There’s no such thing as a happy story about feral kids. Though films like The Jungle Book make life among the animals looks like carefree fun, the most famous feral humans have been left tragically scarred by their ordeal. Throughout modern history, several kids have for whatever reason been left to fend for themselves in the harsh world around us. 

In each of these cases, the children learned to survive by relying on animals. They adopted the characteristics, diet, and behavior of whatever wild animal they spend the most time with. Even today, children find themselves lost among the animals for years at a time, only to be rescued almost against their will. These experiences have an indelible impact on the survivors who come out the other side. Even though they start with an animal taking pity on a poor, lost child, few of these stories have fairy tale endings.

Here is a group of children who managed to survive insurmountable odds in spite of the fact that they had no training and virtually no chance of surviving on their own. Though the real history of feral children is darker than the movies would have you believe, these stories of survival are no less astonishing.

In 1977, Sujit Kumar’s mother committed suicide. Then, the six-year-old’s father was murdered. As a result, he was left in the care of his grandfather, who locked the poor boy in a chicken coop for four years. What’s worse, when he was found, he was sent to an asylum, where they tied him to the bed for the next 20 years.

When he was found in Fiji by philanthropist Elizabeth Clayton in 2004, she says that when she first encountered the boy, “he pecked at his food and would crouch down as if roosting. His fingers turn inward from scratching around in the dirt, he communicates by making a rapid clicking noise with his tongue and he seems detached from much that goes on around him.”

These days, Kumar is able to stand upright, and he’s attending school, but the damage of his previous abuse is still a huge part of his life.

In the mid-1980s, as Uganda was in the throes of a violent civil war, young John Ssebunya was a mere toddler of two. One night, in a fit of rage, John’s father killed his mother, prompting the terrified child to flee into the jungle. There he stayed for the next year, surviving only thanks to the benevolence of a group of monkeys.

A few days into his feral life, Ssebunya was approached by a small family of monkeys who offered him roots, nuts, sweet potatoes, and cassava. Ssebunya also learned his behavior from the monkeys (for example, as a boy, he’d rarely meet people’s eyes). Fortunately, though, John survived and was raised by a new family. And though he’s happy where he is, John explains that he feels fortunate to have been found by the group of monkeys who would become his short-lived family.

“I am grateful, yes, I am,” he says. “Because... not because of love from them, from the monkeys. But because what they did made it possible for me to be loved by other people, by humans.”

In 1986, three-year-old Ukrainian Oxana Malaya was left outside during a snowstorm by a pair of alcoholic parents. Young Oxana managed to walk into a nearby hovel where she was taken in by a pack of dogs. For some reason, her parents never actually went to retrieve their daughter, and the young girl was raised by the domestic canines for the next five years, until a neighbor reported the situation to authorities.

These days, the 33-year-old works with cows on a farm at the mental facility where she resides. Though she’s become somewhat comfortable with people, telling jokes and speaking regularly, she reportedly still favors the company of creatures to people.

Okay, after all of that human tragedy, here’s a somewhat sweet story that likely won’t have a horrific impact on the victim. In 2008, a one-year-old from Argentina was found in the bottom of a gutter, being nurtured by a pack of eight feral cats. 

According to the boy’s homeless father, the boy had gotten lost while the man was out looking for cardboard to sell for money. Missing during the coldest point of the year, the boy’s father had little hope for his son’s survival. Then, a band of cats found the infant.

Over the next several days, the cats brought the boy food, slept on and around him during the freezing nights, and protected him from the dangers surrounding him. When police finally found the kid, he was in near perfect health (and the cats were irritated about giving him up).

Okay, this is kind of a cheat, because the woman who was identified as Genie by the people who researched her wasn’t technically raised by animals. Technically.

When authorities in California first caught wind of Genie in 1970, it was only because her mother walked into the wrong doctor’s office and a physician noticed something fishy about the kid’s behavior. As it happens, welfare employees discovered that her father regularly kept the girl tied to a chair in a silent room from the time she was a toddler. She was beaten if she cried, spoke, or made any noise. 

As a result, the young woman was unable to make any kind of noise or interaction for a large majority of her life. The time period in which she was found combined with diminishing interest in her story meant that Genie slipped into bureaucratic obscurity shortly after her initial brush with fame.

When she was just a little girl in 1974, Ng Chhaidy and her cousin Beirakhu wandered out into the jungle next to their village in India. Beirakhu was found some time later, spinning tales of a mysterious woman who lived in the woods and helped the kids survive. Though a search was mounted, neither the woman nor young Chhaidy was found… until 2012, after more than 38 years apart from her family.

In 2012, Chhaidy was found in the adoptive care of a woman living in Myanmar. She’d been found living naked in a cemetery four years earlier and had been in the woman’s home ever since. When she reunited with her mother, Chhaidy was (and is) a happy woman, though her personality is remarkably childlike. She’s still able to help her mother with chores, and she loves playing with the village kids.

An anonymous seven-year-old Russian boy wasn't exactly abandoned by his mother, a 31-year-old Russian woman, but his life may have gone a little smoother had he been. Before he was discovered in 2008, the young man had been raised entirely as a bird.

According to Russian newspaper Pravda, the boy’s mother was infatuated with birds. She had a large collection of domestic birds and regularly fed wild birds, as well. As her son grew, she refused to speak to him or let him out of the apartment. Instead, she treated him just like one of her birds. As a result, when he was found by authorities at age seven, he was only able to communicate in bird chirps. 

The boy was taken from his mother’s care and sent to live in a psychological care facility.

In 1797, 12-year-old Victor was found wandering the wilderness of France. He was captured twice over the next year, but he escaped quickly both times. In 1800, the 15-year-old emerged from the woods of his own accord.

Because schools for the deaf tended to specialize in helping people speak, the mute teenager was sent to a facility for deaf people. There, he was taken into the care of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, who began to work with the boy. Unfortunately, Victor proved nearly incapable of learning to speak (he only ever learned two words). Itard’s studies were the first indication that the human brain has a natural cutoff in which the fundamentals of language needed to be imprinted.

Oh, also, a monk once took Victor out in the snow when the kid was bare-assed, apparently for reasons of scientific inquiry (suuuuuuuuure.) Surprisingly, though, Victor loved it, running and jumping through the snow happily.

The mid-1990s were a pretty bleak time in Russia. The country was suffering turbulent political instability and a crippling economic depression. One of the human victims of these often generalized terms was Ivan Mishukov. In 1996, four-year-old Ivan ran away from an alcoholic father and took refuge in the city streets.

An avid animal lover, the young boy would spend his days begging for food on the Moscow streets before sharing his spoils with a pack of local dogs. In turn, the pack adopted the young boy, helping him to stave off the crushing Moscow winter, which can sometimes get colder than ten degrees below zero. For two years, Ivan lived with his pack, somehow thriving on the city’s streets. Every time authorities would come to collect him, Ivan’s pack would drive the people away. It took a bribe of steak to lure the dogs away long enough to rescue young Ivan.

Due to the fact that he was in human custody for the first four years of his life, Ivan was able to re-adapt to society with relative ease.

In 1959, Marina Chapman was kidnapped from her rural Colombian home and driven into the jungle. There, she was abandoned for apparently no reason. After hours of wandering and weeping, she managed to stumble upon a group of what are thought to be capuchin monkeys. Chapman followed the clan for days, learning to scavenge like they did, and surviving thanks to their help. At one point, one of the elder members of the family even helped save Chapman’s life when she got food poisoning.

Over time, Chapman began to miss human contact. Unfortunately, the first people she chose to reveal herself to sold her to a brothel. It was years before she was able to escape into the city streets by working as a domestic servant in people’s homes. Fortunately, these days Chapman is at the head of an extensive family of her own, having put the horrors of her life behind her.

To this day, Chapman says that she owes her life to the little family of monkeys that helped keep her alive.

The next time you go house-hunting, be sure to thoroughly look into the backstory of the house you're interested in. These properties might have been inhabited by serial killers, used by members of the adult film industry, or contained the "essence" of the former (now deceased) owners. Real estate agents must, by law, disclose the truth about these potentially haunted houses, but some may not even know what happened there unless they speak to the neighbors. 

These Reddit accounts detail what went down in homes before their current owners purchased them. Turn all of the lights on and remember that home isn't just where the heart is; there's plenty of horror, too.

From youdirtynetwork:

"So two years ago my step dad was charged with some child porn offenses, not a great time, 0/10 would recommend. More to the point of this story, flash forward to this October and the police contact my sister wanting to ask some questions. As it turns out, he had little creepy cameras all over the house and had been filming her since she was in Grade 9 until she moved out! Needless to say my mother is selling the house. I feel bad for the next people who buy and possibly come across something the cops missed!"

