The Bye Bye Man

The True Story behind the Terrifying Movie

Don't think of his name...

In 1990, three college students spent a long Wisconsin winter experimenting with a Ouija board; it turned out to be the deadliest mistake of their lives.

The board brought them into contact with a psychic serial killer, known only as the Bye Bye Man. Learning his name makes you vulnerable, but thinking about it draws the Bye Bye Man to you.

He is a relentless traveler, moving night and day, coming ever closer until the shrill sound of a steady whistle announces his arrival. He might turn up outside your bedroom door, speaking in the voice of a trusted friend, someone who would never hurt you…

Here is the authentically terrifying, true-life story recounted by historian Robert Damon Schneck in a chapter of his classic underground collection of weird Americana, which formed the basis for the major motion picture, The Bye Bye Man.

This unsettling tale is accompanied by seven more chapters of twisted history, and includes the author’s new afterword, “Searching for The Bye Bye Man.”

Robert Damon Schneck is the author of The President’s Vampire: Strange-but-True Tales of the United States of America, republished here as The Bye Bye Man. Schneck also wrote the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Mrs. Wakeman vs. the Antichrist: And Other Strange-but-True Tales from American History. A longtime chronicler of the weird and unexplained, he has written about everything from killer clowns to suicide clubs. Schneck wrote most of the book that became The Bye Bye Man at his regular table at a McDonald’s in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.