18 thoughts on “Top Five Inaccuracies in Winchester

  1. I remember going on a tour when I was little to a mansion owned by an eccentric woman. There was a couple of second story door that opened up to an abrupt drop to a first floor room. The docent explained those doors to nowhere was a convenient way to contact servants.

    My family also went on a road trip through California when I was six. I don’t think we saw the Winchester house, but it’s possible.

  2. The book, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey has a chapter on the growth of the Winchester House legend. It’s a good read.

  3. We did see it, twice! The second tour through we weren’t allowed to take pictures, for some reason. I was charmed, although it reminded me that Victorians really hated natural light (no big picture windows) or cooking smells. Something I think the open-concept people forget is that onions don’t need to be smelled in the rest of the house. Oh, how I wish we could have seen it in furnished splendor!

      1. My sister! I kept every one of my kitchen walls when I remodeled. It’s my woman-cave!

      2. I loathe open-concept houses. Just stupid. No privacy, no quiet — I realized how much I hated it when I visited my in-laws and was forced to listen to football against my will. Literally no escape unless you left the house.

  4. I too hate the open-concept design favoured today. I also avoid horror movies like the plague. So despite Helen Mirren, I am not going to see it.

  5. Thank you for this post. I wish the movie was more the story of a smart, ahead-of-her-time woman who lived her own life and didn’t answer to society instead of this retread fictional story. Ms Winchester was an amazing woman living at a time that had no patience for women who lived outside societal norms, and this just perpetuates the lies made up about her by people who didn’t like her independence.

  6. Blergh, I had no interest is seeing this mess. Instead of setting a Victorian ghost story in the Winchester House, how about it being a school for witches and wizards ala Hogwarts. I think Sarah would have liked that much better…..

  7. Dreadful film… so much wasted potential in the hands of inexpert directors and a bland cast (minus Mirren, who is usually fabulous). She had gorgeous black lace costumes, though… I expected to be scared (the trailers I found pretty chilling) and instead was… bored.

  8. If only those who profit from arms sales really were haunted by the ghosts of those killed by their product..

  9. Thank you for a shout out to The Frighteners which I adore. It is enhanced for us locals by such delicious moments as a car pulling out of a street in Wellington in the north Island and turning into a street in Lyttleton which is in the South Island!

    1. That’s hilarious. I always notice errors like that in movies, like Elevated trains in Chicago that run on non-existant lines. Also people in cars who must have that invisible turbo-feature like in Men in Black because there is NO WAY they could travel from Point A to Point B, even with absolutely no traffic.

      I also watched season 2 of Outlander and realized they were using the exact same shots of Paris (actually Prague) OVER and OVER. I get that they’re on a budget and it’s hard to find locations that resemble the 18th century, but they were literally repeating themselves in the same series

  10. It’s such a shame to waste both an intriguing history and Helen Mirren (whom I absolutely adore) and turn it into a giant pile of lies and crap.

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