The Time Kevin Bacon Once Bought (And Demolished) A Haunted House
Kevin Bacon got his showbiz start on a classic soap opera in the early 1980s, and after his breakout role in 1984's "Footloose," he's been in dozens of movies. He's worked with so many people throughout his career that the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" was born, with the idea that you can name any random actor and connect them back to Bacon through their movie roles in just six steps.
However, along with his long Hollywood career, Bacon has also embraced country life complete with a menagerie of farm animals, which is a far cry from his upbringing in Philadelphia. Having a farm, as Bacon told Parade, is "off-brand because I'm a city kid. But I'm an animal person. I find them calming as I get older."
On an episode of "Literally! With Rob Lowe," Bacon talked about the Connecticut farm that he now shares with his wife Kyra Sedgwick. Bacon said he bought the first piece of land there back in 1983 before he'd even met Sedgwick. Over the years, he continued to buy neighboring parcels when they became available. However, there was one land parcel that the seller was hesitant to sell to Bacon because the house on the land was, according to the seller, haunted.
The contract said Kevin Bacon had to tear the house down
Kevin Bacon explained to Rob Lowe how he talked to the neighbor about the sale of the land with the haunted house on it, "I said, 'listen you can't sell me a piece of land but not sell me the house that's on it.'" The neighbor stuck to his stance of not wanting to sell Bacon a haunted house, "'I'm afraid that you'll get possessed and do some serious damage,'" Bacon said the neighbor had told him. That makes sense to us; who would want to be known as the person who sold a beloved actor a house that ended up possessing him? The scenario of Bacon becoming possessed by a haunted house might sound familiar. The 2020 film "You Should Have Left" stars Bacon alongside Amanda Seyfried as a couple living in a haunted house in Wales where Bacon's character gradually loses it.
So to avoid any possible otherwordly possession, the sale of the Connecticut land went forward, but only with the caveat in the contract that Bacon would, "destroy [the house] within a month or so." Bacon followed through and tore the place down. As for just who or what it was that was haunting the house, Bacon said he was told that it, "had to do with a Native American who in the 1700s had been murdered by a colonial soldier." The previous owner had called out a ghost-hunting team and apparently had gotten enough proof for him to believe it really was haunted.
Kyra Sedgwick vetoed keeping anything from the supposedly haunted house
Before the house was torn down, Kevin Bacon walked through it — in the daytime, he noted to Rob Lowe on his podcast. And he had been tempted to keep some parts of it, including some "beautiful old pine boards and a banister." But Kyra Sedgwick, who Bacon's been married to for over 30 years, put her foot down and refused to let Bacon keep anything out of that house.
As for Bacon, he didn't say that he experienced anything spooky or otherworldly at the house before it got torn down, though he did acknowledge that he hopes to one day see a ghost. He might want to be careful, as he's certainly experienced some terrifying ghostly experiences onscreen. Along with the haunted house in "You Should Have Left," Bacon starred in "Stir of Echoes" as a telephone lineman who can see the spirit of a girl who was murdered in his house.
With Bacon's potentially haunted house destroyed, perhaps whatever spirit(s) were there were able to move on? Who knows, but there certainly doesn't seem to be anything spooky about Bacon and Sedgwick's farm now if his social media is any indication. He's shared Instagram pics and videos of the animals they have — alpacas, horses, goats, and pigs — and it looks like Bacon's living his best life out on the farm, sans ghosts. He even sings to them.