From ControlYourPoison:

"When we were looking to buy a house we looked at one in which the father of the family committed suicide in. You could tell which room it was because it had clearly recently been sheet-rocked and painted. It didn't really bother us though and we didn't get any creepy feelings. We chose not to put an offer in because the rest of the house needed a lot of work.

And no, the realtor did not tell us that someone had committed suicide in it. I happened to know because it is very close to the house I grew up in and it's a very small town."

From JaytheFarmer:

"My parents were realtors, and also flipped houses. When I was growing up I used to help them a lot, usually by cleaning. When I was 12, I was helping with a house that was infested with roaches. I noticed the closets were smeared with shit and children's hand prints, with fingernail scratches on the insides of the doors as well. I asked my parents why this was the case. They told me the old tenants used to lock their toddlers in the closets for days."

From _old:

"My grandma sells/rents houses in the Denver area. A few weeks ago I had to help her evict a few college bros from one of her properties. This is a cottage-style home, no second floor, no basement. These guys literally dug a hole in the wood floor and made a basement where they've been throwing trash away for the last year. Like it's a living room, complete with a tv, a couple arm chairs, and a giant hole in the ground filled with ice cream wrappers, pizza boxes, and cigarette butts."

From stuisthebest:

"My aunt is a realtor and was selling a house that a lady owned but had been renting out to her college-aged son and a few of his friends.

When they went to do the first walk through so my aunt could take pictures and such, it was apparent the lady hadn't been in the house in ages. Every single room had a tv, a chair, a box of Kleenex, and a bottle of lotion. They were literally just jacking it with each other all over the house all the time.

The lady was so embarrassed."

From WillSmiff:

"I photograph homes. It's normal, people die in homes. I've photographed a few homes where the reason for sale was a recent suicide in the home. I photographed a new home that the builder killed himself in the garage just before the project was complete.

The weirdest one was mostly very creepy and suspicious. I photographed a billionaire's compound where the guy had and absurd fascination with flesh. There were well over 50 heads mounted on walls from water buffalo to elephant. Five-to-10 large cats, stuffed. Chandeliers made from the feathers of rare birds. Stools made from elephant feet/legs. Paintings and abstract photos of oily skin, 'veiny' muscles of humans and animals etc etc. I looked for his kill room, but I never found it. In general I find billionaires don't behave like normal people, but this one was particularly weird."

From tiberion:

"The lady next door to me died, and wasn't found until she was, well, more liquid than solid on her living room carpet. The family couldn't pay back taxes or something, and the house went to HUD to auction. HUD paid for some cleanup, but not to replace the carpet, only to steam clean it.

So it finally sold, and was talking to the guy who is flipping it. Before I could mention the death, he asked if the house had a water leak under the foundation, because when they ripped up the carpet and pad to put down the laminate floor, it was really dirty and got all over them and their clothes. I told him what happened and how HUD went cheap on what to fix before the auction; he got green as a pea and started puking right there on his side of the fence."

From Yup4545:

"When I was looking for my last house, I went with my wife and realtor to look at several houses. We went to look at one house in particular because it didn't seem like the price they were asking for could be real: a huge house sitting on tons of land with outbuildings, going for millions under market value.

We got there, and the realtor said 'Oh, I should mention, a serial killer lived here and when he was put away cops found 11 bodies on the property.' Oh, well that'll do it."

From Grandmastrgusto:

"An old friend of mine bought a nice house in a quiet neighborhood. The place is beautiful and has a really nice deck outback with a hot tub. About three weeks after closing he was cleaning out some previously owner junk in one of the closets and found an old DVD. It was a Bridget the Midget porno with a hot tub scene on the cover. His hot tub. It was epic."

From Zutsky:

"Not a realtor, but I used to rent an apartment that was in a converted Victorian asylum. It was rumored to be haunted, but I never heard or saw anything whilst living there.

When I met with a leasing agent to hand the keys back at the property, and for him to run through a final inspection he asked if we had been 'happy' there. I said something to the effect of yes, but we were only moving as the landlord had it up for sale. It became clear he was after some kind of ghost story as he explained that none of his colleagues liked going to any apartments in the building because when taking photos to market one of them, the red eye detector kept triggering on his phone when no one was in frame!

The poor guy looked nervous as heck the whole time we were there."

A list of troubled or "cursed" movies, looking at deaths, illnesses and mysteries surrounding some of the most infamous film productions of all time. A variety of films have been released that are thought to carry with them a "curse," due to the troubles faced by the cast and crew either during or immediately following the film's production. These incidents range from the tragic (as in the accident that cost Superman star Christopher Reeve the use of his legs) to the simply unfortunate (such as Tower Heist director Brett Ratner's use of a homophobic slur costing him a gig as Oscar producer.)

What are some of the most well known movie curses? Regardless of whether you believe these creepy stories about cursed films truly represent something supernatural - or if they are simply regrettable coincidences - nevertheless the existence of so many such productions is uncanny and fascinating.

How's this for a statistic: Four actors who appeared in Poltergeist films died within six  years of the first movie's release. They include:

Dominique Dunne, who played Dana in the first movie, was murdered by her former boyfriend at age 22. Julian Beck, who played Henry Kane in Poltergeist II: The Other Side, died in 1985 of stomach cancer at age 60. He had been diagnosed before he had accepted the role. Will Sampson, who played Taylor the medicine man in Poltergeist II, died as a result of post-operative kidney failure in 1987, at age 53.

Heather O'Rourke, who starred as Carol Anne Freeling in all three Poltergeist films, died in 1988 at age 12 after being misdiagnosed with Crohn's Disease. During the course of being treated for a disease she didn't have, O'Rourke became ill and suffered cardiac arrest. Her family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente Hospital, which treated her for Crohn's rather than the actual condition - a bowel obstruction - that in part led to her death. The case was settled out of court.

Rebel Without a Cause introduced the world to a variety of young actors, many of whom met grim fates in the years following the film's release.

Most famously, star James Dean was killed while racing his Porsche 550 Spyder before the film’s release, at the age of 24. He became one of the most recognizable and beloved actors of his generation, despite making only three films.

Dean’s co-star, Natalie Wood, drowned amidst unusual circumstances in November 1981. She, husband Robert Wagner, and friend Christopher Walken had gone to Catalina Island for a weekend, and were staying on a yacht. It's thought Wood awoke at some point during the night and attempted to get off of the boat, causing her to slip, fall, and drown. Her body was found floating face down nearby, wearing a jacket, nightgown and socks.

A witness from another yacht later recalled hearing Wood calling for help, only to be ignored by someone else on the boat. The death was deemed an accidental drowning, but suspicions of foul play have always surrounded the case, and Wood's sister Lana has made attempts to get the LA County Sheriff's Department to reopen the investigation.

Another Rebel actor, Sal Mineo, died five years before Wood, after being stabbed to death in an alley in West Hollywood. He was 37.

Finally, in a last bizarre twist on the Rebel curse story, Beverly Hills orthopedic surgeon Troy McHenry fitted his own car with parts from the Porsche Spyder in which James Dean died. A year later, he was killed when his Porsche Spyder hit a tree.

Director Roman Polanski's deeply unsettling film about a pregnant woman who may be in the thrall of a Satanic cult carries with it a number of unsettling stories from behind the scenes. Most famously, one year after the movie's release, Polanski’s wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family. She was eight months pregnant with the couple’s first child at the time.

The film's producer, William Castle, suffered painful gallstones immediately following the film's production, eventually requiring a series of treatments and surgery. Composer Krzysztof Komeda died suddenly from an accidental fall. Castle later wrote in his memoirs that it felt like  Rosemary's Baby was coming true in real life, and that the cast and crew were being stalked by witches.

Christopher Reeve played the titular hero in Superman: The Movie and three sequels. The actor was paralyzed from the neck down after being thrown from his horse in a cross country riding event in 1995, and subsequently died in 2004 due to heart failure stemming from his medical condition. 

Reeve isn't the only person involved in the Superman films to face personal struggles. Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane, suffered a bout of mental illness in 1996, and was found dazed and filthy, wandering the streets of Los Angeles. Richard Pryor, who appeared in Superman III, died of multiple sclerosis only a few years later. 

Believe it or not, this franchise wasn't the only troubled Superman series. George Reeves, who played the Man of Steel in the 1950s television program Adventures of Superman,  died at the age of 45 in 1959. The official finding was suicide, but some believe he was murdered or the victim of an accidental shooting.

