Boo! Scary street names in horror movies
If you’re here, you appreciate a good horror movie, especially around Halloween time.
There are many different subgenres of scary movies: slasher, found footage, psychological horror, supernatural horror, monster, folklore, zombie, gothic fiction, paranormal fiction, and the list goes on and on for a frighteningly long time.
One thing all horror movies have in common is a scary setting. Maybe the trees are creepy and dead. Perhaps the house is rotting from the inside out. Sometimes, the location has historical significance with real and traumatic events.
All the best horror movies out there shake us in our boots because of their spooky and haunted places. And what comes along with a location? A street. Sometimes, it’s the numbers that scare us. Sometimes, it’s the street name itself, and sometimes… both are downright freaky.
What are some of the creepiest street names out there?
- A Nightmare on Elm Street wouldn’t hit the same if it weren’t squarely located on 1428 Elm Street. (Somehow, Nightmare on Sesame Street just doesn’t scare the pants off ya unless you’re scared of puppets.)
The name Elm Street wasn’t chosen by chance, either. Freddy Krueger’s address was carefully selected in the early conception of the film. “Every town has an Elm Street,” said Robert Englund, the actor who played the original Freddy. Knowing this, and the fact that Elm Street was also the name of the street where John F. Kennedy was shot, the writer and director of the film, Wes Craven, chose Elm Street for the iconic film’s title.
Elm Street doesn’t sound creepy or scary, so in this instance, the movie made the name terrifying.
- The Addams Family is known for living in a spooky mansion, and the different adaptations have associated multiple addresses with the home. Some of the notable addresses and location details used across movies, TV shows, and comics include:
- 0001 Cemetery Lane: This is the most common address in Addams Family adaptations, particularly in the 1991 Addams Family and Addams Family Values (1993) movies and The Addams Family animated series from the 1990s. This address is fake. (If you don’t believe us, you can try to validate it with our nifty address tools.)
- 1313 Cemetery Lane: In some adaptations, the address has been listed as 1313 Cemetery Lane, fitting for the family's spooky nature and affinity for all things macabre.
- 0001 Mockingbird Heights: Although more famously associated with The Munsters, the name "Mockingbird Heights" is sometimes mistakenly used about the Addams Family, as both families have similar gothic-themed homes.
- 21 Chester Place, Los Angeles: In the original 1964–1966 television series, the exterior shots of the Addams Family mansion were filmed at a Victorian house at 21 Chester Place in Los Angeles. However, the fictional address was never explicitly mentioned.
- Addams Manor: In Charles Addams’ original cartoons for The New Yorker, the Addams Family mansion is often simply called a spooky, grand home without a specific address. The exact location is generally left to the imagination, adding to the family's mysterious nature.
Not only has the address had many iterations across remakes, but the mansion details have also evolved. From 0001 Cemetary Lane, a museum with odd knick-knacks and a terrifying torture room, to a former mental asylum with interesting statues and overgrown foliage at 1313 Cemetary Lane.
What’s more chilling than roads linked to actual haunted places?!
- The Amityville Horror wouldn’t be the same without 112 Ocean Avenue. This horror series is based on the actual and “chilling facts” from a Long Island mass murder. A 23-year-old murdered his entire family while they slept, a total of 2 parents and 4 siblings.
As if that weren’t enough to make the location a scary address, the Lutz family moved into the home 13 months later and only lived there for 28 days before abandoning it, citing eerie stories of paranormal activity. The Lutz family claimed to have experienced seeing green slime oozing from the walls, feeling cold spots in the house, hearing screaming voices telling them to “Get out,” knives being knocked down, levitating wives, pig-like creatures staring into windows, and other such encounters.
Although the public has often questioned the validity of the Lutzs’ claims, the urban legends were so fantastical and wild (dare we say terrifying?) that The Amityville Horror series was born.
Although the address has since been changed to 108 Ocean Avenue and has had many other owners, 112 Ocean Avenue is still infamous and a major part of the creepy addresses found in horror classics.
Many US street names aren’t linked to a haunted house or a horror movie but still have a frightening ring.
- Blood Road – Greenville, Ohio
- Banshee Road – Middletown, Ohio
- Whispering Way – Glendale, Arizona
- Devil’s Lane – Toms River, New Jersey
- Haunted Lane – Bensalem, Pennsylvania
- Skull Hollow Road – Camden, New York
- Witch Tree Road – Chaska, Minnesota
- Cemetery Lane – Several locations across the US.
- Dead End Road – Numerous locations across the US.
- Phantom Road – Winston-Salem, North Carolina
- Hell Hollow Road – Voluntown, Connecticut
- Shades of Death Road – Warren County, New Jersey
- Reaper Road – Eureka, Missouri
- Black Cat Road – Salem, Oregon
- Dark Hollow Road – Warrington, Pennsylvania
What are the spookiest addresses?
Well, we’re almost afraid to write the words down… but the spookiest roads belong to addresses that are “not valid,” “duplicated,” “falsely positive,” and “incorrect.”
Why are these types of addresses so scary?
Because they lead to these 4 negative consequences:
- Not validated address shipments are likely to go to non-existent or incorrect locations, which results in failed deliveries, wasted resources, and frustrated customers.
Your databases provide insight into how your organization operates. Are you efficient? Does your company ensure that only valid addresses exist in your database, or is it cluttered with inaccurate information that’s costing your organization time, money, and effort? Not validating addresses is a terrifying choice for any industry. Clean data should be the only data stored.
- Duplicate addresses confuse customer records, leading to inefficient deliveries and potentially sending multiple packages to the same location by mistake, increasing costs and logistical headaches.
Market trend analysis is also highly affected by this scary address mishap. If one company is listed in your database multiple times due to alias addresses, this can not only cost money in sending out flyers and promotional items, but it can also significantly skew the number of clients you potentially have in a certain industry or demographic.
- An address incorrectly identified as valid (a false positive) can lead to missed deliveries or incorrect shipments. This can be costly for the business and ruin customer trust when they receive incorrect or delayed packages.
- Incorrect addresses cause delivery delays or failed deliveries, impacting customer satisfaction and increasing the cost of re-delivery. They also create headaches for logistics teams and reduce the overall efficiency of the supply chain.
Incorrect addresses also become a huge pain (see what we did there) for healthcare compliance. Regarding patient records, address information related to billing and medication must be correctly updated and precise in your database. Failure to do so can put your organization in a tough spot regarding HIPAA, not to mention skew your data analysis process and impede efficient patient care.
Don’t run away screaming yet.
We have a solution
Use top-of-the-line address tools like Smarty’s address autocomplete to get only accurate addresses from the start and address verification to verify addresses and clean up the false positives, duplicates, and incorrect addresses from your database.
Even the freakiest street names deserve to be standardized and validated. If you’re even slightly worried about looking in your database, talk to an address expert and learn how we’ll help you never be scared of addresses again.
