THE HOUSE OF WINCHESTER

SARAH WINCHESTER

A movie had been made with Helen Mirren about the live of Sarah Winchester. She lived in the 19^th century and was an heiress of the fortune made by the Winchester rifle. Sarah Winchester was convinced that her family was haunted by the spirits of the thousands death caused by the Winchester Rifle.

To make it up to them Sarah built a mansion for their spirits. She was also convinced that as long as she built the mansion she will not die.

The Winchester mansion was an eight-bedroom cottage. She spent a fortune building a mansion for ghosts which became America’s largest private home.

Sarah slept in a different bedroom every night to avoid haunting spirits.

It was built – round the clock – for 38 years with stairs go nowhere or leading into the ceiling, doors and cabinets open to walls. Small rooms are built within larger ones and secret doors can only be opened from one side.

The construction is so complex that hidden rooms were lost because new rooms been added. In 2016 a room was found with a pump organ, Victorian couch, sewing machine and paintings. Another one in 1975 with chairs, old photographs, speaker and a 1910 latch on the door.

The house is known as the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, northern California. It has 10,000 windows, 2,500 doors, 47 fireplaces, 40 staircases, 13 bathrooms and nine kitchens.

WINCHESTER WILLIAM

Sarah Lockwood Pardee married in 1862 William Winchester when she was 22. He was the son of Oliver who invented the Winchester Repeating Arms Co in 1866. It was also the same year her only child died, six weeks old.

Oliver died in 1880 and her husband in 1881 of tuberculosis. Sarah inherited $20million and was one of America’s richest women. 

Eight million Winchester rifles helped to open-up the West and costs thousands Native Americans’ lives.

WINCHESTER OLIVER

Sarah tried to cope with her family’s tragedy and consulted a Boston psychic who told her the spirits of Winchester victims were haunting her. She moved from Connecticut to San Jose.

She started to built the huge monstrosity. There are rumours that she held nightly seances to receive new construction. It is also thought that she built rooms to trap the spirits.

She employed 16 carpenters to work round the clock and 365 days a year. She paid them three times as much making sure the hammering never stopped.

Everything had to be 13. Chandeliers had 13 arms; clothes hooks had 13 holes; ceilings 13 panels; many windows had 13 panes and stairways had 13 steps.

Till 1906 the home had 400 rooms and was seven storeys high but the San Francisco’ earthquake made several cupolas and its 100-feet-tall Observatory Tower collapse.

Sarah was trapped in a bedroom behind a huge wall of rubble, but the construction workers were able to dig her out.

Although the home today is evidence of her chaotic mind, but many rooms are of outstanding beauty and great craftmanship.

The wood-panelled grand ballroom, built almost without nails. Its parquet floor is made of six woods changing colours with the lights.

The Crystal Ballroom wallpapered with sparkly mica.

The “Witch’s Cap” is a conical tower, dauting, because the purpose remains hidden.

Sarah died in 1922 after giving back to a lot of employment for builders and founded a hospital in Connecticut. She was 82 and on her death the builders put down their hammers and never return. Some spent their entire working life there.

Original the house stood in a 161 acres of apricot and olive orchards.

Today the house is a tourist attraction and is now in between an eight-lane Interstate 280 freeway and mobile home park.