They Called it ‘Hell House’: A Retrospective On The Iconic Found Footage Series
In the woods of Rockland Lake, there is a place where the crows go quiet, where the trees breathe heavier. Where anyone who steps too close feels they’re being watched. Within those shadows, there is a house. What might have once been welcoming and warm now leaves you with the feeling you’ve crossed into someplace you were never meant to find. The house, though abandoned and decaying, was waiting.
When Hell House LLC creator Stephen Cognetti happened upon it, a baleful chill ran down his spine, but something inside lured him closer. From somewhere within the walls, a story began to whisper.
Chapter One: The Stories That Wait in the Walls
As Cognetti looked up at the dark, silent windows, he felt something within himself come forward. He wondered why the house had been left forgotten, and if the house had forgotten too. At the time, Cognetti was working at ITV Studios in New York as a production assistant. From a young age, he had known that he would one day be a filmmaker.
After his sophomore year of high school, he enrolled in a summer program through the New York Film Academy, spending six weeks on Princeton University’s campus. There, he shot on 16 mm film for the first time and learned how to edit using a Steenbeck machine. The experience solidified his path, and he later enrolled at Temple University, where he majored in film. Though he can’t recall exactly why he went to Rockland Lake that day, discovering a skeleton key to a door only he could unlock had never been the plan. He found one anyway. “It was so creepy, so abandoned. I took pictures and immediately thought: Hell House.”
Borrowed from Richard Matheson’s novel of the same name, the title sparked a new story unraveling in his mind. Suddenly, it was as though he had heard the stories of this place told in hushed tones around the town for his entire life. As he stood in front of the decrepit house, the characters began making themselves known to him, and he began to see the horrors that had unfolded inside with morbid clarity.
“I was pretending I’d come across it after tragedy struck. Something happened in this house… it happened right here.”
When Cognetti returned home, he immediately dove into writing about what he might have uncovered had he stepped inside. Furniture still turned over on the floor in panic, darkened stains now collecting dust, but what came to him most vividly were the scares. He thought back to his childhood and how there had been a painting of a clown that watched silently.
“It was so terrifying to all of us. I was the youngest, and it terrified my oldest brother all the way down to me,” he explained. “This clown, the watercolor painting, it’s not doing anything. It’s just staring at me. And when you walk into the hallway, it’s just staring at you.”
Cognetti knew all too well that the simplicity of a clown’s design was more dreadful than one done up with color and bright patterns. The idea of coming upon a clown’s pale face and lifeless eyes in the dead of night chilled him to his core. The first scare he had ever written was for a clown to be found standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs, unwavering, yet not where it had last been seen. Even scarier still, it would have no relation to the characters he was beginning to know. In fact, it would be welcomed. What happened inside the house that night had occurred during a haunt run by Hell House LLC. When they came upon the abandoned Halloween props in an old vacant home, they would be thrilled to incorporate them into the experience.
As the story spilled out onto the page, Stephen returned to Rockland Lake in hopes of bringing the film to life in the place it was born. Quickly finding the idea to be illogical and arduous, he set out to find an operational haunted attraction that could become Hell House. Through his research, he came across just what he had been looking for: the Waldorf Estate of Fear in Lehighton, Pennsylvania.
Cognetti visited and studied its layout, decay, and dim corridors. Its lived-in tenor grounded the scares, making the fiction feel disturbingly plausible. Its owner, Angie Moyer, not only gave him access to the space but also became a key collaborator and supporter across multiple films. The Waldorf Estate of Fear was not dressed like a set; it already was one. It would not just serve as the filming location; it would become the Abaddon Hotel itself. The ominous props that already resided within the Waldorf were repurposed and reimagined by Angie throughout the haunt, grounding the production in a way no budget could fake.
