In Horror Films, Some Kernels of Truth
The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, is whimsical or eerie, depending on how you view such things, with stairs leading to the ceiling and doors that open to nowhere. It was the home of Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms fortune, who, according to legend, had workers laboring on the house for decades, from 1884 until her death in 1922. She undertook the project at the behest of a New England seer to delay her own demise, one version of the story goes, or to calm the spirits of the thousands of souls killed throughout the ages by Winchester rifles, as another version has it.
The tale has all the makings of a good horror film. Best of all, the story is true — or is it?
In “Winchester,” which opened globally last month, the directors Peter and Michael Spierig (“Predestination,” “Jigsaw”) have taken the tale at its spooky word, filling the mansion with levitating rifles, rocking chairs that move by themselves, and the specters of an army of long- dead war veterans and murder victims. Then there’s Helen Mirren, dressed head to toe in mourning black, as the mysterious Ms. Winchester.
“Winchester” is the latest in a line of horror films to trade on its supposed veracity. The 1979 “The Amityville Horror” was based on a supposed haunting from 1975. The macabre exploits of Ed Gein, a murderer who fashioned furniture and clothing out of body parts, inspired “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and “The Silence of the Lambs.”
Interestingly, the “true story” of Sarah Winchester has long been in doubt. Sarah Winchester did build the house, but much of the rest was invented by journalists of her day, said Mary Jo Ignoffo, author of “Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune.”
The stairs to the ceiling and the doors that lead nowhere? The result of earthquake damage in 1906. All those rooms? A reflection of Ms. Winchester’s interest in architecture and interior design. Her supposed “gun guilt”? “Nobody felt guilty about guns at the turn of the 20th century,” Ms. Ignoffo said. “Everybody used them and needed them.”
“The fundamental lie is that the building of the house went on 24/7,” she added. “She didn’t even live in the house for the last 15 years of her life.”
Both the film and the biography reach similar conclusions about Ms. Winchester: She was more heroic, and less nuts, than she has been painted. In Ms. Ignoffo’s book, she is a savvy businesswoman; a beloved employer; a generous sister and aunt, and a philanthropist. In “Winchester,” she’s a heroine protecting her family and home from evil spirits and greedy company executives.
If the film often strays from the truth for the sake of a good scare — there’s no record that Ms. Winchester was ever attacked by a boy possessed by the ghost of a murderous Confederate soldier, for example — that’s fine with its creators.
“Ultimately you’re not making a documentary,” Michael Spierig said. “You’re making a piece of entertainment.”