The story in the new Winchester movie is not fiction. The possessed millionaire actually built a mad and damned house. We will tell you how it happened. And will show an exclusive excerpt from the film.
Certainly the horror film Winchester. The House That Ghosts Built”(2018) pursues purely passionate entertainment functions. But the story of our correspondent will fill in all the gaps in history and serve as an educational function. Enjoy your enlightenment …
PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR
I was going to this "house of secrets" with the feeling that I was being played, and quite impudently: the entrance ticket cost almost 30 dollars. Is it for seeing a haunted sanctuary in the heart of Silicon Valley? Three minutes from the high-tech Cisco and Adobe headquarters? Human superstition, gentlemen, is a strong thing, but after all, the XXI century is in the yard, and you need to know the honor.
No one would claim that Sarah Winchester had everyone at home. But since her fortune earned her $ 1,000 a day tax-free income at the end of the 19th century (now the equivalent of $ 18,000), she was called eccentric, not crazy. The tangible result of her insanity - "Sarah Winchester's Mystery House" in San Jose - is listed in the US register of historical monuments as "a strange building with an unknown number of rooms." But when I found out that in addition to this, the house is one of the few in America, which the US Department of Commerce has awarded the official status of "house inhabited by spirits", I became curious. And I went.
BRILLIANT INJECTION
Promotional video:
But in order. Sarah was born in Connecticut in 1839. The best private schools, four languages, a piano and a violin … In 1862, at the height of the American Civil War, cute petite (147 centimeters) Sarah married William, the son of the famous repeating shotgun manufacturer Oliver Winchester. In fact, such a gun existed before, but Winchester figured out how to put the case on the conveyor. State contracts were still profitable at that time: the gun allowed a shot every three seconds, which made it the favorite weapon of the northerners against the southerners. Everyone else who also needed to quickly shoot at enemies, including the Redskins, also liked it. No wonder they say that thanks to this gun the Wild West was conquered. The Winchester family grew rich quickly and fabulously. But, as Chekhov rightly noted,if in the first act of the play a gun hangs on the wall, then in the fourth it will certainly fire.
In 1866, Sarah and William had a daughter who died at the age of two weeks. Sarah was very upset by the death of her daughter and for several years balanced on the brink of madness. 15 years later, another misfortune came: in 1881, William died of tuberculosis, to whom the gun business passed from his father. At 42, Sarah became the heiress of a gigantic fortune ($ 20 million) and half of the shares of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company (“blood money,” Sarah later said about her capital). There are many widows who will not grieve for long under such circumstances, but Sarah was inconsolable.
Finally, she makes an appointment with a famous Boston clairvoyant, who popularly explains to her that a curse rests on her family and that the death of her daughter and husband is revenge for all those killed from multiple-shot "Winchesters". The spirits of the slain haunt all members of the Winchester family, and the same fate awaits her. The only way to salvation, on the advice of a clairvoyant, is to drop everything, go "where the sun sets" (Sarah decided that this meant the Pacific coast), and build a house there so that she could die quietly on the day of construction. The logic here was not so hot: all the disembodied spirits of the slain needed a roof over their heads. Nevertheless, Sarah learned the main thing: as soon as she stops construction, she will inevitably die.
A fragment of the film “Winchester. The House That Ghosts Built”, which gives an idea of the intricacies of the decor and the atmosphere prevailing in the house.
LIFETIME REPAIR
In 1884, Sarah moved to San Jose, bought a farmhouse on 65 hectares of land and immediately began to rebuild it. This is today in Silicon Valley fabulously expensive land and every piece of built-up, and then there was a village. It was all the more surprising for the neighboring farmers to hear the incessant hammering and squealing of drank and to watch as one team of eleven carpenters replaced another, because the construction was carried out day and night, seven days a week. Sarah Winchester lived in the house herself and built, added, and rebuilt for 38 years, until her death in 1922 at the age of 83. Most of us, even after a few weeks of repairs, fall into a state close to insanity, and here 38 years, 365 days a year! But, according to eyewitnesses, this construction marathon had a beneficial effect on Sarah's psyche,preventing cockroaches from crawling out from under the hat. She was confident in the correctness of the business she had started and had the means to implement it. Therefore, "The Mystery House of Sarah Winchester" got into the Guinness Book of Records as the longest long-term construction.
