Something wicked at Winchester: Eccentric gun company heiress who spent 38 years building a 'haunted' 160-room mansion with staircases that lead nowhere inspires new Hollywood movie

The Winchester House in San Jose, California, is no ordinary home. Whispers seem to come from the walls, staircases that lead to nowhere, doors that open to nothing and a groundskeeper whose work is never done.

What started as a farmhouse continued to be built 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for 38 years by a mysterious widow named Sarah Winchester who, after her husband’s death, inherited a gun company fortune worth more than $515 million today.

When Sarah died in 1922, the home remained empty, save for the spirits that are rumored to lurk in the 160-room, 24,000 square foot mansion.

It has such a complex layout that the housekeepers were said to need maps just to navigate it so they could do their daily chores and among its many quirks is a staircase leads to a ceiling after Mrs Winchester decided to have a hallway built over it.

It’s no wonder that this peculiar story has caught the attention of Hollywood. Winchester, starring Helen Mirren, hits theaters today. The movie takes a classic horror twist, but many don’t know the very true story of Sarah Winchester’s sad and strange life.

Born Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1840, she married into a weapons dynasty 22 years later when she wed William Winchester.

Four years into their 1862 marriage they had a daughter, Annie Pardee Winchester, who died just six weeks after she was born from marasmus – an extreme protein deficiency. It usually occurs due to poverty, but can sometimes be caused by viral or bacterial infections, or chronic diarrhea.

The couple never had another child, and the tragedy didn’t stop there for Mrs Winchester. Her husband William passed away from tuberculosis in March of 1881, after working with his wife to build their expansive home in New Haven, Connecticut.

When William died, Mrs Winchester, at the age of 41, inherited half of the fortune from the company his father founded, the Winchester Repeating Arms company. Suddenly, she was one of the wealthiest women in America, having acquired $20 million, the equivalent of more than $515 million today.

She took the money and went west, eventually settling in San Jose, California – then a small area known for its agricultural lands. She purchased an eight-room farmhouse, and immediately set to work on reparations.

Then, the rumors began circulating. Her relentless efforts to make the biggest, most lavish mansion she could confused her family and neighbors.

Her silence and reclusiveness only served to intensify suspicions about her.

‘It fed all the legends and rumors – she wouldn’t talk about herself so people made things up,’ Winchester house historian Janen Boehme told DailyMail.com.

It's said that she had construction going on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, for 38 years. One legend says that a Boston psychic named Adam Coons told her that if she ever stopped building the house, she would die like her husband and daughter.

This story was never confirmed, and Boehme said she believes it was simply her way of coping with loss – and that Mrs Winchester was trying to recreate the happiness she felt building her New Haven home with her husband years before.

'I think Sarah was trying to repeat that experience by doing something they both loved,' she said.

Regardless of her reasons – the result was jarring. The eight-bedroom farmhouse ballooned into a 160-room mansion, with 13 bathrooms, rounded turrets, towers, and was eventually painted bright yellow and red.

Occasionally, rather than tearing something down that got in the way, she'd simply build around it. Hidden within the Winchester house is an old farm bell and a giant water tower, which once resided in the back yard, but as building expanded were simply covered up with walls and swallowed into the home. For the 38 years that the house was under construction, it cost an estimated $5 million (about $73 million today).

Mrs Winchester lived there for most of her life, and for 15 years was joined by her favorite niece, who kept her company and staved off con men trying to swindle the elderly widow out of her vast fortune.

As the years went on, the construction got more and more bizarre. There remains a staircase that leads to nowhere, doors that open into walls, and rooms left unfinished. It eventually became so complex that it's been said the mansion's staff needed a map just to navigate their daily routine.

The creation was entirely her own – she cut ties with contractors within the first few years of construction.

'She had her own men here and they would try these various ideas. If they liked them, great, if they didn't, they would just tear them down,' Boeme said.

In 1906, disaster struck again. This time, an earthquake ripped through northern California, with an estimated magnitude of 7.8. It caused fires in nearby San Francisco, where approximately 3,000 people died.

The Winchester house, about 50 miles away, wasn't hit nearly as hard but still experienced the earthquake's effects. More than a century later, many rooms remain unrepaired from the damage. Mrs Winchester was terrified – as rumor has it, she became trapped in one of the many rooms she rotated as her bedroom, and the mansion's staff had to pry open the door with a crow bar to rescue her.

