Has anyone else wondered how the Supernatural writers never seem to run out of ideas for episodes? Finding new and creative situations for the characters to get into every episode must be really difficult, but apparently, coming up with the monsters that they run into isn't so hard.

Quite a few episodes of Supernatural are based on real events! And when it's not based on a real event or person, it draws its inspiration from urban legends or folklore from somewhere in the world. A lot of what the Winchester brothers hunt is actually based off of real life. Isn't that creepy? Whether they're real or just stories, no one knows. But in the world of Supernatural, they're very real. Sometimes, the show even made these tales scarier than the actual story they were based on.

Keep reading to see how real life inspired the following 15 episodes of Supernatural.

15 Croatoan

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There are countless unsolved mysteries in the world; mysterious objects, missing people, and strange phone calls are only some of the items on the list of all the mysteries in the world that people will likely never solve. Among the most famous unsolved mysteries in American history is the mystery of the Lost Colony, also known as the Roanoke Colony. It was established in 1585 on Roanoke Island, which is known in modern times as Dare County, North Carolina. They got their name because—you guessed it—they're lost. No one knows what happened to them. There are a ton of theories, but it was never solved and the main clue is that the word "CROATOAN" was carved into a tree at the colony sometime before it was abandoned.

Supernatural's take on the hint is probably not accurate, but it's still pretty cool. On the show, Croatoan is a demon-virus that infects people. Ew!

14 No Exit

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Not all of the inspiration behind episodes of Supernatural come from a paranormal legend or myth. Some of them take a completely real person and then put an incredibly creepy and very, well, Supernatural twist on it. 

Herman Webster Mudgett was born in New Hampshire in 1861 and is known as one of America's first serial killers. He was convicted of killing one person and allegedly killed nine others, but some reports in the 1940s reported that he was responsible for up to 200 murders! If he doesn't sound familiar, then it might be because you know him under another name: H.H. Holmes.

In season two, Sam and Dean go to Philadelphia with Jo to investigate a series of murders. All of them were women who lived in the same apartment building and as they find out, the culprit is none other than the ghost of H.H. Holmes. Not even death could stop him!

13 Malleus Maleficarum

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Just like some of the other episodes, season three's Malleus Maleficarum took its title from another famously paranormal source. Long before it was the title of an episode of Supernatural, "Malleus Maleficarum" was the title of a book published in Germany in 1487. It's among the most well-known books about the paranormal and it details all the reasons that witches should be exterminated.

It's no surprise that an episode about witches has that title. Sam and Dean go to investigate a coven of witches who have been murdering people and, because they've used black magic, Sam says they should be killed. Yikes!

It's the second episode that heavily features witches, but not the first to take its title from a famous witch. Season one's "Something Wicked's" title is from a line the witches say in Shakespeare's Macbeth.

12 Home

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Monsters and paranormal entities of all kinds are terrifying, there's no denying that. Even if they're not real and they're just a thing of myths, legends, and TV show episodes, it's pretty creepy to think about or watch shows and movies about them! It's scary enough to imagine them possibly just existing, but the idea of having one close to you, like in your own home? No, thank you! As the name suggests, season one's episode "Home" is all about a family that is experiencing some confusingly creepy things in their house.

Although this didn't take its inspiration from a single haunted family, there's no shortage of stories of them. One of the most famous stories of a family dealing with a haunting in their home is the story of the Perron family. Ed and Lorraine Warren's story about coming to help them with their scary situation even inspired the movie The Conjuring. I'd move out so fast!

11 Bloody Mary

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The story of the infamous Bloody Mary has been circulating for longer than people can really trace. Along with the story about the babysitter who sees a statue outside the family's home and then calls the parents, who only tell her they don't have a statue like that on their property. It's probably one of the most famous urban legends in folklore. There are countless variations of it, movies about it, and TV shows that feature at least one character doing the ritual. So, how could Supernatural not do an episode on the famous legend?

They did and it certainly didn't take long. Only five episodes into the series, Sam and Dean went to investigate a mysterious death that occurred after a group of friends play the game to scare each other. Since the ritual has so many different backstories about what happens, who Bloody Mary is, and the other details of the game, Supernatural even got to make up their own backstory for her. How cool is that?!

10 Wendigo

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In pop culture, some monsters show up over and over. Others are a little bit less common. That doesn't make the ones that show up over and over in movies and TV shows any less scary! The wendigo is one that has made its way into a ton of movies, TV shows, and even video games. But is it still terrifying? Absolutely. The legend originates from Algonquian folklore and describes a cannibalistic monster that has an insatiable hunger and greed. Aside from just being a mythological monster, it describes a medical term called "Wendigo psychosis" in which people are in a situation where they have no food and are driven to cannibalism.

In just the second episode of the series, Sam and Dean go to investigate a town where people disappear every 23 years. And, because no murder or disappearance in Supernatural is ever something normal, they find out it's a wendigo.

9 Hollywood Babylon

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If someone died on the set of a movie, they would totally stop using that set, right? Like, production for the movie would be shut down for a while and then, if they continued filming it, they'd film somewhere else, I imagine. Maybe I'm wrong, but that just seems like the polite thing to do. Obviously in TV shows, politeness doesn't matter. Because in season two of Supernatural, Sam and Dean set out to investigate a movie set where someone had died and they just kept using the set. Of course, people kept dying afterwards. UM, hello, this is why you shut it down!

Although this wasn't based on a single untimely death on a movie set, there have been some movies that were supposedly haunted. For instance, three actors who were in Poltergeist died before its release and JoBeth Williams allegedly went home every night to see her paintings hanging crooked. No thank you!

