On October 31, 1992, the BBC aired a 90-minute documentary-style program called Ghostwatch, which was promoted as being broadcast live from “the most haunted house in Britain.” Presenting the show that evening were such trusted BBC personalities as Michael Parkinson and children’s TV host Sarah Greene. This helped lend it some credibility because, in actuality, the whole thing was staged and had been filmed months in advance. Despite that, millions of viewers believed they were watching a real paranormal investigation unfold.
The story revolved around Pamela Early and her two daughters, who were reportedly living with a ghost known as Pipes. The alleged poltergeist was given the nickname due to his habit of banging on their water pipes. As time went on, the family was subjected to more and more terrifying experiences, and Pipes could be spotted lingering in the background during certain scenes. By the end, Pipes “seized control” of the cameras and the folks watching from the TV studio were shown fleeing as the paranormal activity appeared to spread beyond the house.
Ghostwatch ‘Traumatized’ Countless Kids
Ghostwatch was so convincing that the network received upwards of 20,000 calls while the show was on the air. Evidently, many of the 11 million viewers who tuned in were children, who’d been traumatized by the experience. “It was partly that it scared people, but the complaints were actually more that the BBC had made them feel like mugs,” recalled screenwriter Stephen Volk. “People felt the BBC was something they could trust, and the programme had destroyed that trust,” he continued.
The broadcast was even blamed for the suicide of a teenage boy, whose parents said he’d been hearing banging noises in their house like the ones from the show. This allegedly terrified him to the point that he hanged himself five days later. In the boy’s pocket was a note to his mother, saying, “If there [are] ghosts, I will now be one and I will always be with you as one.” An investigation by the Broadcast Standards Commission concluded that the BBC had made a “deliberate attempt to cultivate a sense of menace,” and the network issued an apology.
Ghostwatch was never broadcast on the BBC again and wasn’t released on home video for another decade.
On February 9, 1956, 96-year-old Samuel J. Seymour appeared as a mystery guest on the game show I’ve Got a Secret. Seymour’s secret, which the panel was tasked with guessing, was that he’d seen John Wilkes Booth shoot Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Based on Seymour’s age, panelist Bill Cullen quickly figured out that the answer had something to do with the Civil War, and Jayne Meadows (sister of Audrey Meadows from The Honeymooners) then connected what Seymour had witnessed to Lincoln. “Was this a pleasant thing?” Meadows asked, to which Seymour replied, “Not very pleasant, I don’t think.”
Once the cat was out of the bag, host Garry Moore went on to explain that Seymour was just five years old when he was taken to see the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., where Lincoln was assassinated. What Moore found especially interesting about Seymour’s story was that he wasn’t concerned with the president because he didn’t realize he’d been shot. Instead, when Seymour saw Booth jump from the presidential box onto the stage, his only concern was for the man he thought had fallen out of the balcony.
“I was shot 50 times, at least in my dreams”
In a 1954 article referenced by Moore during the show, Seymour went into further detail regarding his experience at Ford’s Theater. According to him, his godmother lifted him up at the beginning of the play so that he could see the president’s arrival from across the theater. “He was a stern-looking man,” Seymour recalled. “I guess I just thought he looked stern because of his whiskers, because he was smiling and waving to the crowd,” he continued.
Eventually, a shot rang out, and Seymour noticed that Lincoln was slumped forward in his chair. “Hurry, hurry, let’s go help the poor man who fell down,” Seymour begged, after seeing Booth try to make his escape. “[My godmother] swept me into her arms and held me close and somehow we got outside the theater,” Seymour remembered. “That night I was shot 50 times, at least in my dreams—and I sometimes still relive the horror of Lincoln’s assassination, dozing in my rocker as an old codger like me is bound to do,” he concluded.
Seymour appeared on I’ve Got a Secret just a couple of months prior to his death. By the time he shared his story publicly, he was believed to be the last living witness to Lincoln’s murder.
On the August 13, 1997 episode of The Howard Stern Show, Stern and co-host Robin Quivers took a call from a man named Clay, who told them he was a serial killer. Clay was unusually calm from the beginning as he revealed that he’d supposedly murdered 12 prostitutes up until that point. He also said he had a pretty good idea of why he committed the heinous crimes. “I think I just do it for the sense of the power,” Clay explained.
