There are some houses that if the walls could speak, they would likely scream in horror. When a home becomes part of a serious murder investigation, it’s often not long before the murder memorabilia hunters come forward, ready to grab a piece of true crime history. Then, once bodies have been discovered on the site, the ghost hunters and creepy tours will follow shortly after.

SEE ALSO: 10 Abandoned Amusement Parks With Horrific Histories [Disturbing]

The following homes all made such an impact on those who live in the area and the loved ones of victims that there was no other option left but to tear them down to the ground. Not even demolishing them could completely erase their memories, of course. Locals still know what the sites were.

10 Fred And Rose West’s House

Fred and Rose West will go down in history as one of the worst serial killer duos. They lived at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester City, England, and what took place behind closed doors was so disturbing that the home has since been flattened. The sinister couple murdered at least 10 young women together between 1971 and 1987. (Fred killed more beforehand.) The victims were then dismembered and buried in either the cellar or the garden. The two even threatened their children that they, too, would “end up under the patio.”

Behind bars, Fred became depressed when Rose refused to reply to any of his letters, and he took his own life in prison. Initially, Rose denied any knowledge of the murders, but her web of lies soon fell apart, and she was sentenced to life for her involvement.

Two decades after the crimes, Gloucester City Council purchased the “House of Horrors,” as it had come to be called, knocked it down, and turned the former site into a public walkway. Still, nobody will forget in a hurry what happened at 25 Cromwell Street.^[1]

9 Jeffrey Dahmer’s Apartment

When police officers arrived at the apartment of Jeffrey Dahmer at the 900 block of North 25th Street Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they had no idea they were about to uncover one of the grisliest crime scenes of all time. Dahmer gained his nickname “the Milwaukee Cannibal” after he lured 17 men and boys back to his apartment from 1978 to 1991 with the intention to kill them. Police discovered seven skulls, a human head, and two human hearts in the refrigerator, as well as an entire torso in the freezer, among other remains.

After the crazed cannibal was arrested, his neighbors wished to depart the building as quickly as possible. One explained, “It’s been a living hell. It’s like we’re on a museum tour or a zoo tour. People drive by day and night. I haven’t been eating. I haven’t been sleeping. All I know is I want to get the hell out of here.”^[2] The building was demolished in 1992, and the former site of the grisly murders has remained vacant ever since.

8 Ariel Castro’s House

Ariel Castro kidnapped three female victims on separate occasions between 2002 and 2004 when they were aged 14, 16, and 20 years old. He then held them captive at his home in Cleveland, Ohio. The young girls, who grew into women during their decade of hell, were kept in darkness, surrounded by boarded windows and with only a small hole providing any circulation. Castro repeatedly abused them and even fathered a daughter with one of his victims. She gave birth in a small inflatable swimming pool.

In 2013, one of the brave victims was able to escape when Castro failed to secure the “big inside door,” and she screamed a cry of help that alerted the neighbors. Castro was arrested that same evening, but he only lived out one month of his life sentence before he hanged himself with a bedsheet in prison. It took just one hour and 20 minutes for his former home to be demolished as spectators cheered from the street.^[3]

7 The Petit Family Home

The Petit Family home invasion is so disturbing that it became one of the most widely publicized crimes in the state of Connecticut’s history. In 2007, Dr. William Petit, his wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their young daughters 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela suffered a brutal, random attack at their family home in Cheshire. Perpetrator Steven Hayes and his accomplice Joshua Komisarjevsky broke into the home, first striking William Petit with a baseball bat and then binding the other family members and forcing Jennifer to go with them to the bank and withdraw cash.^[4]

She was able to alert the bank teller of the situation, but the Petit family were failed by the responding police officers. As the mother and daughters were brutalized and murdered inside, the police still did not enter, instead focusing on setting up a perimeter around the home. William Petit was able to escape as the perpetrators torched the house. The remainder of the family home was torn down, and the lot is now a memorial garden for the family.

6 The Bloody Benders’ House

More than 140 years ago, one family committed such evil that they became known as the Bloody Benders. The Labette County, Kansas, family consisted of four people—John Bender, his wife Elvira, and their children John Jr. and Kate. (Some sources claim that Kate was actually John Jr.’s common-law wife.) From 1869 to 1872, he family would invite travelers into their home with the sole intention of smashing their skulls, cutting their throats, and stealing all their possessions. When members of the community noticed the rise in missing persons traveling through the area, they called a meeting.

A few days after that meeting, the Benders’ family home was abandoned, and locals discovered a terrible odor coming from inside. After a proper investigation, the bodies of their 11 victims were uncovered. However, other missing persons cases could tie the bloodthirsty family to as many as 21 murders. The since-demolished house is nowadays nothing more than a gravel road two hours southeast of Wichita. Ghost hunters will travel there just to soak up any sensation of its sinister history.^[5]

5 John Christie’s House

In London, 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill is not the same house as it once was. In 1978, the place was rebuilt so that the grisly memories of the previous building could be long forgotten. In the 1940s and early 1950s, serial killer John Christie hid the bodies of his victims around the house, including burying them in the garden, hiding them under the floorboards, or stuffing the corpses inside a wall in the kitchen. In 1953, he was arrested, and it was discovered that young women who had turned to him for help with unwanted pregnancies were murdered. It is believed more than eight vulnerable victims lost their lives to the sinister Christie.

Despite the rebuild, this might be a case where past evils haven’t moved on quite so quickly. The current owner confessed, “I think the place is cursed. I’ve had bad luck since I’ve been here. I’ve been here 40 years. My health’s gone. Everything’s gone.”^[6]

4 Ted Bundy’s House

Ted Bundy confessed to the murders of 30 young women and girls in seven states between 1974 and 1978. However, the real victim count is believed to be much higher, as he buried the corpses in several secluded areas. One location that became a killing spot for him was Emigration Canyon, Utah. The serial killer’s former rooming house has since been destroyed, leaving only a scatter of bricks. However, the sinister cellar is still intact, which encourages ghost hunters and other true crime fans who are chasing a creepy experience.^[7]

Bundy moved to Utah when he was accepted at the University of Utah Law School in August 1974. It’s believed he kidnapped and murdered eight victims aged between 16 and 18 during his time in the state. The surrounding area of Bundy’s cellar would have been the last place some of these women saw before their lives were stolen from them.

3 Anthony Sowell’s House

Two years after Anthony “the Cleveland Strangler” Sowell murdered 11 women between 2007 and 2009, his former home on Imperial Avenue in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Cleveland was demolished. The property was where the bodies of the victims were found in various states of decomposition. The hunt for more bodies left the home in crippling disrepair, and the city decided it was in the interest of public safety to tear it down for good. More than 50 people—including relatives of the victims—gathered outside the property to watch the demise of the death house.

The victims’ family members received the following hand-delivered letter from the city: “In order to prevent actions that would be disrespectful to the memory of your loved one, your family and our community; the demolition will be performed in such a way that no piece of the property will remain.”^[8]

2 Myra Hindley And Ian Brady’s House

Myra Hindley and Ian Brady are considered by many as the real faces of evil. In the early to mid-1960s, they killed five children aged between ten and 17. The bodies of three of the victims were discovered in graves on Saddleworth Moor, but the chilling couple never revealed where they placed the bodies of the other victims. Hindley died behind bars in 2002 and Brady in 2017, and they never allowed the relatives of the victims any peace—withholding information about the murders until the very end.

It’s no surprise that the home the Moors murderers shared on Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, Cheshire, England—the same place where investigators found the body of their final victim—stayed empty for so many years after the couple was arrested. Nobody wanted to live in a property where two of the biggest monsters in Britain once slept peacefully at night. The property was pulled down in 1987, and the site has remained empty ever since.^[9]

1 Dr. H.H. Holmes’s Murder Castle

In 1885, Dr. H.H. Holmes moved to the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago and built his now-infamous murder castle. The labyrinth-like structure featured many different rooms—all with equally sinister ways to die. The rooms were soundproofed, and the many secret passages would leave his unsuspecting guests feeling disorientated. There were even trapdoors that would drop his victims into the basement where he could finish the job. Holmes murdered for financial gain; often selling the skeletons of his victims to medical research facilities.

The actual victim count has been guessed to be as high as 200, but Holmes only confessed to 27 murders. He was hanged at Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia in 1896. In 1938, the murder castle was finally torn down, and a post office now stands in its place. Chicago tour guides still take groups to the former site of the murders, but the true horror that took place here can only really be imagined.^[10]

Cheish Merryweather is a true crime fan and an oddities fanatic. She can either be found at house parties telling everyone Charles Manson was only 5’2″ or at home reading true crime magazines.
Twitter: @thecheish

One of the foundations for horror is helplessness. Murderous monsters and otherworldly threats are imposing enough, but the terror amplifies when you can’t stop them. That’s why so many horror games position players as victims. When you can’t rely on the usual offensive approach, you must find creative ways to escape before your assailant closes in. Not only does that approach breed suspense, but it leads to greater challenges. Sometimes, however, the shoe should be on the other foot.

A few games flip the horror script by letting you play as the killer. Controlling a masked maniac or mythical monster, you hunt down innocent civilians to satiate your bloodlust. NPCs and even other players exist solely as your victims, and you’re nigh impervious to their pitiful attacks. While this premise undermines the difficulty, it compensates through the sheer thrill of a power fantasy. It also offers a fresh perspective on cliched horror scenarios. These perks make it worth seeing things from the other side—as demented as it is.

Related: 10 Horror Video Games You Won’t Want to Play in the Dark

10 Texas Chainsaw Massacre

How fitting that this early example stems from one of the most notorious horror flicks ever made. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre focuses on an unsuspecting group of friends who stumble into a macabre ordeal. A simple pit stop brings them face-to-face with a family of cannibals. The most imposing of these killers is Leatherface, a silent giant with a chainsaw and a mask made of human skin. You’d think such grisly visuals would be too much for an old Atari game, but you’d be wrong.

The Texas Chainsaw tie-in has you play as Leatherface during a killing spree. Wielding his trusty chainsaw, he chases civilians around the screen. Colliding with these victims slices their heads off, leaving them in a mass of pixelated blood. That gameplay loop sounds simple, and that’s because it is. You control this iconic serial killer and do what he does best. The game gives you exactly what you ask for.

If old-school Atari is not your thing, the 2023 version of the game comes with more killers and better graphics.^[1]

9 The Happyhills Homicide

In the same retro vein is a pixelated indie title. The Happyhills Homicide introduces John Wade. This unfortunate school janitor’s grotesque appearance earns brutal treatment from both students and staff. After a fire leaves him scarred and homeless, this poor soul takes revenge on those who wronged him. Needless to say, this game makes you root for the killer. It’s not just a mindless massacre, though.

The game is a side-scrolling puzzle title. You must sneak into your victims’ homes to catch them unawares. This process involves studying the layout, using tools lying around, and bypassing obstacles. This preparation makes success all the more rewarding. Not to mention, the harebrained schemes have a sadistic perk: killing your targets in wonderfully elaborate ways. The game prioritizes patience and ingenuity with its sadistic showmanship. Revenge is a dish best served cold.^[2]

8 Dead by Daylight

This title sees you target other players. Dead by Daylight is a multiplayer adventure whose premise stems from horror archetypes. Each match sees several players control the Survivors. Working together, they must escape the arena that they’re trapped in. This process involves gathering materials, crafting tools, and fixing generators to power up the exit gates. The catch is the time crunch.

