A few weeks into his job, Williams was sitting at his desk not realizing he was the only person in the office when a push pin flew past him, hit his corkboard and landed on his desk, he said.
“I thought it was just our graphic designer messing with me as guys do but I looked around and nobody else was in my office, nobody was in the other offices,” Williams said. “So I took that as my first initiation into the house.”
Then the night before Williams and his team launched the Explore More Tour, they held a preview night event for annual pass holders. They were gathered on the front porch steps in a semi-circle, Williams facing the front doors with no one behind him, when he felt a shoulder tap.
“I thought it was maybe one of the janitors coming over to join the conversation, but I turned around and no one was there,” Williams said. “I looked back to everyone in the semi-circle kind of puzzled and everybody was like, ‘You felt a shoulder tap, didn’t you?’ I said, ‘Yep,’ and they said, ‘Yeah, that happens.’”
“Nothing here is mean or vicious,” he was quick to add. “At the very worst I would say whatever has happened to tour guides or guests has been mischievous.”
The bulk of “Winchester” was filmed on studio sets in Australia but there were about three days of filming at the actual house last May. Williams helped shut down the house – a rare occurrence – so the crews could get exterior shots from a drone and interior shots in the house.
Williams also served as a stunt double for Clarke, whose character is summoned to the house by Winchester.
“I climbed across roof lines as Dr. Eric Price, and it made the final cut,” he said. “That’s my small little claim to Hollywood fame.”
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Williams came to work for the Winchester Mystery House in the summer of 2016. The job couldn’t have come along at a better time. He’d lost his job and his wife, Hailey, was pregnant.
In fact, Williams was offered the job just hours after their son, Archer, was born.
He had to hit the ground running.
At one of his first work meetings, Williams was tasked with launching Halloween candlelight tours in just five months. As soon as that was done, he was made project manager of the first daytime tour in more than 20 years, which involved opening more than 30 rooms that had never been accessible to the public in 94 years of tour history. Then the movie came along.
As Williams puts it, things have been “rocking and rolling” since day one of the job.
“My dream for a long time was to work for Disney. Plans change,” he said. “This was and is an absolutely fantastic start to a career that I’m incredibly happy to be in.”