Born Michael Audrey Myers in 1957, the troubled child that would become known as The Shape began his decades long career of murder at the age of six on October 31st, 1963.  On that Halloween night, Michael’s parents arrived home to discover he had murdered his sister, Judith.  In the aftermath, with his mother and father seeking answers, Michael was institutionalized under the care of Dr. Sam Loomis.  His parents’ search for the reasons that fueled his murderous madness would, ultimately, be fruitless.  As Dr. Loomis stated, “I met this six year old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes; the devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply…evil.”

Young Michael Myers was held at the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium until he was twenty years old, at which point he was to be transferred and tried as an adult for his sister’s murder.  Upon attempting to transfer, the now adult, patient, Myers escaped.  Dr. Loomis, who had opposed the transfer, wanting simply to keep Michael locked away under the strictest security imaginable, was certain he knew his patient’s destination.  Loomis quickly headed to Haddonfield, Michael’s hometown, to sound the alarms.

In the years that Michael was locked away in Smith’s Grove, his parents her killed in a car accident.  His youngest sister, just an infant, was adopted by another Haddonfield family; they renamed her Laurie to protect her identity, and to guard her from the negativity now associated with the Myers name and its legacy.  But, after his escape and return, Michael sought and found his sister, knowing her by either instinct, family resemblance, or some other sixth sense.  Laurie Strode, a high school teen, would soon meet her brother on the night of Halloween, 1978, forever to be known as “The night he came home”.

Patiently, and systematically, stalking and killing all who stood between him and his sister, Michael Myers finally came face to face with Laurie.  Whatever drove Michael, whatever spurred him, whatever twisted and coiled in his mind and darkest of dark souls, brought him to Haddonfield, to his sister, to kill her.

In a fight for her life, which she narrowly escaped with, Laurie strode survived her battle with her criminally insane brother, thanks in no small part to Dr. Loomis, and his, albeit limited, understanding of Michael’s psychology.  Their relief and reprieve was short lived.  Michael Myers was not dead, merely injured, and escaped to try his hand at finishing his sister at the local hospital.  Once again, Laurie and Dr. Loomis narrowly survived.

Sam Loomis was physically scarred with his last confrontation with Michael Myers.  Michael was left comatose and Laurie disappeared.  Loomis watched, waited, and saw to the care and detainment of Myers at the maximum security Ridgemont Federal Sanitarium.  The administrator of Ridgemont deemed the comatose Myers a non-threat in 1988 and arranged for his transfer back to Smith’s Grove.  Myers once again escaped, his ten years coma being a waiting game for him.

Free once more, Michael once more returned to Haddonfield.  Again he was drawn to a relative, Jamie Lloyd.  Jamie was his niece, the daughter of Laurie who had died in a car crash, the same fate as her parents.  It was Dr. Loomis, thanks to the help of the people of Haddonfield, who stopped Michael once more.  Michael once more escaped, and slipped into a coma to awaken a year later in the shack of a hermit.

Michael was stopped by Jamie and Dr. Loomis, but he was not killed.  He went into hiding for the next several years only to emerge after the death of Dr. Loomis.  Rummaging through Loomis’s old case notes, he discovered that his sister, Laurie, was in fact a live and he tracked her down to the secluded private school where she now taught.  That confrontation ended with Laurie, seemingly, beheading Michael.  The truth was that Michael switched places with a paramedic, and Laurie killed an innocent man.  Laurie suffered a breakdown and she herself was institutionalized.

It was during Laurie’s institutionalisation that Michael found her and finally succeeded in her murder.

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*This profile follows the timeline set forth by the original Halloween film series.

*In “reporting” this profile of Michael Myers I thank the assistance of Wikipedia and Horror Film Wiki

In the summer of 1958, two young counselors, identified only as Barry and Claudette, were murdered at Camp Crystal Lake, a summer camp in New York State.  Their murderer was one Pamela Voorhees, camp cook and grieving mother who blamed her son’s death the previous year on the two amorous young adults.  The camp closed after the double homicide, and various attempts in the ensuing years to reopen it were thwarted by Pamela Voorhees until it was partially revived in 1979 with disastrous results.

