Hell House LLC (2015) is not a true story. It is fiction, written and directed by Stephen Cognetti and shot to look like recovered footage, and the Abaddon Hotel at its center never existed. There was no deadly accident at a haunted attraction in 2009, no town called Abaddon and no company called Hell House LLC; all of it belongs to the script, as Wikipedia’s entry on the film sets out. What is real is the building the camera walks through, and a ruined house by a lake in New York that gave Cognetti the idea.
The story the film tells
A documentary crew is looking into a disaster. In the fictional town of Abaddon, New York, a haunted-house attraction opened in an old hotel in 2009, and on opening night something went wrong. Fifteen people died. A surviving staff member hands the crew the behind-the-scenes tapes: the team setting up the attraction in the half-ruined hotel, the things that started happening once they moved in, and the decision to open anyway. The film is those tapes, cut together with interviews.
In the story the hotel sits in Rockland County. The tapes are assembled, on screen, by a documentary editor named Mitchell. He is fictional too.
The film premiered at the Telluride Horror Show on October 16, 2015, and reached Shudder and digital platforms on November 1, 2016. Wikipedia records a Rotten Tomatoes score of 75% from 12 critics’ reviews.
Where the Abaddon really is
According to a Dread Central retrospective, the hotel’s corridors are the Waldorf Estate of Fear, a working haunted attraction in Lehighton, Pennsylvania, not a hotel in New York state. Its owner, Angie Moyer, gave Cognetti access and went on to work with him on several of the films. The place was already a haunt, so it needed little dressing, and Moyer repurposed props she had.
The idea came from somewhere else. The same retrospective says Cognetti found an abandoned house at Rockland Lake while working as a production assistant at ITV Studios in New York. Going back there to shoot was impractical, so he went looking for an operating haunted attraction instead. He borrowed the title from Richard Matheson’s novel Hell House, and chose the documentary form after watching a true-crime documentary, naming The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Lake Mungo (2008) as influences.
So the only real thread is that house by the lake. We found no claim of deaths or hauntings at the Waldorf, and no legend about a real Abaddon.
Hell House LLC in order
Five films, released over ten years. The dates and runtimes below follow Wikipedia; JustWatch dates the third film to 2020, but Wikipedia gives September 19, 2019.
| # | Film | Released | Runtime | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hell House LLC | October 16, 2015 (festival premiere) | 93 min | Found footage |
| 2 | Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel | September 20, 2018, Shudder | 89 min | Found footage |
| 3 | Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire | September 19, 2019, Shudder | 85 min | Found footage |
| 4 | Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor | October 30, 2023 | 98 min | Found footage |
| 5 | Hell House LLC: Lineage | August 20, 2025, limited US theaters; Shudder October 30, 2025 | 108 min | Not found footage |
Watch them in release order. II sends journalists into the abandoned hotel and develops the aim of its original owner, Andrew Tully, to open a gate to hell. III follows an entrepreneur, Russell Wynn, who wants to stage a production of Faust inside the building. Origins moves to October 1989 and the Carmichael Manor, where a whole family vanished; it works as both prequel and sequel to the first film, so it can go first, but it lands harder once you know the Abaddon.
Lineage is the exception. Wikipedia calls it the fifth and final film and quotes Cognetti on the change of form: “Yes, non-found footage, and I think it will be the scariest of them all.” Critics were less sure; Wikipedia records 25% on Rotten Tomatoes from 24 reviews.
Where to watch Hell House LLC in the US
Last checked: October 20, 2026, against the JustWatch US guide. Streaming rights move, and prices with them.
- All five: Shudder and AMC+ carry the whole series, the one-subscription way to watch it in order.
- Hell House LLC: also Prime Video, fuboTV, Philo and Screambox; free on Kanopy; free with ads on YouTube and The Roku Channel.
- II: The Abaddon Hotel: also Philo and Screambox; free with ads on YouTube.
- III: Lake of Fire: also Prime Video, Philo and Screambox; free with ads on The Roku Channel.
- Origins: The Carmichael Manor: also Philo; rental and purchase available.
- Lineage: Shudder and AMC+ only; rental and purchase available.
Why it feels real
Found footage asks you to treat the frame as evidence, and Hell House LLC gives you two kinds of it. Most of the film is handheld, shot by the cast as they build the attraction, the running, breathing camera of Blair Witch. Around it sits the documentary: interviews, an editor assembling recovered tapes, the calm voice of an investigation after the fact. The handheld camera makes you a participant. The documentary frame tells you someone has already checked.
The scares are built for that camera. According to Dread Central, actors Gore Abrams and Danny Bellini suggested restaging one of the key deaths so that it plays out through a camera’s viewfinder, to fix a scene that was not working. Abrams also wrote the piano melody that comes back through the whole franchise. Cognetti edited the first film himself, at 5 a.m. each morning, and it took about six months to finish.
The fixed-camera branch of the genre works differently, and our piece on Paranormal Activity and found footage traces how a tripod in a bedroom turned the viewer into the investigator. For the same trick played on a true-crime audience, see Hunting Matthew Nichols, and for the broadcast that fooled a country, Ghostwatch (1992). Where films like these sit among the three kinds of ghost movie depends on whether you believe the camera.
Not the other kind of hell house
Search for “hell house” and you also find a real American tradition. As Wikipedia’s article on hell houses records, these are haunted-house-style attractions run by evangelical Christian organizations, usually in the days before Halloween. A guide leads visitors through short scenes of sin and its punishment, often ending with an altar call. The first known one was Jerry Falwell’s ScareMare in Lynchburg, Virginia, from 1972, backed by Liberty University. Trinity Assembly of God in Cedar Hill, Texas, has run one since 1990, and from 1995 Keenan Roberts promoted the idea from Colorado and sold kits to churches.
The film shares the name and nothing else. Its Hell House is a commercial scare attraction in a hotel, and Cognetti’s stated source for the title is Matheson’s novel. We found nothing linking the film to the church tradition.
Before the lights go down
The series is on the Halloween hub alongside the rest of our October viewing, and on the list of ghost movies to watch this Halloween.
The anniversary run ends on November 1, ten years to the day after the film reached Shudder. For four nights, audiences will sit in the dark and watch a crew build a haunted attraction in a hotel that never existed, inside a haunted attraction in Pennsylvania that does.