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15 Horror Movies Filmed in Allegedly Haunted Locations

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The set was scarier than the script.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

TV Shows & Movies - October 14th 2026, 00:00 GMT+2

Uninvited 1987 — 15. Uninvited (1987)
Guests at the Hollywood Roosevelt have reported a little girl's laughter near the pool for decades, long before Uninvited ever shot there in 1987. The hotel opened in 1927 and hosted the first Academy Awards ceremony three years later. Montgomery Clift's room, number 928, gets more ghost tour mentions than this horror comedy ever did. The killer cat movie came and went, but the hotel's reputation outlived it.

Madhouse — 14. Madhouse (1981)
A killer in a pig mask stalks a horror actor in Madhouse, and the production found its gothic backdrop in Savannah's Kehoe House. Built in 1892 for William Kehoe, an iron foundry owner with ten children, the house later operated as a funeral home. Staff there have long claimed two of the Kehoe twins died inside its chimneys. The film's body count is fiction. The building's history of death isn't.

Hostel Part III — 13. Hostel: Part III (2011)
Grand Masonic ceremonies once filled the Detroit Masonic Temple, and Hostel: Part III used its halls for something considerably bloodier in 2011. Completed in 1926, the building remains the largest Masonic temple in the world. Workers have reported unexplained falls and sudden drops in temperature tied to a construction death during the original build. Eli Roth's franchise swapped Slovakia for Michigan, but the unease stayed local. | © Sony Pictures

Cropped The Nun 1 — 12. The Nun (2018)
Corvin Castle sits in Hunedoara, Romania, and its medieval bridges and towers gave The Nun its 2018 backdrop. Legend holds that Vlad the Impaler was imprisoned there in the 15th century, chained in its dungeons for years. Local guides still point tourists toward the well said to have been dug by three Turkish prisoners in exchange for freedom. The film invented a demon. The castle didn't need one. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

The Ninth Configuration — 11. The Ninth Configuration (1980)
William Peter Blatty wrote and directed The Ninth Configuration in 1980, years after his novel The Exorcist made him famous. For exteriors he used Eltz Castle in Germany, a fortress owned by the same family for over 800 years. The castle survived centuries of European wars without ever being destroyed or conquered. Blatty needed a place that looked untouched by time, and he found one that actually was.

Rose Red — 10. Rose Red (2002)
Stephen King wrote Rose Red as an original miniseries in 2002, and he based the haunted mansion on a real Tacoma estate called Thornewood Castle. The home was built in 1908 by shipping magnate Chester Thorne, who had its stone walls shipped over from a demolished English castle. Crew members reported equipment glitches on set that nobody could trace. ABC aired the thing anyway, static and all. | © ABC

American Fright Fest — 9. American Fright Fest (2018)
Pennhurst State School and Hospital operated in Pennsylvania from 1908 until 1987, and American Fright Fest shot there in 2018. The facility had already become a haunted attraction years before the cameras showed up. A 1968 news investigation by Bill Baldini exposed the abuse happening inside its walls. The film borrows that history instead of inventing its own.

Raw Force — 8. Raw Force (1982)
A Japanese soldier still fighting World War II decades after it ended is the setup nobody expects from a 1982 B-movie. Raw Force filmed aboard the RMS Queen Mary, permanently docked in Long Beach since 1967. The ship had already logged sightings tied to its wartime service and a fatal 1966 accident below deck. Cannibal monks and kung fu island plots aside, the boat didn't need the extra reputation.

Crimson Peak 2015 — 7. Crimson Peak (2015)
Guillermo del Toro picked Casa Loma in Toronto to stand in for Allerdale Hall in Crimson Peak, released in 2015. The castle was built between 1911 and 1914 for financier Henry Pellatt, who lost it within a decade to unpaid taxes. Staff and visitors have reported cold spots and footsteps in empty rooms for years. Del Toro reportedly toured several locations before deciding the house itself needed to feel like a character. | © Universal Pictures

Helen Mirren in Winchester — 6. Winchester (2018)
Sarah Winchester spent decades expanding her San Jose mansion, convinced that construction would keep restless spirits at bay. The 2018 film named after her, Winchester, was shot on location at the real house. Helen Mirren plays Winchester, who inherited the Winchester Repeating Arms fortune in 1881 after her husband's death. The house still has staircases that lead straight into ceilings. | © CBS Films

Fallen — 5. Fallen (1998)
Denzel Washington chases a demon named Azazel through New Jersey's Pine Barrens in Fallen, a 1998 supernatural thriller directed by Gregory Hoblit. The Pine Barrens cover over a million acres and locals have reported strange lights there since the 1700s. Folklore ties the area to the Jersey Devil, a winged creature supposedly born there in 1735. The production leaned on that reputation instead of building one from scratch. | © Warner Bros.

Death Tunnel — 4. Death Tunnel (2005)
Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville treated tuberculosis patients from 1910 until it closed in 1961, and the death toll is still debated. Death Tunnel, a 2005 horror film, uses the real body chute, a tunnel built so staff could move corpses without patients seeing them. Director Jason Stephenson shot much of the film on location rather than faking the corridors on a set. Nursing students in the story end up trapped there overnight, which is more time than most paranormal tour groups get. | © Vicious Circle Films

The Shining 1997 — 3. The Shining (1997)
Stephen King hated Stanley Kubrick's version of his novel enough to write his own adaptation, and the 1997 miniseries The Shining is the result. ABC filmed it at the actual Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, the place that inspired King's book in 1974 after he stayed in room 217. Mick Garris directed the three-part broadcast, which ran nearly five hours total. King got the hedge animals and the hotel back, but he never matched Kubrick's ratings. | © ABC

12 Monkeys — 2. 12 Monkeys (1995)
A padded cell and a rooftop recreation yard both appear in 12 Monkeys, and neither one was built for the film. Terry Gilliam shot large portions of his 1995 movie inside Eastern State Penitentiary, the Philadelphia prison that held Al Capone in 1929. The facility had sat abandoned since 1971, its cellblocks crumbling exactly the way Gilliam wanted them to look. Bruce Willis spends much of the film trying to escape a future that looks a lot like that building's past. | © Universal Pictures

As Above So Below — 1. As Above, So Below (2014)
Director John Erick Dowdle got permission to film inside the actual Paris Catacombs for As Above, So Below, a 2014 found footage horror movie. The tunnels hold the remains of roughly six million people, moved there starting in 1786 when Paris cemeteries overflowed. Only a small section is open to tourists, so the crew pushed into restricted areas most visitors never see. The film invents a path to hell beneath the city, but the bones underneath are not fiction. | © Universal Pictures

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Some horror productions didn't need to manufacture atmosphere, they filmed in places with their own dark histories and reportedly paid the price. Here are 15 horror movies filmed in allegedly haunted locations.

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Some horror productions didn't need to manufacture atmosphere, they filmed in places with their own dark histories and reportedly paid the price. Here are 15 horror movies filmed in allegedly haunted locations.