From there, Clay got into the specifics of how he carried out the murders. According to him, most of the women were killed with a hammer after he’d had sex with them—except for one, whom he decided to strangle. Two of these incidents reportedly took place in parking garages, whereas the rest happened on the side of the road. “Dude, you’ve gotta have a lot of anger in you,” Stern suggested, to which Clay bluntly replied, “Yes.”
Stern then questioned Clay about whether or not he’d had an abusive childhood or if he’d killed small animals growing up, like some serial killers have been known to, but the host didn’t make any progress getting to the bottom of things. Perhaps the most bizarre detail Clay shared during this conversation was his desire to leave his mark by using the fingers of the dead women to paint pictures. Evidently, he hadn’t gotten around to doing that just yet.
In the end, Stern hung up on Clay without obtaining much useful information from him, other than the way he allegedly murdered his victims and his claim of being from New Orleans. To this day, it’s unclear if the caller was serious, though many have noted that his story somewhat lines up with the crimes of the Storyville Slayer, who killed at least 12 prostitutes in New Orleans between 1991 and 1995. However, the problem with that theory is the man police suspected to be the murderer was arrested weeks before the call to Stern was made.
You can listen to Stern’s full exchange with the mystery man below.
From the bright minds that brought you FTX Arena and NBA Top Shot NFT maketplace (where sales last month dropped to $762,781, which is a 99.66 percent decrease compared to the February 2021 peak of $226,350,843), the NBA announced Monday that it has new "preferred" prediction market deals for Kalshi and Polymarket, as well as a memorandum of understanding with the US CFTC about how to manage the relationships. It also announced an expansion of its DraftKings deal to include prediction markets, and says that more expansions will be announced with others soon.
The NBA is already facing scandals after Jontay Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy …
The RealReal, a secondhand luxury fashion consignment retailer, said it's updating its bot defense system, effectively making it harder for AI agents to shop on its site.
The change comes days after The Vergereported that an AI agent could be used to take advantage of The RealReal's item reserve system. On the retailer's website, an item goes "on hold" and is unavailable for other customers to buy for 20 minutes once it's placed in a user's shopping cart. Using Meta's Muse, The Verge was able to instruct the AI agent to continuously re-add The RealReal listings in a shopping cart as soon as the 20-minute hold had expired, effectively block …
On October 24, the legendary actress Amy Irving made an appearance at the revered Jacob Burns Film Center in celebration of the iconic horror movieCarrie‘s 50th birthday. The special event came as part of an ongoing retrospective dubbed “Starring Amy Irving.” Throughout the evening at the Burns, Irving couldn’t have been more lovely: Not only did she speak beautifully and answer every question as informatively as possible, but she kindly signed and posed for fans. Located in Pleasantville, NY, the Burns has been championed by everyone from Ron Howard to the late Jonathan Demme, so it was great that this fine institution was able to welcome Irving back. Irving’s husband, Kenneth Bowser, actually sits on the Board of Directors.
The Burns’ screening of Carriegave viewers an opportunity to appreciate Irving’s mastery of her craft, as she triumphed in the role of Sue Snell. In addition, attendees were moved by the remarkable performances of Irving’s co-stars, as Sissy Spacek, who will forever be remembered for playing the lead. With its outstanding cinematography, artful lighting, and dazzling colors, Carrie, which many of us have seen only at home, was a joy to behold on the big screen. The film remains refreshing in its charm, which is of a rare, human breed that has since become more or less extinct. Of course, this artistic yet organic milestone proves as relevant as ever in its exploration of bullying and overall themes.
Amy Irving in Carrie
‘Carrie’ Star Amy Irving Reveals the Surprising Story Behind the Movie’s Iconic Ending
After the screening, rock-star writer and curator Eric Hynes joined Irving for a fantastic Q&A. As always, Mr. Hynes served as the ideal moderator, steering the conversation in all the right directions and later kindly opening the door to audience questions when the time came. Upon taking the stage, Irving, who looked gorgeous, revealed that seeing her very own mother, Priscilla Pointer, who played her parent in Carrie and five other films, brought her to tears. Pointer passed away in 2025, and Irving broke hearts when saying, “I just miss her so much.”
