If you’ve been following our blog for a little while, you’re probably familiar with our recurring Featured Homes posts. This time, as Halloween approaches fast, we want to feature some awesome iconic houses from popular movies many of us watch around this time of year.
Our featured homes are usually based around Offerpad homes that we’re selling. For this post, keep in mind that we definitely DO NOT OWN these homes, but they’re fun to read about during Halloween anyway!
Here are our Halloween movie Featured Homes:
The “Hocus Pocus” house in Salem
Let’s start with the quintessential Disney Halloween movie “Hocus Pocus” – if you’ve seen the film, chances are that even as a kid you were intrigued by the cool house Max and Dani move in to.
The colonial-style home is, in fact, located in Salem, Massachusetts. It was built in 1870 and has three bedrooms and one bathroom in 1,305 square feet. According to Realtor.com, the value is estimated at about $507k.
As an off-market home, that’s just about all the info there is to share on this one. But that awesome lookout tower is actually in the home and we very much hope it’s really part of that cool bedroom/teen room place where Max and the gang hang out and make plans on how to handle the Sanderson Sisters.
The “Beetlejuice” House in Vermont
Ah, the famous home of the Maitland’s and later the Deetz family. The house plays a pretty central role in the film as it is featured for its old-fashioned, idyllic look and then it’s renovation which turns it into… not that.
This beautiful and apparently totally customizable home set high on a hill in East Corinth, Vermont features a whole lot of cool stuff, all of which is completely fictional. Yep. Not a real house, the exterior was built as a façade for movie making. The interior is all studio production design in Culver City, California.
This blog gives a breakdown of the Maitland and Deetz versions with lots of images to see the side-by-side Deetz “upgrades.” But again, not real so please don’t travel to East Corinth for a tour.
The “Silence of the Lambs” Home in Pennsylvania
Buffalo Bill’s eerie pad is a real house and was part of the set in the 1991 Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins thriller, “Silence of the Lambs.”
The cozy Princess Anne Victorian style home is 110 years old and is nestled outside of Pittsburgh on 1.76 acres of land on the Youghiogheny River. It has four bedrooms, one bathroom and its original hardwood floors, woodwork, light fixtures, pocket doors, fireplaces, and wallpaper.
It has a wrap-around porch, gazebo, in-ground pool, and spooky attic. Note: we can’t actually confirm that the attic is spooky, but attics at Halloween time are known for that sort of thing, right?
Really though, the above home specs are accurate – this home, as reported by Inman, was actually on the market earlier this month. The listing agents suspect a buyer might be interested in using the home as a tourist attraction or for a “Silence of the Lambs”-themed vacation rental. Sound like a dream vacation to you?
The Other Cool House in “Hocus Pocus”
Yes, more “Hocus Pocus.” Remember the amazingly Halloweeny house in the movie where Allison’s parents throw that very elaborate Halloween party (and somehow EVERYBODY is very very on-theme and in-character)? It’s an actual home, too. Our friends at House Beautiful say that it’s known as the Ropes Mansion and is actually a historic museum! Disney only used the mansion for exterior filming – and it’s a good thing because the interior museum is incredible as it is, not something you’d want to mess with.
The authentic colonial was built around 1727 and passed down three generations within the Ropes family. With each passing down, the home received updates and then a major renovation in 1894. Almost 20 years later, after the last generation of Ropes’s, the historic house became a preserved museum.
In its current form, the Ropes Mansion – i.e. Allison’s Parents’ party house – has three floors, two living rooms, two dining rooms, three pantries, two bathrooms, a kitchen and nine bedrooms. It’s not for sale and we don’t even want to take a stab (scary Halloween pun) at what the value might be now.
Nancy’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street” House
The classic scary movie “A Nightmare on Elm Street” features Freddy Krueger stalking Nancy Thompson at this property in the 1984 Wes Craven film. The movie was set in Springwood, Ohio but the home where they filmed was actually in Los Angeles. The house still sits there today.
This beautiful, inviting home has three bedrooms and four bathrooms and is located in West Hollywood. Exterior filming in the movie took place here but interior shots were done in a studio – so no need to worry about stains and water damage (blood damage? Gross.) from the iconic bed-blood geyser scene. Fun fact, according to Film School Rejects that special effect was done with 80 gallons of water and red paint which was poured through an upside-down rotating set!
Realtor.com says that this home was sold in 2013 for $2.1M. Five years later, the home is estimated to have appreciated another half mil.
The House from “Halloween”
Another classic film, this one which carries the holiday’s name and became a huge franchise, including its latest film released in 2018, all started in 1978. The story centers on the menacing Michael Myers and a babysitter played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Naturally, it takes place in large part at the home where Laurie is baby-sitting. In the movie, the home is set in Haddonfield, Illinois but the actual house is in… you guessed it, L.A. – West Hollywood, California.
The idyllic home is a quaint Cape Cod style property with four bedrooms and two bathrooms worth almost $2.7M in 2018, according to Realtor.com. Not bad for the home of your dreams, or is it nightmares?
Hogwarts from Harry Potter
Is Harry Potter in the Halloween genre? Are castles considered homes? Can school be home? That last one is pretty murky these days, but we’ll say YES on all three accounts.
Outdoor scenes from the first two Harry Potter films, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” were filmed at the very real 11th-century Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, UK.
This estate dates back to 1309 and is considered the largest inhabited castle in the UK. In addition to being a (very gigantic) family home, “Hogwarts” here has served as a military outpost, a college (not of witchcraft OR wizardry), and of course a film set.
This place also has a poison garden! Visitors can learn about the most lethal plants here – sounds pretty Halloweeny, for sure.
The Winchester House
This home is as real as they come. The 2018 film titled “Winchester” was based on the strange San Jose, California mansion now called the Winchester Mystery House.
The home, originally an eight-bedroom farmhouse, was occupied by Sarah Lockwood Pardee Winchester, who had it under construction and renovation from 1886 through the rest of her life in 1922. This bizarre property is 24,000 square feet with 10,000 windows, 2,000 doors, 160 rooms, 52 skylights, 47 stairways and fireplaces, 17 chimneys, 13 bathrooms, and 6 kitchens. Imagine the Halloween party Allison’s family could throw here!
It was appraised at about $5M in 1923, equivalent to over $70M today. But it’s not on the market right now, sorry about that. In 1923 the mansion opened as a tourist site and has drawn over 12 million guests in its nearly 100 years. Sarah Winchester’s motivation for such peculiar additions to the home remains a mystery.
If Offerpad received a request for a free offer on any of these homes, we’d really have to think on it…but we always welcome the request! Visit Offerpad.com to request your free, no-obligation cash offer – the less spooky the better, and no set-design façades, please. Happy Halloween!
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