Due to incomplete historical records, no one is entirely sure who built the house or why. It is a brick structure in the French Baroque style, erected in the early 20th century in what is now Beijing's Dongcheng District, roughly 250 meters west of the Second Ring Road. By the late 1930s, it had become the property of a Catholic organization, possibly an American Benedictine group. During World War II, Belgian Augustinian nuns reportedly used it as a clinic. At the time of the Communist victory in 1949, it was being run by the Irish Presbyterian Mission. The most persistent legend -- that a Kuomintang officer abandoned his wife or mistress there when he fled to Taiwan in 1949, and her ghost has never left -- has no historical support. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Beijing, which now owns the property, says no record of any KMT officer living there has ever been found.

After 1949, the house served as offices for various government agencies. During the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, Red Guards briefly occupied the property. Their hasty departure has been cited by believers as further evidence of the haunting -- the implication being that even the most ideologically committed found something inside that unnerved them. The property was transferred to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association in 1994 after the Catholic Church proved its historical claim to the government's satisfaction. By then, Beijing's real estate market was booming under Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, and the old mansion was nearly demolished to make way for development. The archdiocese saved it by suggesting it could serve as the Vatican embassy if China and the Holy See ever normalized relations.

For years, the decaying house attracted curious teenagers who slipped past the diocese's warnings about structural danger. They left behind empty beer bottles and graffiti, adding to the atmosphere of abandonment. Then came the 2014 horror film The House That Never Dies -- shot in 3D, the first Chinese production to use the modern version of that technique. At the diocese's request, the filmmakers changed the Chinese title to Capital City No. 81, but everyone knew which house inspired it. The film grossed 24.9 million US dollars on its opening weekend, making it the highest-grossing Chinese horror film ever. Youths who saw the film flocked to the actual house, some within blocks of the theaters showing it. On peak days, as many as 500 visitors showed up, some in cosplay costumes. The diocese had to close the gates and restrict entry.

The stories pile up like the debris in the house's courtyard. A British priest who supposedly built the property vanished before it was finished. Investigators allegedly discovered a secret tunnel in the crypt leading to the Dashanzi neighborhood to the northeast. A woman's ghost appears on the stairs. None of it has been verified; all of it has been retold. What makes Chaonei No. 81 fascinating is not whether it is haunted but what its haunting represents. In a city that has demolished centuries of architecture to build the modern capital, this crumbling Baroque mansion survived precisely because it was too historically valuable to tear down and too structurally compromised to renovate easily. Heritage listing protected it from demolition; strict preservation rules made restoration difficult. The ghosts, in a sense, were the building's best defense.