Rotten Real Estate

With the housing market in grave shape, here are some cinematic haunted houses you could probably get dirt cheap

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By Don Kaye
Special to MSN Movies

Everyone knows that the housing market is in terrible shape these days, but what do you think your place would be worth if it were infested by ghosts or demons? The new movie "The Haunting in Connecticut," based on an allegedly true story, might not get into the financial aspects of buying a haunted house, but it certainly does offer a warning to prospective buyers that they should always do thorough research.

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Was your new home previously used as a funeral parlor, like the one in "The Haunting in Connecticut"? Is your deluxe suburban ranch built over an Indian burial ground, as it was in "Poltergeist"? Do the neighbors appear and disappear from your Brooklyn brownstone faster than cockroaches, as in "The Sentinel" (1977)? These are all signs that one should take a good, hard second look before signing on the dotted line. A history of scandal, murder and insanity (like those found in "The Haunting" or "The Shining") is probably a red flag as well.

Stephen King himself wrote in "Danse Macabre," his 1981 study of the horror genre, that the movie "The Amityville Horror" was a tale of "economic unease" dressed up as a ghost story, adding that he wondered not so much if the tortured Lutz family would get out alive, but whether they had "adequate homeowner's insurance." With the market in the dumps these days, it might be prudent to know that not every cheap property is available because of a desperate developer or a grim foreclosure. Here are some deals that the occupants should have avoided:

'The Uninvited' (1944)
The first major supernatural haunted house story to emerge from Hollywood, "The Uninvited" finds Ray Milland and sister Ruth Hussey stumbling upon an abandoned mansion on England's Cornwall coast and deciding to purchase it. But their investment starts to look shaky when strange manifestations, noises and odors appear, eventually drawing them into the secret history of the previous owners. It's bad enough when a former occupant leaves something behind like a clogged shower drain or a dirty fridge -- imagine dealing with a vengeful, unhappy spirit.

'The Innocents' (1961)
There's a scene in this Gothic classic in which heroine Deborah Kerr looks out a window and sees a malevolent face rising out of the darkness to stare back at her. It's a supremely frightening moment in a movie full of them. Based on Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw," the film puts the emotionally fragile Kerr in charge of two orphaned children at their absent uncle's shadowy estate. But others lurk there as well, and the children are acting very strangely. Or is it all in Kerr's mind? Director Jack Clayton creates a palpable miasma of unease and depravity made physical by the deep, dark rooms of Bly House itself -- definitely not a place to raise kids.

'The Haunting' (1963)
The definitive example of how to not show a single thing on-screen and still make one of the most terrifying movies of all time (unlike the avoid-at-all-costs 1999 remake), "The Haunting" was based on Shirley Jackson's classic novel "The Haunting of Hill House." Like so many haunted abodes, Hill House was simply "born bad," a place so fundamentally wrong that it brings nothing but misery and death to all who enter. Brooding and monstrous, even its owner eventually wants to see it burned to the ground -- talk about taking a loss!

'The Legend of Hell House' (1973)
Similar to "The Haunting" both in structure and style (a team investigates the "Mount Everest" of haunted houses and the chills derive more from what is not seen), "Hell House" has re-emerged as an underappreciated, if flawed, gem. It also delves further into the actual science of paranormal research. One thing's for certain: using a giant machine to rid the mansion of "electromagnetic activity" is one method of house cleaning that we never thought of.

'Burnt Offerings' (1976)
Don't you sometimes wish that your house could just repair itself? Wouldn't it be amazing if those old, weather-beaten shingles peeled themselves off the roof to reveal nice new ones underneath? How much would your weekends improve if you didn't have to repaint a door or clean that damn pool? Well, the secluded summer house in this underrated chiller does just that. It also sucks the life out of whoever's living in it, with grim results. On second thought, that estimate from the local handyman to repair the back stairs doesn't sound so bad, after all.