A number of principals involved in John Wayne's The Conqueror succumbed to cancer in the years following the film's release. Director Dick Powell died of cancer less than seven years after the movie's 1956 debut. Actor Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the early '60s, filmed one last movie (James Bond thriller From Russia With Love) to leave his family with money, then took his own life in 1963. Actress Agnes Moorehead died of cancer a decade later. in 1974. Thereafter, both principal stars, John Wayne and Susan Hayward, were diagnosed, and died within four years of one another.

Combine this with the knowledge that above-ground atomic tests were run at Nevada's Yucca Flats - very near where the movie was shot, in Utah's Snow Canyon State Park - and it seems obvious what happened. The cast and crew were exposed to radiation while making the movie (a ridiculous take on Genghis Khan), then proceeded to die from the disease. This theory was dismissed as an urban legend, as the deaths could likely be traced to either the unhealthy lifestyles or coincidence.

While there's ultimately no logical reason to assume horror movies are more likely to be cursed than any other genre, seeing The Exorcist on a list of cursed movies is kind of like finding pickles in a pickle jar. 

During production, The Exorcist was beset by a slew of problems. The set for the home in which most of the movie takes place burned down. Actress Linda Blair injured her back when some rigging failed, and Ellen Burstyn was hurt so badly during a take the issue plagued her for decades after filming wrapped - the scream when possessed Reagan (Blair) throws her mother (Burstyn) to the ground, is real. Meanwhile, the son of Jason Miller, who played Father Karras, was seriously injured when hit by a motorcycle during production. 

Actor Jack MacGowran (Burke Dennings) and actress Vasiliki Maliaros (Father Karras's mother) both died shortly after filming wrapped. MacGowran of the flu, Maliaros of natural causes. Linda Blair's grandfather and actor Max Von Sydow's (Father Merrin) brother died during production, and the son of Mercedes McCambridge, who voiced the demon, murdered his wife and two daughters before taking his own life after being accused of fraud in November of 1987. All told, nine people associated with the movie died violently, mysteriously, or during or immediately after filming. 

Various problems plagued The Exorcist upon its release. A woman at one sceening broke her jaw and sued Warner Brothers. The case was settled out of court. The movie was banned for some time in the UK, and American evangelists believed running the film through a projector would bring about demonic possession. 

Mel Gibson's retelling of the story of Christ's death faced numerous challenges while filming, and they weren't even related to the infamous director's run-ins with the law.

Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, suffered numerous injuries during the production, including being struck by lightning (witnesses reported seeing smoke rising from his head), dislocating his shoulder while carrying the crucifix, and having a portion of his flesh ripped off accidentally while being fake-whipped.

The film's assistant director, Jan Michelini, was also struck by lightning - twice - on set. John Debney, who wrote the score, has called the job as the most difficult assignment of his life, and claims he closely felt the presence of Satan in his studio while working on the film.

The film's release also brought with it a slew of tragedies. On the movie's opening day, actor Carl Anderson - who played Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar - died following a prolonged fight with leukemia. The film's Kansas advertising sales manager, Peggy Scott, died after suffering heart failure during the film's brutal crucifixion scene.

Actress Judy Garland became a cinematic legend playing Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz, but her personal life proved rocky after the film, in large part due to abuses heaped on her by the studio. She suffered four divorces, a string of infamous insecurities and neurosis, financial instability, and addiction struggles before dying of an accidental overdose of barbiturates at age 47.

Problems for the Wizard cast didn't stop there. Four months after the movie was released, Frank Morgan, who played The Wizard, was involved in a serious car accident. Though he was left largely uninjured, his wife Alma suffered a crippling knee injury that would plague her for the rest of her life, and his chauffeur was killed. Morgan died in 1949, never seeing the film become a staple of television and an all-time childhood favorite.

Uncle Henry and Auntie Em met with bad luck following Oz. Charley Grapewin - who played Henry - died in 1956, just before the film debuted on television, where it became a staple. Clara Blandick, who played Auntie Em, committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills and putting a plastic bag over her head when she was 81 years old.

The production of Wizard was similarly troubled; a number notable accidents took place on set. Several actors playing flying monkeys accidentally broke the wires holding them up and crashed down to the set (they had a net to prevent grievous injury.) The actress playing the Wicked Witch of the West - Margaret Hamilton - was badly burned while filming a scene in which she explodes into flames. When she took time off to recover, a stand-in tried to replicate the stunt in her stead, only to be burned in the same fashion.

The Omen is a film about a couple raising a child who may in fact be the son of the Devil. (Shades of Rosemary's Baby!) It's only natural there would be some superstitious rumblings around the production. But the making of The Omen was surrounded by genuine tragedy on all sides.

Two months before filming commenced, star Gregory Peck's son committed suicide. Later that year, when Peck was flying to London to make the movie, his plane was struck by lightening. A few weeks later, executive producer Mace Neufeld was flying to London and his plane was also struck by lightening.

Neufeld's hotel was later bombed by the IRA, as was a restaurant where a number of the cast and crew were planning to dine. A tiger handler on the site was killed in a freak accident. Another plane hired to do aerial work on the film crashed while working on another production, killing everyone on board.

Even after the film was finished, troubles and tragedies abounded. Eight months after working on the film, special effects consultant and designer John Richardson suffered injuries in a head-on car collision in Holland that killed his assistant, Liz Moore. A road sign by the crash read: Ommen, 66.6 km (Ommen is a city in the Netherlands).

Richardson was in Holland working on war film A Bridge Too Far along with a colleague from the set of The Omen, stuntman Alf Joint. While performing a standard stunt on A Bridge Too Far (jumping off of a rooftop onto a large inflatable cushion) Joint slipped awkwardly and was badly hurt. He later told friends he felt like he had been pushed.

Rumors of the curse of the The Omen have abounded for years, and director Richard Donner, Neufeld and others associated with the film eventually spoke in interviews about the superstitions. Actor Harvey Stevens - who played young Damien in the movie - and Gregory Peck both refused to speak about the curse for the remainder of their careers.

Atuk is so cursed it never made it to screen. The screenplay, based on satirical novel The Incomparable Atuk, about an Eskimo who moves to New York City, has been kicking around Hollywood since 1971, when producer Norman Jewison bought the book rights.

Most major actors attached to the project have died. John Belushi died a few months after agreeing to star in the film. British comedian Sam Kinison signed to play the lead in 1988 and even filmed a few scenes, but the production fell apart due to disagreements between the actor and pretty much everyone else. He died not long thereafter in a car accident. 

In 1994, John Candy was attached, but died of a heart attack. A few months later, Michael O’Donoghue, a friend of Candy's who, according to rumor, went over the script with the actor, died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage. Chris Farley was attached when he died of a heart attack and, according to unverified rumors, Phil Hartman was also interested in or attached to the script when murdered by his wife. 

Falling is one of humans' deepest, most primordial fears. And it's a worthy thing to be afraid of, given that the impact from any fall of significant height is likely to cause serious injuries and could even lead to death. This reality is likely the reason why people are so scared of heights, yet it's actually possible to live through even the most traumatic falls – as people who have fallen off of buildings but lived to tell the tale prove.

There are all types of situations whereby someone might accidentally plummet from a great height. They could fall from the side of a cruise ship in rough seas or have their parachute fail to open during a skydive. Whatever the case, it's perfectly clear that falling from anything high would be a truly terrifying ordeal. Just take heart from the fact that such incidents do not always equal death.

Before he became a popular television personality and adventurer, Bear Grylls spent a short amount of time in the armed forces. During this military service, he was involved with the SAS Territorial Army and took part in a training exercise over Zambia. During a skydive, his parachute failed to inflate. Thinking he had time to fix the problem before he hit the ground, he chose not to open the reserve chute and instead fell 16,000 ft and landed on his parachute pack. Although he narrowly avoided severing his spinal cord, he did break his back, which required him to go through 12 months of 10-hour-a-day physiotherapy.

James Boole is an incredibly experienced skydiver who completed some 2,500 jumps during his lifetime. However, all of this experience did not prevent him from falling 6,000 ft in Russia when he opened his parachute too late for it to fully inflate. He hit the ground with a tremendous amount of force, leaving a one-yard crater in the snow. Somehow, Boole was able to survive, sustaining a broken back and ribs. This allowed a miraculous recovery whereby he could walk after just a week of the accident.

WWII Air Force Sergeant Alan Magee was part of a B-17 Flying Fortress crew that was hit by German fire during a mission. The airman not only found himself plummeting towards the planet’s surface in the wreckage of his plane, but he had also been hit by gunfire during the attack. Yet, miraculously, he still managed to eject himself from the aircraft. Falling through the air, Magee found that his parachute wouldn't work as it had been damaged, meaning he was in free fall when he crashed through the glass ceiling of a train station. Bizarrely, this glass ceiling actually managed to save his life, cushioning the fall enough so that he only had some minor injuries.

