Fun & Famous

TRUE HALLOWEEN HORROR STORIES

Yesterday you could read which movies you must watch from me if you are not celebrating Halloween this weekend. And today I’m still in the spirit of the American holiday. Because as scary as horror movies can be, true horror stories are of course a thousand times creepier. Ever wondered if there have actually been truly creepy murders and Exorcist-like things happening on October 31st? I went on a little research trip with my trusty old friend Google. My findings? Voilà!

Scream 2.0

Let’s go back to October 31, 2013, when someone in New York was wearing a ‘ghostface’ mask (you know, the one from Scream) and shot a 19-year-old boy dead in the middle of the street. Now I could somewhat handle the movie Scream, but now that I know this, I’m not quite sure what to do if I encounter someone with such a mask tonight...

Trick or Treat

Especially as a child, the best part of Halloween is ’trick or treating’. You put on your costume, go around to all your neighbors, and come home with a bag full of candy. Well, that also happened back in 1974 in Pasadena, Texas for eight-year-old Timothy O’Bryan. Only, he didn’t survive. What turns out: daddy Ronald Clark O’Bryan needed money and decided to poison his son’s candy. Why? Well, if his son were dead, he would get the money from his son’s life insurance. Can you imagine having a father like that...

October 31, 1986

A horror story from our own cold little country. Dirksland to be exact (no, I didn’t know where this was either). Time: a quarter past eight in the evening. When Adeline Mans she came into the world. Haaa, joke. Silly, I know. But just in case you didn’t know, she gets to blow out 30 candles on Monday the 31st. Congrats, dear Adeline (in English of course).

Strange Halloween decorations

Two years ago, a few days before Halloween in Long Island, some people saw someone walking with a decapitated body. It was laid down somewhere on a sidewalk and it seemed like it was just a macabre Halloween joke. A dummy to scare people. At least, that’s what everyone thought, since the town was decorated for the holiday. But it turned out, the body was not fake. It was 66-year-old Patricia Ward who had been murdered and decapitated by her own son. He jumped in front of a train shortly after. So: watch out for the decorations this year. You never know if something is dead or alive or just a dummy.

Another case of no decoration

In Frederica, Delaware, there was also a case of ‘Is this decoration or is this real?’ A woman was hanging about 4.5 meters from a tree above a highway. But well, Frederica was also fully decorated for Halloween, so people assumed this was just morbid decoration. It wasn’t. This body was, unfortunately, real too. But it was not a case of brutal murder; this 42-year-old lady had hanged herself.

No ghost stories and Exorcist scenes, just a lot of cold-blooded murders. Yuck. Will I see you all here tonight?