Out of all of the things I’ve heard about Nicolas Cage (an obsession with Elvis, owning snakes so deadly they require anti-venom nearby, turning the entryway of his home into a car and motorcycle showroom) this isn’t the strangest. Cage was making one of those b-movies he churns out so he can continue to afford the mortgages on all the castles he owns around the world. He was supposed to film scenes in an old house didn’t want to do it at first. According to Mike Walker at The Enquirer (I know), Cage got a bad feeling and insisted that the place be cleansed of evil spirits. A paranormal expert was called in to pacify Cage and it worked.
Nicolas Cage held up shooting of his new flick “Southern Fury” while rating: “Evil spirits are threatening me…
“Producers groaned when Nic took one look a this old house where his character’s supposed to live, insisted he felt spooked and refused to enter because it was ‘haunted.’
“Nic demanded that ‘spirit-chasers’ purify the spooky old dwelling with what’s called a ‘smudge’ – so-called magical herbs including sage, cedar, sweet gass and mugwort mixed in an ancient Indian pot and burned to release purifying fumes that drive away evil spirits…
Nic sniffed the air, detected no evil spirits, grinned at grateful producers and barked ‘Roll ’em.'”
[From The National Enquirer, print edition]
I know some of you believe in this, but I’m a skeptic and it sounds like hooey to me. Still, it seems relatively harmless if someone wants to have spirits cleansed with herbs or whatever. It’s not like a diva request, like “make the entire place smell like lavender because the odor offends me,” especially if he was really scared. This makes me wonder if Cage believes in other mumbo-jumbo, especially because we know Megan Fox does. So I googled “Nicolas Cage Illuminati” because I vaguely remember the plot of those National Treasure movies. It turns out he has a nine foot tall pyramid tomb in New Orleans just waiting for him to take his final resting place. On the tomb is written “Omnia Ab Uno,” the Latin phrase “Everything From One” which is straight from his National Treasure movie.
Then I went down the Cage rabbit hole and learned that he used to own the LaLaurie House in New Orleans, which was considered one of the most “haunted” homes in the US due to the gruesome history of Madame LaLaurie, who used to torture slaves there. Cage said of the home that “Other people have beachfront property; I have ghost front property… I have not experienced anything, but I like a bit of mystery, and the house has such a mystery to it. Some of the stories about it are pretty horrific.” He lost the home in 2009 to foreclosure, but this begs the question: if he wasn’t afraid of ghosts before he lived there, what changed? He did do this movie no one saw:
photos credit: WENN
What did I just read.
Yippee!!! Love these posts. Let the ghost stories ensue!
ha ha ha don’t judge me, but I have a friend that actually does this for people.
Goes to their homes and cleanses them of the spirits.
She truly, fundamentally believes in what she is doing, and that there are spirits floating around some homes, with an ill intent. In her words, she “guides them back to the light” à la Jennifer Love Hewitt in that show of hers.
I don’t know if it’s true or not, but she is convinced and her clients are happy afterwards, so I guess ok ?
Yeah, not going to lie. I get suuuuper creeped out super easy. Mom’s family is of Irish roots and Catholic and super superstitious, and they have stories that actually terrify me from all of the old homes they lived in in our area.
I get so mega creeped out living alone. And I swear some weird things have happened in our house – but it’s only been when the husbands been away. I’ve woken up in late October after having gone to bed without making a fire, and felt actual warmth. I went and checked the heaters, thinking I’d left something on and nothing was on. The heaters were cold and turned off. But the house was so warm and felt like the heat had been on for hours- and it wasn’t a warm day at all. I’ve woken up to my name being called. I’ve heard music in the basement and booked it out of the house. I do know that the previous owners husband died from cancer… but I’m not sure if he was in the hospital or if he died in the home. Supposedly he was an avid record collector.
I’d totally be the kind of person to pay someone to come in JUST for the peace of mind. I don’t care if there’s nothing happening in the house and I don’t care if it’s absolute hooey- if it makes me feel better, I’d totally be down.
