Mediums, employees, and visitors alike have all described random events of potential spirits still in the house, and people from all over the world come to see the haunted maze for themselves. The Haunting Impact Left Behindĭespite any debates around the truth of the spirits’ involvement, the Winchester Mystery House has become a historical landmark in the United States. Sarah believed the spirits used the earthquake to tell her that portions of the house were too close to completion. The 1906 earthquake that erupted between Oregon and Los Angeles destroyed much of the house.
Because of this, Sarah included the strange additions to confuse them. The spirits reportedly feared their own reflection, and were naturally afraid of traps. To confuse and ward off the spirits, Sarah had a number of odd things added to the house: doorways that opened into solid walls, chimneys that were blocked at the top, and a noticeable lack of mirrors to name a few. Photo courtesy of the Winchester Mystery House. Allegedly, the purpose of these seances were for the spirits to tell Sarah what they wanted her to build next. She’d ring the bell in the bell tower at midnight to summon the spirits, then again at 2 a.m. According to legend, Sarah entered the Seance Room on a nightly basis to communicate with the spirits. The question of whether ghosts exist or not is at the forefront of debates around this house. The end result was 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms and 6 kitchens spread out over seven floors and placed on 161 acres of land. Having bought the house in 1884, by 1900, she had already transformed the eight-room house into a seven story mansion. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, construction never halted for 38 years. Sarah immediately hired construction workers to build the house around the clock. Should she ever stop building, she’d die. Legend has it that the spirits demanded she continued construction of this house for the remainder of her life. With a $20,000,000 fortune and an income of $1,000 per day, Sarah began construction on an unfinished farmhouse she purchased in Santa Clara Valley, just outside of San Jose, California. She believed William told her she would know when she had found the right property.įrom there, her sole focus became making the spirits happy so she could keep her life. To save herself, William instructed Sarah to pack up from her home in New Haven, Connecticut and migrate west. There, she believed her husband communicated with her a warning: If she wasn’t careful, she was next.Īccording to the medium, William believed that the spirits of those who had lost their lives during the Civil War and various others who had fallen at the hand of a Winchester rifle sought revenge against their family. Unable to handle her grief, Sarah Winchester sought spiritual help from a Boston medium. Winchester suffered a case of tuberculosis that claimed his life as well.
Together, they had a daughter, Annie, who caught the mysterious child disease marasmus, and tragically lost her life. Sarah’s husband, William Wirt Winchester, was the original manufacturer of the Winchester rifle. What was Sarah’s obsession with ghosts? Why did she continuously add on to her house until she died? And just how haunted is the house nowadays? The labyrinthine halls - filled with staircases merging into the roof, rooms leading nowhere, doors opening to big drops and rooms that only Sarah had the keys to - were said to ward off the spirits that haunted her.
The result of her fear has captured skeptics, believers, and tourists alike in the enigmatic presence that has become the Winchester Mystery House. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, Sarah Pardee Winchester faced those very questions. What would you do if ghosts told you to never stop adding on to your house? What if your life depended on following their orders?
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