The young married couple moving into the notorious Winchester House knew the place was haunted, and yet they bellyache a blue streak when demonic ghosts take their 12 year-old daughter into a closet and never comes out. Serves ’em right, the disbelievers.
The house, thought to be plagued by the spirits of all the people who expired after being shot by one of Sarah Winchester’s late husband’s kick ass rifles (it’s how the West was won), was constructed with profits from said gun sales to keep adding more and more rooms to the sprawling mansion to rent out to more ghosts. A run-on sentence, but this is fact. (I totally saw it on the History Channel™.)
A neighbor offers his paranormal detective services. (He even has a business card to prove it.) As a soul brother (no pun intended), he sports a stylin’ medium grade afro. Who wouldn’t want his help? But it’s the butler (?) who leads them to the attic where they see a replayed tragic past event unfold, which gives painfully obvious clues as to the ghost flap.
Haunting of Winchester House (2009) is full of stuff you could’ve predicted without a degree in ghostology. And the spirit sequences/spooky effects are as old as the 1884 house itself, to say nothing of the wooden acting chops of all involved. (Except ghost Sarah — she’s got some cool polter-chops.)
Leaving the crowded mansion, mom, dad and their freshly-rescued daughter walk outside, only to find… I’ll just say this — it’s a Sixth Sense (1999) moment that, while kinda neat, doesn’t excuse this tedious, barely-a-story ghost story. Better to visit the real Winchester House (in San Jose, CA) and hang out with real ghosts.