Ghost stories! Hooray! 😀
When I was little, I used to see an apparition of an elderly guy in my room. As I got older, I reasoned that it was probably my imagination because I was little and all. Years later, I meet the previous owner of the house, and she said that her kid saw the same apparition in the same bedroom. Not only that, but our descriptions of the man matched the description of the original owner who died in the house a few years before either of us were born.
That and a few other weird experiences have me convinced that there’s probably something. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t automatically buy every superstition or idea about ghosts or smudging or whatever else. But I definitely think there’s something. Maybe…
When I was in high school ( many years ago). We lived across a cemetery, there was always things happening. I would see these shadow people and would always ignore them. Well one night it got pretty bad. I was in bed trying to sleep, really freaked out and suddenly I felt a cold hand grab my foot!!!!! I bolted out and slept on the couch.
Another time, I was going to sleep. I was at the stage where I was in between sleep and awake. I heard like a claw going down my pillow case. I immediately shot up out of bed and looked at my upper thigh and there was three claw marks. Similar to cat scratches and we didn’t have a cat. They were red, burning three long scratch marks.
aims – one of my aunts had something similar happen in one of the houses they lived in as a kid. She was sleeping, and started waking up because she felt something on her head… so she swatted at it and when she pulled her hand away it was covered in blood. She had a big cut along her head and they didn’t have pets either. She said she remembers being sick for a couple of weeks after that as well.
Another aunt had bought some old farm house. Her husband was a trucker so he’d be gone long periods of time. Whenever she had to leave her car keys would not be on the rack where she left them, and she saw a man in the house frequently. One day she got fed up and said “when I come back in there, you better have put my keys back”. Keys were back. She said it wasn’t so bad – if kind of annoying – for the most part… until he supposedly tried to climb into bed with her one night.
Erinn- I’ve had way to many situation, that I can’t explain. I live in Oregon city. The end and first established town on the Oregon Trail. There’s a lot of very old homes and history here. The cemetery we lived across was one of the first in Oregon.
When I would walk to the bus stop to go to school, it would be very dark. I would hear digging when I was walking and it would freak me out. Fast forward 15 years later, I met a man who was the caretaker of the cemetery. I told him we lived across and I heard digging really early in the morning and I asked him about it. He told me that it wasn’t possible for that digging. The cemetery was gated and nobody should have been in there.
I get why people wouldn’t believe in this. I wouldn’t believe in it unless it happens to me. There’s just way too many unexplained circumstances that have happened to me.
That’s soooo creepy. I can’t even imagine. My maternal grandfather was a graveyard caretaker (we’re in small town NS though) and mom said there have been some creepy things over the years he wouldn’t discuss.
It all sound ridiculously crazy – but I’m not going to argue it. I have a friend who’s a nurse – who was quite religious and REALLY logical. But even she’s completely come around to the idea that there’s some things that just shouldn’t happen – but they do. Working night shifts in hospital wings have convinced her of a lot.
@aims
“I get why people wouldn’t believe in this. I wouldn’t believe in it unless it happens to me.”
Same here. For me, it took several weird and unexplained things before I finally accepted that maybe there was something to these ghost stories.
And yeah, the shadow people experiences are creepy. I’ve only had one, similar to your experience, but instead of grabbing my foot, it felt like ice-cold breathing on my neck. When I glanced up, it looked like there was a cloaked man standing over me. Again, I didn’t give it much thought until my roommate mentioned that she kept seeing a tall guy in a black cloak standing by our doorway.
Aims- I may or may not work at a certain very haunted coffee shop in Oregon city!! Small world!!
@aimes @wiffie, Tigard gal here; I think we should form a ghost-group. I have soooo many good ghostly stories and have heard there are tons of places in and around PDX to experience the paranormal….
