"Based on a True Story" is the oldest trick in Hollywood's book, and horror fans have
seen variations on that idea countless times.
The blurrier the line between fact and fiction, the bigger the potential scares, right?
But sometimes, the stories behind the scenes are even more terrifying.
Here are some horror movies based on even scarier true stories.
Dracula
Bram Stoker's classic story has been revisited countless times in cinema, making it some
of the most beloved source material of all time.
But until Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film, Bram Stoker's Dracula, the connection between
Dracula and the historical figure Vlad Drac had never been depicted onscreen.
If you think a pale, immortal vampire poised to suck your blood is scary, consider "Vlad
the Impaler": the Transylvanian noble is thought to have tortured and executed as many as 100,000
peasants and civilians during his reign.
Deeming the poor as "useless to society," he had them slowly impaled from bottom to
top, and then hoisted publicly for display.
So which is scarier: the fang or the pole?
The Exorcist
The Oscar-winning 1973 film The Exorcist was based on the 1949 possession of a Maryland
boy named "Roland Doe," who reportedly underwent an exhausting battery of exorcisms performed
by Jesuit priests.
While skeptics maintain that "Doe" was insane, the phenomenon of "demonic possession" has
been traced to Biblical times and is taken very seriously by religious experts.
While neither spinning heads nor projectile vomit have been widely reported, levitations,
shaking beds, and speaking in tongues have.
Not scared yet?
Consider that the demand for exorcisms has rapidly increased in recent years: in 2015,
the Catholic Church reported having as many as 100 requests at any given time.
The Amityville Horror
The house at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island, is an icon of the horror genre,
having inspired The Amityville Horror film franchise.
But what transpired at the actual address is more horrific than anything depicted in
the franchise.
There, 24 year-old Ron DeFeo brutally murdered his mother, father and four younger siblings
with a shotgun in 1974.
The hotly contested account in Jay Anson's book details the bizarre events that followed:
the house reportedly stood empty for 13 months, until the Lutz family moved in—only to abruptly
flee after 28 days, claiming they had been terrorized by paranormal phenomena.
After extensive paranormal investigations for decades, subsequent owners remodeled the
exterior, and it's no longer even listed at 112 Ocean Avenue.
The house is still standing, though—and for $850,000, it can be yours!
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Zombies are all the rage, as The Walking Dead and practically every other TV show and video
game seems to prove.
In Wes Craven's 1988 voodoo horror film The Serpent and the Rainbow, however, we find
a very different kind of zombie.
It's loosely adapted from a nonfiction book of the same name by ethnobotanist Wade Davis,
who outlined his expeditions to Haiti investigating the bizarre case of Clairvius Narcisse, a
man who had reportedly "returned from the dead."
According to Narcisse, he was administered a "pufferfish" toxin after offending a voodoo
sorcerer.
As a result, he collapsed and was pronounced dead.
But he was actually conscious during the delivery of his death certificate, and witnessed his
own burial...from inside the casket.
He was recovered from his grave two days after his funeral and was enslaved, forced to work
on a sugar plantation.
Narcisse was finally released and returned to his village 18 years later, where the "dead
man" reunited with his sister.
So...happy ending?
Kinda?
The Terrifying Ed Gein
Some of the scariest and best-known characters in horror have been based on the serial killer
Ed Gein.
Gein's grisly murder spree inspired Leatherface of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Norman Bates
of Psycho, and Buffalo Bill of The Silence of the Lambs, to name just a few.
In fact, Gein's actual crimes were so heinous that he might be the most monstrous figure
in American history.
The Gein family wasn't exactly a Norman Rockwell portrait to begin with.
His father and two brothers passed away early in his life.
After the passing of his sole companion, his beloved mother, Gein lived alone in their
rural Wisconsin farmhouse, and the mild-mannered handyman didn't attract much attention in
the 12 years following her death.
But when a neighboring hardware store owner disappeared in 1957, Gein came under suspicion,
and a search of his property revealed the decapitated woman in a shed, splayed out like
a pre-skinned deer.
Inside the house, authorities found masks, wastebaskets and lampshades made from human
skin, along with assorted human remains.
In fact, some of what was discovered is far too grisly to mention here, but suffice it
to say, Gein's living room would make Leatherface blush.
It was later determined that he'd also been making late-night visits to nearby cemeteries,
exhuming women who looked like his mother—whose room was found boarded up and completely untouched.
Gein's story, even sans chainsaw, is truly the stuff of nightmares.
Thanks for watching!
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch more videos like the one you just saw.
And leave us a comment to let us know which of these true stories is scarier than fiction...