East Corinth

In the 1988 comedy Beetlejuice, the Maitlands, a recently deceased couple played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin, find their house “haunted” by the Deetz family who purchase it after their death. Frustrated with the bureaucratic morass that is the afterlife and their own inability to scare the family off of their property, they call a bio-exorcist, a ghost claiming to be skilled in the removal of the living. His name is Beetlejuice, a rowdy, lewd, uncontrollable scamp played by Michael Keaton.

Although the film takes place in Connecticut, it was actually filmed in Vermont, in the town of East Corinth. The main street that bisects the town goes by most of the featured locations. The town’s Mason Hall stood in for Lydia Dietz’s schoolhouse, a general store stands in for a hardware store, the town library makes an appearance, and the whole town is shown in overview.

The bridge where the Maitlands die still exists, but is not a covered bridge. At the time of filming, the bridge was just a handful of planks and a pair of guardrails. Now it’s a more modern concrete bridge. It can be found on Chicken Farm Road, close to where the street intersects with Village Road.

The delightfully mashed-up 1980s/Victorian house where most of the movie takes place was specially constructed on-site for the film and was mostly just a façade. The hill where it was built, however, can be seen on the main road at the southern edge of the downtown area. A closer view of it can be found off of Jewell Lane, which is basically the driveway to the farm on which the hill stands. The open interior of the fake building was used as a basketball court by the film crew, and the “roof” was actually painted canvas that sagged. When filming exterior shots, the fake building was pressurized with giant fans to make the “roof” puff up to look like a real roof. The “cover” from the bridge was re-purposed, and is in use at the Northeast Slopes ski area, a few miles away on Rte 25. The general store went out of business, and the building is currently undergoing massive renovations, having been gutted to the studs, and raised several feet, so a new foundation can be poured.

Adapted with Permission from: The New England Grimpendium by J.W. Ocker