If you guys didn’t know, I’m pretty into the awesomely terrible paranormal movies that have come out over the last couple of years, including all of the television show spinoffs like The Haunted, A Haunting, and now, my most current favorite, Paranormal Witness. This kind of crap scares the bejesus out of me, and I completely love it. So naturally, when I saw the preview for The Posession, I was kind of like “Woo!” even though I figured it’d be pretty similar to all of the other possession-related films that have been out since the beginning of time. And to a point, I was right. But what I *didn’t* realize was that it was based on a true story (and also chronicled on the aforementioned most current favorite paranormal television show, Paranormal Witness) about a person who bought a dybbuk box, which is more or less a soul box, and suffered some pretty crazy things because of it.
Sources close to those on the set, too, claim that there were some weird happenings during filming. From The Hollywood Reporter:
For Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a non-believer of sorts, shooting The Possession provided a few eerie, unscripted instances while the cameras were rolling.
Lionsgate’s horror pic, opening Aug. 31., draws on the true story of an Ebay user that purchased a dybbuk (the Judaic version of a possessing spirit) box online and wound up facing “horrifying things,” says Morgan. “I’m very skeptical,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter, “but not only would I not want the box around and to tempt fate, but there were enough weird things going on around our set that I’ve never seen happen on sets before.”
Morgan recalls lights exploding mid-take, and feeling cold bursts of wind on a closed, not drafty set. “It always happened in the middle of doing key scenes,” he recalls. “It didn’t happen in between takes or doing scenes that didn’t have a big story impact.”
The creepiest incident, however, came after filming.
“We had all of our props, a couple days after we finished wrapping — they put everything in storage for if you’re gonna do reshoots or anything — they keep it in storage, they need to keep it all in Vancouver,” Morgan says. “It burnt to the ground. It was investigated, and there were no signs of arson, no electrical fire.”
Among the key props destroyed in the fire: the imitation dybbuk box used during filming. (It’s also worth noting that one of the most frightening, crucial scenes in the film takes place outside what looks like a storage facility.)
Co-star Natasha Calis tells THR that the real-life owners of the box offered to allow its use during filming, or to bring for an on set visit, but the cast and crew politely declined.
Now I didn’t see the newest Paranormal Witness (which aired last night) about the dybbuk box, because for whatever reason, my DV-R decided it would bail out on recording just that one show, so I have to wait ’til tonight when it re-airs at 9 PM EST.
Oh, also The Possession premieres tomorrow, August 31st. Will you guys be seeing it? And are you watching Paranormal Witness on SyFy? And if so, how f-cking creepy is it?
looks like a jewish version of the exorcist
I can’t wait for this movie!