De Palma had wanted Pointer for the part; Irving emphasized that the director really took her under his wing. Although she was clearly born into an incredible acting family, made her stage debut as a baby, and studied the art form, Irving stated that De Palma taught her all she needed to know to move forward in the business while collaborating on Carrie and The Fury (1978) — her first and second motion pictures. She reflected, “He’s a real teddy bear, so he was really sweet with all of us. He held our hands.” De Palma actually volunteered himself to coach Irving for a Star Wars (1977) screen test, despite her initial objection that she had already committed to Carrie — auditions for Carrie and Star Wars had been held together, as De Palma and George Lucas are famously friends. While Irving wasn’t cast in Star Wars, she was the Princess Leia actress Carrie Fisher’s “date for the first time she ever saw Star Wars.” Irving continued, “She nearly broke my hand she was holding it so tight.” Star Wars wasn’t the first time that De Palma tried to help Irving win over his friends — Irving amusingly described how he set her up with her now-ex-husband Steven Spielberg twice.
In an ultra-cute anecdote about Spielberg and Lucas, Irving shared how the pair coped with the stress of releases, as box office numbers were important to both men, “Every time Steven’s or George’s movies opened, we would have to go to Hawaii so they weren’t there for the opening, and they would build sandcastles, and that was their way of avoiding it.” When speaking about the camaraderie between these revolutionary filmmakers, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola, it became apparent that the old canonical works were great due to the genuine spirits of those involved; authentically fabulous people like Irving made Carrie the classic it is.
In regard to the grave scene toward the very end of Carrie, Irving, who became irradiant and angelic in her white dress, recalls De Palma having her walk backwards down the street to achieve a subtly otherworldly quality and adds, “And then, he said I had to walk into this pit of rocks, and they were very sharp… He goes, ‘Amy, you have to glide. This is a dream.’ And I’m like, ‘But it really hurts.’ So, I’m pretending it doesn’t hurt as I walk out of there. And then, Sissy insisted on it being her arm [that reaches up from the ground]. She has very specific arms. And she had us bury her alive, literally. The thing about that ending is it wasn’t written in the film; we had no ending… They hadn’t decided who was going to survive, so everybody wanted to survive. I remember Betty Buckley campaigning like crazy. She actually told Brian, ‘I’m the more expressive actress. I should live.’ It was crazy.” Surprisingly, Irving harbored some doubt as to whether the killer scene worked until she saw the amazing crowd reaction once it hit theaters.
As one audience member at the Burns pointed out, the complexity of Carrie‘s characters really enriches the film. Irving commented, “I’m the nice girl. Some people didn’t get that, because I’m not very nice in the beginning. That was a really ugly moment in all of our lives, but then she’s the one that has a conscience and does right by it all.”
In 1997, Trailers From Hell co-founder Elizabeth Stanley snapped a picture of rock critic Brett Meisner at Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris. What Meisner claimed he didn’t notice until five years later was that the ghostly figure of a man who looks an awful lot like Morrison can be seen standing behind him in the photo. Check it out for yourself right here:
The story spread like crazy on the internet, with many, of course, debating whether or not it was a ghost or some kind of fake. Meisner eventually agreed to have both the picture and the negative sent for extensive analysis. According to the 2009 book Ghosts Caught on Film 2: Photographs of the Unexplained, researchers who studied the photo back then determined that it hadn’t been faked. However, they were apparently unable to establish what caused the illusion of a ghost in the background—if it is, in fact, an illusion.
The Creepy 1997 Photograph That Allegedly Shows Jim Morrison’s Ghost
For starters, the folks who examined the picture ruled out the possibility that a trick of the light was responsible for the apparition. They also said that image manipulation—the most plausible explanation—appeared “unlikely.” In conclusion, the book called the image “unexplainable.” But that didn’t end up being the final word on the subject.