What Sarah didn't have was an architect or preliminary blueprints. Every morning she gathered the workers and announced to them the work plan, and since they were well paid and it was clear that they would be provided with work as long as the mistress lived, they carefully followed her instructions. Even if it was necessary to destroy everything that they had been building for a week. The house grew in an unpredictable way. The rooms were added to the rooms, and it turned out a new wing, over which they began to build the next floor, etc. Unsuccessful rooms were either demolished or others were built around them - many of the colored glass doors and windows ordered from Tiffany in New York were sealed between two walls and never saw the light of day. Some historians claim that she received instructions from souls ruined by the Winchesters. Judging by the number of stairs leading to the ceiling, doors,behind which you rest against the wall, and windows in the floor, souls also did not have a single architectural concept. Other historians attribute the chaotic pile-up of levels and many kilometers of corridor mazes to Sarah's desire to confuse the spirits so that they would leave her alone. All these assumptions now form part of the guide's folklore, because Sarah did not leave any explanations. When the safe was opened after her death, there was a will, the curls of her daughter and husband, and obituaries cut from newspapers.because Sarah left no explanation. When the safe was opened after her death, there was a will, the curls of her daughter and husband, and obituaries cut from newspapers.because Sarah left no explanation. When the safe was opened after her death, there was a will, the curls of her daughter and husband, and obituaries cut from newspapers.
There is only a house on Winchester Boulevard, no different from the outside of Victorian mansions, except that this one looks more like a palace that despised symmetry, surrounded by immaculate lawns, fountains and tourist buses. Only after getting inside, you realize that Sarah ordered the best craftsmen from other cities and did not spare money for finishing. And since work stopped on the day of her death (the workers abandoned everything and left, leaving half-hammered nails, because Sarah paid them at the end of the day) and then no one lived in the house, then all the interior details were preserved perfectly - from plumbing to kitchen mechanisms and switches gas lamps. There is even a building shed from the early 19th century.
HOW I SAW THE GHOST
Before the famous San Francisco earthquake in 1906, the house had seven floors, and now there are four left. Three floors collapsed into the garden, and it was decided not to restore them. Sarah saw in the cataclysm a signal that the spirits did not like the finished facade. She boarded up 30 rooms at the front of the house and never returned to them. But there are enough turrets, balconies, cornices, steps and windows of different colors on four floors. It reminds something of the villas of the beginning of the 20th century on Krestovsky Island in St. Petersburg, which in childhood we called "the houses of Baba Yaga". Of the 13 palm trees (with this number Sarah had her own relationship, but more on that below), only nine remained in front of the entrance. "Fungus," the manager of Shozo Kagoshima, who met me, threw up his hands, "we will plant new ones." I took some pictures of the architectural nonsense of the house, such as the door on the second floor,going out through which you can fall onto the lawn and break your neck, and playing them on the display, I suddenly saw that some of them turned out fine, and some came out as colored negatives. I tried to reshoot - the same thing: the camera was clearly buggy! Inside the house, these glitches continued. Maybe this happens when spirits are in the frame? “I haven’t come across ghosts, but both employees and visitors periodically swear that they are witnessing paranormal phenomena,” Shozo said when I complained to him about the trick with the photos. - Everything happens: footsteps are heard, and the flickering light moves, and doors slam, and water from the taps starts flowing by itself, and the door handles turn, and the temperature in the room suddenly drops by ten degrees. Houdini himself visited the mansion after Sarah's death and said that the spirits were locked in closed rooms,”Shozo finally overtook me with fear. Because how can you not believe Houdini? Many different mediums have been in the mansion, and they, as one, declare that some of the spirits invited by Sarah still live in the house. Ghosts are an important part of the Sarah Winchester Mystery House brand. The craving for mysticism among the people is irrepressible, so sometimes you have to wait an hour or two: they are allowed only with an excursion. "Otherwise," explained Shozo, "all we will do is look for and rescue the lost visitors." Particularly popular are the flashlight tours of the house on Halloween and every Friday, when it falls on the 13th. The craving for mysticism among the people is irrepressible, so sometimes you have to wait an hour or two: they are allowed only with an excursion. "Otherwise," explained Shozo, "all we will do is look for and rescue the lost visitors." Particularly popular are lantern tours of the house on Halloween and every Friday, when it falls on the 13th. The craving for mysticism among the people is irrepressible, so sometimes you have to wait an hour or two: they are allowed only with an excursion. "Otherwise," explained Shozo, "all we will do is look for and rescue the lost visitors." Particularly popular are lantern tours of the house on Halloween and every Friday, when it falls on the 13th.
