A Christmas Story House, Bumpus House both available for overnight stays

CLEVELAND — Now that the spooky season of Halloween is (almost) over, it’s time to concentrate on leg lamps, bunny suits and not shooting your eye out.

As Christmas approaches, so too does the season for endlessly rewatching "A Christmas Story," the 1983 movie that has become a holiday classic — and also the basis for a popular museum at the Cleveland house where much of the movie was filmed.

New digs:New Hocking Hills State Park Lodge boasts 81 guest rooms, renovated cabins, restaurant, pub

A Christmas Story House and Museum attracts thousands of fans each year, all year long. Visitors come from all over the country and beyond. During my most recent visit, I saw cars from Texas, New York and Massachusetts parked outside the museum.

“This is like my Mecca,” said Jerry McBride of western Massachusetts, who claimed, not completely in jest, that he and his brothers have watched A Christmas Story “like a thousand times.”

McBride, his wife and his two college-aged daughters were driving West for a family event.

“And seeing how we were going through Cleveland, we just had to stop at the shrine,” he said.

A Christmas Story House bound to stir fond memories

Fans of the movie will immediately recognize A Christmas Story House (www.achristmasstoryhouse.com/) as home to the movie’s 9-year-old, BB gun-coveting hero, Ralphie Parker and his family. Across the street from the house is the site’s gift shop and museum, which houses many of the original props and costumes from the movie and other mementos.

But the star attraction is, undoubtedly, Ralphie’s house, itself.

The exterior of the house has been renovated to look just as it did in the movie.

Although many of the interior scenes were shot on a Toronto sound stage, the house has also been remodeled inside to look like a duplicate of the Parker family’s movie home.

Tours take visitors through the home to the spots where the family opened their Christmas presents, where Ralphie hogged the bathroom while decoding secret messages, and where the family uncrated the mysterious (but not Italian) “major award” won by “The Old Man.”

Because all the furniture and fixtures in the house are reproductions, nothing is off-limits to reasonable inspection and use by visitors, who can relax on the sofa, pose with the “major award” leg lamp in the front window, and even hide under the kitchen sink, just like Ralphie’s little brother Randy when he feared that his father might kill Ralphie.

Fall foliage:Autumn brings brilliant display of Mother Nature's palette to Ohio foliage

Enjoy the house during an overnight stay

Visitors who’d like an extended experience can even book the house for an overnight stay and sleep in the twin beds in Ralphie and Randy’s bedroom — perchance to dream of finding, under the Christmas tree that perpetually stands in the living room, their very own Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range-model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time.

Overnight guests also have access to the modern, queen-size beds in the house’s private third-floor suite, which includes a full modern kitchen – something the Parker family certainly did not have.

Guests who stay the night also get the run of the house after the day’s tours end and so can recreate their own Christmas-morning scenarios any time of year. (Pro tip: If you want to relive the scene where Ralphie descends the stairs looking like “a pink nightmare,” the museum gift shop sells adult-size bunny suits.)

Overnight stays begin at $545 a night and include tours for up to six guests.

The museum also operates additional lodgings at “The Bumpus House” next door to A Christmas Story House. In the movie, that house is home to the rustic Bumpus family and the raucous and intrusive hound dogs that eat the Parker family’s Christmas turkey.

Like the Christmas Story House, the Bumpus House has been completely renovated, with interiors much nicer and more comfortable than anything the Bumpuses would have experienced.

The house is divided into upper and lower suites.

Spooky sites:Haunted histories and ghostly tales make Ohio sites worth exploring

The upper “Stolen Turkey Suite” includes a kitchenette and three separate bedrooms that sleep up to six. Stays begin at $245 a night.

The lower “Hound Dog Haven Suite” has a kitchenette and one bedroom with a queen bed and bunk beds that sleep up to four guests. The suite is handicap-accessible. Stays begin at $195 per night.

Trailer teases to new release

And here’s some more good news for fans hoping for a bit more Christmas Story magic.

HBO Max has announced a Nov. 17 release of “A Christmas Story Christmas” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ56rcXcNzQ), a sequel featuring the child actors from the original movie as grown-ups returning to the old neighborhood. (Check out the house in the trailer’s opening scene.)

Steve Stephens is a freelance travel writer and photographer. Email him at sjstephensjr@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: A Christmas Story House and Museum draws thousands of fans every year