'American Horror Story' House Owners Sue Over Fan Fervor
LOS ANGELES (CBS News/CBSLA) – A couple living in a Central Los Angeles mansion featured as the so-called "Murder House" in the first season of the TV show "American Horror Story" is suing the former owner and the real estate company because they say they were never told that crowds of obsessive fans travel to see it.
The Rosenheim Mansion, located at 1120 Westchester Place in the Mid-City area, was purchased in 2015 for $3.2 million, according to The Real Deal.
The couple says they have to deal with a sometimes-daily deluge of hundreds of fans, some scaling fences and climbing the walls. They say if they knew that beforehand, they never would have moved in, reports CBS News' Jamie Yuccas.
Ornate and classically creepy, the Rosenheim Mansion was an ideal setting for the terrifying first season of "American Horror Story," which aired in 2011. But actually living there has become a different kind of horror story for the home's owners, married couple Ernst Von Schwarz and Angela Oakenfold.
Oakenfold said on a daily basis they see groups of people turning up for selfies and videos.
"We have had several break-ins. We have had on three or four occasions just in the last year, had to call the police," Oakenfold said.
Fans have climbed fences to get onto the property, and one perched on their ledge, the couple claim. Some teenagers literally got a lift from a garbage truck driver.
"He put them in the crane and elevated it. And I'm in the bathroom and I look out the window and there are teenage girls screaming at me," Oakenfold said.
"We Googled the house of course like everybody else would," Von Schwartz said. "But if you Google the house you find a lot of movies have been filmed here…. Lastly the 'American Horror Story,' which I have never seen."
They say their realtor and the home's former owner should have alerted them about the show's rabid fans.
They're now suing both the former owner and their realtor for unspecified damages so they can build a permanent fence or hedge to secure their privacy. The realtor issued a statement: "I have no doubt that the truthful facts of this case will resolve this matter in our favor."
"We feel like they cheated us," Oakenfold said.
"We want to live here, of course, but it is very difficult because we don't feel safe," Von Schwarz added.
The couple say they also want to recoup their property's lost value. There was no immediate response after CBS News reached out to the former owner's attorney.
A real estate lawyer told CBS News if the seller knew about any neighborhood noises or nuisances, it does have a legal obligation to disclose them to the buyer.
This isn't the first time a Los Angeles location featured in AHS has made headlines. In 2013, 21-year-old Canadian Elisa Lam mysteriously disappeared after checking into the Hotel Cecil in downtown L.A. Lam was found dead a few weeks later in the building's rooftop water tank, naked with her clothes floating in the water.
The Hotel Cecil inspired Season 5 of AHS.