Yeah, my fellow Oregonians!! God, it’s such a small world that we’re so close to each other! !!!! We need to swap stories. Especially you Wifie. I wanna know about this certain cafe. 😆
P.S
We lived across the Barclay Hills cemetery.
Aims and other Oregon folks,
Hi!!! I lived in Hillsboro and still own property there. Bestie lives there and two godchildren as well. It’s home to me but I had to leave to get my PhD.
‘Shadow people’ are a well-documented scientific phenomenon that have been thoroughly explained.
Thanks for the stories, you guys!
😁👻😁💀😁
It’s simple and harmless to burn a bit of sage to cleanse a new home. I do it every time I move, just in case. It’s no stranger than knocking on wood or avoiding the path of a black cat. However, no special spirit chasers are needed! What the heck is that?!
I never leave the house without putting on my hamsa. Better safe than sorry.
Ok, true confessions. For reasons I don’t clearly recall, I became interested in smudging. I had a bad bout of depression, and my house became like a prison and I wanted to start over, something something something. So I bought a smudge stick on line, God knows where, or did it come from a spa? Anyway, I imagined this light, clean, purifying little whiff of fragrance floating through my house and making all the bad feelings disappear. Uh, no. It was more like I brought a great big dog doo bush inside and lit it on fire. It smelled awful, it smoked like a chimney and it burned really fast so I was afraid it would burn down to my fingers and I was flying through the house trying to smudge every room before I became smudge myself and ended up hysterically throwing it into the toilet bowl. So, no, I’m not a smudger but it was probably my own fault. It made me laugh afterwards, so I did feel better and just got on with life.
Reading and imagining this actually made me laugh out loud 😀
Maybe I should have called your friend!
You totally should have! She’d have cleaned that sh*t up in no time 🙂
GNAT, I love you even more now. Just when I thought I couldn’t.
You’re one of my favorite commenters here.
It’s the power and belief behind the smudging (why didn’t you just try sage from the market?) that really sends that negative energy out the door. You weren’t nuts for doing it, but holy crap if the way you told it didn’t make me smile!
I wish I had consulted you first! Thanks for your sweet comment. I didn’t know you could just use sage. Would you put it in a little fireproof bowl?
You made me laugh, GNAT, and i would not feel scary tonight.
LOL, thanks for the cautionary tale. I’m moving into a new home in less than a month and I was debating smudging it just to be on the safe side (the current owner seems perfectly nice, but you never know!)
Now that I’ve read your post, I think I might just go to the grocery store and buy some sage, hahahaha. Or call a priest to bless the house, which is what my mom used to do.
If something works for you, makes you feel better, etc, and doesn’t hurt anyone else, I say go for it.
I will admit: when we bought our first home, it was gorgeous ranch home that was built in 1974. There was an elderly woman who lived in it and had passed away. Of course, I needed the house cleaned spiritually… !
Hilarious story!!
Haha, I love your anecdotes GNAT.
Here in the Caribbean, we use Florida Water. Sprinkle it into every room before moving into a new house.
I visited New Orleans last year and our tour guide gave us some very helpful tips on learning whether or not your home is haunted. No paranormal investigator needed! Place a handful of marbles in the middle of a room (make sure the floor is level) and then leave for like an hour. If they are scattered around when you return, congratulations, you have ghosts.
or mice?
Or an earthquake?
Chance of finding a home with a completely level floor in a city built on a swamp…minimal.
I bet that was a fun tour, New Orleans is still on my list to visit.
HA! I love me a New Orleans tour, but bear and mind 80-90% of what most guides tell you is bunk.
What! I’m trying it just for the heck of it lol.
Oh. My. God. He had another tomb in St. Louis Cemetery moved so that he could be near Marie Laveau’s tomb?! That is balls. And very aggravating to the people involved, living and otherwise—haha. It’s interesting about the LaLaurie House. He paid a lot for it, and then never lived there. I read that he and his family did not spend even one night in the house. Why did he buy it?! He had to know its history before he bought it. There’s no one in New Orleans who doesn’t know the horrific history of the LaLaurie House. He is so odd. Maybe he likes collecting “trophy” properties. I wonder if he thinks Marie Laveau can protect him in the afterlife from…..Madame LaLaurie?
