Its Halloween month, which means we’re going to up our spooky content game.
Since so many of you saw similarities between the 2009 movie the orphan and the true story
of Natalia Barnett, I thought it was high time we did a list of scary movies that were
inspired by real life events.
Grab your candy corn and buckle up, You’re about to the top 10 scary movies that were
based on true stories.
Welcome back to another informoverload top 10 list, I’m charlotte dobre, thanks for
checking out another one of these videos, they are absolutely sooo much fun to research.
If you’re new here, subscribe for spicy news updates and epic facts and follow the
Io team on social media.
Make sure you stick around until the end of the video for some comment features and bonus
content.
Now lets get into this list.
At number 10, Child’s Play.
Okay, so the doll that inspired Child’s play wasn’t as scary looking as Chuckie,
but the story that goes along with him is definitely spooky.
It goes back to 1909, when painter and author Robert Eugene Otto claimed that one of his
servants put a voodoo curse on his childhood toy, Robert The Doll.
Apparently this female servant had been abused by his family, this was of course at a time
when slavery was common, so she put a curse on Robert to get back at the family.
Robert the doll put a sort of spell over otto, and otto would talk to him like he was a friend
and his parents would often hear him having conversations with himself.
The scary thing is, otto’s parents heard the replies from Robert, that were made in
a completely different voice.
But that’s not all, Robert would move around on his own, from room to room.
Otto would always blame Robert when furniture would get knocked over or when misfortune
stuck the family.
Otto’s parents would also wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of Otto screaming,
and when they went to check on him, they saw Robert the doll by his bedside and all the
furniture in his room tossed around.
Robert the doll was eventually banished to the attic of Otto’s home until his death
in 1974, when a new family moved in.
The home’s new owners also claimed that Robert the doll would cause strange incidents.
If you’re interested, you can actually go and see Robert.
He’s on display at the Key West Fort East Martello Museum
At number 9, Open Water.
Open water is a film about an American couple who were abandoned by accident in shark infested
waters during their Bahamas vacation.
It was an amazing film that was shot with handheld cameras on a budget.
Open water is actually based on the story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, American tourists
who disappeared off Australia’s graet barrier reef in January 1998.
They’d spent years travelling the world, but before they returned home, they went to
the great barrier reef.
They took a day trip on a passenger boat, where a crew would take them on 3 dives.
On the 3rd dive at around 3 pm, they dove down together, and were last spotted swimming
about 12 meters down.
When they came back up, the passenger boat had left without them.
The danger of being left in the middle of the ocean is not drowning, but dehydration.
A day later, on another boat tour, a diver found six dive weights on the bottom, but
still, the crew had no idea they were left by tom and Eileen, who might have still been
alive at that point.
Several months later, a fisherman 100 miles north of the dive site found a dive slate,
scribbled with the words, Monday January 26th 1998, 8 am.
To anyone who can help us.
We have been abandoned on Agincourt reef by MV outer edge.
Please help us come to rescue us before we die, help.
Over the following months, other belongings, including a eileens wetsuit, fins and dive
jackets were found.
The couple did not die by shark attack like the couple in the film open water.
Instead they likely died from a combination of dehydration and drowning.
In case you’re wondering what happened to tom and Eileen sparked international outrage.
No one even knew they were missing until toms wallet and their passports were found on the
boat.
Regardless, it was by most accounts an accident.
An accident that inspired the 2004 film, open water.
At number 8, Psycho.
Alfred Hitchcock’s classic horror, Psycho from 1960 is one of the best thriller movies
of all time.
It was based on a novel of the same name written by Robert Bloch.
And the main character in psycho, Norman Bates was actually loosley based on real life psychopath,
ed gein.
The notorious Wisconsin murderer and grave robber.
The atrocities committed by Ed Gein earned him the nickname, the mad butcher of plainfield,
and that wasn’t a nickname given lightly.
Gein murdered two women and dug up dozens of bodies from several local graveyards.
He took the remains of these bodies and decorated his house with items made from bones and skin.
Gein was eventually caught, and was found guilty, but legally insane.
He was sent to live out the rest of his life in psychiatric institutions.
He finally passed away at age 77 at the Mendota Mental Health Institute in 1984.
There were a couple similarities between Norman Bates and Ed Gein.
Both had obsessions with their mothers and both their houses contained sealed off shrines
to their dead mothers, and both of them also enjoyed wearing womens clothing.
But the main difference between Bates and Gein is that Gein wasn’t really a serial
killer.
He only killed 2 people and desecrated a bunch of graves.
Bates on the other hand murdered around 20 people.
The more you know.
At number 7, The Shining.
Soooo the shining is one of my favorite movies of all time, because jack Nicholson duh, but
yeah, that hotel?
