Author: Rick
To say the least and state the obvious, Horror is something intriguing, intense, shocking, disgusting, satisfying, but most of all, it is TERRIFYING!!! It has a way of getting into one’s mind, weaving its way to the core of your being, searching for new ways to terrify your soul and satisfy its own need to dish out FEAR!!
With everything that Horror has to offer from Aliens to Zombies, there’s nothing more frightening, more terrifying than knowing the book you just finished, the one that left you full of fear and anxiety, wasn’t a made-up fiction story but rather the reality of this world, the reality of someones dark and twisted soul that actually was or still is alive today, spreading the seed of Fear!
So…… for all of you that thought things really don’t go bump in the night, here are just a few of the many intense and interesting reads of true events that inspire books of Horror!
BUY NOW $23.99--1949– Several newspapers reported an alleged possession and the eventual exorcism of a 14-year-old boy known as ‘Robbie’ or ‘Roland Doe’, these events were witnessed by about 48 people, 9 of them being Jesuits. He grew up in a German Lutheran family and was an only child who had no one to play with and required the attention of the adults in the household to entertain him. His main “playmate” was his Aunt Harriet. On one occasion Robbie had expressed his interest in Ouija boards, and shortly afterward his Aunt, being a Spiritualist herself, introduced him to one. Not soon after his Aunt’s death, the family began experiencing paranormal activity in the house. At first, they consisted of simple vibrations and strange noises, eventually escalating to flying objects and even levitation. (Note: Blatty described this as the first stage of classical possession, ‘infestation’, and used this in his novel before the full possession of its character Regan. The violence, guttural voice, and revulsion for sacred items displayed by Regan are also inspired by descriptions of Robbie’s possession.) 
BUY NOW $18.99--The second event, which Blatty claims inspired his novel is the Loudon Possessions of 1634. This involved a Convent of Ursuline nuns that claimed that they were possessed after having illicit sexual dreams about an attractive priest by the name of Urbain Grandier. During their exorcisms, they convulsed, blasphemed, and made sexual motions towards the priests. (Note: This was similar to Blatty’s infamous crucifix scene in The Exorcist.)
BUY NOW $12.99--November 13, 1974-was a cold morning when Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his entire family at their house at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. On that dreadful morning, DeFeo took a .35 Marlin lever-action rifle and shot his mother, father, and four siblings while they were asleep in their beds. (Note: One odd fact about the murders stands out: neighbors awake at the time of the shootings heard nothing, no gunfire, only the DeFeos’ dog barking.) He then got rid of the evidence and went to work like it was a normal day. Later on that evening, after work around 6 pm-ish, he walked into a bar down the street from his house and blurted out “You got to help me! I think my mother and father have been shot!” He was convicted of second-degree murder in November 1975 and sentenced to six sentences of 25 years to life in prison. DeFeo would go on to die in custody in March 2021.But the story doesn’t stop there. As a matter of fact, it starts a little over a year later, when in December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children move into the house, that they bought for a steal of a price and after only 28 days, the Lutzes fled the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there for those 28 days. Within days they started noticing strange activity going on. George was quoted as saying: “There were…odors in the house that came and went. There were sounds. The front door would slam shut in the middle of the night…I couldn’t get warm in the house for many days,” The events get stranger—the Lutz’s claim to have found strange gelatinous droppings on the carpet, and that Kathy Lutz allegedly transformed into an old woman, and George even claims to have seen her levitating. (NOTE: 28 days are way too long to be in that house)
BUY NOW $20.00The story of Pet Sematary began when King started a job as a writer at the University of Maine. King and his family rented a house on the river, which happened to be in front of a real-life “Pet Cemetery” in a small town know as Orrington, Maine. He says a group of kids kept the path to the cemetery mowed. (Note: which was the inspiration for the kids in the book with masks. In real life, however, they didn’t wear masks and just kept the place very nice and tidy.)
