Harrowing, personal tales have started to emerge about Friday’s movie theatre massacre in Aurora, Colorado, that killed 12 and injured 58 others.

A masked gunman burst into a packed theatre, opening fire on the crowd during a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

The accused gunman, James Holmes, is being kept in solitary confinement without bail until formal charges can be laid next Monday.

Questions are starting to surface about Holmes’ mental state, given his dazed and confused look before the judge in court.

Aurora, Colorado police psychologist John Nicoletti believes it’s unlikely the 24-year-old suffered from a sudden break with reality.

“If you look at a lot of workplace shootings like the ones we had here with Columbine and some of the others, people usually kill themselves if they can’t get out,” says Nicoletti.

“He didn’t snap in terms of his stockpiling of the armament inventory and the setting up of the booby-trap,” he adds. “There was a lot of thought so this is what we would call a pro-active attack behaviour.”

But an expert on mass shootings, Doctor Marissa Randazzo disagrees.

She told ABC’s “Good Morning America” James Holmes’ strange behaviour could be evidence of mental problems and the chance of him faking it is unlikely.

“The chance is probably about five per cent because the people who fake it are psychopaths,” she says. “What we’ve heard about his history does not suggest (that).”

The University of Colorado is saying little about their former student; on Monday, officials at the school said Holmes was studying on a federal grant and receiving $26,000 in spending money a year.

Sixteen people remain in hospitals and seven are in critical condition.

Stephanie Davis and Ally Young were inside the theatre when the gunfire erupted.

“I see him, up there and I’m hearing him up there yelling at people and then you just hear the rounds going off,” says Davis. “Boom, boom, boom.”

After Young was shot in the neck, Davis braved the gunfire and put her finger over her friend’s carotid artery.

Doctors say if not for her quick thinking, the death toll would have grown by at least one.