The ad on realtor.com for the four-bedroom home in Los Feliz tells only part of the story. The beautiful Los Angeles home nestled on a hill has a grand entrance, step-down living room, ballroom, library and serene views.
The 5,050-square-foot Spanish Revival is "waiting for that special person looking for a wonderful opportunity to remodel or develop."
But the $2.75 million home at 2475 Glendower Place has a dark history.
The house is where Dr. Harold N. Perelson bludgeoned his wife to death with a hammer and attacked his 18-year-old daughter before killing himself "in a frenzy that he himself likened to a nightmare," the Los Angeles Times wrote on Dec. 7, 1959.
Since then, the so-called "Murder House" has become the center of morbid fascination, sparking ghost hunters to endlessly ruminate about it online.
"People into weird, creepy stuff would know about it," LA history blogger Kim Cooper said. "There's no justice. That's what makes it so weird and mysterious."
A Los Angeles Times article documents the killing under the headline, "Doctor Kills Wife and Self in Frenzy of 'Nightmare.'"
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Perelson, 50, killed his wife while she slept, then attacked his daughter, the article said. She survived. Two other children, Debbie, 11 and Joel, 13, were not hurt.
When Debbie woke to the sounds and confronted her father, Perelson told her, "Go back to bed; this is a nightmare," The Times wrote, citing police.
Nobody knows what set Perelson off, but detectives at the time said they found paperwork suggesting he was having financial problems.
The dark history of the house took on a life of its own.
After the Perelsons, another family bought the home in probate in the early 1960s. When they died, the son inherited it from his parents but he didn't live there. The last owner died last year and the home went to probate again. The house went up for sale last week, said real estate agent Susan Nancy Sanborn, of Berkshire Hathaway.
So far there have been no takers. She said the urban legends of paranormal activity are not helping the cause.
"It's a very beautiful house," she said. "I don't have any ghoulish details to share."
There's the myth that there was another family who moved in after the Perelsons who reportedly left in a hurry because something happened and they didn't have time to take their Christmas tree and gifts, said Jeff Maysh, an LA-based journalist who wrote a history of the house on Medium.com.
There is another myth of visits by the ghost of Dr. Perelson.
"The house is a sinister character in my story," said Maysh, who sold the story to an LA production company that plans to make a horror film. "It's a building that has secrets which kind of gives it a personality. LA is a town based on secrets. Everyone wants to know what's behind closed doors."
