Winchester Mystery House

Is it haunted? Why was it built the way it was? Do you know what the main number represented throughout the house is? Are their ghosties that roam the halls? Was the owner "not all there"? How did the owner come to live there in the first place? Who was the owner?

All those questions will be looked at in the following paragraphs. But the main question is, do you know all there is to know about the Winchester Mystery House? If not, I hope you will find this article informative to say the least. Through my various resources (I will be naming at the end of this article) I have learned more than I thought I knew about the oddly built house in question. I only hope you find the information gathered here as intriguing as I did.

On September 30, 1862, Sarah Pardee married a recently wealthy young man by the name of William Winchester in a lavish New Haven, Connecticut ceremony. William was only recently wealthy due to his father. Two years prior to their wedding William's father founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. At the time they were famous for their rifles (still are in some ways). They also sold their rifles to the Northern troops fighting in the Civil War. Business was booming you could say (pardon the pun).

After being married for almost four years, Sarah gave birth to their first and only daughter. Annie Pardee Winchester was born on July 15, 1866. Unfortunately though, the Winchester's daughter came down with a terminal disease shortly after being born. She was a much-loved part of the Winchester home for just nine days before her parents lost her to the disease. Sarah was destroyed by the death of their daughter. She was so distraught with pain that she very nearly drove herself insane. It took almost ten full years for her to get close to where she was before losing their baby.

Shortly after she returned to her husband after her recovery though, her husband was diagnosed with his own terminal condition. He was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, a fatal disease, especially back then. By the date of William's death in March of 1881 though, he had been named the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Sarah, as his widow, found herself to be a very rich woman indeed. But as she was still grieving for their daughter, and then had lost her husband, Sarah was again in a deep depression.

Not to long after her husband's death, a friend suggested the use of a Medium to help her with her loss. Sarah went to Boston to meet with the woman. " "Your husband is here," the medium told her and then went on to provide a description of William Winchester. "He 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." Sarah was then told that she must sell her property in New Haven and head towards the setting sun. She would be guided by her husband and when she found her new home in the west, she would recognize it. "You must start a new life," said the medium, "and build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon too. You can never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live. Stop and you will die."

With her $20 million inheritance and her weekly income of $1000 dollars, Sarah sold her home in New Haven and moved to California. It is believed that she thought she was following her husband's wishes, and that California was where he wanted her to build. In 1884 (the year Sarah got to California) Sarah found an unfinished eight room farmhouse that was resting on 162 acres of land near San Jose. Sarah then found workers and began building the house to her specifications almost at once. For 24 hours every day Sarah keep at least 22 carpenters fully employed for the next 36 years.

The work crew kept up with Sarah's ever changing plans. They would build a room one day to tear it down the next in some cases. The oddities throughout the house abounded, and one could only guess as to what the work crew really thought of their employer. "…the house grew to include 26 rooms, railroad cars were switched onto a nearby line to bring building materials and imported furnishings to the house. The house was rapidly growing and expanding and while Sarah claimed to have no master plan for the structure, she met each morning with her foreman and they would go over the her hand-sketched plans for the day's work. The plans were often chaotic but showed a real flair for building. Sometimes though, they would not work out the right way, but Sarah always had a quick solution. If this happened, they would just build another room around an existing one. As the days, weeks and months passed, the house continued to grow. Rooms were added to rooms and then turned into entire wings, doors were joined to windows, levels turned into towers and peaks and the place eventually grew to a height of seven stories. Inside of the house, three elevators were installed as were 47 fireplaces. There were countless staircases which led nowhere; a blind chimney that stops short of the ceiling; closets that opened to blank walls; trap doors; double-back hallways; skylights that were located one above another; doors that opened to steep drops to the lawn below; and dozens of other oddities. Even all of the stair posts were installed upside-down and many of the bathrooms had glass doors on them."

While all of this may seem a little bit odd, Sarah thought that she was doing a good job of confusing the bad spirits that were after her. And up until 1906 Sarah even slept in a different bedroom every night to try and confuse them some more. But in 1906, when the house had reached a towering seven stories in height, the great San Francisco Earthquake struck. "The top three floors of the house had collapsed into the gardens and would never be rebuilt. In addition, the fireplace that was located in the Daisy Room (where Mrs. Winchester was sleeping on the night of the earthquake) collapsed, shifting the room and trapping Sarah inside. She became convinced that the earthquake had been a sign from the spirits who were furious that she had nearly completed the house. In order to insure that the house would never be finished, she decided to board up the front 30 rooms of the mansion so that the construction would not be complete - and also so that the spirits who fell when portion of the house collapsed would be trapped inside forever." Only a few of the rooms, other than the top three floors, were actually in disrepair. Sarah reset her mind to the building of the house (if her mind had actually ever left that though) and began to build once again. After the earthquake though, she did try to appease the spirits by sleeping in one room from then on. The house was fixed and new additions were added every day. Instead of building upward though, Sarah decided to start building the house outward. Forty-seven fireplaces in all were added (even though only half were useable) along with approximately 40 bedrooms, 2 ballrooms (neither finished), 160 rooms (as can best be counted), 40 staircases, 6 kitchens, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows (including some priceless Tiffany glass), a magnificent garden and not one single blueprint. Sarah Winchester built this house from her head and with the supposed help of spirit guides.

