Sarah Winchester began building an eerie seven-story mansion in San Jose back in 1884, and construction continued until her death. How the house is connected with the curse of the Winchester family, and why it became an abode for spirits, we tell in our material.
Today, the mansion, located on Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, attracts thousands of tourists every year with its mysterious stories of ghosts and spirits that inhabit it. However, the widow Winchester pursued completely different goals when she began its construction. The lack of a general development plan, a monthly change of workers and 38 years of construction - the history of the damned house has become overgrown with legends and myths, and the secrets of its mistress still excite fans of chilling stories.
The future mistress of the damned house Sarah Lockwood Purdy was born in 1839 in New Haven, Connecticut, into a poor family of Leonard Purdy and Sarah Burns. Little is known about the girl's childhood, and the first mentions of her appeared only in 1862, when Sarah married the heir to the arms company, William Wirth Winchester.
Sarah Winchester.
William Winchester, the son of the very same Oliver Fisher Winchester, who founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and invented the rifle named after him, had the fame of an enviable groom and was very popular with women. However, Sarah Purdee took possession of his heart, and a few months after they met, the couple got married.
At first, the life of Sarah and William resembled a fairy tale - mutual feeling, wealth, position in society. In addition, after four years of marriage, the lovers had a daughter, whom it was decided to name Annie. The newly made parents were absolutely happy, but the idyll was not destined to last long.
Annie died a month after she was born. According to experts, the cause of the girl's death was nutritional dystrophy, a disease that is often observed in children under one year old and is caused by a lack of nutrients entering the body.
Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester, still from the movie Winchester. The House That Ghosts Built”, 2018.
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The tragic death of her daughter was a real blow to the family - Sarah was in a state of extreme stress for several months, and William did not know how to help his desperate wife. Even years after Annie's death, the couple did not dare to have children.
But this death was not the last tragedy in the Pardee-Winchester family. In 1880, William's father, Oliver, died, and a year later, Winchester Jr. himself was gone. In both cases, the cause of death was tuberculosis, a common infectious disease in those years.
A series of losses greatly affected the state of Sarah Winchester, who in an instant became the heiress of a multimillion-dollar fortune and at the same time remained completely alone. The widow could not find a place for herself and began to turn to the services of psychics and magicians, hoping to understand the causes of death of her loved ones.
House of the Widow Winchester.
After spending several useless sessions with people with paranormal abilities, Sarah met with a medium from Boston named Alan Koons, who revealed the details of the Winchester family's past.
According to Koons, a terrible curse lay on the Winchester family. All the deaths in the family are a cruel revenge of those killed by a rifle created by Oliver Fisher Winchester. The frightened woman was horrified by what she heard, but the medium calmed her down by proposing a solution.
The man told Sarah that she should leave their home in Connecticut and go to the western United States, where she was to build a mansion for the souls of those who fell victim to the Winchester rifle.
Sarah obeyed Alan Koons and went to California, where large-scale construction began under her leadership in 1884. The widow bought out a destroyed ranch in the Santa Clara Valley and hired several dozen workers to build the mansion. Already at the planning stage, oddities began to occur - Sarah did not hire architects, did not make any drawings, and did not bother to create a master plan for the development.
A still from the film “Winchester. The House That Ghosts Built”, 2018.
In addition, the owner of the residence often changed construction crews, and therefore no one except herself probably knew the details of the layout of the mysterious labyrinth house. However, even an incomplete picture of an unfinished house raised questions - some windows did not look out onto the street, but onto neighboring rooms, many doors and stairs in the room led to a dead end, all bathrooms in the house were fake, except for one, to which only the hostess herself had access. and the corridors were so narrow that workers could barely squeeze through them.
A staircase inside the house leading to a dead end.
According to legend, all these planning oddities were associated with the fact that Sarah Winchester built the house in such a way that the spirits that were chasing her could not find her and were lost in the maze created.
Another staircase leading to the ceiling.
By 1906, the building was already a huge seven-story mansion with many secret rooms and hiding places, and rumors about the cursed house of the Winchester widow were already spreading throughout the district. However, in the same year, the residence was somewhat modified after a strong earthquake, which completely destroyed the three upper floors of the building.
This natural disaster reactivated Sarah's activities, which began a new round of construction of the mansion. So, she decided to decorate the interior of the residence, bringing the most beautiful stained-glass windows, mirrors and art from abroad, as well as silver and gold chandeliers, expensive carpets and other luxury items.
Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester, still from the movie Winchester. The House That Ghosts Built”, 2018.
By the way, the locals were ambivalent about Sarah herself. Rumors of the Winchester family curse had already spread throughout the city, and the strange behavior of the owner of the house only made the situation worse. In addition to the protracted construction, frequent changes of contractors and the mystical atmosphere of the house itself, local residents were embarrassed by the habits of the Winchester widow. The woman was withdrawn, silent, often wandered around the neighborhood completely alone, and the workers said that at night in her house, the woman held séances in a secret room, and also slept in different rooms every night.
In addition, all those who visited the house described it exclusively as a "cursed" estate, the atmosphere in which inspired genuine fear and horror.
House of the Widow Winchester.
However, rumors and tales of local residents can be explained by the fact that people were frightened by the unknown, and the closed lifestyle of the billionaire's widow raised many questions, the answers to which could be found in mystical stories.
One way or another, on September 5, 1922, it all ended with the death of Sarah Winchester from heart failure. On the construction of all this splendor, the widow spent almost forty years of her life and all the savings that her husband left her.
Sarah Winchester, 1919
A sign outside Sarah Winchester's house.
After her death, the family's lawyers discovered Sarah's will, which contained thirteen sections, which she signed exactly thirteen times. All the property was intended for the niece of a woman named Marion, who soon sold the cursed house at auction to John Brown for 135 thousand dollars.
The new owner of the house restored the premises and already in 1923 opened the doors of the residence for tourists, presenting it as a real labyrinth with ghosts and spirits of dead people. The house is still incredibly popular and attracts crowds of tourists who claim to feel the presence of ghosts in it, as well as hear shrill moans and rustling of steps in the corridors.
Also, the history of the cursed house has repeatedly become a part of mystical films and TV series. Among the popular projects about the Winchester widow's residence are the series "Red Rose Mansion", the script of which was written by Stephen King, as well as the 2018 film "Winchester. The House That Ghosts Built”starring Helen Mirren.