And now he should make a movie about that.
He is the only actor with a legit castle problem. Dude can’t help himself. The man loves castles!
One problem (of many) is, you will go into the hole trying to manage and maintain those properties, plus the taxes are exorbitant. So I kind of feel for him? For whatever reason, he can’t seem to realistically extrapolate the long-term costs of his hobbies—which, again, is mansions and castles. At least with paintings and grandfather clocks and pianos, you just need an expert to swing by every once in a while for tune-ups.
He absolutely does like collecting trophy properties. Too bad he can’t afford to keep it up!
To be fair, I would not step foot in the LaLaurie house. That place scares the crap out of me.
I would be afraid to go into that house, but I still want to. I would stay out of the upper floors, though. It is such a fascinating, evil story, and so heartbreaking because of Madame LaLaurie’s cruelty. The disgusting conclusion to this story is that Louis and Delphine LaLaurie got away with their crimes. I think they escaped New Orleans as their house was on fire, and disappeared. It’s horrifying. If there is any justice, perhaps Madame’s tormented victims “haunted” her.
Nic had two houses in New Orleans, one in Garden District, the other in the Quarter. He used to take the walking tours quite frequently with his family. (I spend a lot of time in NOLA and most of my friends there are in the tourism industry.)
But I agree, I wouldn’t spend a minute in the LaLaurie house, and a few others there too. Bad mojo.
Yeah. We stood across the street from it on one of those haunted tours. I don’t put a whole lot of stock into the LaLaurie mythos, which seems pretty apocryphal, but that didn’t keep us from getting hella bad vibes even from way across the street. That building isn’t right.
I wouldn’t want to go inside there either. I don’t believe in ghosts but it makes me incredibly anxious to be anywhere where I know people suffered greatly. All I can think about is what those people went through, I don’t really get tragedy-based tourism.
I am not going to shade him. Years ago, my mother and I went to visit my grandmother, my granny. She was very old, almost ancient to me. All week I played with her hens and collected eggs for her. She would make me one of her special cakes her German mother had made for her when she was little. And it happened, all so suddenly. She fainted when we were dining and there was a tiny trickle of blood running out of her nose. She was dead. It took ambulance almost 35 minutes to reach our home. And during that time my mum was talking to my father( gastroenterologist) and she basically left me alone with my dead granny. I was 8 at the time. I swear to God, I felt chilly and wanted to run, but was too afraid to move. My mother called her neighbours and i felt relief being taken to their home. I developed fever overnight. The house has never been the same for me, I am certain that her ghost lives there. She was a weird little lady and was Nazi sympathiser. She hated my mother because she was so different from her being a Muslim woman who fled with her family from Kashmir (India) during the political turmoil. And she dared fall in love with my father. Granny called my mum wicked and very vulgar names because she was an islamophobe as well. But she loved me, surprisingly. She lived alone for most of her lifetime. Haunted or whatever psychological phenomenon, we always experience something weird in that house. I once woke up in the night screaming but my dad told me i am more prone to hypnogogues. Science tells me that ghosts does not exist and while it is true. But our brain makes up the most bizarre stuff at worst of the times. But i would not stay alone in dead grannies house.
Yikes, I don’t blame you.
OMG I wouldn’t either
Hello Nullius, interesting to know your mom is a Muslim lady from Kashmir, so am I. What part of Kashmir was she from? Give my regards to her. Cheers Sana
Hallo, sana! After all,World is a small place! My mother was originally from anantnag but her maternal family resided in Srinagar.