In 2010, members of the Miami Paranormal Research Society declared that the photograph had been fabricated using the Pepper’s ghost illusion technique—a process that involves projecting an image off of a sheet of glass. The proof of this, they explained, is that you can see breaks in the arms of the “ghost” if you look close enough. The so-called phantom person, whoever they are, clearly follows the contours of the doorway they were allegedly projected onto as well. If the technique was indeed utilized here, the negative would show no signs of alteration.
As for the rumor that Tom Petty had taken the picture in question, the team in Miami found no evidence of that. Stanley publicly acknowledged that she was responsible for it in 2014, but didn’t mention anything about it being a hoax.
Apocalypse Now was an extremely troubled production that nearly cost both Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Sheen their lives, but it also came close to featuring a few people who were already deceased. According to the film’s co-producer, Gray Frederickson, rumors that human corpses would be used in the movie were going around early on, and he initially dismissed them as being “ludicrous.” Then a prop guy said something one morning that made it clear this wasn’t just some tall tale.
After Sheen’s wife complained that there were dead rats on the temple set, production designer Dean Tavoularis told Frederickson that they were being kept there for “real atmosphere.” That’s when the aforementioned prop guy chimed in, saying, “Wait till he hears about the dead bodies.” Frederickson was then taken to the prop store, conveniently located behind the tent where everybody ate dinner. Inside, he was shown a row of cadavers laid out on the floor.
The Time Police Found a Room Full of Human Corpses on the Set of ‘Apocalypse Now’
The source of the corpses was a man who supplied bodies to medical schools to use for autopsies. However, it was later discovered that he was a graverobber. “The police showed up on our set and took all of our passports,” Frederickson recalled during a 2009 interview with The Independent. “They didn’t know we hadn’t killed these people because the bodies were unidentified,” he continued. “I was pretty damn worried for a few days, but they got to the truth and put the guy in jail.”
Eventually, a large truck full of soldiers showed up and the bodies were thrown inside. “Where do we take these?” one of the men asked. Frederickson suggested a cemetery, but that was off the table because nobody was willing to pay for their burial. “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll dump them somewhere,” Frederickson was informed, just before they drove away. In the end, he never did find out what became of the mystery cadavers, but thankfully they didn’t wind up in the movie.
Before he decided to only make movies with the word “Avatar” in the title, James Cameron was planning to shoot a documentary in space. The filmmaker initially approached the Russians, who agreed to let him visit the Mir space station, but he eventually set his sights on the ISS instead. As Cameron explained to NASA administrator Daniel Goldin, who was overseeing the assembly of the ISS at the time, he saw Mars as the future, and getting there would require a lengthy flight. For that reason, Cameron wanted to observe what it was like for people who were already living in space.
Goldin considered Cameron’s proposal, but ultimately felt it would be too difficult to pull off. Alternatively, Goldwin offered Cameron the opportunity to take a shuttle flight. That way, he’d at least get to see space for himself and view the Earth from above. After thinking it over, Cameron declined to go on the flight, sticking to his guns about traveling to space on his own terms, even if it never came to be.
How James Cameron Narrowly Avoided One of NASA’s Deadliest Disasters
Cameron’s rejection made Goldin realize how determined the director was to make the project happen, and he finally gave him the green light to venture to the ISS. Cameron then flew to Houston to train for his trip, and started mapping out the logistics of the shoot. “And they were going to fly me,” Cameron told GQin 2022, “and then Columbia was lost.” For context, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated while reentering the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003, killing all seven people on board.
The eerie part of all this is the Columbia flight was actually the one Cameron had turned down. “I f—king saved my own life by choosing the higher path!” Cameron recalled. When asked if he had any regrets about not going to space, Cameron said, “Zero,” adding, “The stuff I did instead was equally cool. Yeah, it would’ve been great and I think if I had really, really put my mind to it, I could have remanifested that a few years later with a better camera system and a better plan.”
Horror movies have never gotten much love at the Academy Awards. And even when they do get some attention, it’s rarely in the Best Picture category. To date, only nine films in the genre have been nominated for the highly coveted award: The Exorcist, Jaws, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan, Get Out, The Substance, the 2025 version of Frankenstein, and Sinners. To make matters worse, just one of those actually went home with the Oscar.
