10 Real Life Horror Stories That Will Freak You Out

10. H.H. Holmes (1861-1896)

H.H.Holmes is famous for being the first of the modern documented serial killers. Living in Chicago at the time of the World's Fair, Holmes designed and built a hotel, specifically to allow him to perpetuate the murders of his guests. This hotel came to be known as the Murder Castle. Holmes worked at a drugstore from 1886, which he purchased when the proprietor left to have a child, through mortgaging the stores stock and fixtures.

With his new found wealth, Holmes purchased a plot of land opposite the drugstore, roughly a block long. There he built a three-storey "castle" as locals called it, which opened as a hotel in 1893, with part of the building leased as shops. The ground floor contained the shops, Holmes' drugstore, and commercial space, whilst the upper two floors contained his personal office and around 100 windowless rooms. Additionally, there were doorways that opened to brick walls, oddly-angled hallways, stairways that led nowhere, doors that would only open from the outside and many other strange examples of architecture. The company of builders used changed repeatedly during the construction, allowing only Holmes a full understanding of the buildings layout. Holmes would select mostly female victims from those women among his employ, who would be required as part of their employment to take out life insurance policies; which Holmes would pay for, but also be the beneficiary.

He would also kill lovers and guests of the hotel, murdering them as their stays ended. His methods of killing were extensive, but most commonly, hotel bedrooms that were completely soundproofed and fitted with gas lines would allow Holmes to slowly asphyxiate his victims at any time he pleased. Other victims were locked in a large bank vault to slowly suffocate. Holmes disposed of the corpses via a secret chute, that led directly to the basement. In the basement, corpses would be meticulously dissected, having the flesh stripped from the bones with the skeletons often being crafted into models which could be sold to medical professionals. Holmes also had acid and lime pits on the grounds to dispose of corpses and two large furnaces were located in the basement - along with many different types of poisons and a stretching rack.

After a period of time, money ran low and so Holmes fled to Texas, where he killed a woman he had proposed marriage to, and her sister. After a series of equally dastardly schemes, murders, blackmail, and border hopping around the country, Holmes was finally tracked to Boston where he was arrested for horse theft from his time in Texas. He was found to have murdered several young children in the intervening years and psychologically tortured a family, whilst forcing them to travel the country with him, at the same time as taking a second wife. When the police finally searched the Murder Castle, 27 corpses were found, although the police themselves admit that the bodies were so badly dismembered and decomposed that it was difficult to tell where one body ended and the next began. In all, anywhere between 20 and 200 deaths have been attributed to H.H.Holmes.