The final player controls the Killer. This masked maniac hunts down the Survivors and impales them on hooks. This unholy act sacrifices them to a mysterious being known as the “Entity.” If he accomplishes this terrible tribute before his victims escape, then he wins. Essentially, each side has to race against time to outfox the other. The gameplay loop is basic, but so are most horror scenarios.^[3]

7 Predator: Hunting Grounds

The formula of Dead by Daylight naturally spawned a few imitators. Predator: Hunting Grounds is one of them, but it’s a fitting match. The Predator movies are about extraterrestrial hunters systematically slaughtering characters in densely confusing settings. That premise lends itself naturally to this formula.

As before, players compete in a horrific game of cat and mouse. Four of them control elite spec ops soldiers. Together, they must complete military missions like recon or eliminating targets. Meanwhile, the remaining player goes after them as the Predator. Either side can kill the other, but the latter obviously has the advantage, thanks to alien stealth tech and durable biology. It can easily catch its quarry unawares like a superhuman assassin. The toughest troops look like lambs by comparison.^[4]

6 Friday the 13th

Another multiplayer movie tie-in uses Dead by Daylight as a template. Friday the 13th focuses on a masked murderer stalking a forest campground and offing the counselors. This survival title positions one player as Jason Voorhees, who proceeds to hunt down the others. His uncanny mobility and extrasensory abilities make him a skilled killer able to ward off any attack, but the others are far from defenseless.

The remaining players are camp counselors. Their in-house know-how can hinder Jason through careful planning. Specifically, they slow him down by setting traps or shooting projectiles. Those small delays buy enough time to either escape or last until the end of the session. Granted, the counselors can also kill him by replicating his childhood trauma involving his mother, but that feat is extremely difficult to pull off. Because of Jason’s otherwise invincible nature, most matches likely involve running for dear life.^[5]

5 Jaws Unleashed

It’s easy to see how Jaws made audiences afraid to enter the water. This film portrays a scenic island plagued by a massive shark. Its bloodthirsty nature is never satisfied, and its aquatic habitat makes it nearly impossible to see coming. Like the best horror monsters, this animal is truly overwhelming.

Jaws Unleashed shifts the perspective beneath the waves. Players control the enormous predator as it prowls the waters near Amity Island. Gameplay involves attacking swimmers, sinking boats, fending off hunters, and eating other animals. Along the way, you improve your stats and attacks to take on larger prey. That loop continues as the pitiful humans resort to increasingly drastic means to drive you out. Overcoming those attempts lets you secure your spot at the top of the food chain.^[6]

4 Vampyr

To be fair, this entry depends on your playstyle. Vampyr sees a blood-sucking plague ravage London in 1918. You play as a doctor trying to stop it. The twist is that you’re a vampire yourself, albeit of a higher tier. It’s here where the game’s choices come in.

The selfish path is easier, but it also leaves more bodies in its wake. As a doctor, you have a set number of patients. They may be innocent people, but a vampire simply sees them as a food source. Killing them and drinking their blood can satisfy your hunger. In fact, it’s practically required to level up your vampiric abilities. The downside is that it somewhat undermines the medical profession when your patients mysteriously die off. By the end, this doctor is a bigger menace than the plague.^[7]

3 Terminator: Resistance

The Terminator films are pillars of technological terror. They depict an apocalyptic future where machines reduce the planet to a nuclear wasteland and wage a ruthless war against the survivors. Terminator: Resistance positions you as one of those human survivors. You frequently fight the menacing mechs, and each encounter is a grueling struggle thanks to their impregnable armor and unparalleled precision. Fortunately, you can tip the odds in your favor.

The Infiltrator Mode DLC lets you become a Terminator. Specifically, you control an infiltrator unit to terminate a Resistance commander. Accomplishing this mission involves scouring the dilapidated Los Angeles streets and storming Tech-Com facilities. At the end of the day, though, you just mow down any humans foolish enough to stand in your way. That frightening efficiency makes you wonder how people can ever win out against robots.^[8]

2 Rebel without a Pulse

Zombies usually make convenient cannon fodder. Stubbs bucks that trend. The eponymous Rebel without a Pulse survives by killing humans. The goal of the game is to simply devour people’s brains. This cranial meal keeps the undead protagonist alive (so to speak). Granted, the humans don’t make this easy, as many of them are only too willing to blast Stubbs into oblivion. The zombie can defend himself with makeshift weapons and stolen vehicles, but there’s strength in numbers.

Stubbs can also infect his victims with the undead virus. Not only does this action turn them into zombies, but it makes them loyal to their deformed creator. Soon, Stubbs has a whole army of mindless followers. These legions are great for both combat and spreading the infection. The resulting snowball effect eventually topples the entire population. It’s no wonder why zombies are so good at the apocalypse.^[9]

1 Among Us

Among Us looks like the most innocent entry, but those looks lure you into a false sense of security. It’s yet another multiplayer title about a group of survivors in an enclosed environment. They must roam around this rundown base and keep it operational through teamwork. Of course, they also have a killer seeking to wipe them out. However, that familiar setup comes with a lethal caveat: The murderer is one of their own teammates.

Certain players are imposters. These guys resemble regular characters, but that’s how they get close enough to assassinate you. You must somehow discover who is genuine and who is a saboteur. Otherwise, your companions will gradually get knifed in the dark. It’s tough to rely on a team you can’t trust. On the upside, paranoia is a solid foundation for horror.^[10]

Long before M3GAN did her creepy little dance, Chucky unleashed a never-before-experienced fear of dolls. (Okay, M3GAN is not exactly a doll, but you get the idea.) Nearly twenty years before Netflix introduced the Scream TV series, the original Ghostface made us double-check that our doors were locked at night.

There is a reason why old-school horror movie villains are still so popular. The actors behind these monsters tapped into our most primal fears by fully embodying the role, scaring us half to death in the process. Think about how Scream turned an everyday cinema into a house of horrors or how Halloween made innocuous pumpkins seem the most sinister thing ever.

Freddy Krueger crawled into our nightmares, while Jason Voorhees traumatized us like no other movie character could. Except for Michael Myers, that is. Not to mention Leatherface and his ever-present chainsaw. But what are the stories behind these villains? What inspired the most terrifying, bloodthirsty fictional killers that, in turn, served as the spark behind today’s up-and-coming horror villains?

Related: 10 Horror Films Where You Never See the Villain

10 Samara Morgan

How long did it take you to stop looking at your TV askance after watching 2002’s The Ring? “First you watch it, then you die!” That sentence alone sent chills down the spines of thousands of eager horror movie fans. The Ring is one of the horror movie genre’s best classics and is based on a horror novel of the same name. The American version of the movie is a remake of the 1998 Japanese film Ringu and claims to be based on true events. These events are said to have happened during the 16th century in Japan.

A girl named Okiku worked in the Himeij Castle in Japan and was pursued by a samurai, but kept refusing him. To manipulate the situation in his favor, the samurai hid a valuable plate that Okiku was meant to protect. When Okiku realized the plate was gone, she panicked because it meant she would be put to death.

The samurai again suggested that she should give in to his advances because he could save her. She refused, angering the samurai, so he suspended her over a deep well. When she said no again after the samurai asked her one last time to be with him, he struck Okiku with his sword, and she tumbled down the well to her death.

It wasn’t the end of Okiku, however. The samurai heard her counting the plates over and over again from the bottom of the well, never reaching number 10. The creepy thing is that there is a well called Okiku’s Well in Japan. The well has a cover over it to keep Okiku from crawling out.^[1]

9 Norman Bates

When Robert Bloch dreamed up the character of Norman Bates for his 1959 horror novel Psycho, he probably never imagined that his book would become so popular that its contents would be turned into several movies. Norman Bates also made a turn on TV in the series Bates Motel.

In Bloch’s subsequent novels, Bates is not the main villain. He is succeeded by more than one copycat killer who assumes Bates’s identity after his death. This is in contrast to the Universal Studios movie franchise. Psycho was adapted to film because of the shocking revelations surrounding murderer Ed Gein at the time. This led to a widespread assumption that Gein inspired the Norman Bates character.

However, Bloch revealed that it was not Gein so much as the horrific circumstances surrounding the killer’s case that inspired Normal Bates. He wanted to highlight that killers could hide their true nature even in small towns amid the most curious window-peeping neighbors.

It was only many years later, when the world was appalled at learning the full extent of Gein’s crimes, that Bloch realized how closely Bates resembled Gein in their heinous acts. And, of course, there are also the weird attachments both men had to their mothers.^[2]

8 Candyman

Horrifying legends that come to life are what make many old-school horrors so good. In the movie Candyman (1992), an unforgettable legend was “born” after a Black artist was summarily lynched when it was discovered he had an affair with a white woman. A student writes a thesis about urban legends and folklore in Chicago and happens upon the legend of the Candyman.

The legend turns into a nightmare when the Candyman’s name is said five times in front of a mirror, and he starts killing people with a rusty hook for a hand. Not to mention the ribcage and mouth full of bees. Tony Todd played the titular character so well that it is hard to picture him without the hook and the bees. And the movie took some of its inspiration from a blood-chilling real-life murder.

On April 22, 1987, Ruthie Mae McCoy called 911 in a panic. Ruthie suffered from mental illness and told the dispatcher, “They throwed the cabinet down.” This confused the dispatcher, but Ruthie was right. There were passages between the apartments in the building where Ruthie lived. These passages were meant to make maintenance work easier. But, it also made it a breeze for burglars to push bathroom cabinets out of the wall to enter an apartment.

A neighbor alerted the police after they heard gunshots coming from Ruthie’s apartment that night. However, the police did not break down the door when no one responded to their knocks and calls. They did not want to be sued for destruction of property. It took two days for Ruthie’s body to be discovered as a result. A building superintendent drilled the lock to her apartment open and found her face-down on the floor. She had been shot four times.

In the Candyman movie, the first victim is Ruthie Jean, who is murdered by someone who came through her bathroom mirror. Ruthie Jean’s neighbor is Ann Marie McCoy, who believed Ruthie was crazy. Ruthie died alone after calling the police for help. It is not quite clear how Ruthie McCoy’s murder became part of the movie. It is thought that the director may have heard about the crime after deciding to shoot Candyman in Chicago.

The movie was also based on a short story, “The Forbidden,” written by Clive Barker.^[3]

7 Leatherface

The earliest versions of Leatherface were a bit comical (at least they are now). The face-wearing killer holding the chainsaw over his head and running down the stairs is not nearly as scary as it was back in the day. (The new movies are still terrifying, though.)

Not surprisingly, some elements of the Leatherface character were inspired by Ed Gein. Director Tobe Hooper had heard stories about the Wisconsin murderer but claimed he did not know it was Gein until the 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released.

Gein’s fondness for wearing human skin as a mask greatly disturbed Hooper, so he decided to make it part of Leatherface’s character. Additional inspiration came from Hooper’s memory of a Halloween party where a friend arrived wearing a cadaver’s face. Hooper would later state that it was the most disturbing thing he had ever witnessed.

Hooper also used Baby Huey as inspiration for Leatherface’s bumbling walk and child-like behavior. As for the chainsaw, this came from a fleeting thought Hooper had about mowing down a large crowd in the hardware section of an exceptionally busy store.^[4]

6 Jason Voorhees

Jason Voorhees is that guy in a hockey mask who can knock someone’s head clean off their body with one punch. This is both hilarious and strangely terrifying. Friday the 13th is a true horror classic and a Halloween movie marathon favorite. The franchise has twelve films and an upcoming limited series called Crystal Lake, a prequel to the first movie released in 1980.

