The disturbing true story that inspired the dark horror film Orphan – TV and Film

Fans of horror films who were left suffering from the psychological chill Orphan You might be surprised to learn that the true story that inspired it is even crazier.

Launched in 2009, the first Orphan The film stars Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther, a nine-year-old Russian girl adopted by Connecticut couple Kate and John Coleman after the birth of their third child.

Unfortunately for the couple, Esther is not exactly who she says she is.

You can watch the horrific trailer here:

At home with her new family, Esther exhibits strange behavior.

In the horror film’s big twist, Esther is a 33-year-old Estonian woman named Leena Klammer who has been diagnosed with hypopituitarism, a condition that stunts her physical growth and causes proportional dwarfism.

To top it off, Leena is a serial killer who took advantage of her physical appearance to commit several murders.

Despite the crazy premise – seeing an adult woman pretending to be a child – the film House of Wax filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra is at least partially grounded in reality.

Isabelle Fuhrman was 11 years old when she played Esther in Orphan (Warner Bros)

The true story that inspired Orphan

The film is inspired by the real-life story of Czech Barbora Skrlová, who effectively posed as a girl in 2007 and later posed as a 13-year-old boy.

In the city of Brno in the Czech Republic, Skrlová posed as a girl and went to live with two sisters, Klara and Katerina Mauerova, and Klara’s two children, Ondrej and Yakub.

Klara struggled with her mental health, which allowed Skrlová to manipulate her more easily, leading her to believe that Ondrej and Yakub were behaving badly, including breaking things in the house.

Skrlová convinced Klara and Katerina to administer increasingly violent punishments for the boys’ imagined pranks. She even convinced the sisters to lock the boys in the basement and leave them there without food.

When a neighbor of the Maureova sisters alerted authorities suspecting child abuse, Skrlová fled to Norway, where she posed as a missing student named Adam, after binding his breasts and shaving his head.

Barbora Skrlová posed as a 13-year-old boy who went missing in Norway after fleeing the Czech Republic. (STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)

According to Oslo police, the real Adam’s parents helped Skrlová pose as their missing son and deceive local police and child welfare authorities.

In September 2007 — months before Skrlová’s true identity was revealed — a woman provided a Czech passport to enroll her son Adam at the Marienlyst school near Oslo.

As for the teachers and school staff, they claimed that it was difficult for them to identify that Adam was, in fact, an adult woman.

“We reacted to Adam’s behavior. But it’s not easy to know. Children this age can be very different,” the school’s director, Ingjerd Eriksen, told Oslo newspaper Dagbladet at the time.

Orphan spawned a 2022 prequel, Orphan: First Deathwith Fuhrman, then 24, reprising the role of Esther/Leena.