The lone winner in question was The Silence of the Lambs, which pulled off another extremely rare feat at the 1992 Academy Awards: it swept the so-called “Big Five” categories. For the record, that includes Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. That evening, the Jodie Foster-Anthony Hopkins classic became the third film in history to accomplish that. It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had done so previously (in 1935 and 1976, respectively).
The Oscars Have Snubbed Horror for Decades, but One Movie Broke the Curse
But while the members of the Motion Picture Academy have shown a significant lack of interest in horror over the years, it isn’t the most snubbed genre there is, believe it or not. For instance, no animated or comic book film has ever won Best Picture, though three movies of each kind have received nods. And as far as disaster films go, Titanic remains the single, solitary Best Picture winner. That’s more than we can say for documentaries, which haven’t even been given the opportunity to walk away with the sought-after trophy.
Why Oscars are so elusive for certain genres is unclear. Circling back around to scary movies, it seems like a huge oversight that films like Psycho and The Shining weren’t major winners—in fact, The Shining was nominated for a whopping zero Academy Awards. At the end of the day, very few horror movies have won Oscars since the ceremony began in 1929—some of the more notable examples being Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, and Alien. However, this past year Frankenstein, Sinners, and Weapons were all surprisingly victorious, so maybe things are finally starting to change.
On June 7, 2016, James Wan’s first sequel to 2013’s The Conjuring, fittingly titled The Conjuring 2, had its world premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. 10 days later, two Indian men attending an evening screening of the film in Tiruvannamalai became the subject of a creepy mystery that doesn’t appear to have ever been solved. According to a report from The Times of India, one of the men complained of chest pain during the movie’s climax and fainted.
The 65-year-old was then rushed to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. For whatever reason, the hospital staff asked the man’s friend to bring his body to a medical college on the outskirts of town for postmortem, instead of transporting him themselves. And that’s where things get even eerier. You see, as it turns out, the corpse never arrived at its destination, and we still don’t know why.
The Bizarre Story of a Man Who Died Watching ‘The Conjuring 2,’ and Then Vanished
Evidently, both the living man and his deceased friend’s body disappeared after leaving the hospital. Police were said to have been inquiring with the different hotels in the area to try and figure out who the dead guy was. However, they don’t seem to have had any success identifying either of the two men.
The New York Post noted that the friend was seen hurriedly bringing the body to an auto-rickshaw that the pair had apparently been staying in. No additional information has come to light since. Naturally, this has led to some speculation as to whether or not the story was real, but it’s worth pointing out that it was covered by several reputable news sources at the time.
In my mind, Spooky Season music comes in two distinct flavors. There are the fun, occasionally goofy songs like "The Monster Mash" and John Carpenter's "Halloween Theme." Then there is the genuinely terrifying: Throbbing Gristle, The Body, or Scott Walker's The Drift.
This 2006 album from the singer-songwriter is truly upsetting. On it, Walker explores death, disease, and tragedy. But not just from some abstract perspective. There are visceral descriptions of the hanging of Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci. He sings about 9/11, his stillborn twin brother, and the Srebrenica genocide. Lyrically, it's about as dark as an album …
The social media account Stay Golden TV, nobly dedicated to The Golden Girls, dutifully drew our attention to a pressing issue: What on earth was hanging on the wall in the home of America’s four most beloved senior citizens (Dorothy Zbornak, Rose Nylund, Blanche Devereaux, and Sophia Petrillo)? The account posted still frames showing what appears to be a male appendage sculpture conspicuously hanging in the background.
Stay Golden TV found the once-popular relic in question for sale, and therefore we were able to see other listings for ourselves. The item is, in fact, a copper lobster mold / wall hanging. Such objects have been manufactured internationally by different makers. Upon getting a better look at the relief, the claws become clear to see. However, even so, these molds unquestionably resemble phalli.
As Stay Golden TV pointed out, until high-definition remasters were available for streaming, it was difficult to discern anything but the curious piece of decor’s silhouette.
