Get ‘Unhinged’ at the Winchester Mystery House (The NoPro Review)
The classic tourist attraction plays host to an elaborate, but disjointed, house of horror
In San Jose, just past the movie theater, and around the corner from the shopping mall, sits a building that has attained a certain legendary standing in the Bay Area. A tourist attraction that has withstood the test of time and survived the transformation all around it. As the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment has skyrocketed out of range for working class denizens of Northern California, the enormous Winchester Mystery House stands tall with its immeasurable rooms (it was reported that a new one was just “discovered” in 2018) and vast complex spaces. Its elaborate and labyrinthine passageways, nonsensical doorways to nowhere, and secret spaces are said to be a testament to the tortured soul of its wealthy owner — the agony and guilt of endless affluence earned though the suffering of others, in a region now infamous for both its soaring technological empires and its ever widening income gap.
I approached the Winchester Mystery House encumbered by expectation. Its reputation certainly precedes it, as an inspiration for many stories, films, and (most important to this writer) theme park attractions. It’s a mainstay of Bay Area tourism, as much as San Francisco’s wharf and Santa Cruz’s Mystery Spot. And yet, I’d somehow avoided making the trek to visit all these years, in no small part due to one local author’s estimation that the house’s ratio of “house” to “mystery” was somewhat miscalibrated.
I was a bit worried that my lack of experience with the house would be an impediment to appreciating Unhinged. In many site specific experiences, the history of the location is an integral component of the experience. Some productions go out of their way to familiarize audiences with the context of the location, whether it be within the text, in programs or literature, or in marketing material. However, the somewhat (at least locally) iconic location of the Winchester mansion precluded much prologue for Unhinged. While the broad strokes of the mansion’s history are familiar, there are surely details and anecdotes that eluded me as I entered the house.
The broad strokes of the mansion’s history are easy enough to find, whether it be through internet searches, various basic cable ghost hunting series, or the 2017 film, Winchester, featuring Helen Mirren. According to legend, Sarah Winchester (the widow and heiress to her husband, William Wirt Winchester, of the Winchester rifle company) began work on the house in the late 1800s and continued through 1922, when she herself died. It’s said she worked continuously to house the ghosts of those killed by her husband’s rifle company. As work continued (unceasing for 38 years), the house continued to grow, rooms and passages were built on in increasingly absurd ways. Doors led to nowhere, and elaborately patterned windows were installed indoors, where no light would shine through them.
As I approached the house for the first time, it was not without some weight of expectation. Billed as an “immersive horror experience,” our guides were careful right off the bat to remind us that this was not an ordinary tour of the manor, but rather a theatrical experience, and that should we wish to experience the house as it has been presented for all these years prior, that they would be happy to host us come daylight hours for a traditional docent-led tour. Then, upon stepping into the house, we were introduced to our “tour guide for our routine tour of the mansion.” Of course, as they often do in haunted houses, things went off the rails when we took a wrong turn into one of the house’s basements. As our guide disappeared, presumably a victim of the evil spirits that awaited us deeper within the house, we traveled on.
With each new room, we encountered new ghostly residents of the home. Some existed as visual tableaus — actors in grotesque, striking makeup posing in eerie visual dioramas, with elaborate sets, lighting, and sound cues. Some relied less on the sets and rather placed a single actor in an existing space, their only goal to unnerve or frighten us with their characterizations. The uncanny labyrinthine space was effectively used — at any given moment, scenes could play out above, below, or around us. Passing a window, one could observe a grisly crime scene playing out in the courtyard below, or upon entering the attic, could find oneself engulfed in a projection mapped inferno.
And yet, much like the many rooms of the mansion itself, the various tableaux seemed often disconnected, the parts not always adding up to a greater whole. Each ghostly scene could end abruptly or just as likely overstay its welcome. More often than not, our tour group might struggle to fit into a space, stragglers slowly inching into a room whose vignette was already in media res.
My lack of familiarity with the lengthy history of the house did me no favors, and, in my search for a unifying theme or plot, I was persistently plagued with the notion that the apparitions we encountered were meant to be based on some element of the building’s storied history or lore. Was the funereal casket viewing based on a real teenager whose life was cut tragically short? Perhaps the attic did catch fire at some point? It wasn’t until I encountered a large bug-eyed Roswellian grey alien that I settled safely into the idea that none of what I was experiencing could be traced back to life or legend of Sarah Winchester.
(Full disclaimer: on the night of our press preview, some elements of the experience had been cut, as they were deemed not ready, and it seemed some elements of the show may have connected more in completion. One particularly mysterious element — a women dressed in a Victorian nightgown — joined our tour at the last minute, disappearing midway through experience without explanation, a fact that no one, our hosts included, could explain.)
The walkthrough is not the only experience included in admission to Unhinged. Midway games, themed cocktails, and a shooting gallery can be found on the grounds, as well as a gingerbread recreation of the mansion itself by Netflix star Christine McConnell. The true highlight of the evening was the projection mapped “Unhinged: Light Show,” a moody, evocative piece that showcased some of the best projection mapping I’ve seen in many years. Again, showcasing a Winchester tour gone wrong, a lone victim is left behind in the house overnight, terrorized by visions both spectacular and macabre. The projections are convincing enough that it truly seems that the walls of the house are moving, and that we are seeing inside the windows in three dimensions. Spectral faces push through the walls, candelabras flicker and float down hallways, and the entire house is lit ablaze. The light show experience is worth the price of admission alone and occurs several times per night.
Ultimately, Unhinged is an effective, well produced, visually striking experience made all the more unnerving by its storied setting. With a bit more connective tissue and a stronger embrace of its location, Winchester’s newest addition could be a world class addition to the Bay Area’s rapidly growing spooky and immersive scenes, and I am eagerly awaiting what comes next (and, and in the meantime, I just may pop in for one of those docent-led tours I keep hearing so much about).
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