9. Winchester Mystery House
Sarah Winchester was the wife of William Wirt Winchester, the treasurer and only son of Oliver Winchester, the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. After her daughter and husband died, Sarah inherited a vast wealth, by some accounts equivalent to $23,400 a day in today’s money. Sarah was largely superstitious and consulted with a medium after her husband’s death who advised her to leave her home in New Haven Connecticut and travel West. In addition to settling in the West Sara was to build a home there for herself, and for the spirits of those people who had been killed by the Winchester rifles.
Sarah moved to San Jose, California around 1884 and until her death in 1922 designed, ordered and oversaw the construction of a dizzying seven-story home with 160 rooms, 40 bedrooms, and 2 ballrooms. The home today is just four levels. Still, many stairways, hallways and doors remain that were built to lead nowhere. Some windows even overlook other rooms.
Some people believe that Sarah was in fact being guided by the spirits when she designed this home, but many others just believe that given her lack of formal architectural training this lead to the curious designs. Of course, there was also talk that she was just mad. Sarah never slept in the same bedroom in the house more than two nights in a row in order to escape any spirits who may be searching for her. The home features Sarah’s preoccupation with the supernatural; spider web motifs are included in stained glass throughout and the number 13 is prominent in architectural details.
Sarah was said to have built an elaborate spying system so that she could monitor the large staff and many workers would kid that she could walk through walls as she would often appear silently, without notice. Neighbors reported hearing bells toll from the mansion around midnight and again at 2 a.m., the time that spirits are thought to communicate. There is also a blue room in the mansion that Sarah frequented nightly and it was there with paper and planchette that she was thought to communicate with the dead.
After the 1906 earthquake Sarah left the home for some time, fearing that the earthquake was caused because the spirits were upset with her. Sarah would go on to die of natural causes in the house. She left behind no journals and no formal reasoning as to the maddening mansion and no one has lived in it permanently since.
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