The most recognizable freehold in the County of Selkrest in the Kingdom of Pacifica, the Winchester House is not, technically speaking, a freehold at all. Apparitions reportedly seen around the house seem to be some of the old Winchester caretakers and servants, apparently guarding the manse. In places, nails can still be seen half-driven into walls where workmen, informed of the mistress's death, abruptly halted their labors. Thirteen is the dominant theme of the house, reflected in the number of lights on chandeliers, coat hooks on walls, windows in rooms, and even the number of drainage holes in the kitchen sink's trap.Īt the widow's death the house contained over seven hundred rooms, of which more than a hundred and sixty still stand today. The Gothic Victorian monstrosity was constantly expanded with dozens of pointless rooms, stairs leading nowhere, narrow hallways less than two feet wide, secret doors, and ceilings so low one had to stoop to enter.Īt midnight each night, Sarah would don a nightgown inscribed with occult symbols and weave her way through mazes of rooms via secret, sliding panels to the "seance room." For the next two hours she would receive instructions from the ghosts, telling her what sort of chambers and galleries should be built next. Heiress to the Winchester Arms fortune, Sarah believed that she was under a curse placed on her by the countless victims killed by Winchester Arms, and had to build rooms to house the dead. In 2018, a horror film was made about the infamous house and the spirits that live within.The Winchester Mystery House is a tourist attraction in San Jose, California.īegun in 1884, the Winchester Mystery House's ongoing construction occupied the remaining thirty-eight years of Sarah Winchester's life. The month-long, round-the-clock investigation included interviewing over 300 people regarding their experiences on the property, and analyzed every aspect of the environment for any unusual phenomena. In response to the ongoing claims of ghostly encounters and other paranormal phenomena on the property, in the early 1990s the Winchester management had a parapsychologist and paranormal investigator named Christopher Chacon conduct a full-scale scientific assessment of the property. Though it’s open now, signs of damage from the earthquake are still clearly visible. Some say Sarah Winchester took this as a sign from the spirits that she was too close to completion and ordered the unfinished front half of the house to be boarded up. As the theory goes, to avoid them she would sleep in a different bedroom every night and take labyrinthine paths through her own home.Ī massive earthquake struck the Bay Area in 1906 and toppled the top three stories of the house, damaging the other four stories along with it. Some theories say she believed that as soon as construction was complete, she would die, while other theories suggest she built the house like a maze in order to keep her paranormal tormentors at bay and lost in the many intricacies of the building. After her husband passed away, a psychic told her that to evade the spirits, she would have to move out west, buy a home, and build nonstop. Winchester was being haunted by the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifle, which her late husband’s company had invented. Winchester demanded constant changes to her very large house. A particularly odd delight is a cabinet that, when opened, extends through 30 rooms of the house. Staircases lead straight to ceilings, expensive Tiffany stained-glass windows were installed in places where they would get no light, and there are more secret passages than Narnia. Not all the 2,000 doors can be walked through-one leads to an 8-foot drop to a kitchen sink, another to a 15-foot drop into bushes in the garden below. Of course, that’s not all that’s unique about the house. It had over 160 rooms and 40 bedrooms, 10,000 windows, and even 2 basements. She purchased a small eight-room farmhouse and started a small renovation project that would take 36 years and $5.5 million (in the money of the time), only stopping when she passed away in 1922.īy the time she was done, the Winchester Mansion was a modern marvel with indoor plumbing, multiple elevators, a hot shower, and central heating. In 1886 an eccentric woman named Sarah Winchester traveled from New Haven, Connecticut, to San Jose, California, to start a new life.
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