10 Things You Didn't Know About Poltergeist

A fairly unknown actress at the time, JoBeth Williams didn’t always have the best of times working on the set of Poltergeist. Very freakishly, when she returned to her rented hotel after a days work, all the pictures on the walls would hang crooked. Williams would rearrange them, but they would always move back to being angled.

And one moment of the film which she’ll never forget filming is the swimming pool, where Mrs Freeling is surrounded by dead bodies emerging from the pool.

This particular shoot was approximately five days long and it involved Williams spending most of her time in muddy, wet conditions. The actress hated it because there was a lot of electrical equipment close to the proximity of water, making her feel unsafe. To calm her nerves, Steven Spielberg got into the pool, telling her “now if a light falls in, we’ll both fry”.

What Spielberg failed to tell her was that the skeletons used were real human ones because they were cheaper to use. JoBeth was not made aware of this until after the stunt was finished. It made the actress feel rather uncomfortable, but this unethical act may have also affected the rest of the cast in other ways….