Writer: Michael Grais

Michael Grais co-wrote Poltergeist with Mark Victor and Steven Spielberg, and the script’s central idea, that the haunting arrives through the television set in a brand-new suburban development, is what gives the film its specificity.

The house is built on a relocated cemetery where only the headstones were moved, which converts the ghost story into an argument about development and what it paves over.

He and Victor also wrote Cool World and Marked for Death, and the Poltergeist authorship question, given Spielberg’s involvement, has never been fully settled.