25 Unbelievable Homes Built In The World’s Most Hair-Raising Locations

Do you want to live in something that looks like a sci-fi spaceship that’s crash-landed on a steep hillside overlooking Los Angeles? Then the Chemosphere House would suit you perfectly! But if you suffer from vertigo, then it might not be your ideal home. That’s because it’s precariously cantilevered from a slope that has an angle of around 45 degrees.

Architect John Lautner built the uncompromisingly modernist property in 1960. Lautner, who died in 1994, was, “one of the most important American architects of the 20th century, and perhaps one of the most misunderstood,” according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the man who commissioned the home, Leonard Malin, was an aerospace engineer.

The Solvay Hut is a flimsy-looking timber structure perched on a ledge on the sheer face of the famous Matterhorn in Switzerland. Built in 1915, it’s the highest structure on the mountain. At an altitude of about 13,000 feet, the Solvay Hut is some 1,500 feet below the Matterhorn summit. The shack is an emergency refuge for mountaineers and can accommodate up to 10 people at a pinch.

Born in 1838, Ernest Solvay was a Belgian industrialist who was also a keen climber. He donated the money to build the Matterhorn’s Hörnli Hut, 2,400 feet below the one named after him. In 1976 the Solvay Hut was updated with the addition of an emergency telephone. But as you’ll find if you ever spend a night there after getting into difficulties on the Matterhorn, there’s little else in the way of facilities.

Elliðaey is one of the Vestmannaeyjar group of islands, which lie in the North Atlantic off the south coast of Iceland. The tiny green spot of land has just one house, and it lacks both electricity and running water. So if it’s solitude you crave, then this is the place to head for. Bizarre stories have swirled around this splendidly isolated property. One was that Icelandic songstress Björk owned the house. A romantic idea – but utterly false.

Another unlikely tale was that a billionaire had bought Elliðaey Island as a refuge in the event of a zombie apocalypse. But there’s no truth in that, either. In December 2020 the Daily Mirror revealed the rather less dramatic, although still weird, truth about the house and island. Although inhabited up until the 1930s, the island has no permanent residents today. But it is visited by puffin hunters each year, and they stay in the lonely house while they go about their business.

Fancy living at the top of a volcano in a home perched 150 feet above the ground? Well, TV personality Huell Howser did, so he commissioned architect Harold J. Bissner, Jr. to build the Volcano House in 1968. The house is set on the edge of California’s Newberry Springs, close by the dunes of the Devil’s Playground in the Mojave Desert.

The house perches atop the cone-shaped volcanic outcrop. To reach it, you drive up a spiral roadway that runs around the cinder rock. The circular configuration of the dome-shaped dwelling gives sublime all-round views of the surrounding desert and mountains. You just have to hope that the volcano is definitely dormant. Otherwise, things could get distinctly uncomfortable.

Just Room Enough Island, also called Hub Island, is one the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River, near New York’s Alexandria Bay. The Just Room Enough moniker is entirely accurate: this American islet is tiny. Much too small, you’d think, to have a house on it. But that is just what there is.

As Andrea Sachs put it in a 2010 piece for The Washington Post, “The speck of land squeezes a house and a couple of wrought-iron benches pushed hard up against the shingles onto its banks. One misstep and you’re swimming.” The Sizeland family built the house and planted a single tree on the island in the 1950s. Apparently, they were hoping for an isolated hideaway. But their plan was spoiled by the huge numbers who came to gawp at their strange home.

The Holy Trinity Monastery could hardly be better placed for monks wishing to dedicate their lives to devotional prayer and spiritual contemplation. This extraordinary UNESCO-listed structure is located just outside the town of Meteora in central Greece. The monastery is improbably perched on an inaccessible peak which is surrounded by soaring, otherworldly rock formations.

A monk called Dometius established the Holy Trinity Monastery – known to Greeks as Agia Triada – in the 15th century. The only way up to the building is via 140 steps carved into the unyielding rock face – hot work in the Greek high summer. If you’re a James Bond fan, you may well recognize Agia Triada. It was used as a location in the 1981 movie For Your Eyes Only.

This whimsical-looking structure is billed as a teahouse. Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori designed the Teahouse on the Tree, and it was constructed in 2004. It’s located in Japan’s Nagano Prefecture and sits on a hill called Chino. Up to six people can enjoy the tea ceremony in it as they sit on the tatami mats that furnish the tiny house. Attached to a chestnut tree, the teahouse is about 30 feet tall to the top of its chimney, which serves as a fireplace where the tea is prepared.

