Director Steven Spielberg’s film sees an ordinary family tormented by an evil apparition that later takes the youngest daughter Carol Anne into another realm. But the reality behind the fiction is equally as frightening. The film is loosely based on events at a house on Long Island, New York, where the Hermann family were plagued by a so-called poltergeist. Between February and March 1958, bottle tops and lids inexplicably popped, ornaments flew around the house, a heavy bookshelf mysteriously fell over and a Virgin Mary figure soared through the air and struck a mirror 12 feet away. The family, who moved away soon after, believed the events were somehow connected to an ancient Native American burial site near their home – something that features heavily in Spielberg’s movie.