Films & Shows · 08 filed
Ghost films and series, the real cases they were built on, how the movies first learned to put a ghost on screen, and which ones deserve a dark room.
A film about a haunted house nearly always opens with a card that says it is based on true events. Sometimes that is a marketing decision. Sometimes there is a family, an address, a police report and a lawsuit behind it, and the film is the least strange version of the story.
This section is about that gap. It follows the ghost from the first stage illusions and the first trick films to the fixed camera in a suburban bedroom, and it goes back to the cases the famous pictures were built on: who lived in the house, what they said, what the record actually shows, and where the house is now.
Every film is named with its director and year. When a piece explains an ending, its title says so, and nothing is spoiled above a heading that warns you.
Lead storyNo. Other Mommy (2026) adapts Josh Malerman's novel Incidents Around the House. Its one real seed is a child's goodnight in the author's brother's house.
More in this section
What the 1974 investigation of Doris Bither recorded, what she reported, what The Entity invented, and what the 2026 drama What Happened to Doris? changes.
The DeFeo murders of 1974, the Lutz family's 28 days at 112 Ocean Avenue, the book and films that followed, and what the next owners of the house said.
The real cases behind The Conjuring, The Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, Enfield and more: who lived there, who investigated, and what the record actually shows.
Every era made its ghosts from its own recording technology: angled glass, a double-exposed plate, a film splice, TV static, videotape, and now generated video.