Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I've written a little about this before, but it's pretty cool to me that the Winchester Mystery House is the focus of a film, especially one that's starring Dame Helen Mirren and directed by the Spierigs.
I moved to Austin when I was 12 years old. Before I became a Texan, I was a Bay Area brat. I grew up in Sunnyvale and Cupertino, so of course my school fieldtrips were pretty awesome. We'd go up to the San Francisco Zoo or to the Monterey Bay Aquariam or the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. I remember all of these, but the one that stood out in my mind was the Winchester House, a real place that had a bizarre feel to it.
The house belonged to the Winchester family... as in Winchester rifles. They had all the money in the world, but also a lot of tragedy. Sarah Winchester was left alone when her husband and child died and believed her family was cursed by the souls of all who had died at the hands of the guns her family produced. She went mad, but the kind of insane only the truly rich can go.
She kept building onto her house. There were secret compartments, hidden passages, stairs that led to nowhere, doors that opened to blank walls. It was her obsession and she claimed it calmed the angry spirits that haunted her.
For a young kid obsessed with ghost stories this was absolutely the coolest possible place to visit. I remember vividly walking around that place, hoping to see a ghost and pushing every raised stone or discolored floor plank hoping to be the one to discover a new hidden room.
The Spierigs are making a movie about Sarah, simply titled WINCHESTER, and they're siding with her outlook, it seems. The flick will show that she's not crazy, but really being tormented by the souls of the damned and all set within one of the creepiest real life places that exists and can be visited!
Helen Mirren at the center of this story and the Spierigs behind the camera make me instantly excited for this project, which CBS films just announced they've picked up for distribution. Can't wait!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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