The Buhrman House from “Truth Be Told”

I am a firm believer in love at first sight.  I definitely had hearts in my eyes upon catching a glimpse of the stunning Victorian where the Buhrman family lived on Truth Be Told.  The towering Queen Anne, pitched atop a leafy hill, was striking, to say the least, and I promptly set out to find it.  Though set in San Francisco and its environs, little of the new Apple TV+ series was actually lensed there – most filming took place in L.A.  But I figured the Buhrman pad had to be one of the show’s few NorCal locales.  I couldn’t imagine such a unique property being in Los Angeles and not coming across it in all my years of stalking.  So I began my hunt in the Bay Area, but after countless fruitless hours decided to switch to L.A. on the off chance it might be there.  Lo and behold, I discovered the place listed on several online location databases, including Malibu Locations which showed it as having an address number of “2150” and being in Altadena, shockingly enough!  How I had never seen it during my almost two decades of living in nearby Pasadena was beyond me!  I headed right over to Google, searched for “2150,” “Victorian,” and “Altadena,” was led to 2150 Mendocino Lane and all became clear.  As you can see above, no part of the Buhrman’s fabulous Victorian can actually be seen from the street, though it is apparent in aerials.  Making the pad even more elusive, the view shown on Truth Be Told was actually of its rear entrance, situated off a small private road named Kengary Lane.

[ad]

The massive abode is Truth Be Told’s central location.  It is at the supposed Menlo Park pad that author/professor Chuck Buhrman (Nic Bishop) is murdered on Halloween night 1999, thereby setting off the main storyline.  Though featured throughout the series’ eight-episode run, we oddly don’t catch many full views of the place, the best being in episode 7, titled “Live Thru This,” as seen below.  The shot appears to have been digitally altered because the house is not actually visible at all from Kengary Lane due to a plethora of foliage surrounding it, as I sadly discovered upon arriving to stalk it.  I figured the property was still blogworthy, nonetheless.  (I did not trespass to take the photo below, by the way.  I stayed on Altadena Drive, which is public, and zoomed in on my camera for the shot.)

Per Zillow, the sprawling 3-story Victorian boasts 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 3,162 square feet, a rock fireplace, a 2.7-acre lot, a detached garage, and a wraparound porch.  But neither the fencing out front . . .

. . . nor at the rear provide any sort of clue as to the beauty that lies just beyond them up the driveway.

What I wouldn’t give to see the home up close!

As you can see in this photo, a sign by the property’s front door reads “Circa 1886, Estab. here Sept. 1, 1984,” so I’m wondering if it was initially located elsewhere and then moved to its current location, which sounds crazy but isn’t all that out of the ordinary in Los Angeles.

Interior scenes taking place at the Buhrman house were shot elsewhere.  As you can see in these images as compared to the screen captures below, what was shown onscreen bears little resemblance to the actual inside of 2150 Mendocino Lane.

A reader named Mimi wrote in to let me know that the Buhrman house also portrayed the Minnesota residence of Chrissa Maxwell (Sammi Hanratty) in the 2009 straight-to-video movie An American Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong.

The property popped up as the home of a serial child abductor in the Season 5 episode of Criminal Minds titled “Mosley Lane,” which aired in 2010.

And fellow stalker Richard (you may remember him from this post and this post) let me know that the Victorian appeared in the recently-aired Season 1 episode of 9-1-1: Lone Star titled “Monster Inside” as the residence of a man who refuses to believe his mother has passed away.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The Buhrman house from Truth Be Told is located at 2150 Mendocino Lane in Altadena.