Film curses
James Wright’s letter [FT431:62- 63] rightly points out that the film Poltergeist was allegedly ‘cursed’. However, he gave me a laugh when he mentions actress “JoBeth Williams, who won the part for showing precocious reading ability at her audition”. While I’m sure Ms Williams’s reading ability was excellent, I wouldn’t call it ‘precocious’, given that she was 33 years old at the time. Mr Wright was referring to Heather O’Rourke, who – at the age of just five –was cast as Carol Anne Freeling (the family’s youngest child). She did indeed die of a congenital intestinal condition at the age of 12 (JoBeth Williams played the mother, Diane Freeling – just a slip on Mr Wright’s part, for sure).
He also references two actors who have played Superman. However, while the first was indeed George Reeves, the second was Christopher Reeve (no ‘s’ – a common slip).
Lastly, all credit to Mr Wright for highlighting the tragic case of Judith Barsi (the child actress who voiced the character ‘Ducky’ in The Land Before Time) and her murder at the age of 10 (along with her mother) at the hands of her father. She tends to get forgotten in discussions of this kind.
Your magazine certainly covers some ground; sometimes funny, sometimes tragic – but always interesting.
Graham Mullins
Orpington, Kent
Dancing lights
Lise Cribbin refers to dancing points of light and wonders if she can “see air” [FT432:66]. I, too, have this experience sometimes. For me they behave like sperm cells seen under a microscope. They appear as points of light and move so fast they appear to have a tail. They rush around in various directions followed by other such points of light. The clue for me was when she says she adjusts her way of looking in order to see them. This is also the same for me.
I am pretty certain that my own experience is produced by the flow of blood through the capillaries on the surface of my eye. Normally invisible, these can be seen if the focus is adjusted and the light is right. What I am seeing is, I think, single blood cells moving through capillaries very quickly and somehow magnified and appearing in the world rather than being a phenomenon produced by the eye itself.
Perhaps Lise Cribbin is seeing air or the souls
