[DL] Thirteen ghosts.

[Brom Clancy <spleen23@webtrolls.com>]

Backstories of the ghosts from the movie 13 gHosts:
Might supply a few evil idears:

The First Born Son is the ghost of a little boy who 
looks relatively normal – except for the arrow spiked 
through the middle of his forehead. 

Backstory:  Little Billy Michaels loved to dress up 
like his heroes, the cowboys on TV. The seven year-
old never listened to his mother, and his father 
dubbed him “Billy the Brat. ”  But his parents never 
disciplined him, and little Billy always just did 
what he wanted. And now Billy’s sorry that he never 
listened to his mom, who suggested that he not play 
Cowboys and Indians with a real bow and arrow – and 
that he not shoot the arrow straight up into the air 
the way that his buddy Danny did. 

Wrapped in cellophane, The Torso trundles through the 
basement accompanied by his decapitated head. The 
actor, a double amputee, wore a black hood during 
filming so that the digital effects team could 
later “remove” his head from his body. 

Backstory: Jimmy “The Gambler” Gambino never learned 
his lesson. A constant scammer and gambler, he always 
had a knack for landing on his feet. Larry “Three-
Times” always warned Jimmy not to get in over his 
head, his head, his head. But The Gambler didn’t 
listen and he lost his shirt in a big poker game with 
a made guy. He would have bet his wife and kids if he 
had any, but since he didn’t, The Gambler ran off – 
welching on the bet. The mob caught up with Jimmy and 
made an example of him. Actually, several small 
examples, wrapped in cellophane. 

In her heyday, The Bound Woman was a pretty 
cheerleader who was strangled on a prom date gone 
bad. A compound fracture appliance was used to 
simulate her broken neck, and contact lenses give her 
eyes a suitably hemorrhaged appearance. 

Backstory: The envy of every girl in school, Susan 
LeGrow was the prom queen and a cheerleader. She won 
an academic scholarship to state college but decided 
to stay in town and marry Chet, her high school 
sweetheart. But the after-prom party turned into a 
nightmare when Chet caught Susan in Billy Bob’s arms. 
No one really knows what happened that night, but a 
week later they found Susan’s body buried beneath the 
football field’s fifty-yard line, strangled to death. 

The Withered Lover is the ghost of Jean Kriticos who 
perished in a fire. With half of her face and hands 
horribly burned and scarred, Jean wears a hospital 
gown and pulls an IV drip behind her. 

Backstory: She was a loving mother and wife. Outgoing 
and smart, everybody’s favorite PTA mom, she devoted 
all of her time to her family. Her husband loved her 
and her kids adored her. Although her daughter grew 
up too fast, she wanted her son to remain a child 
forever. When the freak accident occurred, she died 
while racing to save her kids – her dreams of a happy 
home snuffed forever. 

Because The Torn Prince is the ghost of a teenager 
who was wiped out in a car accident, he is quite 
handsome when viewed from the left, but the entire 
right side of his body and face are dramatically 
ripped and shredded, the result of his lethal road 
rash. A particularly gruesome aspect of his effects 
makeup is an intricate face piece that exposes his 
skull and brain. 

Backstory: In 1953, Royce Clayton was Valley High’s 
baseball superstar, wearing his letterman jacket 
everywhere he went. Everything was handed to Royce on 
a silver platter, and he felt untouchable. But this 
cocky James Dean wannabe went too far one night. He 
challenged the local greaser to a drag race and 
thought he had it in the bag. But he didn’t brake in 
time and ended up the star of a fiery wreck instead – 
never to crack a bat again. 

Perhaps the most subtlely disturbing of the ghosts is 
The Angry Princess a young woman who committed 
suicide. Completely nude, gashed from head to toe and 
drained of all blood, her full body make-up includes 
smeary lipstick, dark runny eyeliner and black 
contact lenses that turn her eyes into deep pits. 

Backstory: Dana Newman was a psychotic beauty who 
never believed she was beautiful. Always searching 
for perfection, not a single strand of her hair could 
ever be out of place. Famous for her insane tantrums, 
they called her “Beauty the Beast. ”  Finally giving 
up on achieving perfection, she took her last beauty 
bath and slashed her own wrists. When they found her, 
they said she remained as gorgeous in death as she 
had been in her wasted life – despite being covered 
in hundreds of self-mutilating slash marks. 

Another angry blast from the past is The Pilgrimess. 
Accused of witchcraft, she was sentenced to die from 
exposure and the abuse of her fellow townspeople. In 
the afterlife, she is permanently locked in wooden 
stocks. Her gnarled, wrinkled face was created by 
means of a weathered-flesh piece and further accented 
by opaque contact lenses, which give her a milky, 
sightless look. 