In fact, this is not the only extraordinary teahouse that Fujimori has designed: there’s one in Germany, two more near the one pictured here and others elsewhere. Speaking to Wallpaper* magazine in September 2020, Fujimori explained, “When designing teahouse architecture, you have to create a separate world that is distinct from everyday life. The key is to let something float above the ground.”

The Korowai people live in the inaccessible jungles of Indonesia’s West Papua and only came into contact with the outside world as recently as the 1970s. According to a 2006 article in the Smithsonian magazine, they were one of the last tribes anywhere in the world known to practice cannibalism. It’s a controversial claim, with some anthropologists asserting that this gruesome custom is many years in the past.

The Korowai’s lofty wooden houses, built atop towering trees, look like frighteningly flimsy and high-risk homes. But the high-altitude dwellings do have some entirely practical qualities, such as avoiding the hordes of mosquitoes below. The structures perch more than 100 feet above the ground at the top of wanbom or banyan trees and can accommodate families with as many as 12 members.

It’s called the Lagangarbh Hut, but this remote stone-built Scottish hideaway is more like a small cottage. The house is set close to the River Coupall, which runs through the magnificent, dark hillsides of Glen Coe. The National Trust for Scotland has owned the property since 1946 and rents it out. Surprisingly, its four rooms can sleep up to 20 people – but don’t expect the lap of luxury or much in the way of privacy!

The hut was once the home to the MacDonald family – but Glen Coe is a mournful place for them now. In February 1692 the clan hosted a group of Campbells there, freely giving them traditional Highland hospitality. Then one night the guests turned against the MacDonalds, massacring 38 men, women and children. Others of the clan escaped across the heather through a blinding Highland blizzard.

The Whistler Forest is a nature reserve in British Columbia, Canada. It’s a wild place of mountains, forests and lakes. And it’s also home to various lodges and hotels that cater to hikers and winter sports fans. The land is publically owned – and that means you can’t just decide to build yourself a home there.

But Joel Allen did it anyway. Working in secret, he built himself an incredible treehouse in the forest. He constructed his egg-shaped timber dwelling high in the trees using his impressive carpentry skills. And building a home off the ground is probably quite a good idea in an area that’s famous for its black bear population.

This place looks like it’s clinging to the hillside using little more than hopes and prayers. Yet the “Sanctuary” treehouse in Asheville, North Carolina, is actually a custom-made affair that isn’t going to tumble into a ravine any time soon. People who’ve stayed there have even called it the perfect escape to unplug from a moving-too-fast world.

Yes, you read that right! This luxury treehouse is an Airbnb where up to four guests are welcome to stay – any time they can get a reservation. But while Sanctuary certainly gives off fairy-tale vibes, Asheville is also home to all manner of dangerous wildlife. We’re talking black bears, alligators, copperheads... So be sure to stay alert!

This futuristic Alpine shelter enjoys a spectacular position at the foot of Skuta Mountain in Slovenia. Building it required the logistical muscle of the Slovenian Army, with soldiers airlifting the construction materials to the site. The building is wrapped in concrete, and the glass gables afford superb views across the mountainous landscape.

Students from Harvard working with Slovenian architects OFIS came up with the design. Their creation is specifically aimed at withstanding the harsh winter conditions in the high peaks of Slovenia’s Kamnik Alps. Once the structure had been prefabricated off-site in three sections, these were flown in by helicopter and assembled by 60 volunteers in a single day. Now, up to eight mountaineers can shelter in the building.

One of America’s best-known architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, designed this breathtaking house perched on a wooded hillside. Eric Kaufman was the man who commissioned the architect, and the building was completed in 1938. Its truly outstanding feature is the fact that it actually stands above a 30-foot waterfall – hence the name Fallingwater.

Built as a holiday home for the Kaufman family, the modernist house is set among the idyllic glades of Pennsylvania’s Bear Run Nature Reserve. Consisting of three stories, each floor is cantilevered from the hillside. A series of balconies wrought from reinforced concrete extend over the waterfall, too. The plan was for the house to sit naturally in its surroundings. There’s even a large natural rock protruding into the living room.

