6 Horror Films that Really Happened!
Published in Entertainment at April 19th, 2017 at 10:51 AM
6 Horror films that really happened! Need we say more.
The Exorcist
The Exorcist, 1973, changed the face of horror forever when a young girl was possessed by a demon and was quite the fright for many moviegoers. Now this movie was actually based upon a book by the same name in 1971 by William Peter Blatty which in turn was inspired by an exorcism case sometime in approximately mid-1949. The exorcism was on a child who has been given the name Roland Doe. This wasn’t the child’s real name but it is unknown what their real name was at the time. Most of the information about this story comes from either the diary of the priest at the exorcism, Father Raymond Bishop, or an anonymous source at the time who later revealed themselves to be Reverend Luther Miles Schulze.
The exorcism supposedly took place after the death of Roland Doe’s Aunt Harriet. When indoor squeaking and marching feet could be heard within the household, along with objects moving and levitating by themselves, or so the reports say, that’s when Roland was examined by both medical and psychiatric doctors who couldn’t offer any sort of explanation to the events taking place. Schulze decided to spend a night with Roland at this point to see if he could offer his own insight into what was going on, but when Roland’s bed started shaking with scratchings on the wall and an armchair moving, he decided that evil was within the room. The case was referred to Reverend Edward Hughes who started to perform the exorcism at Georgetown University Hospital but failed to complete the task due to Roland inflicted a serious wound upon the reverend which required stitching and thus ending the exorcism.
Reverend William S. Bowdon was then assisted by Father Walton Halloran and Reverend William Van Roo to perform the exorcism a total of thirty times over the course of weeks in secret, only allowed if a detailed diary was kept of the events. Throughout the exorcisms, the words “hell” and “evil” appeared several times on Roland’s body and Halloran’s nose was even broken, but after the last exorcism, Roland had no trouble again and went on to live a successful and happy life.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Next up, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1974, was a film which was loosely based upon an incident with serial killer, Ed Gein. In the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, although the film was marketed as a true story, it isn’t entirely true. The plot is fictional however the main antagonist, Leatherface and minor plot details were based on true events and the story of Gein. His crimes were horrible and sick, and gathered widespread notoriety around his hometown in Wisconsin. One of the things he was known for was to dig up dead bodies and make trophies from their bones and skin. Gein admitted to killing two women but many suspect there was probably more.
The first women was a tavern owner, Mary Hogan on December 8th, 1954, whose head was found in Gein’s house years later in 1957 but Gein later claimed he had no memory of the details of her death. The second was hardware store owner, Bernice Worden on November 16th, 1957. This is when Gein was discovered and all his confessions came out. Upon Worden’s disappearance, her son told the police that Gein was the last customer the night beforehand. When searching Gein’s house, Worden was found, dead, decapitated in a shed hung upside down by ropes at her wrists, with a crossbar at her ankles and her torso was dressed out like a deer. It was discovered that she had been shot and the mutilations to her body were made after she died.
When the police were searching Gein’s house, they found numerous items, the worst ones were a wastebasket made from human skin, nine human face masks including Mary Hogan’s face mask, Bernice Worden’s heart, nine vulvae in a shoebox, a belt made from female human nipples, a lampshade made from the skin of a human face and many more. These artifacts were photographed by the state crime laboratory and then destroyed. Gein’s murderous and sickening behaviour was said to have started when his mother died and Gein tried to use her skin as his own, to try and become his mother. Gein was eventually sent to the Central State Hospital for the criminally insane. This was a maximum security prison where Gein spent the remainder of his life until he eventually died.
Child’s Play
Child’s Play, 1988, is the next on this list. The film is about serial killer and voodoo practitioner, Charles Lee Ray, also known as “Chucky”, who is mortally wounded and transfers his spirit before death into a child’s doll. The doll is given to a child called Andy but Chucky wants to transfer his spirit into Andy after telling him his secret and thus terrorises the family. However Chucky is based on an actual voodoo doll, “Robert the Doll”.
Key West artist and author, Robert Eugene (Gene) Otto received the homemade doll in 1906 when he was only a child at six years old. One of the family’s servants created the doll out of different materials but oddly enough used hair from Gene’s own head. The servant who had made this doll was apparently often mistreated and had lost their own child due to being forced to look after gene. They were also apparently highly trained in black magic and voodoo.
When the doll was apparently given to Gene, he used to talk to it all the time. This didn’t unnerve the parents at all however it’s first unusual behaviour started when Gene was chatting away and then another voice responded, completely different from Gene’s voice. If it was me, I would have chucked out this doll there and then, but stupidly the doll was kept. Spooky stuff started to happen shortly after that, the main characteristic of this supposed living doll however was that it was apparently a jealous type and therefore mutilated all of Gene’s other toys. Neighbours often claimed to have seen the doll from the windows of the house looking back at them when the family was out. This happened on several different occasions. As the doll’s grip on the family apparently grew stronger, it was said that it was often heard giggling and every now and again it was seen moving.
Furniture was often found during the middle of the night and as the parent’s rushed in after Gene would scream, the doll would of course get the blame. The doll’s influence on Gene didn’t even end when he grew up and left the house, after his parent's death he and his wife moved back in. His wife, Anne grew an instant disliking for the doll and so Gene decided to confine the doll to the attic but even then visitors to the house claimed they heard footsteps, movement, and laughing despite no one being up there other than the doll. Gene continued to find the doll sitting in a chair in the living room and had to constantly return it to the attic but no matter how many times this was done, the doll always found a way downstairs again. In 1974 Gene died and the doll was sold. The family’s daughter claimed the doll as her own and the symptoms started all over again, starting with the talking and the other child’s toys being mutilated. The doll is now in an exhibition in the Fort East Martello Museum for anyone to visit, however those who have taken a picture of the doll without the doll’s permission have letters of apology on the walls.
