#The 10 Spookiest Old Dark Haunted House Movies

“#The 10 Spookiest Old Dark Haunted House Movies” , Our latest 31 Days of Horror Lists kicks down the door of cinema’s best old dark houses.

October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true. Most people take that to mean highlighting one horror movie a day, but here at FSR, we’ve taken that up a spooky notch or nine by celebrating each day with a top ten list. This article about the best old dark house movies is part of our ongoing series 31 Days of Horror Lists.

A house is something human. They’re built with purpose. They’re built from dreams. Blood, sweat, and imagination are hammered into every wall and floorboard. In each nail, a prayer is answered, but the response may not be what you had in mind.

The haunted houses you’ll find below are poisonous domiciles. The dreams found within soured into nightmares and the guests who dare to cross their thresholds fare about as well as any unwanted cockroach. These buildings are shocking structures designed by filmmakers to cement their desired dreads.

Spooky old dark house movies are a dime a dozen, but too often their foundations lack character. Our beloved Boo Crew — a.k.a. Chris Coffel, Valerie Ettenhofer, Kieran Fisher, Rob Hunter, Meg Shields, Anna Swanson, Jacob Trussell, and yours truly — have erected a list of films featuring mighty mansions and lowly lodgings overstuffed with hateful dread. Each movie selected contains a bold architectural innovation mutated by repulsive humanity.

10. Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

What a dick move. Here we go promising a list of the best old dark house movies only to start it with a brightly lit film set in a high-tech home with glass walls. A new bright house if you will. Of course, that’s part of what makes Steve Beck‘s remake of William Castle’s 1960 original so damn entertaining and memorable. How can a modern smart house with see-through walls and illuminated floors be creepy?

The multitude of non-standard door locks certainly help, as do the ominous collections of geared creations, but it’s the prison cells in the basement that really tip the scales. Ghosts! They hold ghosts, and once the angry undead are out and roaming the halls — visible only to those with special glasses, naturally — the film’s adrenalized terror ramps up alongside the fun. Gone are the usual hiding spaces for jump scares and thrills, and in their place sits a collision of glass, metal, ectoplasm, and flesh. Welcome home. (Rob Hunter)

9. The Old Dark House (1932)

When trapped in a thunderstorm, any potential shelter should come with relief. Of course, not if that shelter is the Femm estate with its Boris Karloff butler and family of mysterious psychotics huddled within. Sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease. The titular Old Dark House looks like any other country home you’ve seen on postcards. It’s a collection of passages and tiny boxes, but hidden behind every door is a secret where whispers echo like screams.

James Whale knew how to bend a set toward terror, and the tricks he learned on Frankenstein solidify with The Old Dark House. The director weaponizes lighting and sound design, transforming his studio sets into nightmares of shadow and incoherent rustling. The Femm house will have you nostalgically dreaming of the luxury and comfort of Bavarian castles. (Brad Gullickson)

8. House (1985)

House is a haunted mansion flick with more on its mind than creaky floorboards and things that go bump in the night. The supernatural elements serve as a metaphor for PTSD, though the film is packed with too much humor to work as a truly effective examination of the condition.

That said, where the movie does succeed is in its ability to balance the laughs with horror elements that are truly menacing at times. More than anything, though, the movie is just pure bonkers and constantly entertaining. The practical effects work is delightfully ghoulish as well, but that’s just a small part of House’s many spooky charms. (Kieran Fisher)

7. The Others (2001)

You don’t need direct sunlight to be able to see that the old manor in The Others is one of horror’s best decrepit houses. It’s got all the hallmarks of a spooky English estate: rolling fog, stuffy furniture, and vast, unexplored corridors. This is all made even more ominous by Nicole Kidman’s pitch-perfect performance as a paranoid mother hellbent on keeping her children, who have a sensitivity to light, away from the damaging rays at all costs.

From the foreboding gated entrance to the shadowy interiors, every inch of this Jersey property instills doom and gloom. Even before ghosts enter the picture, this is clearly the perfect location for a haunt. (Anna Swanson)

6. The Innocents (1961)

Crafting the perfect haunted house is a magic trick. For The Innocents, most of what you see of Bly Manor exists on the sound stages within Shepperton Studios, while a facade was constructed on the lot. For the larger exterior shots, director Jack Clayton selected the old gothic mansion that stood defiantly atop Sheffield Park in East Sussex.

