8 murder mansions in creepy horror movies

As the horror movie Bodies Bodies Bodies drops, it’s time to go house hunting in streaming’s eight most glorious murder mansions. Every slaughter means it’s sales time! 

If you’ve ever bought a house, you’d probably rather have a mouth-breathing demon stand at your bedside like a toddler who wants water than have to deal with any more paperwork. Poltergeists can make themselves useful and push a broom around. And if grandad was poisoned before they found piles of dead wives in his basement, we’re saying thoughts, prayers, and knock a zero off the price.

It’s a killer housing market so if you’re buying, your Showmax estate agent has eight properties you might want to check out. Bad vibes, great bones!  

1. Bodies Bodies Bodies 

Nothing exceeds like excess! Fresh on the market, this opulent stone and plaster McMansion in Chappaqua, New York, has it all, from Georgian mouldings to Corinthian columns. There’s a pool with pergola, a two-storey library with a balcony, six bedrooms, nine marble-clad bathrooms, a sunken living room, a billiards room, chef’s kitchen, wine cellar, and a secret passageway. Every room comes with statement chandeliers and fireplaces, over-the-top window treatments ("curtains" doesn’t even begin to cover it), along with hardwood doors, floors, and built-in cabinetry. And there’s a grand staircase in the entryway that sets the scene for unwelcome guests to have that “little accident”.

Surrounded by 86 acres of private woodland where no one can hear you scream, it’s the ultimate party palace with plenty of space to play hide-and-seek-style games like Bodies Bodies Bodies. Some cleanup is required, particularly in the blood spattered bathrooms and kitchen, and the electrical power has been known to fail in a hurricane. But with a little TLC, this slaughterhouse could become a laughter house again. Get it before the ghosts do. 

2. Crimson Peak 

The floors are oozing red clay and this imposing stone mansion is sinking into the ground under the weight of the horrors it holds, but fixer-upper Allerdale Hall is the last word in richly detailed Gothic Revival fantasy. The magnificent, three-storey entry hall boasts spiky carved wooden tracery that’s unbelievably stylish for falling onto, with all the balconies and staircases you could ever desire for pushing and falling over. And the gaping hole in the roof makes it construction-ready for you to instal an iron and glass dome. The house boasts a lift cage to take you down into the forbidden basement’s clay mines, where deep, brick-lined wells of clay hide a multitude of sins.

You can blame the unsettling groaning and shrieking that your new bride might otherwise attribute to ghosts to the house’s indoor plumbing. And the remains of your previous victims will enjoy scuttling down the long, narrow passages while running their clawed, blackened fingers along the arsenic green walls. 10/10, would haunt.  

3. Torn Hearts 

Nashville’s Dutch Manor, once famed as the residence of country music star Harper Dutch (Katey Sagal), has just come up for sale! High walls and iron gates featuring the Dutchess Sisters’ D symbol keep out all but the nosiest sightseers from your vast, tree-lined grounds. Inside, the two-storey stone mansion is a time capsule of fringed, sequined and bedazzled late 1980s glam that’ll suit any modern fan of ultra-feminine maximalism today.

Expect painted wood panelling and columns, velvet curtains and stained glass windows. There’s a platinum-album-lined in-home music studio filled with instruments and vintage recording equipment, where you can fight over who’s really the better musician. The pink ensuite dressing room doubles as a gun room. And you’ll find treasured memorabilia like eyeballs and fingers in jars in the secret shrine room with its pink neon lighting. What a treat.

Sold as is, you’ll just need to patch up some bullet holes in the plaster, mop the blood off the walls and photo-studio glamour shots, deep clean those deep pile carpets, throw out about 1 000 liquor bottles, and this baby will be good to go. The vintage stage outfits and longing for a faded career are yours to keep.  

4. Voice from the Stone 

The cold, grey walls of this ancient Tuscan castle are said to whisper, and right now they’re whispering “buy me”. The property has been in the same family for 1 200 years and includes the surrounding flooded stone quarries, a nude sculpture of Verena (Emilia Clarke) – the family’s childminder from the 1950s – a natural history museum’s worth of taxidermied animals, a tall tower that’ll entice your children to stand right on the edge, and a marble mausoleum in which you may conveniently bury people alive. There are plenty of ornate tombs to choose from, as 40 generations have been buried in the stone.

A tireless ghost housekeeper cares for the vast interiors with the soaring ceilings and zillions of windows, which you’ll find to be a significant saving on your bills. And the classical garden with its established trees and hedgerows, eerie mist-filled woods and crenellated castle walls make this the ultimate fantasy spot for playing lady of the manor, however briefly.  

