- From time to time, people will tell you a scary story.
Sometimes it's so frightening
that you will convince yourself it's not real
but the truth is, that might just be your mind
trying to comfort you because the reality
is this world can generate horrors
that will leave you crippled
if you were to acknowledge them.
The following are just those stories.
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Here are 10 scary stories based on real events.
Number 10 is Pet Sematary.
When Stephen King wrote his novel Pet Sematary,
he believed that the tale of dead children
coming back from the grave was so disturbing
that no one would want to read it.
Well, as it turns out, not only was it read,
but it sold millions of copies.
The most twisted thing about this novel, however,
is that it was inspired by a real event.
In the story, a family are left traumatized
when their son is run over by a truck.
They hear a local legend that if they bury their son
in a nearby pet cemetery, then he will come back to them.
So, in desperation, they do just that,
but the son returns without a soul.
In real life, King's own son was nearly run over
outside their home.
With a pet cemetery nearby, this story fell into place
and remains one of King's most shocking
and gruesome to date.
Number nine is The Devil in the White City.
Erik Larson has released a number
of literary non-fiction books.
These books are dramatizations of events
which actually happened.
One of his most notable books
is The Devil in the White City.
It follows the main character Daniel Burnham
who created the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.
Meanwhile, a serial killer with the ironic second name
of Holmes used the fair to target his victims.
Holmes had built a torture dungeon
in a hotel which includes a place to dissect victims,
cremate the bodies, and even has a gas chamber
as a handy way of dispatching his prey.
Holmes then sells his victims' skeletons
to medical science.
It's a fascinating story but horrifying,
because it's true.
Serial killers are often opportunistic,
and Holmes' twisted approach to use Burnham's fair
to attract victims to his hotel
is a perfect example of this.
Number eight is The Monster of Florence.
In 2008, Douglas Preston and Italian journalist Mario Spezi
released the book The Monster of Florence.
Preston had moved to the Italian city of Florence
and had become fascinated by a famous case.
It involved a series of murders in the local area
between 1968 and 1985.
The killer had identified couples
having sex in their cars as his target.
He drove around Florence and the Italian region
of Tuscany looking for victims.
In a bizarre twist, the books' authors
became suspects themselves because of their involvement
in investigating the case.
Some police officers believe that they
were either accomplices or the serial killers themselves.
The Monster of Florence, then,
tells the story of how two authors
became wrapped up in one of Italy's most shocking cases
as they tried to dig into the truth.
Number seven are the Dead Ringers.
Dead Ringers was made into a horror film
by David Cronenberg and was adapted from the book
by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland.
The story perfectly sums up the saying,
fact is stranger than fiction, follows the lives
of Stewart and Cyril Marcus, who were twins.
They lived together in a New York apartment
during the 1970's.
They were both gynecologists and prominent medical experts.
In 1975, they were both found dead in their apartment.
The cause of death, to this day, remains debated.
Some believe they committed suicide together,
others, that they died from drug withdrawal.
When they were found, their apartment
was in complete disarray,
filled with decomposing food and feces.
In the end, it turns out to be a true story
of despondency and depression,
and how even those who are successful
can suffer from severe mental health issues.
Number six are Burial Rites.
Burial Rites was published in 2013
and written by Australian author Hannah Kent.
It won a number of prestigious awards
as it brilliantly fictionalized
one of Iceland's most notorious murder cases.
In 1830, a woman known as Agnes Magnusdottir
was accused of two brutal killings.
She worked on a farm as a servant.
While there, she murdered two men
with the help of two accomplices.
Agnes and her accomplices were sentenced to death,
after which, their heads were removed
and put on display as a deterrent.
Two days later, the heads mysteriously disappeared.
A psychic living in Iceland at the time
then began to have nightmarish visions of Agnes,
who pleaded that her head be returned
and buried with her body.
The psychic was able to find the head
and finally laid Agnes's soul to rest.
Number five is Jaws.
Jaws stunned audiences when it was released
as a film in 1975.
The story of a small town terrorized
by a great white shark off its shores
was written by Peter Benchley.
What a lot of people don't know
is that the horror of that novel is based on a real event.
In the summer of 1916, off the coast of New Jersey,
a 25-year-old was savaged
by a great white shark in the water.
Just a few days later,
another victim fell prey to the animal.
On July 12th of that year, an 11-year-old boy
was eaten by the same shark.
The man who jumped in to save him, Watson Fisher,
suffered the same fate.
The shark continued to feed on those swimming in the waters
until a few weeks later, when a 136-kilogram
three-meter-long shark was caught.
When its stomach was cut open, human remains were found.
Number four is Audrey Rose.
William Blatty's novel The Exorcist
is one of the most famous stories of possession.
However, another famous book, which also turned into a film
around the same time, was Audrey Rose,
although it dealt with a different form of possession.
Written by Frank De Felitta,
the author claimed that the novel was based
on experiences he actually had.
When his son was born, he soon suspected
that the boy was receiving information
from somewhere else.
He quickly became a brilliant piano player
without being taught.
Over time, De Felitta believed that his son
was the reincarnation of a talented piano player.
Using this as a jumping off point,
he wrote the story about a young girl named Ivy
who is haunted by a terrible night terror
and a real stalker who believes Ivy
is the reincarnation of his daughter Audrey Rose.
Number three is The Girl Next Door.
Released in 1989, The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
is a crime novel based on a horrific real event.
The book follows two teenage sisters
who find themselves in the care of their aunt.
Over time, both girls are manipulated and abused
at the hands of their aunt and her children.
The story is based on the real life torture
and murder of Sylvia Likens.
Sylvia was killed in Indianapolis during October of 1965.
What is most disturbing about the case
is that Sylvia's foster parent encouraged her children
and two other neighborhood youths
to take part in the abhorrent treatment
of a 16-year-old girl who had been abandoned by her family.
The Girl Next Door is another example
of how real life contains far more terror and brutality
than any fictional story.
Number two is The Devil in Connecticut.
The Devil in Connecticut is a controversial book
based on the case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Many will know the names of Ed and Lorraine Warren
from the popular Conjuring film series.
They were the couple who believed that they had the ability
to combat demonic hauntings and possessions.
They were involved in a number of high-profile cases
throughout the latter half of the 20th century.
The Devil in Connecticut follows the alleged possession
of an 11-year-old boy named David Glatzel.
The boy's family were exhausted and terrified
by the paranormal occurrences
that were surrounding their son.
Eventually, Ed and Lorraine Warren offered their services.
They supposedly vanquished the demon,
but it then entered a man named Arne Cheyenne Johnson,
who then murdered his landlord in cold blood.
And number one is Psycho.
The thriller novel Psycho was released in 1959
and was written by American writer Robert Bloch.
It follows the character of Norman Bates,
a middle-aged bachelor with a dark secret.
All the while, a deranged serial killer is on the loose
and seems to be connected to him in some way.
Just two years before the novel was first published,
a man called Ed Gein was famously arrested
in Plainfield, Wisconsin.
He had murdered two women.
When the authorities broke into his remote farmhouse,
they found that Gein had turned the bodies into furniture,
and even made a suit of human skin out of the body parts.
As well as inspiring elements of Psycho,
Gein also inspired The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
And so, his crimes have left an indelible mark
on popular culture and on peoples' nightmares.