The Real Michael Myers

Michael Myers is the terrifying killer from the Halloween movie franchise. Created by John Carpenter, he first appears in 1978 as a young boy who murders his sister, Judith Myers, only to return fifteen years later to kill even more teenagers as he searches for the sister who got away.

While some believe that Michael Myers is simply a work of fiction, others believe his character is based on a real person – a boy named Stanley Stiers. What will you choose to believe?

Stanley Stiers was born in 1912, in Iowa. At the time, his parents were elated to have a happy and healthy little boy. Unbeknownst to them, however, there was a mischievous nurse working in the hospital nursery. After Stanley was born, she took him and swapped him with another baby, just for kicks.

Both families happily took their babies home, not realizing the mistake. But there was more bad to come. The other family was involved in a terrible auto accident on their way home from the hospital. Both they, and the Stiers’ real baby, were killed.

Not long after, the Stiers discovered that their baby was not their own. The nurse in the hospital was sent to prison, but that did little to help the family deal with the situation they found themselves in. They grew resentful of Stanley, and began to drink heavily. They spent the majority of their time drunk, and shouting at the young boy, locking him in his room, and trying to make him miserable, as punishment for not being theirs.

Then they had another baby, this time a little girl. They named her Susie, and she became their whole world. She was their princess, and they gave her everything she could ever want, while still treating Stanley like he was the bane of their existence. Susie picked up on it, and she too, began to treat Stanley very poorly, often hitting or kicking him, and always yelling at him.

In school, Stanley was often bullied for how he looked, or how he behaved. His sister did nothing to help, often joining in when the other kids would tease or mock. He had no friends, and got very poor grades.

In 1923, when Stanley was 11 years old, all he wanted to do was go trick-or-treating like all the other kids. He had never been allowed to go, but his parents said no, yet allowed Susie to go to a Halloween party the night before Halloween. Little did they know, this would be the final straw.

Just hours after Susie returned home, Stanley snapped. He took a butcher knife from the kitchen and stabbed her multiple times, until he knew she was dead. He then turned on his parents, killing them in their beds. Finally, he turned to the family dog, killing him as well. When Halloween came, he went trick-or-treating for the first time ever.

Of course, his bullies were still out there, and Stanley attacked and killed as many as he could without being seen. At one point, he even invaded the home of one of his bullies, killing him and his entire family, before returning to the street to collect more candy.

He was having the time of his life, and stayed out until morning, sitting on a swing at the school playground, gleefully eating his candy. That’s when the Feds swooped in, and he was taken to a private psychiatric institution where he was studied for the next thirteen years. All records of Stanley were suppressed, including his Halloween killing spree. To the rest of the world, it was as though he never existed.

The government wanted to know what would make a boy snap like he did, and what gave him the strength and ability to kill so many people. They opened the study up by first looking for signs of the paranormal, but they found nothing. Not even the slightest sign of demonic possession. But they didn’t stop there – they knew he was a danger, and they continued working on and with him.

But then, on Halloween 1936, a couple of orderlies started to harass Stanley. He was now 24 years old, and had grown quite a bit over the past thirteen years. Standing at 6’4”, and 260 pounds, they should have known better. Stanley snapped their necks as easily as if he were snapping a pretzel in half.

He walked right out the front doors of the institution where he was met with resistance. The Feds had been alerted and were standing, armed, in the parking lot. Stanley didn’t stop though, he walked straight out, and while he was shot multiple times, he managed to take out everyone who would try to stop him.

Some say Stanley possessed super human strength, and that he was able to lift and throw a car, killing all the Federal Agents in the parking lot that night. Others say he was just that terrifying, that he felt no pain, and the agents backed down or were killed when Stanley got his hands on them.

With there being no legitimate or legal record of Stanley Stiers, we can never know for sure if he really existed. We do know that John Carpenter has stated that when he was in college he went on a class trip to a mental institution in Kentucky. There, he visited the most serious mentally ill patients. Among these was a young boy aged twelve to thirteen. He said the boy gave a “schizophrenic stare,” “a real evil stare,” which he found “unsettling,” “creepy,” and “completely insane.”

While the boy John Carpenter described couldn’t be Stanley Stiers (John Carpenter wasn’t born until 1948, twelve years after Stanley escaped), is it possible his inspiration truly was the story of Stanley Stiers?

Interested in more movies based on real events? Check out the story behind Scream.