- 7/2/2025
Truth is more disturbing than fiction... Join us as we examine real-life tragedies that mirror famous horror films! Our countdown includes cases where reality eerily paralleled movies like "The Exorcist," "Misery," and "Scream" - sometimes by terrifying coincidence, other times through disturbing mimicry. Which case between horror and reality disturbs you most?
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00:00One look in his room and investigators become even more suspicious.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at true tragedies that eerily parallel the events of pre-existing horror films,
00:11whether by coincidence or through mimicry.
00:14It was always on, it got hit by lightning. Three days later, David Seltzer was on the same flight. His plane was hit by lightning.
00:21Bath Salt Zombie, 28 Days Later
00:24Danny Boyle's post-apocalyptic masterpiece perfected the formula of the fast zombie.
00:2828 Days Later felt horrifyingly feasible in its concept of a virus that drives people into an unthinking violent frenzy.
00:36Jim! Jim is infected!
00:39It didn't even take that to put Rudy Eugene in such a state.
00:42In 2012, the Miami man was filmed attacking Ronald Poppo, cannibalizing much of his face before police shot Eugene dead.
00:49Though they suspected a designer street drug dubbed Bath Salts, the exact reason for the breakdown was never determined.
00:55There have still been multiple violent incidences involving Bath Salts.
01:00The outbreak is thankfully more contained than the internet and Boyle's gruesome visions.
01:04Still with Eugene dead and Poppo left completely blind, the horror is much too real.
01:09But that's not who I know. He was very sweet and very affectionate to me and my children, so...
01:15Gone Girl Kidnapping.
01:16Misery.
01:17Stephen King's hostage thriller, Misery, was masterfully adapted into a cautionary tale about entitled fandom.
01:22I don't want her spirit! I want her! I feel bad at her!
01:28In 2015, an incident in California's South Lake Tahoe marked an even more sobering indictment of society.
01:35Once distinguished lawyer Matthew Muller decided to ransom evil rich people for charity after being disbarred over severe mental illness.
01:43One victim was physical therapist Denise Huskins, whom Muller kidnapped and sexually assaulted in a remote cabin.
01:49When he released Huskins, police scandalously suspected that her story was a hoax.
01:53The media naturally hearkened to the then-recent David Fincher caper Gone Girl.
01:58You can stop pretending.
02:00I'm not pretending. You are perfect.
02:04More apt comparisons to Annie Wilkes were made when Muller was apprehended following a home invasion two months later.
02:10He was ultimately served justice for his own twisted entitlement, despite people's reluctance to believe his victim.
02:16But Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn's story is so far from the fictional plot.
02:21Green River Camping Trip – Cabin Fever
02:23Eli Roth first unleashed his sick mind for realistic horror, with a cabin holiday being spoiled by a flesh-eating bacteria.
02:30Are you alright? I'm sick!
02:33Reports of this nightmare scenario and other ecosystems have long gotten under the public's skin.
02:37Finally, in 2019, Jonathan Metcalf found the actual cabin fever in Kentucky's Green River.
02:43Actually, his family stayed outdoors during their Memorial Day camping trip, which was cancelled when Metcalf began experiencing horrible pain in his lower body.
02:51Never would have crossed my mind that something like this could have hit me. It's something you see on Facebook.
02:55The doctor diagnosed him with a bacteria, which required partial amputation of his thigh.
03:00Metcalf ultimately got lucky, although Roth's ultra-gory version of necrotizing fasciitis is an exaggerated extreme.
03:07Still, if cabin fever doesn't tell you to be careful on a camping trip, then Metcalf would.
03:12I need a doctor.
03:13Pig Pharma Killer – Texas Chainsaw Massacre series
03:16Despite its highly publicised basis in true crime cases like Ed Gein, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise,
03:22it's just a terrible fantasy about the perils of the back roads.
03:30That fantasy was found to be reality in rural British Columbia in 2002.
03:34After Robert Pickton's arrest, it came out that he had spent several years abducting women from the Vancouver area,
03:41then murdering and butchering them at his family farm.
03:44Women would disappear and hardly anyone noticed.
03:48The gruesome story of the Pig Pharma Killer was sensationalised in the media as the kind of horror usually associated with Leatherface.
03:55Pickton was killed in prison 17 years after being convicted of six homicides.
03:59At one point, he had bragged about claiming 49 victims.
04:08The death of Liz Moore – The Omen
04:10A series of terrible occurrences linked to the Richard Donner's The Omen sparked the myth that the production was cursed.
04:17It was an aura of not being welcomed.
04:22The devil was really – I really sincerely believe that the devil didn't want the picture to be made.
04:27Perhaps the most eerie tragedy befell Liz Moore after she designed props for the film.
04:31Two months after its release, she and boyfriend John Richardson got into a car accident while working in the Netherlands.
04:38Moore was beheaded by a tyre from the other car.
04:41This is similar to one of the most shocking deaths in The Omen, in which a truck releases a sheet of glass that decapitates David Warner's character.
04:48He was driving and had a head-on accident and beheaded this girl.
04:54Such ghastly accidents were really supernatural acts to ensure Damien Thorne's destiny as the Antichrist.