Joshua Hanson astounded doctors when he survived a 200 ft fall from a hotel that would almost certainly have killed anyone else. The accident happened when Hanson ran from an elevator in January 2007. He lost his balance and fell through a window, plummeting from the 17th floor of the building onto an overhanging roof. From there, he fell to the ground, somehow landing on his feet. The 29-year-old suffered a myriad of serious injuries, including internal bleeding and multiple broken bones but was lucky to simply stay alive.

Juliane Koepcke was a passenger on a flight traveling over Peru on Christmas Eve in 1971 when the plane began to experience heavy turbulence. After several minutes of passing through the storm, an engine on the wing was hit by lightning, and the aircraft plummeted towards the ground. Juliane was the only survivor out of the 91 passengers on board, and the 17-year-old landed in the jungle with a broken collar bone, one shoe, and only a few sweets for food. She spent 10 days in the Peruvian jungle before she was rescued. The leading theory for how she survived is that the heavy vegetation softened her fall while the row of seats she was strapped in acted as a makeshift glider.

August 2004 was not a good month for South African skydiver Christine McKenzie. The 23-year-old was in free-fall when her parachute failed to open. This prompted her to try her reserve chute, but this too malfunctioned and became tangled as it partially inflated. The incredibly rare occurrence meant that McKenzie hardly slowed before she smashed into a series of powerlines before hitting the ground. Those powerlines saved her life, though, absorbing most of the energy from the fall and drastically reducing her impact. Despite the fact that literally everything that could go wrong in her jump did go wrong, McKenzie managed to survive with just a broken pelvis and some bruising.

In January 1972, Vesna Vulovic was on a flight over what was then Czechoslovakia as a flight attendant for Jugoslavenski Aerotransport. The aircraft broke up in midair when a bomb exploded onboard, killing everybody with the exception of Vulovic. She fell an estimated 33,333 ft before landing on the ground and somehow managed to survive. She was seriously injured from the accident, however. She spent 16 months in the hospital and was in a coma for 27 days, as well as having dozens of broken bones. However, she went on to make a full recovery.

Unlike many of the entries in this article, Felix Baumgartner did not fall from a great height by accident. Instead, his plummet was a stunt performed in partnership with Red Bull in October 2012. The Austrian jumped out of a balloon at a staggering 128,100 ft and reached a maximum speed of 833.9 mph during the descent. Although the parachute deployed as planned in the last few seconds of the 10 minute drop, Felix did run into trouble twice. While heading down into the final part of Earth’s atmosphere, his visor began to fog due to a malfunction, and while he was dropping he began to tumble rather than remain in a special delta position. Fortunately, he managed to recover and was completely unharmed upon landing.

Steve Fossett was an adventurer who made several attempts to travel around the world in a hot air balloon. In one such attempt in August 1998, he suffered a catastrophic accident as his balloon crashed into a storm front. Hail tore apart the structure and sent his small capsule tumbling towards Earth. After falling almost 30,000 ft, Fossett woke up to discover he had not only survived the ordeal but was also completely unharmed. The capsule had landed in water and protected him from injury, though, he did have to spend 10 hours at sea before he was rescued.

The Golden Gate Bridge has become a hugely popular location for those attempting to commit suicide. The 200+ ft fall kills 98% of all of those who jump on impact, and the icy cold waters below make it even harder to survive. But survival is possible. This is exactly what happened to a 16-year-old girl who jumped from the bridge in April 2011. Precisely how she survived is not known, but research suggests that the younger and fitter a person is the more likely they are to manage to live through the ordeal. 

A list of troubled or "cursed" movies, looking at deaths, illnesses and mysteries surrounding some of the most infamous film productions of all time. A variety of films have been released that are thought to carry with them a "curse," due to the troubles faced by the cast and crew either during or immediately following the film's production. These incidents range from the tragic (as in the accident that cost Superman star Christopher Reeve the use of his legs) to the simply unfortunate (such as Tower Heist director Brett Ratner's use of a homophobic slur costing him a gig as Oscar producer.)

What are some of the most well known movie curses? Regardless of whether you believe these creepy stories about cursed films truly represent something supernatural - or if they are simply regrettable coincidences - nevertheless the existence of so many such productions is uncanny and fascinating.

How's this for a statistic: Four actors who appeared in Poltergeist films died within six  years of the first movie's release. They include:

Dominique Dunne, who played Dana in the first movie, was murdered by her former boyfriend at age 22. Julian Beck, who played Henry Kane in Poltergeist II: The Other Side, died in 1985 of stomach cancer at age 60. He had been diagnosed before he had accepted the role. Will Sampson, who played Taylor the medicine man in Poltergeist II, died as a result of post-operative kidney failure in 1987, at age 53.

Heather O'Rourke, who starred as Carol Anne Freeling in all three Poltergeist films, died in 1988 at age 12 after being misdiagnosed with Crohn's Disease. During the course of being treated for a disease she didn't have, O'Rourke became ill and suffered cardiac arrest. Her family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente Hospital, which treated her for Crohn's rather than the actual condition - a bowel obstruction - that in part led to her death. The case was settled out of court.

Rebel Without a Cause introduced the world to a variety of young actors, many of whom met grim fates in the years following the film's release.

Most famously, star James Dean was killed while racing his Porsche 550 Spyder before the film’s release, at the age of 24. He became one of the most recognizable and beloved actors of his generation, despite making only three films.

Dean’s co-star, Natalie Wood, drowned amidst unusual circumstances in November 1981. She, husband Robert Wagner, and friend Christopher Walken had gone to Catalina Island for a weekend, and were staying on a yacht. It's thought Wood awoke at some point during the night and attempted to get off of the boat, causing her to slip, fall, and drown. Her body was found floating face down nearby, wearing a jacket, nightgown and socks.

A witness from another yacht later recalled hearing Wood calling for help, only to be ignored by someone else on the boat. The death was deemed an accidental drowning, but suspicions of foul play have always surrounded the case, and Wood's sister Lana has made attempts to get the LA County Sheriff's Department to reopen the investigation.

Another Rebel actor, Sal Mineo, died five years before Wood, after being stabbed to death in an alley in West Hollywood. He was 37.

Finally, in a last bizarre twist on the Rebel curse story, Beverly Hills orthopedic surgeon Troy McHenry fitted his own car with parts from the Porsche Spyder in which James Dean died. A year later, he was killed when his Porsche Spyder hit a tree.

Director Roman Polanski's deeply unsettling film about a pregnant woman who may be in the thrall of a Satanic cult carries with it a number of unsettling stories from behind the scenes. Most famously, one year after the movie's release, Polanski’s wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family. She was eight months pregnant with the couple’s first child at the time.

The film's producer, William Castle, suffered painful gallstones immediately following the film's production, eventually requiring a series of treatments and surgery. Composer Krzysztof Komeda died suddenly from an accidental fall. Castle later wrote in his memoirs that it felt like  Rosemary's Baby was coming true in real life, and that the cast and crew were being stalked by witches.

Christopher Reeve played the titular hero in Superman: The Movie and three sequels. The actor was paralyzed from the neck down after being thrown from his horse in a cross country riding event in 1995, and subsequently died in 2004 due to heart failure stemming from his medical condition. 

Reeve isn't the only person involved in the Superman films to face personal struggles. Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane, suffered a bout of mental illness in 1996, and was found dazed and filthy, wandering the streets of Los Angeles. Richard Pryor, who appeared in Superman III, died of multiple sclerosis only a few years later. 

Believe it or not, this franchise wasn't the only troubled Superman series. George Reeves, who played the Man of Steel in the 1950s television program Adventures of Superman,  died at the age of 45 in 1959. The official finding was suicide, but some believe he was murdered or the victim of an accidental shooting.

A number of principals involved in John Wayne's The Conqueror succumbed to cancer in the years following the film's release. Director Dick Powell died of cancer less than seven years after the movie's 1956 debut. Actor Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the early '60s, filmed one last movie (James Bond thriller From Russia With Love) to leave his family with money, then took his own life in 1963. Actress Agnes Moorehead died of cancer a decade later. in 1974. Thereafter, both principal stars, John Wayne and Susan Hayward, were diagnosed, and died within four years of one another.

Combine this with the knowledge that above-ground atomic tests were run at Nevada's Yucca Flats - very near where the movie was shot, in Utah's Snow Canyon State Park - and it seems obvious what happened. The cast and crew were exposed to radiation while making the movie (a ridiculous take on Genghis Khan), then proceeded to die from the disease. This theory was dismissed as an urban legend, as the deaths could likely be traced to either the unhealthy lifestyles or coincidence.

