As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- In her first visit, Tangina tells the Freeling family that Carol Anne sees the beast as "another child". This seems incredibly fishy, since the first time Diane got to talk with her daughter through the TV, Carol Anne said "There's somebody here" and then started screaming bloody murder. Is Carol Anne intensely afraid of other children, is Tangina lying about this for some reason, or is there something else going on?
- The Beast is a thoroughly evil, calculating creature that knows how to best trap / trick you; the unfortunate souls who are his victims (all the other souls in the other dimension) however, are not as manipulative and are not deceiving Carol Anne at all (in fact they are so desparate that they don't care at all that they are scaring the crap out of Carol Anne). So yes, it is logical that the Beast's behavior (disguise, if you will) is different than the rest's.
- The development company built Cuesta Verde on top of a cemetery, moving the headstones but leaving the coffins. And yet they allow the people living there to dig swimming pools? Mr. Freeling even uses how free homeowners are to make modifications to their homes as part of his sales pitch. Is the company not at all afraid that someone's going to dig a little too deep and discover their nasty secret?
- Probably just an oversight in the writing. Also a good excuse to have some scary scenes in the pool with the coffins and bodies. If you really want a good explanation, maybe it was a very old cemetery and the development company also added a bunch of dirt before they did the sodding and landscaping, and figured that between the ground settling and the extra dirt, no one was likely to hit a coffin by putting in a ten foot pool.
- The housing development is located in a narrow valley (as seen when Steven and his boss climb a hill to look down on it). As the troper above pointed out, tons of fill dirt were probably used to level the ground before building (for that matter, they'd need a significant amount of depth just to install a sewage/drainage system for the neighborhood). Also consider that in the hilltop shot, we see that the development is pretty huge, likely much bigger than the original graveyard. Only a relatively small number of lots (including the Freelings') would be located on top of the graveyard. Property owners outside the boundaries of the graveyard proper could dig as deep as they like; they'd probably strike oil before they hit a coffin.
- Or maybe Steven is just wrong about why all those bodies and coffins are popping up out of the ground. We've already seen the ghosts teleporting their grave goods into the Freeling house; they could have used the same process to send the entire contents of their graves back to their original locations. In truth, the bodies might have been dumped in a landfill rather than the construction company having to dig hundreds of holes on the hilltop (and then doing so again when the next phase of development installed more houses on the valley's rim).
- This part is sadly a little Truth in Television from the alleged haunting case that inspired some elements here. Even if one doesn't believe the haunting tale it is true the family bought the house and went to dig a swimming pool with no knowledge or advance warning. It was only when a long time resident saw and came over to warn them to know that, yes there could be bodies where they were digging. (And there were at least two).
- Many people have wondered why only the Freeling family was haunted when many other people also lived on top of the graveyard. The movie has two scenes that explain this: one in which Steven tells a prospective buyer that his was the first family to move into the neighborhood, and another in which Steven's boss mentions that Carol Anne was born in the house. The novelization makes it even more explicit: Carol Anne possessed an extremely powerful life-force since birth, and because she was born in the burial ground, all the ghosts immediately flocked to her. The real question then becomes...why didn't the Freelings start experiencing paranormal activity immediately after Carol Anne was born? Why did the ghosts just hang around chilling for five years until the events of the movie?
- Maybe the ghosts, or more specifically the Reverend, required a conscious mind rather than just a living body. They had to wait until Carol Anne was enough of her own person to manipulate her and get her to do things for them.
- One has to consider that the ghosts haunting the house weren't malicious by any means, the events unfolding in the movie were all the Beast's doing, if it wasn't for that dark entity then the ghosts most likely would have remained enthralled by Caron Anne's spiritual force but without doing anything hostile. As for why the Beast didn't act sooner, my guess is that he had to build up "strength" (in a metaphysical sense, of course) to enact his plans, as Tangina explains that punching through the dimensional barriers in order to manifest in the material world isn't exactly a small feat.
- Don't forget the dead canary scene, and how its little coffin-box got plowed up so the Freelings' pool could be installed. Sure, it's just a bird, but symbolism is bound to be very meaningful to ghosts, given that their state of being is all mental, not physical. Having yet another grave, however tiny, violated in the same way as their own probably gave the otherwise-benign spirits a surge of angry power, which Kane's ghost hijacked and directed towards breaching the barriers. At which point, the really intense hauntings get started, of a kind that the Freeling adults can't just brush off as ground tremors or their daughter sleepwalking.