Amityville Horror
The next film is the Amityville Horror from 1979, the film was and still is a successful film franchise, so much so that 17 sequels have been made to date with the next sequel coming out early in 2017. However, only the original film and the remake of the original in 2005 are based on true events. The film was based on a book published September 1977 which in turn was based on a series of murders in 1974 and then paranormal occurrences the year after.
On November 13th 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr shot and killed the six members of his family he was living with at the time, his mother, father and siblings. They were all killed around three in the morning by gunshot, however many have questioned why some didn’t wake up from the first couple of gunshots. These murders took place at 112 Ocean Avenue and inspired many forms of media about the event. However, this wasn’t the end of the Amityville Horror, in fact, it was only just the beginning.
One year later, in December of 1975, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the home where the murders took place the year previous with their three children. Paranormal phenomena apparently caused the new family to leave the house after just 28 days due to being terrorised, but not much else was said about this until 37 years later. Their son, who was only ten at the time recently talked about his experience in the house claiming that although there were spirits, they only appeared because of the meddling of his step-father’s dabbling in events. Daniel, who was deeply troubled by George, who was abusive and the Amityville experience in itself, left home five years later and spent time homeless away from family. Apparently George was involved with Satanism and Black Magic even before moving there and he knew something was wrong as soon as he moved in. In his room was tons of flies, despite it being winter, but when Daniel went to get his mother to help get rid of them, there wasn’t a trace of them to be found.
The family dog went crazy also, nearly killing itself with its lead as the garage door was shaking up and down. Daniel recalls a kitchen window mysteriously slamming shut as his hand was being treated by his mother. He recalls an invisible spirit sliding in a chair, leaving impressions into the padding of the seat. He remembers levitating beds, cold spots, odd smells of perfume. He specifically claims to remember the glowing eyes of a demonic, pig-like creature that peered through windows and left footprints in the snow. Daniel says that these mysterious activities in the house usually accelerated after three in the morning, around about the time that the original murders had taken place. Apparently the movie was accurate in what had happened however no movie could ever depict how terrible and frightening the experience actually was.
Borderland
Borderland (2007) is next, and this movie has very gory traditions regularly practised by a cult. It is loosely based upon a man called Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo. This man was the leader of a religious cult which practised in the arts of human sacrifice. Constanzo originally used live animals for his experiments, such as chickens, goats, snakes, zebras, even the poor little lion cubs! Soon however, this wasn’t enough, he started to dig up graves and use the human bones for his research.
Before long though, he needed live human sacrifices, Constanzo and his followers, the Narco-satanists, kidnapped and murdered Mark J. Kilroy in Spring of 1989 along with more than 20 other victims. Constanzo wanted to become business partners with one of the most powerful families at this point in time but after rejection, seven of the family suddenly ended up disappearing. When the bodies were eventually found, they had body parts missing. Mainly toes, fingers, ears, brains but in one circumstance there was even a spine missing.
Constanzo fled to Mexico City with four of his followers. They were only discovered when police were called to the apartment because of an unrelated dispute taking place there.
As the officers approached, Constanzo mistakenly believing they had located him, opened fire with a machine gun. This only served to soon getting him surrounded by the police. Determined not to go to prison, he handed the gun to follower Alvaro de Leon and ordered him to open fire on him and Martin Quintana. By the time police reached the apartment, both Constanzo and Quintana were dead.
The Entity
Finally we have the Entity (1982), which was based on a novel of the same name. Both the film and the novel are based on the 1974 Doris Bither case, also known as the entity hauntings. Two investigators arrived at the house to investigate the so called hauntings that they had been told about by the owner of the house, Doris Bither. From what is known, she had an abusive relationship with her parents when growing up along with several abusive relationships with men. Apparently these stories acted as a beacon to paranormal beings, who regularly appeared in the household and attacked her, even raping her as her claims stated.
The investigators were obviously sceptical of this but then they saw the bruises on her thighs and started to believe what she was telling them. Dorris claimed these ghosts were the ghosts of three Asian men. The fact that this is supposedly ghostly rape is an interesting factor to this investigation. Apparently two smaller ghosts held her down while the bigger ghost pursued to rape her. One of her son’s, the eldest, admitted to seeing his mother tossed around but whenever he tried to help her, he was flung across the room by these ghosts.
How one can claim spectral rape, let alone prove it, is as astonishing as anything, but the investigators, despite their doubts, were keen to capture some sort of proof, setting up high speed cameras along with other forms of technology in Dorris’ bedroom along with photographers and other investigators. When Doris was asked to call the ghosts, lights started appearing around the room, and a green mist started pulling itself into existence. It started swirling and growing until the form of a man’s torso started appearing in the green mist, there is no proof of this but apparently this is what happened, whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you but one man supposedly fainted after seeing this.
The investigations went on for months but eventually became less and less likely to happen over time. It was reported that the poltergeist usually only appeared when Doris was under the influence of alcohol and this energy somehow drew the being towards her. If you’ve made it through this video, well done. Perhaps go and enjoy some ice cream or cute animals to take your mind of these horrific tales!