Backstory: Miss Isabella Smith was a young lady 
without family who decided to take the journey from 
England across the Atlantic to the new colonies in 
1675. But once she settled in a small New England 
town, her separatist ways isolated her from the tight-
knit townsfolk. When the town’s preacher accused her 
of witchcraft, she denied it as a matter of course. 
But the town turned against her – much livestock had 
mysteriously died that month and only a witch could 
work such magic – so Isabella was sentenced to death 
in the stocks. 

The theory behind The Great Child and The Dire Mother 
is that the demented mother manipulated her giant-
sized baby in an attempt to create a monster son who 
would be capable of carrying out her elaborate 
revenge fantasies. In the film, the duo is comprised 
of a heavyset man wearing only an enormous diaper and 
a vomit-covered bib over his prodigious stomach, and 
a tiny woman whose aged and peeling face stands out 
in grotesque contrast to her girlish outfit and pony-
tailed hair. 

Backstory: Margaret Shelburne was a shy woman who 
could never stand up for herself – probably because 
she was only three feet tall. She was imprisoned by a 
band of gypsy lumberjacks – forced to live in a cage 
as their freak show version of entertainment. But her 
secret union with Jimbo, the man they said had 
the “iron swing” with his mighty axe, produced her 
pride and joy – her giant 300 pound son, Harold. 

Harold was spoiled and smothered from infancy by 
Margaret, who raised him to be her protector and to 
carry out vengeance on the gypsy lumberjacks who 
imprisoned her. Harold took to Jimbo’s axe with a 
passion and was soon felling rows upon rows of giant 
redwoods. But he soon graduated to human lumber, 
yelling “Timber!” every time he chopped a gypsy 
lumberjack at the roots. After Harold sliced his way 
through the camp, both mother and son were finally 
killed by a torch-waving mob that wanted to put 
Harold through the wood chipper. But despite repeated 
attempts, the mob couldn’t manage to stuff his giant 
body into the chute. 

The Hammer is the bloodthirsty spirit of a murderous 
blacksmith. His ghostly incarnation features spikes 
and nails embedded in his head and body, a large 
hammer bolted to his wrist in place of a hand, and 
chains enveloping his torso. One of the more 
elaborate ghosts, his look was achieved through the 
creation of prosthetic appliances, including full 
head make-up, a foam body suit and the hammer-hand 
piece. 

Backstory: George Markley was a happy, honest 
blacksmith in the 1890s – until the local townspeople 
wrongfully accused him of stealing and drove him out 
of town. Enraged, George snapped and tracked down the 
ten people responsible and hammered them to death. 
The townsfolk finally captured him and dragged him 
back to the blacksmith shop, where he received a 
brutal form of frontier justice – his captors drove 
nails into his body and chopped off the blacksmith’s 
most prized possessions, his hands, and left them out 
for the crows to pick over his dying body. 

Another visually terrifying ghost is The Jackal whose 
crazed face with its yellow eyes and deadly sharp 
fangs peers out through a rusty metal cage that has 
been locked around his head. An escapee from a turn-
of-the-century lunatic asylum, this feral, hunched-
over creature also sports a hideous set of lethally 
long claws. “The Jackal” required full body makeup, 
as well as an iron cage anchored around his head. 
Prosthetic gloves with elongated nails and yellow 
contact lenses complete his bestial countenance. 

Backstory: In 1908, Ryan Kuhn was a deeply disturbed 
psycho patient of Borehamwood Asylum. He was locked 
up because of his insatiable appetite for women – 
specifically, for attacking and biting them!  After 
years of unrelenting imprisonment with his arms 
stretched back in a straightjacket and his body 
twisted grotesquely, his limbs grew horrid in shape. 
He hated any kind of human contact and was revolted 
if anyone came near. When a fire broke out in his 
wing of the Asylum, everyone but Ryan escaped. People 
still talk about how he ran away from rescuers 
shouting “Keep away!”  He preferred instead to face a 
fiery uncertainty than to let anyone touch him. 

 Finally, the twelfth and perhaps most lethal ghost 
is The Juggernaut who died in a hail of bullets. As a 
result, in the afterlife his body is riddled with 
bullet holes from head to toe. The character required 
a full body suit with makeup and five separate 
appliances for his forehead, nose, neck, chin and 
hands. 

Backstory: Breaker Mahoney was a massive, seven-foot 
tall serial killer. Horribly disfigured, he towed 
stranded motorists back to his junkyard and brutally 
murdered them. he would literally rip them apart with 
his bare hands and “break” them into as many pieces 
as possible. When the local authorities finally 
tracked him down, the immensely powerful murderer was 
impossible to subdue physically. But, as Breaker 
ultimately discovered, all men are “breakable” – and 
he bit the dust when the cops pumped him full of 
lead.