It was inspired by a real hotel that’s said to be haunted even to this day.
Its called the Stanley hotel, its a haunted resort in the state of Colorado.
The shining is the story of a hotel caretaker who’s driven insane by evil spirits.
But you know what?
As if that already isn’t scary enough, the real story is a lot scarier.
There are 142 rooms in the hotel, but one room has a terrible history.
Room 217.
Room 217 used to belong to a chambermaid, Mrs Wilson, who is spending eternity cleaning
up the room she’s trapped in.
Guests who have stayed in the hotel report that they have been terrorized by strange
incidents.
People report they wake up to the sensation of something poking them in the ribs if their
room is messy.
Steven king is also said to have spent a night in room 217 while he was battling alcoholism
in 1974.
He apparently had a terrifying nightmare that his son was being chased down the hall by
a possessed fire hose.
It was this stay in the hotel that inspired steven king to write the book, the shining,
which is about an alcoholic writer who spends the winter being driven crazy by spirits in
a haunted hotel.
At number 6, The Girl Next Door.
The film is based on a novel by Jack Ketchum, that follows the story of a man named david
who recalls memories from his childhood about a pair of orphan girls who were sent to live
with their aunt.
The orphans are tortured and degraded at the hands of their family members.
All the while, david struggles to decide if he should intervene.
The girl next door is actually based on a true story.
16 year old Sylvia Likens was held captive by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski.
For three months, Gertrude, her children and other kids in their neighbourhood abused and
tortured Sylvia until she died from her injuries.
Eventually Gertrude, her eldest daughter paula, her son john and 2 kids from the neighbourhood
were treid and convicted in may of 1966 of neglecting, torturing and eventually killing
Sylvia.
The counsels of the defendants called the case the most diabolical to ever be presented
before a court or jury.
To this day, the torture and murder of Sylvia likens is the worst crime ever to be committed
in Indiana.
Half way there at number 5, The Hills Have Eyes.
Okay, I definitely didn’t know that the hills have eyes was based on a true story,
or a legend that’s said to be based on a true story.
The hills have eyes is a story about a family who’s car breaks down in the desert.
While they are stranded, they are targeted by a group of cannibalistic mutants.
How could cannibalistic mutants be real?
Well.. have you ever heard about Sawney Bean?
The legend of Sawney bean is one of scotlands most shocking legends.
Alexander Sawney bean was the head of a 45 member family in Scotland back in the 16th
century.
He left home with a woman named Agnes Douglas who was accused of being a witch.
Neither of them were a fan of honest labor, and they were said to have robbed and cannibalized
an innocent victim.
They sought refuge in a coastal cave where they remained for 25 years in hiding.
The cave was very deep and was blocked by water during high tide, very difficult to
find and very difficult to enter.
The couple bore 8 sons and 6 daughters, who had incestual relationships, and they bore
18 grandsons and 14 granddaughters.
The clan were said to have survived by ambushing passers by at night and murdering them.
The bodies were brought back to their caves where they were eaten.
Sometimes body parts washed up on shore.
This legend is supposed to be fictional but many experts believe it was based on a real
story.
Wes craven used the legend of sawney bean as his inspiration for his 1977 film, the
hills have eyes.
In at 4, The silence of the lambs.
This to date is one of my favorite Anthony Hopkins films, and that’s saying a lot.
Hopkins is a legend.
The silence of the lambs revolves around a cannibal named Hannibal lecter.
No one knew that the character was based on a real person until 2013, when the 25th anniversary
of the silence of the lambs was released.
Hannibal Lector was based on an actual doctor from mexico, Alfredo Balli Trevino, a surgeon
who was convicted of murdering and chopping up his gay lover.
Thomas Harris, who wrote the book that the movie is based on, actually met Trevino in
the 60’s while he was working on a story for a magazine, and managed to score an interview
with him after he performed life saving surgery on one of the inmates.
He killed his lover for one of two reasons, he found out he was leaving him, or he refused
to pay back money that was owed.
Either way, Trevino ended up in prison and his murder was categorized as a crime of passion.
He injected a drug into his lovers body, dragged his body into a bathtub, slit his throat with
a scalpel and drained the blood.
Afterward he sliced up the body and stuffed the pieces into a box.
Harris described Trevino as someone who had a certain elegance about him, which is pretty
interesting because the guy chopped up his lovers body.
But that definitely speaks to Anthony Hopkins portrayal of him.
Interestingly, after serving 20 years, Trevino was released in the year 2000 and continued
to practice medicine, providing medical care for the poor until his death in 2009.
Getting close now at number 3, A nightmare on Elm Street.
Okay so freddy kruegers freaky face wasn’t based on a real life person so you can cool
your jets about that.
