195. Cursed Horror Movies: The Omen and Nosferatu

Go tohttps://kachava.com/https://kachava.com and use code HSP for 15% off your first order. Open your SoFi Checking & Savings account today - head to https://sofi.com/HeartStarts to get started. They were warned: make a movie about the Devil, and the Devil will try to stop you. What followed were plane crashes, bombings of film locations, animal attacks, and a real-life decapitation that mirrored a scene from the film itself. From The Omen to Nosferatu, these are the horror movies where the curse might have been real, and the truth behind it is even stranger than the legend. Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon. Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet. Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding TW: Suicide

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Primally Pure. I feel like every time I run out of a product in my bathroom, I have this moment where I go, okay, do I just order the same thing? Or do I finally make a better swap? And that thinking is exactly what got me into Primally Pure. They're a female-founded brand that keeps it really simple. Fewer, better ingredients, and nothing you can't pronounce. I just got an order from Primally Pure and I am obsessed with their lip oil. I also got Eucalyptus and Lavender Body Butter, which has spa vibes for sure. If you want an easy starting point, their Clean Start Bundle is a great place to start. For under $50, you get three everyday essentials. Their best-selling aluminum-free deodorant, a mini body butter, and the lip oil that I love. It's also a really thoughtful gift if you know someone

• 0:45Kaelyn Moore?

  who's been wanting to clean up their routine. Use code HSP to get 15% off your Primally Pure purchase. That's www.p-r-i-m-a-l-l-y-p-u-r-e.com and use code HSP at checkout for 15% off your order. This episode is brought to you by Toyota. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla sedan packed with the latest features, advanced tech, and head-turning style. Take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup,

• 1:30Kaelyn Moore?

  plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland, and all-wheel-drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with legendary resale value, built on a reputation for quality and reliability. So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places. Welcome back to another episode of Heart Starts Pounding. As always, I'm your host, Kayla Moore. So people always ask me if I think any horror movies are actually cursed. And while sometimes I do think that they just say that for marketing purposes,

• 2:14Kaelyn Moore?

  there are actually a couple of horror movies that I think have some very strange and possibly evil energy associated with them. I want to tell you about two of them today. The Omen, a movie where producers were warned that the devil would try to shut down production, and the original Nosferatu, where the director died under very strange and supernatural circumstances. And also, if you want more spooky stories, we just covered haunted university stories over on Patreon. Hear about a dorm fire that led to a haunting, an old medical building that's now a dorm where students feel their toes being tagged at night, as if they're corpses, and a fraternity hazing event that still haunts a school. That's over on our Patreon and also on Apple Podcast subscriptions,

• 2:57Kaelyn Moore?

  as well as many other bonus episodes that you can binge during the spooky season. All right, let's get into it. The Omen started with a simple premise. What if the Antichrist, the son of the devil, had already come to earth and was walking among us, but no one recognized him because he had taken the form of a child? Producer Harvey Bernhard was so struck by this thought that as soon as he heard the pitch, he stood up in the middle of the meeting, excused himself, and immediately drove home to flesh out this idea. In the wake of blockbusters like Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist, Bernhard felt certain that he had a major hit on his hands, but he might have gotten more than he bargained for, a lot more. It's been said that the greatest trick the devil ever played

• 3:42Kaelyn Moore?

  was to make you think he doesn't exist. And Bernhard's movie idea was a direct assault on that strategy. And several people warned him, "The devil will try to stop this movie from ever being made." And they might have been right at first, but only in an ironic way. The script sat in development hell for a few years before it was picked up by 20th Century Fox and Turnaround. And there were more script revisions. The title changed a couple of times from "The Antichrist" to "The Birthmark", and then finally, "The Omen." If you haven't seen the movie, I'll give you a quick summary. Spoiler warning, obviously. So we meet Robert Thorne and his wife Catherine on what should be the happiest day of their life, the day that their son is born.

• 4:24Kaelyn Moore?

