The director of three ‘Saw’ movies has shared eerie footage of the terrifying moment some paranormal activity appeared to unfold behind the scenes of another film.
Darren Lynn Bousman, 45, spoke with DailyMail.com about the hair-raising incidents that plagued the cast and crew of his 2011 horror flick, called ’11-11-11′, to the point of making them ‘question our sanity’.
Creepy video shows the moment shutters on the 150-year-old haunted house they were filming outside began rising in the background of a scene – despite the crew being unable to shift them even a millimeter when they tried moving them before.
The shutters, which Bousman said were attached to a long-defunct rope-and-pulley system, appear to move due to an invisible force, unnoticed by the oblivious actors in the foreground.
‘Stuff that made absolutely no sense happened in that house,’ Bousman said, while speaking from the set of his latest film, Monster, in Connecticut. ‘The things were so subtle which made it so perfect. It made us question our sanity.’
Bousman recalled several more paranormal incidents that unfolded in the Spanish mansion – while also discussing his latest venture: an immersive Halloween experience called Exiled enthralling Saw fans this year in Kansas City.
‘The worst movie I ever made was 11-11-11. I got so emotionally wrapped up in that,’ Bousman, who directed Saw II, III and IV said.
‘We shot it in a 150-year-old house 40 minutes outside of Barcelona that has three confirmed deaths in it.’
He said the movie’s editor, Martin Hunter, who is known for his work with Stanley Kubrick on Full Metal Jacket, was going through the tapes for a scene outside the home when they noticed something ominous.
‘Martin said, “What’s going on in this scene?”,’ Bousman recalled. ‘He points to the screen, we were outside of this palatial estate.
‘It had big wooden blinds outside the windows. They needed a pulley system which took two people to operate via a rope, which was nailed through to the walls outside.
‘We tried to close them in the movie, and we couldn’t do it. One was broken.
‘In the background, you can see a black see-through figure and all three of the shutters on the windows all slam closed.
‘I know from being in that house that it could not happen.’
Bousman said there were ‘tons of other things we couldn’t explain’ including cast and crew members getting ‘unexpectedly ill’ and an eerie incident involving a skeptical cinematographer who joined the set later in the production.
‘He shows up on set, he walks in the first day and he says, “You guys are a bunch of weirdos to think this s**t is real”,’ Bousman told DailyMail.com.
‘Seconds later, a chandelier falls and hits him on the head. It should not have fallen in the way that it did. He had to go to the ER.’
Another seemingly haunted clip from 11-11-11 showed lead actor Timothy Gibbs speaking, while a loud crackly voice can be heard rasping in the background.
But the actors in the scene were completely oblivious.
‘On the microphone, you can hear a very very very loud voice that is speaking… but he (Gibbs) doesn’t react to it,’ Bousman said. ‘No one reacts to it.’
The director said things escalated to the point where two people quit because they could no longer stand a permeating ‘heaviness in the air’ surrounding the house.
Staff even began testing for mold that could have been prompting the illness and unwanted visions – but Bousman said air samples came back ‘completely clear’.
They started to probe into the dark history of the home – which included a story about it being haunted by the ghost of a little girl, and that it once sheltered an eccentric Spanish cult.
‘There was a crazy story about the first ownership,’ Bousman said. ‘They had a daughter who was killed, and her father buried her in the basement, in the 1900s.’
Producers also discovered strange ‘H’ symbols branded all over the windows and doorways of the mansion – something they later came to realize stood for Spanish cult ‘Humo’.
The home once sheltered several members of the cult, who would host crazed sex parties inside.
Bousman said it was his love of haunted houses as a child that sparked his career path, but he had never had a real-life experience with supernatural activity until filming ’11-11-11′.
‘It opened my eyes. I love this stuff. But I have never seen anything,’ Bousman said. ‘That was the first time that I was like, there’s more here than we know about.’
Bousman has branched out from movies to create real-life haunted house shows over the last several years. ‘In 2015, I started splitting my time from movies into immersive experiences,’ Bousman told DailyMail.com.
‘It’s such a unique art form because it takes what I love about movies and makes them active.’
His latest venture took him back to Kansas City, where he grew up and which he describes as ‘America’s mecca for haunted houses’ because of the impressive commitment to Halloween by local venues and artists.
‘Exiled takes place in this outdoor very dense forest that goes into this other open area that we turned into a carnival,’ Bousman said of the experience in Bonner Springs near Kansas City.
‘You are able to interact with all the actors’ on adventures and side-quests, and the way you respond changes what happens next.’
Bousman described Exiled as an ‘art installation, a horror movie and a form of therapy’ or like a ‘live-action video game’ where guests are the main character.
‘When you step in this world it’s like Alice in Wonderland, you step into a living, breathing universe,’ he said.
Guest responses have been very polarized to say the least.
‘The reactions have been love or hate,’ Bousman said, adding that the skeptics usually dislike the experience because it ‘pushes them outside their comfort zone’.
‘Those who hate it excite me just as much as those who love it,’ he said.
‘The scares in Exiled are emotional, they are psychological. They (the guests) are having to look inside themselves and interact with an uncomfortable situation.’
Exiled has also attracted ‘game breaker’ guests who try to throw the actors off.
‘The actors are so talented and amazing though,’ Bousman said. ‘They learn dozens of pages of script as well as improvising.’
On the flip side, the experience has engrossed some visitors who become ‘so emotionally involved, they start to lose sight of what is real’, Bousman said.
‘Imagine you show up and you have a 45-minute conversation with one of the actors at the bar,’ he told DailyMail.com. ‘It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s scripted.’
Exiled pays homage to the director’s late father Lynn Bousman, who became sick two years ago before passing away.
‘My father always took me to haunted houses when September started,’ the Saw legend said.
‘Kansas City was the mecca of the haunted house world. If you lived in Kansas City you would be out doing these haunted houses.
‘It became a tradition that my dad would take me and my friends down. It instilled this love of horror in me that never left.
‘My father is buried about five minutes from where Exiled is. It’s a full-circle homecoming for me.’
Bousman has taken his nine-year-old son and six-year-old daughter to tour the Exiled set – though he said they’re too young to appreciate the full experience yet.
He said he hopes horror experiences like Exiled can help people to tap into a new part of their brain – while providing a rare form of adventure which is much-needed among those who have grown up in the internet era of instant-gratification.
‘We are so used to entertainment being given to us or handed to us,’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘What this (Exiled) does is give you an equity of feeling like you have earned something, it requires something out of you.’
His advice for people wanting to make the most of spooky season? ‘Embrace being scared, embrace being weird’.
Exiled 2024 opened on September 13 and continues running until November 2. Tickets range in price from $59 to $150.
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