Though he had the location and knew where the bones were buried, something wasn’t right. He wrote and rewrote, worked and reworked, endless components to find what would make the fear most palpable. For each question he found himself asking, he found a way to pen its answer. He knew what moved when no one was looking, and how it would first be seen amidst flashes of bright light. Yet, what he saw in his mind wasn’t reflected on the pages in front of him. No matter how many drafts he tore through, the story kept slipping away. Whatever it was meant to become was there in the flickering bulbs, in the things found where they hadn’t been left, but it refused to come to the side of the living.
Late one night, he sat watching a true crime documentary. It was built around grainy footage and interviews purposefully intercut. Suddenly, he realized that he was looking at the missing piece that would bring the story to life. Hell House had to feel like something real, something that happened. It had to be told the same way it came to him: like evidence found too late.
Chapter Two: We’re Not Supposed to Be Watching This
Through dimly lit videos that sputter and crackle, a disturbing tale begins to take shape. The recordings made within the walls of Hell House were never meant to be seen. What occurred on October 8 at the Abaddon Hotel had been veiled by the dark of night, by confusion and chaos, and by a narrative structure.
Cognetti thought back to the perspective he found himself slipping into at Rockland Lake, the idea of looking at something after it had already gone terribly wrong. Whatever happened in the Abaddon Hotel was a secret kept by the dead, but the lurid mystery surrounding that night would entice those who sought answers.
Switching to a new format afforded Cognetti more creative liberties. Though it meant losing some of the narrative backstory he had already written, the faux docu-series allowed the exposition to be spoken aloud. He said, “The one thing I wanted to do if I was going to make a found footage film: I want the audience to know why they are seeing what they’re seeing. Why is this being presented to them?”
To him, found footage wasn’t a limitation; it was liberation. It let him strip horror down to its most visceral elements: silence, shadow, implication. It allowed him to pull the camera into the dark, not to show more, but to show just enough.
As a fan of the found-footage subgenre, Cognetti knew that it was an art form. The Blair Witch Project taught him that the most terrifying moments happen subtly, like the things glimpsed once and never explained. The discomfort of the unknown would embed itself somewhere deep within those who wished for answers. Though he praised The Blair Witch Project for its ambiguity and innovation, Lake Mungo introduced a new approach that he found to be dreadfully effective, presenting the footage via documentary. Cognetti believed that once the audience understood why they were seeing the footage, the story would no longer feel like fiction; it would feel like something unearthed.
Sara slides a duffel bag across the table.
Diane: What is that?
Sara: It’s everything. Everything that went on in the house was taped.
Mostly by Paul and Tony. Some tour-goers.
Diane gestures toward Mitchell, seated quietly nearby.
Diane: Mitchell’s gonna go ahead and start looking through those, if that’s all right. (The door creaks open and shuts behind him as he leaves the room.)
Diane: Sara… have you watched them?
Sara: No.
Diane: So you have no idea what’s on them?
Sara:
(Beat.)
Hell House.
Though the contents of the tapes would be inconclusive, the comprehensive presentation of the footage would feign credibility. For the film to linger long after the screen goes dark, it had to not only feel real but be real. The footage within the walls of the Abaddon Hotel was predominantly captured by the cast with handheld cameras. By inserting a fictional editor into the framework of the story, Cognetti could now blend intentional chaos with deliberate construction.
Mitchell wasn’t just a character; he was how Cognetti was able to sculpt the movie using his own voice. He could now decide where the cuts would be, what was shown, and how it was shown, all without taking away the belief that it was never supposed to be seen. Every time the footage is replayed or a startling figure in the background is zoomed in on, we’re reminded that somebody is trying to understand what happened and put the story back together.
There is movement just out of focus. A shadow in the corner of the room, sworn to have just been standing there. Are the strange noises in the basement nothing more than a friend playing a trick on another? The tension is built slowly, steadily, and almost without warning. The only thing scarier than what the camera sees is what happens out of frame, and not knowing if it will show up on tape.
