‘Goosebumps’ Creators Reveal Secrets of the Biddle House — Plus, Justin Long’s Reaction to It (Exclusive)

PEOPLE chatted with executive producer Rob Letterman and production designer Dan Hermansen all about the hidden details behind the show’s eerie Biddle House

What’s scarier than spending a night at Goosebumps’ Biddle House? Getting a whole cast and crew to the real location, the show’s creators say.

PEOPLE chatted with the series’ executive producer, Rob Letterman, and production designer, Dan Hermansen, about the eerie house that ultimately “becomes its own character” as the chilling plot unfolds, Hermansen reveals.

Based on several of R.L. Stine’s hit novels, the horror comedy follows a group of teens — Isaiah (Zack Morris), James (Miles McKenna), Margot (Isa Briones), Isabella (Ana Yi Puig) and Lucas (Will Price) — as they investigate the house’s haunted past and find out how their parents played a part in the death of its former inhabitant, Harold Biddle, back in 1993.

At the same time, Mr. Bratt (Justin Long) inherits the spooky abode and gets caught up in the dark entities that still lurk there 30 years later.

A home as complicated (and creepy!) as the Biddle House takes a lot of planning, and PEOPLE uncovered all the hidden details behind the set during an exclusive interview with Hermansen and Letterman.

Related: 'Goosebumps': Justin Long Gets Possessed as 5 Teens Investigate an Old Mystery in First Trailer (Exclusive)

PEOPLE: Is the Biddle House a real place or was it filmed on a set?

Rob Letterman: Dan and I, we scouted so many homes throughout Vancouver, Canada — and some weird ones at that. Nothing was right. But then we went to Minnekhada Lodge, the real-life Biddle House, which is the most complicated place ever to shoot at. But immediately when we got there, I was like, "Dan, this is it."

PEOPLE: Are the interior scenes filmed there?

Dan Hermansen: The vast majority of interior shots were filmed on a set based largely on location in Vancouver. It really drove home the whole Pacific Northwest — where the show takes place — of just being on the water and having those low clouds. With the sets, we tried to be fairly faithful to what the interior of the historic house was, which was a unique hunting lodge built in the 1930s.

Related: Jack Black Fights Every R.L. Stine Monster Ever in the Trailer for 'Goosebumps'

PEOPLE: What was the inspiration behind the animal heads that are hung up all over the house?

Letterman: The hunting trophies — that was just understanding what the building was and diving into that weirdness. Everybody had fun with it, especially when they were shooting the party scene and Will Price, who plays Lucas, looked up with a cup in his mouth and grabbed the deer head off the mantle. That's all just him reacting to the space. So the cast did have a lot of fun with it.

PEOPLE: Justin Long’s character Mr. Bratt lives in the Biddle House with all that creepy decor. What was his reaction when he first saw it?

Letterman: Justin is amazing. We always encouraged him to improvise and just use the space. So when he reacted to all the antlers and stuff in the show, those were all his own ad-libs. I just let him occupy the middle of the scene and that was all off the cuff reacting to what he was seeing. So it did inspire the performance.

Related: Kate Bosworth and Justin Long Share a Kiss in the Kitchen During Date Night at N.Y.C. Restaurant

PEOPLE: Tell me about the design process behind Harold Biddle’s room in the basement?

Hermansen: Well, we obviously had to have the totems that were drawn from the five books. That was all scripted and everything. A lot of it was just embracing the era of the 1990s as much as we could.

Letterman: Dan and his team went and bought all these 1990s-era things that would be in a teenager’s man cave. I remember they had all the posters and the board games and the television sets — all that vintage stuff. It was very, very cool.

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PEOPLE: How are the different elements of horror that fans loved from the books reflected in the Biddle House?

Letterman: We picked the different Goosebumps books and mapped them to our characters, but we were also looking for different sub-genres of horror within Goosebumps. So there's gross-out stuff with the worms, ghostly things, psychological thriller type of stuff, etc. Dan ingested all that and the basement really is sort of the epicenter of all those ideas.

Stream new episodes of Goosebumps every Friday on Disney+ and Hulu.

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