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And while there are many researchers who devote their lives to debunking these accounts, Hollywood is only too happy to use them not only as fodder for pseudo-scientific reality shows, but cinematic dramas as well. Heck, nothing sells tickets quite like a good "based on a true story" byline on a movie poster for some otherwise unremarkable horror or sci-fi flick. Here are 10 "true" stories of the supernatural, extraterrestrial and the paranormal, and the good, bad, and mediocre films which used them.
10) The Story of Doris Bither = The Entity
The 1983 film The Entity stars Barbara Hershey as a single mother who is sexually assaulted by a supernatural force. The film was based on the story of Doris Bither, a woman from Culver City, CA, who claimed she and her children were tormented by malevolent spirits for months. The Bither case is still one of the better-known hauntings in paranormal investigative circles today, though largely forgotten by the general public.
9) The Aurora Encounter = The Aurora Encounter
Long before Cowboys & Aliens, there was The Aurora Encounter. This 1986 fantasy film was very...very...very loosely based on what may be the earliest recorded UFO sightings of (relatively) modern times. In the late 1890s, there was a spate of sightings of "mystery airships" in Texas. One such ship allegedly crashed in the town of Aurora, where the dead alien pilot was then given a proper Christian burial. The Aurora encounter was part of a larger phenomenon of airship sightings, a precursor to the UFO frenzy of the 1950s, although rather than aliens, such airships were often attributed to a genius inventor (supposedly Thomas Edison himself had to issue a denial that he was behind the sightings).
The film version of the story lets the alien pilot live for a while and interact with the town's residents. On a side note, the small-but-elderly-looking alien was played by a teenager with progeria, an extremely rare disease where one shows signs of aging during childhood and the teenage years (like the Robin Williams movie Jack, except... not). Whether that represents the fulfillment of a child's dream or a rather creepy act of exploitation is a topic for another time.
8) The 1942 Battle of Los Angeles = Battle: Los Angeles
On the night of February 24, 1942, during the height of World War II, air raid sirens began to blare in Los Angeles. Around three in the morning the sky lit up with anti-aircraft fire that lasted for an hour, with over a thousand shells launched into the air. Three civilians were killed by friendly fire and another three died from heart attacks, but within hours the Secretary of the Navy declared the whole thing a false alarm due to "war nerves."
An hour's worth of artillery fire? That's one hell of a false alarm. Many news outlets suspected a cover-up, though they focused primarily on the idea of a secret Japanese invasion. Decades later, UFOlogists would latch on to the notion that the targets of the so-called Battle of Los Angeles were alien spacecraft. Somewhat amusingly, in 1983 the Air Force would fall back on the borderline-cliche explanation of weather balloons as having set off the air raid sirens. The Battle of Los Angeles was supposedly one of the inspirations for Steven Spielberg's 1941 (which depicted a Japanese "invasion" of L.A.) and directly inspired the 2011 action film Battle: Los Angeles.
7) The Travis Walton Abduction = Fire in the Sky
Travis Walton was a logger who claimed to have been abducted by aliens on November 5th, 1975. As soon as he disappeared in a blaze of light, his friends went to the authorities saying they had witnessed the abduction. In the five days Walton was missing, a media frenzy grew around the case, with reporters and ufologists arriving in the small town of Snowflake, Arizona. Police began to suspect the UFO story had been cooked up to cover up Walton's death (accidental or otherwise), but a polygraph test of the witnesses suggested they were telling the truth.
Walton reappeared on November 10th at a gas station, believing it was only a few hours since he'd disappeared. His account of his time in the UFO and the subsequent investigation has been the subject of controversy ever since. Walton's book on the encounter, The Walton Experience, was adapted into the 1993 film Fire in the Sky. The film is best remembered -- if it's remembered at all -- for the scene where Walton is covered in what looks like a body condom.
6) The Mothman Prophecies = The Mothman Prophecies
Between 1966 and 1967 near Point Pleasant, West Virginia, there were a series of sightings of an insect-like creature that came to be known as the Mothman. Theories as to the nature of the creature have run from aliens to snowy owls, but author John Keel used the sightings to weave a heady mixture of paranormal theories in his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies. The book was loosely adapted into an arguably even weirder movie in 2002, starring Richard Gere. The film was more coy in its references to the supernatural, using them more as a backdrop for the character drama.
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