In this video, we revisit horror movie houses and see what they look like today. The Amityville Horror House, 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, New York. The Dutch colonial where Ronald DeFio Jr. murdered six members of his family on November 13th, 1974. The Loots family moving in 13 months later and fleeing after 28 days claiming paranormal activity.
The story becoming the 1977 book and 1979 film. The iconic quarter moon windows replaced with Square Ones by subsequent owners to discourage tourists. The address changed to 108 Ocean Avenue. The most famous haunted house in America occupied by a family that is not haunted and would prefer you did not stop. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre House, Kingsland, Texas.
Toby Hooper filming the original 1974 film at a farmhouse in Round Rock, Texas. The low-budget production shooting in the Texas summer heat. The cast and crew enduring real misery that translated to screen. The house dismantled and relocated to Kingsland, Texas in 1998, where it now operates as a restaurant called the Grand Central Cafe.
Leatherface’s dining room converted into an actual dining room where customers eat barbecue voluntarily. The Psycho House, Universal Studios, Hollywood, California, the Bates Motel, and the Victorian Gothic House on the Hill, built on the Universal backlot for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece, Norman Bates and his mother, occupying the most famous house in horror history.
Still standing on the Universal backlot as part of the studio tour. The house never a real residence, only a facade with no interior rooms. The most terrifying house in cinema history, having no inside. The Exorcist steps and house 3,600. Prospect Street Northwest, Georgetown, Washington D.C. The steep stone staircase where Father Caris fell to his death.
And the brick rowhouse where Reagan’s bedroom window overlooked the steps. William Freriedken filming on location in 1973. The house still a private residence in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Washington. The steps now a DC landmark. Joggers running up and down. The 97 stairs that a priest tumbled down.
The poltergeist house 4267 Roxberry Street, Semi Valley, California. The suburban tracked house where the Freeling family discovered their subdivision was built on a cemetery. The tree that ate Robbie. The television static. The swimming pool filled with real human skeletons because they were cheaper than props. The house still a private residence in a semi valley neighborhood that looks exactly like the film because the film was shot in the actual neighborhood.
The Nightmare on Elm Street House, 1428 North Jese Avenue, Los Angeles, California. the Dutch colonial where Nancy Thompson first encountered Freddy Krueger in Wes Craraven’s 1984 original. The house selected by location scouts because its ordinary appearance made the extraordinary events inside more disturbing.
Sold in 2013 for $2.1 million, renovated and repainted. The house that launched a franchise still standing on a real street in a real neighborhood where real children sleep. The Halloween house, 1000 Mission Street, South Pasadena, California. The Meyers House, where six-year-old Michael killed his sister in the opening of John Carpenters’s 1978 film.
The house that launched the slasher genre, relocated from its original location on Orange Grove Avenue in 1988, restored and moved to 1,000 Mission Street, where it now houses the offices of a chiropractic practice, the house that Michael Meers grew up in. Now a place where people get their spines adjusted. The Conjuring House, 1677 Roundtop Road, Harrisville, Rhode Island.
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The farmhouse where the Parent Family allegedly experienced paranormal activity investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren. The 2013 film, grossing $319 million worldwide, purchased in 2019 by a couple who opened it for paranormal investigations and overnight stays. The most profitable haunted house in cinema history, becoming a haunted Airbnb.
The Silence of the Lamb’s House, 8 Circle Street, Peropoulos, Pennsylvania. The exterior of Buffalo Bill’s house, where he kept his victims in the basement pit. The I puts the lotion on its skin scene filmed at an actual residence sold in 2021 for $290,000. The house sitting on the market for years because its cinematic history deterred buyers, eventually purchased by a couple who converted it into a silence of the lamb’s themed bed and breakfast.
The Screamhouse, Tama Farms, Soma County, California. The remote farmhouse where the final act of Wes Craraven’s 1996 film took place. The party scene, The Garage Door Kill, Sydney Prescott’s Showdown with Ghost Face. Located on private farmland, the house still standing but not accessible to the public.
The most 1990s horror film shot at a house that looks like every 1990s house party destination. The Shining, the Timberline Lodge, Mount Hood, Oregon, and the Stanley Hotel, Estus Park, Colorado. Stanley Kubri using the exterior of the Timberline Lodge for the Overlook Hotel while building the interiors on a London soundstage. Stephen King having written the novel after staying at the Stanley Hotel, both operating as hotels.
The Timberline requesting Kubri not use room 217 because they feared no one would book it. Kubri changing it to room 2137. The Stanley leaning into its horror legacy with ghost tours and a shining themed hedge maze. The Hotel King was inspired by profiting from the fear he created. The Blair Witch Project House, Burkittzville, Maryland.
