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Image Credit: Travel Channel -
Image Credit: Lindsay Blake After the Storys moved to Los Angeles in 1924, the Victorian underwent several iterations, serving as everything from the Royal Trees Tavern restaurant/tea room to an office for the Los Angeles County Sheriff before returning to its original use as a private home in the ’50s, as it remains today.
With seven bedrooms, five baths, two parlors, a formal dining room, a cellar, a banquet room, a salon, a sunroom, and a reception room, the elaborate pad, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is not short on space. Other amenities include 13- to 14-foot ceilings throughout, a whopping seven fireplaces, a 50-foot long front porch, and two pantries (because one is just never enough!). You can check out interior photos of the residence here.
The land the house sits on has been subdivided several times over the years, the last of it sold off in the mid-1950s, at which point the eight homes immediately surrounding it were built. The construction changed the look of the place drastically, as evidenced by the imagery above. Today, the Woodbury-Story House sits on a 0.36-acre lot. Though not small by Southern California standards, it’s a considerable reduction from the original 937 acres.
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Image Credit: Travel Channel In his 2002 book “Haunted Houses of Pasadena,” parapsychological investigator/ psychic medium (try saying that one five times fast!) Michael J. Kouri deemed the residence one of the most haunted spots in the area. The “Ghost Adventures” crew confirmed his findings in a Season 16 episode. So I guess it is no surprise that the pad has become such a hotbed of horror filming. So prolific is the property that it would be impossible to chronicle all of its appearances here, but what follows are some highlights.
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Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Television “True Blood,” the production that led me to discover the house, shot its Season 5 episode titled “Gone, Gone, Gone” at Woodbury-Story. In it, the residence poses as the Gamma Kappa Tau fraternity house where Reverend Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian) and Russell Edgington (Denis O’Hare) slaughter an entire fraternity chapter, drink the members’ blood, and then proceed to dance amongst the bodies to Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” Romantic, I know, though I guess somewhat appropriate being that filming took place in the music room.
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Image Credit: Digital Entertainment Woodbury-Story’s film history actually dates back much farther than that. The interior of the Victorian appeared as the inside of the supposed Solvang-area house where reporters Jennifer (Barbara Bach), Karen (Karen Lamm), and Virginia (Lelia Goldoni) are terrorized in the 1980 horror flick “The Unseen.” Exterior scenes were shot a good seventy miles away at another stately Victorian located at 11840 West Telegraph Road in Santa Paula.
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Image Credit: Allumination Filmworks Coincidentally, the same is true for “Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes” (also known as “Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes”). In the 1989 made-for-television movie, the Telegraph Road Victorian appears in exterior shots of the supposed Dancott, Calif., house belonging to Alice Leacock (Jane Wyatt), while interiors were filmed at Woodbury-Story.
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Image Credit: Uncork'd Entertainment The interior also appeared in the franchise’s 2016 followup, “The Amityville Terror.”
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Image Credit: The Asylum The pad portrays the Winchester Mansion in 2009’s “Haunting of Winchester House,” which is loosely based upon the life of Sarah Winchester and her infamous San Jose mansion.
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Image Credit: The Asylum In 2010’s “8213: Gacy House,” Woodbury-Story masks as the home built atop the site of John Wayne Gacy’s former residence, where a team of paranormal investigators attempts to make contact with the serial killer.
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Image Credit: CBS Also in 2010, Melinda Gordon (Jennifer Love Hewitt) investigated a ghostly presence at Woodbury-Story in the Season 5 episode of “Ghost Whisperer” titled ‘Dead Ringer.”
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Image Credit: Full Moon Features The 2011 campy horror film “Killer Eye: Halloween Haunt,” which stars a pre-“Vanderpump Rules” Ariana Madix, takes place in its entirety at the Woodbury-Story House.
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Image Credit: XLrator Media Man (Wes Bentley) is held captive by Woman (Kate Bosworth) there in the 2014 thriller “Amnesiac.”
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Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Television In 2017, the property popped up as the sadistic “Judgement House,” which Kai Anderson (Evan Peters) and his sister, Winter (Billie Lourd), visit one Halloween night in the episode of “American Horror Story: Cult,” titled “Winter of our Discontent.” Peters also posed for the November 2012 issue of “Flaunt Magazine” at Woodbury-Story (covered in rats, no less!), as did Elle Fanning for the March 2016 issue of “Vogue Australia” and Millie Bobby Brown for the Summer 2016 issue of “So It Goes” (her first-ever solo magazine cover!).
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Image Credit: Sony Pictures Jamie (Bella Thorne) and her family live – and are tortured – at the Woodbury-Story House in the 2017 horror movie “Keep Watching.”
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Image Credit: Level 33 Entertainment; Restless Nomad Films The pad also appears in 2017’s “Attack of the Killer Donuts.” (Yes, that’s an actual movie. The premise, per IMDB – “A chemical accident turns ordinary donuts into bloodthirsty killers.” Because, why not?)
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake Now that’s what I call a list of credits! Most Hollywood hopefuls would give their eye teeth for a resume like that.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: The Woodbury Story House, aka Gamma Kappa Tau fraternity from “True Blood,” is located at 2606 North Madison Avenue in Altadena. Disclaimer: Please remember this is a private home. Do not trespass or bother the residents or the property in any way.
For more Dirt on the property, click over to the main page.