Many horror films are based on true stories.
But real life has a habit of being even more terrifying than film makers can imagine, and
there are plenty of real life scary stories that sound more like horror films.
Number 5 Some of the scariest horror stories are those
where the victim was seemingly selected at random.
This seems to have been the case for Bill and Dorothy Wacker.
For years, the elderly couple were harassed and threatened by an unknown individual or
individuals who seemingly wanted nothing but to drive the couple insane.
The Wackers had lived in the small town in Ohio for their entire lives.
It was the sort of town where crime was rare, and people would leave their doors open at
night.
So when they came home one evening in 1984 to find their home had been ransacked, they
were stunned.
Surprisingly, nothing had been stolen, and for some reason the Wackers did not feel the
need to alert the police.
This would happen two more times, each time with nothing being taken, before they finally
contacted police.
Police found no clues as to who was behind the break-ins, and no motive for the crime
could be found.
The case went cold and Bill and Dorothy were left questioning the safety of the quiet little
village they had known for decades.
Things escalated in June 1985.
Dorothy was home alone, recovering from an operation, when there was a knock at the door.
A man had broken down and asked to use her telephone.
He was a young, clean cut blonde man who didn’t look like he was out to cause any trouble,
so Dorothy let him in.
She heard him talking on the telephone in the other room, but couldn’t make out anything
he said.
At one point, Dorothy thought she heard him heading out, which she thought odd as he had
never even called out to thank her.
When she went to see if he was gone, the man struck her in the head and she blacked out.
When Dorothy woke, she had been tied to a chair in the kitchen.
She couldn’t tell if the intruder was still in her home, but she managed to get to the
window and call for help.
Police would find only a few items, including a watch and a radio scanner, had been stolen.
Scrawled in crayon on the bedroom wall was a message that read “cheaper, but will do”.
Harassing phone calls at all hours of the day and night would follow, sometimes the
caller would say nothing but other times he would swear and threaten the Wacker’s lives.
The stolen items were returned, wiped clean of fingerprints and left one by one on their
doorstep.
Banging could be heard throughout the night on the door and walls to their home, but when
they went out to see what the cause was there was nobody there.
The Wacker’s friends and family decided to stake out the house one night.
For hours, they sat and watched on all sides, waiting for something to happen.
Somehow, the stalker slipped through their watch, banging on the backdoor and leaving
a note which told the couple to “get the message”.
No one saw the phantom come or go, and everyone was left puzzled.
The harassment continued until the couple passed away from natural causes.
Many suspect someone who knew the couple were behind the crimes, while others have pointed
the finger at Bill Wacker himself.
But if this was the case, then who was the stranger who had come to use the phone, and
why did Dorothy not recognise him?
The case has never been solved and, with both Bill and Dorothy having passed away, it’s
likely we’ll never get answers.
Number 4
The case of the Monster with 21 Faces lends itself to a thriller horror film, in no small
part helped by a name lifted from a popular detective novel.
Between April 1984 and August 1985, consumers in Japan could never be sure the treats they
were buying for their children, the sausages they purchased for dinner, or even food ordered
in a restaurant weren’t laced with poison.
It began with a kidnapping.
On March 18th, 1984, two masked men broke into a house and tied up the old woman living
there.
They took only a spare key for the house next-door.
They then broke in there, tied up a woman and her young daughter, and searched the house
for the man they were after.
Katsuhisa Ezaki, president of Glico Candy Company, was taking a bath.
The kidnappers took him before he could even get dressed, bundled him into a car and disappeared
into the night.
A ransom of 1 billion yen and 100kg of gold bullion was demanded.
It was the largest ransom demand ever made in Japanese history.
Getting that much gold would take time, though, and before the Glico company could meet the
demand, Katsuhisa managed to escape.
He had been held in a warehouse in Osaka.
They hadn’t harmed him, besides a few scratches on his face.
The mysterious organisation turned their attention to Glico.
It would set fire to the company’s vehicles and leave a container of acid in one of its
buildings.
The group sent taunting letters to police, which were signed as the Monster with 21 Faces,
giving the group its nickname.
The group threatened to poison Glico products, forcing the company to pull its candy from
store shelves.
No poison was ever found, but they couldn’t take the risk.
It was at this point police got their first lead.
A man was captured on security at a supermarket putting Glico products back onto the shelves.
He was wearing a baseball cap, business suit and glasses, and stills of the security footage
were sent to the press, but he was never identified.
