Some thought her an eccentric with too much money on her hands, and her home took on the nickname "mystery house" not long after her death.īecause Mrs. Winchester was building the house, she was regarded with suspicion. If this sounds strange to you today, you're not alone. Winchester might have deliberately installed these weird touches. Believing that ghosts would get lost on stairs that went nowhere or accidentally step out of a door that went outside, Mrs. Some people think that these touches were designed to confuse the evil spirits that were haunting Mrs. Since she had no deadline for completion, she'd either tear down the mistake or cover it up with something else. Because she had no master plan for the house, her architectural ideas didn't always work out. Winchester usually covered up her mistakes by just continuing to build around them. Whether it was accidentally or on purpose, Mrs. Winchester bought, and when she started adding on to the home, she covered up the stairs. The useless stairs might have a simple explanation the stairs were likely a part of the original house that Mrs. The stairs to nowhere are pretty much what they sound like: Stairs go up until they reach the ceiling, and then they just stop. A closet door in the second floor séance room opens onto a first-floor sink several feet below. )īut what of these doors and stairs to nowhere? Doors may open onto walls, or in the case of a second story door, to the outside, resulting in a big fall for anyone who might try to exit that way. (Multiply those figures by about 20 to get an idea of how much money that would be in 2008. Winchester with a daily income of about $1,000 to spend on her house. Winchester had inherited $20 million and just less than half of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company stock. Winchester paid well, no one disputed her instructions. The crew might spend a month constructing a room, only to be ordered to destroy it the next month. Sometimes it seemed she didn't care what she built, as long as she could hear the hammers of her crew. The next morning, she'd present her construction workers with hand-drawn sketches of what was to be done. Winchester would retreat to her séance room and receive instruction from the spirits on the progress of her house. Winchester served as her own architect, but it's possible that some ghosts had a hand in designing the house as well. Photo courtesy Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, CA But how did she end up with such a weird house? Why did she construct stairs that went nowhere and doors that opened into walls? Find out on the next page. She bought a six-room farmhouse on 162 acres in California and set to work building, a task that would occupy her until her death 38 years later. Winchester headed west to build a home for herself and her ghosts. We can't know exactly how she interpreted this advice she might have thought the spirits would get her if she stopped, or she might have seen continuous construction as a path to eternal life. Never stop building, the medium told Mrs. The ghosts had another request: that the house never be completed. Their spirits were seeking vengeance, and the only way to appease them was to build a house for them. The medium told her that the Winchester family had been struck by a terrible curse and was haunted by the ghosts of all those killed by the Winchester rifle. Distraught over these losses, she visited a medium for spiritual guidance. Winchester died of tuberculosis 15 years later. The young couple started a family in 1866, but their daughter, Annie, died in infancy, a blow that Mrs.
The gun was used by Northern troops in the Civil War and was also known as "the gun that won the West". The company had developed the repeating rifle, a gun that was easy to reload and fired rapidly, at a rate of one shot every three seconds. In 1862, Sarah married William Winchester, who was the heir of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Although she only stood 4 feet 10 inches, she was known for her beauty and her sparkling personality. Born in 1839, Sarah Pardee was one of the social stars of New Haven, Conn. Sarah Winchester didn't always want to build a haunted mansion. And I haven't even mentioned the ghosts. It's filled with weird things like stairs and doors that go nowhere. This was no ordinary construction job, though the house is an oddball labyrinth of rooms that at one point reached seven stories. For 38 years, she had construction going 24 hours a day at her home in San Jose, Calif.
But for Sarah Winchester, construction was a way of life. We worry about the expense and complain about the inconvenience. Most of us want to get home construction over as soon as possible. Photo courtesy Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, CA
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