Poltergeist

American Hauntings Podcast

Cody Beck and Troy Taylor

True Crime, Religion & Spirituality, Tv & Film, Spirituality, Film Reviews, History

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There isn’t a lot that I can say about this film that you don’t already know – it’s a classic, there’s no two ways about that. It’s not only one of the greatest horror films of the 1980s but one of the great horror films of all time. But if you’re not old enough to have seen it in 1982 when it came out, you might be wondering why it was so scary to those of us who were.

And for those who already know, it turns out there was another haunting that made news just before POLTERGEIST was written that’s even more terrifying – and hits a lot closer to home.

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This episode was written by Troy Taylor

Produced and edited by Cody Beck

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Transcript

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1:17.5	There isn't a lot that I can say about this film that you don't already know. It's a classic. There's no two ways about that. It's not only one of the greatest horror films of
1:23.4	the 1980s, but one of the great horror films of all time. But if you're not old enough to
1:29.3	have seen it in 1982 when it came out, you might be wondering why it was so scary to those of us
1:36.1	who were. It was terrifying because the haunted house in the film wasn't a massive old mansion
1:42.9	with a chilling backstory like the haunting of Hill House,
1:46.7	or even a place that made menacing, like the House on Haunted Hill. The Freeling House didn't
1:53.2	look haunted. I mean, it shouldn't be haunted. It was an ordinary house in an ordinary subdivision, just like the one that so many
2:02.9	of us lived in during the 1980s. It was so scary because if their ordinary house could be haunted,
2:09.7	then so could yours, just like the ordinary houses that this film was inspired by. But we'll
2:16.8	come back to that. In the film, we're introduced to
2:20.3	the ordinary family that lives in this ordinary house in Questa Verde, California, a community
2:26.1	that Stephen Freely helped to plan. Stephen, played by Craig T. Nelson, as the perfect suburban dad,
2:33.7	had his choice of the new homes, and he lives there with his wife, Diane, played by Craig T. Nelson, as the perfect suburban dad, had his choice of the new homes,
	...

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