{"id":661447,"date":"2026-10-30T07:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T07:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/661447\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T07:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T07:26:09","slug":"experience-i-live-in-the-house-from-the-80s-horror-movie-poltergeist-life-and-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/661447\/","title":{"rendered":"Experience: I live in the house from the 80s horror movie Poltergeist | Life and style"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first saw Poltergeist at the movie theatre with my mom and sisters, back when it came out in 1982. I remember being scared, especially during the part when the toy clown drags little Robbie Freeling under the bed. At that age, the idea of a family experiencing something terrifying in the kind of everyday suburban house I was familiar with made a\u00a0big impression. Later, it became a\u00a0ritual of mine to put the movie on every\u00a0Halloween.<\/p>\n

I grew up in the Chicago area, but moved to California in the early 90s to go to art college. My sister moved there, too \u2013 to Simi Valley, not far from the house used as the Freeling family\u2019s home in the movie. I\u2019d drive past it when I visited her. A couple of years ago, I had a gut instinct that it would soon go up for sale. Sure enough, just weeks later I was sitting with my sister in her back yard when she looked up from her phone and said, \u201cHey! The Poltergeist house went on the market!\u201d<\/p>\n

As it happened, I\u2019d been looking for a new home for me and my three daughters, so I booked a viewing. The\u00a0house was being sold by the same\u00a0people who\u2019d owned it when it appeared in the movie. Walking in for the first time was the most bizarre experience \u2013 it still had honey-coloured retro furniture everywhere, and I got the trippy impression that I\u2019d travelled back to the 80s.<\/p>\n

There were multiple offers, so when mine was accepted I was very excited. I spent the first night at the house with just my dog, Emmy, who kept barking like crazy all night long. Even when I managed to fall asleep, I\u2019d wake up with pictures from the movie running through my head. Part of me felt very uneasy \u2013 what did I just purchase?<\/p>\n

The sale had attracted a lot of press attention, which made me realise I\u2019d entered into a different realm of home ownership. Families would stop and take selfies outside, and Poltergeist fans from all over the world started emailing me their memories of watching the movie. It occurred to me\u00a0I could give some of them the opportunity to experience the house for themselves by allowing them to visit or rent it for an overnight stay.<\/p>\n

\u2018My dog kept barking like crazy\u2019: Rachel Powers outside her home. Photograph: Bradley Meinz\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Without attempting to recreate the\u00a0movie set, I started adding playful\u00a0touches for these occasional visitors, sometimes with help from fans who had found particular items\u00a0seen onscreen. I had to have a\u00a0TV that played only static when switched on, as a nod to the one in the\u00a0film, and ensured guests had access to my own video cassette copy of Poltergeist, along with a stack of other\u00a080s movies. My\u00a0daughters are not fans of the movie, and were unimpressed when I\u00a0also added a 1980s Atari console.<\/p>\n

double quotation markGuests reported seeing flickering lights, or hearing mysterious voices when they picked up the landline receiver<\/p>\n

Whenever fans stayed in the house, I\u2019d take the girls camping, or we\u2019d go to\u00a0my sister\u2019s. I loved hearing the creative ways our visitors spent their time here \u2013 recreating the scene where a steak comes to life on a kitchen counter, or filming each other sliding along the floor as if being pushed by invisible hands. Many arrived with their own clown\u00a0doll.<\/p>\n

Some guests reported seeing flickering lights, or hearing mysterious voices when they picked up the landline receiver. The house still has old copper phone lines, so there\u2019s probably a perfectly ordinary explanation, though perhaps it\u2019s more fun not to know.<\/p>\n

But everyone agrees the house is a welcoming one \u2013 certainly more so than in the movie. The tree that comes alive outside the bedroom window was taken away after filming, and the muddy hole full of skeletons that the mother Diane Freeling falls into is now a finished swimming pool.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

I still get many requests from fans wanting to stay here, especially this time of year. We haven\u2019t taken any recent bookings, though Oliver Robins, who played Robbie Freeling, has dropped in a couple of times. Last Halloween he came and we handed out candy together in front of the house. He wore red jammies, just as he did as an eight-year-old boy in the movie.<\/p>\n

When we first moved in, I didn\u2019t necessarily picture this as my for ever home, but I think that\u2019s changing. Even my kids now say, \u201cMom, you can never let go of this house!\u201d It\u2019s a\u00a0unique piece of film history, and to be able to live in it is an honour.<\/p>\n

As told to Chris Broughton<\/p>\n

Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I first saw Poltergeist at the movie theatre with my mom and sisters, back when it came out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397],"class_list":["post-661447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}