On Halloween night 1963, in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, six-year-old Michael Myers (Halloween), dressed in a clown costume, stabs his older sister Judith to death with a kitchen knife in their home. Fifteen years later, on October 30, 1978, Michael's psychiatrist, Samuel Loomis, and his colleague, Marion Chambers, arrive at Warren County's Smith's Grove Sanitarium to escort Michael to court. Michael escapes the sanitarium, stealing Loomis' car in the process, and returning home to Haddonfield.