The scariest thing about Disney's new Haunted Mansion movie might've been that time they tried to film Jamie Lee Curtis' scenes with her head inside a real crystal ball, director Justin Simien tells EW.

"It absolutely was," Simien explains of first attempting to shoot the Oscar-winning actress in a way that most accurately replicated the way her Madame Leota — the iconic psychic whose floating head appears in the Disney parks ride upon which the film is based — appears in the film. "It was certainly encased in a lot of motion detector cameras. There was a ball on set. I think we had it so that if Jamie wanted to get in this thing and suffocate in order to act off of the other actors, it was technically possible, but I don't think that lasted."