The Katskhi Pillar is set in Georgia – the European nation, not the U.S. state. This 130-foot natural limestone column supports a truly implausible looking manmade structure: a church built between the sixth and eighth centuries. The sacred building is dedicated to a monk, Maximus the Confessor. Maximus is considered the leading theologian in Byzantium in the seventh century.

The tiny church has three monk’s cells, a burial vault and, perhaps surprisingly, a wine cellar. To this day, monks climb a hair-raising metal ladder that runs up the side of the rock formation to the church for daily worship. Father Maxime Qavtaradze was the final monk to actually live atop the Katskhi Pillar, which he did for some 20 years until 2015.

This house – set in the River Drina where it forms the border between Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina – dates back to 1968. In that year, a group of swimmers decided that the rock the home was eventually built on was a good place to chill out. But the rock lacked a certain something: a house! So the water sports enthusiasts set about building one, undeterred by the obvious disadvantages of the site.

Using boats and kayaks, the intrepid band transported all the timber and other building materials piece by piece to the middle of the Drina. For keen swimmers, this house is a dream come true. Wake up in the morning and dive straight into the river for an exhilarating swim. Although it has to be said that the potential dangers of storms and flooding are all too apparent.

When it comes to accommodation, there can be few more thrilling, or terrifying, places than Skylodge. The four transparent pods that make up Skylodge hang from the side of a mountain cliff 1,300 feet above the floor of Peru’s Sacred Valley of Cusco. The only way to get there is to climb, which will take you around 90 minutes – assuming you know what you’re doing.

Three of the capsules are sleeping accommodations – they even have private bathrooms – and the fourth larger one houses the kitchen and dining area. It’s worth pointing out that the only way to get to your breakfast is to climb across the rock face to the dining room when you wake up in the morning. A truly invigorating start to your day!

It’s easy to see why some have described this property as a “real-life Flintstones house.” The Casa do Penedo – house of stone – actually only dates back to the 1970s rather than to Hanna-Barbera’s fictionalized Stone Age. Nevertheless, it’s an intriguing structure, taking full advantage of natural features in northern Portugal’s rugged Fafe Mountains.

The eccentric dwelling, set at an altitude of some 2,600 feet, is sandwiched between four massive boulders. It took two years to build and was completed in 1974, when it was used for a time as a holiday home. Now, it serves as a small museum. And it’s certainly well defended. The place is nestled between huge granite rocks, and its windows and doors are said to be bulletproof.

Living in the Antarctic exposes humans to some of the most extreme environmental conditions anywhere on the planet. And that’s why nobody lives there permanently. But each year scientists travel to this hostile region for months of research. This large red capsule, part of the Halley VI Antarctic Research Station, is the place they call home in the Antarctic. It’s located on the Brunt Ice Shelf on the Caird Coast.

The entire research station, composed of eight modules, can be hauled over the ice by tractors. This is just what happened in 2017 when a large unstable chasm in the nearby ice threatened the safety of the scientists and support staff. Despite the 14-mile relocation, the station has not operated during the winter season since. The precarious condition of the ice near the station makes over-wintering just too risky.

“Nail house” is the term given to homes that are situated in the middle of urban or highway developments in China. What happens is that property owners refuse to sell to the authorities – so large-scale construction projects proceed around the stubborn residents. This nail house is in the Chinese city of Wenling in Zhejiang Province.

As you can see, this particular nail house sits right in the middle of a freshly built freeway. The occupants of the home were Luo Baogen, a duck farmer, and his wife, both in their 60s. The local government had offered them $41,300 to move, but they’d spurned the deal. Eventually, after prolonged negotiations, Baogen agreed to move, and the house was finally demolished in December 2012.

Clinging to the remains of an ancient and mostly demolished bridge, this picturesque property looks just about ready to plunge into the river below. The Old Mill of Vernon sits above the River Seine, about 50 miles downriver from the French capital, Paris. It was built in the 16th century atop a 12th-century bridge. At one time, there were five mills driven by the river waters.

A flood in 1651 so damaged the bridge that it was no longer usable. In the 19th century, when a new bridge was built just upstream, all that remained of the original bridge was the part that still supports the Old Mill. Yet the ancient building was almost lost thanks to damage during World War II fighting. But the good folk of Vernon rallied around and found the funds to restore their precious mill.