But a nightmare on elm street was inspired by a terrifying true story.
The movie revolves around a terrifying villain, freddy Krueger, who’s the spirit of a serial
killer who uses a gloved razor hand to kills his victims in their dreams, which causes
their deaths in the real world as well.
Wes Craven said he was inspired by an L.A. Times article that survived the killing fields
in Cambodia.
The family made it to the united states, but the boy was haunted by nightmares, likely
fuelled by traumatic events.
The boy told his parents that he was afraid of something that was chasing him in his dreams,
and so he refused to sleep for days at a time.
Of course, your body will not allow you to stay awake for days at a time, so eventually
the boy fell asleep.
But his parents awoke to a scream in the middle of the night.
They ran to check on their son…but by that time it was too late.
The boy died in the middle of a nightmare.
BROO.
The boy had died from Sudden unexpected death syndrome, a condition that affects young Hmong
males and Filipinos.
It claims anywhere from 43 to 100 victims per year.
Basically… victims die of fright from their own belief of what happens in their dreams.
This is where Wes Craven got his idea for a nightmare that can kill.
Almost there now at number 2, Scream.
It isn’t a Halloween month without scream, a slasher movie that took a dark humor approach
to tell the true story of the Gainseville Ripper, aka Danny rolling.
The screenplay for the films were written by Kevin Williamson, an actor, who was captivated
and horrified after reading about the tragic events that took place during the summer of
1990 at the university of florida.
Over the course of 3 nights, danny rolling murdered 5 students.
He broke into the apartment of freshman roommates aged 18 and 17, and stabbed them to death
before putting their bodies in sexually suggestive positions.
The next day, he did the same thing to another victim, only this time he cut off her nipples,
severed her head, then placed her head on a shelf so it looked at the body.
Would not have wanted to come across that crime scene.
Two days later, he struck again, killing 2 roommates, a man and woman aged 23.
The murders took a tole on the community.
Universities closed for a week, students took turns at night keeping watch.
But danny rolling didn’t kill again.
Police didn’t figure out it was rolling until a year later, but by that time he was
already in jail for an unrelated burglary charge.
He was eventually sentenced to death, but during his court appearances, rolling would
sing love songs to his fiance’, Sondra London.
He also sang just before he was executed 15 years later in 2006.
And at number one on our list, The exorcist.
This is the scariest film on this list in my opinion.
And don’t come for me in the comments, but I was truly disturbed after I watched the
exorcist.
The exorcist is based on the real life exorcism of Roland Doe.
Back in the 1940’s in suburban Washington DC, a 13 year old boy was traumatized over
the loss of his beloved aunt harriet.
His aunt was a spiritualist who taught him how to use a Ouija board.
Before his aunt died in 1949, Roland started experiencing strange things.
He was haunted by the sounds of water dripping, scratching sounds coming from the walls, and
his mattress would move on its own.
His family consulted experts…doctors and psychiatrists and their local Lutheran minister.
None of them could help.
Their minister suggested they seek out the help of a catholic priest, Father E Albert
Hughes, who got the permission to perform an exorcism on Roland.
But the exorcism was cut short when roland broke off a piece of the spring from his mattress
he was strapped down to and sliced the priest across his shoulders with it.
A few days later, strange scratches formed on the boy that spelled the words, Louis,
indicating the family had to go to st lous.
They sought the help of family members who knew 2 priests, who performed another exorcism
on Roland.
During it, the men gathered had witnessed scratching on the boys body and the mattress
moving violently around.
Roland also was in a trance like state, during which he would utter strange sounds in a guttural
voice.
The two priests continued the exorcism night after night, until one night roland urinated
all over his bed and started cursing at the priests.
His parents took him to Alexian Brothers Hospital in st lous, where finally, the Monday after
easter, Ronald awoke with seizures, yelling at the priests ‘satan would always be with
you’.
The priests adorned him with holy relics and objects.
At 10:45 pm, the priests called on st Michael to expel satan from rolands body.
Seven minutes later, Ronald woke up from his trance, saying, he’s gone.
Ronald went on to live a completely normal life after this, and there were no other documented
incidents or behaviour.
The cool thing is, you can actually go to the staircase, the famous staircase from the
exorcist that the priest falls down at the end of the movie.
Its in Georgetown Washington.
I’ve totally been there, no biggie.
Alright, I need a breath.
Everyone take a breath with me.
That one was a doozy.
But we’re not finished yet.
I still gotta read out some comments from my video, the top 10 youtube channels that
might be shutting down.
Grant – as long as IO doesn’t shut down then I’m all good.
Love you potato queen.
Unique Reisen – I just watched this episode of IO with free data and its worth it.
Glaco – I don’t think you know what a pun is.