Scream: The True Story premieres on discovery+ the same day that the new Scream movie releases in theaters: Friday, January 14, 2022. Like they did for Ed Gein: The Real Psycho, Steve Shippy and Cindy Kaza team up to explore a case of another horror movie-inspiring serial killer who may now be a ghost.
Although, Danny Rolling, a.k.a. the Gainesville Ripper, didn’t exactly inspire the movie Scream. Not in the same way that Ed Gein inspired Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Silence of the Lambs. Scream isn’t based on Rolling’s murders.
But did Rolling return to haunt his former childhood home after he was executed in 2006?
Perhaps.
Shippy and Kaza investigate that, but they’re also interested in trying to figure out why Rolling was driven to murder. But instead of engaging in the age-old nurture vs. nature debate, they wonder if he was really possessed by a demon, as he claimed. Or was it something else? Can they figure it out?
Let’s first take a look at what this newest Shock Docs is about. Then we’ll explore the three main theories Shippy and Kaza come up with to explain Danny Rolling’s killer tendencies.
About Scream: The True Story
Beginning in 1989, Danny Rolling stalked and murdered eight victims. First in Shreveport, Louisiana, then in Gainesville, Florida, where he murdered five college students.
Rolling claimed he was possessed by a demon named “Gemini” when he committed his crimes.
In Scream: The True Story, paranormal investigator Steve Shippy and renowned psychic medium Cindy Kaza join forces to uncover the truth behind Rolling’s claims that a demon made him kill.
Shippy and Kaza are the first to ever conduct a paranormal investigation in two places Rolling lived: at the campsite he stayed at near the University of Florida campus, and his childhood home in Louisiana, where the current homeowners say aggressive poltergeist activity plagues them.
Interviews with experts and those connected to the case, including Rolling’s ex-fiancée, reveal that evil has run in his family for generations. A powerful malevolent energy confronts Shippy and Kaza during their investigation, but what is it? The demonic force that possessed Rolling, or the spirit of Rolling himself?
Fearing for everyone’s safety, they call in a demonologist to conduct an exorcism and help battle the evil forces.
Theory #1: Generational Curse
Was Danny Rolling haunted by a family curse? Is that what compelled him to first start out as a peeping Tom before progressing to breaking and entering, burglary, and ultimately rape and murder?
That’s one theory Shippy and Kaza present. But it’s not clear when the curse started, why, who cast it, etc. Since there’s no way to get to the bottom of it, they can only guess that it’s a possibility.
Theory #2: Multigenerational Possession
Danny Rolling claimed that when darkness fell at night, a demon named Gemini possessed him and compelled him to commit the despicable acts that he did.
As Shippy and Kaza investigate, they learn more about Rolling’s home life, including that his father was abusive and his grandfather allegedly killed his grandmother. In a pretty brutal fashion too.
It was before Rolling was born. His father was a child and watched his dad pick up a butcher knife and nearly sever his grandmother’s head off at the dinner table one night.
Talk about being both super disturbing and brutal, but it gets worse. It was a story Rolling’s father related to his family often, in a combo bragging/warning kind of way.
That’s going to leave a psychological mark.
But Kaza and Shippy theorize perhaps this explains Danny Rolling’s bloodthirst. Maybe his father inherited a demon from his father. They theorize that’s perhaps what made the men in the Rolling family so violent.
Theory #3: “Serial Killer Soup”
They also touch on the most common —not to mention most likely— explanation for why Danny Rolling became a serial killer: a combo of genes and environment.
Kaza was the one to term it “serial killer soup.” That pretty accurately sums it up. It does seem there are some key ingredients that go into the making of all serial killers, and Rollings was no exception.
The answer?
So many people would love to know why serial killers are the way they are. Shippy and Kaza are no different. They formed some theories why Rolling became who he did.
Ultimately, however, the question remains unanswered.
It’s a hard pill to swallow to admit that some people are just born bad —or become bad because they’re born into extraordinarily awful circumstances and have to endure the influence of toxic people. It’s easier to believe in an external evil supernatural force that could be conquered with enough love and faith.
But life isn’t that black and white or as simple as good vs. evil.
Demons do exist. They dwell within us all. Most of us are good at taming them. We may let them out every now and then but we know how to reign them back in.
But a few of us, whether it’s due to crossed internal wiring, childhood trauma, or combo of both, succumb to their dark side. We may never understand why.
Nor may we ever learn whether curses or possessions are real.
That’s why, for all of their speculating and theorizing, the issue of what compelled Danny Rolling to murder eight people, five students in Gainesville, Florida, and a triple murder of three family members in Shreveport, Louisiana, went to the grave with him.
In Memoriam
The Shreveport Victims
William Grissom, 55
Julie Grissom, 24
Sean Grissom, 8
The Gainesville Victims
Sonja Larson, 17
Christina Powell, 17
Christa Hoyt, 18
Tracy Paules, 23
Manny Taboada, 23
Check-In
Which theory did you find most interesting?
It doesn’t have to be the most plausible necessarily. Even though I didn’t buy the multigenerational possession theory, I did think it was an interesting one.
Courtney Mroch is a globe-trotting restless spirit who’s both possessed by wanderlust and the spirit of adventure, as well as obsessed with true crime, horror, the paranormal, and weird days. Perhaps it has something to do with her genes? She is related to occult royalty, after all. Marie Laveau, the famous Voodoo practitioner of New Orleans, is one of her ancestors. That could also explain her infatuation with skeletons.
Speaking of healing, to learn how she channeled her battle with cancer to conjure up this site, check out HJ’s Origin Story.
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When interviewees say “evil has run in his family for generations,” the first thing I thought of was a generational curse. But how would you prove such a thing?
Okay so thank you for this. I’m not alone in wondering that. My thoughts exactly!