The Eerie Things That Happened On The Set Of The Deliverance

It's not exactly unusual for horror movies to develop a reputation for spooky on-set happenings — some have even been considered cursed. "The Deliverance," which hit Netflix on August 30th, is the latest in a long line of scary movies with bizarre occurrences plaguing their shoots. Directed by Lee Daniels, it stars Andra Day as Ebony Jackson, a single mother who moves her family into a new house in Indiana. Ordinarily, this might not be a problem, but this is a horror movie, so of course their new home has a malevolent presence contained within it, one that begins to have an unsettling impact on her three children.

It wasn't long into the film's shoot that reality began to reflect the quasi-fictional world of "The Deliverance," which is based on real-life alleged hauntings. From on-set health emergencies to the deaths of beloved pets, the film set experienced terrifying unexplained events that disturbed the cast and crew. Read on for the full story of "The Deliverance" and its eerie goings-on.

"The Deliverance" was based on the true story of the Ammons family, who allegedly experienced a terrifying series of supernatural events in 2012, when they moved into a new home in Gary, Indiana. They reported perpetual infestations of black flies, regardless of weather conditions and how regularly they were exterminated. Things got more frightening when the Ammons children began to bear the brunt of the house's supernatural presence, as their bodies were levitated, throw about the room, and supposedly possessed, forcing them to speak in strange, unfamiliar voices.

Not everyone believed the story of the Ammons family, however, and the children were removed from the house as the result of a social services investigation based on anonymous reports of neglect and abuse. Latoya Ammons regained custody of her children later that same year, but not before undergoing three exorcisms and having a priest bless their new home after she relocated to Indianapolis.

Oscar-winner Mo'Nique didn't escape the ravages of shooting "The Deliverance" — at one point during the production, she actually had to go to the hospital directly from set. "Mr. Daniels had me doing a scene, okay?" she explained in a Sirius XM interview. "It was just, the demon was supposed to be on top of the building, so they kept blowing this — at one point I'm like, 'Lee, do we have this s— because I can't breathe.' They kept blowing. He was like, 'One more time. One more time.' So when I got finished, right, my thyroid was a big, I mean, it was just sick ... I was like, 'What kind of s— is this?' It was a lot of things happening with 'The Deliverance.'" 

Whether her health scare was a result of supernatural forces or simply the effect of difficult shooting conditions, it's hard to deny that the feeling on set was that they needed to be careful, given the dark subject matter of the film. And that was far from the end of the troubles the cast members of "The Deliverance" would face during the film's production.

Plenty of strange — and sad — things happened while Lee Daniels and his team were making "The Deliverance." Just days after his sister Girly Daniels — who has been in every one of Lee Daniels' films, his proclaimed "good-luck charm," as he explained in a Sirius XM interview — performed in a scene where Alberta (Glenn Close) is receiving chemotherapy treatment, she herself was diagnosed with lung cancer.

To add to the bad news for the Daniels family during the film shoot, Lee's pet dog died mid-production of "The Deliverance." His mom was certainly worried about the impact of the film's subject matter on the project, as Daniels told Variety in a recent interview. Years earlier, when he was first approached with the script, she convinced him not to take on the project. "My mom talked me out of it because she really believed I'm an open portal for all sorts of energies, and she really felt that if I was going to do that, something bad was going to happen to me," he explained.

Lee Daniels knew going into the project that, given its subject matter, he wanted to take preventative, faith-based measures to avoid the darkness of the film from seeping into the experiences of the cast and crew. In addition to hiring a professional deliverer to be on set — a profession that seems sort of like a reverse exorcist — he introduced prayer, hoping it would counteract any demonic influences. 

"We prayed every day," he told Variety. "Interestingly enough, HR from Netflix tapped me the first day we started praying and said, 'This could be offensive to people and you can't.' I go, 'Wait a minute — we've got to figure something out, because I can't go in this jungle without praying every day." Apparently, the solution was to give the cast and crew an out if they weren't interested in participating in the prayer circle, but Daniels claims that most stayed, saying, "Most people, most of the 200 or so crew knew that they wanted to be protected."

Stories of cursed sets, particularly for horror films, are almost as old as the genre. Sometimes developed as a promotional tool to help sell the idea of the film, sometimes born out of genuinely spooky occurrences, it's almost a trope of the genre at this point. "The Exorcist" is one of the most famous examples of these — in addition to the now-famous MacNeil house set burning down, it has a reported death count of anywhere from four to nine people associated with the production, depending on who you ask. Publicist Joe Hyams was unnerved as the shoot continued, saying (via the New York Post), "These weren't casualties from stunts or things like that. These were men standing behind the camera and all of a sudden dropping dead."

"Poltergeist" is also closely associated with tragedy, given the number of performers in the film who died young. Heather O'Rourke passed away at the age of 12 during a bowel obstruction surgery while "Poltergeist III" was in production; her older on-screen sister Dominique Dunne was murdered by her partner when she was just 22 shortly after the making of "Poltergeist;" Julien Beck, who played the evil preacher in "Poltergeist," was diagnosed with stomach cancer and died by suicide in 1983; and Will Sampson, who played Taylor the shaman, died a handful of years later during a heart-lung transplant.