Chapter Three: The Quiet Knows What’s Coming
There’s a foreboding that creeps in when Hell House LLC begins to play; something in the air changes. As you settle in for the movie, text appears on screen: “What you are about to see is a documentary on the mysterious events surrounding the 2009 Halloween haunted house tour tragedy.” Something about it feels wrong. You no longer feel you’re alone, and begin to fear that someone is standing behind you. You shift in discomfort, sinking further into the couch, not yet turning to check. Entranced, you don’t notice as it comes closer. There is a doorway glowing red. A silhouette steps into it. You realize that the introduction wasn’t set up; it was a warning. You wince and finally turn around.
A ghost doesn’t arrive screaming, and Cognetti knew that true dread is composed with time, restraint, and intention. Hell House LLC lets terror take root. It builds in moments of stillness and repetition; it wants guards to be let down. He knows when to hold back, when to allow glimpses at what hides, and the importance of how it’s presented. Fear in Hell House LLC is often disguised at first. It is dressed up as laughter, overreaction, and disbelief. Characters like Paul and Tony deflect with jokes, unaware that the danger doesn’t come from being afraid; it comes from believing that they aren’t.
In the middle of the night, a noise from downstairs wakes the character of Paul. He turns on his camera and frantically goes to see what had made it. As he steps into the hallway and goes for the stairs, the clown is waiting at the bottom. Paul’s breaths begin to quicken as his friend comes beside him. The stairs below their feet creak while they walk slowly toward the clown; the fear hangs heavy in the air. The moment stays suspended until the tension is cut in less than a second. Tony touches the clown and reveals that it’s only a mannequin. Cognetti never wanted his scares to lunge; he wanted them to linger. “When you get to the scares, these beats have to be very particular.” The fear isn’t rushed; it waits for the air to go still.
Even the most careful rhythm can falter. During the filming of Sara’s death, Cognetti couldn’t get the scene to play the way he’d envisioned it. Originally, Sara was supposed to be killed by knife, but nothing about it was working. The blood squibs looked hokey in an otherwise bleak moment, and the blacklights above altered the color of the kill. Up against a clock that kept
lurching later into the night, Cognetti suggested they all return to their hotels and try again the next day. Gore Abrams, who plays Paul, and Danny Bellini, who plays Alex, suggested something simple: “Why don’t you just use the camera to kill her?” Sara’s death finally fell into place. Instead of orchestrating a complex moment, the violence would come through the viewfinder. Some sequences, like the strobe-lit encounter in the basement, tested his patience. The camera and the rapid flickering of light were unwilling to concur, and Cognetti had to learn on the fly, discovering new tricks in post-production to make the fear land the way it did in his mind.
The first time it happens, you flinch. The second time it happens, you doubt yourself. By the third time, you know that something terrible has arrived. The Hell House LLC franchise uses repetition the way other films use audio cues. The same imagery keeps returning, but each appearance is an escalation. It isn’t just placed; it’s carefully timed. One of the film’s most chilling echoes comes in the form of a simple piano jingle. On set, Cognetti asked Gore Abrams to create a short, memorable melody that would cut through the silence of the night from the parlor of the Abaddon. Abrams composed it himself, and the unsettling refrain would become a ghostly thread woven throughout the entire franchise.
Each morning after filming had wrapped, he woke at 5 AM to edit before work and steadily carved the film out of darkness. The scares were sculpted little by little, meticulously designed to grip all who saw them relentlessly. Still, he couldn’t discern whether or not they were working. His wife assured him that they were, and that he was just too close to it to see. After six months of editing, the film was finally ready to be seen. A distribution offer came with a $15,000 stipulation: the audio was a mess. He was told, “You either fix this or the movie never gets released.” It was his wife who urged him to empty their savings. Pregnant and unwavering, she told him to do it.
Once the audio had been corrected, Hell House LLC was finally screened for an audience. Cognetti quietly sat in the back row while two young women sat beside him.
“During the film, the one girl puts her hand over her mouth, and she’s not breathing. She just inhales, and I could tell she’s just too terrified to even breathe,” he explained. “Her hands never left her mouth; it was there the whole time.”
The scares had landed. He watched as the story crawled into a stranger’s veins. The only thing that mattered to him while writing the first film was that it was effective, and during that first screening, he knew he had been successful. He wasn’t thinking about what might come next; something was already in the walls, waiting to be let out.