One day “Fate” came along, and as Fate would have it, King’s daughter’s cat Smucky had died and of course, they buried Smucky in the pet cemetery. Later, that evening King had found his daughter in the garage screaming at God, “God can’t have my cat,” she said. “That cat is my cat.” (Note: It was her deep and sincere desire to have her dead cat return to her that sparked King’s idea to have the pet’s in his novel to be able to rise from the dead)
Even though King says he had a great time writing Pet Sematary, he admitted that he was horrified by some of the gruesome ideas of the plot. “All that stuff about the death of kids,” he said. “It was close to me because of my kids.”
(Note: Then manuscript almost never saw the light of day, but King had a book contract with Doubleday that he had to settle so he decided to go through with publishing the creepy tale of horror.)
BUY NOW $19.99--Ted Bundy – was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 homicides, committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. His true victim total is unknown and could be much higherFrom #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Rule, “America’s best true-crime writer” (Kirkus Reviews), her unforgettable classic account of the horrifying murders in the Pacific Northwest and her shock when she discovered her friend–Ted Bundy–was not only a suspect but also one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.
Meeting in 1971 at a Seattle crisis clinic, Ann Rule and Ted Bundy developed a friendship and correspondence that would span the rest of his life. Rule had no idea that when they went their separate ways, their paths would cross again under shocking circumstances.
The Stranger Beside Me is Rule’s compelling firsthand account of not just her relationship with Bundy, but also his life–from his complicated childhood to the media circus of his trials. Astonishing in its intimacy and with Rule’s clear-eyed prose, you can’t help but share in her growing horror at discovering that her friend was one of the most notorious American serial killers.
An unforgettable and haunting work of research, journalism and personal memories, The Stranger Beside Me is “as dramatic and chilling as a bedroom window shattering at midnight” (The New York Times).
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher was based on the real-life Constance Kent murder case of 1860.
In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.
At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.
Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…
Few names have ever brought more terror and fear into the human heart than the name Dracula. The infamous and legendary vampire, which was created by non-other than author Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel Dracula. We all know that Dracula in itself is fiction, however, did you know that Stoker actually named his infamous character after a real person, which by the way had a unique and terrifying taste for blood! His name is Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia-You might have heard of him under his nickname, Vlad the Impaler!!! The theory that Vlad III and Dracula were the same individuals was developed and popularized by historians Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally in their 1972 book “In Search of Dracula.” In 1431, King Sigismund of Hungary, who would later become the Holy Roman Emperor, inducted the elder Vlad into a knightly order, the Order of the Dragon. The Order was devoted to a singular task: the defeat of the Turkish, or Ottoman Empire.
To consolidate his power as voivode, Vlad needed to quell the incessant conflicts that had historically taken place between Wallachia’s boyars. According to the legends, Vlad invited hundreds of these boyars to a massive feast, and knowing that one day they would eventually challenge his authority and position, he had all his guests stabbed, and then he had their still-twitching bodies impaled on spikes.
This is just one of many gruesome events that earned Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, his infamous nickname, Vlad the Impaler.
If I had to guess, I would say this is the #1 reason why people are afraid to go into the waters around the world! Although this is a fictional book and movie, did you know that it is actually based on real-life events that happened back in 1916 right here in the American territory of New Jersey! It is known as the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks Of 1916
It all started when Charles Vansant stepped out of his beachfront hotel at the resort town of Beach Haven, to take a quick dip in the Atlantic Ocean before his dinner on July 1, 1916. He entered the water with his faithful dog at his side when a dark fin suddenly sliced through the water. Before he could even fathom what was going on, it bit and clamped itself onto Vansant’s left leg and refused to let go, obviously trying to take the fit athlete under. Vansant unleashed a horrifying scream as the ocean’s white breakers turned red with his blood. Several people from the beach formed a human chain, trying to pull him to safety, but the animal would not open its jaws until it too was pulled into the shallow waters near the shore. The rescuers carried the badly injured Vansant into the lobby of the Hotel where he very quickly bled to death. The Dr. at the scene recorded a remarkable cause of death—a shark bite.
