On October 31, 1986, Universal Studios Hollywood launched its first-ever Halloween Horror Nights event. The big draw that evening was the Terror Tram, which was really just their normal, everyday Studio Tour repurposed to scare the crap out of people. “It’s one Halloween you’ll never forget. That is…if you live to talk about it,” promised a print advertisement for the event. Unfortunately, those words would end up sounding eerily prescient afterward.

At some point during the nighttime tour, trams were supposed to drive by a parked tram full of mannequins made up to look like corpses. That was 20-year-old Paul Rebalde’s cue to jump out from the pile of fake dead bodies and try to frighten the folks on the passing vehicles. However, one of those attempts didn’t go according to plan, and Rebalde somehow got himself stuck between the third and fourth sections of a four-section tram.…