SILENCE HOUSE – “Silence of the Lambs” artifacts can be seen throughout Buffalo Bill’s House. [Courtesy of Buffalo Bill's House]

Chris Rowan is a prop stylist and set decorator by trade – one of those folks who makes sure the environment actors move around in on the set of a film or television production is just right, and that props don’t migrate from one spot to another and mess up a scene’s continuity.

So, with that list of responsibilities, it’s not such a leap to have to deal with all the tasks that go into keeping up a 116-year-old, three-story Victorian home.

But the 44-year-old Rowan doesn’t own just any old stately abode. He is the proprietor of Buffalo Bill’s House, the property in the Fayette County community of Perryopolis where scenes from “The Silence of the Lambs” were filmed three-and-a-half decades ago. Decorated with movie-related artifacts, what was once a private residence is now an Airbnb-style destination where visitors can stay, soak up some horror-movie ambience and even time-trip back to the 1980s and 1990s by playing vintage video games like Pac-Man or Mortal Kombat, or choosing a VHS tape from a shelf and popping it into a VCR.

The house, located along the Youghiogheny River and the Great Allegheny Passage, “is a stunner,” Rowan said. Before he paid $300,000 for it in the early part of 2021, its role in “The Silence of the Lambs” was familiar to locals and to movie buffs who would “stop on the lawn and snap a photo, or even knock on the door,” Rowan explained. The house, though, was officially off limits to the public as its owners went about their daily lives. Under Rowan’s ownership, though, it has taken on the moniker Buffalo Bill’s House and is open not just for stays, but for tours, weddings and other kinds of events.

“It’s something that continues to grow,” Rowan explained on the phone last week from his home in suburban New Jersey, about 30 miles outside New York City.

Born in Manhattan, Rowan was raised in a movie-loving family as the home-video boom of the 1980s and 1990s was making a smorgasbord of film history readily available. Rowan’s father was taken with the monster movies Universal Pictures released in the 1930s and 1940s like “Bride of Frankenstein” and “Son of Dracula,” and Rowan developed a taste for horror fare that was then popular, like “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Halloween” movies.

His parents took a laissez-faire approach to what he watched, so Rowan first caught a glimpse of “The Silence of the Lambs” when his father brought home a videocassette of it when he was 10 or so. It was about a year after it arrived in theaters in February 1991, and around the time it swept the major categories in the Academy Awards, with Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster winning acting honors, Jonathan Demme taking the directing prize and the movie winning Best Picture. Hopkins’ character, Hannibal Lecter, is considered to be one of the most diabolical and most memorable in movie history.

Much of “The Silence of the Lambs” was filmed in the Pittsburgh region and in northern West Virginia. Buffalo Bill’s House was used in the film’s showdown, where Foster, playing FBI agent Clarice Starling, confronts the serial killer Buffalo Bill. Other locations throughout the region used in the movie include the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum in Oakland.

Although some of the subtleties and subtexts in “The Silence of the Lambs” went over his head on the first viewing, Rowan recognized it was “a different type of horror movie, a psychological horror movie. It was something totally different than what I was used to … It was a slow burn, and something very intense. It definitely left an impression.”

Rowan’s cinephilia continued as he got older, and he graduated in 2004 from Marist College with a degree in film and television production. He would also seek out sites that were used in some of the movies he loved, making Rowan an early practitioner of what has come to be called film tourism or “set-jetting.” He remembers tracking down locations that were used in the “Die Hard,” “Lethal Weapon” and “Terminator” movies.

It was natural, then, that Rowan would be intrigued by Buffalo Bill’s House when it came on the market in early 2021. When it was sold five years before, it had lingered on the market and it sold well under the price it was initially listed at. However, when Rowan decided to jump into the fray, there were already several other seriously interested parties, but he ultimately placed the winning bid. With no experience in the hospitality industry, Rowan did his homework, formed a limited liability company and got down to the business of transforming the house into a tourist draw.

Rowan emphasizes it is not a “haunted attraction” where someone is going to leap out of a closet with a plastic ax and yell “boo!” or that visitors have to fret about every creak in the night. But along with all the reminders of “The Silence of the Lambs,” there is a pit in the basement that replicates one used by Buffalo Bill in the movie that was built by the crew of Tom Savini, the Pittsburgh-area makeup artist, actor, director and special effects maven.

“I just trusted my gut instincts,” Rowan said. “What would I want out of it? How would I run it?”

The house is open for parties of up to eight people, and no other people will be in the house when someone reserves a private stay for themselves or their families and friends. Tours are planned for Mother’s Day weekend, and for June 19-21 and July 3 and 5, with more dates to be announced. Those staying can order groceries in advance, and add on extras like a birthday cake, cookies, chocolates, and Chianti, the red wine favored by Hannibal Lecter.

“It’s an interactive experience,” Rowan said. “It’s basically yours when you rent it.”

For information on Buffalo Bill’s House, call 833-283-3245 or go online to buffalobillshouse.com