When you strip away all the movie magic, horror films aren't actually that scary. After all, what makes a good horror film? It's an insanely creepy score. It's a well-placed jump scare (though we appreciate when there aren't any jump scares just as much). But on the set, in the silence, with 50 actors, directors, and crew members milling around, it's hard for the set of a horror movie to be scary. That said, every once in a while, a strange and impossible-to-explain occurrence will rattle everyone who's there to witness it. Case in point: the spooky Los Angeles set of Annabelle Comes Home on the Disney Burbank lot, which I visited in December 2018.
No, for the most part, production went off without a hitch . . . until it didn't. Here and there throughout the shoot, many of the stars described unsettling things that happened to them that they couldn't fully hash out with logic or a laugh. It got to a point where they decided to have a Catholic priest bless the set, something I learned is a tradition and superstition for pretty much every film in the Conjuring universe. Wondering what sorts of things the actors witnessed after the camera stopped rolling? You've been warned: some of them might give you goosebumps.
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One of the most interesting stories came from star Madison Iseman, who plays the production's plucky and bright-eyed babysitter, Mary Ellen. It's worth noting that this particular incident happened in the upstairs portion of the set, meaning it would've been hard for a cast or crew member to sneak past Iseman and pull a prank.
"The other day, we were filming this scene, and they were doing a test with Annabelle in a rocking chair all day. So she had pretty much been in the rocking chair all day. We weren't using her. And then we were doing this scene downstairs. After the scene downstairs, I run upstairs, and then the scene kind of ends. And I was just upstairs just looking around, just because they called, 'Cut,' and I was like, 'OK, just going to peek.'
And I looked in one of the rooms, and Annabelle was just sitting on the bed. She was sitting on the bed straight up, her legs out, and I was like, 'Oh. This is weird. No one else up here.' They were like, 'OK. Setting up again. Come down.' So I ran down for another take. Take took two minutes maybe.
Ran back upstairs. They called, 'Cut.' Look in there again. She's back in the rocking chair. And after that, I was like, 'OK, who's messing with me?'"
On that same day, Iseman had an issue with her dressing room. "After that, when we wrapped, I went back to my dressing room, and my lights would not turn on. I'm not kidding. They would not turn on. I was flipping the switch on and off. On and off. Finally was going to leave, and then as I was leaving my lights turned on."
Iseman wasn't the only one dealing with strange lighting malfunctions, either. McKenna Grace, who plays young Judy Warren, told me a similar story about her own quarters.
"One night, whenever we had trailers, we came back from shooting. I'm pretty sure it was the day we shot the scene with the priest ghost. [Editor's note: I don't know what the priest ghost is, and I'm not sure I want to know.] We came back, and my trailer lights were off, and they wouldn't turn back on. And it smelled in there. It smelled bad in our trailer, and the lights wouldn't turn on.
So we had to call someone over to help us get them back on. And they were like, 'That's weird. Everything's fine. They shouldn't be off.' And the trailer right next to us, the school room, the lights were on. And they couldn't figure it out. And after 10 minutes of figuring it out, they turned on. A little creepy."
Then there were the bloody noses. Yes. Plural. Grace was the first one to tell me about hers.
"So, before the set blessing [Editor's note: more on set blessings here.], Madison, Katie, and I were all on set together after booking the jobs. They had to turn off the lights for some reason to test something or whatnot. And then whenever the lights came back on, I just had this stream of blood coming out of my nose. And then I wiped it, and I had blood all over my hands. And it only stopped bleeding after I walked out of the stage, because the restroom is outside."
Michael Cimino, who plays Mary Ellen's friend Bob, also had a bloody nose at one point. "There was one day that I got a really bad bloody nose before I came to set," he told me. "Later on that day, we found out there was supposed to be a set blessing, and they didn't wind up doing it. So it was weird." Sounds pretty normal, I know, but Cimino told me this doesn't happen to him. "I never have bloody noses. And so I had a bloody nose while I was in the shower . . . it was weird."
Grace gave me another story that's a little long but very spooky.
"After the set blessing, Madison and I were walking down the hallway . . . we heard knocks coming from the Warrens' bedroom door, as we were walking down during the take. So we kind of stopped for a moment, because we didn't know if it was for the take or not. Then we kept going. And then I was like, 'Did you hear that?' She was like, 'Yeah. I don't really know what that was.' And whenever we opened the door, Annabelle was sitting in the rocking chair.
I was asking around, and nobody knew where Annabelle came from or how she got into the chair. And every time we'd walk down the hallway, we'd hear that. And in the first Conjuring, they said that the three knocks are an insult to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So that was frightening.
As we were talking about it, upstairs in the school room, my mom got a call. And she forwarded it to voicemail because she didn't know who it was. And then she listened to it. And it said, 'Hi. This is St. Mary's prayer association wanting to know if you needed an urgent prayer for anything.'"
Does anyone else have goosebumps? Just me?
While these last two stories don't pertain to the set of Annabelle Comes Home, they're still evidence that spookiness exists all around. Producer Peter Safran has worked on every film in the Conjuring universe, and he recounted a particularly scary story from the set of the first Annabelle.
"It was the first time we brought the demon, who was Joe Bishara, in full makeup . . . we were shooting in the apartment building in Koreatown, and it was the first time we brought him onto the set. And in the script, at the time — it didn't end up in the movie — he kills the character. The demon kills the character, the handyman in the apartment building. His name is Fuller.
And so we go over to the elevator. It's me, Joe, and it happens to be Fuller, the actor playing Fuller. And we get onto the elevator. We walk down the hallway, and he's going to go sit in an apartment waiting for him to come. And as we walk — it's an old apartment building that has these giant, glass chandeliers all the way down the hallway. As Joe passes the first one — Fuller's right behind him — it just falls out of the ceiling in its entirety and smashes Fuller on the head, full-on shatters on his head. Now, he was OK, but he was totally dazed, and it was like the demon killing Fuller."
Safran told me they cut the death after the incident. A little too spooky for everyone's taste.
Safran's other story hearkens back to where it all started: The Conjuring.
"When we were shooting the first Conjuring — it had to be psychosomatic. But the witching hour is 3 o'clock, right? And I rented this house the whole time we were shooting there in Wilmington. It was an old house called the French House, very old house in the center of Wilmington. And around 3 o'clock every morning, I would hear the floorboards in the hallway — and I had the whole house [to myself] — they would creak, creak, creak. And they would wake me up almost every night. And I would never walk out there to see what it was. I just thought it was much better not to."
Anyway, if you need me, I'll be buying sage and burning it in my apartment. I'm not messing around with these evil spirits, OK?!