It is widely believed that a horrifying incident in Finland was the main inspiration behind the Friday the 13th movies. Although the production team denied that the movies or Voorhees are based on specific real-life events, the similarities between fiction and reality are too striking. You be the judge…

In 1960, four teenagers set off on a camping trip in Lake Bodom. The two boys and two girls set up their tents along the lake’s edge. A group of birdwatchers saw the tents collapse on June 5 and a blond man running in the opposite direction. They did not investigate, so it was only later that a carpenter discovered what had become a crime scene. Three of the teenagers had been stabbed to death, and the fourth was barely alive. Nils Gustafsson had suffered several stab wounds and fractures to his face.

He told the police that someone broke into the tents and attacked them. He also said that the man who attacked was dressed in all black and had bright red eyes. Gustafsson was initially considered a suspect but was cleared because the severity of his injuries matched the story he told the police. The Lake Bodom murders remain unsolved in 2024.

The Friday the 13th movies went on to potentially inspire serial killer Peter Moore to kill four male victims over three months back in 1995. Moore blamed the murders on a fictitious restaurant worker named Jason, who his lawyer and the prosecution had no doubt was supposed to be based on Jason Voorhees. Moore was a cinema owner in North Wales before he turned serial killer.^[5]

5 Hannibal Lecter

Hannibal Lecter is an even more terrifying horror movie character than Voorhees. The 1981 novel Red Dragon was adapted for the big screen and resulted in the widely praised The Silence of the Lambs, released in 1991.

Anthony Hopkins’s performance made the film, and his sociopathic demeanor throughout still manages to spook, even if you watch the movie for the tenth time. Many of Lecter’s characteristics are the result of the novel writer and movie director’s wild imagination. Just the name Hannibal (a play on cannibal) immediately evokes an image no one wants to picture. But, some of the inspiration for this diabolical character came from a horrifying real-life case.

Thomas Harris, the author of Red Dragon, worked as a journalist in the 1960s. He interviewed a convicted and imprisoned killer, Dykes Askew Simmons, in Mexico. It was at this prison that he met “Dr. Salazar.” At first, Harris thought Salazar was a prison doctor. Salazar asked Harris incredibly insightful questions, and Harris was struck by how poised the man was. However, when Harris later asked a prison warden about Salazar, he learned the horrible truth.

Salazar was actually an incarcerated former surgeon named Alfredo Balli Trevino!

Trevino came out as gay during a time when Mexico actively oppressed the gay community. He tried his best to fit into mainstream society, but this upset his lover to a great extent. Trevino ended up killing his lover over what was believed to be Trevino’s intention to marry a woman. Trevino sliced up the corpse into small pieces and stacked them into a box. Obviously, he did not get away with the crime. But, his sentence was commuted after he had served 20 years in prison, and he returned to his hometown of Monterrey.

Trevino went on to treat patients without worrying too much about payment until he died in 2008. It is believed that Trevino had also murdered several hitchhikers between 1950 and 1970, but this was never proven. Harris used Trevino’s mannerisms as inspiration for his Hannibal Lecter character. Both men were doctors at one point. Both had a deep insight into the criminal mind. Both were intellectually challenging to others. And both men easily conned others.

Trevino was also not Harris’s only inspiration. Other murderous individuals who helped bring Lecter to life include Albert Fish, Pietro Pacciani, and Robert John Maudsley.

Pacciani, who was known as the Monster of Florence, murdered several people in Florence in the 1970s. These murders directly inspired The Silence of the Lambs sequel Hannibal. Maudsley killed child molesters and continued his murder spree while in prison. He was finally confined to a bulletproof glass cell, which inspired Lecter’s cell in the film.^[6]

4 Pennywise

Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel IT sets quite the opening scene. You can picture six-year-old Georgie Denbrough in his yellow slicker and red galoshes running down Witcham Street, chasing the paper boat his older brother Bill made for him. In this tense opening scene, readers are introduced to what would become one of horror’s most terrifying villains: Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

King thought out most of Pennywise’s characteristics (no surprise there). But the evil clown character was also inspired by a bunch of real-life clowns. Many believe King’s idea for IT came from serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who used to dress up as a clown called Pogo. However, King named Bozo, Clarabelle (from Howdy Doody), and Ronald McDonald as his inspirations for writing his controversial novel. King had a run-in with the Ronald McDonald mascot on a plane back when travelers were still allowed to smoke onboard.

King asked the mascot where he came from, to which the clown replied, “From McDonald Land.” King naturally thought the clown was being sarcastic and asked him where he really came from. The clown then confirmed that there was such a place as McDonald Land in Chicago, and he was there for the opening of a new McDonalds restaurant.

King found this to be a surreal and unnerving moment, but it also gave him more ideas for the Pennywise character.^[7]

3 Ghostface

When Scream was released in 1996, it introduced a whole new meta approach to horror. The movie clearly made fun of horror movie tropes while still paying tribute to the classics that came before it. Kevin Williamson, of Dawson’s Creek fame, wrote the Scream screenplay after watching a TV special about Florida serial killer Danny Rolling. Rolling, or the Gainesville Ripper, murdered five students in four days in August 1990.

Gainesville was in a state of terror and remained so even after Rolling was caught. While Williamson watched the events unfold via reenactment on his TV screen, he noticed an open window in his house. He was immediately terrified as he realized how easy it would be for a killer to get into his house. This overwhelming fear inspired him to create Ghostface.

The similarities between the killer in Scream and Rolling are highlighted in the movie. In real life, Rolling insisted he never had a motive for killing the students. But there had to be some reason for his murder spree. In Scream, Billy Loomis is revealed as the killer behind the ghastly mask, and he tells Sidney that not every killer needs a motive. However, Loomis did have a motive in that Sidney’s mother had an affair with his father, resulting in his mother leaving.

Scream seemingly also inspired a so-called “thrill killing” in 2006. Sixteen-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart was murdered by two classmates, Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper. The boys stalked Stoddart and filmed her before stabbing her to death. They made a video in which they talked about how they would kill Cassie. The same video contained footage of the boys’ reaction after they killed her.

Draper and Adamcik apparently wanted to become notorious serial killers. They even had a death list of other people they wanted to murder. When they were caught, they mentioned Scream, as well as the Columbine High School shooters, as their inspiration for Cassie’s murder.^[8]

2 Michael Myers

Michael Myers is often described as pure evil. Considering that he was six years old when he killed his first victim (his sister), that description is apt. Throughout the film franchise, Myers continues to murder people left and right. And he does this without so much as a grunt.

Myers is the embodiment of a nightmare that you cannot escape. If he finds and stalks you at a gas station, chances are he’ll rip your teeth out. Or, if you get out of your car to confront him next to the road, he’ll probably stomp your head to a pulp. Sure, these are all movie scenes and not real life, but the Halloween movies still have the power to make you check behind you when you walk to the bathroom at night.

The Myers character was inspired by a very real and frightening event experienced by Halloween director John Carpenter when he was a student at Western Kentucky University.

Carpenter met a teenage patient during a visit to a psychiatric hospital. The boy’s unnerving “evil” stare greatly unsettled Carpenter, and he later used this experience to describe Michael Myers’s emotionless face when he was six. The character of Sam Loomis describes Myers’s eyes as the “devil’s eyes.” Yul Brynner of Westworld fame inspired grown-up Myers’s inhuman strength throughout the Halloween movies. And, of course, Myers’s infamous mask was modeled from a mask of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk.^[9]

1 Freddy Krueger

When you watch A Nightmare on Elm Street now, it is more of a comedy than a horror. Freddy Krueger’s exaggerated mannerisms and strangely long arms are not exactly scary in 2024. But, back in 1984, when Krueger’s scarred face popped up on the big screen, he scared the crap out of moviegoers.

Like the other movies on this list, A Nightmare on Elm Street was inspired by real-life events and experiences. Writer and director Wes Craven read about a family who had escaped the Killing Fields in Cambodia. The family made it to America, but before they could even sigh in proper relief, a young member of the family started having nightmares.

The young boy told his parents he was afraid to sleep because he believed the thing chasing him in his nightmares would get him. He tried to stay awake for several days at a time but inevitably fell asleep. That night, his parents heard screams emanating from their son’s bedroom. They rushed to him, but it was too late. Their son had died in the middle of his last nightmare.

This story formed the basis of Craven’s script, but he still needed to figure out his villain. Craven had several ideas for the villain, but one childhood memory ultimately brought Freddy to life. Craven remembered a man walking down the street past his house late one night. The man turned and looked at Craven, who was watching him with a disturbing expression on his face. The man also wore a fedora—another part of Craven’s childhood experiences that made it into the movie.^[10]

Horror games are no stranger to controversy, but these ten games took it a little too far, each crossing boundaries that got them banned or pulled from shelves around the world. From dystopian drug-induced joy to psychologically twisted survival games, these entries aren’t just scary to play—people were scared of what they could do.

Whether it’s Hotel 626’s eerie phone calls in the dead of night or Manhunt’s brutal, unapologetic violence, each game serves as a dark reminder of how far games and the gamers behind them can go.

Related: 10 Bizarre Urban Legends That Are Related to Video Games

10 Hotel 626

Let’s start with Hotel 626, the absolutely legendary web-based game that disappeared from the internet. Hotel 626 was released on October 31st, 2008, by none other than the company we all know and love, Doritos. Yes, I said Doritos. And yes, it is a horror game.

They wanted to revive their two dead flavors: Black Pepper Jack and Jack and Smokin’ Cheddar BBQ. Unfortunately, this was not a game about Cheddar Cheetah hunting you down and trying to kill you for eating his Cheetos. Instead, it was about waking up in a hotel that you found out pretty quickly that you didn’t want to stay at. You could only actually play it between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. (though I’ve heard the stories of people changing the time on their clocks to play it), ensuring you had the perfect eerie backdrop of darkness when you played.

The game had a creepy, unique style that used videos and photos of real people instead of 3D avatars. Your only mission was to escape while being hunted by ghosts, demonic infants, and a psychotic hotel maid. Easy, right? Well, it was apparently really hard due to the puzzles, specifically the one where you’re locked in with a starved-to-the-point-of-insanity man who will eventually escape and eat you alive.

However, the thing that actually killed the game itself was its collection of personal information. The game used things to send shivers down the players’ spines. It asked for your phone number at the beginning of the game in order to call you with a pre-recorded message during the allotted hours in the middle of the night that told you that you were still in the hotel, which is absolutely… great, yeah.

The second is used within the game. There was one particular part where you had to run away from a chainsaw-wielding maniac by finding a photograph that showed your own face from your webcam (or the hotel lobby if your webcam was off). However, as you were looking for your own face, you saw tens of other faces in your desperate escape. These faces were not actors but pictures taken of people in their own bedrooms reacting to the chainsaw maniac following them. Now, the only problem is that Doritos never asked the player for permission to use their webcam and pictures. Yikes.

This led to a panic from the legal department side of Doritos, and critics and privacy advocates pointed out the potential risks of hackers. Doritos eventually pulled the website from the internet to avoid being sued. Thus, they weren’t actually banned, but most likely were going to be, and they pulled the plug on themselves.^[1]

9 We Happy Few

We Happy Few transports players to an alternate 1960s England, a place where the streets are tidy, the colors bright, and everyone is, without exception, blissfully cheerful—or so it seems. The only thing that seems to keep the place running is “Joy,” a happiness pill designed to keep citizens smiling while erasing any uncomfortable memories of the past and everything that makes you you. Those who decide to stop taking Joy are labeled “Downers,” outcasts who are hunted down by the smiling authorities for “rehabilitation.” The game’s take on happiness, controlled by the iron fist of a drugged-up dystopia, poses an uncomfortable question: What’s the price of happiness if it’s manufactured? Turns out, it’s not pretty.