  Sadly, the doctor tells Robert that the baby died after only one breath. But they can still have a family because there's another baby in the hospital whose own mother died in childbirth, and they can adopt him. Robert agrees, but he keeps this truth from his wife, presenting the baby as their own, and they name him Damien. Everything seems okay at first. But as Damien grows up, unexplained things start happening in the Thorne household. The boy seems to have a strange effect on animals. They're terrified of him, except for this pack of rottweilers that keep appearing outside of the Thorns' house. In the famous scene at Damien's fifth birthday party, his nanny hangs herself from a second-story window in front of all the guests, proclaiming, "It's all for you, Damien."

• 5:09Kaelyn Moore?

  There's another scene when the Thorns arrive at a cathedral to attend a family wedding, when Damien freaks out, attacking Catherine as soon as they're inside of the church. More bodies keep piling up around Damien. A priest who tries to warn Robert that Damien is actually the Antichrist is impaled by a falling steeple. A photographer who tries to help Robert investigate the mystery is beheaded by a pane of glass. And Catherine suffers a miscarriage after accidentally falling over the second-floor railing, an accident that may or may not have been engineered by Damien. And Robert learns that if Damien is the Antichrist, he'll bear the mark of the devil. And one night, while he's asleep, Robert looks for any sign, and he finds a birthmark on his scalp,

• 5:53Kaelyn Moore?

  hidden beneath his hair, in the shape of 666. And with this confirmation, he knows what he has to do: kill his own son. Okay, so I'm not going to fully spoil it for you guys, so I'll stop there, especially because the real point of today's episode is what was happening behind those scenes. After sitting on the shelf for almost two years, once The Omen was picked up by 20th, the production rapidly fell into place. Gregory Peck signed on to play Robert Thorne, opposite Lee Remick as Catherine. Production was slated to start in London in the fall of 1975 if everyone made it there in one piece. But three different people had a rough time even getting to London for shooting.

• 6:35Kaelyn Moore?

  Gregory Peck's flight was plagued with heavy turbulence almost the entire way, and his plane was struck by lightning. Three days later, writer David Seltzer flew the same route with the same airline, and his plane was struck by lightning too. And then it happened a third time during producer Mace Newfield's trip. Now, it's not unheard of for planes to be struck by lightning, but this cluster of lightning strikes is definitely strange. Also, one night during production prep, producer Harvey Bernhard and director Richard Donner were working late. Afterwards, Bernhard offered to drive him home, and he parked on the street in front of Donner's house. It was dark, and Donner's house was on the curve of a hillside.

• 7:19Kaelyn Moore?

  Seconds after Donner stepped out and closed the door, he was caught in the glare of headlights. Another car came careening down the hill out of nowhere and slammed into them, pinning Donner between the two. He managed to walk away from the accident, but just barely. A few inches difference, and according to Donner, he would have lost a leg. But was it just an accident? A crazy Los Angeles driver on a windy road? Well, Bernhard kept going back to what he had been warned about, that the devil will try to stop this movie from being made. Robert Munger worked as a spiritual advisor on the movie. Before he flew to London, he had lunched with a friend, a fellow theologian. After Munger excitedly told him about the production, his friend got really quiet.

• 8:04Kaelyn Moore?

  He thought the whole thing was a bad idea because it was tempting the devil. Now Munger shrugged. He said his faith had nothing to do with the devil. To him, Christianity was about his belief in God and his relationship with Jesus, and this was just a movie. But his friend shook his head and said, "You may not believe it now, but if you go ahead with this movie, before you are done, you'll believe the devil exists." When production started in October of 1975, multiple people commented on a strange atmosphere surrounding the set. It was like this tension that hung in the air, a sense of dread and discomfort that you just couldn't really put your finger on.

• 8:46Kaelyn Moore?

  And it seems like even the animals that were on set felt it too. Now, the film features rottweilers in a couple scenes. In one scene, Robert and his friend, played by David Warner, are attacked and chased out of a cemetery by a wild pack of these rottweilers. But on the day of the shoot, the dogs just wouldn't do anything. Instead of chasing the actors around, the dogs sat patiently on the hillside, perfectly behaved, almost as if they were in a trance. To get the shots they needed, the actors had to hide slabs of meat under their clothes just to get any reaction from the dogs. The whole thing was basically a joke on set. For the final shots, Peck and Warner were replaced by their stunt doubles. Terry Walsh, who played Warner's double, was an experienced stuntman.