5. IT: Chapter One 

If you’re looking for a property with, let’s say, some added dimensions, might we suggest The Well House at 29 Neibolt Street in Derry, Maine. Currently run down and uninhabited aside from the occasional rotting homeless person under the porch, addicts, nosy children, and an ancient alien spider from outer space, The Well House  boasts original Second Empire architecture. But the house has a long history and beneath its basement you’ll find traces of the town’s founding settlers.

As the Well House’s name suggests, its cistern is the key point connecting the entire town’s waste water system, and keen explorers will enjoy exploring the vast stone cavern and sewer tunnels beneath the house. Inside you’ll find many themed rooms with antiques and collectables that will pass to you along with the house, including a curious collection of clown dolls. Should you choose to give this house the TLC it deserves, we’ll throw in a reminder service and arrange for you and your loved ones to enjoy a prolonged holiday out of town every 27 years. Why? Sometimes it’s just nice to get away. Shoo, now.  

6. Crooked House 

If you’d kill for a little vintage style, Three Gables just outside London (nicknamed The Crooked House by locals, and a twin to Minley Manor in Hampshire) has all the old English country manor glamour that your dark heart could desire. Previously owned by Greek-British business tycoon Aristide Leonides, Three Gables was built in the style of a gothic French chateau during the 1850s and features a long drive with gate house to establish your poshness, a 600-metre avenue of Wellingtonia trees, and swathes of formal gardens. Inside, aside from the spiky tracery in the grand foyer, the separate rooms reflect the interests of the extended Leonides family.

Magda’s (Gillian Anderson) dramatic drawing room harks back to her prime and her days on the stage, for example, while Brenda’s (Christina Hendricks) bright, plush pink drawing room reflects her own past as a casino dancer in Las Vegas. And Aristide’s wood-panelled private study is very much the room of a travelled English gentleman. Three Gables’ imposing architecture makes it ideal for any controlling patriarch who wants to keep his huge family under one roof, where he can keep them squelched under his thumb. Locals are still talking about the four sensational deaths at Three Gables and its grounds during the 1950s, so it’s a podcast waiting to happen.  

7. Knives Out  

If you’re keen on the whole controlling patriarch angle but are looking for a slightly cosier property in the US, do consider the Thrombey mansion (wood-panelled interiors resemble those of the Ames Mansion in Boston, while exteriors recall Hill Hurst mansion in Natick, Massachusetts). Built in the 1880s, this Gothic Revival mansion had an entire family backstabbing, front stabbing, poisoning and strangling to inherit the estate following the murder of crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer).

If you dream of living inside the board game Cluedo, complete with weapons in every room, the Thrombey mansion is a must-have … if you can persuade the current owner to part with their inheritance. Features include a small writer’s attic studio and far more imposing library, and fun assorted knickknacks like a “Wheel of Knives” sculpture to rival the Iron Throne in Game of Thrones, a full suit of armour, wind-up automata, and a doll house murder diorama in the style of those made by Frances Glessner Lee in the 1940s. The Thrombey mansion rewards anyone with an eye for detail, especially fans of Thrombey’s crime novels. 

8. Elizabeth Harvest 

Tired of gothic revivals and looking for a more modern space in which to contemplate your existential horrors? This futuristic-looking Bauhaus extravaganza of exposed concrete was the main residence of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr Henry Kellenberg (Ciarán Hinds) and his new bride, Elizabeth (Abbey Lee). Built on a magnificent mountainside estate in Bogotá, Colombia, this sprawling, multi-level mansion by architect Carlos Granada features double volume rooms for that inhumanly imposing and isolating scale, an indoor swimming pool, orchid room, luxurious master suite with wood panelling, and interiors inspired by Adolf Loos’s designs from the 1920s, along with repeated circular patterns and mirrors that reflect Dr Kellenberg’s life’s work.

Inside you’ll find velvet furnishings to soften the architecture, and sculptures with animal and sexual motifs. We would advise against exploring the doctor’s blue-lit Bluebeard’s chamber of secrets – his basement laboratory – or any digging in the house’s gardens and grounds. Sometimes it’s better not to know.  

Still haven’t found what you’re looking for? We can set up additional viewings of the Lightstone Mansion in Violent Night, Bill Murray’s Zombieland mansion in Beverly Hills, the Phelps family’s Victorian mansion in Shining Vale, Connecticut, the Preaker family’s Victorian mansion in Sharp Objects, the Tudor-style Ardham Lodge in Lovecraft Country, and the Boone Family’s Queen Anne Revival mansion in Chapelwaite.  

Your dream murder mansion is out there, waiting for you.  

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