The 1999 film using a real house in the final scene, the abandoned Griggs house where Heather Donahghue’s camera drops. The most terrifying final shot in found footage history. The house privately owned and not accessible. The town of Burkittzville besieged by tourists who stole the town sign so many times the city stopped replacing it.
The cheapest horror film in history, costing a Maryland town its street signs. The Rosemary’s Baby Building, the Dakota 1 West 72nd Street, Manhattan, New York. The luxury apartment building on Central Park West that Roman Palansky used as the exterior of the Bramford, where Rosemary Woodhouse was impregnated by the devil.
The Dakota more famous as the building where John Lennon was murdered in 1980. The horror film’s legacy overshadowed by a real horror that the building could not have scripted. A nightmare on Elm Street, the boiler room. The scene set in Freddy’s boiler room filmed at the Lincoln Heights jail in Los Angeles. The abandoned jail’s basement providing the industrial atmosphere without set construction.
The building later used for dozens of film and television productions. The jail that housed real criminals, becoming the space where fictional ones hunted teenagers. Night of the Living Dead. Evans City Cemetery, Evans City, Pennsylvania. George Romero filming the opening cemetery scene at the Evans City Cemetery in 1968. Johnny’s there coming to get you.
Barbara the line that launched the zombie genre. The cemetery still operating. The chapel from the opening scene still standing. An annual festival held at the site because the cemetery that introduced the world to zombies is proud of it. The Omen House. Various locations. England. Richard Donner filming at several English estates for the 1976 film, the Gothic atmosphere provided by actual British history rather than Hollywood’s set design.
The estates operating as private residences and tourist attractions, the houses that hosted the Antichrist, hosting wedding receptions. It follows Detroit. David Robert Mitchell filming his 2014 horror film Across Detroit. The urban decay of the city providing the atmosphere of inevitable dread without CGI. The abandoned houses and empty pools of a city and economic collapse becoming the backdrop for a sexually transmitted curse.
Detroit’s recovery making the film a time capsule of the city at its most abandoned. The horror film that used real urban decay filming in a city that was already living through its own horror story. Hereditary various locations Utah. Ari asked her filming his 2018 debut in rural Utah. The miniature house that Annie builds becoming the most unsettling prop in modern horror.
The treehouse where Charlie’s fate is sealed. The locations privately owned. The film proving that horror does not need a gothic mansion. It needs a family that is falling apart and a house that watches them do it. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The gas station. The gas station and barbecue stand where the hitchhiker and the family’s business operated.
Filmed at a location in Bastrop County, Texas. The gas station becoming a horror pilgrimage site. The building that served human barbecue in the film, now a place where fans photographed themselves pretending to eat it. Get out. The sunken place house. Jordan Peele filming at a private estate in Fair Hope, Alabama for the 2017 film, The Plantation Style House.
Perfectly capturing the liberal racism the film satarized the estate privately owned. The house that represented America’s most dangerous hospitality. The kind that smiles while it takes everything from you. Beetlejuice. The Corbin House. East Corinth, Vermont. Tim Burton filming the exterior of the Matland residence in the small Vermont town in 1988.
The Victorian house providing the New England charm that made the afterlife look quaint. The house still a private residence in a town of 1,200 people. The most famous house in East Corinth, famous because a dead couple refused to leave it. The Haunting of Hill House. The Bishop Manor. Lraange, Georgia. Mike Flanigan filming the Netflix series at a historic estate in Georgia. The Red Room.
The bentneck lady. The most emotionally devastating horror series ever produced. The estate privately owned, the house that contained every Crane family member’s worst memory, now containing the memory of every viewer who watched it. An American werewolf in London, the Slaughtered Lamb Pub. The fictional pub’s exterior filmed at a cottage in the village of Cricadorn Pow, Wales.
The interior at the Black Swan Pub in Aam Suri, England. The pub where two American tourists were warned to stick to the road. Now a stop on horror film walking tours. The ring, the Morgan House, Whidby Island, Washington. The barn and farmhouse where Samra Morgan was kept before being thrown into the well filmed on Whidby Island.
The island’s rural atmosphere providing the isolation that made the cursed videotape feel like it could have been recorded anywhere. The house sitting on an island that most viewers cannot find on a map. Midsummer, the Swedish village. Ari Aster filming in Hungary rather than Sweden for his 2019 folk horror film, The Midsummer Celebration.
Set constructed in a field outside Budapest. The mapole and the flowercovered buildings designed to make daylight as terrifying as darkness. The set dismantled after filming. The horror of the film existing entirely in what the audience remembers rather than any structure that survived production. Paranormal activity.