• 9:31Kaelyn Moore?

  He had performed stunts using dogs before, and he had really, really, really prepped this scene before shooting. But when he walked onto the set, that palpable tension returned, the strange atmosphere that was always buzzing in the background. And as soon as the director called action, one of the dogs turned on Walsh, and his entire demeanor changed. That trance had been broken. The dog lunged at the stuntman, attacking him so viciously that he actually bit through the protective padding he was wearing and basically mauled him. And as Walsh was sent to the hospital, the rest of the crew was left pretty shaken up. It felt like it was more than just an accident. Like maybe something had made the dog snap.

• 10:16Kaelyn Moore?

  Now, I do personally feel like animals can sense energy that we just can't. And the dogs were not the only animals on set that were having these strange issues. So in the movie, Catherine takes Damien to a drive-through safari park outside of London. It's one of the early hints that something is wrong with the little boy. As they move from exhibit to exhibit, the animals grow increasingly wary of him, like they can smell something wrong with the boy. It all culminates in the baboon enclosure. The entire pack of monkeys swarms Catherine's car, leaping onto the hood, pounding on the windows, and it's truly one of the scariest scenes in the entire movie. And for Lee Remick, who played Catherine, the terror was genuine.

• 11:00Kaelyn Moore?

  To get the reaction that they needed from those baboons, the crew had to do stuff to provoke them. The only problem was that the baboons were completely desensitized to humans. They were in this big, open enclosure where cars would just drive around day in and day out, and they just didn't really care about that stuff anymore. So they came up with a plan B. If they separated the alpha baboon from the pack, the rest of the pack might get riled up. So the on-site veterinarians sedated the leader and held him in the backseat of the car. Director Richard Donner shot with a handheld camera in the backseat with Lee and Harvey, who played Damien in the front. And when the rest of the baboons saw their leader being driven away in that car,

• 11:41Kaelyn Moore?

  they panicked and they started swarming, just like the director wanted. Unfortunately, Lee Remick didn't know how to drive stick shift very well. And as the baboons swarmed in full force, she got so flustered, she kept stalling the car. And as she struggled to flee through that sea of baboons, the alpha started to wake up and realizing what was happening, he grabbed a hold of her hair from the backseat, and he just refused to let go. Somehow, she eventually managed to get the car in gear and drive away safely. But Donner confirmed that most of her screams in the final cut were 100% real. So that's a horrible experience, but it doesn't sound like a curse. If anything, the director probably thought it was a blessing because he got the performance

• 12:26Kaelyn Moore?

  he wanted out of the actress. But there was another incident at the safari park that day that hints at a darker hand at work. So Donner had also shot a sequence in the lion enclosure, though the scene ended up on the cutting room floor. After they were done filming what they needed, the crew moved on to a different part of the park. Traffic resumed, and the guards and the handlers went back to work. But apparently, when one of the guards went back to his booth, the door didn't close all the way, and he didn't notice that it silently swung all the way open. And remember, this was not a normal zoo. The animals were kept in a big, open habitat enclosure. The next time the guard looked up, there were two lions standing in the doorway,

• 13:10Kaelyn Moore?

  and before he could call for help, they attacked him and mauled him to death. But again, maybe that's just an accident, right? Again, it's horrible, but ultimately, not a curse. Except, some people noted that that's exactly what the omen the film is filled with. These tragic occurrences that have plausible explanations, but they're also so horrible that it makes you stop and wonder if something darker is at play. The circumstances of the lion attack would have fit seamlessly into the world of the film. So was it really just an accident? As the weeks of production marched on, the atmosphere on set turned a lot darker. One of the actors started to feel like there was a genuine presence of evil

• 13:53Kaelyn Moore?

  and that it was starting to follow them home. So Gregory Peck had a favorite restaurant in London. It was called Scott's. He went there practically every night after filming wrapped and even had a standing reservation. One night, after a very long shooting day, Peck decided he was gonna sit out that night's meal at Scott's. But one of the producers, Mace Newfield, offered to keep the table and just go in his place. He figured he'd just walk from his hotel because it was barely a 10-minute walk away, and it was a well-lit walk, and there was a view of the park the whole time, so it was a nice walk to take. When he was just a block away from the restaurant, he realized that there were fewer cars on the street than usual. It was still early, though, not even 8 o'clock. But he was alone on the sidewalk, and he could hear his footsteps echoing.

