Horror stories are great and all, but around Halloween, we like to focus on the real stuff. You know, the monsters that could in fact be outside your house right now.

Lots of you are too old and jaded to be kept awake at night by ghost stories and implausible urban legends. No, this time of year, you need something a little more real.

We love our serial killers in one of two flavors -- dead, or in prison. But not the third flavor: the ones who do their thing for years, or even decades, without ever getting caught.

Here are a few works of art we nearly lost to the blood-rage that lives within all creative types.

Sometimes people go missing so hard that it's like Doc and Marty jacked up the time stream and erased them entirely from the fabric of existence.

When you discover your dad is Charles Manson do you A) Write him letters in prison? Or B) Pretend you never found out and take that information to the grave?

In the name of preparedness (and giving hypochondriacs something new to obsess over), we want to let you know of a few things.

Jason Vorhees would run away screaming at the sight of any of these real-life monsters.