The real-life owners of the Pennsylvania house that served as Buffalo Bill’s lair in Silence Of The Lambs put their home up for sale last summer in an effort to simplify their lives. (There’s also a distinct possibility that they got tired of passersby asking to borrow some lotion or to check out their sweet basement pit.) But the house’s remote location, while presumably appealing to someone with nefarious plans, has put off most serious, non-homicidal buyers. The asking price has been lowered to $249,000, but there’s still only one organization that’s offered to take the house off the couple’s hands: According to NBC News, PETA has expressed interest in turning the building into an animal “empathy museum.”
PETA’s executive vice president Tracy Reiman sent a letter to the real estate agent overseeing the sale of the house, indicating the group’s desire to “[t]urn[ing] The Silence Of The Lambs house into an empathy museum for these victims would serve as a way to point out that all animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone.” In a press release promoting its letter and plans, PETA announced that one of the planned activities for the empathy museum would involve putting animal skins on visitors to remind them “that animals also are ‘made of flesh, blood and bone’.” PETA didn’t comment on having seemingly taken inspiration in this case from the film’s villain instead of its hero who, as a child, made a desperate attempt to save a lamb from slaughter, so perhaps a movie night is in order.