• 14:38Kaelyn Moore?

  And then, when he turned the corner...

• 14:42Kaelyn Moore?

  It sounds like a joke, but the restaurant literally blew up. Broken glass littered the sidewalk, and the entire area in front of Scott's had been cordoned off by the police. There was a gaping hole where the front window used to be, splintered tables and chairs piled up on the pavement. Scott's was actually the latest victim of the IRA's bombing attacks, and Mace Newfield had missed it by just a few moments. At least one person died in the blast. But it wasn't the only near miss that happened during production. Several weeks earlier, the same IRA cell had bombed the Green Park Underground station. Newfield and a couple other crew members had been walking towards the station that night

• 15:24Kaelyn Moore?

  around 9:00 PM, when all of a sudden, they heard that blast. They had avoided it by just a few minutes. Now, so far, in the span of production, Newfield's plane was hit by lightning, and two locations he was heading to blew up on his way there. It's starting to feel a little more than just a coincidence. As filming continued, the subtle sense of disquiet remained on set. So the cast and crew were probably grateful whenever they had a day away from the studio so they could escape the tension and the dread of set. Like this one day. Director Richard Donner and a small crew are at a private airstrip outside of London. They've chartered a small plane for some exterior shots. Simple stuff, like Gregory Peck getting off of the plane,

• 16:09Kaelyn Moore?

  him talking to another character who meets him on the runway. Before they arrived, the charter company offered production a deal. Because they only needed to film the plane on the ground, the company asked if they could charter out the plane to actual customers who would take off after they were done shooting. Basically, the paying passengers would cover most of the cost, and production could get the shots they needed at just a fraction of the price. Even with Gregory Peck as the lead actor, the omen wasn't a big-budget movie. So any chance to save money was very welcome. They agreed to the deal, and they adjusted their shooting schedule accordingly. Production arrived at the airstrip in the morning, setting up their shots, and they started rolling.

• 16:50Kaelyn Moore?

  It was a simple day, maybe a couple of hours to capture the different angles, and then an early wrap. The crew finished packing their gear just as the actual passengers arrived, and by the time the plane was ready for takeoff, all of the elements of production were long gone. But perhaps, one piece of it lingered. That hint of darkness that they had all felt for weeks now. The plane squared up at the end of the runway. The pilot made confirmation with the radio tower, all clear for takeoff. He throttled the engines, gathered speed, advancing down the runway. The wind lifted the little craft into the air, climbing higher and higher. But as they made their ascent, the plane flew directly into a flock of birds.

• 17:33Kaelyn Moore?

  The engine seized, sputtered, and then died completely. Only moments after takeoff, the plane plummeted back towards the ground, crashing at the end of the runway and killing everyone on board. And with nothing in the way to stop the plane, it barreled through the fence at the end of the runway and onto the road, slamming into a passing car, crushing it, and killing all three passengers. And in an even crueler twist, the woman driving the car was the pilot's wife, and their two children had been riding in the backseat. This one horrible accident had claimed the lives of an entire family. And with that, the omen started to feel like it actually might be cursed.

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• 19:20Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Bigelow Tea. By now, you should all know that I'm obviously a very curious person, and I'm also a big tea drinker. So I have always heard about this tea called Bigelow Constant Comment. It's been around forever, and people absolutely love it. I realized I had no idea what it actually tasted like. Obviously, I had to investigate, and now I'm obsessed. Constant Comment is this incredible black tea with real orange rind, cold-pressed orange oil, and sweet spices. The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas in a cup, except you get to drink it all year long. Then I learned the story behind it, which made me love it even more. Constant Comment was created by Ruth Campbell Bigelow and her New York City kitchen in 1945. She shared it with her friends, and everyone kept talking about it.