Chapter Four: The Hotel That Wouldn’t Let Go
The Abaddon sat quietly for a while, but beneath its floorboards, the bones of the story remained. They had always been there, waiting to be uncovered. When the first Hell House found its form, some parts of the story weren’t ready to cross into the light. Cognetti had always known about the haunted past that preceded the night of October 8, but accepted that he might never get the chance to tell it. As Hell House LLC quietly found its audience, though, he felt something stir, the urge to keep the story alive before it slipped from memory. Much like the spirits he’d conjured, he refused to fade, tethered to something unfinished. What followed wasn’t just a continuation; it was a slow, uneasy negotiation between ambition and exhaustion.
The second film began with a ticking clock that only Stephen could hear. He knew there was more history left untold by the original, and he felt the opportunity to divulge it slipping away. To keep the story alive, he adjusted the lens slightly. Building off the events of the first film, he found a new way to breathe life back into the Abaddon Hotel. The Abaddon was no longer just the site of one tragedy; its legend had begun to branch outward. With each entry, the world of Hell House LLC deepened and became something lived in and obsessed over.
In Cognetti’s notes, the mythology stretched far beyond the footage. “There’s a lot of backstory about the cult that I had written out… it was there, but not on the surface,” he explained. Written in the margins were tales of rituals, recruitment, and past lives of the hotel and its original owner, Andrew Tully. The deeper he dug, the more the story threatened to outgrow its vessel.
The fear of finality cast a shadow over the shoot of Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel. Afraid that this could be the final entry in the series, Cognetti decided to let the story bleed out. The budget had gotten smaller with the second film, and because of this, he was forced to find creative ways to chronicle the hotel’s history. He leaned harder into what mattered to him most: the scares. The clown shows up in more places than it did before, its chilling presence featured more heavily than it had been in the first film. “I just wanted to go all out… because this might be the last time we ever see him,” Cognetti explained.
The second film was shot in November, unlike the first, which had been given the relaxed duration of spring to unfold. With winter on the horizon for Hell House II, everything had to move more quickly. Though the story had always lingered behind the walls of the original, he didn’t give himself the time to form an intimate relationship with this script. Stephen knew the limitations he was giving Hell House II, but he pushed forward anyway, afraid that if he waited too long, the Abaddon might be forgotten.
The greatest haunting of the second film came in hindsight. He had hoped, blindly, that it would still find its way. As he hastily expanded the legend of the hotel, even more mythology waited just beyond reach, taunting him with the need to be elsewhere if he wanted it to be heard. If he could move deeper into the Abaddon, he knew how he would leave it once and for all.
Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire was designed to conclude the story, and Stephen began unraveling how it would be done before he knew if he’d be able to. Russell Wynn had long waited in the wings, a presence Cognetti imagined during the writing of the second film. He envisioned a finale shaped by audience immersion, inspired in part by Sleep No More, an off-Broadway dreamscape where the story surrounded you, silent and strange. However, when he returned to the Abaddon, the hotel no longer felt alive with presences that weren’t. He wandered familiar halls, hoping to be startled, but instead found silence. His heart no longer raced when stepping into 2C.
Growing tired of the repetition, he buried it within himself as production began. Hell House III was plagued by problems that Cognetti had to solve largely on his own. “I knew I had a problem on my hands with three… It was tough to write the scares in three. It was really tough, but I wanted to finish the story,” he said. He had never wanted to surrender creative control for financial backing, but that choice came with challenges.
One of the most important elements to him was the scar on Russell Wynn’s face. Much like how he had once envisioned every detail of the clown, he saw the scar clearly in his mind. At one point, he even considered bringing in someone whose sole focus would be crafting it. Between the pressures inside and outside of the Abaddon, he didn’t rewrite the script to fit the budget. Instead, he pushed forward with an ambitious vision that ultimately relied more heavily on makeup and digital effects than he was comfortable with, especially under such financial constraints. The final result didn’t reflect what he had pictured, but he moved forward anyway.
