Carol Anne Freeling

Two sequels, 1986's Poltergeist II The Other Side and 1988's Poltergeist III, and a 2015 remake that nobody talks about since it really wasn't good, or success, followed in its ghostly wake.

According to IMDb.com, Dominique Dune, who plays Daniel Freeling, and Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Ann Freeling, are buried in the same cemetery, Los Angeles' Westwood Memorial Park.

22-year-old Dune was strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, in the driveway of her West Hollywood home, October 30, 1982, and having been declared brain dead, died four days later, never gaining consciousness.

On February 1, 1988, O'Rourke died on the operating table of intestinal stenosis at the age of 12.

As soon as it involves the names of real life people, my knowledge just gone.

Carol Anne interacts with spirits through which household electronic device in Poltergeist?

Oh, the TV.

Correct.

It is only a transition to a different sphere of consciousness.

Carol Anne is not like those she's with.

She is a living presence in their spiritual earthbound plane.

They are attracted to the one thing about her that is different from themselves.

In fact, Heather was lunching in the MGM commissary with her mother one day waiting for her sister to wrap a scene when Steven Spielberg spotted her.

Spielberg was Poltergeist's writer and producer, and Heather fit his vision for Carol Ann Freeling to a T. Spielberg was in the middle of making his latest masterpiece, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, and was therefore contractually prohibited from directing another movie at the same time, which is why MGM hired Toby Hooper, of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame, to direct Spielberg's Poltergeist script.

But Spielberg couldn't divorce himself from the production.

He was on set just as much as Hooper.

Those, of course, were Hollywood embellishments to the true story of the Hermanns' 1958 haunting.

And that true story was used, nearly 25 years later, as the basis for the poltergeist screenplay written by Steven Spielberg, Michael Graess, and Mark Victor.

In the movie, Carol Ann Freeling, played by five-year-old newcomer Heather O'Rourke, the one Spielberg met in the MGM commissary, is the manifestation of Life Magazine's psychokinetic child.

She doesn't move objects with her mind, but she is clairvoyant and communicates with ghosts directly through the family's TV set.

So yeah.

Drew Barrymore, um, actually auditioned for this movie for the, uh, what's her name? Carol Anne.

The kid?

Yeah.

... and, "My wife is 32.

My oldest daughter's 16."

[laughs] Oh, well.

But they say later in the novelization that this is, that, uh, Diane is his second wife, and Dominique Dunne as...

Anyway, um, I, um-

Opes

... th- he says, also refers to her as "my daughter" and not "our daughter" at one point.

Oh, interesting.

I could get.

Carol Anne, yeah.

Carol Anne was interviewing Coraline.

Coraline.

Coraline.

Um, the, the, the mum's played by JoBeth Williams as Diane Freeling, so you've got Steve and Diane Freeling.

Um, you've got the eldest daughter, um, played by Dominique Dunne, who's Dana Freeling, and he's, they've got a younger brother, Robbie Freeling, and the star of the show is Carol Anne Freeling.

So if anyone's seen that-

Oh, I just do one thing quickly