Winchester Mystery House
Any homeowner will tell you that youâre never finished working on your home. Items will need fixing, rooms painted, youâll add little touches and additions here and there as time and money allow. The Winchester House takes this idea to an entirely different level. In 1884, Sarah L. Winchester, widow of William Wirt Winchester and heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company fortune, purchased an eight-room house on 150 acres in San Jose and began making a few additionsâadditions that would keep three shifts of carpenters, architects, and construction workers busy for 38 years until Sarahâs death in 1922. By the end of her life, Sarah turned the eight-room home into a 160-room Victorian mansion with three working elevators, 47 fireplaces, hand-inlaid parquet floors, silver and gold chandeliers, Tiffany windows, staircases that lead to nowhere, doors that open to brick walls, other doors that open to the outside on the second floor with a straight drop down, and many other architectural oddities. There werenât formal blueprints; Mrs. Winchester would just sketch out rooms on paper and even on tablecloths for the workers to follow.
Why did she do this? Sarahâs husband died in March of 1881 of tuberculosis while the couple was living in New Haven, Connecticut. Their only daughter died 15 years earlier during her infancy. Sarah was having a difficult time getting over the death of her husband, so a friend of hers suggested she contact a Spiritualist medium. The medium claimed her husband William was present and âHe says for me to tell you that there is a curse on your family, which took the life of he and your child. It will soon take you, too. It is a curse that has resulted from the terrible weapon created by the Winchester family. Thousands of persons have died because of it, and their spirits are now seeking vengeance.â The medium told her to head west; her husband would guide her and she would know when she found the right home. The medium told her to start a new life and to build a home for herself and for the spirits who had fallen at the hands of a Winchester rifle. She was told she could never stop building the house or the curse would take her as it did her husband and daughter.
So Sarah Winchester built. If her plans conflicted with a room built earlier, they simply built around. Rooms are contained within rooms, and the floor plan is certainly chaotic at times. Sarah spent a great deal of time in a room she called âThe SĂ©ance Room.â
Sarah Winchester is said to be still wandering her house today, causing disembodied footsteps, murmuring voices, and cold spots. Psychics have gone in and identified many other spirits who they also believe call the Winchester Mystery House home. Whether these really are the souls of those killed by the famous rifle, or whether theyâre more a figment of the imagination, is up to each visitor to decide.
Written by â Jeff Belanger Founder, Ghostvillage.com
WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE
525 SOUTH WINCHESTER BOULEVARD
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA 95128
TEL: 1 (408) 247-2101
WEBSITE: www.winchestermysteryhouse.com
SEE ALSO:
SOURCE:
Encyclopedia of Haunted Places -Ghostly Locales from around the World – Compiled & Edited by Jeff Belanger – Copyright 2005 by Jeff Belanger