Is “Halloween” Based on a True Story? All About the Real Person Who Inspired Michael Myers

John Carpenter loosely based the film's villain on someone he met in college

Halloween is considered one of the most influential horror films of all time, and the movie’s filmmakers, John Carpenter and Debra Hill, based the story on real-life experiences.

The script — which tells the story of babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) as she’s stalked by an evil killer named Michael Myers who has recently escaped from a psychiatric hospital — took about three weeks to write, as revealed by Hill in the 2003 documentary Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest.

"The idea was you couldn't kill evil,” she told The Guardian in 2002. “We went back to the old idea of Samhain, that Halloween was the night when all the souls are let out to wreak havoc on the living, then came up with the story about the most evil kid who ever lived."

When it came to details, Hill drew upon her background to create the film’s fictional town, while Carpenter took inspiration from a boy he met in college to create the character of Myers.

Here is everything to know about the real stories that inspired Halloween.

Is Michael Myers based on a real person?

Michael Myers was named after a real person that Carpenter and Hill both knew.

As Hill explained in the 2003 documentary Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest, the real-life Myers was the distributor for the filmmakers’ Assault on Precinct 13. “Michael Myers pushed it into the London film festival ... I felt I owed him, so that was my tribute,” Carpenter said in the documentary.

When it came to Myers’ persona, the screenwriter said he drew inspiration from several sources, including a patient he met while visiting a psychiatric hospital as a student at Western Kentucky University.

"We visited the most serious ... patients,” Carpenter said in Halloween: A Cut Above. “There was this kid, he must have been 12 or 13 and he literally had this look ... It’s a really evil stare. And it was unsettling to me. And it was like, the creepiest thing I’d ever seen.”

Carpenter described the look further through the character of Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), who says in the first film, “I met this 6-year-old child with this blank, pale emotionless face. The blackest eyes. The devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil."

As for Myers’ inhuman strength, Carpenter said his resilience was intentional and reminiscent of Westworld’s Yul Brynner, who plays a killer robot that’s incapable of destruction.

“I thought it might be a good idea to raise this Michael Myers character up to a mythic status,” the producer said in the documentary. "Make him human, yes, but almost like a force ... a force that will never stop. That can’t be denied.”

Carpenter told Deadline in 2014: “[Michael Myers] is part person, part supernatural force.”

Who is Michael Myers’ mask modeled after?

Before Michael Myers’ mask was associated with the monster known as “the shape,” it was designed to embody Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, as played by William Shatner.

According to Carpenter, production designer Tommy Lee Wallace found the accessory at a mask shop on Hollywood Boulevard. “There were two options – one was a clown mask, which was a better mask,” he told Deadline in 2014.

Wallace revealed in the 2003 documentary Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest that the Captain Kirk mask “didn’t really look like anybody” despite its branding, making it better suited to the filmmakers' preference for something “pale” and “featureless" — characteristics Carpenter said he found in the 1960 French film Eyes Without a Face.

“This girl had a burned face so she wore this face mask, and it was [really] creepy because it was featureless and immobile, except for her eyes,” he explained.

Wallace ultimately cut the eyeholes of the Shatner mask to be larger, tore off the eyebrows, poufed out the hair “so it looked demented and strange” and removed the sideburns. He also spray-painted the mask white, transforming it into Michael Myers’ face.

Who inspired the character of Laurie Strode?

Like Michael Myers, Laurie Strode’s name likely came from a real-life person. Business Insider reported in 2021 that Carpenter named the film’s heroine after an ex-girlfriend.

Strode’s background and personality, however, were more likely influenced by Hill. “I was a babysitter and I knew what it was like to be ... all those characters,” she said in the 2003 documentary Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest, adding, “I really contributed the girl dialogue.”

Like Strode, Hill also grew up in a small town — Halloween’s fictional setting of Haddonfield, Ill., was modeled after Hill’s hometown borough of Haddonfield, N.J. “I really had a sense of what a small town was like,” Hill said in the documentary.

Where is the real Michael Myers house?

Carpenter said that Myers’ home in the film was based on small-town folklore. “Most small towns have a kind of haunted house story of one kind or another, at least that’s what teenagers believe: There’s always a house down the lane that somebody was killed in,” he said in A Cut Above the Rest.

The exterior of the home where Myers lived is a real place, though it’s not in the Midwest, but in South Pasadena, Calif. “That’s where the old house is, that the kids are out in front of that’s where we pull back ... It’s right off of Sunset Boulevard,” Carpenter confirmed in the film’s documentary.

Can you visit the Michael Myers house?

The South Pasadena home where Halloween was filmed still exists today, albeit in a different location.

According to Florida- and Georgia-based realty company Watson Realty Corp, the home was relocated from its 707 Meridian Avenue address to 1000 Mission Street in 1987 to make way for a hospital.

While the home was saved from being bulldozed, the company reports that it was converted from a private residence into office spaces in the process and does not allow visitors to come inside.

The nearby hedge on Montrose Avenue in South Pasadena where Michael first reveals himself is also still a popular visitor attraction, per NBC.

What happened to the boy who inspired the character of Michael Myers?

Though it’s unclear what happened to the patient Carpenter met in college, the fate of the fictional Michael Myers was ultimately sealed in the most recent Halloween sequel, 2022's Halloween Ends, which (spoiler alert!) sees Myers being killed by Strode and her granddaughter before his body is placed into an industrial-sized shredder.

As Carpenter explained in A Cut Above, the character was never meant to have such a definitive narrative.

“This guy is a human but he’s not, he’s more than that,” he said. “He’s not exactly supernatural, but maybe he is — who knows how he got that way. It makes the [original] ending more surprising.”

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