Is Lifetime's Boy In The Walls A True Story? Dark Inspiration Explained

Lifetime's Boy In The Walls is a haunting mystery, but is the story based on a real person living in the walls of a home or a work of fiction?

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Lifetime movie Boy in the Walls!

This article mentions abuse and graphic violence.

Summary

• "Boy in the Walls" is a Lifetime movie based on the true story of Daniel LaPlante, who lived hidden in a family's home for almost a year in 1986.
• Phrogging, the act of living in someone else's home without their knowledge, is a real phenomenon that has inspired unsettling movies and stories.
• While the movie takes some liberties with the true events, it accurately portrays the fear and terror experienced by victims of phrogging. The truth behind the story is often stranger than fiction.

Sometimes there's nothing better than a Lifetime movie like Boy in the Walls, and it's even better if they're based on a true story. Recent movies based on true stories like Girl in the Basement show how the network handles ripped-from-the-headlines stories and makes them gripping television, but this mystery is so twisted it seems like a work of Hollywood fiction. The movie begins with Alisa (Ryan Michelle Bathe) who, while still adjusting to the role of stepmother to her husband Chris's children, moves from a busy life in Manhattan to rural Connecticut and begins to feel like someone may be watching them from inside the house.

While her husband is busy with work all the time things around the house get moved or misplaced, food gets eaten, and she finds more and more evidence pointing to someone else living among her family. What she finds shocks her - a stranger has been phrogging (living inside a house without the knowledge or permission of the tenants) right under their noses. While it sounds impossible that someone could live alongside a family without them ever seeing them for so long, it turns out that not only is it more common than it sounds, but it's based on an extremely graphic true-crime story.

Yes, Boy In The Walls Is A True Story - What To Know About Phrogging & Daniel LaPlante

The concept of phrogging isn't a new one, and Boy in the Walls is based on the true story of Daniel LaPlante, an abused and troubled boy who, at 17 years old, snuck into Tina Bowen's home and found a place in the walls of her home to hide. According to A&E’s True Crime blog, LaPlante was able to live, unbeknownst to Bowen, for almost an entire year in 1986, at first just watching her go about her regular routine, and later relishing in the idea that he could terrify her family. When he was discovered, he took a hatchet and held Bowen, her sister, their father, and a friend hostage until he was eventually arrested in 1987.

While out on bail in December of '87, LaPlante broke into the home of Priscilla Gustafson and killed her as well as her two children, after which he was caught for the last time and sentenced to multiple life sentences for their murders. Most phroggers' are unhoused transients and not violent, but the screenwriters Katrina Onstad and David Weaver do a good job of capitalizing on what they represent. An unknown terror lurking in what's normally thought to be a safe space gives Boy in the Walls its tension and utilizes a primal fear in most viewers.

How Accurate Is Boy In The Walls?

The screenplay might be fictional but because it draws on real events, the Boy in the Walls is an accurate account of phrogging and the terror it inflicts on unsuspecting victims. The movie begins with Alisa and her children experiencing many of the things that happen to victims of phroggers; hearing strange noises, noticing objects in the house being shifted, food being eaten, TVs left on, and things often attributed to a supernatural haunting. The end of Boy in the Walls might not be as gruesome as the LaPlante story, but it's satisfying for a Lifetime thriller.

Movies like Homebound and even the Oscar-winning film Parasite have focused on the unsettling nature of someone else living in secret. As unlikely as it might seem that phrogging and home invasions of this kind can happen, it's a plot that has sparked the imaginations of mystery fans for years and has led to one of Lifetime's best "Based on a True Story" movies. LaPlante's story is the most famous case to inspire storylines like the one in Boy in the Walls but it proves that the truth can still be stranger than fiction.

Source: A&E’s True Crime