6 horror movies based on true stories: the best scary films inspired by real events - from The Conjuring to The Exorcist

With Halloween just around the corner, many of us are looking for terrifying films to really bring the frights to a movie night or two.

While most scary movies are flights of fancy that might frighten you in the moment but lose their power as soon as you try to examine their fantastical logic, these seven films are all inspired by true events, which makes them just that much more scary.

Here are seven films, all of which you can stream in the UK right now, that will really have you jumping come Halloween night.

The Conjuring (2013)

This supernatural spookfest tells the purportedly true story of paranormal investigators and demonologists Lorraineand Ed, who are called to the Rhode Island home of the Perron family.

The Perrons recently moved into the secluded farmhouse, where a supernatural presence has made itself known, and though the manifestations are relatively benign at first, events soon escalate in horrifying fashion.

The story behind the film is the same tale that inspired The Amityville Horror story and film franchise.

Stream it on Netflix

Veronica (2017)

This Spanish-language horror tells the story of a teen girl who finds herself besieged by an evil supernatural force after playing Ouija with two classmates.

It is loosely based on true events from a 1991 case – known as the Vallecas Case for the Spanish region it took place in – where Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro died mysteriously after she used a ouija board at school.

A nun broke her Ouija board, ending or interrupting the ritual, and Lázaro later experienced months of seizures and hallucinations, particularly of shadows and presences surrounding her.

Stream on Netflix

The Exorcist (1973)

OK, so The Exorcist – one of the most infamous horror movies of all time – is technically an adaptation of a novel which itself was a fictionalised version of real life events.

But links to truth are there, and the 1971 novel of the same name by American writer William Peter Blatty was inspired by a 1949 case of demonic possession and exorcism that Blatty heard about while he was a student.

In the case, priests of the Roman Catholic Church performed a series of exorcisms on an anonymous 14-year-old boy, documented under the pseudonym "Roland Doe", who was the alleged victim of demonic possession.

Stream on Now TV

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre introduced us to horror movie icon Leatherface, who is famed for the skin masks he is always seen wearing, which hide his deformed face and are made from his victims' faces.

The terrifying character is actually based on Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein, who also wore masks made of human skin, and exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones.

Stream on Shudder

Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock’s most infamous movie essentially rewrote the rules of the horror genre, and gave us that famous shower scene which has been parodied countless times in popular culture.

The film remains an iconic addition to the genre, and centres on the encounter between Marion Crane - a female embezzler on the run - and Norman Bates, the shy proprietor of a secluded old motel.

Ed Gein is again the inspiration, with the source material – Robert Bloch's 1959 novel of the same name – loosely inspired by the case of the convicted Wisconsin murderer.

Available on Now TV

Angst (1983)

This obscure Austrian horror tells the story of a killer released from prison who breaks into a remote home to kill a woman, her handicapped son and her daughter.

It's loosely based on the exploits of real-life mass murderer Werner Kniesek, one of the most dangerous offenders in Austria's criminal history, torturing and killing a family of three while on parole.

Not for the faint hearted, the film was banned all over Europe for extreme violence upon its 1983 release.

Stream now on Shudder