05:00Moore's death thus convinced superstitious viewers that her colleagues' misfortunes were no coincidence.
05:06Certainly, they were all tragic.
05:07We had all these things happen. Are they omens? Is there something bigger? I say no, it's just an incredible coincidence.
05:16Possessions – The Exorcist
05:18Obviously, the existence of demonic possession is ever in dispute.
05:22It's certainly made for compelling fiction in William Friedkin's genre-defining masterpiece, The Exorcist.
05:28Keep away! That's always mine!
05:32With the visceral impact it's had through the years, the psychosomatic was inevitable.
05:37In 2012, Friedkin told Entertainment Weekly that many viewers later reported being possessed.
05:42Jason Miller, who played The Exorcist's assistant, would be stopped in the streets by people wanting him to save their souls.
05:49Could you see her?
05:50Yes, I could. I could see her as a psychiatrist, but I can't see her.
05:53Oh, not a psychiatrist. She needs a priest.
05:55Life also imitated art through Friedkin himself when he witnessed Father Gabriele Amort perform an exorcism in 2016.
06:03The so-called Dean of Exorcists alone had dealt with possessions and delusions long before Friedkin's fanbase.
06:09And though the filmmaker identified as an agnostic, he believed he saw true evil that day.
06:14The murder of Sharon Gregory, Friday the 13th series.
06:22Horror fans have long been obsessed with Jason Voorhees' killing spree, usually of teenagers.
06:28The Friday the 13th movies were particularly a favourite of Massachusetts grocery clerk Mark Branches.
06:33Sharon Gregory, a psychology student like Amy Steele's character in Part 2, made this the subject of a profile that ended in tragedy.
06:46On October 24th, 1988, Branch donned Jason's signature black boots and hockey mask and stabbed Gregory to death.
06:53Branch appears to be most fascinated with Jason, the serial killer who systematically stalked his prey in the movie Friday the 13th.
07:01The killer took his own life shortly thereafter, and the victim's study was never recovered.
07:06Branch's act may have been modelled after the movies, but it was clearly the culmination of a lonely youth and mental illness.
07:12Sadly, gruesome tragedies such as these are not supernatural.
07:16We knew it was him. We knew him by the clothing that he had on all of that Jason, Friday the 13th, he had on all the clothing.
07:24Richard Delma Boyer, Halloween 2.
07:26Much of what makes John Carpenter's Halloween, the definitive slasher, is its realism.
07:38But it was the more far-fetched sequel that entered reality.
07:42A year after the film's release, Richard Delma Boyer of Fullerton, California, recreated a scene in which Michael Myers steals a knife from an elderly couple he decides to spare.
07:51Authorities have confirmed that all three of the victims are teenagers, two girls and a boy.
07:57However, Boyer went through with killing Francis and Eileen Harbitz.
08:01He later blamed being in the same inebriated condition, under which he repeatedly watched Halloween 2.
08:11It was the first time a mainstream movie was used as evidence in a US murder trial,
08:16but the jury was not convinced that the defendant was an unconscious copycat.
08:20In 1992, Boyer was convicted of an earlier murder and labelled a serial killer.
08:26Jonathan Cruz, The Purge
08:27Before getting swept up in speculative political thrills,
08:30The Purge franchise began with the horror of a crime spree without legal recourse.
08:36Please just let us purge.
08:38Thankfully, the law quickly caught up to Jonathan Cruz in 2017.
08:41But the 19-year-old Indianapolis man had already robbed several people and committed three murders over the course of four days.
08:48That far exceeds James DeMonaco's version of an annual half-day in which all crime is legal.
08:54I'm just devastated.
08:57We were all so gross.
08:59Still, Cruz described his actions as purging in social and private media that were investigated after his arrest.
09:06He pleaded guilty to the crimes he anticipated answering for.
09:09The law was very much in effect during his purge, but that tragically did not stop it.
09:14Cruz will formally be sentenced to life without parole on May 11th.
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09:33The Murder of Alison Cambier
09:35Scream franchise
09:36Many fictional copycats in the Scream series are inspired by true crime and horror tropes.
09:42The meta-satires have in turn inspired real-life slashers.
09:47No!
09:51It all began in 1998, when two teenagers killed one of their mothers to steal her money,
09:57purchase Ghostface masks, and continue their spree.
10:00But the closest copycat killing was of Belgian teen Alison Cambier in 2001,
10:06when she rejected the advances of 24-year-old neighbour Thierry Jardin.
10:10He donned a Ghostface mask, stabbed her 30 times, and confessed to her father over the phone.
10:15I want you. It's showtime.
10:18This is just one of several instances in which disturbed individuals
10:21merely modelled their acts after this self-reflexive horror franchise.
10:25Of course, it's not unusual for the most twisted fiction to become reality.
10:35What do you think of these cases and their place in horror pop culture?
10:38Make your observations in the comments.
10:40I feel like I am some character in this crime drama.
10:44I'm like in a movie.
10:55I'm like in the movie.
11:13I feel like you, man.
11:13I feel like I'm sorry, man.
11:14I think I'm a proud che�er in it.
11:16But it was like my father-in-law.
11:17I should be like this in the movie.
11:20Finn, I would say.
11:20I'll come back to you in the movie.
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