Houses of Horror: Mills View Mansion and Stimson House
Mills View and Stimson House served as the filming locations for the cinematic haunted houses of two creepy and quirky 80s horror movies.
Underground shelters built in fear of a nuclear attack were usually cramped spaces with just enough amenities to survive a few months. When wealthy recluse Girard “Jerry” B. Henderson built his Cold War bunker in 1978, he decided to ride out the end of the world in style.
The subterranean paradise at 3970 Spencer St. in Las Vegas was built 26 feet underground. At ground level a 2-bedroom caretaker house sits on the property. In the backyard, ventilation and air-conditioning units jut up from the dirt. Rocks conceal stairways and an elevator that lead down to the AstroTurf-covered front yard of the home below.
With its own generator and fuel tank, the home could sustain life for a year with a fully-stocked pantry in the event of a nuclear attack.
Henderson’s underground retreat includes a pool, two jacuzzis, a sauna, an outdoor BBQ grill inside a large fake rock, a dance floor, a putting green in the garden, adjustable light settings to match various times of the day and a hand-painting 360-degree mural of locations familiar to Henderson. A one-bedroom guest cabana is located beside the pool.
A tunnel once connected the house to the office building next door where Henderson worked, but that property was sold separately after Henderson’s death and the tunnel was filled in.
The Las Vegas house was the second bunker home designed and constructed by Texas contractors Kenneth and Jay Swayze for Henderson at a cost of $10 million. The first home is located somewhere near Boulder, Colorado.
Jay Swayze was a passionate advocate of underground living, authoring a book titled Underground gardens & homes: The best of two worlds, above and below.
After Henderson’s death in 1983, followed by his wife’s in 1989, the property passed to a distant relative. It was sold, and then lost to the bank due to foreclosure. It can be yours now for a mere $1.7 million, down from the 2001 price tag of $8 million.
One thing nobody ever seemed to think of when they built these things is that they would need a completely independent air supply that is not connected to the surface to survive. Otherwise the incoming air would be full of radioactive isotopes and would kill the inhabitant much more slowly and painfully than if they were on the surface during the strike.
I think after a month of looking at that decor Id slit my wrists.
Fun to look at. Home forever after a nuclear disaster? No thanks.
I used to live next door to this house for 2 years…. My cat loved playing on their “Roof”. looked like a big abandoned lot of dirt with giant rocks… there is also an above ground portion of the house that faces the street.
Just the comments alone on this page tells you that Amerikwa is already a post-apocalyptic nightmare full of post-humans. The sheer naivete of people to believe this place has no exits or air filtration system. This facility has one of the most advanced air processing plants in all of Las Vegas.
It’d make a great man-cave.
Sold for 1.15 million April 2014.
A bargain for 16,000 sqft.
Reminds me of the underground bunker in the movie Blast from the Past.
More info about this property:
http://www.lasvegasundergroundhouse.com/
Nolan, if you were old enough to remember the cold war and the over hanging threat of atom war, then you would see this as a piece of heaven…….I learned how to get under my desk in elementary school because of the other “Power”
for Gods sake……..
The most horrendous, nightmarish abode I’ve ever seen. Like a Tim Burton vision of sub-urban America only entombed 26 feet underground with no escape.