The San Diego House. Orin P filming the 2007 microbudget hit in his own San Diego home for $15,000. The most profitable film relative to its budget in history. The house that launched a franchise grossing over $890 million worldwide. The house still a private residence. The most lucrative piece of real estate in horror history belonging to a man who sold his home movie to Hollywood.
Friday the 13th. Camp Noibosco, Blairestown, New Jersey. The Boy Scout camp, where Shawn Cunningham filmed the original 1980 slasher. The lake where Jason first emerged. The cabins where camp counselors were murdered for having sex. Still operating as an active boy scout camp. The camp that taught Jason to kill hosting children every summer.
The scariest summer camp in cinema history. Functioning as an actual summer camp. Insidious. The Lambert House. Pasadena, California. James Juan filming at a Craftsman bungalow in Pasadena for his 2010 film about a family whose son astral projects into a demonic realm called the further.
The house still a private residence. The craftsman architecture that defines old Pasadena, providing the warmth that made the horror feel like it was happening in a home rather than on a set. The Amityville horror, the real crime. Beyond the Lutz family’s 28 days, the house at 112 Ocean Avenue remains significant because of the DeFio murders.
Six family members shot in their beds. The prosecution arguing Ronald DeFao acted alone while the defense claimed he killed under the influence of heroin while hearing voices. The demonic possession angle invented later by the Lootz family for their book. The real horror of the Amityville house having nothing to do with ghosts and everything to do with a 23-year-old who killed his entire family while they slept. The Strangers.
The Moxville house. Brian Bertino filming his 2008 home invasion film at a house in Moxville, North Carolina. The script inspired by real Mansona break-ins and a childhood experience where strangers knocked on every door in his neighborhood asking for someone who did not live there. The house privately owned, the most realistic horror film of the 2000s.
Filmed in a town most viewers have never heard of. Don’t Breathe. Detroit again. Fede Alvarez filming in the same decaying Detroit neighborhoods that it follows. Used 2 years earlier, the blind man’s fortified house on a street where every other house was abandoned. Detroit’s urban collapse providing a ready-made horror set. The city’s real estate crisis making every block look like a place where no one would hear you scream.
The Wicker Man locations across Scotland. Robin Hardy filming the 1973 original across multiple Scottish islands and mainland locations. The pagan community of Summerisel created from real British folk traditions. The filming locations operating as farms, ins and villages that look as pastoral and inviting as they did in the film.
The horror of the wicker man being that the most dangerous place looks like the safest. The Babaduk, Adelaide, Australia. Jennifer Kent filming her 2014 psychological horror film in and around Adelaide. The cramped house reflecting the grief of a mother who cannot escape the death of her husband. Filmed in a real Adelaide house, the most critically acclaimed horror film of the 2000s, proving that the scariest monster in any house is the one the family brought with them.
The Changling, The Henry Treat, Rogers Mansion, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The 1980 Canadian horror film starring George C. Scott using the historic Victorian mansion at 1739 East 13th Avenue in Vancouver. The wheelchair, the ball bouncing down the stairs. One of the most effective haunted house films ever made.
The house still standing. The film largely forgotten by mainstream audiences, but considered by horror fans to be the greatest haunted house film ever made. Carrie, the prom. Brian de Palma filming the prom massacre at the Culver City High School gymnasium for the 1976 adaptation. The bucket of pig’s blood, the most famous prom accessory in cinema history.
The gymnasium since demolished. The most iconic prom in film history occurring in a building that no longer exists. The Conjuring universe houses beyond Harrisville. The Warren case files spawning Annabelle, the nun, and the curse of Liorona. Each based on a location the Warren investigated the real Annabel doll sitting in a glass case at the Warren Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut.
The museum drawing thousands of visitors who come to see a raggedy ant doll because the Warren said it was possessed. The most profitable doll in horror history, not being Chucky, but being a children’s toy behind glass. The orphanage, the Maz Courts estate, Catalonia, Spain. Ja Biona filming his 2007 Spanish language horror film at a historic estate near Barcelona.
The crumbling seaside mansion providing Gothic atmosphere that CGI could not replicate. The estate privately owned, the most acclaimed Spanish horror film of the 21st century, shot at a house whose decay was real enough that the production did not need to add any. The others, the Palacio deos hornos, Canabria, Spain, Alejandro Amenar filming Nicole Kidman’s ghost story at a 19th century estate in northern Spain.
the fog and the drapes and the children who could not go outside creating claustrophobia without closing a single wall. The palazzo operating as a private estate, the house where nothing was, but it seemed looking exactly like every other estate in Cantabria because that was the
