Fact Check

Man Walks in to Haunted House with Chainsaw, Murders 7 People?

Reports of a tragic attack inside an East LA haunted house attraction are fake news.

Published Oct. 8, 2014

Claim:

On 5 October 2014, the Daily Buzz Live web site reported that a man had killed seven people with a chainsaw at a haunted house in Los Angeles:

A Los Angeles, California man is in custody, and 7 people are dead after a tragic attack inside an East LA hunted house attraction over the weekend that was caught on surveillance video.

A Hispanic male, 26-year-old Luis Ortega, entered the Texas Chainsaw Massacre House of Horrors on Friday's opening night wielding a chainsaw.

The article quoted people who had witnessed the attack and included surveillance footage of the incident taken from a security camera:

While the video accompanying the article was real, it did not capture a man killing seven people with a chainsaw outside of a haunted house. Instead, the video showed an incident from February 2012 in which a man was kicked out of a pub in England. Dean Dinnen, 24, was booted from the Endyke Pub in Hull after he refused to put out a cigarette; the inebriated man then chased patrons with a gas powered chainsaw and injured one woman before patrons subdued him in the street. Dinnen was sentenced to three years in prison for his assault.

The video saw a surge in popularity after it was combined with a backstory about a man's killing seven people at a haunted house with a chainsaw, but no such incident took place. The story about the haunted house killings is fiction, and the video is an old one repurposed to lend it credence.

Moreover, a disclaimer on Daily Buzz Live explains that articles on the web site are for "entertainment purposes only" and that while some stories may be "inspired by real news events," they are "complete fiction."

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.