- Again in the novelization, Tangina explains that there are many dimensions and that the one that these particular ghosts occupy is not the afterlife, but a pocket dimension ruled by the Beast: a literal embodiment of greed that imprisoned the spirits solely for the sake of possessing them. The Beast may have ruled this dimension for eons until by pure coincidence, five years after Carol Anne's birth, the Light finally arrived to take the trapped souls to the true afterlife. In danger of losing its entire collection, the Beast punched a hole between dimensions and stole Carol Anne to use her powerful life-force as a pseudo-Light in order to distract its captive souls from the real Light. This is why Tangina orders Carol Anne to "run to the Light" (but not into it) to protect herself from the Beast. The Beast isn't afraid of the light; it just doesn't want its prisoners to notice the Light is there. The moment Steven yanked the rope and dragged the Beast's head into our world was the moment the Beast's connection to its prisoners snapped and they all made a break for the Light, leaving the Beast alone in its dimension and seeking revenge on the family that ruined its perfect prison.
- Okay, PG-13 didn't exist, and Star Wars got away with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru and the dismemberment, but how the fuck did the first movie get away with that face-peeling scene? Sure, it's obviously fake, but so was ever horror movie gore scene at the time, and that's significantly worse than anything seen in Friday the 13th or Halloween.
- Poltergeist was pretty much the forerunner of a small spree of films that led directly to the creation of the PG-13 rating. The film was originally rated R, but Spielberg managed to talk the MPAA into a PG.
- I think because the face-peeling scene was revealed to be a frightening hallucination rather than it occurring in reality to the character, so there was a little more justification. In the PG-rated kid's movie SomethingWickedThisWayComes, there's a brief scene of a child seeing his own severed head, but this is just an illusion designed to scare him. If the character had actually been decapitated, it would probably earn an R-rating. Similarly lots of characters seemingly die horrific deaths in the PG film TheGate, but they are all restored at the end of the movie. Apparently you can occasionally show characters undergoing Nightmare Fuel mutilations in a PG movie as long as you have the effect undone in a later scene, and reveal that it never actually occurred.
- This is probably a dumb question, but why did they have to put Diane and Carol Anne in the bathtub after they returned from the Other Side?
- Not having access to the novelization, I can only speculate that it was to remove the ectoplasmic residue that covered them, or bar the Beast from noticing their precise location right away. Water has historically been a deterrent to evil spirits like vampires and dullahans.
- I have watched the entirety of the first film and I noticed something about the ghost on the staircase, which looked like a glowing woman wearing a white dress. Who is the ghost on the staircase? Is she the leader of the ghosts? Does she help Carol Anne stay away from the light?
- In the novelization (which incidentally is a wealth of world-building information about the film, and which was declared canon by Spielberg), the woman in white isn't a ghost (in that she was never a human and she's not dead) but a powerful, benevolent entity called the Waiting Woman. Just as the Beast is the embodiment of greed, the Waiting Woman is the embodiment of endless patience (which makes her infuriating to deal with, since she cannot comprehend that other people's time isn't as limitless at her own). Her presence gives the trapped souls the strength to endure their endless imprisonment, while she herself waits eternally for a mysterious "him" who never comes. Through Tangina, the Waiting Woman confirms that she protects Carol Anne by distracting the Beast and other dangerous entities who might harm her.
- Tangina is proved to be a pretty powerful and accurate spiritualist, and for the majority of the movie, she's 100% correct about everything. Why then does she proclaim the house "clean" when it's clearly not? Is this assumed to be her one slip-up? Because considering that in the final attack, the entire house folds up and nearly takes the whole family with it, that's one hell of an oops-my-bad on her part.
- I interpreted it more as all of the BAD spirit energy was gone ....at that moment. They had definitely exorcised the spirits from the house and got Carol Anne back, but that does not necessarily mean the gateway was closed. The Beast was still able to claw its way back into the house through the still open gateway from the spirit world.
- It's possible that the gateway was indeed closed, Tangina sensed it and thus made that claim. Thing is, The Beast is an entity fueled by hatred, and the Freelings messing up with his masterplan probably gave him enough juice to once again punch through the barrier between planes.
- Wouldn't also be the first time in alleged real-life hauntings that an entity exorcised from a house tries to get back in. Especially given how strong and relentless this fictional one is, it seems quite possible he just tried again.
- In her expository monologue, Tangina makes mention that she had no idea of what the Beast was, it was something unlike anything she's ever experienced in all her years as a medium. It's perfectly possible that she misjudged how powerful the entity was, and assumed that it wouldn't be able to again punch its way into the material plane.
- The sequels' backstory for the haunting suggest that the "Beast" didn't reside in the house, it resided in the cavern under the house where all those people died.
- One could also assume that since there is a Time Skip to when the Freelings have already arranged to move, found a new house and organized the moving van - that the Beast took a while to recover or get powerful enough to punch its way through. So the house was clean. It just didn't stay that way.
- The mother is thirty-two. With a sixteen year-old daughter. Maybe she's not the mother after all. Might explain the height difference.
