15. The original HQ was known as the Black House because… you guessed it, it was painted black
In 1956, LaVey purchased a Victorian house on California Street, San Francisco. He was attracted to the property because of the numerous secret passageways and doors which dated from its time as a speakeasy during Prohibition, which matched his appreciation of the arcane and dramatic. Still, it wasn’t quite perfect, and so ‘he painted it black, thus creating a haunted intrusion on an otherwise typical block, matching his own unique presence’. The Church of Satan was founded at the so-called ‘Black House‘, which remained its headquarters until LaVey’s death in 1997, thenceforth lying abandoned until it was demolished in 2001.