The moments of magic during the production of Hell House III are what kept him going, if only to have the chance to burn it all down. He still believed in the story, and the cast helped keep that belief alive. Even as he quietly admitted that some of the scares had been seen before, the heart of the franchise still beat.
There were reasons Hell House LLC had crept into so many nightmares. The found footage format, the chilling imagery, the hotel itself: they weren’t done yet. One of the favorite scares by fans of the entire series lives within the third film. Even in an entry where the scares were harder to summon, one of the strongest in the entire franchise took shape in the basement.
One of the women cast in Insomnia is dared to go into the basement at night to kiss the clown. Just as she pulls away, its head turns, slow and subtle, but unmistakably alive. They tried several times to capture that exact movement, but Cognetti’s devotion to realism was how they finally pulled it off. The scare had to be shown in the periphery, captured by a camera that didn’t know what it was filming. The tension in the basement was so heavy that Bridgid Abrams couldn’t get out of there fast enough when they called cut.
Cognetti was ready to check out of the Abaddon. It had given him a lot, but it had taken the same amount. If he was going to leave it, he wanted to leave it burning. “I knew that there were only so many things we could do inside the Abaddon Hotel, and I think that’s why I was happy that the conclusion was that we’re going to burn it down,” he said.
The flames that freed the spirits trapped in the hotel also freed Cognetti from creative repetition. Despite his fatigue, he still loved the world he had built inside those walls. He was just ready to stop living in them. The regret he felt came from how long he had stayed inside. The hotel had burned, but the story didn’t die with it. The Abaddon was only where the darkness first took shape, but it wasn’t where it would be laid to rest. Beyond the ash, the Carmichael Manor was already waiting.
Chapter Five: Something Older Still Breathes
In October of 1989, a symphony of screams was conducted within the Carmichael Manor. Its finale was a silence that would never be solved. Only two bodies were found, but an entire family had vanished. The puzzling case of the Carmichaels would leave the public perplexed for decades to come. In 2023, two girls with an affinity for the unsolved traveled to the property in hopes of finally discovering the truth of what had happened. To them, it wasn’t part of the Abaddon’s legacy, but they soon found out that they shared the same blood.
There were always pieces of the story Cognetti hadn’t been able to tell; details from decades earlier that never found their place. In each entry of the franchise, something much bigger is alluded to for those who dare to listen. In Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor, the story finally widened, and something darker stepped into view. Cognetti had always wanted to return to the 1980s, conscious of the fact that it’s where the story truly began. Budgetary constraints never allowed him to fully recount what came before the hotel, and what the footage had really been capturing. Fundamental to the entire mythology, he needed to find a way for it to be told.
Origins sets out to solve a new mystery: the murder and disappearance of the Carmichael family. It doesn’t begin as a ghost story. Instead, it chronicles the details of a real-world homicide. The atmosphere of the film is meaner because of this, reflecting the nature of the story. It cuts sharp and deep, aiming straight for the jugular. The footage feels different this time. It’s no longer a televised special or the frantic documentation by a haunt crew enveloped in fear. It’s more intimate; it’s all that remains of two women who thought they knew what they were walking into.
The Carmichael Manor is vast and sweeping. Its sprawling interior offers more rooms for something to be hiding in and veils a labyrinth imitating unsuspecting hallways. Surrounded by woods disguised as a family’s desire for privacy, the seclusion was always meant to avoid the scrutiny of something nefarious; the acres were always intended to contain. No longer locked into a hotel that shielded itself from the daylight, Cognetti worried that the luminosity would lessen the fear, but it only heightened it.
“There was a scene where I wrote it, and it worked on paper. It’s really something subtle—a hand around a corner and then a face,” he said. “I thought that maybe the daytime might make it not work, but when I put it together, I was like, ‘Oh yeah. This is creepy.’”