• 20:06Kaelyn Moore?

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• 20:23Kaelyn Moore?

  Throughout the film, several of the characters in Damien's orbit suffer their own accidental deaths and injuries. Richard Donner was deliberate in how he wanted these to play out in the movie. He wanted each one to be directly on the line between plausible and supernatural. Even when it felt like Damien was the source of the violence, there was always a plausible alternative explanation. And to make all of these accidents feel as realistic as possible, Donner had this amazing cohort of seasoned special effects designers and stuntmen. Now, near the end of the film, after Catherine learns the truth about Damien, she's attacked by Damien's nanny and protector, Mrs. Baylock. She launches Catherine through the window of her hospital room, where she falls to

• 21:05Kaelyn Moore?

  her death, crashing through the roof of a parked ambulance. To capture that on film, Donner turned to a stuntman named Alf Joint, who specialized in high falls. He once jumped 430 feet into a waterfall for a stunt, so a jump from a two-story window was hardly anything for him. And he was supposed to jump off the roof of a building and land on this airbag they had set up on the ground, something that he had done dozens of times. But just as Alf got ready to leap, he felt someone push him from behind, making him lose his balance, and he fell instead of jumping, missing the airbag completely and slamming into the ground.

• 21:47Kaelyn Moore?

  He did manage to somehow survive this fall, but he refused to call it an accident. He insisted that something pushed him off of that roof. But there was no one there who would have done it. People watched him fall, and they confirmed that there was no push. It was as if that horrible presence they had all been feeling had pushed them. The curse was getting stronger, but no one could have imagined what was about to happen. In the movie, Robert Thorne investigates Damien's background and the possibility that he's the Antichrist with the help of this photographer, Keith Jennings. Moments after Jennings tries to convince Thorne that he must kill his son to eliminate

• 22:29Kaelyn Moore?

  the threat, he's decapitated by a huge pane of plate glass. Originally, the scene was scripted so that the glass would fall from above. Workers would be hoisting the pane up the side of a building to place it in a window, the cable would snap, and the glass would fall onto Jennings, slicing through his neck. However, when it came time to rig this stunt, the lead special effects designer, John Richardson, ran into a couple issues. Instead of falling straight down, the glass kept sweeping out at an angle as the huge pane of glass caught the air, so he came up with an alternative that eventually became the scene in the movie. In that sequence, Robert and Jennings travel to meet with an Antichrist expert in Jerusalem.

• 23:10Kaelyn Moore?

  He tells Robert to look for the mark of the devil, a birthmark in the shape of three sixes, to confirm Damien's true identity. And then he gives Robert seven silver daggers and instructs him to kill Damien. Robert is shocked and horrified by the prospect, but Jennings insists it has to be done. While they argue on the street, Robert throws the daggers down an alleyway in refusal, but Jennings won't let him give up. He goes after those daggers and starts collecting them. While Jennings searches the ground, a flatbed truck carrying a huge pane of glass parks at the top of the alley. When the driver gets out, he knocks the parking brake loose without realizing it, and slowly

• 23:52Kaelyn Moore?

  the truck creeps backwards, gathering speed as it slips down the sloping alley until it rams into a barrier. On impact, one of the panes of glass slips free of its tether, and it shoots off the truck bed just as Jennings stands up, holding the daggers. And it slices clean through his neck and crashes into the storefront behind him, his severed head tumbling after. On the day of filming, the new stunt pretty much went off without a hitch, and Richard Donner agreed that it made for an even more impactful moment than the original, and he gave all of the credit to John Richardson. But what happened next is really what would go on to cement the legend of the Omen Curse.

• 24:35Kaelyn Moore?

  After production wrapped, John Richardson was hired to work on another movie, A Bridge Too Far. It was this World War II epic set in the Netherlands. I imagine it was a nice change of pace after weeks of working on The Omen. One night, John was out driving on his way back from a long shoot day. He was with his girlfriend, Liz Moore, who also worked in special effects. In fact, she had also worked on The Omen. It was late, almost after midnight, and the roads were dark and winding. Maybe John was exhausted, maybe the curve in the road was just sharper than he expected. Maybe he was distracted by the radio suddenly buzzing with static, when all of a sudden, it was a head-on collision.

