Halloween 2 hot tub

Michael Myers has been terrifying teen babysitters since the first Halloween film debuted in 1978.

The masked killer stalks and knifes (and strangles, and drowns, and hangs and beats to death) residents of the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois, especially targeting high school students.

This month, the iconic character returns to the big screen in Halloween, a direct sequel to the original film of the same name and the eleventh installment in the Halloween franchise.

Myers has become one of the most recognizable masked killers in horror history, alongside villains like Ghostface in Scream, who was inspired by the real-life serial killer the "Gainesville Ripper," and Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, who was supposedly based on the "Butcher of Plainfield."

But is Myers's character similarly rooted in reality?

The original film's director and co-write