8 Crossroads Blues

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Supernatural is definitely not the first place to have someone sell their soul to the devil for success, and it won't be the last. In season two, Sam and Dean go to investigate the death of an architect who appears to have died in relation to a large, black dog. They found out while they were there that his death was no accident and that the dog wasn't just any dog, but a hellhound. The man had sold his soul to the devil for success and the hellhound came to get him so he could hold up his half of the bargain. In mythology, hellhounds are often referred to as the guards to the underworld and will lead people into the afterlife when they die.

That creature isn't the only inspiration that Supernatural's writers took for this episode. The name Crossroad Blues is shared by the title with a song by Robert Johnson. And the song just so happens to be about the narrator of the song selling his soul to the devil. Spooky, right?

7 The Hook Man

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I first heard the legend of The Hookman when I was a kid, before I even knew what urban legends were. I was at a birthday party and my friend's older cousin made us all turn the lights off so she could tell us a story. She said that she had a friend who was driving home from a nearby town with her boyfriend when the music on the radio was cut off for a news bulletin. Apparently, a serial killer had escaped from a prison nearby and was probably going to be trying to hitchhike on the roads in the area. It said he had a hook for a hand and to stay away from him. At some point, the couple pulled over on the side of the road to walk around and stretch their legs and when they came back to the car, the hook was stuck on the door handle. I don't remember how it ended, but it terrified me enough that I'll never forget it.

Just like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Supernatural included the infamous urban legend in an episode of the show, and it was just as scary as the story I had heard! The Supernatural writers are experts at taking an urban legend that everyone knows and making it even creepier.

6 Phantom Traveler

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"Phantom Traveler" doesn't necessarily have a single urban legend or specific monster as its inspiration for the main villain in this episode. Its villain is a common theme that shows up throughout the series even now. Even though this episode is from season one, it was like this episode was setting the brothers up for years and years of problems with this kind of evil entity: demons. 

The episode, which features Sam and Dean dealing with a demonic possession on a plane, wasn't necessarily inspired by a single case of demonic possession or exorcism. But, the show isn't the first place that it's shown up in pop culture. There have been countless movies about someone being possessed by a demon. Some of those were even based on real cases of people who were allegedly possessed and who underwent the ritual.

5 All Dogs Go To Heaven

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Skin-walkers are a Navajo legend describing a creature that can disguise itself as an animal. Skin-walkers are usually said to disguise themselves as animals so that they can trick someone into getting closer to them so they can kill them. Talk about creepy! Compared to other monsters, skin-walkers haven't made their way into pop culture a lot, but I think that made their appearance in Supernatural that much creepier.

The episode was even scarier to me because they didn't immediately reveal that it was going to be a skin-walker. Sam and Dean were sent to investigate what they believed was a werewolf attack and found something even more sinister. After Sam sees a dog turn into a human and leave, he finds out that their problem isn't a werewolf at all, but a skin-walker.

4 Everybody Loves A Clown

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A decade before killer clowns were in the news, Supernatural had a really scary episode about clowns. Were they predicting the future and just knew that people were going to be terrified by strangers in clown suits lurking in the woods in 2016? Probably not. Being afraid of clowns has roots much older than the 2006 episode of Supernatural. Between Stephen King's It, John Wayne Gacy, and even Charles Dickens The Pickwick Papers, clowns don't have the best track record in pop culture.

Supernatural took on the theme of the scary clown in season two when the Winchester brothers investigated a series of murders that occurred when a circus was in town. Although there was no monster clown behind the killing, the episode still had a few that would make anyone's skin crawl.

3 Baby

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Don't worry, Sam. I've never heard of a 'werepire,' either. The idea of a vampire is scary enough, I don't need to add all the most terrifying parts of a werewolf to it, too! Unfortunately, the writers of Supernatural disagree with that and decided that the show didn't have enough terrifying monsters running around before and they needed to combine two of the scariest ones. What happens if you take the teeth of a vampire, the indestructibility of a werewolf, and make it eat the blood and hearts of living people? You get a nachzehrer.

As scary as this is, the writers didn't completely make it up on their own. That's even scarier, right? The creature comes from German folklore, but similar creatures have also been described by the Kashubians of Northern Poland.

2 Weekend At Bobby's

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Some episodes of Supernatural keep the story of their monster pretty similar to the myth or urban legend that it came from. They often put their own twist on it, but keep it pretty similar and recognizable. While others, they change quite a bit to make it scarier for Sam and Dean to hunt. Whether they keep it similar to the original story or change it around, they do a really good job with their own lore on the show when it comes to the creatures they feature. 

In Wisconsin, Sam and Dean hunt a monster that cracks the bodies of its victims open. Bobby helps them identify it as a lamia, a monster in ancient Greece that "juices hearts and chugs the blood." The original story of Lamia says that she was Zeus' mistress and when Zeus' wife got jealous of her, she turned Lamia into a monster and killed all her kids. Her new monster form was said to hunt and eat other people's kids forever after that. Yikes, stay away from her!

1 The French Mistake

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A list about the real-life inspirations behind episodes of Supernatural just wouldn't be complete without including the episode "The French Mistake." Instead of being based on mythology or some kind of scary urban legend, "The French Mistake" takes its basis from something much, much scarier: real life! While some shows never break the fourth wall, Supernatural has become an expert at doing it in their show. So, naturally, they had to have an entire episode dedicated to breaking the fourth wall, right?

The inspiration for "The French Mistake" came from, well, the show itself. What?! Yeah, the episode is about Dean and Sam finding themselves in an alternate universe. Specifically, they find themselves on the set of a show called Supernatural and everyone mistakes them for the show's stars, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki. Sound weird? That's because it was, but in the best way.