In June 1984, The Monster With 21 Faces turned their attention to other companies.
Nobody else was kidnapped, but large ransom demands were sent to Morinaga and other companies.
When police undercover as workers from one of the companies tried to hand over the money,
the hand over was always called off by The Monster.
Twice, police encountered a strange man referred to as The Fox-eyed Man on these drop offs,
but they failed to apprehend him.
With Morinaga, some of the company’s products were actually poisoned.
On this occasion, all poisoned products were clearly labelled as containing cyanide, but
messages from The Monster indicated they might not be so thoughtful next time.
The taunting letters were sent to police and, in August 1985, Superintendent Shoji Yamamoto
took his own life.
The Monster sent one last letter, saying Yamamoto hadn’t had to do what he did, and saying
they had decided to stop torturing food companies.
They warned any further letters would be from copycats and with that they disappeared as
mysteriously as they had arrived.
Number 3
On April 10th, 1990, the Casie Nicole and her crew of four men left the docks in Georgia.
The plan was for a multi-day fishing trip off the coast of South Carolina.
Only one of the men would ever return.
The Casie Nicole was captained by Billie Joe Neesmith.
Also onboard was his brother Nathan, their nephew Keith Wilke and their friend Franklin
Bentley.
The ship itself had been in a dry dock for over a month before for repairs, but it was
deemed to be in a good enough condition for them to set sail for what they expected to
be a seven day trip.
Day one of the trip went as planned, but when Nathan woke in the early hours of the second
day he knew something was wrong.
The ship wasn’t behaving as it was supposed to and, when he went to wake his brother,
they discovered a foot of water had leaked into the bunk room.
The four men tried to bail out the water by hand after it was discovered the pumps did
not work.
Then the power went out.
Barely able to see and with water coming in faster than they could bail it out, Billie
Joe made the call to abandon ship.
But the nightmare only continued.
Their life raft wasn’t designed for so many people, and it had begun to rot.
There was also a small hole in the raft and it soon began taking on water.
When it was light enough to see properly, Nathan spotted the hull of the ship they had
abandoned in the distance.
He figured it would be safer for them all if he left the raft and swam to the hull.
The others tried to get him to stay with them, but he didn’t listen.
It took seven hours for Nathan to swim to the hull.
By the time he reached it, he could no longer see the raft and his friends.
The next day, Nathan saw a freighter on the horizon.
It seemed to circle the spot where he thought the raft was.
He figured the freighter was picking something up out of the water and was hopeful that the
others had been rescued.
He tried to gain the freighter’s attention, but it did not notice him and he was left
alone in the ocean.
On April 15th, Nathan was finally rescued.
He was described as clinging to life.
He told his rescuers about the raft and the other sailors and the US coast guard launched
a search.
No trace of the other men could be found.
Only a single life jacket and a sleeping bag were found bobbing in the ocean.
It was determined the men had perished at sea.
It was a sad end to the story but, for Nathan, the horror was over.
That was until six months later.
His sister received a phone call from a man speaking Spanish.
Reports differ as to what the man said.
In some he spoke in Spanish and the only thing that Nathan’s sister could understand was
her own name and her phone number.
In others, that was all that was said.
And in some reports, the man also said the names of the three missing sailors.
On the same day, the owner of the Casie Nicole received the same phone call.
They would receive a total of five more phone calls between them.
The family became convinced someone had rescued the missing men.
In the final call, in broken English, the caller said he was “bringing him home”.
But nobody would ever be returned home.
The calls weren’t traced and there’s no way of knowing if it was a twisted joke or
if someone had been trying to bring back one of more of the missing men.
Number 2
For seven years, Cindy James lived inside her own horror film.
Mentally and physically attacked by an unknown person, dismissed by authorities and eventually
even some people who were closest to her.
The torment would eventually lead to her passing, but the mystery of who or what did this to
a 44-year-old Richmond nurse lives on.
The torment began shortly after Cindy divorced her husband, Roy, who was a psychiatrist,
in 1982.
She started to receive sinister phone calls and threatening letters.
Raw meat would be left on her doorstep, along with deceased animals with a note reading
“your next” tied to their necks.
The attacks became physical.
No less than seven times she was kidnapped, injected with an unknown substance, attacked
with a knife and strangled with nylon stockings and pantihose.
On one occasion, a neighbour found her outside her home, crouched with a black stocking tied
tightly around her neck.
