The real murder case behind Session 9 is scarier than the movie

Let me take you back to the early 2000s for a cinematic oddity that still manages to slip under most people's radar: Session 9. We're talking Brad Anderson's very first horror – a psychological slow-burn set inside an actual derelict asylum (no, really, they shot it in the real thing). Twenty-five years after its release, this is still one of those films that, if you know, you know. For those who don't, settle in – because not only is it inspired by a genuinely grim murder case, but both the cast and crew allegedly got a bit more than method acting bargained for wandering those cursed Massachusetts corridors.

Session 9 debuted in 2001 and was filmed inside the abandoned Danvers Psychiatric State Hospital.

The Murder That Lurks Beneath

Most people wouldn't look at a bungled ziti dinner and think 'Here lies the seed for a haunted asylum movie', but Brad Anderson and Stephen Gevedon (who co-wrote and stars) clearly aren't most people. The script, as it turns out, was loosely inspired by a grisly real-life homicide in Boston, 1995. Richard Rosenthal, an unassuming insurance executive, brutally murdered his wife Laura Jane – apparently triggered by a minor kitchen mishap. The details are macabre: Laura was beaten to death with a rock, then her body mutilated and her organs impaled. Rosenthal claimed amnesia afterwards, with the subsequent court case turning on the thorny issue of mental illness v. fraud.

This 'snapped father' motif and the ambiguity about true evil – madness, supernatural, or simply human – carry straight over to the film's core: Peter Mullan's Gordon Fleming. He's a new dad, stressed at home, and as the pressures mount (plus, you know, Danvers working its hellish charm), he unravels. What's remarkable: none of this is spelled out in the film, but Anderson has always admitted that the Rosenthal murder shaped both the character and the script. Mullan himself was cast because Anderson loved him in My Name Is Joe – he wanted someone viewers could genuinely believe was a hard-working bloke simply trying to provide.

Inside Danvers State Hospital

There's a reason this film doesn't feel like your average Hollywood haunted house. Danvers State Psychiatric Hospital was a real place, only shut down in 1992. Built in 1878, with all the Victorian gothic horror that implies, the hospital is basically New England's Arkham Asylum. Anderson, living in Boston at the time, often drove past its batwing-bricked silhouette and couldn't shake the image from his head. With a shoestring $1.5 million budget, shooting in situ rather than on a soundstage just made practical sense – nobody quite expected it would end up giving the film its signature menace.

• Anderson and Gevedon cite classic horror DNA: Don’t Look Now for its psychological games, The Shining for the 'one angry man and a massive location' vibe, and those creeping wide tracking shots.
• Session 9 was ahead of its time tech-wise; one of the first to use Sony's 24p HD format, giving those long takes in endless hallways a sharp, cinematic edge.
• The sound design is full of subtle animal squeals and mechanical groans, always right at the edge of your hearing – designed to get under your skin without ever leaping out with a cheap scare.

Paranormal on and off Screen

The plotline sees Gordon and his ragtag crew drawn into the asylum's history via the titular session tapes: magnetic reels documenting interviews with Mary Hobbes, a former patient whose mind housed several competing personalities – including the thoroughly evil 'Simon'. These audio fragments thread a second mystery through the film, amplifying the sense that something inside Danvers isn’t just sick – it’s lurking, waiting for the next victim to break.

The location's real infamy ran deeper than set dressing. Anderson's team barely had to bring in props – the furniture, flags, even graffiti were all original leftovers from when the feds up and abandoned the place. Production designer tweaks were minor: a tub here, some gloves there, but the utter decrepitude was all authentic. Even the tunnel Jeff sprints through when the lights go out had genuine surgical debris lying around. The crew stumbled upon actual medical samples and blood-soaked tissues, and half of them were less than keen on handling anything without gloves.

When Deleted Scenes Change Everything

If you think the ending of Session 9 is ambiguous, that's nothing compared to the alternate cut. What audiences saw in cinemas: Gordon lost in a dissociative haze, phoning his dead wife while haunted by the voice of Simon telling the assembled world, ‘I live in the weak and the wounded, doc’ – a killer last line if ever there was one. But originally? Gordon gets brained by an elderly homeless woman (who, in axed subplots, had been flitting in and out of shots, collecting trinkets and covertly observing the crew’s demise). Her presence, and those scenes, made the story a lot more literal – too literal, apparently. Early viewers wrongly assumed the woman was Mary Hobbes (never mind the obvious contradictions: Mary’s dead, documented in photos as a white middle-aged blonde, while the homeless woman is very much alive and not Mary). The confusion forced Anderson to excise her subplot entirely, tipping the balance back to eerie uncertainty and giving Gordon a grimmer, wider fate – stuck in the madhouse, possibly for eternity.

The Cast Freaked Themselves Out

Danvers’ bleakness wormed into the actors too. Peter Mullan, for one, said the rooftop scenes triggered an overwhelming, split-second urge to throw himself off. David Caruso avoided mentioning it to anyone on set, but swore he saw an indistinct figure move past a window during a break. In one interview from 2001, Caruso described it best:

‘It was a place you never got comfortable in. It wasn’t like day three, and we were throwing water balloons because it was so much fun to be there. It was always scary. You can really feel the pain of the people who went through Danvers. It’s a rough environment. It’s not fun. It’s on the film. They didn’t have to dress any sets or anything. All of that stuff was sitting there. The federal government walked away from it about thirty years ago. It was a terrifying location.’

That sense of danger was more than psychic. Director of photography Uta Briesewitz was nearly blinded filming one chase: she ran into a leftover medical cart, smashing her face on an ancient surgical prong, in a mishap almost uncannily similar to a nasty death that occurs in the film itself.

Toxic hazards weren’t just a plot device, either. Whole tracts of the building were off-limits due to unstable floors, exposed pipes, and pervasive asbestos. Gevedon said openly that, technically, they weren't even supposed to be in there – only some backstage favours at the Massachusetts film office got the team official entry, and even then, cordoned to vaguely 'safe' areas.

Two and a half decades on, Session 9 isn't just rare for being one of the earliest digital horror films, or for that uniquely oppressive New England Gothic atmosphere. It’s the sort of creeping, ambiguous psychodrama that's only possible when you trap a bunch of genuinely freaked-out actors inside a real asylum and leave the rest deliberately unresolved. The result? Horror that lingers, far longer than most viewers expect or invite.