Is Coraline Really Based On A True Story?

"Coraline" has been delighting viewers for years with its sublime spookiness. It's a children's tale about the importance of family, friendship, and accepting the ones you love, flaws and all. The tale follows Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning), an 11-year-old who's royally embarrassed by her preoccupied parents Mel (Teri Hatcher) and Charlie (John Hodgman). They have just moved into a new building loaded with eccentric types, and she's bored and restless – a big clue that something unusual is set to happen. 

Her new neighbor gives her a doll that looks like her, and a bored Coraline discovers a door lodged in her living room's brick fireplace. When the door turns into a tunnel, Coraline discovers the Other World. There, duplicates of her mother and father exist — merry, button-eyed, but living entirely to please her. Coraline thinks she has the solution to her problems and spends time on both sides of the door. With a talking black cat (Keith David) warning her of the dangers of this other land and her new friend Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.) bearing stories about his great aunt's disappearance in the Other World, is it possible that she's in danger?

The answer might be obvious, considering the movie's constellation of fantasy elements and its talking cat character, but "Coraline" isn't based on a true story. What it is based on, however, is a constellation of tales and experiences from its author, Neil Gaiman.

While "Coraline" definitely isn't a real story, Neil Gaiman has previously explained the hows and whys of its birth. "Coraline" started life as a picture book before being adapted into a movie. Gaiman told Booklist Magazine that Lucy Clifford's short story "The New Mother" provided partial inspiration for the tale. That's definitely something only an adult would notice about "Coraline," as the story was first released in 1882. Parts of his life with his family also inspired the book, including stories told to him by his daughter, Holly, and the layout of his own childhood home.

Fans have long speculated that a gruesome Hampshire, UK area urban legend may have influenced "Coraline" as well. It involves an elderly woman who took in her granddaughter after a housefire that killed her son and daughter-in-law. No one ever sees the child, rumors spread, and children break into the house to find out what's going on — only to learn the "mean mother" has stolen the corpse of her grandchild and dressed it up like a doll, pretending she's still alive. Though there are some scant threads that connect this story to "Coraline," it appears it didn't influence Gaiman's work. No matter what sparked it to life, "Coraline" endures as a bright, witty, and legitimately scary film for kids of all ages, unusual enough to make horror fans of all ages take another look at its twisted story.