Unlike the Abaddon, some things in the Carmichael Manor don’t try to hide. They eagerly announce themselves instead. In a house that size, sound travels differently. Every knock has room to echo, to stretch, to feel like it’s coming from everywhere at once. Cognetti has always found the sound of rapping upon a door unsettling, and he used the new location as an exhibition for that unnerving noise. “If you’re ever home and you hear a knock at the door, you don’t know who’s on the other side.”
The franchise had earned the moniker of being a “slow burn.” While he stood by the belief that real fear takes time, he let a few scares happen early to signify the deviation from the Abaddon. Though Stephen had spent more than enough nights there, by the time he left, he still wanted to honor its legacy. Like laying a rose atop a grave, Origins mirrors the pacing of Hell House LLC almost to the minute.
Until Origins, the past had crept in on its own terms: bleeding through tapes, testimony, and secondhand footage. This time, Stephen was finally able to begin unveiling what had come before. Despite the backward glance, it was the first time for something new: custom clown masks, designed from scratch and aged across decades. The franchise had never used custom props before, as the Waldorf Estate of Fear lent itself to the premise of the film. The original clown mask had been a last-minute solution after the first one never arrived, despite being based on Stephen’s concept art. Angie Moyer rummaged through her old props and found a plain, featureless mask that the makeup artist was able to repurpose to resemble the original design. That improvisation became iconic.
For Origins, he didn’t just need a replacement. He needed three different variations. With help from producer Joe Bandelli, the team brought on a skilled maskmaker who crafted all three designs to match the concept, each one aged differently to track through time, across fragmented footage and worn photographs. The new masks felt familiar, like the monster who showed up in your childhood nightmares, but something about them was colder. More patient. The clowns no longer being tied to a specific location meant that there was nowhere left to run.
The cult of Andrew Tully had lived within every frame of the franchise, but Origins finally indoctrinated everyone at home. It was no longer just about what haunted the Abaddon—it was about why it was haunted at all. The events that took place at the Carmichael Manor reframe everything already thought to be known about the Abaddon Hotel. It had now expanded far beyond room 2C. It was more than something showing up between flashes of light, and even deeper than the Carmichaels. The malevolence was pervasive and devoted, moving within the shadows to leave no heart still beating. During Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor, while it is slowly revealed how deep into the ground the skeletons are buried, and how long they have been there, you’re left wishing you could return to the Abaddon Hotel.
Epilogue
There is a house in Rockland Lake whose pillars lean slightly above a door covered in moss. Its stillness warned all who passed to keep walking, but ten years ago, someone did not. Stephen Cognetti stood at its threshold, drawn not by curiosity but by a pull, something spectral, subtle, and strange. It felt like the house had been waiting. He didn’t knock. He only listened.
The story it whispered had waited for him. It festered and expanded. The deeper he went, the more the story insisted. Its pieces were not added, but summoned. He walked every hallway of the story for a decade and lit every flickering bulb again and again. Some nights, it gave more than it took. Others, it asked too much. But he stayed.
Through him, the story grew, and through the people he found along the way, it endured. Hell House LLC became more than just a series of films. It became a place, haunted not only by spirits, but by something more meaningful: collaboration, friendship, and trust. People like Joe Bandelli, Sophie Schneider, Cameron Munson, Jon Shearburn, Angie Moyer, Brad Geiszler, and Joe Dain were there beside Cognetti, and became part of the foundation beneath the Abaddon Hotel and the Carmichael Manor. And now, after all this time, he has one final story to tell.
Pieces of stories that remain are not always left there by accident. Sometimes, they are meant to be found. Other times, they are meant to be told. In its final telling, Hell House LLC: Lineage is viewed through a different lens. It is the last word scratched into the walls. As the story is lowered into the ground, a camcorder rests atop the casket. The tape is no longer rolling, but the image remains.
Before the dirt falls in, Cognetti leans down to pay his final respects. “The longer I’m away from it, the more I’ll miss it. I will miss it, and it means a lot to me. It’s such an important part of my life to make those movies. Making them was a lot of fun. I would never treat it as something that I’m over. No, it means so much to me.”
He walks away, not because the house is empty, but because the story has finally been told.
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