Helen Mirren to star in thriller film about Winchester Mystery House
Jan 8, 2018, 2:04 PM
Another supernatural phenomenon is making its way to the big screen — but this time, with a spooky twist.
“Winchester: The House that Ghosts Built,” starring Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren and Australian actor Jason Clarke, follows the true story of Sarah Winchester and the Winchester Mystery House.
This story goes back all the way to the 1800s. In 1881, William Wirt Winchester, the treasurer of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, died of tuberculosis, not long after his father originally founded the gun company.
William’s wife, Sarah, came into a great amount of money after his death — about $20 million, equivalent to more than $507 million today — and two years later moved from New Haven, Connecticut, to San Jose, California.
According to legend, Sarah felt her family was cursed and turned to mediums and psychics to find some answers.
One Boston medium, a man allegedly named Adam Coons, told her that her family was cursed by the spirits of those who were killed by the guns that her husband’s company sold and she needed to move west and build a home for her and the spirits.
And if construction on the home stopped, the medium claimed, Sarah would join her husband and their infant daughter, who died shortly after birth.
So Sarah, according to legend, took the advice to heart and began construction on her San Jose home. However, this was no HGTV “Fixer Upper” type of renovation — construction continued until Sarah’s death until 1922.
By time of Sarah’s death, the house spanned seven stories tall and contained hundreds of rooms.
While the movie isn’t completely accurate to true events — it’s a horror film — with Mirren at the helm, there’s no way it can be disappointing.
