Out of all of the things I’ve heard about Nicolas Cage (an obsession with Elvis, owning snakes so deadly they require anti-venom nearby, turning the entryway of his home into a car and motorcycle showroom) this isn’t the strangest. Cage was making one of those b-movies he churns out so he can continue to afford the mortgages on all the castles he owns around the world. He was supposed to film scenes in an old house didn’t want to do it at first. According to Mike Walker at The Enquirer (I know), Cage got a bad feeling and insisted that the place be cleansed of evil spirits. A paranormal expert was called in to pacify Cage and it worked.

Nicolas Cage held up shooting of his new flick “Southern Fury” while rating: “Evil spirits are threatening me…

“Producers groaned when Nic took one look a this old house where his character’s supposed to live, insisted he felt spooked and refused to enter because it was ‘haunted.’

“Nic demanded that ‘spirit-chasers’ purify the spooky old dwelling with what’s called a ‘smudge’ – so-called magical herbs including sage, cedar, sweet gass and mugwort mixed in an ancient Indian pot and burned to release purifying fumes that drive away evil spirits…

Nic sniffed the air, detected no evil spirits, grinned at grateful producers and barked ‘Roll ’em.'”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition]

I know some of you believe in this, but I’m a skeptic and it sounds like hooey to me. Still, it seems relatively harmless if someone wants to have spirits cleansed with herbs or whatever. It’s not like a diva request, like “make the entire place smell like lavender because the odor offends me,” especially if he was really scared. This makes me wonder if Cage believes in other mumbo-jumbo, especially because we know Megan Fox does. So I googled “Nicolas Cage Illuminati” because I vaguely remember the plot of those National Treasure movies. It turns out he has a nine foot tall pyramid tomb in New Orleans just waiting for him to take his final resting place. On the tomb is written “Omnia Ab Uno,” the Latin phrase “Everything From One” which is straight from his National Treasure movie.

Then I went down the Cage rabbit hole and learned that he used to own the LaLaurie House in New Orleans, which was considered one of the most “haunted” homes in the US due to the gruesome history of Madame LaLaurie, who used to torture slaves there. Cage said of the home that “Other people have beachfront property; I have ghost front property… I have not experienced anything, but I like a bit of mystery, and the house has such a mystery to it. Some of the stories about it are pretty horrific.” He lost the home in 2009 to foreclosure, but this begs the question: if he wasn’t afraid of ghosts before he lived there, what changed? He did do this movie no one saw:

photos credit: WENN