Located in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, Old Bishop House was used for the 1971 horror film Let's Scare Jessica To Death" — and is now said to be haunted itself.
You would think a car dealership’s viral video would be, well, about cars. But instead, an employee at the dealership showed the world the spooky view they get every day at work. Their workplace is situated right in front of “one of Connecticut’s most haunted houses”: Old Bishop House.
Set to haunted horror music, the text overlay on @checkvachon_official’s video reads: “POV: you’re car shopping across from one of Connecticut’s most haunted houses.”
@checkvachon_official TikTokVachon Buick GMC in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, sits across the street from Old Bishop House.
When they turn the camera, the view goes from a suburban car dealership to a looming, decrepit, and quite massive yellow house with peeling paint, a decaying roof, and a boarded-up window.
The caption identifies the building as the Old Bishop House in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, which is best known as the filming location for the 1971 horror film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.
The Film That Made The House Famous
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death was directed by John Hancock and shot on location across a cluster of towns in southeastern Connecticut, Dread Central reports.
The story follows Jessica, played by Zohra Lampert, a woman recovering from a mental health crisis who relocates with her husband from New York City to a Victorian house in rural Connecticut to start a farm, only to find a stranger already squatting inside. She also starts to see and hear things and isn’t sure if something is deeply wrong with her or the town around her.
The southeastern Connecticut setting was partly chosen because the film’s producer, Bill Badalato, had personal ties to the area.
“My wife and I had a weekend house in Chester, Connecticut,” Badalato recalled in an interview with Dread Central. “We loved the area and shared our feelings with John [Hancock] and the Mosses. After a preliminary scout we all agreed that this was where Jessica should be filmed.”
The Old Bishop House served as the exterior of the characters’ new home, with its Victorian architecture and distinctive tower giving the writer an unsettling feeling, especially when set over a gloomy sky.
The interiors, however, were filmed elsewhere. “Given the period houses, beautiful foliage, and picturesque country lanes, the Old Saybrook area is ideal for filmmaking, especially the horror genre,” Badalato said.
J&M Explorations YouTubeThe exterior of Old Bishop House was used in the 1971 cult horror film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.
The film’s director, John Hancock, has spoken about wanting to return to the location but not being able to find it.
“I drove around the area several years ago without finding it. I wish I could see it again,” he said.
The Real History Behind The Old Bishop House
According to Zip06, the house was built in 1875 at the beginning of the Gilded Age, and sits on 72.5 acres of land. For most of its life, it was known as Fairview Farm.
Its original owner, a Hartford native named J.P. Newton, purchased it from the Denison family in 1889, had a dam built to create a private reservoir on the property, and planned to use it as a working farm to supply produce to Hartford while summering there himself. In winter, the frozen reservoir was harvested for ice.
During the Great Depression, the property was purchased by Fred and Bertha Piontkowski, Polish immigrants who farmed the land and raised four children there. It’s rumored that some of the house’s 13 rooms were used to board immigrants from Poland and Germany during World War II.
The property passed through the family to their eldest son Carl and eventually to his family — who have owned it ever since and, according to Zip06, have long made themselves unavailable to historians and journalists, understandably wary of the attention the house has attracted over the decades.
It is unknown exactly when the house was vacated. The property was listed for sale in October 2017 at $5,795,000, a price that, as of 2019, had not changed despite being removed from the market twice.
Old Saybrook’s building inspector told Zip06 that despite its weathered exterior, the structure itself is sound. “If someone had enough passion and the finances,” he said, “the structure can be brought back to its former glory.”
The Old Bishop House Today
The Old Bishop House still stands, as you can see in the video. According to Atlas Obscura, it’s surrounded by several acres of overgrown vegetation that has swallowed much of the property.
Despite being hidden in plain sight, its distinctive tower still looms in a perfect sightline from the car dealership directly across the street.
@checkvachon_official Right across the street from us sits the Old Bishop House 👀 An abandoned home used in the 1971 horror film ”Let’s Scare Jessica to Death”… luckily Vachon Buick-GMC is here to help you find your getaway car 🚙👻 📍225 Middlesex Tpke, Old Saybrook, CT 06475 #haunted #hauntedhouse #connecticut #horror #scary
After reading about the Old Bishop House, learn about the true story behind The Haunting in Connecticut — and the family that claimed to suffer two years of supernatural torment. Then, discover 16 horror film locations you can still visit today.