My mother along with her two siblings, mother(boba!) and her brother (mum’s uncle) migrated to Chicago, US. She scandalized her family by marrying a German doctor, at least a decade older than her and also an atheist. My mother wears proudly her headscarf and observes her religion. She taught us the basic teachings of Islam and I marvel how different it sounds from what gets portrayed in the popular culture.
In 2012, we finally visited India. My mother broke down crying at the sight familiar chinars and streams. To me, it looked like just my hometown of Düsseldorf sans castles. It is a lovely place on Earth but
unfortunately very scary for its dwellers, one never knows when they would get shot down.
Hope you are having a lovely day, sana.
Awwww that’s so sweet she finally revisited Kashmir after all these years. Kashmir is an amazingly beautiful place with a rich heritage , unfortunately we are living under a heavy militarized presence by India paramilitary forces, Kashmiris have also faced horrible human rights abuse over the past 25 odd years which rarely gets any attention in the mainstream media. Anyhoo, in case your mom would like to buy some Kashmiri soveniers, do tell her about http://www.kashmirbox.com . May God bless you both along with your family . Regards Sana
People in NOLA do indeed hate him. For all kinds of reasons. Another rich entitled guy making things difficult for ordinary people….
As for smudging: My mother’s side of the family (Sicilian) believes heavily in this sort of thing, and I grew up on it. I read the cards, smudge, etc. but I can’t say that I believe in it the way my grandmother did.
Cage is Cuban, and Cuba’s culture is pretty rich in all of these traditions, including Santeria. It’s pretty fascinating. My Cuban neighbor downstairs set off the building’s fire alarms when her midnight smudge ceremony to banish evil and summon Erzulie Freda went awry. I’ll shake the hand of any evil spirit that hangs around after that night.
I roll my eyes at the “ancient Indian pot” part though– pfffft! There is nothing to mix! You dry some sage or cedar, roll it up, tie it with some string, and smudge. Some people are just too high maintenance.
Nicholas Cage is Italian, he’s a Coppola, his dad is Francis Ford Coppola’s brother
Hmmm! For some reason I thought he was Cuban! Must be mixing him up with Andy Garcia….. My bad!
Hi, Miss Jupitero! 🃏
Hello there sweetie!! *waves*
Cage is italian and german.
I’d consider myself a skeptical believer. Nic seems to have gone off the deep end a long time ago though.
To be honest, i used to believe in evil spirits. During night, I used to hear voices singing, a heavy load on my chest, cackling laughter and sometimes a squirrel like apparition and a feeling of suffocation. Afraid of being called an idiot, i kept this scary nocturnal experiences to myself. But one fine day after a nasty encounter, i finally complained to my father. He is in medical profession as i expected he didn’t laugh. It is a scientific phenomenon called hyonogogic hallucination and it is completely normal and explained phenomenon. Basically, what happens is during hypnogogic hallucination, you are in between waking and sleeping. And our brain gets a bit confused and some of the neurons are in overdrive. Science and common sense spoil all the fun!
Sleep paralysis! I watched this documentary on it once, and literally the very next day, my roommate told me about this terrifying experience she’d had a few nights prior and I was able to explain it to her.
i love smudging, and the smell of sage.
can’t speak to banishing anything more than the nasty smell of my menfolk in the bathroom, though.
i do believe it in the protective aspect, to be honest, but have never attempted to banish spirits (had none that needed it, lol).
my two sons start mock screaming when i smudge their rooms “no. stop smoking my room. why are you trying to kill me?” etc etc.
the drama is strong in my family line. le sigh.
There’s a difference between ghosts and evil spirits (aka demons). One could be a nuisance and the other frightening.
I’m Greek Orthodox and was reading an interview an Orthodox priest who is an exorcist gave about being called to a new convent that had experienced strange things (banging, things being knocked over, etc.). He arrived and started doing the prayers for exorcism (demon banishing) and it seemed to upset the unseen “occupants” to the extent more stuff happened. Then he wondered if it were actually spirits who had not gone on, so he started chanting those prayers instead to help them move on and as he sang those chants, the unseen occupants started keeping time with the chant. At some point during the prayers, the banging stopped and never returned.