• 25:17Kaelyn Moore?

  John was thrown from the car and was knocked completely unconscious. And when he woke up, he saw just how horrible the scene was. On one side of him, he saw Liz, who had been decapitated by a tire that smashed into the car. And on the other side, he turned and he saw this big, blue street sign, one of the headlights making it gleam in the darkness, and it read 66.6 kilometers to Amen, a nearby city. In the decades following the film's release, director Richard Donner hasn't really put much stock in the rumors of a curse. He thinks that no matter what kind of movie you're filming, the themes and the tone are always going to be amplified in your memory.

• 26:02Kaelyn Moore?

  They were making a horror movie, so the horrible things that happened are the ones that stuck out. And if they had been making a comedy, all anyone would remember are the laughs. But both producer Harvey Bernhard and advisor Robert Munger walked away from that experience with a totally changed perspective. Munger had to admit that his friend was right. After everything he had seen the devil throw at them, he was now a believer. The Omen was hardly the first horror movie people believed to be cursed. Actually, we can go even farther back to one of the first horror movies ever, and we can still find signs that something just wasn't right.

• 26:41Kaelyn Moore?

  Nosferatu is the OG film vampire, and even today, over 100 years later, he's horrific. Even if you haven't seen the original 1922 movie, I guarantee that you recognize Count Orlok. Long, spindled fingers, studded with sharp claws, he has this towering frame, he has pale white skin, and two pronged fangs, like a rat. Nosferatu is arguably one of the most important horror films ever made, not only because of its influence on so many subsequent horror movies and filmmakers, but because in many ways, it defined our expectations for horror and horror movies, which is wild because no one was ever supposed to see this film.

• 27:23Kaelyn Moore?

  But before we get into that part of it, let me give you a quick summary. The full title, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, was a silent film released in Germany in 1922. It follows the story of Thomas Hutter, a real estate agent, his wife Ellen, and the bizarre pseudo-love triangle they find themselves in with Count Orlok, a Transylvanian nobleman who is also a vampire. Hutter is sent to Transylvania to meet Orlok and finalize his purchase of a house in Hutter's town, Weisborg. On his way there, Hutter stops at an inn where the people there are terrified just by the mention of Orlok's name. And in his room that night, Hutter finds a book on vampires and decides he's going to bring it with him. When he arrives at Orlok's castle, he meets with the count and presents him with the contract to finalize and sign.

• 28:08Kaelyn Moore?

  Orlok sees a picture of Ellen amongst Hutter's belongings and comments on her lovely neck. At dinner, Hutter cuts his thumb, and he's horrified when Orlok tries to suck the wound clean. And then, when he wakes up the next morning, he finds two fresh puncture wounds on his neck. After consulting the book about vampires, he begins to suspect that Orlok is a vampire. And then, while wandering around the castle, he finds Orlok sleeping in a coffin. So suspicions confirmed. Now terrified for his life, Hutter hides in Orlok's castle. He sees Orlok load several coffins onto a carriage before climbing into one himself,

• 28:50Kaelyn Moore?

  and then, riding off into the night, Hutter makes his escape and he flees back home to Weisborg. And soon after, Orlok also arrives in Weisborg and moves into his new house. He brings with him a plague of pestilence, spread by rats throughout the city. Hutter's friends and neighbors start dying from this disease. Ellen then finds a book about vampires and realizes the truth about Orlok and the source of the plague. And to save the town, Ellen decides to sacrifice herself. She offers herself to Orlok, allowing him to drink her blood, distracting him until sunrise, and when the sunlight falls on Orlok, he's destroyed, vanishing, leaving only a puff of smoke behind. Now, Nosferatu went on to define the vampire legend, and the film created tropes and lore

• 29:35Kaelyn Moore?