Fans Spotted What Looks Like a Penis on the Set of ‘The Golden Girls,’ but There’s a Catch
One user seems to have hit the nail on the head, “Definitely falls under the category ‘They Knew What They Were Doing.'” The wall hanging indeed represents a perfect example of attention to detail in set design.
Another netizen joked, “It’s a LOBSTER. Blanche probably had her own personal penis one though.” After all, our girls were no strangers to naughty antics.
Yet another observer astutely remarked, “Archie Bunker had the same lobster in his kitchen.” He is, in fact, correct.
This seems like the perfect time to inform all those grateful to the girls for being friends that Dan Watt’s Bea Arthur: The Documentary – “I’ve Done Everything Except Porn” was released this month. Catch a screening if you can.
The Poltergeist series has long been rumored to be cursed, reportedly due to the fact that real human skeletons were used in a scene from the original film. Since then, five actors who were involved with the franchise have died, some under circumstances that sound straight out of a horror movie. Take Dominique Dunne, who played Dana Freeling in the first entry, for example. Five months after Poltergeist premiered in 1982, Dunne was strangled by her ex-boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney, outside of her West Hollywood home; she never regained consciousness.
Then there’s Julian Beck, best known to Poltergeist II fans for portraying Reverend Henry Kane. Beck died from cancer eight months before the 1986 sequel hit theaters. His co-star, Will Sampson—a real-life shaman hired to play one in the movie—followed suit in 1987, a result of post-operative kidney failure (he’d just undergone a heart and lung transplant). Sampson also apparently felt the need to perform an exorcism on the set of the film at one point.
Why People Believe the ‘Poltergeist’ Movies Are Cursed
Heather O’Rourke (Carol Anne in the original trilogy), like Beck, didn’t live to see the release of her final entry in the series: 1988’s Poltergeist III. O’Rourke began exhibiting flu-like symptoms in January of that year and went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital. She later died from septic shock caused by congenital stenosis of the lower intestine, which doctors at the time called “distinctly unusual” because she lacked prior symptoms. O’Rourke was only 12 years old.
Lastly, we have Lou Perryman, a character actor who had a small role as Pugsley the construction worker in Poltergeist. On April 1, 2009, Perryman was murdered in his home by a man he’d met a little while earlier. Seth Christopher Tatum, who’d recently stopped taking his prescribed medication, had attacked his mother’s ex-boyfriend and fled to Perryman’s neighborhood. Shortly after striking up a conversation with Perryman, Tatum entered Perryman’s house and repeatedly struck him with an axe.
However, one person who isn’t buying the whole curse angle is Robbie Freeling himself, Oliver Robins. In 2022, Robins told Yahoo Entertainment, “I do believe in the paranormal to some degree, but I don’t think there’s a curse because those deaths can be explained.” He went on to say, “You had these tragedies happen, but they were going to happen whether [the actors] were in the movie or not. Like with Heather, she had a medical condition for which she wasn’t treated. So I don’t think they are interconnected.”
2005’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose was inspired by the story of Anneliese Michel, a young German girl who was believed to have been possessed by demons. As a teenager in the late 1960s, Michel started having convulsive seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy. Before long, she was suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts. Eventually, Michel began experiencing hallucinations and hearing voices that would tell her she was damned.
In the midst of her alleged possession, Michel would display bizarre behavior, such as ripping off her clothes, barking like a dog, eating spiders, biting the head off of a dead bird, and licking her own urine from the floor. After turning to the Catholic Church, fathers Arnold Renz and Ernst Alt performed 67 rites of exorcism on Michel over the course of about 10 months, with some lasting as long as four hours. More than 40 audio recordings were made during that time, in which Michel could be heard growling in the voices of Satan, Judas, Cain, Nero, Adolf Hitler, and a priest named Valentin Fleischmann:
The Bizarre True Story Behind ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’
By the spring of 1976, Michel was refusing to eat and subsequently dropped down to just 68 pounds. However, at her own request, doctors were never consulted, and she continued to slowly deteriorate. Michel died on July 1 from what her autopsy deemed “malnutrition and dehydration.” She was 23 years old.
