By Bizarre troupe member Kala T Disney
Sarah Winchester is best known for building The Winchester Mystery House in San José, California. There are several versions of how and why the house was built the way it was, but the main story seems to go like this:
Sarah was the wife of William Wirt Winchester of the famous rifle company. When her husband passed away in 1881 after they had been married for 19 years, Sarah inherited $20 million and half of the Winchester company. In today’s money this would have been like having a fortune of over $500 million with an income of $30,000 a day, making her one of the wealthiest women in the world.
She was so upset by her husband’s death that she decided to reach out to a psychic medium and have a séance with her. During the session, the medium told Sarah that she was cursed by the spirits of those who had been killed by Winchester weapons over the years, and that the spirits wanted her to move to California and build them a house.
So she bought a farmhouse with plenty of land and started build the mansion for the spirits to rid her of curse. Every night at midnight she would ring a bell to let the spirits know she wanted to communicate, which she did through a Ouija board. Every time she communicated the spirits would give her building instructions which she passes on to her building foreman in the morning. To please the spirits she made sure there was work being carried out on the house every day until she died 38 years later in 1922.
Because she did not want the spirits to follow her around, Sarah built the house in a way which she hoped would confuse them. Amidst the maze of corridors there were staircases that just led to nowhere, doors that opened onto a wall or to a two-storey drop, towers, a ballroom, thousands of windows - some in the floor looking into the rooms below and secret entrances so she could move from room to room without the spirits following her. She would sleep in a different room every single night to keep the spirits off her trail.
All around the house there were 7s carved into the wood because she believed it was a lucky number. She also believed 13 was a lucky number so you will find examples of it in the house as well; the séance room has 13 coat hooks, and all the sinks drains in the house have 13 holes.
When Sarah died, the unfinished house consisted of 160 rooms all filled with expensive furniture. Over the years it is said 600 rooms were built, but many were demolished to make way for new ones as the building plans changed or were lost when the house was reduced from seven storeys to four in the California earthquake of 1906. Sarah left everything except the house itself to her niece – who was also her personal secretary. When the contents of the house were removed to be auctioned, there was so much furniture and other possessions that it took the workmen six weeks. Also, they kept getting lost in the maze of corridors. The house – considered worthless – was bought by a local businessman who opened it to the public in the year following Sarah’s death.
To this day you can discover the twisted and confusing house, built to please the spirits, as a historic landmark and popular tourist attraction. Many people believed that, sadly, the death of Sarah's husband made her go mad and everything was in her head. However, the house may still be haunted. The caretakers who lock up the house every day, after the tourists have left, have report strange happenings such as all the doors unlocking and all the lights on a single floor turning on by themselves.
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