Real-life haunted houses have been fodder for cine-horror in the past (The Amityville Horror is perhaps the most famous). Now it's the turn of the Winchester Mystery House, setting for Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built. Check out the first trailer below.
The strange true story of the house began in 1881 with the death of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester (he of Western favourite the Winchester Rifle). He left his entire immense fortune to his wife Sarah (Helen Mirren) who, from 1884 until her own death in 1922, undertook building of what can politely be called an "architectural curiosity".
Constructed in an incessant 24 hour-a-day, seven day a week mania for decades, it stands seven stories tall and contains hundreds of rooms. To the outsider it looks like a monstrous monument to a disturbed woman’s madness. But Sarah is not building for herself, for her niece (Sarah Snook) or for the brilliant Doctor Eric Price (Jason Clarke) whom she has summoned to the house. She is building a prison, an asylum for hundreds of vengeful ghosts, and the most terrifying among them have a score to settle with the Winchesters….
Yes, while Clarke's Price sets out to be all Scully up in the house, he soon learns that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy.
Director by Michael and Peter Spierig, Winchester will be out in the UK on 2 March. And this is your contractual reminder that despite the name, it has nothing to do with Sam, Dean or Supernatural. Apologies to our own Helen O'Hara, who will have to somehow soldier on.