'The Sentinel' (1977)
Having lived in Brooklyn for several years, we can tell you that prices for brownstone apartments in the borough have gone through the roof. But we never thought living in one could cost you your soul. That's what model Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) finds out when she moves into a prewar building that happens to have some pretty bizarre occupants, not to mention one hell of a heating problem. Notorious for its shocking, controversial ending, "The Sentinel" reminds us that it's not always in our best interests to get to know our neighbors.

'The Amityville Horror' (1979/2005)
Neither version of this supposedly true story is that good, despite some iconic sequences and tremendous box office success. What's more terrifying are the lengths that some people will go just to get out of a mortgage, which was reportedly the motivation of George Lutz to invent this tale of how he and his family were driven out of their new home in less than month by malevolent entities. The house itself, both in real life and on-screen, was undeniably eerie-looking, especially the two attic windows that looked like eyes peering out at the world. Sadly, the top of the house was completely remodeled by its later owners to stop tourists from coming around.

'The Changeling' (1980)
This long-overlooked minor classic stars George C. Scott as a famed composer longing for some solitude after the deaths of his wife and daughter. Moving to Seattle, he takes up residence in the kind of old mansion that immediately tells the viewer that our protagonist won't be getting much rest at all. "The Changeling" offered up perhaps the last of the brooding, vast, "classical" haunted houses, with "Poltergeist" bringing the ghosts into the suburbs just two years later. Nevertheless, Scott finds plenty of chilling hidden features in his new place; good thing he just rented.

'The Shining' (1980)
Stephen King should write a sequel to "The Shining" in which the owners of the Overlook Hotel attempt to recover their investment. It's true that we're never really sure until nearly the end whether the events of "The Shining" actually take place in this evil-plagued resort or in writer Jack Torrance's (Jack Nicholson) crumbling mind, but we know that if the place actually existed, it wouldn't be on our list of top vacation spots. Even the presidential suite comes with its own apparitions; these days it's likely to be the ghosts of Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns.

'Poltergeist' (1982)
With the classic Gothic haunted house looking kind of dated by the latter half of the 20th century, producer/co-writer Steven Spielberg and director Tobe Hooper struck gold by recasting the possessed abode as a modern home in a California suburb. The house itself is utterly bland, the archetypal setting of so many Spielberg films. But what lies underneath its cookie-cutter façade is a nightmare for the movie's Freeling family. Nowadays it's hard to say what would be more terrifying: living on top of a Native American burial ground or living with the threat of foreclosure.

'House' (1986)
The haunted house market isn't all doom and gloom; you could do worse to brighten up the mood than to watch this lighthearted spoof of the genre. William Katt is a writer with a lot of issues: he's a Vietnam vet, his wife has left him, and his son's missing. He moves into his deceased aunt's house, making his first mistake by sleeping in the very room in which she hung herself. Mistake No. 2 is asking neighbor George Wendt for help once demons start bursting out of every wall. No serious scares here, but this fixer-upper is still good for a few laughs.

'Session 9' (2001)
Director Brad Anderson was inspired to make this cult indie chiller after stumbling upon Massachusetts' abandoned Danvers State Hospital, a massive, Gothic asylum that possibly provided inspiration for the "Batman" universe's Arkham Asylum. Anderson brilliantly filmed the picture on location, and there's no doubt that Danvers, with its dark tunnels, decaying rooms and scattered medical equipment, is the star. The asylum was actually turned into an apartment complex a couple of years ago, which sounds like a sequel waiting to happen.

'The Others' (2001)
After a few years of modern, suburban hauntings, director Alejandro Amenabar brought back the traditional Gothic mansion in this chilling gem. Nicole Kidman and her light-sensitive children drift through their shadowy, way-too-big house, waiting for her husband to return from war and sensing that there are "others" inhabiting the house with them. We won't reveal the twist here, but the lesson is: Sometimes it's harder than expected to get the previous tenants to leave.

'The Haunted Mansion' (2003)
Yes, we know, it's a lousy movie. But the ride at Disney World is still the only "haunted mansion" we've ever actually visited, and we have fond childhood memories of it. Anyone know if it's for sale?

What haunted house are you most afraid of? Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com

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Don Kaye covers films, TV and entertainment for MSN.com and thinks his bathroom might be haunted.