Whether the villain is supernatural or a slasher, the streets and backlots of Los Angeles are often blood-soaked, thanks to a steady diet of Hollywood horror flicks.
Now, to coincide with the Halloween season, the experts at Giggster have tried to quantify the regional fright factor by ranking the top U.S. cities based on the number of horror movie filming locations.
Not surprisingly, the Los Angeles area has seen by far the most horror movies filmed in its backyard: 2,410, to be exact, according to Giggster. Those classics include Poltergeist (Simi Valley), Halloween (South Pasadena), A Nightmare on Elm Street (Spaulding Square) and Insidious (Victoria Park).
However, when it comes to horror movie sites per capita, L.A. is actually second in the nation.
The top spot goes to … Jersey City, New Jersey.
As the setting for Smile and The Toxic Avenger, among others, Jersey has seen 132.35 horror movies filmed per 100,000 population. L.A. is second with 63.07, followed by Washington, DC (47.72) and Atlanta (40.72).
Giggster also ranked the most-Googled horror movie location in the U.S.
Oregon’s Timberline Lodge, the setting for The Shining (1980), ranked first, followed by New Jersey’s Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, better known as Camp Crystal Lake from Friday the 13th (1980), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) house in Kingsland, Texas.
The Michael Myers house from Halloween (1978) was fifth.
In August, the Simi Valley, California, home made famous in 1982’s Poltergeist, went on the market for the first time in 45 years. It sold in less than three weeks.
Giggster compiled the lists based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).