While there's ultimately no logical reason to assume horror movies are more likely to be cursed than any other genre, seeing The Exorcist on a list of cursed movies is kind of like finding pickles in a pickle jar. 

During production, The Exorcist was beset by a slew of problems. The set for the home in which most of the movie takes place burned down. Actress Linda Blair injured her back when some rigging failed, and Ellen Burstyn was hurt so badly during a take the issue plagued her for decades after filming wrapped - the scream when possessed Reagan (Blair) throws her mother (Burstyn) to the ground, is real. Meanwhile, the son of Jason Miller, who played Father Karras, was seriously injured when hit by a motorcycle during production. 

Actor Jack MacGowran (Burke Dennings) and actress Vasiliki Maliaros (Father Karras's mother) both died shortly after filming wrapped. MacGowran of the flu, Maliaros of natural causes. Linda Blair's grandfather and actor Max Von Sydow's (Father Merrin) brother died during production, and the son of Mercedes McCambridge, who voiced the demon, murdered his wife and two daughters before taking his own life after being accused of fraud in November of 1987. All told, nine people associated with the movie died violently, mysteriously, or during or immediately after filming. 

Various problems plagued The Exorcist upon its release. A woman at one sceening broke her jaw and sued Warner Brothers. The case was settled out of court. The movie was banned for some time in the UK, and American evangelists believed running the film through a projector would bring about demonic possession. 

Mel Gibson's retelling of the story of Christ's death faced numerous challenges while filming, and they weren't even related to the infamous director's run-ins with the law.

Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, suffered numerous injuries during the production, including being struck by lightning (witnesses reported seeing smoke rising from his head), dislocating his shoulder while carrying the crucifix, and having a portion of his flesh ripped off accidentally while being fake-whipped.

The film's assistant director, Jan Michelini, was also struck by lightning - twice - on set. John Debney, who wrote the score, has called the job as the most difficult assignment of his life, and claims he closely felt the presence of Satan in his studio while working on the film.

The film's release also brought with it a slew of tragedies. On the movie's opening day, actor Carl Anderson - who played Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar - died following a prolonged fight with leukemia. The film's Kansas advertising sales manager, Peggy Scott, died after suffering heart failure during the film's brutal crucifixion scene.

Actress Judy Garland became a cinematic legend playing Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz, but her personal life proved rocky after the film, in large part due to abuses heaped on her by the studio. She suffered four divorces, a string of infamous insecurities and neurosis, financial instability, and addiction struggles before dying of an accidental overdose of barbiturates at age 47.

Problems for the Wizard cast didn't stop there. Four months after the movie was released, Frank Morgan, who played The Wizard, was involved in a serious car accident. Though he was left largely uninjured, his wife Alma suffered a crippling knee injury that would plague her for the rest of her life, and his chauffeur was killed. Morgan died in 1949, never seeing the film become a staple of television and an all-time childhood favorite.

Uncle Henry and Auntie Em met with bad luck following Oz. Charley Grapewin - who played Henry - died in 1956, just before the film debuted on television, where it became a staple. Clara Blandick, who played Auntie Em, committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills and putting a plastic bag over her head when she was 81 years old.

The production of Wizard was similarly troubled; a number notable accidents took place on set. Several actors playing flying monkeys accidentally broke the wires holding them up and crashed down to the set (they had a net to prevent grievous injury.) The actress playing the Wicked Witch of the West - Margaret Hamilton - was badly burned while filming a scene in which she explodes into flames. When she took time off to recover, a stand-in tried to replicate the stunt in her stead, only to be burned in the same fashion.

The Omen is a film about a couple raising a child who may in fact be the son of the Devil. (Shades of Rosemary's Baby!) It's only natural there would be some superstitious rumblings around the production. But the making of The Omen was surrounded by genuine tragedy on all sides.

Two months before filming commenced, star Gregory Peck's son committed suicide. Later that year, when Peck was flying to London to make the movie, his plane was struck by lightening. A few weeks later, executive producer Mace Neufeld was flying to London and his plane was also struck by lightening.

Neufeld's hotel was later bombed by the IRA, as was a restaurant where a number of the cast and crew were planning to dine. A tiger handler on the site was killed in a freak accident. Another plane hired to do aerial work on the film crashed while working on another production, killing everyone on board.

Even after the film was finished, troubles and tragedies abounded. Eight months after working on the film, special effects consultant and designer John Richardson suffered injuries in a head-on car collision in Holland that killed his assistant, Liz Moore. A road sign by the crash read: Ommen, 66.6 km (Ommen is a city in the Netherlands).

Richardson was in Holland working on war film A Bridge Too Far along with a colleague from the set of The Omen, stuntman Alf Joint. While performing a standard stunt on A Bridge Too Far (jumping off of a rooftop onto a large inflatable cushion) Joint slipped awkwardly and was badly hurt. He later told friends he felt like he had been pushed.

Rumors of the curse of the The Omen have abounded for years, and director Richard Donner, Neufeld and others associated with the film eventually spoke in interviews about the superstitions. Actor Harvey Stevens - who played young Damien in the movie - and Gregory Peck both refused to speak about the curse for the remainder of their careers.

Atuk is so cursed it never made it to screen. The screenplay, based on satirical novel The Incomparable Atuk, about an Eskimo who moves to New York City, has been kicking around Hollywood since 1971, when producer Norman Jewison bought the book rights.

Most major actors attached to the project have died. John Belushi died a few months after agreeing to star in the film. British comedian Sam Kinison signed to play the lead in 1988 and even filmed a few scenes, but the production fell apart due to disagreements between the actor and pretty much everyone else. He died not long thereafter in a car accident. 

In 1994, John Candy was attached, but died of a heart attack. A few months later, Michael O’Donoghue, a friend of Candy's who, according to rumor, went over the script with the actor, died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage. Chris Farley was attached when he died of a heart attack and, according to unverified rumors, Phil Hartman was also interested in or attached to the script when murdered by his wife. 

Despite our desire to think that everyone in Hollywood is the best of friends, sometimes that’s just not true. In fact, there are a ton of celebrities who don't get along or simply don't have any chemistry. Some couldn't even bear to be on set at the same time because their mutual antagonism had gotten so intense.

Most of these co-stars who hated each other were able to make it through the original production, but then one was not asked back for the film’s sequel. For example, Channing Tatum may have put up with Alex Pettyfer’s “diva” antics on the set of the first Magic Mike movie. However, when it came time to shoot the sequel, Magic Mike XXL, the British actor was not offered the opportunity to reprise his role as "The Kid."

Usually, actors are professional enough to get through a production. But that doesn’t mean that there are not actors who filmed scenes separately. This may be tough to stomach for die-hard The Good Wife fans, but it just looked like Julianna Margulies and Archie Panjabi shot that long-awaited series finale reunion scene in the same location. In fact, it was Hollywood smoke and mirrors that created the illusion that the two actresses were in the same location. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss, especially when it comes to beloved actor pairings.

The feud between Bill Murray and Lucy Liu on the set of the original Charlie's Angels film is a well-told Internet tale. The story goes that Murray said something pretty darn mean to Liu while filming one of the scenes in the movie. He allegedly stopped the scene and pointed to Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu, saying in order, “I get why you’re here, and you’ve got talent... but what in the hell are you doing here. You can’t act!”

At that point, Liu allegedly got extremely upset and started throwing punches to the point where the two had to be separated. Despite that wide spread rumor, Murray has a completely different take on the story, stating that he and Liu simply had a 20-minute blowup, and their argument was blown out of proportion.

He explained: "We began rehearsing this scene and I said, 'Lucy, how can you want to say these lines? These are so crazy.'" He continues "She got furious with me because she thought it was a personal assault, but the reality is she hated these lines as much as I did. But for 15 or 20 minutes there, we went to our separate corners and threw hand-grenades and sky rockets at each other."

Murray insists that there is no bad blood between the fiery actors. But, if that's the case, then why was Murray replaced with Bernie Mac for the film's sequel? According to the Groundhog Day star, he decided not to re-sign because of a different member of the cast, not Liu, was going to be in the sequel. "That same person was going to be involved in the second one, so I wasn't going to show up again."

It was the mid-1990s, and both Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte were at the height of their Hollywood fame. The duo joined forces in the forgettable romantic comedy I Love Trouble in 1994. However, Roberts and Nolte reportedly hated each other so much that they had to film their scenes separately and then use stand-ins in order to try and create on-screen chemistry.

Roberts told The New York Times that her co-star could be "charming and nice, [but] he's also completely disgusting." Nolte, not one to let bygones be bygones, retorted, "It's not nice to call someone 'disgusting.' But she's not a nice person. Everyone knows that."

