The smash anthology series “American Horror Story” first premiered in 2011 with a season revolving around a terrifying turn-of-the-century mansion known as the “Murder House.” The property — a sprawling estate bedecked with Tiffany glass, mahogany ceilings and a ballroom with soaring ceilings — factors heavily into the plot detailing a couple’s move from Boston to a mysterious Los Angeles home whose shadowy past is creeping into the present.
The actual “Murder House,” as seen in “AHS,” is a historically protected property known as the Rosenheim Mansion, which sits near LA’s Koreatown neighborhood. Named after its architect, Alfred Rosenheim, who built it as his personal residence, the six-bedroom home was considered the finest in the city upon its completion in 1908. Yet over the last thirty years, the Rosenheim Mansion has become better known as the de facto house of horrors for film and TV location scouts. Beyond “American Horror Story,” the home has been used in genre staples including “The Twilight Zone,” “The X-Files,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Six Feet Under” and “Dexter,” as well as two later seasons of “AHS.”
In a turn that seems fated to live in a script, the “Murder House” has changed hands acrimoniously in recent years, as the current owners claim that the home is both hellish to live in, given its fame, and genuinely haunted…