Though all these odd architectures were added, one number can be counted repeatedly throughout the house. Sarah was an apparent fan of the number 13. To list just a few there were: 13 drain holes in most sinks, 13 windows in some of the rooms, 13 steps to just about every staircase (including the grand staircase), 13 panes of glass in almost all of the windows, 13 bathrooms (with only the 13th one having a shower and 13 windows), 52 skylights (multiple of 13), 13 palm trees line the driveway, 13 panels on the walls, many of the wooden floors contain 13 sections and even the greenhouse had 13 cupolas. The numbers seven and eleven are also seen throughout the house. One stairway in the house "turns 7 times and has 44 steps, but only goes up 9 feet! Some speculate that stairs were built so low because Sarah had arthritis; others think she had them built that way to confuse and/or slow down the spirits."

One more oddity is the bell tower. It is said that the bell tower was used to tell the spirits when to come and go. The bell was rang every night at midnight to let the spirits know they could come, and then again at 2 two in the morning, to let them know to leave. If you are wondering if it was used at any other time, then you will just have to go to the house and ask, as reports differ from one source to another. Now, the bell ringing for the spirits may sound weird, but there is more weirdness on top of that my friends. "The tower was only approachable from the outside by climbing onto the roof of the mansion using a ladder. The bell was hung at the top of the tower, with a long rope hanging down a sheer, unclimbable wall. The rope was reached through underground tunnels, the precise layout of which was known only to the bell ringer and his assistant."

Sarah Winchester died peacefully in her sleep in the early morning hours of September 4, 1922 at the age of 83. As the word of Sarah's death spread through the mansion the workers set down their tools. Nails that were only half hammered in can still be seen today. For the first time in 36 years the sounds of hammers and saws were quieted at the Winchester House.

The Winchester house was left to one of Sarah's nieces. Even Sarah's Last Will and Testament was broken into 13 parts and had 13 signatures on it. "Little did anyone know, but by this time, Sarah's large bank account had dwindled considerably. Rumor had it that somewhere in the house was hidden a safe containing a fortune in jewelry and a solid-gold dinner service with which Sarah had entertained her ghostly guests. Her relatives forced open a number of safes but found only old fishlines, socks, newspaper clippings about her daughter's and her husband's deaths, a lock of baby hair, and a suit of woolen underwear. No solid gold dinner service was ever discovered." Everything was sold off at auction. "It took 8 weeks (6 truckloads a day) to remove it all.". Even the house itself was sold off to a group of investors who wanted it as a tourist attraction.

Today the house is a Historic Landmark. The total room count is 160, but no one is really sure if that is correct or not. But the question now comes of, is the house really haunted. If you ask a tour guide for the house, the answer will most likely be no. But if you go by accounts from visitors since the house opened, then yes. It more than likely is.

"There have been footsteps; banging doors; mysterious voices; windows that bang so hard they shatter; cold spots; strange moving lights; doorknobs that turn by themselves.... and don't forget the scores of psychics who have their own claims of phenomena to report." "The unusual goings-on reported in the Winchester House include organ music in the Blue Room where Sarah died, a couple lingering in the corner of a bedroom, cold spots in Sarah's bedroom, and apparitions of Sarah. Perhaps one of the oddest is the smell of chicken soup coming from a long-unused kitchen. Since Sarah Winchester's death, several psychics have reported feeling cold spots and seeing red balls of light that fade and explode. Psychic Jeanne Borgen visited in 1975 and reportedly took on Sarah Winchester's appearance for a short time. Authors Richard Winer and Nancy Osborn spent the night there in 1979 while researching a book and were awakened by footsteps and piano music. Staff members have also reported seeing apparitions, hearing whispering sounds, seeing lights going on and off and security alarms being triggered from inside the house." Are these accounts real or imagined though? As everyone who has reported them has known why the house was built, are they mere figments of the imagination? That question remains unanswered to this day. But wouldn't it be nice if all of Sarah's hard work, money and time wasn't just the act of a woman trying to keep a step ahead of her own demons?

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Located at:

525 South Winchester Boulevard, San Jose, CA 95128
Exit I-280 southbound at Winchester Blvd.

Open for tours daily, except Christmas day. Special flashlight tours on Halloween and every Friday the Thirteenth. The standard tour lasts 65 minutes and costs much more than a full-price movie, but for the curious, the Winchester Mystery House can be quite an adventure.