Scariest Ghost Movie Of All Time Now Streaming Free

The Changeling is the tragic story of a man who suffers the loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident, and how he moves out of the area to find himself again. But when composer John Russell (George C. Scott) moves into the long-abandoned Seattle mansion, he is immediately made aware that someone (or something) is present alongside him in his new home.

At first, it seems as though he might be going mad from grief. But it becomes apparent that Russell is quite lucid, and could very well be haunted by the spirits of one of his recently deceased family members. As he digs into the home’s history, he discovers that it has been the site of several tragic figures that met their ends while only children.

The Changeling sees Russell conduct a seance to communicate with the spirit in his home and discovers that he is being haunted by the ghost of a nine-year-old boy named Joseph Carmichael. Joseph reveals to Russell that he was murdered by his father and replaced by an orphan in what was a scheme to keep the large financial estate of the Carmichael family intact. Russell is directed to property once owned by the Carmichael’s with the instruction to excavate the site of an old well, where the boy’s remains could be found.

Standing in the way of Joseph’s eternal peace is the orphan who replaced him, a powerful United States Senator who bears the name of the dead kid.

The Changeling is a slow build, its creepy elements slowly giving way to sinister acts committed at the hands of the ghostly Joseph. George C. Scott gives the film his best work between Patton and The Exorcist III, playing Russell as a character that is believably grief-stricken and equally haunted by the paranormal events that unfold around him. Scott takes the movie in directions otherwise not possible, giving a ghost story a sense of realism that works to make the terror all that more believable.

It might seem like it was concocted from the imagination of a Hollywood screenwriter, but The Changeling was, in fact, based on true events. The script was the work of American playwright Russell Hunter, who used his chilling experiences as a guest in a Colorado hotel as the basis for the film. According to Hunter, he was living in a rented room at the Henry Treat Rogers mansion in Denver and began experiencing paranormal phenomena.

While investigating mysterious noises, Hunter stumbled across a journal from the 19th century that he maintained was written by a disabled boy who was shut away from the world by his cruel parents. Like in The Changeling, a seance was held to communicate with the boy’s spirit, leading Hunter to dig until he found the skeletal remains and christening medal belonging to the child.

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Whether true or just a figment of the writer’s imagination, the events translated well into Hunter’s screenplay and were brought to life by Peter Medak’s wonderful direction. Canadian composer Rick Wilkins gave the production one of the most chilling cinematic scores, adding layers of both suspense and horror to an already unsettling film.

You can stream The Changeling for free with Tubi.