If you’re a horror fan, you know the importance of a good story when you choose a film to watch. It’s got to have everything you love in a horror: an intricate plot that draws you in, believable characters (heroes and villains), frightening jump scares and the pièce de résistance – a terrifying, preferably haunted location.
There are many different sub-genres within horror: gore, folk, demonic, religious, historical, cult and, of course, haunting and possession. Not all horror movies feature haunted locations, but the last two certainly do. These locations are often the heart of the film, becoming characters in and of themselves and adding an aura of desperation and hopelessness to any good storyline. These are some of the scariest haunted locations featured in some of the best horror films out there.
Image © Cottonbro Studio
Army of the Dead
In Army of the Dead, we find ourselves in Las Vegas. Now the Vegas that we know is already a town steeped in supernatural activity: old-timey specters floating through the walls of haunted Las Vegas locations like old hotels and casinos, cursed dams and haunted arts schools. Las Vegas has a long history of haunted places, all of which are made all the more terrifying by the fact that, in this film, almost the entire population of the city has been turned into zombies.
Not only do the film’s characters have to contend with the ghosts of the past, but also the terrifying undead that now populates Vegas and makes crossing the city a near impossibility. There are places like The Westgate, where Elvis performed time and again. Places like Balys, where a fire once killed 87 innocent people. Places like the ghost town of Rhyolite just outside the city, where gold miners once lived and thrived. There’s not just one location in Vegas, there are many to choose from. In Army of the Dead, a former mercenary is approached to recover an enormous sum of money from inside one of the casinos still standing in the city before the army takes out all the zombies in the area. A motley crew comes together to undertake the mission.
Image © Onanini
The Conjuring House
Any horror fan worth their salt has, no doubt, watched the entire Conjuring franchise. Since the best place to start is at the beginning, you will have watched The Conjuring before any of the others and gotten a taste of the Perron family’s haunted house. While the location in the film is not the original house, the original house is still standing and inhabited, despite being considered one of the most haunted buildings on the North American continent. On Rhode Island, in the middle of an enormous plot of land that was subdivided and sold off over the years, sits the house that was home to the real Perron family and has borne witness to many terrifying events over its lifetime. Foul smells, horrifying visions and dreams, physical attacks, drained energy, objects being hurled across the room and flying off shelves. These are the events that the Perrons and the house’s inhabitants since then have had to deal with since 1736.
The story goes that Bathsheba Sherman, a woman who married into the wealthy Sherman family, was a witch. After being caught offering a human sacrifice to her dark lord, she cursed anyone who would try to take her land and then took her own life. The land was parceled off, and many of the split-off properties have experienced severe haunting for hundreds of years.
Image © Lil Artsy
The Amityville Horror House
The story of the Amityville Horror is well known amongst movie lovers of all kinds, particularly among those who love true crime and horror. The massacre at 108 Ocean Avenue on Long Island in 1974 was a horror in and of itself and a true one. The story of an entire family murdered by the oldest son would scare anyone, but it’s the events that happened in the house before and since that have made the house itself a legend.
Ronnie Defayo claimed that he heard voices and was possessed by a demon in that house, a demon that drove him to kill his brothers, sisters and parents in their sleep. Years later, a family desperate for a new home and a new start, The Lutzes, purchased the home at an excellent price but had no idea what they were in for. Over the short time that the Lutz family lived at 108 Ocean Avenue, they say that they experienced foul smells, doors slamming on their own, inexplicable ooze coming from underneath the carpet and even levitation. When the Lutz family had finally had enough, they fled the house in abject terror, leaving all their possessions behind.
Wrap Up
These are some of the horror films we love that feature the scariest and most haunted locations out there.