The story begins with Arthur Hastings, one of three characters you can control throughout the game. He discovers an old newspaper clipping that jogs his memory of events before Joy, spurring him to go off the drug and start seeing the crumbling reality around him. The town of Wellington Wells is bright on the surface, but for those not dosed up on Joy, the illusion fades quickly into a grim picture of societal and physical decay. Citizens go about their days in a forced euphoria, with the Joy-enforcing “Bobbies” smiling widely while clubbing anyone who dares to so much as frown. As someone who just watched Smile 2, I have an all-too-good vision of what this would be like in real life, and I don’t like it.

However, We Happy Few was a bit too dark. The game faced a temporary ban in Australia, where authorities claimed that its depiction of Joy might encourage substance abuse, echoing real-life concerns about drug normalization. The controversy highlighted the game’s balance between satire and shock value, as critics argued that its portrayal of forced happiness struck too close to reality. Yet supporters countered that the game isn’t about glorifying drug use—it’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of a society that sacrifices authenticity for the sake of fake positivity.

The ban was eventually lifted, as predicted in 2019. Its portrayal of a world addicted to false happiness simply points to our current social pressures to “just be happy.” By forcing players to choose between following the crowd or holding onto reality, the game poses an unsettling thought: can happiness be real if we don’t have a choice? And maybe more hauntingly, are we already swallowing our own version of Joy?

You might be able to tell I love this game’s concept.^[2]

8 Phantasmagoria

Imagine booting up your computer and stepping into the surreal, eerie world of Phantasmagoria. The game was definitely intended to keep you awake for hours after playing—or falling asleep to nightmares. Set in a massive, creaking mansion on a fog-draped coast, the game drops you into the life of Adrienne Delaney, a writer hoping to escape distractions with her husband in tow. As the days wear on, it turns out this mansion has more inspiration than she bargained for.

Slowly, Adrienne uncovers the twisted history of its former owner, a magician who dabbled in dark arts that left a lasting impression—and maybe a few curses behind. So much for inspiration, right? One of the game’s groundbreaking features was its usage of full-motion video (FMV), meaning real actors were filmed to play each character, adding a bit of raw realism that made each horrifying scene even more terrifying. Yay!

As Adrienne’s husband descends under the mansion’s spell, he transforms from her loving husband into a twisted and maniacal stranger. Love does drive you crazy, after all. The use of live actors brought an unsettling authenticity that caused horror fans to flock to the game in droves. With each sequence more gruesome than the last, the line between virtual horror and real-life terror became disturbingly thin. This live footage is also what paved the way for Hotel 626 just a decade later, and it’s what I have to personally thank for making horror games better.

When Phantasmagoria was released in 1995, it was met with a mix of fascination and outrage. Its unfiltered scenes of violence, supernatural possession, and psychological abuse quickly earned it a reputation as one of the most controversial games of its time. Critics were quick to condemn it as “too explicit,” arguing that some scenes were simply beyond the boundaries of good taste.

The now-infamous “head-in-the-blender” moment alone redefined how far horror could go in gaming, with fans eagerly replaying scenes while some critics wondered if they’d accidentally wandered into a horror film set. Australia, once again, was less enthusiastic, banning the game outright for being “too dark.”

Apparently, they didn’t care much for the murder, possession, or the infamous “head-in-the-blender” moment, a scene that truly redefines “blending genres.” But despite the ban, or maybe because of it, Phantasmagoria endures as a darkly beloved cult classic, known for taking horror out of the shadows and into a player’s lap—often a bit more literally than anyone expected.^[3]

7 Rule of Rose

Beneath the facade of its orphanage setting, Rule of Rose is anything but kid-friendly. Jennifer, the game’s protagonist, quickly learns that she’s the latest “lucky” entrant into the twisted social structure run by a gang of children who call themselves the Red Crayon Aristocrats. But this isn’t playtime with jump ropes and hopscotch. Unless you’re okay with the squares being replaced by symbols of ritual sacrifice. The “games” involve strange sacrifices and crazy rituals that make Jennifer the unwilling star player. Eventually, you’ll question if you liked the kids in Lord of the Flies better.

Rule of Rose achieves its horror by leaving most of the terror to the imagination and by hinting at everything behind the scenes. It leads to the feeling of cult-like control and a social hierarchy gone awry. While other games might use zombies or monsters, here, it’s the children themselves who set the stage for horror, forcing Jennifer into disturbing tasks involving cages, mutilated dolls, and animal sacrifices.

Each ritual drags her deeper into their twisted little “games.” As she endures ritual after ritual, she slowly uncovers twisted truths about the children, each task dredging up memories from her own traumatic past. It’s dark psychological horror at its finest—or worst, depending on how you feel about repressed memories resurfacing in the form of creepy lullabies. While this game was definitely more so on the violent side than the sexual side, some journalists claimed that the game had violent erotic undertones with underage girls. This, of course, caused the critics to make an even bigger uproar about the game, even getting the mayor of Rome and the EU involved in its release.

But it was Italy this time, not Australia, that took the largest issue with it. Italians bantered about banning it, saying that “Every frame is dripping with perversion.” Politicians in the UK fueled outrage over content they hadn’t even seen, based on rumors and worst-case guesses. It was eventually released anyway, but only in small amounts, making it a rare and expensive find today. The mix of eerie children, cult-like rituals, and symbolic violence even made sure it stayed off the shelves in several places.^[4]

6 Manhunt

Manhunt is what happens when someone decides a horror game can never be too bleak or too brutal. You play as James Earl Cash, a death row inmate given a second chance—though “second chance” is a bit generous when you’re dropped into a live-action snuff film. Cash’s director and “savior” is a shadowy figure who’s orchestrating every bloody detail for his own twisted film. From the moment Cash steps out of that prison van, his only goal is to survive the night by creatively dispatching a series of gangs—groups like the Hoods and the Smileys, each a little more colorful than the last in their own murderous way.

The game’s “murder with style” approach quickly grabbed attention, with every kill graded on a scale from “quick and clean” to “horrifyingly elaborate.” Manhunt doesn’t just let you eliminate enemies; it challenges you to do it with… pizzazz. Weapons range from plastic bags to nail guns, each lending a different flavor to your executions. The Director encourages the most vicious kills, rewarding Cash with higher scores for each gruesome masterpiece as he sneaks, creeps, and bludgeons his way through each gang. Art school really has changed, eh?

It was immediately banned in New Zealand, labeled as “grossly offensive,” which is just another way of saying they’d prefer it never see daylight. Australia pulled its rating with lightning speed, and the UK took it off shelves briefly after a real-life murder was initially linked to the game—a claim that was later disproven. The game was so infamous that critics quickly raised questions about whether Manhunt was even a game or just an interactive horror film.^[5]

5 Hatred

Hatred is, in a word, unapologetic. The main character (he has no name) wakes up, stares into the mirror, and, instead of making affirmations or grabbing a coffee, decides it’s time to kill everyone in sight. You play as “The Antagonist,” a nihilistic anti-hero clad in a leather trench coat who’s basically the twin of Bleach’s Yhwach. His whole mission? Complete destruction of anyone and everyone.

This game doesn’t mince words—or actions. In Hatred, there are no redemptive story arcs and no world-saving quests. The entire thing is a sandbox game where the goal is simply to be as destructive as possible. And while most games are like, “Hey, maybe save the city,” Hatred is more like, “Here’s your assault rifle, and maybe don’t forget the grenade launcher.” Each level is a parade of carnage as you roam a town that might as well have a banner reading “Welcome, We’re All Targets.” In-game scores even reward you for increasing mayhem, turning every quiet street into the world’s darkest block party.

The backlash? Immediate and intense. It was temporarily pulled from Steam Greenlight after complaints that the game “promotes wanton violence,” a charge that developers shrugged off with a “Yes, exactly.” And while Grand Theft Auto might get flak for “glamorizing crime,” Hatred threw its hands up and said, “Forget glamour, let’s just go all in.”

The developers state that the purpose of the game was to eliminate all the “fake philosophical stuff” thrown into games to justify their violence. The result? An unapologetic, chaotic game full of violence and animalistic nature. The game was banned in several countries, including Germany and New Zealand, and was widely labeled as irredeemably violent.^[6]

4 Mariam

Originally developed in Saudi Arabia, Mariam caused a stir almost as soon as it hit the app store. The game follows a young girl named Mariam who’s “lost” and asks the player for help finding her way home. But what starts off as a seemingly innocent interaction turns creepy fast. While guiding Mariam, players are prompted with increasingly personal and invasive questions, starting by stating she can read your mind by talking about trending news stories and then ending with a casual “Where do you live?”.

The game escalates through these bizarre, unsettling questions that make you wonder if Mariam is more of a stalker than a lost child. As the game progresses, it becomes less about helping Mariam and more about surviving her situation, making players feel like they’re stepping into a horror-themed therapy session they never signed up for.

What really ramped up the unease was the game’s tendency to ask for players’ location access, sparking rumors about potential surveillance and data collection. Reports swirled that Mariam might actually be tracking players, with each spooky message hinting at a ghostly GPS service run by Big Brother. The game wasn’t actually gathering any data, but the game’s eerie atmosphere and unsettling questions led to privacy concerns among players and their parents. It wasn’t long before the app felt less like a game and more like an interactive urban legend, where players were helping a lost girl… and giving her far more information than anyone should share with a haunted app.

In Saudi Arabia, Mariam sparked controversy, with concerned parents accusing the game of influencing children in unhealthy ways. Some even claimed that it promoted self-harm, though no evidence surfaced to support these allegations. Given the outcry, authorities acted swiftly, banning the app and issuing warnings about its “psychological impact” on young players. Apparently, the horror game had done its job a little too well, blurring the line between suspenseful gameplay and digital intrusion.

Mariam remains a curiosity, with its unsettling gameplay and strange mechanics drawing to those with a taste for the mysterious. But it’s more than just a horror game—it’s a digital campfire story that dares you to play and then leaves you wondering if you should have. In the end, Mariam became as much an urban legend as it was an app, proving that sometimes the scariest thing of all is realizing you’ve willingly handed your location to a creepy, fictional child.^[7]

3 Postal 2

Postal 2 is the video game equivalent of a fever dream had by someone who watched too many action movies on fast-forward. The game follows “The POSTAL Dude,” a guy who’s just trying to get through his week with simple errands like picking up milk, cashing a paycheck, and returning a library book. Sounds mundane, right? Wrong. Postal 2 gives you the option to complete each task peacefully or… not-so-peacefully. And by “not-so-peacefully,” we’re talking about flamethrowers, a shovel with a wickedly sharp edge, and a lot of chaos.

Set in a small desert town, Postal 2 doesn’t just allow for violence—it practically rolls out the red carpet for it. Almost every NPC has a quick insult ready if you look at them the wrong way, and the town is filled with groups like rampaging protestors and angry fundamentalists. If you thought going to the bank was stressful, Postal 2 makes it feel like a gladiator match. And just when you think it couldn’t get more absurd, the game hands you a health pack in the form of—you guessed it—catnip, which also doubles as a silencer if you attach a cat to the barrel of your rifle. Yes, Postal 2 is that kind of game.

