Behind the Horror

True Stories That Inspired Horror Movies

Read by Adam Sims
Uncover the twisted tales that inspired the big screen's greatest screams.

Which case of demonic possession inspired The Exorcist? What horrifying front-page story generated the idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street? Which film was inspired by an 18th-century Japanese folktale?

Unearth the terrifying and true tales behind some of the scariest Horror movies to ever haunt our screens, including the Enfield poltergeist case that was retold in The Conjuring 2 and the serial killer who inspired Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs.

Behind the Horror dissects these and other bizarre tales to reveal haunting real-life stories of abduction, disappearance, murder, and exorcism.

Lee Mellor, Ph.D. is a criminologist, lecturer, musician, and the author of seven books on crime. He received his doctorate from Montreal's Concordia University after specializing in abnormal homicide and sex crimes. As the chair of the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases' academic committee, he has consulted with police on cold cases in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, and London, Ontario. He resides in Ontario, Canada.
Dr Lee Mellor, PhD is an author, criminologist, and musician. His books, the national bestseller Cold North Killers: Canadian Serial Murder (2012) and Rampage: Canadian Mass Murder and Spree Killing (2013) focus on he under-explored topic of multicide in Canada. Mellor’s academic works include Homicide: A Forensic Psychology Casebook (2016), Understanding Necrophilia: A Global Multidisciplinary Approach (2016), and two chapters on literary criminology for The Criminal Humanities: An Introduction (2016). Recently, he authored a substantial portion of The Crime Book (2017) for DK’s Big Ideas, Simply Explained series, as well as Behind the Horror: True Stories That Inspired Horror Movies (2020), and Conspiracies Uncovered (2021). View titles by Dr. Lee Mellor

About

Uncover the twisted tales that inspired the big screen's greatest screams.

Which case of demonic possession inspired The Exorcist? What horrifying front-page story generated the idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street? Which film was inspired by an 18th-century Japanese folktale?

Unearth the terrifying and true tales behind some of the scariest Horror movies to ever haunt our screens, including the Enfield poltergeist case that was retold in The Conjuring 2 and the serial killer who inspired Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs.

Behind the Horror dissects these and other bizarre tales to reveal haunting real-life stories of abduction, disappearance, murder, and exorcism.

Lee Mellor, Ph.D. is a criminologist, lecturer, musician, and the author of seven books on crime. He received his doctorate from Montreal's Concordia University after specializing in abnormal homicide and sex crimes. As the chair of the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases' academic committee, he has consulted with police on cold cases in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, and London, Ontario. He resides in Ontario, Canada.

Author

Dr Lee Mellor, PhD is an author, criminologist, and musician. His books, the national bestseller Cold North Killers: Canadian Serial Murder (2012) and Rampage: Canadian Mass Murder and Spree Killing (2013) focus on he under-explored topic of multicide in Canada. Mellor’s academic works include Homicide: A Forensic Psychology Casebook (2016), Understanding Necrophilia: A Global Multidisciplinary Approach (2016), and two chapters on literary criminology for The Criminal Humanities: An Introduction (2016). Recently, he authored a substantial portion of The Crime Book (2017) for DK’s Big Ideas, Simply Explained series, as well as Behind the Horror: True Stories That Inspired Horror Movies (2020), and Conspiracies Uncovered (2021). View titles by Dr. Lee Mellor