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Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street will celebrate its 30th anniversary on 9th November… the day the original opened up in cinemas.

But, while Freddy Krueger may haunt our nightmares - just as he did the teenagers he attacked in the movie - we never assumed he was based on a true story.

Until now, that is.

Wes Craven has revealed that he came up with the idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street after reading an L.A. Times article about a family that had survived the Killing Fields in Cambodia.

They made it to the United States, but a young boy in the family still found himself haunted by terrible nightmares while he slept.

And yes, it gets worse.

Craven explained: "He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time.

"When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night.

"By the time they got to him, he was dead.

"He died in the middle of a nightmare."

The horror director added: "Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street."