Los Angeles is a mecca for horror fans for a variety of reasons, one of which is to see the real-life filming locations of iconic movies. Whether you want to see the Myers house from Halloween in South Pasadena, the Thompson house from A Nightmare on Elm Street in West Hollywood, or the titular House on Haunted Hill in Los Feliz, there are a number of iconic photo opps that horror fans can collect. In Simi Valley, though, horror fans can immerse themselves in a seminal location in an entirely new way: you can rent the house from Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist on Airbnb.
It’s difficult to understate the significance of the home and its role in the 1982 film, as while many of the aforementioned locales merely served as establishing shots, nearly the entirety of Poltergeist unfolds in the house. Given that some of these locations are actual homes or businesses, owners don’t always take kindly to tourists, but that’s far from the case with homeowner Rachel Powers. As a fan of the film herself, she knows the importance of the home, and rather than discouraging fans from making the pilgrimage, she’s known to come outside and chat. If you trick-or-treat on Halloween night, you’ll also notice Poltergeist playing on the TV.
“For the most part, people just pull up in front – they either pull up over here on the other side of the driveway or they’ll pull up in front of the neighbor across the street. They usually just take pictures and videos from their window. Sometimes they’ll get out and they’ll walk around,” Powers told Bloody Disgusting. “I had a German tourist here a few days ago. This was a number-one stop on his list, to come see this house … I’ll go out there, I’ll talk to people and answer questions.”
The house today isn’t exactly what it was in the early ’80s – the 1994 Northridge earthquake resulted in some changes, such as the exterior retaining wall. Similarly, renovations over the years mean the living room’s spiral staircase was removed and exposed beams have been covered up, but outside of these changes, as soon as you see the same TV model sitting inside playing static, you’ll be immediately transported to the very first time you saw Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) speaking to the TV people.
Transforming the home has been an ongoing process for Powers, as some items are easier to track down than others. Shipping the era-appropriate TV set, for example, costs more to ship across the country than it even costs to buy, and a few key items have still escaped her. Her passion for the movie has connected her with the sprawling community of Poltergeist fans, with this communal love allowing her to unexpectedly acquire integral pieces.
“The community has been super duper helpful in helping me find things. For example, that picture above the TV, a fan on TikTok saw a video I had posted. He’s like, ‘You’re missing the picture,’ and he sends me a link to where it was. I was able to negotiate back and forth, put an offer on it, and then, a few weeks later, it arrived. It’s the same print by the same artist, it’s part of the same run.”
Much of the home has earned the upgrades to bring it into the 21st century, which makes staying there much more comfortable, but don’t worry – turning the TV on immediately brings up static, and a VCR lets you watch the original trilogy without having to worry whether or not it’s streaming.
A number of key sequences from the movie unfold in the living room, though many of these scenes take place in the darkness. The true show-stopper in the home is the kitchen, thanks to how similar it looks to the movie, right down to the cookbooks on the shelves and the glassware, and thanks to how memorable those kitchen-set scenes are in the original movie. Powers marked the floor with circles and arrows to match what was done in the movie, and placing a chair in the requisite circle on the floor will almost make you think it will slide across the room if you leave it there long enough. After identifying the key elements from the movie, the house is packed with Easter egg tributes to Poltergeist, almost making the experience of staying here feel like a scavenger hunt.
Entirely unlike the movie, though, there’s no nefarious presence to be felt when you’re inside. Otherworldly events may have been filmed here, and the stars may have suffered tragedies later in life, but the love put into the house and the fans who regularly drop by have helped create a much more positive energy than seen in Poltergeist.
Upstairs, you can see the primary bedroom looking quite similar to what we saw in the movie, and Robbie (Oliver Robins) and Carol Anne’s room has been decorated with the necessary accoutrements to resemble the film. Robbie’s Star Wars bedding wasn’t all too difficult to acquire, while Carol Anne’s bed was one of the biggest challenges of the whole project for Powers.
“The hardest thing to track down was the bedding and the fabric for the kids’ bedroom. It was the green fabric with the pink and yellow prints. It’s got a country-esque feel to it. No one makes that anymore; I couldn’t find it anywhere. I looked for months and months and months trying to find that particular fabric to make the bedding,“ Powers confirmed. “It was just crazy, I’d been looking online, I’d done Google image searches, I was looking everywhere.“
She added, “And then, all of a sudden, last minute, one of my kids comes home and she’s like, ‘I have a science project due tomorrow. We have to go get X, Y, and Z.‘ We run out to Joann Fabrics like 15 minutes before closing. I get in there, and the first thing I see, to my left as I walk in the door, is a bolt of this green fabric with the pink and yellow flowers just sitting there.”
Another key element of the kids’ room is the horrifying clown doll, which Powers has a replica of, though she is still hoping to track down one of the screen-used clowns to make the room even more authentic.
The backyard of the home isn’t nearly as frightening as what is seen in the movie, as there is no foreboding tree, and the pool is actually quite nice, as opposed to being just a hole in the ground full of dead bodies. This might (strangely) come as a disappointment to some fans, but anyone who has been subjected to the heat of Southern California will prefer a finished pool as opposed to a hole in the ground full of corpses.
The experience of watching Poltergeist in the living room of the house is surreal, to say the least, as you get distracted at various points looking around you to compare what you see on-screen to your actual surroundings. What’s most surprising, though, is that the further you get into the movie, the less you pay attention to those things, as you get sucked into the events of the film, no matter how many times you’ve seen it. It’s a testament to Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg‘s filmmaking that, even in the home of the movie you’re watching, even more than 40 years later, you still get sucked into the TV (but in a way much safer than what happened to Carol Anne).
“The reason why I do it is really just to share it with people,“ Powers shared. “I came in, lived in it, really wanted to get a feel for it, get the vibe of the house. It was when I would have people come over, and the first thing they would do is go up to the TV with their hands on, and [there was] just this joy. ‘Oh, my God, I’m here. I’m in the movie.’”
She continued, “So far, the response has been pretty overwhelming. I get emails daily from around the globe from people basically thanking me. There’s a lot of gratitude for doing this because I could have come in, just updated it all, closed it off, put ‘Do Not Disturb‘ signs everywhere, and called it a day. But the thing is, there’s a generation of people that this movie just touched – so many people. Every time somebody requests to book the place, they tell me their story. I don’t ask for it. Everybody tells their story about when and where they saw the movie, how old they were, what kind of impression it made on them.”
You can head to Airbnb to book the Poltergeist house for yourself.
Video credit: Patrick Cavanaugh. Follow on Instagram and YouTube.
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