4 Albums Recorded in Weird Locations – from Haunted Mansions to Crime Scenes

There are countless famed recording studios throughout the world and inside each one, magic was made by some of the biggest artists in music history. But, sometimes, a musician opts to forgo the studio experience for something a little more off-kilter.

From haunted mansions to crime scenes, these four albums were recorded in strange locations. Read about the creation of these projects below.

1. OK Computer (Radiohead)

OK Computer is hallowed ground among Radiohead fans, which makes it all the more apt that the project was recorded in a 15th-century mansion that once was a monastery.

The mansion, St. Catherine’s Court, has lived many lives. On top of being a monastery, the building was also once the place where King Henry VIII kept his illegitimate daughter. Because its history is so storied, many believe it to be haunted. Nevertheless, Radiohead managed to co-opt it as a recording studio and make one of its most beloved records.

2. The Downward Spiral (Nine Inch Nails)

The Downward Spiral is an eerie concept album about a man suffering a breakdown. What better place to record that sort of project than the site of a grisly murder, orchestrated by a man who also descended into madness? At least that’s what Trent Reznor thought when he decided to record this album at 10050 Cielo Drive – aka the house where actress and model Sharon Tate was murdered by members of the Manson Family.

Reznor was the final renter of the house before it was torn down in 1994. “Sometimes I’d come home and find bouquets of dead roses and lit candles in the front gate,” the realtor of the house once said. “It was really eerie. Who were they leaving the shrines for – Tate or Manson?”

3. Rubber Factory (The Black Keys)

The Black Keys decided to move from Patrick Carney’s basement to an abandoned General Tire factor to record their third album.

“We were looking for a place and we saw the ‘for rent’ sign and it’s just this giant building and the first floor is where all the big storage rooms are, the big kind of cavernous rooms, and then the second floor is where they had all the offices and laboratories, and that’s where we rented our space,” Carney once said.

The experience gave the album its name.

4. At Folsom Prison (Johnny Cash)

Because Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison is such a classic, the idea of a country star going into a prison to record an album might not seem that outlandish, but, at the time, Cash was doing something unprecedented.

“The culture of a thousand years is shattered with the clanging of the cell door behind you,” Cash wrote in the liner notes of the record (per Pop Matters). “Life outside behind you immediately becomes unreal. You begin to not care that it exists. All you have with you in the cell is your bare animal instincts.”

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