History Headscratchers / TheFrighteners

** He's probably committing the murders more for his own sake at this point, and it's fairly clear that he and Patricia are far from rational thinkers about his "score" anyway.

* Given that Johnny Bartlett's extended kill-score is mostly post-death, and thus the living would never recognize him as responsible, why would the other dead serial killers in Hell give him any respect? Wouldn't at least half the "point" of the tallies being the urban legend that comes from the living talking about your kills after your death?

** The foreboding numbers aren't something Bartlett is causing on purpose, it's Frank's own psychic senses granting him foresight into who's going to be attacked next. Bartlett is just killing whomever he feels like, and letting Frank survive as a scapegoat to deflect any possible suspicion from falling on Patricia.

** Most likely Patricia set up an alibi for the time of the accident, and from what I understand of the legal situation wouldn't her role in the murders have been kept sealed due to her status as a juvenile at the time the crimes took place, thus limiting the likelihood that someone would draw a connection between her and the murders?

* Where the heck did Johnny Bartlet get a scythe like that? Who made it? Heck, if he has a scythe that can force ghosts to move on, why doesn't Hiles have one? If its one of a kind, where did he get it?

** Most evil people don't think they ''are'' evil; they invent spurious self-justifications for their misdeeds. By the time they realize that the light they're entering is the express train to Hell, it's too late.

** Wouldn't the ability to see ghosts qualify as a "psychic power" in itself?

* How did no one suspect Patricia was responsible for Frank's Wife's Death. A 13 was carved into her forehead, the exact same thing that Patricia and Johnny did to their previous victims during the initial massacre. Heck, the fact it was a 13 specifically should've been a red flag since the original number of victims was 12. How did no one suspect that maybe Patricia, who was a suspect in a mass murder spreed, was responsible for this death or heck, how did Frank never figure it out?

*** So not only was Bartlett, one single scrawny psycho, able to overpower death itself, bu the reaper didn't want it back?

* What is the point of the foreboding numbers after Barlett gets out of hell and resumes killing? It implies that he is planning on killing a predetermined target (the Reaper's behavior implies this too, and he seems hellbent on ignoring Frank and only killing Lucy when the two are together), but Bartlett was an indiscriminate murderer. Unless the "deal" he was referencing in his escape form Hell was taking over as the Grim Reaper and performing its duties, which explains both why the targets of marked for death ahead of time (fated to die) and his powers as the Reaper to ferry souls to the other side, whether they are people he killed or already dead ghosts. This flies in the face of the events in the movie though: all 28 deaths were in the same locale, indicating Johnny (even if bound to the duties of the Reaper) was more or less contained to Fairwater, possibly by Patricia's influence as she was the one that summoned him. The deaths caused by Johnny are described as unnatural by at least 3 sources (Perry, Dammers and the coroner Lucy knows). Two of the victims (Magda's junior editor and then Magda herself) are merely adjacent to each other! It seems highly unlikely any of the people killed by Bartlett are actually predetermined to die and that he's just murdering from beyond the grave, but then most of the ones we see immediately ascend to Heaven, contradicting the idea that their deaths were untimely (as all the original 12 murder victims did not as those definitely were). It just raises further questions, and it makes the numbers make even less sense. What do they mean, Mason?!?

*** ^Yes, pay attention. It helps with the deleted scenes in the director's cut, but the time line of the movie is pretty clear: Patricia summoned Bartlett from Hell through something ritualistic (Walt Perry notes she had Ouija boards and she was in possession of his unconsecrated ashes) around 5-6 years prior so they could continue the streak together. This is the beginning of Johnny's "tenure" as the Reaper, and their first victim together was Frank's wife. They kill 28 people in total in this resumption of the streak, up through the events of the movie. The opening scene of the movie is some years later, right in the middle of the continued streak, in present day. Perry also notes that Patricia's mother found out and sedated Patricia to control her presumably after the incident in the opening scene, or not long before it (Patricia was in custody for 5 years before this, so she couldn't have done it before summoning Johhny), but Johnny was set loose and killed regardless. Frank's knife in the mother's closet completely supports this: She took it from Patricia when she found out and started to sedate her; it is the evidence of her involvement and what her mother alludes to when she tells Lucy she could have Patricia locked up at any time she chooses despite her being exonerated on the condition she be left in her mother's custody. What is actually unclear is whether Patricia was immediately found out by her mother after killing Debra ~6 years ago, or if she started sedating her later on in the new 20-something streak.

