50 terrifying movies based on real stories

Reality is far more fascinating than anything you can imagine. And the films in this gallery confirm it! Let's have a look at the most terrifying movies about murders, paranormal phenomena, and other disturbing things. All of them were based on true stories!

Directors: Wes Craven (1977) and Alexandre Aja (2006)

This movie was inspired by a story dating back to the 17th century in Scotland. A family of 48 people ambushed travelers on the roads with the aim of killing and eating them.

Director: Brad Anderson

'Session 9' is a film inspired by the story of the Danvers Psychiatric Hospital in Massachusetts, an abandoned nineteenth-century building that was long considered one of the most haunted places in America.

Director: Marc Meyers

'My friend Dahmer' recounts the youth of serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. The slayer murdered seventeen young men before eating certain pieces of their bodies.

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

On November 13, 1974, a man murdered his parents and siblings in a moment of insanity. The house of this tragedy, in the town of Amityville, was bought for a small sum by the Lutz family who would then also experience a real nightmare.

Director: Irvin Yeaworth

The classic horror movie 'The Blob' is based on a news item that appeared in the local Philadelphia press. On September 26, 1950, two policemen on patrol observed a gelatinous mass of lavender color in a field.

Director: Jonathan Demme

The most famous cannibal in cinema, Hannibal Lecter, really existed and is called Ed Gein. He had a morbid fascination with human skin.

Director: Joe Berlinger

The film revisits the love affair of serial killer Ted Bundy with Liz Kendall. Bundy was an assassin famous for his looks and charisma. It helped him attract many female victims for his killings.

Director: Wes Craven

The idea for this film emerged after Danny Rolling murdered five students in the course of three nights. It happened in Gainesville, Florida in 1990.

Directors: Michael and Peter Spierig

'The Winchester Curse' is inspired by the true story of Sarah Winchester who mysteriously enlarged her mansion after her husband's death by creating rooms that were at first sight useless (dead-end rooms, empty spaces, secret passages, etc.). the constructions had one purpose: locking up spirits killed by Winchester's weapons.

Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi

The story is based on the successive and mysterious disappearances of ten people in Alaska since 1990.

Director: Ti West

'The Sacrament' is based on the murder of Leo Ryan who'd come to investigate the People's Temple sect in 1978. As he prepared to paint an alarming portrait of this mysterious community, guru Jim Jones murdered him.

Director: James Wan

Also titled 'The Warren Files,' this is the true story of two famous American demon hunters, the Warrens, who got involved in over 4,000 paranormal cases in the 1960s and 1970s.

Director: James Wan

The film transcribes one of the most traumatic files studied by the Warren couple: a single mother and her four children under attack of evil spirits.

Director: Michael Chaves

This is another of the many terrifying cases followed by the Warrens: a little boy comes under the influence of a demon and a man offers his body to the demon instead. The events that follow, culminate in the first court case in U.S. history in which a man accused of murder pleads demonic possession.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Just like the later blockbuster 'Silence of the Lambs,' the classic movie 'Psycho' is also inspired by the serial killer Ed Gein. Hitchcock's masterpiece investigates the relationship of the serial killer with his mother and the creepy way in which he impersonated her after she died.

Director: Scott Derrickson

This film is an adaptation of the book by Ralph Sarchie, a former American soldier-turned-detective who investigated a series of demonic possession cases together with a priest.

Director: Sidney J. Furie

This strange story tells the real-life ordeal of Doris Bither in the 1970s. Allegedly, the woman was regularly abused by supernatural beings until one day she became pregnant. Her children, as well as the neighbours, witnessed these spirits too.

Director: Scott Derrickson

The film tells the story of Anneliese Michel on whose body 67 exorcisms were performed in a period of ten months. The experience, which occurred in 1976, was so rough that she did not survive it.

Director: Don Mancini

The haunted doll from the movie is said to have really existed in the early 1900s. His name is Robert and he is currently in Key West’s Fort East Martello Museum. People say that great misfortune befalls on anyone who dares to take a picture of it.

Director: Alejandro Amenábar

The director retraces a series of strange cases in the 1980s related to satanic rituals. They included scenes of collective abuse of women and sacrifices of infants.

Director: Bryan Bertino

'The Strangers' is based on several incidents where intruders broke into a house and killed their owner(s). A famous example is that of the Manson family, a group of serial murderers raging in 1969. Another, lesser known case is that of Keddie Cabin, where four people including two children were murdered without apparent cause in 1981. The culprits were never found.

Director: John R. Leonetti

In 1968, the nursing student Dona received a doll as a gift. She and her roommate Angie began to notice that the doll sometimes changed position without being touched. It even moved between the rooms of their apartment. Thoroughly concerned, the two women called in a psychic who concluded that the doll was in fact possessed by the spirit of a 7-year-old girl named Annabelle Higgins.

Directors: Tobe Hooper (1982) and Gil Kenan (2015)

In 1958, the Hermann family witnessed strange facts in their Long Island, New York home. A joker's spirit repeatedly amused himself by uncorking different bottles simultaneously and dumping their contents on the ground. This story caught the media's attention and inspired 'Poltergeist.'

