There’s a long-standing debate on who the director of 1982’s Poltergeist was. Did Tobe Hooper control production, or did Steven Spielberg pull the phantom strings that ultimately led to the film’s haunting success? The debate stands, and I don’t plan on solving it here, but what we do know is the story was conceived of and written by Spielberg. His endless imagination of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s was often taken from true stories of his childhood manifesting into his big-screen dreams.
Reportedly, Spielberg’s foray into horror was inspired by two true tales of terror. I feel this is the formula to any great “inspired by” horror since the film really does become something wholly original in the midst of true history. But, like adding vinegar to baking soda, was the melding of two supernatural histories what caused the legendarily cursed production? Again, we may never know…
Poltergeist tells the tale of real estate developer Steve Freeling (Craig T. Nelson), his wife Diane (JoBeth Williams), and their three children (Dominique Dunne, Oliver Robins, Heather O’Rourke). Steve moves his family into his latest planned community project, Cuesta Verde, where, almost immediately, odd events begin to occur.
After an earthquake and an eerie message from their daughter Carol Anne (O’Rourke) when she converses with the television, strange albeit benign events take over the house. The family is, at first, amused, but the tides turn when son Robbie (Robins) is assaulted by a tree outside his window, and Carol Anne gets mysteriously abducted from within the house.
The family calls in a group of parapsychologists and a spiritual medium (Zelda Rubinstein) to get Carol Anne back and cleanse the house of the supernatural forces that have become disturbingly prevalent and increasingly aggressive. Steve eventually confronts his boss (James Karen) after being told a cemetery that was supposed to be moved prior to development was simply covered over, and the spirits were not at all happy about it.
The Ghosts of Cheesman Park
The idyllic 80 acres of Cheesman Park in Denver, Colorado, is home to 57 species of trees and the Grecian Cheesman Memorial, constructed in 1908. It’s the perfect place to picnic or stroll through the botanical gardens. But don’t dig too deep into the grounds of the beautiful, centrally-located park, or you might unearth some troublingly morbid history surrounding the construction and supposed haunting of the grounds.
The park’s history started in 1858 with General William Larimer, who claimed the grounds from St. Charles Town Company and named it Denver. The only problem was that the land technically still belonged to the Arapaho Indians, and their burial grounds were not relocated when Larimer commissioned the Mount Prospect cemetery (which would become Cheesman Park). Essentially, bodies were buried on top of bodies as the cemetery continued to be filled for the next twelve years.
After a federal land dispute in the 1870s, US Congress determined the bodies should be removed from Mount Prospect in favor of building a park. They hired undertaker E.P. McGovern to move the bodies, and his ghoulish work began in 1893. McGovern and his crew saw more profits in hacking up the bodies and putting them in child-sized coffins or simply doubling or tripling up on bodies per coffin. They would often ransack the bodies, taking jewelry and fine fabrics for themselves, and sometimes would leave body parts in the open to rot rather than re-bury them. After a tell-all article brought the grisly deeds to light, McGovern was fired from his duties unfinished, with many bodies still resting on the grounds. A new contract to move the bodies was never issued.
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However, that didn’t stop the city of Denver and US Congress from their work, and in 1984, Walter Cheesman began his work to grade and level the area, turning 80 acres into lush park grounds. To this day, approximately 2,000 bodies remain buried at Cheesman Park, as do the spirits of the disturbed souls who may never be able to rest in peace.
There have been reported sightings of melancholy, wandering spirits haunting the park. People have reported seeing the silhouette of gravestones glowing in the moonlight at night. Others have said that they found it difficult to get up after lying on the grass, as though restrained. Homes in the area report phantom knocking on doors and windows and previous residents attempting to reclaim their homes. The most famous account of a Cheesman Park haunting was actually put to screen in the 1980 film The Changeling.
So, to paraphrase Craig T. Nelson, they moved the cemetery, but they didn’t move the bodies. The grounds remain a hotbed of ghost sightings to this day.
And while this compelling history sparked the overall premise of Poltergeist, the specificity of the horror that befalls the Freeling family can be traced to the world’s very first paranormal reality show in Seaford, New York, and the Herrmann family haunting of 1958.
Popper the Poltergeist
It was February 3rd, 1958, and Lucille Herrmann welcomed her two children home from school. James Herrmann was at work in New York City. Shortly into their routine afternoon affairs, the quaint single-story ranch-style home exploded with popping sounds: a bottle of bleach in the basement, liquid starch in the kitchen, shampoo and soap bottles, and a flask of holy water in the master bedroom all popped their tops, spilling their contents. After calling her husband about the odd occurrence, the couple chalked it up to humidity and laughed off the incident.