Pamela’s son, Jason, born physically deformed, and most likely mentally handicapped, in 1946, died in the tragic accident at Crystal Lake.  A lonely child, with little to no contact outside the family unit (practically nothing is known of his father and siblings), Jason was teased and tormented by the other children at the camp.  The derision from the other campers led to Jason falling into the lake and, apparently, drowning (his body was never recovered).

Mrs. Voorhees soon learned that the counselors who were supervising the children at the time, Barry and Claudette, had secreted away to satisfy their teenage lusts.  Pamela later returned and slaughter the two counselors.

Having been closed for several years, and failing to open anew, Camp Crystal Lake was given the moniker “Camp Blood” by locals.  In 1979, Steve Christy intended to open the camp once more for area youths; his parents had owned the camp at one time in years passed.  Pamela Voorhees infiltrated Camp Crystal Lake one last time in retribution, murdering Steve Christy and six of the young adults he had hired as counsellors for the summer.  One counsellor, Alice Hardy, managed to not only survive Mrs. Voorhees’ rampage, but Alice killed Pamela in a defiant act of self-defense.  Alice decapitated the charging Pamela.

When the authorities were finally alerted and arrived, Alice was found unconscious in a canoe floating in the middle of the lake.  Once aroused in the hospital, Alice told authorities that a boy rose out of the lake to attack her, at which point she lost consciousness.  Upon a preliminary search, the police reported no boy being found.  It was speculated that Alice had hallucinated the surfacing boy, or had dreamed it.  If it had been Jason Voorhees, he would have been a grown man, but for the child to have survived in the wild to adulthood was believed impossible.

Two months after surviving the latest, and all hoped last, Camp Blood massacre, Alice Hardy was found murdered in her apartment.  She had been killed with an ice pick.  Jason Voorhees is believed to be the culprit.  After the murder of Pamela Voorhees, Jason sightings began.  It is believed that he witnessed the murder of his mother, and that that incident has triggered an unprecedented homicidal rampage.

The people of Crystal Lake avoid the former campgrounds, which now stands in ruins.  Subsequent attempts to open the camp since the murder of Steve Christy and his employees have ultimately met with failure.  Jason Voorhees is the reason.  Time after time, Jason resurfaces long enough to stop campers and trespassers from what has become his home.  The residents of Crystal Lake know to avoid the old camp, and the surrounding woods, and advise tourists and sightseers to do likewise.  Over the years Jason has been stopped, but death seems to be a mild hindrance, a small inconvenience, to Jason Voorhees.

The people of Crystal Lake do not know if Jason is really dead.  They pray he is, but live as if he still stalks the night.

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thanks to Wikipedia and Horror Film Wiki

…the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But, had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history…

There are two varying stories in American culture relating to the murderer universally known as Leatherface. What is known is that his crimes, and those of his family, are brutal, atrocious, and taboo acts perpetrated upon unsuspecting members of society. As heinous as these crimes are, it has not stopped Leatherface from enduring a lasting, macabre, celebrity.

It is believed that Leatherface was born sometime around 1940, somewhere in the more rural areas of Texas. The first account of Leatherface, and the most popular, gives him the name of Bubba Sawyer. This account leads one to believe that his family, poor and from the backwoods, murdered people to make them into barbecue, which they sold.

It is from Sally Hardesty that we gleam the majority of information concerning the Sawyer clan. Hardesty and her brother, Franklin, along with friends, were traveling through Texas when ill chance put them in the path of the Sawyer family. It is believed that Leatherface acted out only from instruction from his family. Franklin, wheelchair bound, was murdered by Leatherface, and Sally barely managed to escape after enduring a grisly evening with the Sawyers. That particular evening, Sally was tied and held for Grandpa Sawyer to kill with a hammer. In the ensuing confusion Sally managed to break free, being picked up by a passing motorist.

