There are many destinations to enjoy your stay, however there a more than few spots you should avoid at all costs. If you find yourself lost and in need of help, reconsider any hillbilly hangouts and ensure your priest is near when you move in to your new home. Your new dwelling or one night sleep-over might be your last!
Let’s have a look at GeekShizzle’s list of Top 15 Scariest Horror Houses of all Time:
1. The Haunting (1963)
Dr. Markway, doing research to prove the existence of ghosts, investigates Hill House, a large, eerie mansion with a lurid history of violent death and insanity. With him are the sceptical young Luke, who stands to inherit the house, the mysterious and clairvoyant Theodora and the insecure Eleanor, whose psychic abilities make her feel somehow attuned to whatever spirits inhabit the old mansion. As time goes by it becomes obvious that they have gotten more than they bargained for as the ghostly presence in the house manifests itself in horrific and deadly ways.
2. The Legend of Hell House (1973)
A team consisting of a physicist, his wife, a young female psychic and the only survivor of the previous visit are sent to the notorious Hell House to prove/disprove survival after death. Previous visitors have either been killed or gone mad, and it is up to the team to survive a full week in isolation, and solve the mystery of the Hell House.
3. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Five friends visiting their grandpa’s old house are hunted down and terrorized by a chainsaw wielding killer and his family of grave-robbing cannibals. Driving through the backwoods of Texas, they pick up a traumatized hitchhiker, who shoots herself in their van. Shaken by the suicide, the group seeks help from the locals, but their situation becomes even more surreal when they knock on the door of a remote homestead. It’s quickly apparent the residents are a family of inbred psychopaths, and the unlucky youths suddenly find themselves running for their lives. In hot pursuit is a disfigured, chainsaw-wielding cannibal known as Leatherface.
4. Burnt Offerings (1976)
This is a haunted house chiller from Dan Curtis has Oliver Reed and Karen Black as summer caretakers moving into a gothic house with their young son. The house rejuvenates a part of itself with each death that occurs on its premises. The house draws energy from its inhabitants and selects its own “keeper” from the family, who rent the strangely-affordable house one fateful summer then find themselves slowly succumbing to its creepy powers.
5. The Changeling (1980)
A recent widower (George C. Scott) moves into an old house that turns out to be haunted. In this case, the ghost is a young, sickly boy whose wheelchair and ball lend some classic scares as the man unweaves the tangled, tragic mystery behind the boy’s death. It was the perfect family vacation for composer John Russell and his family when a freak automobile accident claims the lives of his wife and daughter. Consumed by grief, John, at the request of friends, rents an old turn of the century house. Mammoth in size, the house seems all the room that John needs to write music and reflect. He does not realize that he is not alone in the house. He shares it with the spirit of a murdered child who has homed in on John’s despair and uses him to uncover decades of silence and deceit. With the help of Claire Norman, the one who aided John in procuring the house, they race to find the answers and soon learn that a devious and very powerful man guards them.
6. Hell Night (1981)
Hell Night is a cult classic “slasher” movie about fraternity initiations gone wrong. Before being able to join Alpha Sigma Rho fraternity and its sister sorority, four pledges must spend the night in Garth Manor, twelve years to the day after the previous resident murdered his entire family. Some, however, say that one member of the Garth family survived, and still resides somewhere in the now-deserted mansion. After the four pledges bed down for the night, mischievous upperclassmen descend into the house, intending to scare them out of their wits…but something even more repulsive than a pack of drunken frat-boys beats them to it.
7. Poltergeist (1982)
Ahead of its time, the film directed by Tobe Hooper is still one of the most favored supernatural horror movies in the genre. “Poltergeist” tells the story of a young family who is pestered by ghosts in their home. At first the ghosts appear friendly, moving objects around the house to the amusement of everyone. They eventually turn nasty and start to terrorise the family before they “kidnap” the youngest daughter. Unable to find the little girl, her father consults a para-psychologist from a nearby college. The paranormal phenomena is so strong in the Freelong household, the para-psychologist is unable to deal with it successfully and sends for a clairvoyant and professional exorcist to examine the house. They eventually make a horrifying discovery: she is alive and in the house, but is being held on another spectral plane.
8. Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Young FBI agent Clarice Starling is assigned to help find a missing woman to save her from a psychopathic serial killer who skins his victims. Clarice attempts to gain a better insight into the twisted mind of the killer, Buffalo Bill, by talking to another psychopath Hannibal Lecter, who used to be a respected psychiatrist. FBI agent Jack Crawford believes that Lecter, who is also a very powerful and clever mind manipulator, has the answers to their questions and can help locate the killer. However, Clarice must first gain Lecter’s confidence before the inmate will give away any information.
Buffalo Bill’s modus operandi is to approach an overweight woman, he pretends to be injured and asking for help, then knocks his victim out in a surprise attack and kidnapping her. He takes the victim to his house and leaves her in a well in his basement, where he starves her until her skin is loose enough to easily remove.
9. House on Haunted Hill (1999)
When an eccentric millionaire offer a group of opposites $1,000,000 to spend the night in a so called “Haunted House” with a murderous past, they figure it is a quick way to get money and leave. All of them are sure it is some made up story just to mess with their heads a little and test their courage. But, once they stay in the house they start to think about the mistake they made in coming there when mysterious things start to happen. It is a remake of William Castle’s 1958 classic horror film.
10. Thirteen Ghosts (2001)
Arthur and his two children, Kathy and Bobby, inherit his Uncle Cyrus’s estate: a glass house that serves as a prison to 12 ghosts. When the family, accompanied by Bobby’s Nanny and an attorney, enter the house they find themselves trapped inside an evil machine “designed by the devil and powered by the dead” to open the Eye of Hell. Aided by Dennis, a ghost hunter, and his rival Kalina, a ghost rights activist out to set the ghosts free, the group must do what they can to get out of the house alive
11. House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
In “House of 1000 Corpses”, two young couples take a misguided tour onto the back roads of America in search of a local legend known as Dr. Satan. Lost and stranded, they are set upon by a bizarre family of psychotics. Murder, cannibalism and satanic rituals are just a few of the 1000+ horrors that await.
12. House of wax (2005)
A group of unwitting teens are stranded near a strange wax museum and soon must fight to survive and keep from becoming the next exhibit. Six friends are on their way to a football game. They decide to camp out for the night and continue driving the next day. The next day the friends find that they’re having car troubles, so two of the friends accept a stranger’s ride into a small town named Ambrose. The main attraction in Ambrose is the House of Wax. Except something is not right in this town, the wax figures are so realistic and the whole town is deserted – except for two murderous twin brothers. The six friends must fight to survive and escape from being the next exhibits in the House of Wax.
13. Amityville Horror (2005)
A family is terrorized by demonic forces after moving into a home that was the site of a grisly mass-murder. George and Kathy Lutz and their three children move into a house that was the site of a horrific murder a year before. They decide to keep the house and try to keep the horror in the past. This is until, George starts to behave weirdly and their daughter, Chelsea starts to see people. What now follows is 28 days of sheer terror for the family.
14. American Horror story – Season 1 (2011)
An anthology series that centers on different characters and locations, including a haunted house, an insane asylum and a witch coven. After a miscarriage and nearly breaking up, Ben and Vivien Harmon move from Boston to Los Angeles with their daughter to start a new life in a house with an eerie past. The Harmon’s fresh start in a new home deviously twists to reveal discoveries of love, sex and murderous revenge.
15. The Pact (2012)
After their mother passes away, sisters Nicole (Bruckner) and Annie (Lotz) reluctantly return to their childhood home to pay their last respects. While staying overnight in the house, the sisters sense a mysterious presence in their midst: noises startling them in the night, objects moving about, a fallen picture of an unknown woman posed next to their mother. Annie begins experiencing a series of intense and disturbing dreams visions that lead her to uncover something terrible about her mother’s past that is finally revealing itself. Annie summons a medium believing that there is more to the story that meets the eye.
Like Horror? Check out our other posts at GeekShizzle:
House of Wax 2005 was garbage.