#9
Winchester Mystery House
525 S. Winchester Blvd., San Jose, California
Our story begins in New Haven, Connecticut with Sarah Pardee and William Winchester around 1839. Sarah was a socialite and popular among the city's upper circles. She was beautiful and talented. William Winchester was the son of a wealthy businessman. William became involved in developing weapons & soon created a rifle that became very popular during the Civil War. This particular rifle would soon make the Winchester name famous.
Because this rifle was so popular, William Winchester became vastly wealthy. He made a fortune from government contracts and private sales of the weapon.
Sarah and William meet around 1860. They marry in an elaborate ceremony on September 30, 1862.
Sarah gives birth to a daughter, Annie, on July 15, 1866. A short time later, Annie becomes ill and dies on July 24, 1866. Understandably, Sarah is devastated by the loss of her only child. She suffers from depression and withdraws from all of her prior activities for close to a decade. She & William are unable to have another child.
Sarah's bad luck continues, unfortunately. By this time, William has accrued even more money and is wealthy beyond belief. His company is doing very well and Winchester rifles are a common household item. William suddenly contracts pulmonary tuberculosis and dies on March 7, 1881.
The silver lining? Sarah inherits over $20 million dollars (which is approximately $463,540,534 in 2018--holy cow) and she receives almost half of the Winchester Rifle company and an income of around $1000 per day (which is approximately $23,177.03 in 2018--again, holy cow.) So Sarah was immensely wealthy. Like so rich that she never had to even think about money ever again. But Sarah was grieving so deeply that the money meant nothing to her now that her husband and child were gone. She seeks out the help of a medium and is told that her dead husband wants her to sell her home in New Haven and head west because there is a curse upon the family due to all of the death that the Winchester rifle has caused; she must leave and her husband's spirit will tell her when to stop. When she reaches that place, she must build a house for herself and all of the spirits seeking vengeance from being killed by Winchester guns. She can never stop building the house or else she would also die.
Well, Sarah decides to take no chances. She sells her home in New Haven and heads west across the United States. Keep in mind that this is the late 1800s. Much of the western US was uncharted and vastly underpopulated. She reaches the Santa Clara Valley in 1884 and believes that her husband wants her to stop here. She finds a 6 bedroom home which also came with 162 acres of land. She immediately draws up plans for the home and begins building.
And she built constantly, 24 hours per day every day of the week, for the next 38 years.
Sarah employed 22 full-time carpenters that worked day and night in order to fulfill the medium's vision. The home rapidly grew to 26 rooms and a railroad had to be constructed in order to keep up with the needed building supplies. There seemed to be no real direction for the building but Sarah had drawn a new building plan for every single day. If something didn't work out correctly, no prob. Just build around it or over it.
Eventually, Sarah ran out of major building projects and started on the nonsense that makes the Winchester House the oddity that it is today.
47 fireplaces
3 elevators
Staircases going nowhere
Chimneys that don't lead anywhere
Trap doors
2nd story doors that led directly outside
Dead end hallways
Door To Nowhere
source: schrammjourney.blogspot.com
Staircase to Nowhere
source: expedia.com
Weirdest of all (I think), Sarah was obsessed with the number 13. Like not just a little bit. All of the windows in the home contained exactly 13 panes of glass. Every staircase (except for 1) had 13 steps. All of the walls had 13 panels. The wooden floors had 13 sections. Rooms had 13 windows. The greenhouse had 13 cupolas. Chandeliers had 13 bulbs. Only one thing being tied to the number 13 would be coincidental but this is way too many things to be coincidental.
source: wikipedia.org
Sarah believed that by creating hallways that went nowhere and fake doors, she could fool the spirits that were after her. She purposefully designed the house to be a maze so that the spirits would not be able to easily find her. At the same time, she conducted numerous seances in her seance room to communicate with the same spirits that she was attempting to hide from. Sarah was a weirdo.
Seance Room
source: winchestermysteryhouse.com
By 1906, the house was 7 stories tall & a real mess. That year, the San Francisco Earthquake happened and damaged the home. The top 3 levels of the home collapsed and were never rebuilt, leaving the home permanently at 4 stories. When the earthquake occurred, Sarah was trapped in a bedroom and took it as a sign that the spirits were angry with her for almost finishing the home. So she decides to close up 30 rooms in the home to keep the spirits happy...and to trap any spirits in there that might have gotten stuck because of the earthquake. Like I said, she's a weirdo.
So after the earthquake, work returns at full force. She adds on more bedrooms, bringing the total up from 15 to 25. She needed so many bedrooms because she slept in a different room every night to avoid the spirits. The home eventually clocks in at 24,000 square feet. Today, there are approximately 160 rooms (no exact count has been determined?), 950 doors, 10,000 windows, 40 staircases, 6 kitchens, 47 fireplaces, and 52 skylights. Sarah also added state-of-the-art (for that time) amenities like an indoor shower, electricity, insulation, and gas lighting. There was only 1 working toilet in the home with the rest designed as decoys for the spirits. Construction lasted for 38 years, day and night, for 365 days a year. As you might imagine, she spent quite a bit of money on this never-ending project. Sarah was reclusive but had many servants in the home as well as construction workers present at all times.
On September 5, 1922, Sarah Winchester dies of a heart attack. Construction immediately stops. Like everyone quit what they were doing and peaced out--nails are half-driven into walls and many projects are left unfinished.
When Sarah passed, she left everything she owned to her niece. Her niece decides to sell the home and all of it's belongings. It (allegedly) took 6 trucks working 8 hours a day for 6 weeks to remove all of the furnishings from the home.
In February 1923, the home was officially opened as a tourist attraction and has been ever since. Today, it is a California Historical Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sarah Winchester
source: biography.com
A horror/paranormal film entitled Winchester came out in 2018 starring Helen Mirren. You can check out the trailer here! I haven't seen the movie so can't judge it yet.
As if the house itself isn't weird enough, there's also a paranormal aspect to it!
As we all know, Sarah Winchester was a complete loon. There are many theories about why she built the house like she did: the medium who told her too, insanity, grief, Free Mason ideology, and something about the Pythagorean theorem (couldn't understand this one because I don't understand math); being that this is a paranormal blog, I choose to believe that she was inspired by a medium and did to please spirits. There are thousands of articles out there on the Google speculating as to Sarah Winchester's reasoning but we'll never know for sure. For those that believe in the paranormal side, there have been many experiences to prove the existence of a haunting in the Winchester House. Several paranormal investigators have been through the home and caught activity. The House itself actually offers a haunted tour led by flashlight so you can check it for yourself if you're into that sort of thing. Here are some paranormal/unexplained experiences from the home:
Unexplained footsteps in Sarah's primary bedroom
Doorknobs turning by themselves
Temporary loss of vision
Unexplained cold spots
Ghost in the basement pushing a wheelbarrow
Numerous experiences on the 3rd floor (servant's quarters)
Doors opening and closing by themselves
Here is a Reddit thread for you to explore more about the paranormal side of things from a former employee: Reddit Link
Ghost Adventures from the Travel Channel also did a special on the home. There are a couple of videos posted on their site about their experiences: Videos
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