According to Sally, the only survivor among her brother and friends, Leatherface wore a mask made of human skin. She reported that the Sawyer house was littered with bones, both human and animal, and that the bones and skin were used as decoration throughout the home. Sally reported that people were murdered and “dressed” much like animals on site.

Of course, bodies were found, but the family had vacated the property.

The second account is very similar to the first with some slight differences. This second version of the Leatherface legacy gives him the name of Thomas Hewitt. This account of events states that he suffers from a skin disease that had eaten away most of his nose and left his face scarred, which is the reason for wearing the mask. The mask here, as in the other version, is made of human skin. In both versions, Leatherface is presented as a man of somewhat limited intelligence, and whose only way of speaking is through grunts and gibberish. It is believed, though, that his family can understand him.

This second account involves a young lady named Erin, who was subsequently committed to an institution after her ordeal with Leatherface. Erin was the sole survivor of her traveling group in 1973. She has gone on record as testifying that Leatherface was assisted in his crimes by his Uncle Charlie, who was the acting sheriff. According to Erin, the house, in the middle of nowhere, was not littered with bones and such, but that Leatherface had a “work area” in the basement. Erin has also said that Hewitt’s own mother helps in the family’s crimes. In this version they still capture people and use them for meat.

Erin was only able to escape thanks to the help of a child, Jedidiah, the youngest member of the family. The boy leads Erin from the basement as she is pursued by Leatherface, and she, like Sally before, escapes with the help of a passing motorist.

On the official police walk-through, the first officers were attacked and killed by Leatherface. They were filming at the time and caught a fleeting glimpse of him. What the additional officers found at the Hewitt home were the remains of 33 people.

Leatherface and his family have yet to be apprehended.

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*thanks to Wikipedia

Keep away from Pumpkinhead,
Unless you’re tired of living,
His enemies are mostly dead,
He’s mean and unforgiving,
Laugh at him and you’re undone,
But in some dreadful fashion,
Vengeance, he considers fun,
And plans it with a passion,
Time will not erase or blot,
A plot that he has brewing,
It’s when you think that he’s forgot,
He’ll conjure your undoing,
Bolted doors and windows barred,
Guard dogs prowling in the yard,
Won’t protect you in your bed,
Nothing will, from Pumpkinhead.

-Ed Justin

It is said that the creature called Pumpkinhead is a fairytale used to frighten children, merely a backwoods story of a demon to scare attentive listeners around the campfire. Either myth or legend, there is almost always a grain of truth, of some kind, to be found in their origins.

Pumpkinhead is said to be a demon, one particularly summoned for revenge. It’s name derives from the fact that the demon, according to the stories, is buried in a pumpkin patch deep in the far corners of the woods and swamp. The burial site is said to be watched over by a witch named Haggis; other reports chronicle a witch named Osie.

Records indicate sightings of Pumpkinhead throughout history, and after 1957, here in the United States, sightings were all but nonexistent. It wasn’t until a man named Ed Harley had the demon summoned in the late 1980s that sightings became pronounced.

According to friends and neighbors of Ed Harley, it was the death of his young son that gave him the impetus to seek the help of Haggis in raising Pumpkinhead from the grave. In statements from the time, Harley’s son was killed when vacationing young adults struck and killed the boy while riding dirt bikes. Grief stricken, Ed Harley sought the help of the witch, Haggis, who was reluctant at first. Haggis warned Harley of the dangers, but the grieving father insisted.

Newly raised, Pumpkinhead set out on a mission of revenge for the mourning father. What Ed Harley did not know was that he would be able to witness, through the demon’s eyes, the killings. As Pumpkinhead slaughtered the teens, Harley not only witnessed it, but was nearly driven mad by it. Having a change of heart, Harley asked Haggis to stop the creature. Haggis informed him that the only person capable of stopping the creature was Harley himself.

Trying to save the remaining youths from Pumpkinhead, Harley learns that the only way to stop the demon is to die himself. With him dead, Pumpkinhead will also die. One young lady, named Tracey, shot Harley until he and the demon were both dead.

With the demon gone, Haggis buried Harley’s burnt corpse in the pumpkin patch.

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