Further Reading for Rebecca Zahau & The Poltergeist Curse

ZAHAU: Into the Belly of the Whale

Episode: 8

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The “Poltergeist curse” is a rumored curse attached to the Poltergeist trilogy and its crew, derived from the deaths of two young cast members in the six years between the releases of the first and third films. The rumor and the surrounding deaths were explored in a 2002 episode of E! True Hollywood Story titled “Curse of Poltergeist”.^[

Dominique Dunne, who played the eldest daughter Dana in the first film, died on November 4, 1982, at age 22 after being strangled by her former boyfriend John Thomas Sweeney.^[19] He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison, but was paroled after serving three and a half years.^[

Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Anne in all three Poltergeist films, died on February 1, 1988 at the age of 12 due to complications from an acute bowel obstruction.

Rebecca Mawii Zahau (March 15, 1979 – July 13, 2011) was discovered dead at the Spreckels Mansion in Coronado, California, where she lived with her millionaire boyfriend, Medicis Pharmaceutical CEO Jonah Shacknai. Zahau’s death occurred two days after Shacknai’s 6-year-old son Max took a fatal fall from a staircase banister in the same beachfront mansion. Zahau was the only adult present at the time of the child’s fall. San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore announced on September 2, 2011, that Zahau’s death was a suicide while the younger Shacknai’s was an accident, and that neither was the result of foul play. Members of Zahau’s family disputed the finding that her death was suicide and filed a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit against Jonah Shacknai’s brother Adam. The jury in that civil trial found Adam Shacknai responsible for Zahau’s death and granted her family a $5 million judgment for loss of love and companionship as well as an additional $167,000 for the loss of financial support Zahau would have provided her mother and siblings.