The Munster Mansion is one of the most iconic homes in TV history, instantly recognizable even in color. It’s so beloved that one Texas couple recreated their own version stake by stake, and you can even buy kits to build tiny scale models, if you’re a real dork. Like most goth girl renovation projects, however, the Munster Mansion didn’t start out so spooky. It was first built on the “River Road” set on the Universal Studios lot for So Goes My Love, a 1946 rom-com based on the real life of inventor Hiram Maxim. Hey, the war had just ended, and everyone realized they hadn’t really thought about other kinds of movies to make.
For the next two decades, the house showed up in several Universal movies and TV shows whenever a generically prosperous suburban street was needed, including an Abbott and Costello bit, a Rock Hudson joint and an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It was also part of the street where the Cleavers lived on Leave It to Beaver. Boy, that neighborhood sure changed — though, even back then, the house was depicted as creepy and probably haunted.
It got a macabre makeover when The Munsters moved in, but it was undone just as quickly once they departed two years later. The house was relegated to a Universal backlot named Colonial Street, but it still showed up throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s on TV movies and episodes of Dragnet and Kolchak before being “bought” by Shirley Jones for her short-lived 1979 series, Shirley.
Like most things, it underwent a lot of changes in the ‘80s and passed through an increasingly wealthy series of hands. (That’s the modern real estate market for ya.) It was owned by Corey Feldman in The ‘Burbs, a sorority and then a suspected witch on Murder, She Wrote, (who apparently lived in the same neighborhood as the characters of Get a Life, as it appears in the opening credits), and the proprietors of a bed and breakfast patronized by the characters of Everybody Loves Raymond.
Finally, the house was all but completely gutted and rebuilt in the McMansion manner befitting the Wisteria Lane neighborhood of Desperate Housewives, where it was sold to a series of owners who met tragic ends, including death by cop, falling from the roof after being trapped in the attic by a bloodthirsty ex-mother-in-law and prison for murder.
Maybe it really is haunted.
Content shared from www.cracked.com.