centers around a journalist (played by Katrina Halili) who is tasked to write a story about the ghost of a child haunting a village.
In a strange turn of events, the plot of the movie seemed to have come to life when a phantom head of a child was captured on camera during a confrontation scene between Tonton Gutierrez and Glydel Mercado.
The child was seen to peek at an open door during the scene, but what’s strange is that both actors didn’t see anything while the cameras were rolling. There was also no shadow captured when the child peeked through the open door which Glydel herself passed through during the scene. The post-editing team was so surprised by the event that they decided to keep the scene in the final film.
2. Claudine Barretto’s creepy hair day in ‘Nasaan Ka Man’
The 2005 film Nasaan Ka Man starring Claudine Barretto, Jericho Rosales, and Diether Ocampo is twisted in its own right, but it’s not really considered to fall under the horror genre.
This is the reason why many were shocked when something creepy happened on set during a scene shot in an ancestral house in Baguio. In the scene, a lock of Claudine’s hair slowly floated in the air while the cameras were rolling.
According to stories, there was no wind that could have caused that to happen because all the windows were closed during the filming. This led others to look into the history of the ancestral house which, as it turned out, was owned by an old lady who died in the same room where the actress was shooting the scene.
3. The disembodied voices of Clark Air Base
While this wasn’t really captured on cam, Andrea Torres swears by an encounter she had with the supernatural while she was shooting the Halloween special of her show Ka-Blog in 2009.
During the episode, she and the production team went to a hospital building in Clark Air Base—a location well-known for being haunted because of its history. During a particular scene, Andrea announced that she started hearing voices speaking to her in a foreign language. The crew, however, didn’t hear anything despite being in the same area as her.
4. The curse of the Amityville franchise
The story of the Amityville murders is a classic in the horror/suspense genre. Based on the real-life murders of a family by one of their own members, the crime was immortalized in the book titled The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson, and in various movie retellings including the ones starring Josh Brolin (1979 version) and Ryan Reynolds (2005).
The two versions have slight differences from the original book, but one thing that was constant was the eerie happenings that both lead actors experienced during the project.
Josh experienced an unknown force moving a piece of his clothing while he was reading the script while Ryan woke up at 3:15 a.m. consistently during the filming, the same time that his character does in the film—and the exact time the real-life murders happened.
The strange happenings were not just exclusive to the movie adaptation either. According to stories, some of the editors who got the first chapters of the book from Jay Anson also experienced accidents, one of which was fatal.
5. Eerie warnings in ‘The Conjuring’
The Conjuring franchise is undoubtedly one of the most successful movies in the horror genre in recent years. The stories, which were heavily inspired by real-life happenings, centered on the supernatural encounters of Lorraine and Ed Warren who are well-known American paranormal investigators.
With the notoriety of the stories they’ve covered, it was to be expected that some of the eeriness brushed on their big-screen adaptations. Vera Farmiga, the actress who played the role of Lorraine is proof of this.
The Oscar-nominated actress shared that she had experienced different strange events related to the movie, one of which was finding three claw marks on the screen of her laptop while she was discussing the script with Director James Wan.
In a separate incident, she actually found the same claw marks on her leg the night after she finished the filming of the second movie. She also claimed that she would wake up at 3:07 a.m. all the time, the same time that Lorraine and Ed Warren would experience the hauntings in the movie.
6. Julie Vega’s sudden death
Julie Vega’s cause of death at the young age of 16 has been debated for decades. Some believe that the actress was cursed by supernatural entities after playing a possessed girl in the episode “Akin Ang Walang Diyos” in the 1984 movie Lovingly Yours, Helen, while others leaned towards scientific explanation and blamed it on Guillain-Barre syndrome, a kind of immune system disease that the actress was diagnosed with.
Those who believed in the supernatural cause, however, claim that Julie’s health started deteriorating because the spirits of the place where they filmed the movie in Mt. Minalmon, Bulacan felt disrespected by the disturbance.
Others, on the other hand, say that the engkantos fell in love with the young actress and took her spirit away. Even creepier, there are also stories claiming that Julie reported having seen a bearded entity the size of a child a couple of times during their stay on the mountain.
Whether these encounters are true or simply a fabric of the imagination will always remain a mystery. If there’s one thing that we can all be sure of, however, it’s the fact that we will never truly know what is out there…silently watching us.