![]() ![]() Your mileage may vary when it comes to believing there are, in fact, spirits lurking in the corridors of the Winchester Mystery House. Believe it or not, this ghost-packed film could be the closest mainstream audiences come to understanding that Winchester was far from just a “crazy” lady who built a crazy house. Part historical preserve, part spooky theme park oddity, the Winchester Mystery House has now inspired a new horror movie, Winchester, starring Helen Mirren as the titular, reclusive heir to a massive rifle fortune. There have been over 12 million visitors to the house since its mysterious architect died in 1922. Picking up on some popular nicknames of the day, Houdini dubbed the building “Winchester Mystery House” after the late Sarah Winchester, the secretive woman who built and lived in it. The massive estate, partially demolished by the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, had a reputation for being haunted-and not even Houdini himself could shake the sense that something inside those walls was wrong. Though a magician by trade, Houdini was devoted, at this time in his life, to debunking what he considered a scourge of fake spiritualists and mediums. The film will hit theaters in February, 2018.ĭoes this seem like the kind of movie you’d expect from Dame Helen? Let’s discuss.In 1924, Harry Houdini visited a rambling architectural oddity in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley. It’s a wild story that deserves a good telling, and Mirren is certainly an actress that can certainly do justice to this tortured saga. The involvement of Mirren seems to suggest that Winchester will be something more than your typical horror film filled with jump scares. So it’s really only remarkable that no one has managed to make a movie about it before now. It’s long been rumored to be one of the most haunted places in America, if not the world. Now known as the Winchester Mystery House, you can still visit it and see all its uber-creepy features – dead-end passageways, staircases to nowhere, windows that look into other rooms in the building – for yourself. The terrifying residence featured in this film is actually a real place, located in San Jose, California. Watch the trailer for WINCHESTER: The House That Ghosts Built for yourselves below. Ostensibly, all of this was meant to somehow trick the ghosts, or simply to extend the construction process, as Winchester believed the building on her house could never stop. The result was a frequently nonsensical dwelling full of architectural oddities that had seven floors and hundreds of rooms. ![]() ![]() Construction on this dwelling would continue virtually nonstop for the next 38 years until her death in 1922. (Given that the Civil War took place a scant 20 years previously, let’s just say that there was the potential for a lot of restless spirits out there.) On the advice of a medium – or so the story goes, anyway – Sarah moved West, and began building a house in northern California that she believed would contain them. However, Sarah felt that her family was cursed, and worried that she would subsequently be plagued by the spirits of everyone who’d ever been killed by a Winchester rifle. When her husband died in 1881, he left her over $20 million dollars (the equivalent to roughly $496,344,828 today) and a 50% share in the company. Sarah Winchester was the wife of William Wirt Winchester, of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, the makers of the Winchester rifle. (Though, probably not as much as you might think.)īased on a true story, Winchester is not just a terrifying ghost story (though it will doubtless feature scares aplenty), but a sad tale of a woman tormented by guilt and grief. So her latest big screen role – as tortured American heiress Sarah Winchester in the upcoming horror movie Winchster: The House That Ghosts Built – is generally something of a departure from type for her. ![]() The Oscar winner tends to play royalty (she’s played both Queens Elizabeth, after all) or other strong British women such as the troubled DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect. Dame Helen Mirren is well known for many roles, but as an actress she does seem to have a particular type. ![]()
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