8 More Horror Films That Eerily Came True

Countless horror movies would have you believe they were "inspired by true events" but the reality is usually more mundane than it sounds. These claims are often BS, and on the rare instances when they're not, the facts has been twisted, distorted or Hollwoodised, all in the name of silver screen entertainment.

The supernatural chillers that are supposed to have basis in reality often come from questionable sources, and the slashers inspired by actual serial killers are never anything more than embellishments of their real-life crimes.

But what about those times when life eerily seems to imitate art? Many a horror movie set has been marred by claims of strange occurrences and some of these films have even inspired real-life acts of evil. There have also been eerie occasions when strange phenomena straight out of the Twilight Zone has been reported around the world.

They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and even though that's not always strictly accurate, here are some of the times when it was at least just as terrifying.

Meteorites carrying virulent space bugs has been a sci-fi horror trope for decades, used famously in movies such as Creepshow, The Blob and The Andromeda Strain.

This is also the setup for 1987's The Curse, horror master Lucio Fulci's adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space. In this film, a pathogen-packed asteroid strikes down on a farm, contaminating its crops, making its livestock sick and crazy, and mutating some of the unfortunate human residents.

A similar, though far less outlandish, scenario played out in September 2007 when a meteor crashed near Carancas in Peru. A noxious yellow gas is reported to have seeped from its crater, making some of the locals ill and causing cattle to get sick.

Scientists have probed the incident and their explanation is that the first visitors to the crash site breathed in dust particles and debris, and that's what made them sick. The rest has been put down to mass hysteria when they arrived back in their home town.

Alien pathogens is a more interesting explanation, but further research is tricky since meteor poachers got their mitts on the space rock and sold it on the internet.