Lit and shadowed by Freddie Francis (who wouldn’t shoot another film until David Lynch came calling for The Elephant Man), Bly takes on the life of a fist. As Deborah Kerr slinks through its corridors, the audience can sense the walls tightening. There are secrets in this fabrication; dark truths better left unsaid, but are definitely, purposefully doomed to reveal themselves. (Brad Gullickson)

5. The Haunting (1963)

“An evil old house, the kind some people call haunted, is like an undiscovered country waiting to be explored,” is how Robert Wise’s adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House begins, and it’s a perfect summation of what is so terrifying about the “old dark house” concept. A house that is as alive as a jungle is an indescribable horror that is so audacious that you want to engage with it because it dares to push the boundaries of the typical ghost story – and your own imagination.

This isn’t a place filled with spirits but instead infested with an age-old evil that is intellectually incomprehensible. Davis Boulton’s cinematography is meant to evoke the looming menace of the house like it was some gigantic dormant creature you fear rousing. While we do linger on the dead stares of marble statues – in what is likely the first time creepy-ass sculptures were used to motivate fear – it’s the dramatic camera movements and sound design that epitomize the living, breathing structure.

It doesn’t take a cinephile to realize that all of The Haunting’s camera tricks and jump scares would be lifted wholesale by Sam Raimi for his Evil Dead franchise. Just look at the paranormal activity Nell (Julie Harris) and Thea (Claire Bloom) experience on their first night in the house and tell me that isn’t exactly what happens during Ash’s cabin freakout scenes in Evil Dead II.

Do know that this Haunting ain’t really like the popular Netflix adaptation from Mike Flanagan? The ideas and themes the show explores are all here though, such as the juxtaposition between the house and the mental health problems of its family, so if your patience typically wears thin for classic films, just know there is a lot for you to discover here as a fan of the show. (Jacob Trussell)

4. The Legend of Hell House (1973)

Shag carpet, erotic statues, and more wood fixtures than a shipyard: this is the Belasco House. The (don’t laugh) “Mount Everest of haunted houses.” It was built by a 6’5” sadist, and when he died, he never really left. A scientist, his wife, and two mediums enter the mansion with the intent to prove the existence of the afterlife. That is if the house doesn’t kill them first.

While many of the old dark houses on this list feature a lingering malevolent spirit, few are as perverted or as tacky as Belasco. The man never met a velvet lampshade he didn’t like. He painted wood paneling periwinkle — unspeakable evil indeed. The Belasco manor is an over-saturated, over-decorated nightmare. All the more chandeliers to shake and fireplaces to erupt, I suppose. Oh to be murdered by a gaudy, ’70s mansion. That’s how I want to go. (Meg Shields)

3. House (1977)

Upset that her father has remarried, Gorgeous decides to visit her aunt for the summer. She takes six of her best friends with her, all of whom are named after what they like to do — Kung Fu because she likes martial arts, Melody because she likes to make music, and so on. When they make it to the aunt’s house, weird shit begins to happen.

House is a haunted house movie, technically, but to try and explain what happens in it is nearly impossible. It is the definition of surrealism. There’s a cat that meows a lot and is maybe controlling things to some degree. At one point the decapitated head of one of the girls is floating around and bites one of the other girls on the butt. Look man, it’s a weird movie. I don’t know what Nobuhiko Obayashi was on when he made the film, but I thank him for it because the world is better for it. (Chris Coffel)

2. House on Haunted Hill (1959)

While William Castle shot the majority of this film on sound stages, the exteriors belong to the famous Ennis House tucked away in the hillside L.A. neighborhood of Los Feliz. The director was a firm believer in working smarter, not harder. If genius already exists, take advantage. Don’t torture yourself trying to replicate another person’s masterpiece.

The Ennis House sprung from the mind of Frank Lloyd Wright, and it’s crafted using his textile block style. The technique visually connects the residence to ancient Mayan architecture and will cause you to scramble for your Lego bricks. Even when it was brand spanking new, the structure suggested a deep history where all manner of nasty deeds could have occurred.

The house was used in film productions as early as 1933, but it didn’t reach its iconic status until after the release of House on Haunted Hill. In the years that followed, the location became a hot property appearing in Blade Runner, The Karate Kid Part III, Black Rain, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Still, it’s in House on Haunted Hill where the Ennis House exudes the drippiest of dread. (Brad Gullickson)

1. The Changeling (1980)

The best haunted houses keep pieces of their history within their walls, physical relics that tie the past and present together in an indelible and often terrifying way. In The Changeling, grieving composer John (George C. Scott) moves into a Seattle mansion that has stood empty for over a decade. The unsettled house soon begins to tell John its sad story through an eerie music box, a possessed wheelchair, a self-shattering mirror, and more.

Peter Medak’s meditation on grief and family is a masterful work of horror, one that delivers scare after genuine scare through thoughtful writing and cinematic execution. By the film’s end, when all is revealed, The Changeling makes it easy to believe that a place really could have unspeakable past trauma imprinted on its very foundation. (Valerie Ettenhofer)

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