BUY NOW $18.99Five days later, terror struck once again. This time it was 45 miles north of Beach Haven as Charles Bruder swam out beyond the breakers of Spring Lake. The 27-year-old Swiss bellboy was taking his regular lunchtime swim when a Shark attacked him 130 yards from the shore, biting off his left leg above the knee and the right leg just below the knee. Lifeguards pulled the maimed Bruder to shore but alas there was nothing that could be done to save him.
On July 12, 25 miles north of Spring Lake, the killer struck again. Lester Stillwell along with several other boys got the afternoon off and decide to cool off in the waters of the Placid creek, more than a mile inland from where it emptied into Raritan Bay. As Stillwell was floating on his back, others noticed a shadowy figure suddenly emerging from the depths of the water, it was a shark and it stabbed its teeth deep around his stomach and pulled him under the water. Stillwell surfaced long enough to let out a horrific scream before the shark once again took him under. And so began one of the biggest hunts for the “Man Eater”.
This true-life-inspired event of an 8-year-old child being abused and tortured by the one person that should have been protecting her at all costs, her monstrous mother! A simple punishment from her mother escalated into years of physical and mental abuse and torture, all the while family members, friends, and teachers ignored her anguished cries for help. In Byrne’s own words– “Call Me Tuesday is a story based on the true events of my abusive childhood at the hands of my disturbed mother. More specifically, it tells of my experience with the “scapegoat child” phenomenon, a sub-type of domestic dysfunction occurring when only one child is singled out from a sibling group and targeted for abuse. CMT is a fictionalized memoir, meaning the names, locations, and certain identifying details have been altered out of respect for the privacy of the people involved. I decided to do this because, although I believed it was a story that should be told, I didn’t feel it was necessary to risk the possibility of embarrassing or implicating anyone in the process.”
“I wrote the book for two specific reasons, the first being a selfish one. For so many years, I was a helpless, silent victim. Then, I was a troubled young adult, too embarrassed and humiliated by my past to talk about it. Now, after decades of soul-searching, I am finally strong enough to be the voice for that child who I feel suffered a great injustice. CMT is my tiny attempt to balance the scale for her, if only in my own mind and heart.“
“The second and most important reason I wrote the book was to bring light to the plight of the “scapegoat child.” It’s hard to believe that only one kid in a family can be mistreated while the others have a nurturing upbringing. It’s even harder to believe that after a while because the family grows accustomed to the abusive behavior, it often becomes an accepted part of the family dynamics. That doesn’t even make sense; right? But it’s true, it can happen; it happened to me. And I’d be willing to bet that it’s happening to other children right now”.
Hugh Glass was an American frontiersman and fur trapper who became a folk hero after surviving a bear attack and then traveling hundreds of miles alone to safety. There was little known about Glass’s life before 1823, which is when he joined a fur-trading expedition that was backed by William Henry Ashley. The expedition left from St. Louis sometime in March. Months later they were attacked by Native Americans, and Glass was slightly wounded. Then in August, while he was out scouting the nearby area, he was attacked by a bear. The bear was killed—according to some accounts, by Glass himself, however, the attack left him badly injured. Apparently, he had a broken leg, a ripped scalp, a punctured throat, and numerous gashes over his body. The rest of the expedition members believed him mortally wounded, and that he would soon die, so the expedition leaders decided to leave two men, John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger, behind to stay with Glass until he had passed away. However, they became impatient and several days later Fitzgerald and Bridger decided to rejoin their group. So they placed, the still-living Glass in a shallow grave, stripped him of all his weapons, and left him to die, alone. No one knows for sure if it was fear, sheer willpower, or the thirst for revenge, but shortly after their departure, Glass regained enough strength to begin his incredible journey to Fort Kiowa, near present-day Chamberlain, South Dakota. A journey that would take him over 2 months to complete and cover almost 300 miles of the unknown and wild territory…..and he did…..alone!
We are fascinated by True stories, we know that the best ones are almost always written by those who lived through the experience. Yet we still read them with some doubt, denial, or trepidation. WHY is that? Is it because we don’t want to admit that these things can or are happening in our reality or is it because it hits too close to home?!