Joey King was 12-years-old when something strange began happening on the set of The Conjuring. During filming in North Carolina, unexplained bruises spread across her chest, back and other unusual areas of her body. At first, the makeup team assumed the marks were fake and tried to scrub them off with alcohol and oil. They wouldn’t come off.
What followed was a genuine medical scare. Doctors found that King’s platelet count was dangerously low and initially warned that she might have leukemia. They ultimately diagnosed her with the blood disorder ITP and cautioned that she was at risk of internal bleeding.
A blood transfusion was considered, but King’s mother feared her body might reject it. Instead, they tried to raise her levels naturally with iron and a meat-heavy diet. Production pulled King from some physical scenes, and she made the trip to the hospital twice a day — before and after work — as her platelet counts rose and fell throughout the shoot.
The timing of her recovery is what still unsettles her the most. King’s first follow-up after returning home showed that her levels were still as low as they’d been during filming. But at another appointment the very next day, they were fully normal. She says she’s never had a single sign of the disorder since.
The medical crisis was real, but King still can’t explain why it started and ended when it did. Recounting the ordeal on the Zach Sang Show, she said her heart races whenever she tells the story because she worries a spirit could be listening. Her greatest fear, she said, is “having a spirit that’s evil, like follow me or have business with me.”
