Vera Farmiga says she woke to a cross-shaped bruise on her leg while filming the final film in The Conjuring franchise.
Vera Farmiga told E! News that the mark appeared during production of The Conjuring: Last Rites and shared a photograph of the injury with the outlet, saying these 'inexplicable bruising shapes' have shown up repeatedly across the series.
Farmiga posted the images on her Instagram earlier this summer that fans dissected online, and her comments in an exclusive interview with E! published on 25 August 2025, have sparked fresh debate about whether on-set oddities are coincidence, superstition, or something less easily explained.
The actress and her long-time co-star, Patrick Wilson, have repeatedly stated that they prefer not to over-publicize such incidents, as they are concerned about sensationalizing the films and the real cases that inspired them.
Exclusive Interview: Farmiga's Account
In her interview with E! News, Farmiga described the bruise plainly: 'Yeah, I get battered', she told interviewer Francesca Amiker, adding 'that happens every time we do it. It's just these inexplicable bruising shapes that occur on my body. It just is what it is'.
She also explained why she and Wilson rarely discuss such occurrences publicly: 'We don't like talking about it... We're caught between a rock and a hard place — sensationalizing this and selling a movie'. The E! piece runs the exchange alongside a photo Farmiga shared of the mark.
A Pattern Across the Franchise
This was not the first time Farmiga has spoken about peculiar, unexplained marks during her time with The Conjuring films. In interviews dating back to the original film's publicity run, she recounted finding 'claw-like' marks in strange places and waking with unexplained bruises on her thigh, anecdotes that have circulated in contemporaneous press coverage and later retrospectives.
Those earlier comments established a pattern in public reporting: Farmiga has long described odd physical marks showing without a clear cause while working on the horror series.
The Conjuring: Last Rites, the film Farmiga was promoting in the E! interview, was framed in promotional material as the final theatrical chapter for her and Wilson's portrayals of Lorraine and Ed Warren, and focuses on the Smurl haunting.
The movie premiered in early September and was billed as the closing instalment of a long-running franchise, giving additional emotional weight to any off-set stories from its production.
Fans, Skeptics, and the Limits of Evidence
Within hours of the E! interview and Farmiga's Instagram photos going round, fans on X and Reddit began to connect dots and share theories: some playful, some serious, some conspiratorial.
Threads that pushed the idea of a 'cursed set' drew on Farmiga's phrasing and the visual post as their starting point. But that activity is discussion, not proof: social media reactions amplify uncertainty rather than resolve it.
Medical and forensic experts routinely caution that unexplained bruises can have multiple benign causes, from minor, unnoticed knocks to circulatory or dermatological issues, and that photographs alone cannot establish cause.
Likewise, actors working on physically demanding shoots are exposed to stunts, prosthetics, and long days under conditions that can produce marks without supernatural explanation. Farmiga herself framed her remarks as personal observation rather than as a claim of demonstrable paranormal intervention.
Farmiga's bruise remains unexplained, and the debate it has provoked is as much about audience appetite for the uncanny as it is about the facts she chose to share.