Today, guides most often come across at the end of the day the ghost of a carpenter who has devoted his entire working life to laying carved floors, which Sarah then ordered to be replaced. The second in frequency of appearances is reputed to be Sara herself, who often strolls at dusk in different parts of the mansion and lawns. “Employees of the nearby Century 23 cinema have seen her more than once late at night in their parking lot,” Shozo said.
Restless old age
In fact, Sarah seemed inconsistent in her relationship with spirits. It seems that she invited them herself, and then ran away from them. The widow, for example, hid from them every night in another room, and none of the 18 servants knew which of the 40 bedrooms she slept in. Therefore, when on the night of the earthquake Sarah was crushed by a fireplace in her favorite “daisy” room (the flower, it turns out, has 13 petals), they could not find her for a long time. There are 47 fireplaces in the house, but thirty of them end their chimneys before reaching the roof so that spirits cannot enter the house. There are 160 rooms (Shozo said that this is an inaccurate figure: every time they count, they certainly get lost in the end) - only two mirrors, because the ghosts were afraid of their own reflection. Shozo told me his unofficial theory: “She was not afraid of all spirits. She treated some with compassion and treated them from a golden service,which is hidden somewhere in the house, only it has not yet been found. But among the Winchesters who fell from the bullets there were many criminals and bad people. She avoided these spirits as best she could.
As soon as I got ready to photograph the transparent doors in the washrooms, the battery in the Nikon began to run down. But I charged it two hours ago! By the way, there were no latches in all 13 bathrooms. There was a servants' bathroom, but outside. And on the second floor, Shozo took me to the blue "session" room, where every night Sarah received the building control from the spirits, and opened the closet: downstairs was a sink located in one of six kitchens on the floor below. “There are thirteen drain holes in it,” he continued without much enthusiasm to introduce me to the mysterious house. It turned out that many windows in the house have 13 frames, in the "session" room there are 13 hooks on a hanger, in the ballroom covered with mysterious Shakespeare quotes on a gas candelabrum, 13 sockets, 39 out of 40 stairs have 13 steps each, and one staircase, changing direction,seven times it rises to a height of only two meters, because its steps are 5 centimeters high. "And what about the spirits, short-legged?" I asked. “No, Mrs Winchester had arthritis, and it was easier for her,” replied Shozo. Needless to say, no matter how hard I tried, the shot of this staircase turned out to be strongly overexposed, and it was a bit dark!
At the end, Shozo said that Sarah was not as crazy as she seems. She donated $ 2 million to a hospital in Connecticut, which built a tuberculosis unit that is still in operation. On forty hectares, she grew plums and apricots, dried them and exported them to Europe (in the local telephone directory she appeared as “fruit trader Sarah Winchester” with number M15). She brought gas, electricity to the house, made steam heating and sewage, installed three elevators, one of them with the only horizontal hydraulic drive in the United States. But despite these cutting-edge improvements, the home Sarah invested $ 5.5 million in went up for auction after her death for just $ 135,000. "The furniture was taken out within six weeks, six trucks every day!" - Shozo told not without respect.“Oh, if Sarah Winchester were alive, it would take thirteen weeks, thirteen trucks a day,” I thought, going out into the warm Californian sun and shivering with impressions.
In general, if you are in San Jose, be sure to come in.
HELLO WEAPON
The Winchester magazine rifle was the same bad guy symbol in the 19th century as the Kalashnikov became in the 20th. However, some especially frostbitten Brazilian drug lords and Italian mafiosi still prefer this ancient weapon, it is not without reason that it is still produced in Italy and Brazil. At one time, the "Winchester" even reached tsarist Russia. A special model of a carbine chambered for the Mosin three-line rifle was launched exclusively for Russian users. In general, the ability to use cartridges from other weapons, for example from revolvers, was the trademark of the American miracle gun. After all, when you are intensely firing from all the barrels, there is no time to think about which cartridge to take for reloading. In this sense, a real sensation was made by the first cartridge belt for Winchesters, which turned the carbine into a real machine gun. And many more famous models of "Winchesters" were actually developed by a completely different guru of the gun business - John Browning, whom the cunning Winchester exploited for a long time.
Alexey Dmitriev