Sarah Winchester died in her sleep at the home on September 5, 1922, of heart failure. There was a small ceremony in Palo Alta, California, and she was buried next to her husband and infant daughter at Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut.

A fiercely private person for her entire life, there is little to remember her by apart from her now famed home. To this day, there is only one known photograph of her.

No doubt a difficult task, Academy-Award winning actress Helen Mirren will portray the mysterious Winchester in the feature film under the same name.

She herself described the movie not as a horror flick, but a 'ghost story'.

Of her muse, she told the LA Times: 'There are many understandings of her. Was she haunted? Was she crazy?'

That question has puzzled historians for decades as they've attempted to decode the woman with an appetite for architecture. The Winchester House's historian Janen Boehme theorizes that instead of being possessed or mad, the widow was reclusive because of her debilitating rheumatoid arthritis that left her hands disfigured, and her gnarled teeth which required her to wear dentures.

One thing she does know for sure is that Mrs Winchester's home is full of secrets.

'I've heard things I can't explain – footsteps, voices, you'll hear whispers and stuff sometimes,' she said. 'But I think whatever is here has always been positive. She was such a good person.'

Sometimes visitors tell her they've spotted what she calls the 'wheelbarrow ghost' - a spirit trotting around the property in overalls, carrying a toolbox, and pushing a wheelbarrow.

The Winchester House became one of San Jose's more prominent tourist attractions, and to this day visitors pay $40 per tour. The family who owns the home now has expressed their desire not to be named, and declined to disclose how many visitors the house draws annually.

Surprisingly, according to the Santa Clara County assessor's office, the home is only worth about $1.5 million.

Boeme thinks giving tours of the home is, in a way, allowing Winchester to be philanthropic from beyond the grave.

'She had a social conscience and she did try to give back,' Boeme said. 'This house, in itself, was her biggest social work of all.'



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5345507/Winchester-starring-Helen-Mirren-based-real-house.html

This place fascinates me. I'd love to spend a night in there.

I think I've read about this before - possibly on this forum?

Raggamuffin wrote:I think I've read about this before - possibly on this forum?

I hope the move is scary.

Oh, cool! I've been fascinated by this story for a long time, hope the movie's good.

HoratioTarr wrote:This place fascinates me.  I'd love to spend a night in there.

The Winchester house right down the street from here, in the south Bay city of San Jose ... the major town of Silicon Valley, BTW.  The story is simple ... some Rasputin-type--Adam Coons, I presume--convinced the widow that as long as she continued to build onto the home, things would be right for her.

Didn't keep her going, though.  The house is now a tourist site ... The Winchester Mystery House, just off I-280, near its intersection with I-880..

Original Quill wrote:

HoratioTarr wrote:This place fascinates me.  I'd love to spend a night in there.

The Winchester house right down the street from here, in the south Bay city of San Jose ... the major town of Silicon Valley, BTW.  The story is simple ... some Rasputin-type--Adam Coons, I presume--convinced the widow that as long as she continued to build onto the home, things would be right for her.

Didn't keep her going, though.  The house is now a tourist site ... The Winchester Mystery House, just off I-280, near its intersection with I-880..

Have you ever visited?

Just as an aside - I had the idea years and years ago to put a staircase leading up to a door in the wall that led nowhere. Thought it would freak people out and also amuse me.

What a shame this lady didn't find something better to do with her time and money. The theory is that she was trying to placate the spirits of people who had been shot with the guns her husband made or something.

This book is the best out the bunch. The only drawback was that it wasn’t in chronological order which I dislike, but overall a good read compared to others.

I look forward to the film. I think they’ve taken the usual artistic license and made it more a gothic horror story going by the trailers I’ve seen.

Raggamuffin wrote:What a shame this lady didn't find something better to do with her time and money. The theory is that she was trying to placate the spirits of people who had been shot with the guns her husband made or something.

The native Americans. The Winchester repeating rifle killed more of them than any other weapon, I believe. She'd had seances in her little seance room and speak to whoever it was she spoke to. One can only imagine how mentally fraught she must have been to keep frantically building and building.

HoratioTarr wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

The Winchester house right down the street from here, in the south Bay city of San Jose ... the major town of Silicon Valley, BTW.  The story is simple ... some Rasputin-type--Adam Coons, I presume--convinced the widow that as long as she continued to build onto the home, things would be right for her.

Didn't keep her going, though.  The house is now a tourist site ... The Winchester Mystery House, just off I-280, near its intersection with I-880..

Have you ever visited?

Yes. My parents took me, when I was a kid.