'Haunting of Hill House' Homeowners Claim They Have Witnessed Real Hauntings

In the weeks since the release of Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House, many viewers have wondered [...]

By Patrick Cavanaugh

In the weeks since the release of Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House, many viewers have wondered if there's any truth to the horrors depicted in the series. Mike Flanagan may have adapted the storyline from Shirley Jackson's novel of the same name, but the former owners of the house that serves as a stand-in for the haunted home reportedly suffered real haunts.

The interior of the show's house was constructed in Atlanta, Georgia, with the establishing shots of the home being a mansion in LaGrange, Georgia. Neil and Trish Liechty bought Bisham Manor in 2013 and claim that "four or five" ghosts live there. The couple reported that music would play from corners of the house that didn't have sound systems, the smell of tobacco would mysteriously emerge, and objects would vanish and reappear weeks later without explanation.

The duo believe the spirits originate in the 1920s and were the residents of a building that used to exist on the location. In 1997, the home was remodeled, though the homeowner at the time kept one room from the original structure intact. The couple claimed that this original room was related to the bizarre events.

Neil and Trish Liechty sold the home a year ago and reportedly have no interest in watching the series. Unfortunately, moving didn't put an end to the horrors, with the two claiming that the unexplainable phenomena continues in their new home.

As far as the locations that inspired Jackson to write her novel, it is said that two different homes served as sources of restless spirits.

In the book Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin, the author claims that the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California brought in the idea of a house full of spirits seeking to impact the lives of those who live there. The mansion was constructed by Sarah Winchester, the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, who believed she was being pursued by the spirits who lost their lives to the weapon. To confuse them, she enlisted construction workers to craft a home with countless twists, turns, and deadends in hopes of confusing the spirits who sought vengeance against her.

Also revealed in Franklin's book is that it was visiting the ruins of a burned-out apartment in Harlem, New York that provided Jackson with the closest she'd come to having her own encounter with ghosts.

When Flanagan first witnessed Bisham Manor, he knew he had stumbled across his perplexing setting for the story.

"We scouted for about a month and a half trying to find our Hill House, which is a struggle in the south because everything looks like this sprawling southern plantation. Then we just found this house that was so weird, it's so schizophrenic in its architecture," Flanagan shared with Den of Geek. "Our location scouts literally stumbled upon it out there in the woods. The whole crew piled in a van to go look at it, I remember getting out and walking a slow circle around it the first time, it seemed to evoke everything that I felt when I was reading the book. That his house was just off, it was schizophrenic. The more you looked at it the less sense it made. That was just a very fortunate find for us."

The first season of The Haunting of Hill House is streaming now on Netflix.

[H/T The Blast]

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