Obviously, the response was explosive. Postal 2 was banned outright in New Zealand, where authorities labeled it “grossly offensive”—again! They really like that terminology, am I right? Australia followed suit, refusing it on the grounds of excessive violence and animal cruelty. Even in the U.S., it found itself in hot water, particularly within the court system, which pointed to it as proof that video games were steering the youth down a dark path. For once, the game’s creators didn’t argue, proudly marketing it as the game that will give the dark side of your imagination free reign.^[8]

2 Demonophobia

This RPG-visual novel hybrid throws you into a nightmare designed to test your mental stamina (and maybe your sanity). You play as Sakuri Kunikai, a 14-year-old girl. Without a clue as to where she is, Sakuri quickly realizes she’s in a world where everything has just one goal: to make her time here as torturous as possible.

What sets Demonophobia apart is that it doesn’t let you just get through the horror; it demands you watch it unfold in painstaking, pixelated detail. As if the silent, soundtrack-free gameplay weren’t ominous enough, the game makes every mistake lead to a new, disturbing death scene. Each creature has its own gruesome “surprise” for Sakuri. These vary from decapitation to death by slime (which somehow manages to be even worse than it sounds).

The game’s design pushes you to experience each death scene with the kind of loving attention to detail that could only come from a developer with a deep appreciation for Ryona-style brutality and gore. You could say that Demonophobia doesn’t just want you to play it; it wants you to suffer along with it.

By the time you reach Stage 4, things really start to get… weird. Sakuri faces off against grotesque bosses like Asmodeus, and with every level, the game finds new ways to make the whole experience feel progressively twisted. Sakuri, who is still 14, by the way, can lose her clothes, get ambushed by slimy creatures, or face certain “fan-service” moments that are despicable and disgusting to watch. While the game was made in Japan with a lower age of consent, it unsurprisingly caused outrage outside of the country.

Many countries banned it outright, not just because of the VERY questionable erotic scenes with a minor, but also because of the gore and its unapologetic way it served up horrific scenes without any clear purpose beyond shock value. Critics questioned whether it was a game or just a collection of gruesome animations in disguise. Still, Demonophobia still has its loyal fans, mainly in Japan, who are drawn to its sadistic challenges and the dark thrill of surviving each level. For those who make it through, it’s less “I beat the game” and more “I survived it.”^[9]

1 Euphoria

Euphoria, the darkest entry on our list, is an 18+ interactive visual novel game that walks a razor-thin line between psychological horror and boundary-pushing content. It leaves players to navigate an intensely disturbing plot that only gets darker the deeper they go. Set in an isolated, sterile white room, the game begins with protagonist Keisuke Takatou and six other women, five of his classmates, and one teacher, waking up in captivity with no memory of how they got there.

An anonymous speaker leaves them with a disturbing objective: only through a series of twisted and degrading “games” will they survive and escape. Each “game” unlocks a door, forcing players to decide how far Keisuke—and themselves—are willing to go to escape this nightmare. It’s a horror of the mind, with each task chipping away at the characters’ sanity and, frankly, the player’s as well.

Instead of jump scares, Euphoria focuses on psychological torment, making the characters’ physical and mental suffering disturbingly vivid. Keisuke is told to rape and sexually torment all the girls, most of who are also underage, I’d like to point out again, in the room in order to escape. Throughout the game, it becomes clear that each scenario is part of a larger mystery involving Keisuke’s own dark impulses as he constantly battles with his desire to go too far. The storyline gradually reveals more about each character’s background. The game does offer multiple endings, ranging from bleak to (relatively) redemptive, depending on the player’s choices.

While Euphoria is classified as a mature X-rated game, its usage of underaged girls, once again in Japan, makes the entire game even more unsettling and disturbing to play. Euphoria’s extreme content drew criticism for both its disturbing and erotic subject matter and its graphic depictions of violence. Many critics argue that the game crosses the line that no game should go. In reviews, some players admit that Euphoria is like watching a car crash: gruesome, horrifying, but hard to look away from.^[10]

Horror movies are littered with brutal deaths, from slashers stabbing victims to zombies chowing down on the living. A fair number of these kills have reached iconic status, and the stories about the making of these famous scenes are often just as interesting as the onscreen deaths themselves. Here are 10 such stories—which, of course, often feature spoilers.

Related: Top 10 Horror Films That Disturbed the Crew

10 The Sleeping Bag Kill in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

There have been many iconic kills in the Friday the 13th franchise, but one of the top fan favorites occurs in Part VII: The New Blood (1988). A woman is camping with her boyfriend near Crystal Lake when Jason Voorhees drags her from the tent while she’s still in her sleeping bag and gives her one hard bash against a tree, killing her instantly.

The sleeping bag kill was initially supposed to involve multiple hits, but the scene had to be cut down for the film to achieve an R rating. Although not as gory as originally intended, Jason managing to kill the woman in just one whack feels brutal. Kane Hodder, who has played Jason many times, says that it’s one of his favorite kills “because you’re killing someone with something that is not a weapon. Anybody can kill with a weapon.”

The kill left such an impact that it even inspired a kill in Jason X (2001). The slasher is plunged into a holographic camp and comes across two girls who offer him alcohol, drugs, and sex. The film then cuts to the two girls in sleeping bags, with Jason using one to hit the other—and this time around, he takes multiple swings.^[1]

9 The Decapitation Scene in Hereditary

The horror in Hereditary (2018) kicks off when 13-year-old Charlie (Milly Shapiro) goes into anaphylactic shock. While driving her to the hospital, her older brother Peter (Alex Wolff) swerves to avoid roadkill, but at that moment, Charlie has her head out of the window to get some air, and she’s decapitated by a telephone pole.

Although the scene is a punch in the gut, Shapiro had a great time while filming it. She was safely tethered to the car and said that “randomly they would swerve and not tell me so I would be startled.” She described the experience as “kind of like a rollercoaster.” Shapiro was even thrilled about seeing the model of her decapitated head and wanted to take it home “to display it and scare people with it.”^[2]

8/span> The Plastic Bag Kill in Black Christmas

Clare (Lynne Griffin) is the first sorority girl to be picked off by Billy, the largely unseen slasher in Black Christmas (1974). After suffocating her with a plastic bag, he puts her body on a rocking chair in the attic. Not only is her corpse creepily shown multiple times throughout the film, but her plastic-wrapped head also appears on the film’s poster.

Although Griffin doesn’t have much screen time as Clare while alive, she had to film numerous shots while dead. Many actors would struggle to play dead with a plastic bag over their head, but it didn’t faze Griffin because, in her own words, she’s “a fairly good swimmer so I could hold my breath for a long time. And I could also keep my eyes open for a long time without blinking.” She said the only real issue was that “when I was breathing, it was making the bag fog up, so they decided to stick it to my face and poke holes up my nose.”^[3]

7 The Dive Out of the Window in The Exorcist

The Exorcist (1973) ends with Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) sacrificing himself by inviting the demon into his body and then jumping out of the window onto the many steps below the MacNeil’s house. In the film, the house is right next to the top of the steps, but it is further back in real life, so an extension had to be built.

Before stuntman Chuck Waters made the iconic leap, a layer of rubber was put on all of the stone steps to make it slightly less painful. Then it was time for Waters to jump—twice—a feat that was watched from the surrounding buildings by people willing to pay $5 to the Georgetown residents looking to profit from the filming. When Miller asked Waters how he pulled off such a dangerous stunt, he replied, “Complete and total non-resistance, my body becomes totally relaxed.”^[4]

6 The Ending of Night of the Living Dead

When penning Night of the Living Dead (1968), writers George A. Romero and John Russo figured the main character, Ben, would be played by a white actor. That changed when Duane Jones auditioned for the role, but Romero and Russo purposefully didn’t rewrite the script to reference his race. Despite that, Jones being Black changed how the ending of the film—which sees Ben killed by the men who are getting rid of the zombies—was perceived.

“The fact that these redneck posse guys shot him, that became racial, instead of just a mistaken identity, which is really what we intended,” Romero said. He had to fight to keep the dark ending, with Columbia Pictures wanting Ben to survive. Romero said, “None of us wanted to do that. We couldn’t imagine a happy ending.” Jones was in agreement, telling Romero that “the black community would rather see me dead than saved, after all that had gone on, in a corny and symbolically confusing way.”^[5]

5 The Opening Scene in Scream

Scream (1996) opens with Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) getting a phone call from a killer while she’s home alone. After terrorizing her with questions about horror movies and killing her boyfriend, Ghostface stabs Casey and strings her up from a tree. This scene was inspired by a real—although less bloody—event in screenwriter Kevin Williamson’s life.

“I was house-sitting for a friend of mine, and I walk into the family room, and I see that the window’s open,” Williamson explains. “So I go and I get a butcher knife and I start walking around the house and I call up my friend on the phone and I’m like, ‘okay, I think someone’s in the house.’” Williamson’s friend started doing the “ch ch ch, ah ah ah” sound effect from Friday the 13th, which led to the pair discussing horror movies. But unlike in the movie, thankfully, a killer wasn’t waiting to pounce.

Scream was originally supposed to star Barrymore as the main character, Sidney Prescott, but she requested the role of Casey because “my biggest pet peeve was that I always knew the main character was going to be slugging through at the end, but was going to creak by and make it.” To defy expectations, she took the role of Casey—making the audience initially think that she was the main character—”so we would establish this rule does not apply.”^[6]

4 The Highway Pile-Up in Final Destination 2

Final Destination 2 (2003) starts with a pile-up on a highway caused by the chains on a logging truck snapping, sending tree trunks crashing into the vehicles on the road behind it. As much of the crash as possible was done by a stunt team, with the whole scene taking 11 days to film. But one thing that wasn’t possible to do practically was the logs—and not because it would have been too dangerous!

Jason Crosby, who worked on the film’s CGI, says that the crew “discovered that real logs only bounced about an inch off the road when dropped from a logging truck.” So, to get the right amount of height from the bounce, the logs had to be added with CGI. Thankfully, that means that the chances of a log barreling straight through your windshield are incredibly low.^[7]

3 The First Kill in Jaws

Jaws (1975) starts with Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) being attacked by an unseen shark while swimming in the sea at night. To simulate the attack, stuntwoman-turned-actress Backlinie was tied to ropes, and then, as director Steven Spielberg explains, she was “tugged left and right by ten men on one rope and ten men on the other back to shore.” For the final pull underwater, Spielberg himself tugged on the rope because “he wanted it just a certain way.”

Backlinie had to go through another ordeal to complete the scene, though. Spielberg wanted her screams to sound like she was really drowning so, according to Richard Dreyfuss, who played oceanographer Matt Hooper. “He had her tilt her head back, and he poured water down her throat while she screamed, which is now known as waterboarding, so Steven is actually guilty of a war crime.”^[8]

2 The Shower Scene in Psycho

The scene in Psycho (1960) where Marion (Janet Leigh) is murdered in the shower is an absolute classic. When director Alfred Hitchcock was asked why he wanted to adapt Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel, he said, “I think the murder in the bathtub, coming out of the blue, that was about all.” The murder is actually more brutal in the novel, with Mary (as she’s called in the book) being decapitated.

The short scene took a week to film, which was an enormous one-third of the shooting schedule. Hitchcock wanted perfection and made Leigh film the shot of the camera zooming out from her eye 26 times. However, while editing, they noticed that Leigh took a breath in the only shot deemed usable, which is why there’s a brief cut to the showerhead.

