Every one of these films points back to a real address, a real family, and a real (if often disputed) haunting claim. Whether or not you believe the paranormal parts, the houses themselves and the people who lived in them are documented fact.
1. The Conjuring (2013)
Based on the Perron family, who moved into a 14-room farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island in January 1971 and lived there for a decade while reporting escalating paranormal activity, from moving objects to alleged physical attacks. The case was investigated by real paranormal researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren, though their credibility has been widely disputed by skeptics who call them con artists. The real farmhouse, now known as “The Conjuring House,” still stands and offers paid tours and overnight stays.
2. The Amityville Horror (1979)
The most famous haunted house story in American pop culture centers on 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York, where Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered six family members in 1974. When George and Kathy Lutz bought the house the following year at a steep discount, they claimed to be driven out after just 28 days by violent supernatural activity. DeFeo's own defense attorney later admitted to helping fabricate parts of the haunting story to support an insanity defense, and every subsequent owner of the real house has reported nothing unusual.
3. My Amityville Horror (2012)
This documentary offers a very different angle on the same house: Daniel Lutz, the eldest of Kathy Lutz's children and just nine years old during the alleged haunting, gives his first on-camera account in 35 years. The film focuses less on ghosts and more on Daniel's portrait of his abusive stepfather George Lutz, suggesting some of the “haunting” trauma may have had a very human source.
4. The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)
Based on the Snedeker family, who in 1986 rented a house at 208 Meriden Avenue in Southington, Connecticut — a former funeral home — while seeking cancer treatment for their teenage son nearby. The family reported violent personality changes, physical attacks, and eventually brought in Ed and Lorraine Warren and a priest, who performed an exorcism in 1988. The book's own co-author, Ray Garton, later publicly distanced himself from the story's accuracy, and neighbors and later owners disputed the family's claims.
5. Winchester (2018)
Helen Mirren stars as Sarah Winchester, heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, who really did spend decades continuously building and rebuilding her sprawling San Jose, California mansion — now the real Winchester Mystery House, a functioning tourist attraction. The film dramatizes the 1906 earthquake that struck the house, though claims that Sarah built the maze-like estate to appease the ghosts of people killed by Winchester rifles come from a 1967 book, not verified historical record.
6. The Watcher (2022)
This Netflix limited series, created by Ryan Murphy, dramatizes the real ordeal of the Broaddus family, who bought a house at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey in 2014 and began receiving threatening letters from an anonymous stalker calling themselves “The Watcher.” The case was first reported in a 2018 New York Magazine article and remains unsolved to this day; unlike the show, the real Broadduses never actually moved into the house and eventually sold it.
7. The Conjuring 2 (2016)
The sequel shifts to the real Enfield Poltergeist case in North London, where the Hodgson family reported disturbing activity centered on 11-year-old Janet Hodgson between 1977 and 1979, one of the most documented and debated poltergeist cases in British history, investigated at the time by researchers Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair.
8. The Nun / The Conjuring Universe expansion
While the demonic nun Valak is a Conjuring-franchise invention rather than tied to one real haunted house, the film's Romanian abbey setting draws on the broader real-world tradition of reportedly haunted European monasteries that inspired much of Ed and Lorraine Warren's original case files referenced across the franchise.
9. The Girl in the Basement (2021) and the real Fritzl house
Directly inspired by the horrifying real case of Elisabeth Fritzl, who was held captive by her father in a concealed basement beneath the family home in Amstetten, Austria, for 24 years. Though set in a house rather than a “haunted” one in the supernatural sense, it's routinely grouped with real-location horror for its unflinching depiction of an actual structure engineered to imprison someone in plain sight of a family living upstairs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: Is the real Conjuring house open to the public?
Yes. The Harrisville, Rhode Island farmhouse where the Perron family lived is privately owned and now operates as “The Conjuring House,” offering paid tours and overnight paranormal investigation stays, separate from the current owners of the original property title history.
Q2: Did the Lutz family really experience a haunting at the Amityville house?
It's heavily disputed. Ronald DeFeo Jr.'s own defense attorney, William Weber, later said he helped the Lutzes develop the haunting narrative to support an insanity defense and generate book income, and no owner since the Lutzes has reported anything paranormal at the property.
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