They say timing is everything. Real estate agents Eileen Allan and Shannon Assad of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices certainly recognize that fact as they listed the home that portrayed the residence of skin-wearing serial killer Buffalo Bill, aka Jame Gumb (Ted Levine), in “The Silence of the Lambs” at the start of the Halloween season! Depicted as being located in Belvedere, Ohio, in the 1991 psychological horror film (now streaming on Netflix), the Queen Anne Victorian can actually be found in Perryopolis, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh.
This is not the first time the pad has hit the market in recent years. Previous owners Scott and Barbara Lloyd, who called the place home for four decades, listed it in August 2015 and, according to the Daily News, had a heck of a time finding a buyer. Though it was the second most-clicked home on Realtor.com that year, apparently the vast majority of online visitors were cinephilic lookie-loos hoping to catch a glimpse of Buffalo Bill’s pad, or more specifically, his basement. The Daily News surmised that the property’s remote location deterred buyers – as well as the fact that there is only one bathroom on the premises (now that’s downright scary!). I’m sure the connection to one of filmdom’s most disturbing killers didn’t help matters. At one point PETA expressed interest in purchasing the dwelling and, per a letter Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman wrote to agent Dianne Wilk, turning it into “an empathy museum for animals abused and killed so that others may wear their skins.” (The verbiage almost makes Buffalo Bill’s predilections seem tame by contrast!) The idea never came to pass, though.
Originally listed for $300,000, the Lloyds dropped the price four times before the home finally sold the following July at a much-reduced $195,000. Wilk claims the property’s notoriety definitely had a hand in the eventual sale, saying of the buyer, “The fact that [the house] was in the movie is probably what caught his eye. He was not looking in the area at all,” but he “just fell in love with it.” That love was somewhat short-lived apparently because the place is on the market again, this time for $298,000.