Michel’s parents, Anna and Josef, were put on trial for murder alongside the two priests. They were all found guilty of negligent homicide for letting her starve herself and were each sentenced to six months in jail. Following the release of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Michel’s mother told The Daily Telegraph that she didn’t regret her actions. “Anneliese was a kind, loving, sweet and obedient girl. But when she was possessed, it was something unnatural, something that you can’t explain,” she insisted.
In July 1974, while Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was still being filmed in Martha’s Vineyard, the decaying remains of a young woman were discovered in the nearby Race Point Dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The mystery victim was almost decapitated and both of her hands had been removed—presumably to prevent anyone from identifying her. Tucked beneath her head were a blue bandana and a pair of Wrangler jeans. For close to 50 years, the girl was known only as the “Lady of the Dunes.”
Despite having been exhumed several times between 1980 and 2013, police were unable to determine who they’d found that day in Provincetown. This led to numerous theories regarding the woman’s killer, with some even suggesting that mobster “Whitey” Bulger was responsible. The decades-old cold case ended up back in the news around 2018, when an earlier blog post from Stephen King’s son, fellow author Joe Hill, resurfaced. In it, Hill pointed out that a female extra in Jaws was wearing the same outfit found underneath the Lady of the Dunes.
Did Steven Spielberg Accidentally Film a Murder Victim in ‘Jaws’? The Mystery Explained.
At about 54 minutes and 2 seconds into the film, the woman in question briefly pops up during a crowd sequence sporting a blue bandana and jeans. This young lady, according to Hill, bears a “striking resemblance” to a composite sketch of the unidentified murder victim. Though Hill acknowledged that there were several problems with his theory, like the fact that the woman in the scene doesn’t appear to be wearing Wrangler jeans, he still ran the observation past an FBI friend of his. “Odder ideas have cracked colder cases,” he was told.
We may never know for sure if the Lady of the Dunes was in Jaws, but in 2022, the FBI finally identified her as Ruth Marie Terry of Tennessee (born September 8, 1936). The following year, the case was officially closed and Terry’s husband, Guy Muldavin, who died in 2002, was named as her killer. “I’m sort of fascinated by the idea that, for decades afterwards, every time Jaws came on TV, he saw his dead wife turning her head to stare out of the screen at him,” said Hill while speaking with Inside Edition, “There’s something sort of chilling in that notion.”
On October 17, 1994, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno welcomed Burt Reynolds and the host of Nickelodeon’s Double Dare, Marc Summers. Reynolds was going through a divorce with Loni Anderson at the time, and was reportedly unhappy that Leno had made light of the situation. For whatever reason, when Summers was brought on toward the end of the episode, Reynolds decided to take his frustration out on him, of all people. Though the pair’s exchanges were amusing enough at first, things quickly escalated when Summers refused to back down from Reynolds’s taunts.
Summers started off by revealing that, despite all the messy stunts featured on Double Dare, he was actually a neatness fanatic. He then described a segment he’d previously put together for the show, telling Leno and Reynolds, “We once filled a container with 4,000 pounds of baked beans and made kids dive into it, which was great.” But before he could finish his sentence, Reynolds sarcastically replied, “Gee, I wish I’d seen that.” Apparently, in Summers’s mind, the gloves were off at that point.
Burt Reynolds Once Got Into a Bizarre On-Air Fight With ‘Double Dare’ Host Marc Summers
After Reynolds asked Summers who told him he was a neatness freak, Summers replied, “My wife tells me that often,” adding, “I’m still married, as a matter of fact.” Reynolds then proceeded to pour the water from his coffee mug into Summers’s lap. Summers attempted to retaliate with his own drink, but Reynolds just smacked the mug out of his hand, soaking Summers even further. “You’re not a neatness freak anymore,” Reynolds quipped.
Some other uncomfortable moments followed, and Summers eventually got his revenge by dousing Reynolds with water when he wasn’t expecting it. This all culminated in the staff bringing out pies for the two to settle their score with. However, Reynolds had the upper hand there, too, and hit Summers so hard with a pie that he nearly knocked him off of his feet. According to Summers, the legendary incident wasn’t staged, and ultimately resulted in Leno tying David Letterman in the ratings for the first time.
You can check out the full segment for yourself below.
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