25 things you didn’t know about your favorite horror movies

The Exorcist – A real-life murderer appeared in the film

You couldn’t discuss horror movies and not talk about one of the greatest of all time: The Exorcist.

After more than 40 years, The Exorcist still remains one of the most iconic horror films of all time, and for good reason. It’s scary! A teenage girl named Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) is possessed by an exorcist, and her mother enlists the help of priests to save her daughter after medical interventions fail.

And if you haven’t figured it out yet, much like the other paranormal films on this list, some very strange events happened during and after the production.

One weekend, there was a mysterious fire on set. The entire set for the MacNeil home burned down, which delayed the production for six weeks. What was extra creepy is that Regan’s demonic bedroom was completely unharmed.

If that wasn’t enough, two actors who appeared in the film — Jack MacGowran and Vasiliki Maliaros — died before the film’s release. Their characters also died in the movie. Clearly, it’s a coincidence, but when you look at those incidents with everything else, it really makes you wonder.

The scariest tale to come out of The Exorcist is the fact that an actual murderer appears in the movie. In the scene when Regan has to get an arteriogram, the bearded man assisting the doctor, Paul Bateson, was a real X-ray technician at the hospital where the scene was shot. In 1979, Bateson was convicted of the murder of a film critic and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

While he was in prison, Bateson bragged about murdering a number of men whom he apparently picked up in gay bars and had sex with before dismembering them. These murders were known as the “bag murders,” but Bateson was never officially charged, and the case remains unsolved.

In a (not really) funny turn of events, the story of the bag murders was used for the basis of the film Cruising in 1980, directed by William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist.