One of my favorite things to watch in my free time are videos of travel vloggers touring filming locations to famous movie scenes. You might think that would mostly relegate them to the Los Angeles area, but every state has some film history to it, including my home state, Pennsylvania.
Years before Hollywood began flocking here for the tax breaks, Pittsburgh, PA in particular was known for launching the modern zombie horror subgenre with George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Released in 1968, this film was not only terrifying and trailblazing, but it had some deep themes and messages marinated into its plot.
Ten years later, Romero followed up with a sequel to Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead. From there, a franchise was born, and these first two films became a proud piece of Pittsburgh trivia, particularly for horror fans.
Below, I tour some of the filming locations to both of those movies. I’ll also talk about my personal history with the franchise and how much has changed even from when I first began visiting these sites.
Discovering Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a small budget film that, despite being made in the 60s, is already in the public domain. This makes an easy and appropriate film for horror hosts to show on their local and national platforms.
I had known about the film for most of my life. There’s a line in Beetlejuice, where Lydia asks the Maitlands, two ghosts who are hiding under bedsheets, “Are you Night of the Living Dead under there?” This quote left an impression on me as associating this film with imagery that was even too gruesome for me to imagine.
When I got into horror as a teenager, I looked up the premise of the film and learned that it was about a group of strangers trying to survive the night in an abandoned farmhouse while zombies circle the property. This was before I had seen Hitchcock pull off multiple movies set in one location, and I remember thinking, how can you make a full movie set in one spot over one night?
Finally, in my late teens or early 20s, I was able to rent a copy of the film which was included in a box set with five other movies. I remember two of the others being The Corpse Vanishes with Bela Lugosi and The Satanic Rites of Dracula starring Christopher Lee. There was no real rhyme or reason to this collection, but I was just happy to finally sit down and watch NOTLD.
The plot
The movie ended up surpassing my expectations. Finally, I understood the context behind the famous line, “They’re coming to get you Barbara.” I was floored by how ahead of its time I was in casting a Black male in the role of Ben and making him the level-headed hero who butts heads with Mr. Cooper, a white male whose marriage to his wife is crumbling before our eyes and whose young daughter is fatally injured by a zombie bite.
The film gives a very realistic account of what it would like to be in a remote area during a zombie apocalypse. At one point, the group, which also includes a young couple, Tom and Judy, find a TV and watch footage play from Washington D.C. while actual Pittsburgh-area locations appear and disappear on the screen as rescue stations. I always search this list looking for the closest location to me as if this was happening in real time.
Towards the middle of the film, the group forms an alliance to get to one of these rescue stations. But when this plan falls through, the surviving members turn on each other until only Ben survives the night only to be shot by zombie hunters who don’t even hesitate to take him out despite him not even being an immediate threat. I’m sure you can connect the dots as to why they are so spontaneous in their actions.
The last act is horrific, bleak, and thought-provoking. It doesn’t just kill everyone just to kill them. It’s making a point about how crucial camaraderie is in life or death situations and how it’s not always the most obvious threat that is the most dangerous.
The cemetery
The film opens as a car drives through winding hills in a remote location up to the cemetery. There, siblings Johnny and Barbara arrive to visit the grave of their father on behalf of the their mother. It’s a long drive, and Johnny is irritated by how much a five-minute visit is going to eat up his day.
There, the two are attacked by a freshly-buried corpse who has reanimated and is stumbling around looking to feast on living flesh. This zombie was played by Bill Hinzman, usually credited as the first modern zombie to appear on screen. Prior to this, zombies were not flesh eaters but those under hypnosis and forced to do the bidding of some magical evil villain. This guy goes for Barbara, and Johnny fights him off, but in the process, he strikes his head off of a gravestone while Barbara grips an obelisk stone nearby.
This scene was filmed in Evans City Cemetery. Evans City is about an hour away from Pittsburgh. So, far from the city limits but close enough that Pittsburgh claims it as its own.
The road to the cemetery is still hilly and full of twists and turns, but it’s also nicely paved. You know you’ve arrived when you turn a corner and see the wooden sign on the side of the road which takes you up a steep hill to the cemetery itself. Another sign, this one made of stone, is located about halfway up this hill which is tree-lined and very remote.
At the top of the hill to the left is a path that takes you straight to this opening scene in the cemetery. The chapel, which was recently restored a few years ago, will be on your left.
To your right is the obelisk stone reading Nicholas Kramer. It’s located near the edge of the road so you can’t miss it. To the right, facing the stone from the road, you’ll see a smaller stone with the name Cole on it. This is the stone that stood in as Johnny and Barbara’s father’s grave.
Also nearby is the much smaller stone reading Clyde Lewis Meyers. This is the stone that Johnny struck his head off of.
The cemetery itself is not very big, but you can spend awhile circling the paths and looking at the various stones. You’ll see a lot of the same names throughout, it being a small town. There are also some really unique markers, such as a simple wooden cross that reads “This is not the end.” Really fitting for a zombie filming location.
The farmhouse
Once Barbara escapes the cemetery zombie, she runs to the car, crashes it against a tree, and then continues on foot, shoeless with her raincoat flapping behind her. She makes her way to a farmhouse and holes herself up before going pretty much comatose the rest of the movie.
If you leave the cemetery and follow the road past the main drag of the town and into another remote part of the area, you’ll find an empty cornfield. This is the area where the farmhouse once stood.
The house itself is long gone, but the landscape is familiar with the open field surrounded by trees. You can imagine just how dark it gets in that area with no ambient light around, not even from any streetlights on the road.
I remember getting an eerie feeling driving down this road. While turning around to head back into the town, I remember getting looks from the locals who were out in the yards. It felt like they either didn’t welcome strangers or were on edge about people coming down there to trespass on their properties while posing for pictures at this filming location. So, be mindful if you do visit.
The town
While not a specific filmmaking location, if you head into the town and drive over to the library and police station, you’ll see a sign in a small courtyard reading “Evans City Home to Night of the Living Dead.” Surrounding it are smaller plaques with images from the film and information about the making of the film.
On a nearby semi-circle stone wall, there’s a mural with different images of the town throughout history painted on it. One section of the mural contains the cemetery zombie with the cemetery chapel in the background. It just goes to show how much pride this town takes in its place in film history.
Dawn of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead was also a somewhat difficult film for me to find, but once I got my hands on a copy, I wasted no time in watching it in a dark room late at night. This film, which follows four survivors as they commandeer a news helicopter and attempt to escape the chaos unfolding in the city and end up living at a shopping mall for months on end.
The mall has everything they need to not only survive but also to live comfortably and keep themselves entertained. The camaraderie between the four heroes is somewhat rocky at first, but it soon develops into a tight-knit friendship which shows how crucial these human relationships are to their survival and sanity.
Eventually, a motorcycle gang stumbles upon the mall and infiltrates it, ruining the group’s main source of refuge. Those who survive have to escape in the helicopter to an unknown destiny.
This iteration is much more graphic than its predecessor and a lot more silly in some ways while also maintaining that darkness and a new sociological message about over consumption and greed. The premise alone is enough to grab you, but then you really attach yourselves to the characters and its nail biting conclusion which makes way for the Romero zombie films to follow.
The mall
While the first act of the film takes place in various locations, the movie really finds its stride when the group lands on the roof of Monroeville Mall. Once they decide to stay, they seal the building up, dispose of the zombies who are lumbering around the stores and hallways, and build themselves a cozy apartment hidden by a false wall.
Monroeville, PA is also located outside of the city. Still, it’s much closer than Evans City and also enveloped in the outskirts of Pittsburgh.
I first visited the mall in 2008. Back then, the JC Penney where two of our heroes, Roger and Peter, grab some tools when they first arrive, was still located in the center of the mall and took up two floors.
An elevator was located in the back of the store which would take you up and down these two floors. This was the same elevator where Steven, aka “Flyboy,” got trapped and ended up turning into what is arguably the greatest zombie of all time.
Also still present was a small bridge surrounded by fake plants and a little pond with goldfish swimming around. It’s one of those unique touches that malls used to have to differentiate itself from the others. Not long after, the bridge was removed from the mall and given to a local museum for preservation.
The elevator was removed too and was reconstructed in the Living Dead Museum, an installation located inside the mall where you can see tons of movie memorabilia from classic zombie movies and other films set or filmed in Pittsburgh. A model of zombie Flyboy is positioned in that elevator so that you can get a picture with him.
Some of the other Dawn of the Dead props in the film including the machete that actor and makeup artist Tom Savini used to cut into a zombie during the big finale, a scale model of the mall as it looked back in 1978, and one of Roger’s costumes that he wore in the big raid scene in the beginning of the movie.
Zombie events
The mall was known for hosting multiple horror-themed events for those who loved the films. My first event there was a zombie walk back in 2009. A group of us painted our faces and lumbered around in the parking lot before the doors opened for us after hours and thousands of us stiffly walked through the mall in a giant group, smearing fake blood on the storefront windows and bobbing up and down the escalators.
One of the stars of the film, Ken Foree, who played my favorite character in the film, Peter, was there, and helped to host the event along with a team of local horror hosts who used to show old horror movies on a cable access channel. We broke a record for the most zombies at a zombie walk, and we donated a bunch of non-perishable food items to the food bank.
We also got to see Ken be the first to put his bloody handprints onto the Maul of Fame, a wall featuring the handprints of dozens of actors and filmmakers who contributed to the zombie genre throughout the years. It has grown into a great piece of preserved history as many of those who have put their hands on the wall, including Flyboy David Emgee, are no longer with us.
Also during that event, they opened the Living Dead Museum, which was a bare bones version of the museum that exists today. There was no formal entry fee, just a suggested donation, and an indoor zombie-themed mini golf course was unveiled.
A few years later, the museum moved to Evans City before returning to the upper level of the mall where it exists today. There’s a $10 entry fee now, but there’s also a lot more to see than on its opening night.
After that year, the zombie walk grew too big for the mall and was moved to downtown Pittsburgh. A few years later, though, a smaller zombie walk event was held one morning, and actress Sharon Hill, who played the nurse zombie in the film, was there to lead the charge.
Then, Living Dead Weekend, an event held twice a year, moved from Evans City to Monroeville and offered celebrity signings and panels, mall tours, and movie showings in the mall’s theater. I started attending this convention a few years ago. One year, they reunited the surviving Night of the Living Dead cast, and in 2026, they brought back the surviving heroes of Dawn of the Dead.
It’s been surreal to listen to stories right out of the actors’ mouths as they sit in the same area where they filmed some iconic scenes. This same year, we learned that the mall had been purchased by Walmart and would be closing in April 2027, marking the last year of the event at the mall and the end of an era for those who have a close relationship with the mall and the movie that made it famous.
There was a lot of sadness during the final Living Dead Weekend, not only from the fans but also the actors and the hosts of the event who would have been happy to continue it indefinitely. The mall has changed a lot from even 2009. But there are still photos on the wall from the making of the movie, a bust of George Romero sits against one pillar, and the numbered aisles in the parking lot are still the same.
The airfield
The last location that I’m going to share which just illustrates how much things change is the airfield scene that takes place just before the heroes land at the mall. Here, Flyboy lands the helicopter to fuel up as much as possible before continuing on. The four of them battle some stray zombies, including two children turned zombies inside the small building that sat on the remote field.
This scene was filmed at Harold W. Brown Memorial Airfield located at Logans Ferry Road and Airport Road just down the street from the mall. The airfield is permanently closed, and the small building on the property was torn down. A retirement community now sits on the land, and you can’t really get back into the field anymore.
Other scenes of the hunters in the film patrolling the area were also filmed near this location. But again, it looks very different than it did in the film, and it’s not even reminiscent of the images you see on the screen.
What are your favorite moments from Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead? Which filming locations from these films have you seen or want to see? Leave your answers in the comments below!
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