When Cindy recovered, she explained she had gone to the garage and was grabbed from behind.
All she saw were white sneakers.
On another occasion, the same neighbour and her husband stayed the night with Cindy, only
to wake to find the basement in flames and the phone line dead.
When the husband went out to call for help, he saw a man standing at the curb.
The husband asked for him to call the fire department, but the man simply ran away.
Cindy reported almost a hundred incidents of harassment.
She changed her name, moved houses, and repainted her vehicle, but the attacks continued.
Police took the case seriously at first, but eventually began to believe she was behind
the attacks.
Whenever police were stationed at her home, there were no calls or attacks.
As soon as they left, the incidents would start again.
Even at the fire, police found no sign of forced entry and the window they deemed had
to have been used to enter the house was untouched.
There was no disturbance to the dust on the windowsill outside.
Cindy hired a private investigator, who also couldn’t figure out who was behind the attacks.
But Cindy also kept information from him.
Her family believes she knew who her attacker was, or what the reason behind the harassment
was, but couldn’t reveal the truth or her family would be hurt.
Her ex-husband believed she had a multi-personality disorder, and one of these personalities was
behind the attack and keeping the truth from Cindy.
On May 25th, 1989, Cindy disappeared.
Her car was found in the neighbourhood parking lot, abandoned.
Her body was found two weeks later at an abandoned house.
She appeared to have been brutally attacked, her hands and feet tied behind her back and
a stocking around her neck.
But the cause of death was an overdose.
Police initially ruled she had taken her own life, but a coroner later ruled it as an “unknown
event”.
Whether Cindy was being attacked by an outside force or a consequence of her own mental health,
what happened to her wouldn’t be out of place in a horror film.
Number 1
A man named Bashir’s horror story began in Lebanon in 1974, but followed him home
to the United States and continued to play out for decades.
Bashir was born in Syria and raised in Labanon, but had married an American woman named Gail
and was an American citizen.
Gail was a singer who, according to Bashir, often worked at a club known to host political
elite and arms dealers.
So it wasn’t too out of the blue when she was invited to a women-only party hosted by
a Saudi princess.
He went to pick her up at 11.30pm, but his wife never came out.
He waited for a few hours, then decided he had the wrong address so left.
As he left, a van blocked his Mercedes and he was abducted.
For the next few weeks Bashir was tortured.
He was taken to a Palestinian refugee camp, which told him this was a case of mistaken
identity.
His kidnappers thought he was a political person or someone important and when he explained
he wasn’t they would let him go.
But his kidnappers accused him of working for the CIA.
Bashir eventually tried to take his own life.
When his kidnappers found him, they took him to a hospital.
There, he managed to contact his family, who got the American embassy to negotiate his
release.
Naturally the incident mentally scarred Bashir.
He spent months in Lebanon, convinced he had to prove he wasn’t a CIA agent or part of
some political organisation.
He then returned to the United States and tried to put his life back together.
He divorced his wife, who he suspected may have had something to do with his abduction.
She never explained where she was that evening.
He and his sister worked to manage a restaurant in Philadelphia which focused on Moroccan
cuisine.
In 1982, they opened a new branch of the restaurant in D.C.
But even before the restaurant opened, Bashir’s life was turned on its head.
He started getting phone calls from someone who would just breathe down the line.
He installed an answer machine, and the mystery caller would leave messages of laughter or
tsk tsk sounds.
The calls only escalated and seemed to follow Bashir wherever he went.
The caller received the nickname L’Enfant, as they often used the voice of a little boy.
Sometimes that would change to a small girl or someone with a Middle Eastern accent.
L’Enfant would threaten Bashir’s life and, on a few occasions, seemed to physically
harass him.
One time someone tampered with the wires on his car, causing it to catch fire.
Another time, the star of David was scratched into the paintwork.
Bashir went to a psychiatric hospital, in which time the harassment spread to his replacement
at the restaurant and his replacement’s son was physically attacked.
But strangely Bashir also received calls while in the hospital.
The case featured on Unsolved Mysteries and attracted attention from the FBI, but it would
never be solved.
Freedom of Information requests revealed Bashir had been kidnapped by a splinter group of
the PLO, and he assumed they were also responsible for his harassment.
One theory suggests Bashir had seen a face he wasn’t meant to see while he was in captivity,
and that person had later become a politician and was working in D.C.
The harassment was designed to make Bashir leave the city so this politician couldn’t
be identified, but there’s no evidence this is the case.