This unlikely looking structure cleaves to a cliff about 250 feet above the ground on the sheer face of Mount Hen in China’s Shanxi Province. The Hanging Monastery, also known as the Xuankong Temple, might look ready to crash to the ground – but it dates back more than 15 centuries.

The structure, built in 491, is just over 100 feet long and includes two three-story pavilions and a 30-foot bridge. It’s said that the building was started by a single monk, Liao Ran, although others later came along to help with the construction. The altitude of the monastery means it sits in glorious silence. These are ideal conditions for monks seeking undisturbed contemplation and meditation.

It can get hot in Australia. So hot, in fact, that living above ground in the heat of the sun can be a real burn on the keister. The residents of Coober Pedy, however, solved that problem by building an entire city underground.

And we're not talkin' about muskrat hovels inhabited by Star Wars sand people. These are fully-functioning homes accompanied by bars, restaurants, hotels, and a swimming pool. It's a perfect home down under the Land Down Under.

Not every hidden house is far from society. In Warsaw, Poland, there's a house wedged in an alleyway. Between three and five feet wide, it looks like a weird air ventilation shaft for the adjoining buildings. What's its deal?

Built by Jakub Szczesny, the "Keret House" is less of a house and more of an art project designed to memorialize his Jewish ancestors killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. A look inside reveals that it is, indeed, quite narrow.

If you're the type who isn't fazed by heights or open air, then your ideal off-the-grid retreat might just be one of the many cliff-face houses that are set to be built. Of course, it isn't just the way they look from the outside that'll blow you away...

The interior of these mountain houses offer unspeakably gorgeous views. Imagine looking out into the ocean and feeling the sun on your face? This home is purely a hypothetical design—meaning it's not actually built yet—but it looks like a perfect retreat for James Bond, doesn't it?

While a hidden underground bunker designed to preserve life in the event of nuclear fallout doesn't exactly scream "comfortable living," the Vivos Europa One in Germany might just be an exception.

In this bomb shelter designed for the millionaires and billionaires of Europe, there are well over 200,000 square feet of functional floor space. The shelter is broken up into apartments like this one, and it includes pools, gyms, and even restaurants.

The next home isn’t so much an unusual place to live as it is just plain unusual. Seriously, there can’t be too many people who’d see an old airliner as a perfect home. But when Oregon man Bruce Campbell purchased a retired plane for $100,000, he had a vision. He had the imagination and the skill to set about turning the passenger jet into a home. And the result of this flight of fancy is a piece of real estate that really is something else.

Campbell himself has confessed to being something of an “old nerd” by nature. After all, as a former electrical engineer, the senior citizen has spent much of his life pursuing technological achievements. He has never married, and he’s claimed on his own website to be “socially inept” as a person.

Yet while Campbell may think of himself as a geek, this doesn’t mean he’s averse to a spot of adventure. This is probably why he purchased a ten-acre plot in the woods when he was a young man in his 20s. This space is situated outside Hillsboro, which itself is near the Oregon city of Portland.

And Campbell has been skeptical about one of the more traditional ways of purchasing a property. In 2017 the former engineer was interviewed for an episode of FLORB’s YouTube series Alternative Living Spaces. There, he explained, “When I was young, I didn’t want a mortgage.”

So, since Campbell didn’t want to borrow the money to buy a house, he went about things differently. He revealed, “I could have purchased a home and shouldered a mortgage like most people do. But I was happy enough living in a very humble and very inexpensive mobile home.” And that’s exactly what he chose to do.

There was one big benefit to this modest arrangement, too: Campbell was able to save and invest some of the spare money he had. He revealed on the episode of Alternative Living Spaces, “My intention was to wait until I could buy a home with cash. Then I would never be tied down to the shackles of debt.”

When Campbell had eventually scraped together enough money to fulfill that dream, though, his idea of the perfect abode had changed somewhat. He explained, “By that time, I had stopped thinking in provincial terms. Aerospace technology seemed like a wonderful option.” Yes, he looked to the skies for inspiration.

Campbell’s original plan was to build himself a home on his acreage using freight wagons. However, that was before he came across the self-explanatory Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association. And after he had aligned himself with this international non-profit group, there was only one possible structure that Campbell could use in his house build.

The Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association believes in the preservation of retired airplanes. These advocates of antiquated air transport do not simply want to restore aircraft, mind you. Instead, the movement believes that the superannuated structures should be converted to fulfill other uses such as homes. And that’s where Campbell comes in.

On his website, Campbell has expanded on his green thinking about grounded aircraft with extreme enthusiasm. “Retired airliners are profoundly well designed,” he wrote. “[They] can last for centuries (with effective corrosion control), are extremely fire resistant and provide superior security. They’re among the finest structures mankind has ever built.”

But according to Campbell, most aircraft meet sorry ends. Numerous planes are retired each day across the globe, and he suspects that the vast majority of these are simply left to rot. While salvagers may be interested in those jet engines, the other parts of planes are apparently deemed completely worthless.

With this in mind, Campbell thinks it a crime that the vast majority of the world’s aircraft are scrapped after their service. And the Portland man committed himself to saving at least one plane from the same fate, hoping to inspire more people to do the same in the process.

Campbell finally found the perfect craft for his project in 1999. It was a retired Boeing 727 passenger jet, and it came with a rich history. Before it was decommissioned, the plane had once transported the body of shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis home to his native Greece in 1975. His world-famous wife Jackie Onassis sat in the cabin for the journey.

Campbell was sold, and after handing over $100,000 the plane was his. Not bad for a multi-million-dollar piece of high technology. Yet it wasn’t long before the retired engineer encountered his first big problem. How on Earth would he get the beast of a jetliner to its new home?

Well, it turns out that the move was pretty straightforward. Explaining how the aircraft made it to his plot, Campbell told Alternative Living Spaces, “Wayne Grippin house movers and Swanson Trucking managed to move the aircraft from the staging site next to the Hillsboro Airport through this path, which you can see was cut in my forest up to the site.”

Then, once the plane was on his land, Campbell set about securing it. Since his plot sits in the Cascadia subduction zone, it was naturally important that he made his new home as earthquake-proof as possible. How did he achieve this? Well, he used the aircraft’s landing gear. That way, the jet could be stabilized in the event of a tremor.

By perching the plane on its landing gear, it had some flexibility of movement. Campbell explained, “The idea is to enable the aircraft to dance freely in an earthquake.” That said, he already seemed pretty convinced that his new home would be fit to withstand such a natural disaster.

Campbell pointed out, “After an earthquake, newscasters never say, ‘Oh gosh, it’s such a shame – all the aircraft at the airport were badly damaged, and there are so many vehicles which are shaken and damaged.’ That never happens. These are independent vessels, [and] they’re on their own suspension system. They ride it out, [and] it’s no big deal. No damage occurs unless something falls onto them.”

Then the hard work really began, as the engineer got to work transforming the jet into somewhere that he could call home. The renovations would cost a further $120,000, taking Campbell’s total outlay to $220,000. But it appears that the sky was the limit as far as expenditure was concerned.

Campbell had to have the usual mod cons, after all, and so he took care of these practicalities. For starters, he needed access to good old H20. When the plane had been operational, a service door had allowed water to be piped in. Campbell expanded this feature, then, and also connected both an electricity supply and a telephone line to his new home.

Aside from electricity and running water, Campbell’s aircraft also has two working toilets. The pair of lavatories are situated at the back of the plane and share one sewage connection that transports waste out of the aircraft via another service door. Pretty ingenious, but then Campbell had to keep his new home sanitary.

There are a few more fun additions to the craft, too. For example, if you’re ever invited to Campbell’s home, you’ll access it via a set of “air stairs” that retract and extend. These steps bring you up to the rear of the aircraft, where Campbell has installed what he described to Alternative Living Spaces as a “very crude, primitive shower.” Basically, it’s just a hose inside a plastic tub.

Also at the back of the plane are the two bathrooms – one of which Campbell describes as his “guest lavatory.” And to the untrained eye, these spaces seem to be pretty much unchanged from when they were used on board the commercial aircraft. They’re both compact, and each features a toilet, a basin and a mirror.

Then there’s the area that Campbell – using proper aircraft terminology – refers to as the “aft galley.” And there’s heaps of storage space here. Giving a tour of his unusual pad on Alternative Living Spaces, he explained, “My aft galley is filled with all kinds of industrial or construction-related material at the moment.”

But while the aft galley was functioning just as a storage room at that point, Campbell had big plans for the space in the future. He revealed, “At some point or other, it will evolve into either a laundry room or for some other purpose, or maybe a kitchen. I don’t know. I’ll let evolution take its course.”

