The Old Man’s House from “Night of the Demons”

Ah, how I love creepy old houses.  Horror flicks?  Not so much.  Which is strange, I know, being that I am such a fan of Halloween, all things scary, and movies in general.  I do absolutely love horror films that are done well, though (hello, Scream!), but find that the vast majority are pretty pointless (Phantasm, anyone?).  That being said, I will never stop stalking locations from them.  A couple of months ago, I came across this screen capture of a fabulously spooky old house from the 1988 slasher flick Night of the Demons on The Location Scout website and practically started drooling.  Though the capture was slightly blurry due to movement in the scene, the view of the home showed that it was nothing short of tall, dark, and looming.  I knew I had to see it in person and jotted down the address immediately.  I finally got out to stalk it a couple of weeks back while I was visiting L.A. and, though it has recently been fixed up and is no longer as spectacularly creepy as it appeared onscreen, the place did not disappoint.

Originally built in 1898 as a single-family home, the 5-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,706-square-foot property was transformed into a duplex in 1942.

As you can see below, the pad boasts two address numbers – 2833 and 2833 ½.

The residence is located in the Menlo Avenue – West Twenty-ninth Street Historic District, an area of University Park that is comprised of a wide selection of architecturally significant homes that date back to the late 1800s.  The neighborhood, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is comprised of more than fifty Victorian, Classic Revival, and Craftsman-style dwellings, each of them boasting unique detailing.  The Night of the Demons house was built in the Dutch Colonial Revival-style and features a pedimented front porch with columns and an elaborate tympanum (yeah, I had to look that one up, too), a gambrel roof, a Palladian window, and carved diamond insets.

According to the neighborhood’s National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form from 1987, the home was built for Jennie V. Mitchell, one of the only African American women to own property in Los Angeles at the time.  Jennie, who never lived in the residence, is featured in the book The Negro Trail Blazers of California.  From 1902 to 1904, the pad was occupied by Bernard Potter, a lawyer who wrote 1950’s Los Angeles Yesterday and Today.

In 2014, the property was sold, underwent a renovation, and today serves as student housing for the University of Southern California.  You can check out some interior photos of what it looked at the time it was on the market here and some images of what it currently looks like here.

The residence appears twice in Night of the Demons.  It first pops up in the movie’s opening scene in which some teenagers harass the Old Man (Harold Ayer) – and I’m not being disrespectful here, the character’s name is actually listed as “Old Man” – while he is standing in front of his house on Halloween night.  The Old Man then proceeds to harass Judy (Cathy Podewell), a teen girl who happens by, before promising his revenge on all “damn rotten kids” while menacingly holding up razor blades and apples.

The dwelling then pops up again in the movie’s closing scene, in which the Old Man walks outside to retrieve his newspaper the following morning.

After grabbing the paper, the Old Man heads back inside, whereupon his wife serves him an apple pie she baked that morning using all of the leftover Halloween apples.  You can imagine what happens next.  Spoiler alert – it ain’t pretty!

I was floored to discover that the actual interior of the residence was used in the filming of that scene.  As you can see below, the stairwell visible in the segment is a direct match to the staircase pictured in an MLS photograph of the home from 2014.

Though the MLS photos did not feature a full image of the dining room area, the walls were visible in one of the pictures and, amazingly, they look to have been the same color pink in 2014 that they were when Night of the Demons was filmed in 1988!  As you can see in current images of the home, though, the walls have since been painted taupe, so that is no longer the case.

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A big THANK YOU to The Location Scout for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Old Man’s house from Night of the Demons is located at 2833 Menlo Avenue in University Park.

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