12/24/2023 0 Comments Winchester mystery house ownerSarah’s constant building? Perhaps a reflection of her architectural ardor, a passion inherited from her woodworker father. But there are a few perfectly unexciting alternative reasons behind these bizarre features. Such haphazard construction understandably fuels the imagination. But the 1906 earthquake took 3 floors with it. In its former glory, the Winchester House stretched 7 stories high. One on the second floor opens to air - and a stomach-sickening 15-foot drop to the garden below. The heiress obsessed over the number 13, embedding it everywhere from modified chandeliers with 13 lights, drains with 13 holes, and banisters with 13 railings. A staircase rises and rises until it abruptly ends in the ceiling. ![]() The most expensive of the building’s 10,000 windows, a stained-glass masterpiece, overlooks a wall where the sun can’t possibly shine. Hallways turn a corner and abruptly dead-end. There are a number of unsettling little oddities. And the mayhem of the architectural layout - the lurching labyrinthine corridors, the network of secret passageways - certainly seems to reflect a tortured mind. ![]() Sarah was the sole architect of her home. ![]() ( Image via the WMH website) Architectural Insanity?Įven with a skeptical eye, the hype around the house is understandable. It wouldn’t be the last time someone would market Sarah’s cryptic life. “Books about the house and owner all provide second-hand information one popular book was written by the grandson of a former gardener.” “ didn’t leave behind any diaries or letters revealing her beliefs,” observes Karen Stollznow, a part of the investigative team at Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. But her motivations remain ambiguous and about as straightforward as navigating through the building’s confusing web of hallways.Īs a private soul and a sufferer of severe rheumatoid arthritis, Sarah lived a recluse life and kept her reasons to herself. Certainly, she added onto her eight-room farmhouse until it morphed into a 160-room hodgepodge of a mansion. Recent findings from several credible sources suggest Superstitious Sarah might very well be a misrepresentation. She hosted evening seances to develop her building plans and she slept in a different room each night (to throw off the scent of hunting spirits)… But what if we were to tell you the known facts about Sarah and her residence are a lot less “dark and stormy night”?įorget the facts you think you know. Most locals can recite the tale like a timeworn campfire story: firearms heiress and recluse widow, Sarah Winchester, incessantly built onto her home for fear that, if she ceased, the souls slaughtered by her husband’s Winchester rifles would finally catch up to her. What really happened here? Let’s play Nancy Drew and find out. So don your deerstalker hat and ready your brain for some detective work because we’re about to separate the historical from the hysterical. You’ll discover how neighbors and newspapers played a hand in setting the stage for savvy entrepreneurs (namely a roller coaster designer who saw lucrative tourist opportunities). Take a step with us back in history, so we can uncover how a fascinating string of factors (some only indirectly tied to Sarah) mystified her story and her home into urban legend- and catapulted her private sphere into a lucrative business. Come to think of it, how exactly did Silicon Valley wind up with one of America’s most famously spooky residences, inspiring Hollywood films and attracting a steady stream of tourists year-round? And how well do you know Sarah’s story really? Because the facts you think you know might just be part of a manufactured façade. It’s all a lot of fun, but locals with even a little love of history might wonder how a house from a bygone era inspired such a haunted legacy. She’d probably be disconcerted to discover a vengeful bride crawling about on her floorboards and a possessed girl clinging to her wallpaper like some kind of demented spider. ![]() The chillingly titled Unhinged, this year’s haunted house at Winchester, takes a historical San Jose establishment from the early 1900s, then utilizes it as the backdrop for a modern, immersive horror experience this October.Īfter our recent visit, we couldn’t help but imagine that the first (and famed) owner, Sarah Winchester, would be quite startled to find a host of actors in macabre makeup and monstrous masks capering about her residence’s hallways. Haunted? (image via WMH’s Facebook page)Īs All Hollows’ Eve approaches, a horde of skeletons and ghouls have infested the jumbled jungle of a mansion called the Winchester Mystery House. How urban mythology (and a savvy theme park worker) transformed a stodgy old shut-in’s lair into San Jose’s long-running tourist attraction.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |