The only thing more frightening than a horror movie are the words “based on a true story.” If the terrifying images weren’t enough to keep you up at night, the thought of them actually happening in real life will have you leaving all the lights on.

From classics like The Amityville Horror to several installments in the hit Conjuring franchise, here are 10 spine-tingling scary movies that are based on real ghost stories.

‘The Shining’

While the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd isn’t technically based on a true story, the hotel that inspired The Overlook is a known haunted site, the Stanley Hotel. Author Stephen King once stayed at the Estes Park, CO hotel, and that’s where he was first inspired to write the book that was adapted into the movie. The Colonial Revival property near Rocky Mountain National Park was built by Freelan Oscar Stanley and opened on July 4, 1909, and is included in the National Register of Historic Places. Many guests claim to feel the spirits of past guests along with Stanley and his wife, Flora.

Stephen King and his wife stayed there in 1974 during their residency in Boulder and discovered they were the only overnight guests at the end of the season. They were given room 217 — which became the infamous room 237 in his bestseller — and a dream he had while staying there set the book in motion. The hotel is still open and has fully embraced its legacy, offering guests nighttime ghost tours.

‘The Conjuring’

The Conjuring sparked an entire film universe based on the cases of real-life paranormal experts and founders of the New England Society for Psychic Research, Ed and Lorraine Warren (portrayed by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). In the first installment, the Warrens attempt to help the Perron family by ridding the Old Arnold Estate in Harrisville, RI of many spirits. Andrea, the eldest Perron child, recounts “Bathsheba,” a spirit who perceived herself as mistress of the house. In fact, a woman named Bathsheba Sherman lived in the farmhouse in the mid-1800s and is buried in the Harrisville Cemetery nearby.

The Perrons claimed the spirits smelled like rotting flesh and would lift their beds around 5:15 most mornings. The family couldn’t afford to move until ten years later and endured the hauntings the entire time. While the truth has been questioned, Lorraine Warren claims that almost everything depicted in the movie is true and has even consulted on all the Conjuring’s sequels and prequels. The Conjuring 2 takes the Warrens to London, England in 1977 to investigate the infamous Enfield Haunting that affected single mom, Peggy Hodgson, and her four children.

‘The Amityville Horror’

The Amityville House has inspired many movies over the years, but the 1979 original starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder is the one to see. In 1974, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. murdered his entire family — both parents and four siblings — in their home on Long Island, NY, not far from New York City. DeFeo was convicted and given six life sentences. The home was sold just over a year later to George and Kathy Lutz along with their sons, Daniel and Christoper. They claim to have experienced unusual activity like strange odors, green slime oozing from the walls, cold spots, and even Kathy and the boys levitating off their beds.

It’s rumored that when a priest came to bless the house, he heard a voice yell, “Get out!” Even Ed and Lorraine Warren investigated the property (they really were everywhere). Years later, the Lutz’s lawyer says the story was made up because they were in financial trouble, but son Daniel claims he’s still haunted by the experience of living there to this day.

‘The Haunting in Connecticut’

Another film based on a true story and connected to Ed and Lorraine Warren is The Haunting in Connecticut, starring Virginia Madsen. This horror began when the Snedeker family moved to Southington, CT in 1986 so they’d be closer to the hospital where their son was being treated for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The Snedikers were having financial trouble, so it wasn’t easy to find an affordable rental for a family of six. While they were moving into the home, they discovered that the building had been a funeral home and the embalming tables were still in the basement.

Missing items, horrible smells, ghost sightings, a dramatic shift in one child’s behavior, and other horrible things happened to the Snedikers before the Warrens came in to investigate. After living there for several weeks, the Warrens performed an exorcism and declared it safe for the family to return. The owners of the house claim the story is false, and it had never been a funeral home, but it doesn’t make the movie any less terrifying.

‘Annabelle’

It’s feeling like any horror film based on a real ghost story is connected to the Warrens, and 2014’s Annabelle is no exception. The story behind the doll, a recurring figure in The Conjuring universe, is that it was given to a student nurse in 1970, and a psychic medium told the woman that the doll was possessed by the spirit of a girl named Annabelle.

The doll supposedly exhibited malevolent and terrifying behavior although the student and her roommate tried to nurture it, and that’s when the Warrens were brought in. The doll now resides in a glass box at Ed and Lorraine Warren’s Occult Museum in Monroe, CT. There’s a lot of skepticism about this story, and one scholar even claimed that the Warrens may have fabricated the tale based on an episode of The Twilight Zone called “Living Doll” that included a character named Annabelle.

‘Child’s Play’

Long before Annabelle became synonymous with movies about creepy dolls, there was Child’s Play. While the 1988 film’s diabolical toy, Chucky, resembles popular 80s dolls like My Buddy and Corky, the story is inspired in part by the infamous haunted doll, Robert. The doll belonged to Robert Eugene Otto, an eccentric artist who was part of a prominent family in Key West, FL. His grandfather purchased the doll during a trip to Germany in 1904 and gave it to Robert as a birthday gift.

It even wore a sailor suit that may have been an outfit that Robert wore as a child. According to the lore surrounding the doll, it can move, change its facial expressions, and even giggle. There are also tales that the doll has caused broken bones, car accidents, and even divorces. Robert the doll is on display at the East Martello Museum in Key West, and some visitors claim they’ve experienced misfortunes after visiting the doll.

‘The Changeling’

In the 1980 Canadian psychological horror, George C. Scott stars as a composer who moves from New York to a haunted mansion in Seattle. The film is based on events that took place while Russell Hunter was living in the Henry Treat Rogers mansion in the Cheesman Park neighborhood of Denver, CO in the late 1960s. In February 1969, strange things started happening. Every morning at 6am, he was awakened by banging and crashing sounds that stopped when his feet hit the floor. Faucets would turn on by themselves, doors opened and closed on their own, and the walls vibrated so intensely that paintings would fall to the floor.

Hunter and an architect friend found a hidden staircase in the back of a closet that led to the third floor where they discovered a trunk that belonged to a disabled boy who was supposedly kept in isolation because his parents didn’t want to lose the child’s inheritance. When the boy died, the parents buried him in a field and adopted a boy from an orphanage to take his place.

‘Winchester’

Dame Helen Mirren stars as Sarah Winchester, the heiress behind San Jose, CA’s Winchester Mystery House. Winchester was born Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1840 to a respectable family in New Haven, CT. Known for her brains and beauty, she married William Wirt Winchester, the heir to the Winchester firearms company. Tragedy struck their union when their daughter died at just six weeks of age, followed by William’s death from tuberculosis.

Sarah inherited William’s $20 million fortune — roughly $500 million in today’s dollars — and put much of it into the ever-expanding house. No one can say for certain why she built it, but everything from an encounter with a psychic who told her that her family was cursed by everyone killed by Winchester firearms, and the only way to stop the vengeful spirits was to continue renovating the house. Carpenters worked on the house 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from 1866 until Winchester died in 1922. If you find yourself in the area, tours of the labyrinthine estate are available.

‘The Quiet Ones’

The 2014 British horror film starring Jared Harris, Sam Claflin, and Olivia Cooke is loosely based on the Philip Experiment, a 1972 parapsychology experiment conducted in Toronto, Canada. Led by Dr. A.R. George Owen, the aim was to determine that poltergeists are manifestations of the human psyche and not actually supernatural beings. A fictional character, “Philip Aylesford,” was created and then the test subjects tried to communicate with it by holding a seance. No contact was initially made, but when test conditions were changed — such as dimming the lights and creating the mood of a traditional seance — participants reported feeling a presence, rapping sounds, and even the table moving across the room with no human contact.

Although audio and video documenting the paranormal activities exist, “Philip” never appeared to the subjects. The psychologist overseeing the experiments, Joel Whitton, concluded that it was a subconscious defense mechanism created by the test subjects that caused them to regress to a child-like mentality.

‘When the Lights Went Out’

This 2012 horror flick is loosely based on a haunting at 30 East Drive in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England at the home of Joe and Jean Pritchard. Best known as the “Black Monk of Pontefract,” the alleged supernatural disturbances by a poltergeist — nicknamed “Mr. Nobody” and “Fred” — took place between 1966 and 1969 and included throwing objects around and creating puddles of water. While son Philip was initially the target of the entity, Pritchards’ daughter was dragged upstairs by the neck in one event, and pinned by furniture including her own mattress in another. Supposedly, the family was advised to hang garlic around their home and the activity ceased, but similar events were reported at a nearby home on the same property. It was a local tale until a 1981 book put it on the radar of paranormal enthusiasts. Photographic evidence and unusual activity has been recorded by people who continue to flock to the site.