Rachel Powers, 53, grew up loving the Poltergeist films – a franchise famously rumoured to be subject to a real-life curse. Then the house from the first film started calling to her…
Gazing at the famous house, across its neat front lawn, I took a few snaps through the car window.
Just being near the place felt surreal…
I’d first seen the cult 1982 horror flick, Poltergeist, in the cinema, aged nine.
Mum had taken me and my younger sisters to see the film, which was about a family whose lives got turned upside down by paranormal events in their new home.
Although I’d screamed the place down in the scene where a clown popped out from under the bed, I’d loved the movie – in particular Dana Freeling, the teenage big sister character.
Now I’d seen all the sequels, and re-watching the original had become a Halloween ritual.
I’d also heard the rumours about the film franchise being cursed, due to four cast members dying during or soon after filming.
Dominique Dunne, who played Dana, was strangled by her former partner, John Sweeney, outside her home the same year the film came out. Sweeney had been jailed for voluntary manslaughter.
Heather O’Rourke, who played younger sister Carole Anne, died in 1987, aged just 12, during a bowel operation, months before the third instalment hit screens.
Evil preacher Kane had lost his life to stomach cancer soon after shooting Poltergeist II, while Will Sampson, who’d played Taylor the Native American shaman, died in
1987 after undergoing a heart and lung transplant.
Sampson – a medicine man in real life – was also said to have performed an actual exorcism after shooting wrapped one night.
As an adult my job in consumer electronics had taken me to California, home
of Silicon Valley.
One of my sisters lived just two miles from the Poltergeist house, which was in the middle of an ordinary-looking estate.
Now, on a visit to see her, I’d driven by to check it out.
Although I knew the house’s interior had been recreated in a studio for filming, it blew my mind to think the exterior scenes had been shot right where I was standing!
'They'll have had loads of bids'
A year on, heading to visit my sister once again, I passed the turn-off for the Poltergeist house. And this time I got the weirdest gut feeling…
That house is going on the market soon.
I shrugged the thought off. Even if I was right, it wasn’t like I was going to buy the place!
Although I had started house-hunting in the area, with my eldest daughter at college I was looking for something smaller and cheaper.
I still hadn’t found the right property a month later.
However, in August 2024, when my sister said, ‘The Poltergeist house has been put on the market…’
‘I know,’ I replied, thinking how my intuition had been right. ‘They’ll have had loads of bids. I bet it’s gone already.’
‘It’s literally just been listed,’ she replied quickly. ‘Apparently it’s the first time it’s gone on sale in 45 years.’
Next thing I was calling my estate agent…
Then I was actually standing in the Poltergeist kitchen!
The apparent ‘curse’ didn’t stop me putting in an offer. Looking at the vast number of cast and crew that must have worked on such a big franchise, four deaths – although sad – didn’t sound statistically unlikely.
I was up against several other bidders, but just after Halloween in 2024, the house became mine.
Standing in each room, picturing the scenes that
had been set there, took my breath away!
Not that my girls understood.
‘Remind me, why did you buy this again?’ my 17-year old asked, looking around, baffled.
It was only after I was under contract on the house – and started doing a bit of research – that I heard another dark rumour about the film.
Some said writer and producer Steven Spielberg had cut costs by using real human skeletons to film the famous swimming pool scene, where it’s filled with bodies!
The claim had never been verified, so again, I shrugged
it off.
Still, my first night in the house I couldn’t sleep because my German shepherd Emmy kept barking at something I couldn’t see.
And I hadn’t long bought
the place when a team from
the paranormal show Ghost Adventures asked to investigate the property.
I hadn’t yet spent enough time in the house to know if they’d find anything. But one of the production crew brought over a polaroid they’d snapped in the house, which seemed to show a weird kind of ‘energy’ near my head.
Then one of the hosts, Zak Bagans, told me the house was haunted – but that there wasn’t anything evil there.
After filming had finished, the team revealed what they’d found.
They’d turned up with a doll that had belonged to Heather O’Rourke, placing it on
a shelf in the kids’ bedroom – where it had fallen over by itself. They’d picked up a
voice in the same room.
They’d recorded a fluctuating electromagnetic field (EMF) in the hallway and around the television – where the spirits communicated with ‘Carole Anne’ in the movie, plus a shape near the TV too.
I wasn’t freaked out, more curious.
By then I’d already set up a website for the house, explaining how I was restoring it to its Eighties movie glory.
I was using old photos of the house to match the wallpaper, beams and lights to the film and scouring eBay and charity shops for furniture and ornaments.
Some things found me. Like, there’s a glass of milk that smashes to pieces thanks to an unseen force over breakfast, early in the film. I randomly came across the same glasses, while queuing at the checkout of a local off-licence and bought the last seven!
Then I spotted the exact material of Carole Anne’s
floral duvet cover on a last-minute dash to get bits for
one of my girls’ science
project one evening.
I soon began getting emails from fans around the world thanking me for preserving
the house and saying how much it meant to them. That, and seeing the number of people who still drove by the house for a look, as I had, helped me decide to start letting it out to fellow fans for
a few months each year.
It was amazing seeing the joy on people’s faces when they walked in and put their hands on the TV – which was how the spirits communicated with Carole Anne in the film.
The kitchen floor is taped up as it was in the film, and again like Carole Anne, guests can put on a helmet and pretend a ghost is pushing them across the room! I’ve put fake skeletons in the pool and added a VCR where fans can watch a VHS of the film.
One fan brought his own projector and reel and screened it in the backyard for friends!
Before long, the guest book was filling with spooky experiences.
One guest described the kitchen lights flickering, another hearing faint conversations when they picked up the old-fashioned landline phone – although they hadn’t been able to make out what the voices were saying…
Other visitors reported a light beaming on to the living room wall.
My logical brain wants to blame dodgy light bulbs or crossed phone wires. But who’s to say?
The house also attracts a lot of online content creators, and there’s definitely something inspiring about being here.
I’ve even started writing a novel myself since moving in!
I recently learnt that Universal Studios in Hollywood hold horror nights – including a tour of the studio replica of the Poltergeist House. My sister took me for my birthday and it was pretty weird getting to walk through my own home, inside a movie studio!
Living in a piece of horror history can be wild – but I wouldn’t change a thing.
● For more information, visit poltergeisthouse.com