10 Horror Movie Villains You Didn't Know Were Based On Real-Life Monsters

The Girl Next Door, not to be confused with the 2003 film of the same name, is one of the most disturbing films out there (IMHO). An adaption of Jack Ketchum’s book of the same name, The Girl Next Door follows Meg and her disabled sister, who move in with their aunt, Ruth Chandler, and her three sons, after the death of their parents. Ruth, who derives sadistic pleasure from beating her eldest niece, encourages her sons and other neighborhood kids to beat, starve, burn, sexually assault, and mutilate Meg.

The film is nothing short of nauseating - and it pales in comparison to the real horrors 16-year-old Sylvia Likens experienced. The Girl Next Door's Ruth Chandler is the antithesis of a mother and is based on a truly evil woman, Gertrude Baniszewski. Like Ruth, Baniszewski took perverse pleasure in torturing, mutilating, and imprisoning the teenager and, like Ruth, encouraged local kids and her own children to participate in her depraved deeds.

Sylvia and her younger sister Jenny, moved in with the Baniszewskis and the abuse began soon after. In an effort to spare her sister, Sylvia suffered unimaginable horrors in the basement of the Baniszewski home, which eventually resulted in her death in 1965. Gertrude Baniszewski, her three eldest children, and two neighborhood boys were charged in relation to the murder, as well.