Further into the interior of his plane, Campbell has established a kind of small office. When he had the folk from Alternative Living Spaces around, though, this part of his home was in a state of disarray. Pointing this out, the engineer said, “[This is] my workbench, which is terribly cluttered right now – leaving me almost no actual work area.”

But don’t be fooled, as Campbell has transformed the plane into a comfortable, livable home. He has what he’s described as a “makeshift kitchen,” which includes a “five-decade-old refrigerator” and a serving cart originally used on board commercial flights. At the time of the interview, he also possessed enough food to last him for about four months.

As for Campbell’s central living space? It’s situated above the main landing gear bay. There, he has a futon sofa that he seemingly uses to sleep on. The Oregon man added of the furniture, “It folds flat if I ever need space for two, which occurs from time to time.” There’s also a rail on which he can hang his clothes.

Alongside the basics, Campbell’s awesome home boasts a modern design, bespoke lighting and climate control. The jet’s wings, meanwhile, provide the retiree with an outside deck. He told Alternative Living Spaces, “[The] right wing is a frequent work site and recreational site for me.” Campbell even hosts concerts up there on occasion.

Then there’s the front of Campbell’s aircraft, with a cockpit that remains remarkably intact. The engineer has lovingly put lots of it back together, you see. He revealed, “The flight deck was fully skeletonized by the salvage company, but I’ve managed to restore some things. Maybe – very roughly – 35 percent, I suppose.”

Yet while the inside of the plane boasts various modern conveniences, the outer fuselage provides Campbell with sturdy protection from the elements. He elaborated on this idea to online lifestyle magazine Atlas Obscura. He said, “[The structure is] incredibly strong, durable and long-lived. And [it can] easily withstand any earthquake or storm.”

What’s more, living in a plane comes with other surprising benefits when it comes to homeownership. As Campbell went on to reveal, “[The] interior is easy to keep immaculately clean because [it is made up of] sealed-pressure canisters. So, dust and insects can’t intrude from the outside. And [planes are] highly resistant to intruders.”

Since acquiring his unusual living quarters, Campbell has charted the progress that he’s made on his website AirplaneHome.com. And it appears that the Oregon man hopes to convince others to follow his lead. Perhaps more people might consider making a home from a plane after learning about his lifestyle via the internet?

Enthusing about his unusual home to Alternative Living Spaces, Campbell said, “I do love my bird. Even with all of the flaws and all of the fundamental foundational problems, it’s still a wonderful living environment. Just the sheer beauty of aerospace technology, the exhilaration – we trust our lives [to] these things, and, generally, we feel perfectly comfortable doing so.”

If anyone does want to follow suit, then, it might be wise to go online to check out Campbell’s painstakingly conducted research. Indeed, this could well prove to be an invaluable move. For a start, the engineer has concluded that a Boeing 727 “seemed to offer the most attractive overall characteristics.”

Campbell’s online advice went on, “It’s a reasonable-size home for an individual or small family, but not so large that it can’t be transported over public roads.” From there, he added, “Airliners, free of hundreds of passengers and the clutter of their seats, are a sheer thrill to live within.”

But although Campbell is as comfortable as can be in his old airliner, he actually spends six months of the year in Japan. Yet in 2016 he revealed that he was searching for a retired Boeing 747-400. Why? Because of a plan to make a home outside the Japanese city of Miyazaki.

If Campbell secures such a jet, fitting out his second home will prove to be his biggest project to date. Boeing 747-400s can carry up to 660 passengers. As it happens, that represents three times the number of seats and a much larger space than his comparatively humble 727 home back in Oregon.

In order to achieve his dream of a Japanese jet home, the retired engineer put out an appeal to airlines with 747-400s in a piece published by the San Antonio Express-News in 2016. Campbell said, “A superbly executed second project which very nearly fully preserves the original aircraft in all its sleek gleaming majesty will attract a great deal of world press interest for a very long time, and thus be of considerable promotional value to a partner airline.”

Even if Campbell’s dream of a second airliner home never comes true, though, there is little doubt that the “old nerd” will continue to promote his unique lifestyle. As he told Atlas Obscura, “Jetliners are masterful works of aerospace science. Their superlative engineering grace is unmatched by any other structures people can live within.”