The Creepiest Attics In Horror Movies

Much like basements, attics are liminal spaces in the home. Some are gorgeous, with great light and even better views. Lots of folks convert their attics into living or work spaces for this reason alone. But not all attics are created equal. Small, cramped spaces on the top floor that can be used for nothing but storage become really creepy, really fast. Worse, some attics even allow for surveillance of the floor directly below, which often ends up being the one containing bedrooms. This compromises the privacy of those living there ... often without their knowing. 

No wonder horror movies love situating their terrifying tales in the attic. These films explore the full potential of these dusty, drafty spaces, which are often infrequently visited and filled with surprising (and sometimes life-threatening) things. They're a place to hide unwanted children, a site for demonic rituals, a home for vengeful ghosts, and sometimes just a space for mundane human evil. They're attics, as imagined by horror movies — and we're here to explore the creepiest ones around.

Scott Derrickson's chilling Sinister follows has-been true crime writer Ellison Oswalt as he explores a new book idea in an unconventional way: He moves his family into a home where a family was murdered in the backyard. Not long after setting up their new house, Ellison finds a box filled with film canisters in the otherwise empty attic. Upon watching these home movies, he discovers footage of multiple murders. The deaths of the family killed in the backyard are among them, but Ellison traces the footage to other crimes all over America involving families murdered by someone just off camera. Moreover, one child from each of these families have all gone missing, just after the recorded killings took place.

With the help of local law enforcement Deputy So-and-So (he gives himself this nickname, in the hopes of becoming part of Ellison's next book) as well as occult expert Professor Jonas, Ellison discovers the truth: A child-eating demon named Bughuul is responsible for these twisted murders. Each missing child watched the grotesque collection of home videos, became capable of being possessed by Bughuul, and committed the murders themselves. In a particularly terrifying scene, Ellison enters the attic ... only to find the missing children assembled there. This horrifying tale serves as a warning: Don't mess around with other people's things, even if you find them in what is now your own attic.

It may be something of a joke now considering how ubiquitous mobile phones have become, but once upon a time, the idea that a phone call might be coming from inside your own house was terrifying. Based on an urban legend about a babysitter getting strange calls all night, only to have her stalker emerge from the attic, 1974's Black Christmas took this nightmare scenario and made it extra creepy. A group of sorority sisters gather together to celebrate Christmas break, but their festive mood is impeded: First, by member Jess' jerk of a boyfriend, and then by the steady disappearances of their friends. Things go from bad to worse when those missing friends turn up dead.

The attic of the sorority house is where much of the violence goes down. It's a pretty normal attic, really, the cluttered sort of space you'd expect of a shared sorority house – it's the killer's collection of corpses, as well as the man himself, holed up in there above his victims, that makes this one a contender for Creepiest Ever. We never even find out what the killer wants: His mere presence within the home of his victims is terrifying enough that he doesn't need an exhaustive backstory.

Normal attics are creepy enough, but secret attics are even worse. A particularly terrifying example of this comes from 1980's slow-burn psychological horror, The Changeling. This film stars George C. Scott as John Russell, a composer who moves from New York to Seattle to live in a rundown Victorian mansion after his wife and son are killed in a car accident. It's a strange choice from the get-go, but it comes full circle when John discovers a terrible secret about the house's previous owners. He is so thoroughly haunted that he (and the audience) believes for much of the movie that his own grief is beginning to drive him crazy. But no — it's nothing so typical as that.

After encountering terrifying apparitions of a drowned young boy, John finds a hidden room in the attic. This is where John Carmichael, a sickly child murdered in the bathtub by his own father, lived out his short life. John's father replaced him with an orphan (who has become a senator), all so he wouldn't have to leave his wealth to a handicapped son. The attic room is creepy in its own right, but what's creepier still is the secret it contains.

Ari Aster's celebrated horror movie Hereditary has multiple levels of terror operating at once — all of which culminate in the Graham family attic. Annie Graham's overbearing mother has just passed away, and Annie is struggling with complicated feelings of grief. Annie's daughter Charlie has a number of physical and psychological issues that need dealing with as well — all of which end prematurely, when she is accidentally decapitated. Peter, Annie's son and Charlie's older brother, was driving the car the gruesome accident happened within, and is so traumatized, he leaves Charlie's headless body in the family car for their mother to find the next day. Yikes. 

As Annie's guilt and anger grows, she and her son discover shocking family secrets. As it turns out, a demon known as Paimon had been residing in Charlie until her untimely death. Preferring a male body of the family's bloodline, Peter is sacrificed so that Paimon may live more to his liking. All of this goes down in the Graham family attic, where one of horror's creepiest occult altars also figures. If it weren't for the demonic ritual, the Graham's attic would be completely unremarkable. Instead, it's one of the most terrifying movie attics of all time.

Melanie Daniels is an independent San Francisco gal who escapes to Bodega Bay after her affair with a rich and married man makes the papers. Why Bodega Bay? A new fellow has caught her eye who hails from there, and she welcomes the distraction. That is, until all the birds in town begin acting strangely, congregating in odd groups that appear to be watching passerby. They quickly turn menacing as they attack and kill people en masse ... for reasons left chillingly unexplained. No wonder The Birds is considered one of Hitchcock's masterpieces.

The film culminates in a terrifying scene in which Melanie gets trapped in an attic with a literally murderous murder of crows. Her new beau rescues her, but not before she is so traumatized she's gone catatonic. Moreover, this isn't just one of the creepiest attics in a horror movie — it also reflects the real-life horror that Melanie's actress Tippi Hedren survived as she filmed that very scene.

Barbara and Adam Maitland have the coolest attic ever, largely because of Adam's centerpiece miniature of the town they live in. But after they die in a car accident and find themselves trapped in the Victorian mansion they were renovating, the attic becomes creepier and creepier. When Lydia Deetz and her yuppie parents move in, Lydia is the only one who notices the ghosts, befriending them immediately. All the while, a demonic entity called Beetlejuice has set up shop in Adam's town miniature, with the ultimate goal of being summoned into physical form. 

The clueless Maitlands think Beetlejuice is the only way to get the Deetzes out of their home. In fact, in working with him, they unleash a horrible series of events, almost force Lydia into marriage, and spend a lot of time entangled in the bureaucracy of the afterlife. Beetlejuice features a rare horror movie attic that has its own arc: It goes from quaint to creepy, then back to being benign. Yet those moments of creepiness are so incredibly unsettling, Beetlejuice still warrants inclusion on this list.

Both the original Japanese Ju-On film and the American remake The Grudge feature an attic that, under normal circumstances, would be completely benign. A family moves into a lovely home outside Tokyo heedless of its dark history: A young woman named Kayako was murdered in the home's attic, and her spirit lingers there, hungry for revenge. Kayako curses whoever lives in the home, eventually bringing them up to her attic to murder them ... but not before spooking the audience with a whole lot of jump scares.

Kayako's ghostly visage and dark deeds are in direct contrast to what seems like a banal space. But since she is fundamentally connected to that attic room, it quickly becomes as evil as she is. The fact that the house itself seems indestructible, thanks to Kayako's powers, makes this attic even more horrifying. It can't be destroyed, and so its mistress cannot be stopped.