As a child I would love to get scared from watching horror movies. My imagination would run wild, and it seemed anything was possible. But as I got older, the supernatural type movies seemed to be less and less fearful for me. Now I hate to say it, but it’s very difficult for me to truly be scared by a movie. Unless they are superior films, like Blair Witch Project or the first Paranormal Activity, most newer movies don’t do anything but make me wish for those better times when the stories were truly chilling tales that didn’t rely on cheap gimmicks to scare their audience. Looking back, some of the most terrifying movies to me were one’s that had an element of reality…something that could actually happen. Real monsters…people! The Boogeyman. Every culture has its own version of who the Boogeyman is, and the most terrifying thing is, he/she could be real.
I’m from California, and so we grew up with our own versions of the Boogeyman. The most real one that I can remember in my generation is the Night Stalker, the crazed Satan worshiping murderer that terrorized the Southern California neighborhoods in the 1980’s. I had no idea there was another, maybe even more terrifying figure on the East Coast. More specifically in Staten Island, New York. There is a legend of “Cropsey”, a man that hid in the woods and the tunnel systems around Willowbrook Park. Kids would dare each other to visit the old dilapidated buildings in the area, but be warned that “Cropsey” may come to get them and chop them up in pieces with his axe, or his hook hand. Of course the stories were only meant to scare kids, until they became true! The movie “Cropsey” is a true documentary told in a horror story like fashion that tries to uncover the mystery of what happened when kids started showing up missing and how a generation of terrorized parents tried to take action in order to protect their families from the very real horror.
Cropsey is available on Netflix instant streaming. I highly recommend watching this one. I’m almost surprised no one has ever done a movie about this story, but maybe because the pain is still too fresh from what happened not that long ago. Perhaps the Nightmare On Elm Street series got some ideas from this story. In any case it is truly a gripping tale and it won’t leave my mind any time soon. Well done.
