San Jose’s infamous tourist attraction The Winchester Mystery House is getting the comic treatment once again in a new series from Source Point Press.
If you aren’t familiar with it, the Winchester Mystery House was the home of Sarah Lockwood Pardee Winchester, the widow of William Wirt Winchester and heiress to a large portion of the Winchester rifle fortune. After losing her husband and child, Sarah moved from Connecticut to San Jose, California where she bought a farmhouse. From 1886 to 1922, construction seemingly never ceased as the original eight-room farmhouse grew into the world’s most unusual and sprawling mansion. Supposedly it is haunted by all the ghosts of people killed by Winchester firearms.
The new comic will be written by Joshua Werner and illustrated by Dustin Irvin.
“The Winchester Mystery House is a labyrinth full of secrets, and it is my great pleasure to bring those secrets to the reader and unravel them,” Werner said. “Sarah Winchester was a brilliant person, incredibly ahead of her time, and deliciously complex. Weaving her tale and the story of this house into the comic book medium with the beautiful art of Dustin Irvin is a dream come true. And the reader is in for some shocks and surprises.”
Even though I reside in the Bay Area, I’ve never been to the Winchester Myserty House myself, but I have driven by it many, many times. The creative team will be doing more than checking out the exterior while sitting in traffic: In the upcoming comic series from Source Point Press, the Winchester Mystery House is much more than an architectural wonder. Reader’s are invited to step inside and hear the house’s whispers. Inspired by true events, this masterfully crafted horror tale written by Joshua Werner and beautifully illustrated by Dustin Irvin takes you into the non-stop construction of “The house that spirits built” and its brilliant and mysterious owner, Sarah Winchester.
This isn’t the first time that the story of the convoluted mansion has made its way to comics. Peter Tomasi and Ian Bertram explored its history in House of Penance a few years back, while Dan Vado and Drew Rausch created a Secrets of Sarah Winchester comic for SLG Publishing.
Source Point Press will showcase the story behind the book this weekend during the Comic-Con@Home panel “Behind the Veil: The Winchester Mystery House Comic Book Series” on Saturday at 10 a.m. Walter Magnuson, general manager of the Winchester Mystery House, will introduce the panel, which explores “the thrills and struggles behind crafting a horror story based on one of the most haunted houses in the world and the incredible life of its mysterious owner.”
Check out the variant cover and some preview pages from the comic below. The comic arrives in shops Oct. 27.