15 years, several lead roles, and one Academy Award later, Roberts still hadn't forgotten about the bad experience of working with Nolte. In 2009, she went on the Late Show With David Letterman and told a story about an actor she worked with that was not very nice. She then did her best profanity-laced Nick Nolte imitation for Dave. "What the f*** is that? Did you not f***ing hear me? You don’t know what you’re talking about!"

Terrence Howard played Lt. Colonel James Rhodes in the first Iron Man film. However, the Hustle & Flow actor said during a 2013 interview that Robert Downey Jr. "pushed him out" and "took his money," which prevented him from scoring a big payday for the second installment of the franchise. His part was recast with actor Don Cheadle, who also appeared in Iron Man 3.

Howard singled out Downey exclusively (not Marvel or other producers) for sabotaging his chance to return as Rhodey. "It turns out that the person that I helped become Iron Man, when it was time to […] re-up for the second one took the money that was supposed to go to me and pushed me out."

The Empire star also claimed that he originally signed a three-picture deal but his pay was drastically cut when negotiating for the franchise's sequel. "They came to me [for] the second and said, 'We will pay you one-eighth of what we contractually had for you, because we think the second one will be successful with or without you.'"

As far as an actual onset feud is concerned, there is no concrete evidence that one occurred between Howard and Downey. However, there have been claims that Howard exhibited "difficult behavior" during production. Howard has asserted that he will not work with Downey again in the future.

Magic Mike was a surprise box office smash. After the sexy film wrapped, Alex Pettyfer, who played "The Kid," went on author Bret Easton Ellis's podcast and admitted that Tatum did not like him. Pettyfer took responsibility for the feud. The British actor explained that he had a previous bad reputation for being difficult to work with, and Tatum did not want to hire him for the lead role. He was talked into it by the film's director Steven Soderbergh. Pettyfer went on to explain that his team told him to be on his best behavior, so he stayed quiet onset in fear of causing any tension.

"I actually did my work and I sat in the corner and listened to music because I had been told anything I did was wrong by my reps. I was very insecure as a human being. That also gave me a bad rep because everyone was like, "Alex doesn't speak because he thinks he's better than everyone else."

Tatum felt the the In Time actor's behavior made him look like a "jerk for no reason" and a "diva." Tatum and Pettyfer were able to finish filming Magic Mike without complication. However, Pettyfer was not asked to be in the film's sequel Magic Mike XXL.

Both Margulies and Panjabi deny that there was ever a feud between the actresses. They were both asked several times about it, and they both denied any bad blood. But, if we look at the facts, it appears that there must have been something going on.

For several seasons, The Good Wife characters were close friends (although there was tension between Alicia and Kalinda after the former found out that the latter slept with her husband, Peter) and worked together in the same law firm. However starting in Season 4, the actresses did not appear together in a scene for the remainder of the series, which ran for seven seasons. When the characters needed to talk about business, they would call each other or go through a third party.

If that's not enough evidence of a real feud, Panjabi, who won an Emmy for her The Good Wife performance in 2010, was an extremely well-liked and integral character on the legal drama. However, she did not come back for the series final season. Additionally, it was discovered – to the extreme disappointment of The Good Wife fans – that the long-anticipated reunion between Alicia and Kalinda during the show's series finale was nothing than smoke and mirrors. The actresses filmed the scene in different locations on a green screen, and it was then edited together to make it look like they were in the same location. 

The rumor is that it was Margulies, the titular "good wife" and one of the show's producers, who requested that the pair not shoot a scene together. However, even after the series ended, Margulies still vehemently denied the feud rumors:

"Right, I've heard about [the feud]. Who says that? It's totally gossip... I heard that question had been asked to Robert King. There's no story there, sorry … I actually had heard [that rumor] and I feel that it has been talked about and answered. I feel people just like to have gossip or make something into something that isn't there."

Here's the thing about rumors: they have to start somewhere. One of the most mythic, long-standing Hollywood urban legends is the one that claims Richard Gere had to go to the hospital and have emergency surgery because of complications due to stuffing a gerbil up his behind. It's a tall tale that has lasted for decades and still has legs even today. But where did it originate?

Another rumor to the rumor is that Sylvester Stallone hated Richard Gere so much while the pair were filming the 1974 movie Lords of Flatbush that he was the one who started the scandal (Gere was ultimately fired from the production at the behest of Stallone and replaced by Perry King.) Sly denies igniting the hoax and in 2006 discussed his falling out with Gere during an interview with Ain't It Cool News:

"Yeah, the original part of Chico, which was played by Perry King, was originally supposed to be played by Richard Gere, but we never hit it off. He would strut around in his oversized motorcycle jacket like he was the baddest knight at the round table. One day, during an improv, he grabbed me (we were simulating a fight scene) and got a little carried away. I told him in a gentle fashion to lighten up, but he was completely in character and impossible to deal with. Then we were rehearsing at Coney Island and it was lunchtime, so we decided to take a break, and the only place that was warm was in the backseat of a Toyota. I was eating a hotdog and he climbs in with a half a chicken covered in mustard with grease nearly dripping out of the aluminum wrapper. I said, 'That thing is going to drip all over the place.' He said, 'Don’t worry about it.' I said, 'If it gets on my pants you’re gonna know about it.' He proceeds to bite into the chicken and a small, greasy river of mustard lands on my thigh. I elbowed him in the side of the head and basically pushed him out of the car. The director had to make a choice: one of us had to go, one of us had to stay. Richard was given his walking papers and to this day seriously dislikes me. He even thinks I’m the individual responsible for the gerbil rumor. Not true… but that’s the rumor."

This is a case of art imitating life. It's no secret that, just like their characters Dominic Toretto and Luke Hobbs, Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson do not like each other in real life. Their hatred of one another is so strong that the macho men refused to appear together in the same scene during the franchise's 2017 installment, The Fate of the Furious.

Their feud makes for clumsy storytelling; instead of actually seeing Hobbs and Toretto battle onscreen, we have to hear about it. It's a big deal when Dom betrays his Furious family, and it's unfortunate the spectator doesn't see the friends turned onscreen enemies duke it out. Even during action scenes in the film, the actors do not share a single shot together. 

The bad blood between the A-listers was made public last year when Johnson took to his Instagram account to berate a "candy ass" co-star, whom he didn't name but was later revealed by TMZ to be Diesel, for his "bad attitude and habitual lateness." Additionally, it appears that Johnson was not happy with some of the decisions that Diesel made as a producer of the film.

After Selma Blair's sudden departure from the FX sitcom Anger Management, the rumor was that Charlie Sheen fired his onscreen love interest via text message in which he called the actress the dreaded c-word. It was reported that the co-stars had an onset feud because Blair questioned Sheen's work ethic.

However, the actor with tiger blood told Jay Leno a different story on The Tonight Show. Sheen said:

"One of our primary characters, Selma Blair, who played Kate, was written out because [the show] was not about our relationship, and the problem was too many people were still excited about the Two and a Half Men character and thought the Anger Management character was a little dull."

Blair responded to getting fired by threatening a lawsuit. The actress believed that she was canned from the show because she criticized Sheen for being a slacker. Sheen then reportedly got upset and had her fired. Sheen's claim that the show was planning to write the actress's character off, according to TMZ, may actually be true. However, that plan was going to take place over eight episodes but was sped up after Sheen heard Blair bashing him.

Alec Baldwin penned a telling first-person article in New York Magazine in 2014. One of the items that he discussed was his feud with former Broadway co-star Shia LaBeouf. In the article, Baldwin made it clear that he was heavily involved with the canning of the Transformers star from the revival production of Lyle Kessler's play Orphans.

Baldwin wrote that LaBeouf appeared "scattered" when he showed up for rehearsal, adding, "LaBeouf seems to carry with him, to put it mildly, a jailhouse mentality wherever he goes.” Baldwin went on to write that the actor did have all of his lines memorized for rehearsal but was frustrated while waiting for his co-stars to catch up with him. According to Baldwin, LaBeouf attacked him in front of the rest of the cast and allegedly said, "If you don’t say your lines. I’m just going to keep saying my lines.”

Baldwin wrote that he requested a rehearsal break and informed the show's director Dan Sullivan that one of them had to leave the show, Baldwin offered to quit but instead the production chose to fire LaBeouf. “He was shocked,” says Baldwin. “He had that card, that card you get when you make films that make a lot of money that gives you a certain kind of entitlement. I think he was surprised that it didn’t work in the theater.” LaBeouf's character Treat was replaced by actor Ben Foster.