  that still hold today, like the idea that vampires spread disease and also that they can be killed by sunlight. That is original to the first Nosferatu. That point, actually vampires being killed in sunlight, was due to the film's budget. The production didn't have money for fancy special effects, so blasting Orlok into a puff of smoke was the solution to make him disappear. For the most part, Nosferatu was a brainchild of producer Albin Grau. As he tells it, he found inspiration for the picture while he was serving in World War I. Grau claimed that in the winter of 1916, while he was serving in the German army, he was dispatched to a small village where he met a Serbian farmer. The old man told Grau that his father had been killed in a blood feud and was buried

• 30:19Kaelyn Moore?

  without proper sacraments. The unholy act transformed his father into a vampire, and night after night, he haunted the village. Grau claimed that the man showed him an official document describing the way that they went and dug up his father's body to end the torment. The paper claimed that the corpse was perfectly preserved, except for the two front teeth, which now extended well below his bottom lip and two pointed fangs. The local priest drove a stake through his heart, the Nosferatu's heart, and it let out a sigh and then died. Now, this story really resonated with Grau when he heard it. He had just come back from the war, and he likened World War I to a cosmic vampire drinking

• 31:04Kaelyn Moore?

  the blood of millions. Now, after his time in the army, Grau returned to Berlin, and in kind of an attempt to make sense of the horror that he witnessed in war, he became a serious student of the occult. He was a member of the Rosicrucian Magical Order, and later, the Fraternitas Saturni under the name Master Pacitius. Now, back in 1922, dabbling in the occult was not necessarily all that uncommon. Everyone had suffered so much death between the war and then the Spanish flu that happened afterwards. Those that remained searched for answers in mysticism. Why were they spared when so many of their loved ones weren't? What happened to those that they had lost?

• 31:48Kaelyn Moore?

  But Grau was a major player in German mystic circles, even taking part in the infamous Weyda Conference, where occult leaders from around the world gathered in Germany, including the most famous occultist at the time, Aleister Crowley. Now Grau's connection to the occult was peppered all throughout Nosferatu. The occult is literally baked into the film. The letters between Orlok and his servant Nok, who also happens to be Hutter's boss, are written in Anakian. Anakian was a 16th century occult language recorded in a British alchemist's personal journals. Only someone who was very steeped in the world of magic would even know that this language existed.

• 32:31Kaelyn Moore?

  There were also references to a Swiss alchemist, who the Rosicrucians regarded as a prophet. Now ironically, this alchemist was actually one of the first opponents to bloodletting as a medical treatment. Kind of ironic for vampires. Grau also contributed to Orlok's backstory, that he was created by an archdemon, Belial. In the Bible, Belial is linked with pestilence, and Orlok was a literal bringer of the disease, arriving in Weisberg with thousands of plague-infested rats. And he also looks like a rat, which was another choice that Grau specifically was responsible for. Now, as occultism later fell out of favor, it cast a pall on the fates of those connected to Nosferatu.

• 33:14Kaelyn Moore?

  And that's when the discussion of the film being cursed really began.

• 33:21Kaelyn Moore?

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• 34:02Kaelyn Moore?

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• 34:23Kaelyn Moore?

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• 35:06Kaelyn Moore?

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• 35:49Kaelyn Moore?

  and get a bonus of up to $400 when you sign up with eligible direct deposit. Terms apply. SoFi Bank, N A Member FDIC. When you're ready to invest or pay down debt, it's all right there. SoFi members can also access SoFi Wealth's world-class financial planners. Get started at sofi.com/HeartStarts. This is a paid advertisement by SoFi Technologies and is not intended to be financial advice. So many people connected to the film, both cast and crew, either disappeared or died under strange circumstances. By embracing the influence of mystic arts, had they brought it on themselves? For one, many of the cast and crew started disappearing.

• 36:31Kaelyn Moore?

