Wait, Is CBS’s Sitcom ‘Ghosts’ Filmed in a Real-life Old House?
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Of all the shows returning in 2024, one of the most anticipated has been CBS's hit sitcom Ghosts, which kicked off its third season on Thursday, February 15.
Based on the UK series of the same name, the American version of Ghosts stars Rose McIver and Utkarsh Ambudkar as Sam and Jay, a married couple who escape city life to become proprietors of a sprawling bed-and-breakfast tucked away in the countryside of New York's Hudson Valley.
There's just one problem. Besides the fact that just about everything in Woodstone Mansion, which Sam inherited from a great aunt, is in dire need of fixing, the house is full of ghosts. After a fall down the stairs, Sam acquires the ability to see spirits—and Sam and Jay's life will never be the same.
Given that we love seeing an old country house restored to its former glory, as well as idyllic small towns in New York or elsewhere, this spirited comedy is our kind of show. But is the house where it's filmed real?
The U.S. version of Ghosts is filmed in… Canada.
Though CBS's Ghosts is set in Upstate New York and weaves in local references to the area, its filming primarily takes place on a soundstage in Montreal in Quebec and the surrounding area.
According to one fansite, the home that serves as Woodstone Mansion's stone exterior is about an hour from Montreal and was built by a Belgian family in the 1940s. If you look very closely at an aerial view of that location posted on Reddit and an outdoor behind-the-scenes photo posted on Instagram by McIver, you can spot architectural details that match.
During season 2 production in July of 2022, a local news source also reported that the Ghosts cast and crew were filming at Morgan Arboretum in the area of Montreal known as West Island.
Woodstone Mansion's Victorian-style interiors were modeled on a house in California.
During Entertainment Tonight's behind-the-scenes tour of the Ghosts set in 2022, Ambudkar, who plays Jay, revealed that the pilot episode was filmed in an actual house in L.A. near the University of Southern California. When the pilot was picked up, the house's interior was painstakingly re-created inside a Montreal soundstage for filming the rest of the series. The set includes many real antiques too.
The L.A. house that the Ghosts set is modeled after has appeared on TV and in movies before, according to Distractify, including the 1960s TV series Batman, the ABC series Alias, and the 2011 movie Bridesmaids.
However, one part of the L.A. house was not replicated for the Montreal set: the facade. The L.A. house's exterior is brick, while the Canadian facade is stone. Reportedly, the pilot was edited later to swap the house exteriors, so streaming audiences revisiting the pilot episode on Paramount+ will not notice the location change, except for a few brief moments. (For a comparison of the original and current facade, see Hooked on Houses' blog post.)
For scenes where Sam and Jay open the front door to greet guests—or their meddlesome neighbors the Farnsbys (Kathryn Greenwood and Mark Linn-Baker)—but do not step outside, the cast does not have to leave set. ET's set tour reveals that the stone arch is part of the set, and the outdoorsy backdrop may look realistic but is actually a (massive!) curtain.
The set design is pretty impressive. The rustic kitchen, complete with an apron sink and farmhouse table, looks like it belongs in a well-loved and well-weathered home. (By the way, in the kitchen scene below, the one with the arrow is Pete, a scout troop leader played Richie Moriarty. His spirit has been at Woodstone since an unfortunate archery accident in the '80s.)
The bedrooms remind us of past stays in creaky-floored B & Bs. In the future, we'll just tell ourselves that any suspected ghost in such a situation is Alberta, the saucy but endearing Prohibition-era lounge singer (Danielle Pinnock).
Pennsylvania's historic Baker Mansion inspired CBS Ghosts executive producer Joe Port.
There is one bit of CBS Ghosts set trivia that's not related to California or Montreal, but rather Pennsylvania. The series was developed by writers/executive producers Joe Port and Joe Wiseman. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Port grew up in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and on snowy days would sled down the hill at the 19th-century Baker Mansion.
As Port reimagined the British show in an American setting, his memories of the old house inspired him. As a nod to his Victorian muse, he named two characters after Baker Mansion's original owners, Elias and Hetty Baker (there is no similarity to the characters beyond the names). In Ghosts, the fictional character Hetty is portrayed by Rebecca Wisocky, while the spirit of her husband Elias occasionally appears in the form of actor Matt Walsh.
Can you visit the house from Ghosts?
Neither the California house featured in the U.S. version of the Ghosts pilot, nor the home in Quebec that serves as Woodstone Mansion's stone exterior, appears to be open to the public. But you can tour Baker Mansion in Altoona, Pennsylvania—though not a filming location, it was an inspiration for the American version of the series. It's open for docent-guided tours from Memorial Day weekend through mid-December.
If you are a fan of the original BBC Ghosts and are planning a trip across the pond, you can tour the UK Ghosts house: West Horsley Place in Surrey.
How to Watch Ghosts
Premiering on February 15, 2024, Ghosts season 3 airs on CBS on Thursdays at 8:30-9:00 p.m. ET/PT and is available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.
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