Food also played a crucial part in the scene. A knife slicing through casaba melon and steak was used for the sound of the knife cutting Marion. Thanks to being filmed in black and white, the fake blood didn’t have to be red, so Hershey’s chocolate syrup was used. The shot where it looks like we see the knife pierce Marion was done by putting chocolate syrup on the tip of the knife, placing it against her stomach, and pulling away, with the shot then being reversed.^[9]

1 The Chestburster Scene in Alien

Director Ridley Scott knew that the element of surprise would be crucial for getting the actor’s best reactions to the chestburster in Alien (1979). “If an actor is just acting terrified, you can’t get the genuine look of raw, animal fear,” he said.

The cast knew that an alien creature would burst out of Kane’s (John Hurt) chest, but they didn’t know how it was going to look. Everyone but Hurt left the room, and he got into position under the table with his head sticking through a hole. His prosthetic chest was filled with cuts of meat, along with the alien on a hydraulic ram.

After a false start, Scott got the alien to punch through and the blood to spray just the way he wanted it. The actors were suitably shocked, with screenwriter Ronald Shusett recalling that “Veronica Cartwright—when the blood hit her, she passed out. I heard from Yaphet Kotto’s wife that after that scene, he went to his room and wouldn’t talk to anybody.”^[10]

It’s been a while since a new Jason movie featured on the big screen or a green and red striped jersey brought terror to our dreams. While those horrors have been left behind in their own era, a host of new scary movies exist to keep us shivering. And as with most movies, the fan theories follow close behind. WARNING: spoilers ahead!

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Must-See Recent Genre-Defying Horrors

10The Cabin in the Woods

You would be forgiven for thinking of The Cabin in the Woods as the horror movie starring Thor and the hot doctor from Grey’s Anatomy. This popular horror film surprised audiences in 2011 with its fresh approach and massive plot twist at the end.

However, not all viewers were convinced that the twist at the end was all it seemed to be. A fan theory has it that Chris Hemsworth’s character, Curt Vaughan, was in on the plot from the beginning. Proof of this theory is presented in the fact that Curt is the one who gets the group of friends to go to the cabin. Curt is also the only one who doesn’t choose a summoning object down in the basement.

More ‘proof’ indicates that Curt knew his girlfriend Jules had to die first according to the rules, so he made sure to get her alone so the zombies could kill her. It is also thought that Curt would have been given the title of ‘hero’ if he played along with the Facility.^[1]

9The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974 classic horror is one of the creepiest movies on this list. The killer, Leatherface, dons a mask made of human skin and runs around with a chainsaw and an insatiable bloodlust. Not to mention the Leatherface character is based on real life murderer, Ed Gein.

As such, it has always been assumed that Leatherface is a man, but a Reddit fan theory has it that the crazy murderer might in fact be a woman. Proof of this is said to be the way the killer applies lipstick and blusher to another mask. Leatherface also goes mental when the freezer is tampered with and makes very high-pitched sounds for what is supposed to be an above-average sized man. It is also alleged that since Leatherface prepared the food and probably ‘decorated’ the creepy house depicted in the movie, he is probably a she.^[2]

8Halloween

The most recent Halloween movie was a huge box office hit in 2018. In it, Michael Myers allegedly crashes the bus he was being transferred in, to return to Haddonfield to kill a bunch of people. He also goes after Laurie Strode, who has turned her house into a fortress.

Eagle-eyed viewers were quick to notice something off about Laurie, however. While sitting in her truck, drinking, she waits for the bus to leave for the maximum-security prison. She then pitches up at a family dinner drunk and starts crying. A fan theory has it that is wasn’t fear causing her to react like that, but guilt. The theory goes that Laurie, and not Michael, was the one responsible for the bus crash. It is also said that her almost non-reaction to the news report on the crash is a further indication that she planned the whole thing. Why would she do such a thing? Well, because she had been waiting for her fight with Michael for 40 years and wasn’t about to be unprepared for when he arrived at her house.^[3]

7 Us

Michael Myers has also been tied to the popular 2019 horror movie Us. The sequel to Get Out has spawned quite a few fan theories including one that says Michael is a Tethered and was swapped with a clone and trapped for 60 years.

Not only has Jordan Peele, writer and director of US, referenced Halloween during several interviews about his movie, he also mentions the rabbits that feature in the film and how if you should put a rabbit brain in a human body, you’d end up with Michael Myers. What further gets the theory going, is that Michael doesn’t talk, but rather grunts much like the Tethered in Us. Also, in Halloween Resurrection it is revealed to viewers that a tunnel system runs under the Myers house linking to the basement and ultimately enabling the clone swapping.

Moreover, Michael’s psychiatrist, Dr Loomis, tracks him using a ‘Rabbit in Red’ matchbox and describes his patient as not having a soul. Which pretty much describes the Tethered.^[4]

6 Hereditary

Hereditary is arguably the most disturbing entry on this list. There is bleakness and gore and shock value all culminating in a terrifying reveal involving a demon king named Paimon.

Fans were quick to come up with theories involving aspects of the movie, such as linking it to Midsommer (another disturbing horror flick by Hereditary director: Ari Aster). The theory says that since both movies feature cults, they must play out in the same universe. Some fans are also convinced that the couple walking past Annie in Hereditary is the one and only Dani and Christian from Midsommar.

Another popular theory supported by many fans says that none of the horrifying things in the movie, such as Charlie’s decapitation, actually happened. Instead it was the manifestation of both Annie and Peter’s mental disorders.^[5]

5 A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place took what we knew about horror and turned it on its head. Featuring silent characters and monsters reminiscent of the Demogorgon in Stranger Things, this movie made for a unique cinematic experience. Many movie-goers reported feeling uneasy throughout the movie because of the ongoing silence.

In the movie, the monsters are extremely sensitive to noise and attack anyone that makes a sound (as is evident in the very disturbing scene with the little boy and the toy rocket). Hence the silent characters.

These monsters, if one goes by the newspaper clipping on the wall, came from outer space when a meteor hit Earth. However, some fans think that is only a red herring and the creatures are in fact biological weapons left over from WWIII. Others believe that the only way the creatures could have spread so fast if they did indeed crash in only one spot in Mexico, is with the help of the meteor impact. If they had crashed during the spore stage of their lifecycle the impact would have sent the spores flying to the upper atmosphere where they would have caught a ride to locations all over the US.^[6]

4 It Follows

When it comes to psychological horrors, It Follows is a great example of how to do it properly. Rated 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, most reviewers agree that this movie is truly frightening without trying too hard or relying on tired jump scares.

The plot of the movie centres around a curse in the form of a shape-shifting entity passed on to Jay Height after she has casual sex with a guy in the backseat of his car. She then must pass on the curse to another man, otherwise she will be killed by the entity that presents itself in the form of the loved ones of its victims. And so on and so forth.

A twisted theory appeared on Reddit that says the young people in the movie, running from the sinister shapeshifter, were kidnapped from different decades by demons and sent to Hell. On Earth, they had been replaced by changelings. This would mean the monster that follows Jay in the movie, is just another inhabitant of Hell. And the monster doesn’t choose its own form, but rather the victim determines its shape by what may have happened to them in the past such as abuse, rape, attempted murder etc. Since Jay has suffered a sexual assault, the monster chasing her takes the form of a naked woman.^[7]

3 The Babadook

The Babadook is yet another psychological horror that features a creepy kid and even creepier monster. When labor pains overtook Amelia, her husband drove her to the hospital only to get into an accident. Her husband didn’t make it and the movie follows Amelia’s struggle to cope with being a single parent. She reads a book about the Babadook to her son but starts feeling uneasy with the content, especially when her son claims that the Babadook haunts him at night. Amelia then tears up the book and throws it in the bin.

The book shows up on their doorstep, glued back together, and things take a turn for the worse in the household. It seems that the Babadook possesses Amelia with her voice changing during fits of rage. She also kills their dog and eventually goes after her son. When she vomits up black goo, it seems that the Babadook has lost, but instead it runs to the basement where it seems to be fed maggots by Amelia at the end of the movie.

A fan theory has it that the Babadook is a physical manifestation of Amelia’s hatred for her son, since she gave birth to him on the same day her husband died. When the Babadook is heard making weird noises in the movie, Amelia’s rage is evident, giving more weight to this theory. Another theory says that it is not rage, but Amelia’s intense grief that brings the Babadook to life.

A very popular theory claimed that the Babadook is gay, which was eventually acknowledged but not entirely confirmed by filmmaker Jennifer Kent.^[8]

2 Carrie

Carrie is a lesson on the consequences of bullying. And a very disturbing movie to boot. Carrie started out as Stephen King’s first published novel that spawned a film in 1976 and then a remake in 2013.

As with most Stephen King novels and movies, there are many theories surrounding the plot. In this case the main theory seems to be that Matilda, the main character in the novel of the same name by Roald Dahl, grows up to be Carrie.

After Miss Honey and Matilda move to Chamberlain, Maine, they change their names to Margaret and Carietta. Much like Carrie’s mother, Honey/Margaret becomes very religious which leads to Matilda/Carietta hiding away her telekinetic abilities. Which then leads to the start of the story of Carrie, according to theory. This would essentially mean that Matilda is the prequel to Carrie. More proof that these two stories take place in the same universe comes in the form of a car named Christine (another Stephen King title), which is a 1958 Plymouth Fury sold by Matilda’s father. The car caused the death of a passenger, leading to Matilda’s father being arrested and Miss Honey and Matilda’s move to Maine.^[9]

1 IT

The craziest theory by far, on this list anyway, is the one that connects Disney’s Mary Poppins and Stephen King’s IT. Considering that Mary Poppins is a sweet lady that flies around with an umbrella and IT is a killer clown, it might seem ridiculous. However, the theory points out that Poppins and IT share a similar power. They are able to tap into children’s innermost thoughts, whether it be for good or evil.

Both movies feature a young boy named Georgie. While Poppins returns to Cherry Tree Lane after 25 years and relies on children’s joy to keep her energy levels up, IT returns to Derry every 27 years and uses the fear of children to keep his power levels up. In both movies, the children’s encounters with IT and Poppins seem to fade from their minds. Not to mention, Poppins and IT both seem to like dancing. The final thread connecting these two movies comes during the scene where the characters in Mary Poppins grab balloons and float away. Since “floating” and “balloons” are synonymous with IT, the theory seems plausible to many viewers.^[10]

Everyone looks forward to heading out on vacation. Despite the hassles—crowds, delays, bad weather, bad food, that hotel that looks nothing like the pictures—travel can be one of the best experiences of a lifetime. But sometimes things go really wrong and affect people’s lives forever. Here are 10 stories of people who set out on vacation and came back with a harrowing tale to tell—or never came back at all.

10 Erin Langworthy

Visiting Victoria Falls in southern Africa is a dream for many, but for 22-year-old Erin Langworthy, it turned into a nightmare. The Australian was bungee jumping off the Victoria Falls Bridge while visiting Zambia in 2012 when the cord snapped and she plunged 111 meters (364 ft) into the crocodile-infested Zambesi River below. She was swept down the swollen river, her feet still bound together by 10 meters (30 ft) of rope, and spent 40 minutes in the water, until she finally managed to grab onto some rocks and an employee of the bungee company pulled her onto the river bank.

Langworthy was taken to Victoria Falls Clinic in Zimbabwe, but didn’t reach the clinic until five and a half hours after her jump. Though her lungs were partially collapsed and her body was covered in bruises, Langworthy didn’t suffer any serious injuries and returned home two weeks later. She had been the 106th person to jump off the bridge that day.

