We decided to do a little digging, seeing as it's getting close to Halloween, to see which of our favourite horror films were inspired by real events, turns out some of the one's you would least expect are included on this list... Which makes it all a little bit more unsettling.
The Conjuring
Starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, The Conjuring is about two paranormal investigators -- Ed Warren and his wife, Lorraine – and their investigation of a family that was supposedly terrorized by a dark presence when they moved into a Rhode Island farmhouse in the 1970s.
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The Haunting In Connecticut
The film was inspired by events Carmen Reed and her family claim happened to them while living in Connecticut in the 1980s. "There were a lot of things that were very accurate, [but they also] changed a lot of things around and turned it into Hollywood," Reed explained.
The Exorcism Of Emily Rose
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The Story is based on the 1976 case of the German girl Anneliese Michel, who died of dehydration and starvation after months of intensive exorcism activity by two Catholic priests.
Mothman Prophecies
According to many sources, the film, which is based on the 1975 book of the same name by parapsychologist John Keel, is a fictionalized narrative of actual events. "'The Mothman Prophecies’ is based in reality, but a bit of artistic license is used.
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The Amityville Horror
The 1979 film "The Amityville Horror" was about the Lutz family and the strange manifestations they allegedly witnessed when they moved into a New York home where a family was brutally murdered. The movie was based on a book of the same name that was published by Prentice-Hall in 1977. Turns out, the book is a mashup of different tales including 'The Exorcist'.
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Jaws
It is often reported that the story was inspired by real-life shark attacks that plagued the New Jersey shoreline in 1916. In fact these attacks are even mentioned in the movie by Brody.
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The Exorcist
The Exorcist was based on the actual case of an anonymous boy in 1949, given many pseudonyms but never actually named, the boy survived and went on to have a normal life, largely because his actual case was not nearly as dramatic as what was depicted in the movie.
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The 1974 horror classic is rooted in the real-life 1950s case of Wisconsin's Edward 'Crazy Ed' Gein, Crazy Ed, like the movie's Leatherface character, wore the skinned-out scalps and faces of his victims and decorated his farmhouse with human remains.
The Nightmare On Elm Street
According to Director Wes Craven, . "It's about a series of articles in the LA Times ... about men from Southeast Asia, who were from immigrant families and who had died in the middle of nightmares ... One was the son of a physician. He was about 21 ... Everybody in his family said almost exactly these lines: 'You must sleep.' He said, 'No, you don't understand; I've had nightmares before -- this is different.' He was given sleeping pills and told to take them ... Everybody went to bed, thinking it was all over. In the middle of the night, they heard screams and crashing. They ran into the room, and by the time they got to him he was dead.
