The bizarre Winchester Mystery House suffered a loss in its legal fight with a Hollywood filmmaker, according to reports.
The rambling San Jose home, a tourist attraction for its many directionless hallways, superfluous doors, and irrelevant windows, filed suit against the makers of a 2009 movie called, "Haunting of Winchester House," according to the San Jose Mercury News.
The California 6th District Court of Appeal rejected the Winchester's argument that the makers of the movie --- which went straight to DVD -- infringed on the house's copyright, the newspaper reported.
The movie does not involve Sarah Winchester or her descendants, the newspaper reported.
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Both a lower-court and the appeals court ruled that the movie producer, Global Asylum, had the right to "loosely base the fictional film on such a well-known landmark," the newspaper reported.
Sarah Winchester inherited her husband's fortune, a fortune made by manufacturing firearms and bullets (the Winchester repeating rifle is said to be the gun that "won the West"). She is said to have been told by a mystic that in order to keep the spirits of people killed by the guns quiet, she'd have to keep her house under continuous construction. So she did, up until the day she died.
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