Director: Mark Pellington

The film chronicles the urban legend of the Mothman, an apparition that announces the death of all who see it. In the 1960s, several witnesses said they saw a Mothman before the collapse of a bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia (in 1967) killed 46 people.

Director: Wes Craven

The film's screenwriter was inspired by a sensational newspaper article describing the story of a Cambodian little boy refusing to sleep, convinced he was going to die in his sleep. One evening when he was finally able to fall asleep, his parents were woken up by screaming and found him lifeless in his bed.

Director: Peter Cornwell

In 1986, a family moved into a Connecticut home that once had been a mortuary and allegedly witnessed a multitude of paranormal phenomena. They even had an exorcism performed by the famous Warren couple. This story, about the Snedeker family in Southington, Connecticut, has actually been debunked (among others, on livescience.com) and cannot be labelled as 'true' anymore.

Director: Paco Plaza

This Spanish film revisits an incident in early 1990s' Spain, where a police report indicated the occurrence of supernatural elements during an investigation. It concerned the mysterious death of a teenage girl after using an Ouija board.

Director: Greg McLean

Three friends have their car break down during a road trip in Australia. A stranger stops to help them but his intentions are far from friendly. The story was inspired by the ordeal of Joanne Lees and Peter Falconio, a couple attacked by murderer Bradley John Murdoch after their car broke down. Falconio was killed while Lees managed to escape.

Directors: Andrew Traucki and David Nerlich

This horror film builds on the numerous stories of crocodile attacks in the Australian Mangroves.

Director: Wes Craven

This story is taken from the book 'Confession' by Wade Davis who conducted studies on voodoo practices in Haiti. He was particularly interested in the case of the zombication of the former slave Clairvius Narcisse.

Director: Chris Kentis

The film is based on the story of a couple of divers mistakenly abandoned in the middle of the ocean on the Australian Great Barrier Reef.

Director: Courtney Solomon

The film looks back at the first murder on record in US history where a spirit was convicted for the crime.

Directors: Tobe Hooper (1974) and Marcus Nispel (2003)

As several other movies, this film is inspired by the serial killer Ed Gein. When he was arrested in 1957, investigators discovered a range of objects in his home (masks, gloves, lampshades, etc.) made out of human skin.

Director: Gregory Wilson

The film takes up the true story of the murder of Sylvia Likens, who was kidnapped and beaten to death by Gertrude Baniszewski.

Director: Steven Spielberg

'Jaws' was inspired by a true shark. In 1916, several men were attacked by one or more sharks off the coast of New Jersey. At the time, people ignored the reality of sharks and opted for supernatural explanations instead.

Director: Peter Cornwell

This TV movie is loosely based on the legend of the Snedeker family in Connecticut, who were alleged victims of paranormal phenomena.

Director: David Cronenberg

The film is inspired by the story of two twins, both gynaecologists, who were found dead in their Manhattan apartment.

Director: Mikael Håfström

This film is inspired by the investigation of journalist Matt Baglio into a number of exorcisms ordered by the Vatican.

Director: Zev Berman

'Borderland' is inspired by the stories of Americans going to Mexico to party who then disappeared.

Director: Gustavo Hernandez

The script for this Uruguayan film is based on the story of two men who were found mutilated in a farm in the 1940s. Their tongues had been cut off.

Director: DJ Caruso

'The Disappointments Room' refers to the existence of rooms where in a bygone era the sick, disabled or mentally ill children of high-class families were locked away.

Director: Stanley Kubrick

'The Shining' was inspired by the story of a man who became a night porter in the historic Stanley Hotel in Colorado. According to the testimonies of several occupants, the hotel has been haunted by a multitude of prankster spirits until this day.

Director: Tom Elkins

The film takes up the story of a couple who moved into an old house near a hospital to have their sick son treated there. During their stay, weird apparitions took place in the house.

Director: Matthew Arnold

'Shadow People' was inspired by supernatural apparitions seen by different people around the world. They are supposedly black masses with red eyes and human shapes.

Directors: Kevin Gates, Michael Bartlett

This fiction returns to the true story of the Church of Saint Mary where many black magic rituals were said to take place in the 1960s. The church is now abandoned but many investigators go there to try to capture supernatural appearances.

Director: Brandon Landers

The film is based on the story of an psychiatric hospital, opened in 1874, in which mysterious events took place. According to some accounts, the tormented souls of a few patients still live inside its walls.

(Image: the hospital's administrative building now houses the Kennedy Museum of Art. Photo by Leslie K. Dellovade, library.byways.org)

Director: John Pogue

In the 1970s, a group of researchers attempted to create a ghost with the hypothesis that supernatural manifestations are created by the human psyche - in this case, by negative feelings.

Director: Edward Boase

In 2012, two Londoners brought an abandoned Victorian-style mirror into their apartment. After its installation, the two men witnessed disturbing phenomena and felt aches in their bodies.

Director: Sean Stone

Director Sean Stone wrote the script for this film after visiting the Haunted Hospital in Greystone. He went with a friend who'd been studying various supernatural phenomena in the old building. The two men allegedly witnessed the appearance of a ghost together, and one of them was allegedly possessed by it.

Director: Corin Hardy

The nun is one of the many entities encountered by the famous psychics and paranormal investigators, the Warrens couple.