9Daniel Dudzisz

A 26-year-old German tourist went missing this year while attempting to walk almost halfway across Australia alone. He survived by eating flies. Daniel Dudzisz had been homeless for two years and had taken to walking long distances on his own. He had planned to walk 3,860 kilometers (2,400 mi) from New South Wales to Uluru, but found himself lost and stranded between two flooded banks of a river for 10 days. News of his disappearance didn’t alarm those who had encountered Dudzisz; opal miner Andrew Plax said Dudzisz was a uniquely tough traveler who had walked enormous distances on other continents, drinking water from troughs and puddles, and “could live off the smell of an oily rag.” He had no doubt the missing hiker would be found alive.

Dudzisz, who is diabetic, fortunately had enough insulin with him. He turned to eating flies for nutrients when his small supply of cereal and baked beans ran out, and he was eventually rescued by a passing motorist. Dudzisz refused medical treatment and was determined to finish his walk, though he promised to stick to main roads and only walk during daylight hours.

8 Rochelle Harris

British tourist Rochelle Harris was on a flight back from a holiday in Peru in 2013 when she began experiencing a powerful headache and shooting pains in her face. She also began hearing strange scratching noises and had a discharge from her ear. On returning home, 27-year-old Harris paid a visit to a doctor. After initially blaming an ear infection, doctors soon discovered eight large maggots wriggling around inside Harris’s ear canal. She remembered walking through a swarm of flies while hiking on her vacation and one had been buzzing in her ear, but once she waved the fly away, she thought nothing more of it. The insect was a “new world screw-worm fly,” which generally lay their larvae in the wounds of warm-blooded animals. Once they hatched 24 hours later, the maggots chewed a 12-millimeter (half inch) hole in Rochelle Harris’s ear canal. The ordeal didn’t cause any permanent damage to Harris and, surprisingly, the incident made her less squeamish about bugs.

7 Keith Brown

British youth worker Keith Brown was traveling to London from Ethiopia with his wife when he was detained by customs officers while connecting in Dubai. He was found to have cannabis on his person, was arrested on drug possession charges, and was sentenced to four years in prison. He had 0.003 grams (0.0001 oz) of cannabis stuck to the bottom of his shoe. This is about the size of a grain of sugar—not nearly enough to have any psychotropic effect. Fortunately for the 43-year-old father of three, he was pardoned and released early on in his sentence. The UAE is notoriously tough and unyielding on drug crime—a German national was imprisoned for carrying over-the-counter jet lag pills that are legal in Dubai, and a Swiss traveler was reportedly jailed for having poppy seeds on his clothing after eating a bread roll at Heathrow Airport.

6 Brittanee Drexel

In 2009, 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel told her mother she was spending spring break no more than 32 kilometers (20 mi) from their home in Rochester, New York. Instead, she headed to the party town of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with her boyfriend and friends. While there, she went to the Blue Water Hotel to visit a friend who was staying there. She stayed about 10 minutes, then walked out of the hotel lobby at 9:00 PM, never to be seen again. Surveillance cameras caught her entering and leaving the Blue Water, but offered no other clues.

The following day, her cell phone signal disappeared. The signal was later tracked to a swampy area, sparking even greater fears for Brittanee’s safety. The area was searched extensively, but nothing was ever discovered. Police interviewed the friend she had visited at the Blue Water Hotel, who had somewhat suspiciously returned home to Rochester that night at 2:00 AM, and searched the room of a person of interest at another hotel, but no concrete evidence or trace of Brittanee Drexel was ever found. Brittanee’s mother eventually moved from Rochester to Myrtle Beach to feel closer to her daughter and to stay involved in the investigation.

5 The Lutes Family

Widower Gary Lutes wanted to share his love of caving with his two sons, Buddy (age 13) and Tim (age 9). In June 1990, he drove with the boys from their home in Florida to explore the New Trout Cave in West Virginia. They set off into the cave wearing headlamps and carrying a pack of supplies including food, water, and extra headlamps. After 305 meters (1,000 ft), they reached a section known as “The Maze,” full of jagged rocks and tight spaces. Fearing the pack would become a hindrance, Lutes left it behind, intending to return in the half hour he estimated they had left in their headlamps.

After only a few minutes, the boys’ lamps burned out. Lutes decided to return to the pack, but soon realized they were lost. Lutes’s lamp died and the family was plunged into darkness. Gary and the boys were trapped in the cave for five days with no food, water, or light. They began hallucinating, retching from the soot left over from past mining operations in the cave, and Gary developed chest pains. On the fifth day, the family was rescued after a nearby resident alerted authorities that the car had been parked outside the cave for days.

The National Cave Rescue Association questioned why Lutes carried just one pack into the cave only to leave it behind and said that as an experienced caver, he should have known better: “This rescue should never have taken place. Gary Lutes violated every rule that the NSS and the rest of organized caving preaches to each and every one of us: Carry three sources of light each! Tell someone where you are caving and when you will return!”

4Sidney Good And Alexis Fairchild

While vacationing in Florida, two 17-year-old teens from Indiana were seriously injured while parasailing in a horrific incident that was caught on video. As wind speeds increased due to an incoming storm, the operator of the boat made an attempt to bring the girls down—only to have the rope snap, leaving Sidney and Alexis strapped in and at the mercy of strong winds. Horrified onlookers saw them sail overheard, screaming, heading straight for an apartment building. They slammed into a balcony, where building residents tried to grab onto them, but the wind was too strong. They hit nearby power lines and crashed into a parking lot, landing on a windshield and shattering it.

Sidney Good suffered brain trauma and cracked vertebrae and will suffer long-term health issues including vision problems. Alexis Fairchild had a broken back, head trauma, and serious lacerations, presumably from the car windshield. The incident sparked fury at the lack of safety regulations for water sports companies.

3 Cheznye Emmons

While traveling in Indonesia with her boyfriend, 23-year-old British beauty therapist Cheznye Emmons had to be rushed out of the jungle when she fell seriously ill and was unable to see. Arriving at the nearest hospital five hours later, she was put into an induced coma. Emmons, her boyfriend, and a friend had purchased a bottle of alcohol from a local shop with an original label reading “Gin” and had several drinks. It was later discovered that the gin had been removed and replaced with cheaper home-brewed methanol, which can cause seizures, kidney failure, blindness, and death. Five days after the incident, when it became clear that Emmons would never recover, her parents made the heartbreaking decision to turn off their daughter’s life support. The store was investigated and shut down. Potent home-brewed alcohol is a serious problem in Indonesia—in 2009, 25 people died in Bali after drinking a local spirit tainted with methanol.

2 Azaria Chamberlain

In 1980, the Chamberlain family was camping at Uluru (then known as Ayer’s Rock) as part of a large group. As night fell, Lindy Chamberlain placed her nine-week-old daughter Azaria into their tent. Some time later, screams erupted as Lindy discovered Azaria missing, blood on the tent, and dingo tracks nearby. The initial finding in 1981 was that Azaria had in fact been taken and presumably killed by the wild dogs. However, authorities and the public found it difficult to believe that the animals would come into a camp and attack without provocation and so suspicion fell onto the parents. The next year, Lindy Chamberlain was convicted of the murder of her daughter and sentenced to life in prison while her husband Michael was charged as an accessory.

Lindy served three years in prison, until Azaria’s bloody jacket was found near a dingo lair and she was pardoned and released. In 2012, after extensive investigation bolstered by reports of other attacks by dingoes on children, a coroner finally ruled that a dingo was responsible for Azaria Chamberlain’s death. The story has inspired books, a miniseries, an opera, and most famously the film A Cry in the Dark starring Meryl Streep as Lindy Chamberlain.

1 The Kim Family

Tech editor James Kim, his wife Kati, and their two young daughters set off from Portland, Oregon the day after Thanksgiving 2006, heading for the southern coast. After missing a turnoff, the Kims followed what looked like a shortcut on their map, but was in fact a treacherous road over the mountains. After realizing the route was impassable, the Kims attempted to back their car out, but were unable to do so. They spent the night in the car, only to wake up surrounded by deep snow: They were stranded. The Kims ran the car engine to stay warm and burned tires after the gas ran out. Katie Kim breastfed Penelope, four years old, and Sabine, seven months. After several days, James Kim decided he had to go for help. He set off, saying he would return shortly if he couldn’t find a way out. He never made it back to the car. After nine days, helicopters hired by James Kim’s parents discovered and rescued Kati Kim and her girls.

The body of James Kim was discovered in a creek two days later—he had walked several miles through a steep canyon, but sadly ended up only one mile (as the crow flies) from his family’s car. Tragically, if he’d walked a mile in the other direction, he would have found an empty lodge packed full of food and supplies.

Caroline Coupe is a passionate world traveler who thankfully has no travel horror stories of her own. An avid photographer and aspiring writer, Caroline recently launched her travel blog, LoveLiveTravel and can be found on Twitter at @lovelivetravel. 

Some horror movies can only be watched once. Others should be watched a couple of times to get the maximum effect of their complex storylines. During the second or third viewing of some horror films, little details make themselves known that were missed the first time around. A lot of effort goes into making a successful horror film and these little details are a big part of it. Sometimes the details are in the background of the film itself and sometimes it is in the inspiration that led to the making of the movie. On this list are some, perhaps lesser known, facts that play eerily vital roles in making horror movies just a little bit creepier.

Beware though, potential spoilers ahead!

Top 10 Disturbing Movies You’ve Never Heard Of

10 Final Destination—2000

At the time, Final Destination was a breath of fresh air in the horror movie genre. There was no slasher or ghost element. Instead the killer was Death itself, stalking and taking the lives of those who managed to evade it the first time around. The beginning of the movie shows a plane crash that happens mid-air after the main character convinces his friends to disembark it. During the making of the movie the decision was made to use the song “Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver and play it before some of the characters’ deaths. Eerily, John Denver himself died in a plane crash in 1997 and his remains could only be identified by means of his fingerprints. His demise is reminiscent not only of the plane crash in the movie, but also the gruesomeness of the graphic death scenes.^[1]

9 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—1974

Tobe Cooper is best known for being the director of the 1974 horror flick: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The movie introduced horror fans to the legendary Leatherface who instilled fear with his grotesque human skin mask and penchant for attacking people with a chainsaw. Strangely enough, it was ‘the most beautiful time of the year’ that inspired Cooper’s freaky villain. The director was Christmas shopping in 1972 and feeling most frustrated with the sheer amount of people out to buy last minute gifts, when he saw a rack of chainsaws in the hardware section. For just a moment he thought that a chainsaw would be an effective way to get through the crowd really quickly. And so, the horror movie seed was planted.^[2]

8 The Hills Have Eyes—1977

Writer and director of the gruesome film The Hills Have Eyes, Wes Craven, was inspired by the story of Sawney Bean who was said to have been the head of a Scottish clan that went around murdering and eating people during the Middle Ages. There was a lot of tension on set, especially during the filming of a terrifying rape scene. The cast and crew also experienced difficulties in dealing with extreme temperatures. However, the last straw was when Craven decided he wanted the baby in the movie to be murdered by one of the inbred cannibals. The crew put their foot down and threatened to abandon the project if Craven went through with trying to film a scene like that and the director eventually let the idea go.^[3]