*** ^Yes, pay attention. It helps with the deleted scenes in the director's cut, but the time line of the movie is pretty clear: Patricia summoned Bartlett from Hell through something ritualistic (Walt Perry notes she had Ouija boards and she was in possession of his unconsecrated ashes) around 5-6 years prior so they could continue the streak together. This is the beginning of Johnny's "tenure" as the Reaper, and their first victim together was Frank's wife. They kill 28 people in total in this resumption of the streak, up through the events of the movie. The opening scene of the movie is some years later, right in the middle of the continued streak, in present day. Perry also notes that Patricia's mother found out and sedated Patricia to control her presumably after the incident in the opening scene, or not long before it (Patricia was in custody for 5 years before this, so she couldn't have done it earlier), but Johnny was set loose and killed regardless. Frank's knife in the mother's closet completely supports this: She took it from Patricia when she found out and started to sedate her; it is the evidence of her involvement and what her mother alludes to when she tells Lucy she could have Patricia locked up at any time she chooses despite her being exonerated on the condition she be left in her mother's custody.

* What is the point of the foreboding numbers after Barlett gets out of hell and resumes killing? It implies that he is planning on killing a predetermined target (the Reaper's behavior implies this too, and he seems hellbent on ignoring Frank and only killing Lucy when the two are together), but Bartlett was an indiscriminate murderer. Unless the "deal" he was referencing in his escape form Hell was taking over as the Grim Reaper and performing its duties, which explains both why the targets of marked for death ahead of time (fated to die) and his powers as the Reaper to ferry souls to the other side, whether they are people he killed or already dead ghosts. This flies in the face of the events in the movie though: all 28 deaths were in the same locale, indicating Johnny (even if bound to the duties of the Reaper) was more or less contained to Fairwater, possibly by Patricia's influence as she was the one that summoned him. The deaths caused by Johnny are described as unnatural by at least 3 sources (Perry, Dammers and the coroner Lucy knows). Two of the victims (Magda's junior editor and then Magda herself) are merely adjacent to each other! It seems highly unlikely any of the people killed by Bartlett are actually predetermined to die and that he's just murdering from beyond the grave, but then most of the ones we see immediately ascend to Heaven, contradicting the idea that their deaths were untimely (as all the original 12 murder victims did not as those definite were). It just raises further questions, and it makes the numbers make even less sense. What do they mean, Mason?!?

* What is the point of the foreboding numbers after Barlett gets out of hell and resumes killing? It implies that he is planning on killing a predetermined target (the Reaper's behavior implies this too, and he seems hellbent on ignoring Frank and only killing Lucy when the two are together), but Bartlett was an indiscriminate murderer. Unless the "deal" he was referencing in his escape form Hell was taking over as the Grim Reaper and performing its duties, which explains both why the targets of marked for death ahead of time (fated to die) and his powers as the Reaper to ferry souls to the other side, whether they are people he killed or already dead ghosts. This flies in the face of the events in the movie though: all 28 deaths were in the same locale, indicating Johnny (even if bound to the duties of the Reaper) was more or less contained to Fairwater, possibly by Patricia's influence as she was the one that summoned him. The deaths caused by Johnny are described as unnatural by at least 3 sources (Perry, Dammers and the coroner Lucy knows). Two of the victims (Magda's junior editor and then Magda herself) are merely adjacent to each other!

** The film would seem to bear this out. When Frank "dies" in the climax, he is able to grab Patricia's soul and drag it along with him as he ascends, and Johnny follows them. So it seems any ghost can use the tunnel as soon as it appears.

** We don't know how mobile ghosts are in this Verse; it's possible Bartlett can't manifest very far from his original stomping grounds from life. Or, at least, that Patricia ''thinks'' he can't show up outside the town where he died.

** It's mentioned in passing that Patricia's mother has been keeping her sedated. Probably she missed a dose to keep her daughter from acting on her homicidal desires

** Because A: she had a gun too. And B: He was suprised, and in those seconds it gave her time to shoot him. Remember he was chasing Frank and planned to shoot him, not knowing and not wanting to know there was another killer, so when he saw her with a gun, in his last moments he knew that Frank wasn't the killer. Plus he's an obsessed maniac.

** Perhaps the above, but I also think you get out when your body is too badly decayed to sustain your ghost. Ghosts seem trapped in the appearance of their corpse mostly. I suspect decay eventually forces them to transcend or descend.

*** The difference is between "ghosts" and "pure spirits". Ghosts are people who never went to the afterlife. Pure spirits like the Sergeant (sent back on a duty tour from heaven) and Bartlett (who escaped hell?) have much greater powers of manifestation. The judge has his pistols for the same reason ghosts have clothes. He had them while alive and they're part of who he thinks he is.

** It wasn't ''just'' Johnny's score, it was Johnny ''and'' Patricia's score. It's been awhile since I watched the movie, but if I'm not mistaken, in a flashback it's Patricia who kills Frank's wife and Johnny looks like just a ghost not Grim Reaper. If so, then it's probably ''Patricia'' who had continued the bodycount until Johnny got his hands on the Sytche.