- 32-16=16. You can have a child at sixteen. It's the not ideal by any means, but it happens. And with a helpful family and partner, some are able to have a successful life.
- Not the case here, however, as the father specifically tells a workman that his first daughter's mother is dead. (The pool-digging crew had been praising Dana's looks, and saying she must take after her mother.) Mrs. Freeling is clearly Dana's stepmother.
- That doesn't happen in the movie. (maybe you're thinking of Hellraiser when that exact situation does occur.)
- Go back and watch it again. It's the bit where one of the pool-diggers leans in the kitchen window for a cup of coffee.
- ...Nope, doesn't happen. Diane's the one that finds the pool-digger, and the entire scene consists of her asking how it was, him saying it was great, her asking for her cup back, and him saying that she makes great coffee. There was a scene where the diggers were praising Dana's looks (before the coffee thing), and after she flipped them off they might have commented on her mother's looks, but the father never says that Diane's Dana's stepmother.
- Listen to his description of his family members; he specifically refers to Dana as "MY daughter," not "our", like he does with the other two children.
- The novelization makes it a bit clearer that Diane is, in fact, Steven's second wife and that Dana is his daughter from a first marriage.
- Note that there's an age gap between Steve and Diane. Since they're now both adults in their 30s (Diane is 32, Steve maybe 38 or so) this now isn't remarkable at all, but if Steve would have gotten Diane pregnant when she was 16, he must have been about 22, which raises some unfortunate implications as it would technically make it statutory rape even if she consented. Clearly, Steve used to be married to a woman closer to his own age when he was younger, and had Dana with her; he didn't get together with Diane until later. Thus also why Carol Anne and Robbie are closer in age to each other but the age gap between both of them and Dana is much bigger.
- 32-16=16. You can have a child at sixteen. It's the not ideal by any means, but it happens. And with a helpful family and partner, some are able to have a successful life.
- Steve mentions to a couple he's showing a house to that they have very generous construction standards in the area. He has a neighbor who put a wading pool and an aqueduct in their yard, and he himself is having a swimming pool built...in a yard that's right over a cemetery. How is it none of the bulldozers digging up his backyard (that pool is at least ten feet deep) never encountered a coffin (No, the cigar box doesn't count)? And if the development company wants to keep the bodies a secret, why allow people to do things like that?
- Possibly the old cemetery lay at the bottom of a gully, that got covered over by 20 feet of infill when the subdivision was landscaped. That'd make the violent emergence of those coffins in the finale even more impressive.
- I just can't see even the most unscrupulous developer spending the money to cover that much acreage with that much fill just to avoid moving the coffins. That would cost a lot less.
- It's more common now than you'd think. The 2008 real estate crash caused a lot of developments to be canceled before the fill in and leveling stage occurred, which is why you sometimes see odd things in fields off the side of a road like a sewer manhole sticking over ten feet above the ground.
- Not if the gully was only big enough for the Frehlings' house and a little of the nearby street; they could just dump the dirt that was already being excavated to put in the streets and cellars there. That would explain why it's only one house that's haunted, not every house in the neighborhood.
- And wouldn't the bodies have been disturbed anyway when they were building the houses, if they were all buried at the standard depth?
- Alternately, the bodies weren't left behind at all, just the ghosts of the deceased. They'd already teleported a bunch of their burial goods into the house; doing the same with their actual bodies and coffins couldn't be much different. The father's assumption that the bodies had been left behind was him jumping to conclusions.
- Why would a couple of small children have a poster for Alien, an R-rated horror film, hanging in their room alongside their Sesame Street posters? Particularly considering one child explicitly has problems with being afraid of things.
- Man, it was the 80s. Back then it was taken by granted that kids would find a way to watch R rated movies, Why do you think stuff like Rambo and Robocop had cartoon shows?
- It was back when less parents were wusses about what their kids watched. There are still people who let their kids watch R-rated movies.
- Robbie's also not that young. If he's the same age as his actor, he's about ten. Not a completely unreasonable age to have seen the odd horror movie.
- If the son hated that clown so much, why does he keep it at the foot of his bed staring at him? Wouldn't he at least put it in the closet?
- I's been a while since I read it, but I believe the novel had him finding the clown doll right before the ghosts show up (left by the Beast?) and keeping it. Carol Anne vanishes right afterward and he was a little preoccupied, thus not noticing how creepy the thing was until after she returned.
- Also, he's a boy. He probably wouldn't want to admit that he was scared of a clown. This was before coulrophobia was as known or accepted as a normal phobia (people in loads of 80s and 90s shows would always be embarrassed to be scared of clowns).
- In the novelization, the clown was a childhood gift from Robbie's now-deceased grandmother, so it's possible that as much as he dislikes it, his parents might have pressured him to keep it, in a "oh, you don't really want to get rid of that, do you? Grandma gave it to you when you were little" sort of way.