7 Paranormal Activity – 2009

Paranormal Activity was filmed in just one week and since there was no real script to speak of, a lot of the scenes were improvised on the spot. The result was a movie that terrified audiences worldwide to the core, with many convinced that the footage was real and that the entity in the movie could reach out beyond the screen. People actually walked out during early screenings because they were too scared to sit and watch the whole film. Steven Spielberg was also intrigued by the movie and after his company acquired the film, he took home a DVD copy of the movie. After watching it, his bedroom door locked itself from the inside and Spielberg had to call a locksmith to get out. He was so terrified by this experience that he returned the DVD the next day after having tossed it into a garbage bag.^[4]

6 Cloverfield – 2008

While Godzilla was the main inspiration for the monster in Cloverfield, its design was unique. It was also a water creature with a huge tail but was covered in parasites and slightly clumsy on its feet. The reason for the clumsiness was the fact that Clover was still a baby monster. Filming included the ‘found footage’ style and the result made for an extremely immersive movie. However, the continuous movement was too much for some movie-goers and many had to run out and go vomit in the nearest bathroom. Others complained of intense migraines. Some even experienced a temporary loss of balance. This resulted in verbal and visual warnings being posted by theatres so that audiences knew what they were letting themselves in for.^[5]

10 Horror Houses That Really Existed

5 Insidious – 2010

Movie critics had mostly positive things to say about the horror movie, Insidious, which is quite a feat for a movie starring a kid in a coma, desperate parents and a red-faced demon. Some of the scenes are genuinely creepy and there isn’t an overuse of jump-scares. The dad eventually figures out what exactly is happening to his son and he enters a place called The Further to rescue him. All the scenes in The Further were shot in the Herald Examiner building in Los Angeles. This building has somewhat of a creepy past as it used to house the newspaper that was first in covering one of the most terrifying murders that ever happened in LA: the Black Dahlia killing in 1947.^[6]

4 The Ring – 2002

Whenever The Ring is mentioned in conversation, it is almost impossible to think of the movie without picturing a little girl with black hair hanging over her face, crawling out of a TV set. The cursed video tape is almost secondary in people’s minds as the creepy Samara left a lasting impression on audiences in 2002. Also featured throughout the movie is a splendid red Japanese maple tree that was in fact a prop built from steel tubing and plaster. The tree was named Lucille in honor of Lucille Ball (because of her red hair). After a while however, the cast and crew of The Ring began to feel like the tree was as cursed as the videotape in the movie. No matter where they put it up, the wind blew it down. They erected the tree three times and each time the wind picked up to more than 60 miles per hour and knocked it over.^[7]

3 Scream – 1996

While most horror movie buffs would scoff at Scream, saying they weren’t scared at all while watching it, the movie and its subsequent sequels spawned one of the most iconic and recognizable killers in movie history: Ghostface. Kevin Williamson, best known for creating Dawson’s Creek, wrote the entire screenplay in three days. The opening scene of the movie hit very close to home as Williamson explained to CNN in 1998. He was watching the Barbara Walters special on the Gainesville murders when he heard a noise coming from inside his house. Freaked out, he searched through the house to see what might have caused the noise and happened upon an open window in the living room. He hadn’t noticed the window being open even after two days of being home night and day. This really scared him. He fetched a big knife from the kitchen and phoned one of his friends. The friend, David Blanchard, started asking him about scary movies which inspired Williamson to write the opening scene to Scream early the next morning. The Ghostface killer was inspired by the Gainesville Ripper, Danny Rolling, who murdered five students in four days in August 1990.^[8]

2 Halloween—1978

Speaking of iconic killers in movies, Michael Myers is right up there with the best of them. Myers started his killing spree at the age of 6 when he murdered his older sister, Judith. His attention then turned to his other sister, Laurie, who managed to escape him right up until 2018 and presumably beyond. The murderous character was created by John Carpenter after he visited a psychiatric ward with some of his psychology classmates. One of the patients they observed was a teenage boy who would stare ahead of him blankly without speaking. Carpenter used this experience as inspiration while co-writing the script for the film. The movie became very controversial at the time of its release with many people accusing the producers of trying to encourage people to identify with Michael Myers.^[9]

1 Carrie – 1976

A list of horror movies, in whatever form, wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of at least one adaptation of a classic Stephen King novel. Carrie was not only the first of King’s novels to be made into a movie, it was also his very first published horror story. (It was also John Travolta’s movie debut). Many were truly freaked out by Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of Carrie White, while others felt the really frightening moment was at the end of the film when Carrie’s arm shoots out from below the ground of her destroyed house during Sue Snell’s dream. Sue then wakes up screaming. Art director, Jack Fisk, buried Spacek in a pit under a board covered in pumice stones for the filming of the final scene after she insisted on doing the scene herself. Spacek went all out to ensure the red ‘blood’ stains on her prom dress stayed consistent by sleeping in the gown for the three days it took to shoot the prom scene. She also made sure to stay in character by isolating herself from the rest of the cast whenever they weren’t shooting.^[10]

10 Crazy Theories About Popular Horror Movies

The horror genre has a long and fascinating history, going hand-in-hand with the very history of film from almost the very start. As long as people have been using film to tell stories, they’ve also been using those stories to scare people senseless. From innovative camera tricks to impressive makeup wizardry, the films listed here all have their place within film history for good reason. So turn off the light, get comfortable, and get ready for ten silent horror films that’ll give you the chills. 

10. Nosferatu (1922)

You can’t have a discussion about classic silent horror without vampires, more specifically one of cinema’s earliest versions of the classic folktale. When most people think about classic vampires, they usually think about Bela Lugosi’s legendary portrayal of Count Dracula in Tod Browning’s 1931 Universal adaptation. However, it was director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and actor Max Schreck who introduced cinema to vampires just 9 years earlier with Nosferatu.

The film was developed as an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a task that proved difficult when Florence, Bram Stoker’s widow, refused to allow for a sanctioned adaptation. So Murnau, ever the rebel, decided along with his crew, to simply change some key details and go ahead with the film anyway. The film now only barely resembles an adaptation of Dracula, the biggest change being the titular vampire, Count Orlock, played by Schreck. 

Schreck just exudes an unnerving vibe, enhanced by the still-impressive makeup and the way the film is shot. From Orlock rising from his coffin to his demonic shadow ascending the staircase, the film is dripping with timeless and creepy imagery. Despite Stoker’s best efforts to sue the filmmakers and destroy all existing copies, the film would survive and go on to be hailed as an influential masterwork. Countless filmmakers have been inspired by Nosferatu, including director Rob Eggers whose big-budget remake will be hitting theaters in December 2024. 

9. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

When going through the history of classic silent horror films, it’s important to understand the trend of German expressionism. Starting in the late 1910s and lasting until the 1930s, German expressionism was an artistic movement that prioritized the artist’s feelings and imagination over portraying realism. This meant movies could follow suit and push boundaries with their visuals and storytelling they’d previously been unable to. So a film like Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari could run wild with its surreal storytelling, especially with its art direction. 

The entire film, told entirely via flashbacks, tells the story of the titular Doctor Caligari and his somnambulist, Cesare. It soon becomes clear that Caligari is using Cesare to carry out moonlight murders, and even goes after Jane, the main character’s love interest. The story is a bizarre and disorienting one, helped in major part by the visuals which are perfectly in line with German expressionism. Shadows are painted across the floor and background, often contorting into offputting spirals and patterns, as well as defying any physical logic. Additionally, things like doors and windows are anything but normal looking, frequently looking more like something you’d see in a child’s drawing. The whole film feels like a very creative nightmare and still stands out as a classic to this day. 

8. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Long before he was belting out showstopping ballads on Broadway, the Phantom was gracing movie screens with his macabre presence. Adapted from Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, the film tells the story of a deformed murderer known as the Phantom who is haunting the Paris Opera House. Amidst his rampage, the Phantom takes an interest in Christine, a singer whom he wants to see become a star. This leads Christine down into the sewers beneath the opera house where she soon uncovers the truth of the Phantom, as well as his horrific true face.

The Phantom is played by Lon Chaney, often referred to as the “Man of a Thousand Faces,” due to his incredible makeup talents. Chaney had previously played Quasimodo in the screen adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, so he was more than prepared. The makeup for the Phantom is simple yet effective, giving him a horrific pig-like nose, as well as piercing and demonic eyes. These enhancements work beautifully in tandem with Chaney’s performance which, given the film’s silent nature, is completely physical. Every second he’s on screen you can’t take your eyes off of him and he perfectly embodies the Phantom’s foreboding yet alluring presence. If your only knowledge of the character is the musical, definitely give the original silent horror film a watch, it’s more than worth your time. 

7. Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages is an oddity of a film, even amongst other silent films of its time, especially due to its unique format. Long before the likes of The Blair Witch Project or Hell House LLC, Häxan was utilizing a faux-documentary format to tell its story. It would be more accurate to describe the film as an early example of a video essay with dramatized sequences about the occult and witchcraft. 

This means several sequences dedicated to the history of witchcraft, often explaining aspects of it with models and illustrated diagrams. Despite its dry tone, the film is quite enthralling, almost as if you’ve been transported back in time to a 19th-century lecture on occult history. 

This doesn’t mean the film is without any artistic merit, as the dramatization sequences showcase some truly memorable visuals. For a film from 1922, it definitely pushed boundaries, including depictions of satanic worship, female nudity, and even horrific demons brought to life through impressive makeup effects. While it doesn’t get brought up as much as the likes of Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the film still has its appreciators. So this Halloween, if you need something a bit different to set the mood, check out Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages. 

6. The Golem (1920)

Jewish folklore has a rich assortment of legends, myths, and fables, many working their way into various pieces of different media. One of the more famous among these tales is the Golem of Prague, a clay being sculpted by a 16th-century rabbi. 

The Golem: How He Came into the World from 1920 is very much in line with the aforementioned legend, doing ample justice to the Golem’s cultural context. Rabbi Loew, a rabbi in the ghetto of medieval Prague, creates the titular Golem out of humble clay to protect his fellow Jews from an impending disaster. The film, directed by Paul Wegener and Carl Boese, sets many impressive precedents for horror cinema, especially when it comes to the presentation of the Golem. This is most evident in the Golem’s makeup, worn by Paul Wegener himself, which is still an impressive use of prosthetics even now. The design is imposing and a bit offputting which, given the nature of the film, is more than appropriate. 

One could easily see this film as a precursor to the likes of Frankenstein, especially with the angle of a man creating a monster. The Golem is a great watch, especially if you are interested in seeing a key piece of Jewish folklore brought to life. 

5. The Cat and the Canary (1927)

The horror genre, like many other genres, has countless sub-categories that encompass a wide range of styles and subjects. Horror comedy is by far one of the most widespread, with countless films that possess both great humor and horror simultaneously. Films like Night of the Creeps, Shaun of the Dead, or Freaky are all perfect examples of this. But long before any of those films hit the scene, The Cat and the Canary was balancing chills and giggles as far back as 1927. 

The film concerns Cyrus West, a wealthy man who has ordered that his last will and testament go unread until the 20th anniversary of his death. This brings his greedy, conniving family out of the woodwork, all looking to acquire his West’s vast fortune. However, on the night the family arrives to hear the will’s contents revealed, an escaped lunatic called the Cat breaks into the house! While the film boasts quite a fair bit of comedy, it never forgets to lay on the thick eerie atmosphere of an old dark house film. 

The Cat and the Canary isn’t brought up as much as other famous 20s and 30s horror films but deserves its roses for being such a unique outing. 

4. The Man Who Laughs (1928)