Urban Legends: Truth or Fiction?

Poltergeist Curse

Many people are convinced that the Poltergeist films have been cursed, causing the deaths of several cast members.  Whether the series was cursed or not, the deaths are real.  Two of the stars from the first film died at young ages and two cast members from the second film also died.  22-year-old Dominique Dunne, who played Dana Freeling, died on November 4th, 1982 after she had been choked into a coma by her boyfriend.  12-year-old Heather O'Rourke died in 1988 of septic shock.  What her doctors thought was the flu turned out to be a bowel obstruction that created a deadly sepsis.  She died while waiting to undergo surgery to remove the obstruction.  Her death occurred in the period between filming and release.  60-year-old Julian Beck, who played the evil preacher Kane in the second film, died of stomach cancer in 1985.  Like O'Rourke, he also died in the period between filming and the release of the movie.  53-year-old Will Sampson, who played Taylor in the second film, died in 1987 after receiving a heart and lung transplant six weeks earlier.  The cause of his death was unclear, but it's suspected that pre-operative malnutrition was a huge contributer, as well as post-operative kidney failure and a fungal infection.  Ok, so these could be nothing more than coincidences.  These deaths aren't exactly violent, mysterious and rare occurrences, but the unusually high death rate among cast members was enough to create rumors about the "evil" content of the movie that was supposedly causing these deadly incidents.

Outlaw's Corpse Becomes Side-Show Attraction

In 1976, a Univeral Studios camera crew arrived at the Nu-Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, CA, to set up in anticipation of filming a new episode of an action show called The Six Million Dollar Man.  While preparing the set, a worker attempted to move one of the props, the so-called "hanging man," when one of his arms snapped off.  Inside of it, he noticed it was a human bone.  The body is rumored to be that of Elmer McCurdy, a bandit who, in 1911, had robbed a train of $46 and two jugs of whiskey in Oklahoma.  When he announced to the posse in pursuit of him that they would never take him alive, he was shot and killed in a shoot-out.  His body was subsequently embalmed and used as a side-show attraction.  The undertaker used the corpse as his main source of income, allowing on-lookers to drop coins inside his open mouth.  The undertaker would later collect the money.  No one ever showed up to claim the body of Elmer McCurdy, so the undertaker continued to use him as a money-maker.  In 1915, two men showed up and, claiming they were McCurdy's brothers, took him, claiming they would give him a decent burial.  In actuality, however, the "brothers" were actually carnival promoters, looking to make money off the corpse just as the undertaker had done.  He was exhibited throughout Texas and showed up in fun houses and amusement parks all over the country.  By the time the Universal Studios crew discovered McCurdy in 1976, the corpse had already been in the possession of the Nu-Pike Amusement Park for four years.  In April, 1977, McCurdy was finally laid to rest in Guthrie, Oklahoma.  To prevent grave robbing, however, the medical examiner ordered that McCurdy's coffin be covered in two cubic yards of cement before being buried.

Diver in a Tree

There was something like this in an episode of CSI, but this story goes a little differently.  While assessing the damage done by a forest fire, authorities found a corpse in a tree in a burnt-out section of forest.  The body was wearing a full wetsuit, complete with a dive tank, flippers, and face mask.  An autopsy revealed that the diver had not died from burns, as would be assumed, but rather from massive internal injuries.  Once they realized the cause of death, investigators set out to understand how a diver ended up in a tree.  They discovered that on the day of the fire, the diver had set out on a diving expedition off the coast, 20 miles from where he was found.  The firefighters had called in several helicopters equipped with large buckets to assist in getting the fire under control.  The buckets were then dipped into the ocean and brought to the fire successively.  From what investigators can deduce, the diver was apparently scooped up in the large bucket during a filling cycle, carried to the fire, and dropped into the tree.  It was estimated that he extinguished about 1.78 meters of the fire.