  First, screenwriter Henrik Galleen disappeared in 1933. Actor John Gottout vanished around the same time and was only heard from again when people read about his murder in 1942. However, anyone with a basic knowledge of history can probably tell what was going on. A lot of people believe that Nosferatu's curse was actually the result of fascism. A lot of people believe that Nosferatu's curse was maybe caused by something other than the paranormal. First, the screenwriter Henrik Galleen was Jewish, and he was forced to leave Germany in 1933. Actors Gustav Wengenheim and Alexander Granach, who played Hutter and Nok respectively,

• 37:13Kaelyn Moore?

  they both fled Germany for the USSR because of their communist backgrounds. Jewish actor John Gottout, who played Dr. Van Helsing, he went into hiding in Poland, disguising himself as a Catholic priest and was murdered by the SS in 1942. As for Grau, when the Nazis came to power, all kinds of groups were targeted by the regime. The Fraternita Saturni Grau's Order was outlawed in 1936, and he was threatened with persecution. He did manage to flee to Switzerland, where he lived until the end of World War II. Now, director F.W. Murnau was actually gay. And sensing the rising Nazi tide in his homeland, he moved to Hollywood in 1927. Unlike so many others, Murnau did continue his trade,

• 37:57Kaelyn Moore?

  cementing his legacy as one of the most influential directors of the silent film era. His first American movie, Sunrise, won three Oscars at the first-ever Academy Award ceremony. In 1931, Murnau was on a high. His latest film, Taboo, was set to release in a few weeks. He owned two properties, a house in Hollywoodland and a farm in Oregon. He was also in love, but something prickled in the back of his consciousness. A warning. Murnau was expected in New York City for all the press and hubbub leading up to the release. But he couldn't shake this feeling that his trip was doomed. At his last reading, his astrologer had cautioned him against traveling on land. He would just have to put his foot down. There was no way that he could board a train and take it to New York.

• 38:41Kaelyn Moore?

  Instead, on the afternoon of March 10, 1931, Murnau left his house in Santa Monica with his chauffeur and personal valet, driving south on the PCH towards the marina. Instead of a train, he was going to take a steamship to New York. But as the car raced down the careening curves of the coastal highway, a truck approached from the other direction, and it drifted over the line. Swerving to avoid a head-on collision, Murnau's car skidded off the road and down the steep embankment, barrel rolling end over end, eventually landing upside down. Murnau died the next day from his injuries. And a lot of people point to the fact that the astrologer did warn him about traveling on land.

• 39:25Kaelyn Moore?

  Now, the final element of the Nosferatu curse has nothing to do with the occult. If Murnau and Grau and the rest were really cursed, what they suffered from was actually copyright laws. See, even though Grau waxed poetic about the Serbian farmer and the scourge of World War I, it was plain to anyone with eyes that Nosferatu drew heavily from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Sure, they changed locations, they gave everyone new names, they added their own little flourishes to the vampire lore, but the basic framework was practically identical. When Bram Stoker's widow Florence found out about the unlicensed adaptation, she sued the absolute pants off of Grau and his production company for copyright violation. And not really a surprise to anyone, but she won the case.

• 40:10Kaelyn Moore?

  When she realized that she wouldn't receive any of the proceeds from the film, though, because there weren't any, the studio had declared bankruptcy, she insisted instead that all of the copies of Nosferatu be destroyed. And for some reason, the judge agreed. So, the original film negatives were shredded. Except, this movie has lasted over 100 years. You can't kill it like a vampire. It's even on YouTube. Luckily, copies had already been sent to France, Spain, Japan, and America. They not only survived, but they continued to be copied and shared around the world. Only now, it was with this air of secrecy. Just watching the movie was doing something forbidden.

• 40:52Kaelyn Moore?

  Florence Stoker's campaign of vengeance transformed Nosferatu into its own legend, a haunting creature of the shadows that refuses to die. So maybe it's just a curse of irony. But what do you guys think? Now I turn it over to you. After hearing everything, do you believe that these films are cursed? Even just watching them might make you curse, some say. So I hope that you go and watch these movies this weekend. Now that we're in the spooky season, watch them and get back to me. That's all I have for you this week. We're gonna be back here next week with another episode for you all, still in spooky season. I will see you then, and until then, stay curious.

• 41:31Kaelyn Moore?

  Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research and writing by Abigail Cannon. Sound design and mix by Redrum Creative. Video editing by Creative Step. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jordanigan, the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request, check out heartstarts pounding.com.

• 41:54Kaelyn Moore?

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• 42:36Kaelyn Moore?

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