"I worked at a campground on the night shift from 12 AM to 8 AM. I would bring in my PS2 game a good portion of the night, only having to deal with one or two people on busy nights. It was just me in this little 8' x 8' shack, with nothing around but darkness. My first week there, the other third shift guy who was quitting told me about this payphone a few feet from the shack where I worked. He said it rang every night at 4:17 AM, just once. It was probably just an automated test call, he guessed.He's never answered it himself. It was the middle of summer so most nights I had the windows closed so I couldn't hear the payphone go off.
 
Mid-August I started leaving the windows open during the night. Sure enough, at 4:17 AM every morning, the phone would ring once. The ring even sounded creepy, like the payphone was submerged in water.

One night I got up the nerve to answer it. I set an alarm at 4:15 and would go wait at the phone until it rang. When it did, I answered it. But there was no sound. Just dead air like someone was on the other line but wasn't answering. I said hello a few times, and hung up. I did this every night for a week with the same results. I didn't think anything of it and left it alone after that for about a month. The first week of October, I decided to answer the phone once again. I set my alarm and when the time came, I answered the phone.

'Hello? Hello?' 

Then I heard what sounded like someone inhaling through clenched teeth. The voice sounded rough and like he had gargled gravel.

He said my complete name. First, middle, and last. It was a voice I'd never heard. My voice caught in my throat and I hung up.

I rattled some change into the payphone and hit *69. The number had come from California but I was in Indiana."

“When my mom was about 12 years old, her family packed up the car and moved from L.A. to Chapala in Jalisco, Mexico. My grandma, my mom and grandpa were driving home late at night down a dirt road. Now typically, people are advised not to do that because of bandits and also because it's said the devil walks the road at night.

They were about halfway home when they saw a man in a white suit and hat, who looked really wealthy, walking alone down the road. He didn't look lost, just casually walking. The man appeared to be very attractive and they were tempted to stop the car and see if he needed help, but my grandma insisted they keep driving because she had such a heavy feeling of dread in her stomach.

The closer they got to the man, the more they could tell there was something off about him. He was extremely pale, so much so that his skin glowed, but he was absolutely beautiful. When he turned around to smile at them, they saw that his eyes were red.

My grandma hit the gas and they get the hell out of there. My mom said they said about 200 Hail Mary's that night and drank a ton of holy water.”

Mount Everest serves not only as a testament to the majesty of nature's beauty, but as an alluring siren song calling to the heart of every adventurer. Despite the risks, thousands swarm to Nepal every year in an effort to conquer the tallest point on Earth. Many of them never leave.

Over 250 bodies remain on Everest, giving it claim to the title of the world's largest open-air graveyard. While most deaths occur due to avalanches, falls, and exposure to the harsh climate, the area known as the “Death Zone” holds a terribly high body count and comes with its own unique set of problems.

The Death Zone is commonly known as the area above 26,000 feet. When the human body enters this altitude, it slowly starts to die. Then it becomes a race against the clock for climbers to make it from this mark to the peak and back again before their body fails them. Since oxygen at this level is only a third of what it is at sea level, climbers may find themselves sluggish, disoriented, and fatigued. The pressure makes weight feel ten times heavier and causes extreme distress on organs. Because of these severe effects, climbers usually only have a window of 48 hours inside the Death Zone and are strongly urged to use supplemental oxygen at all times.

If someone dies on Everest, it's almost impossible to retrieve their body, especially in the Death Zone. Due to unbearable weather conditions, severe lack of oxygen, pressure on dead weight, and the fact that many bodies are completely frozen onto the mountain face, most corpses are left exactly as they fall. Attempts are sometimes made to retrieve the body of a loved one, but those expeditions can cost upward of $25,000 and are extremely dangerous for the retrieval team.

Overall, standard protocol is to simply let these figures, frozen in the final moments of death, become a permanent addition to the rocky terrain. It would make sense that the mountain's nickname is EVER REST.

“Because it's there.”

With those three words to describe attempting the insurmountable, George Mallory not only cemented his own Everest fame but an entire Western mentality for future generations.

George Mallory was one of the most famous expert climbers of the early 20th century. He was part of the first three British expeditions to the summit and has the morbid distinction of being the oldest known corpse on Mount Everest. A corpse that was missing for over 75 years.

During his third attempt in 1924, Mallory and teammate Sandy Irvine made a push towards the top and were never seen again. Not only was their cause of death a mystery but, for over half a century, no one was certain if Mallory had actually reached the top or not. That would change history as we know it and make him the first known summit.

An investigative expedition was launched in 1999 to find the duo and shed light on the last hours of one of the world's most famous adventurers. The team found Mallory's sun-bleached and mummified body on a low face on the north side of the mountain. Due to severe rope jerk injuries on his torso, the theory is that he was still tethered to Irvine when one of them fell off the mountain and pulled the other man with him.

There was also a golf-ball size puncture wound in his forehead that is thought to be the fatal blow. The team was led to believe that as Mallory slid down the rock face he tried in desperation to slow his descent.  He must have caught on a tilted slab and bounced off the rock, causing it to smash straight into his head.

The mystery still remains to this day if Mallory and Irvine actually summitted. Teams are still searching for a photograph that Mallory was planning on leaving on the peak and a camera that Irvine had brought with them.  Experts for Kodak have confirmed that if found and handled properly, the film could still be developed.

Irvine's body is still missing and, with him, the possible proof of the first ever Everest summit.

In 2006, an experienced climber froze to death near the summit of Mt. Everest. With nearly one out of every ten climbers perishing atop the mountain on average, frozen corpses have become almost run-of-the-mill.  Yet it was the death of David Sharp that nearly tore the entire climbing community apart.

British mountaineer David Sharp made his third trek to the top of Everest without the aid of oxygen, radios, Sherpas, or teammates. His first two attempts were aborted due to perilous conditions, including ravaging frostbite that took several of his toes. He successfully summitted Everest on the third try and, during his descent, stopped to rest inside Green Boots's cave, mere feet from Green Boots himself. Being disoriented and suffering exhaustion, Sharp drew his legs to his chest, rested his head upon his knees, and never woke up.

However, David Sharp did not perish right away. Over 40 different climbers passed him on the mountain and noted he was still alive but in distress. Outrage poured from around the world at the knowledge that Sharp was left moaning and murmuring to climbers who refused to abandon their quest to the top in order to help him.

Sir Edmund Hillary, who was the first person to ever successfully summit Mount Everest, spoke out against Mark Inglis and his team for allegedly seeing Sharp's distress and continuing on towards the top.

“The whole attitude toward climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying,” Hillary said. “A human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.”

The unwritten code among climbers is to abandon their quests in order to help others in peril. On Everest, many believe that the standard code does not apply due to the difficulties involved in climbing the tallest mountain on earth. Many argue that it's every man for himself and that Everest has become a moral “gray area." This modern mentality has pushed the climbing world into civil war, with Sharp's death only further highlighting the issue.

Inglis and his team attest that Sharp was completely frostbitten, incoherent, and beyond saving when they found him. Claims have been made that many did try to help him but seeing he was too far gone, left him and continued their journey. Others stated that an immobile Sharp was mistaken for Green Boots and overlooked. Many cry out that Sharp was left on purpose, becoming just another victim of climber greed and summit fever.

The sad truth is that it's too hard to save yourself on Everest, let alone rescue others.

In 2001, French snowboarder Marco Siffredi became the first person to successfully snowboard down Mount Everest using the North Col passage. Siffredi, who had come from a long line of mountaineers, was disappointed that he was unable to complete his actual goal of boarding down Hornbein Couloir, which he considered to be the true face of Mount Everest.

Siffredi returned in 2002 at a time of year when the Hornbein would have amassed more snow in an attempt to ride down the steepest slope on all of Everest. He reached the summit in a grueling 12 hours with the aid of his Sherpa friend, Phurba Tashi. Upon reaching the top, Phurba was excited but Siffredi did not share his outlook.

“Tired. Tired. Too much snow. Too much climbing,” Siffredi responded.

Being so late in the day with clouds beginning to fill in, the Sherpas urged Siffredi not to make the descent but he refused to pass up a chance to conquer the Holy Grail of snowboarding. That was the last time Marco Siffredi was seen alive.

As the Sherpas were packing up Camp III, they noticed a figure rise and then slide down the mountain along the North Col. This was strange because Siffredi would have been nowhere near the North Col passage and he was the only climber on Everest at the time of year. When the Sherpas investigated the area where they had seen the figure, there were no snowboarding tracks anywhere.

Marco Siffredi is forever shredding the Hornbein with the wind at his back and a smile on his face.

