10 Most Shocking And Strange Facts About Famous Horror Movies

1996's The Craft is a teen horror about a group of high school girls who form a coven of witches and find they are able to tap into a spiritual power in order to make their darkest wishes come true. The film features a number of scenes where the girls perform rituals and cast spells and in a bid to make these somewhat authentic, and possibly to avoid upsetting the witch community, Columbia pictures hired genuine witch Pat Devin to serve as a technical consultant on set.

Devin is credited as a Dianic Wiccan High Priestess and she had a lot of input during pre-production as well as the actual script. The words used in all of the spells and chants were her suggestions, originating from certain books she felt the girls would have access to. Included at her insistence, Devin actually had to seek permission from the high priestess of a local coven to use the rite seen in the initiation scene.

But with all this authenticity was there a risk something might be conjured up for real? Events that took place during the filming of one sequence would suggest so to several of the cast and crew who witnessed.

It happened while filming the beach scene, where the girls attempt to invoke the fictional God Manon. First a great fog rolled in, then as star Fairuza Balk spoke the words a flock of bats hovered over the set and the nearby tide crashed in to extinguish the circle of candles in which the cast were stood.

According to director Andrew Fleming:

"Every time the girls started the ceremony, and only when they would start the ceremony, the waves would start coming up tremendously fast. Then right when Nancy says her line, "Manon fill me", right at that exact moment, we lost power."

Cautious not to inspire teens to "invoke anybody real", Devin had been fine with using the name "Manon" as it wasn't listed anywhere in the books and texts she knew. After what happened on the beach she realised that the name sounds very close to Mananan, the Gaelic god of the sea.