Two days later, it happened again in nearly the same pattern. The family was unnerved but unharmed. By the third occurrence, James suspected his son, Jimmy, who had developed a fondness for scientific experimentation, thinking Jimmy had dropped carbon capsules into bottles around the home to scare his mother. James watched Jimmy closely all weekend, and when the popping occurred again on Sunday morning, despite the careful watch of his son, James confronted Jimmy in the bathroom. Jimmy insisted he did nothing wrong and was “backed up” when two bottles moved on their own in the room. James searched the bathroom for wire, to no avail, and finally decided to call in the local P.D.
His good standing in the community led credence to his spectral story, and Nassau County sent Officer James Hughes to the scene. During his inspection, he witnessed the off-putting “popping” phenomena, and the bottle caps seemed to fly at Officer Hughes. He called in Detective Joseph Tozzi for reinforcements. Tozzi, a seasoned and skeptical detective, took vigil at the home, believing all the events had a perfectly natural explanation. The “poppings” continued in rooms no one occupied, and Tozzi could never confirm the reason for the phenomena. It wasn’t until a porcelain figurine, in full view of the Herrmann children and their second cousin, Marie, lifted itself off a side table and smashed into the floor yet remained curiously unbroken that they called in reinforcements.
Tozzi, stumped, and the Herrmanns, tired, called the Church of St. William the Abbott for guidance of a more spiritual nature. Father William McLeod arrived at the home and cleansed it with holy water. But Popper, as the entity had come to be called, refused to leave. By this time, the media caught wind of the eyewitness accounts of supernatural activity, corroborated by family members, police, and the church. The Herrmann home was crawling with reporters, fanatics, and curiosity-seekers, all blaming everything from Russia to Aliens and all manner of sin as the cause of the disturbances. Time and Life magazine even covered the story, and the popping never waned.
At one point, physicist Robert Zider visited the home with dowsing rods and claimed that underground streams had created a “freak magnetic field” below the grounds. Detective Tozzi helped put together a geological survey to back up the theory, but no stream system was ever discovered. Instead, Detective Tozzi was left battered after being hit in the legs with a 100lb bronze horse statue that had “flown” across the basement. At the time, no one was in the basement with him.
Investigations continued, looking into sonic booms from overhead aircraft, magnetic vibrations under the home, and changes in water levels, but to no avail. Nothing explained the flying objects or popping bottles. One woman, Helen Connolly, convinced the Herrmanns it was a downdraft from the fireplace—having experienced her own mess of moving furniture that was availed upon blocking the chimney. However, installing a rotary metal turbine into the chimney was met with a porcelain figure flying twelve feet and denting a table on the other side of the living room. Things were getting worse…
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The events gravitated around the son, Jimmy, as sugar bowls and ink bottles frequently lifted themselves and flew many feet before smashing onto tables and into the floor around him. One evening, a large bookcase in Jimmy’s empty room toppled over without provocation. While doing his homework, a record player flew fifteen feet behind him. A globe in Jimmy’s room, again aimed at Detective Tozzi, smashed into a wall. There was also the matter of a figure of the Virgin Mary smashing a mirror in the master bedroom. And reporter John Gold reportedly witnessed his flashbulbs fly into the air, unaided, and smash into a wall. Popper was getting restless. It was time to call in the parapsychologists.
Dr. J.B. Rhine was contacted, and his associate, Dr. J. Gaither Pratt, was sent to examine the phenomena. Researching the physical, perhaps human, influencers that could cause the Herrmann Haunting, Duke University hypothesized that an adolescent with telekinetic abilities could cause paranormal events like those of Popper. Though typically seen surrounding young girls (ala Carol Ann?), 12-year-old Jimmy was the centrifuge of the Herrmanns’ haunting. The problem was that several days of quiet accompanied the arrival of Dr. Pratt and his colleague, Dr. William Roll. It seemed Popper did not want to perform for the scientists.
The Herrmanns reported several other occurrences of glass bowls flying and upended bookcases, witnessed by the whole family. And then, one month and eight days after the initial “popping,” the poltergeist would pop one last bottle of bleach in the basement—a phenomenon witnessed by Doctors Pratt and Roll—and remained inexplicably silent ever since.
To this day, Popper remains one of the most well-recorded and widely witnessed paranormal occurrences in history, as well as claiming the title of the first televised haunting.
In 1958, Steven Spielberg was 12 years old, the same age as Jimmy Herrmann, living in Cincinnati, Ohio. He had just made his first film on 8mm, the 9-minute long The Last Gunfight, earning him a Boy Scout merit badge in photography. It would stand to reason little Stevey caught some of Popper’s story on the news, internalizing it for the day when he would write his own horror tale for the silver screen.
There was never a resolution to the Herrmann Haunting, no explanation to be found. Tying things up neatly for the storyteller, Cheesman Park gave motive to the events that would occur in Cuesta Verde—and thus, the enduring legacy of Poltergeist was born…