Climbers taking the North Col route to Everest's elusive summit inevitably end up passing the mountains most infamous landmark, “Green Boots.” While it sounds like a unique protrusion or hidden crevice on Everest's face, Green Boots is actually the frozen body of a fallen climber that earned his nickname because of the brightly colored hiking boots that he was wearing when he died.

While Green Boots's identity has always been hotly contested, he is widely believed to be Indian climber Tsewang Paljor. Paljor was part of a high-class Indian expedition to summit Everest that yielded only one survivor, Harbhajan Singh. Singh recalled that the expedition was marred by mistakes and he had urged the other three men to abandon their quest due to inclement weather heading in.

Singh suspects his men succumbed to “summit fever." Summit fever is a term used when climbers abandon thoughts of safety, and often their own morals, because they are close to reaching the summit and become blinded by the drive to cross the finish line over all else.

“Don't be overconfident,” Singh insisted. “Listen to me. Please come down. The sun is going to set.”

And while the men continued on and eventually did end up reaching the summit, they encountered the terrible blizzard of 1996 on the trek back down. With zero visibility in a fury of wind and snow, Paljor and his two comrades were lost to the brutality of the mountain.

Over time, Paljor simply became known as "Green Boots" and has become a permanent fixture on the North Col passage. For the past two decades, climbers have used Green Boots as a macabre trail marker to gauge how far they had left to go on their own race to the summit.

As of 2014, Green Boots was finally dropped to a lower location over the side of the mountain, where he joined the bodies of other fallen climbers that have been cleared off of the main route.

Francys Arsentiev and her husband Sergei were avid climbers who sought to conquer Everest in 1998. Francys had a goal to become the first American woman to summit Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen. After two aborted attempts, she finally succeeded but was never able to celebrate her achievement.

Due to their lack of supplemental oxygen, the couple moved slowly and were not able to summit until very late in the day on May 22nd, which forced them to spend another night in the Death Zone. The couple became separated during this final evening and Sergei made his way down to Camp IV, assuming that his wife had done the same. Upon discovering her absence, Sergei raced back to the top with oxygen and medicine in hopes of rescuing his wife.

While accounts vary, on May 23rd, a Uzbek team found Francys half-alive and unable to move on her own. They carried her down as far as they could until their own oxygen ran out and they had to leave Francys and descend to camp. Along the way they passed Sergei on his way up to her. He was never seen alive again.

It was Sleeping Beauty's haunting final hour that cemented her legend. On May 24th, climbers Ian Woodall and Cathy O'Dowd saw a body raggedly jerking in the shadows of the First Step, one of three steps on the northeast ridge. Francys was severely oxygen deprived, frostbitten, and still attached to her climbing line. She kept murmuring, “Don't leave me here. Don't leave me here to die.” The team abandoned their attempt to summit and spent over an hour trying to save her.

Between the perilous location, Francys slipping into unconsciousness, and their own oxygen running out, the team made the painful decision to leave her and return to camp. For nine years, climbers scaled around the frozen beauty who had become a part of Everest's landscape.

In 2007, Woodall returned to the mountain and dropped Sleeping Beauty to a lower face where she can slumber for eternity, no longer a summit marker for other climbers.

The most bewildering story of death on Mt. Everest is that of British soldier, pilot, mystic, and mountaineer Maurice Wilson, in 1934. Wilson was a fierce proponent of using one's faith to solve the world's problems and was inspired by George Mallory's summit expedition the previous decade. Wilson believed that by using prayer and his faith alone, he would succeed where Mallory had failed.

Wilson's plan was to fly a plane to the upper slopes of Everest and then hike up to the summit. This plan was abandoned when authorities refused to allow him to fly near Everest.  Despite being a poor pilot and having used only minor hikes around the foothills near his home for his mountaineering preparations, Wilson flew into India and approached from the Rombuk Glacier. Having no climbing equipment, he found his attempts at scaling the ice walls near impossible. His inexperience as a mountaineer showed when he stumbled upon crampons (standard equipment for ice climbing) at an abandoned camp and left them behind. 

Constantly losing his bearings and having to retrace his steps in horrid weather, Wilson finally retreated back to the Rombuk monastery with a twisted ankle, snow-blind and suffering from exhaustion. After several more treks marred by bad weather, no climbing equipment, and his lack of experience within a mountain environment, Sherpas Tewand and Rinzing urged him to return to camp. When Wilson did not return from his last attempt, they left the mountain and reported his death.

Maurice Wilson was found in 1935, covered in snow, surrounded by pieces of his wind-blown tent. Many of the details of Wilson's expedition come from his diary that was found in a rucksack near his corpse.

Along the Northeast Ridge Route near Everest's summit lies “Rainbow Valley." While the name may suggest happiness and hope, Rainbow Valley is essentially a mass pit of dead bodies. This macabre scene got its name from all of the vibrantly colored jackets and climbing gear that are still attached to the corpses strewn on that section of the mountain.

Climbers along this route can not help but notice this blatantly visible spectrum of color as they take this particular passage. Throughout the years, climbers have been known to push bodies over the mountainside into Rainbow Valley or cut the ropes of mummified corpses so that the way is less hazardous for those embarking on the trail.

According to Nepalese law, Everest is sacred and any bodies are to be removed immediately. However, the dilemma lies in the fact that since it is nearly impossible to retrieve bodies from the Death Zone, the bodies must stay where they are, and Rainbow Valley will only continue to accrue more hues for its palette.

One of the darkest times on Mount Everest is considered to be the Spring 1996. The blizzard that roiled over the mountain left devastation in its wake and took the lives of many skilled climbers. It was one of the most infamous disasters in the region, and many have heard tales of the tortured final hours of Rob Hall's expedition team.

Yasuko Namba was a skilled mountaineer who was on Everest to complete the ultimate challenge of conquering the Seven Summits. The Japanese climber had just reached the top and secured the title as well as becoming the oldest woman, at that time, to have summitted. As the 47-year-old was embarking upon her descent, the blizzard of '96 struck the face.

Namba; her fellow climber, Beck Weathers; and several guides became trapped on South Col. The whiteout conditions were so bad that no one in the party was sure where camp was. Namba and Weathers became so weak that they were being completely supported by guides. Namba weighed barely 98 pounds and her small body mass led to her being more susceptible to hypothermia and the harsh conditions.

Shortly after, help came up from Camp IV and started evacuating the trapped climbers. Another guide assumed Namba was dead and left her and Weathers behind as lost causes. A search party sent out the following day discovered Namba and Weathers in horrible condition and were certain they wouldn't make it to base camp. After being abandoned twice over a span of 14 hours, Weathers crawled into Camp IV on his own.

Yasuko Namba died from exhaustion and exposure, all alone.  

Hannelore Schmatz was a German mountaineer who successfully summitted Everest in October 1979. On the way down, Hannelore and her teammate, Ray Genet, were overcome with exhaustion and, despite their Sherpa's pleading to continue to Camp IV, they decided to spend the night inside the Death Zone. They set up a temporary camp without any cover, which was basically just sleeping bags.

Overnight, there was a severe snowstorm that left Ray Genet to die due to hypothermia. Shortly afterwards, Hannelore succumbed to exhaustion a mere 330 feet from camp. Her final words were said to be, “Water... water.”

Attempts to retrieve her body in 1984 resulted in the falling deaths of two men due to the extreme winds on the southern slope. For years, climbers at Camp IV would gaze upon Hannelore's body, still leaning against her long-since-deteriorated backpack with her eyes wide open and her hair blowing in the wind. As time dragged on, she simply became known as “The German Woman."

Eventually, the high winds swept Hannelore's body down the Kangshung face.

Hannelore Schmatz was not only the first German citizen but also the first woman to perish on the upper slopes of Everest.

In April of 2015, a massive earthquake rocked Nepal and claimed the lives of thousands. The 7.8 magnitude quake not only leveled ancient buildings in Kathmandu, but caused a monstrous avalanche on Mount Everest. Among the Everest dead was Dan Fredinburg, the head of privacy for Google X.

Fredinburg had started Google Adventure Team, which documented remote mountains, ocean floors, and reefs in the same manner that Google Maps details cities and towns. A mountain enthusiast, Fredinburg had scaled four of the Seven Summits of the world before attempting Everest.  (The Seven Summits is a mountaineering challenge to successfully climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents.)

While Google refused to confirm details, allegedly Fredinburg and three other employees were on this expedition to Everest in order to enable a Street View trek to base camp as well as to bring a Street View camera to the summit.

During the avalanche, Dan suffered major head trauma and died from his injuries. The other three Google employees sustained injuries but were able to be evacuated. Google committed $1 million to the relief efforts and tried to supply updated satellite images to help in recovery missions.