That was a nice story. Some of the other stuff he experienced with casting out demons was downright scary though.
The lady who was my sons’ preschool Sunday School teacher told me when she first moved into her home (an old farmhouse in Nashville) many, many years ago she had to call our priest. Her boys were around 5 and 6 at the time. She had just returned from taking them to school and was doing dishes and she heard one of them call out, “Mama? Mama?” She thought one of them had gotten sick and come home. She ran to the front door, but no one was there. Every single day at the exact same time, she would hear, “Mama? Mama?” She went to the library to do research (this was back around the early 70’s) and found out a boy died in the house in the early 1900’s at the age of 8. She called the priest and asked him to come out. He went through the house and said the prayers to help a spirit move on and she never heard it again.
My cousin’s husband was a Catholic priest. He left to marry her and he became a college professor. They have 2 children. One old house they moved into was fine at first, then they started doing renovations. The kids were only 3 and 5 at the time. Their son’s bedroom was downstairs in the basement and one night they kept hearing this banging noise like he was opening and slamming the door downstairs. The next morning before she could say something to him, he said, “Mama, would you and Daddy stop slamming my door? I couldn’t hardly get any sleep last night.” That was just the start. They were having dinner a few nights later and one of the children’s balls flew across the room as though someone had kicked it. Then she said about a week after that, she was undressing their daughter from playing outside. She put the shoes on the mantle, then turned around to help her daughter get her coat off. She turned around and found the shoes on the floor. She thought she’d just placed them too close to the edge and they’d fallen off. She picked them up and placed them back on the mantle only to watch them being carefully raised from the mantle and placed on the floor again. She let them stay there that time.
They moved a week later.
I got creeped out just reading that. I can’t blame them for moving, at all.
Yeah, I’d move too. I’ve experienced ghost phenomenon but nothing as explicit as watching shoes move by themselves. *shudder*
I asked her what the kids thought about all of that and she said she just tried to make light of it. She told her son there was a draft from the renovations downstairs, so he would have to sleep in his sister’s room for a while. When the ball thing happened, her husband said, “Oh look! The ball got tired of sitting in the toy chest and wanted someone to play with!” When the shoe thing happened, my cousin’s daughter saw it and she said, “I guess those shoes just want to be on the floor!”
But they left, moved into a rental and sold that house.
Do you know where in Nashville the old farmhouse is? I live in Franklin and always love hearing about new haunted locations. 🙂
Yeah…well, he’s a weirdo. Google his pre-purchased tomb in New Orleans.
He is just….batsh*t. I don’t what else to say. The bit about the pyramid tomb.
I have to remind myself he is an Oscar winning actor and Francis Coppola’s nephew, and Sofia Coppala’s cousin. That’s about all he has going for him in the sanity stakes.
Clearly I’m in the minority, but i love him and all his craziness!!!!
You’re not the only one! 😅
This just makes me like him more. He is a true eccentric and no matter if its a godawful movie and he is a bad actor, its still Nic Cage. He is likable even if he is crazy.
I just love the fact he does everything 100%. Acting, living — he just flings himself into it and commits whole-heartedly.
Obviously that has gotten him into some financial trouble, but yeah, I love that guy. 🙂
I agree. I love a good quirky eccentric individual. He’s definitely not boring. Have appreciated him since Valley Girl.
You can practically see that silly pyramid from the interstate.
As one does.
Smudging has been proven to get rid of bacteria in the air, so at least that part is scientific. 🙂
Nick was fine financially but then the Swiss banks were forced to reveal all their account names/amounts, etc. He had to pay HUGE fines and lost a lot of his fortune. He had bought all those taste specific homes, needed money but no one was buying. Hence all his bad movie choices.
I love all these stories. Thanks for sharing!