“She had a social conscience and she did try to give back,” historian Janan Boehme told Robin Abcarian of the Los Angeles Timesin 2017. When she died, in fact, the heiress left most of her money to charity. Winchester could have been engaging in an eccentric brand of philanthropy, as she built her home during an economic depression, and the continuous construction project provided jobs for locals. If construction ever stopped, she would die.īut as Katie Dowd of SFGate points out, there is “scant proof” for this theory. The medium reportedly instructed her to constantly build a house for these ghosts. Popular lore has it that she was a keen follower of the Spiritualist movement, which was rooted in the idea that dead souls can interact with the living, and consulted a medium who told her she had been cursed by victims of Winchester rifles. Sometimes, she would have features built and plastered over the next day.Įxactly why Winchester embarked on this dizzying cycle of building, undoing and rebuilding is impossible to say. The designs, wrote Pamela Haag for Zócalo Public Squarein 2016, were Winchester’s she sketched them onto napkins or pieces of brown paper, then handed them over to a team of carpenters. The construction project continued until Winchester’s death in 1922, producing an enormous, labyrinthine mansion filled with logic-defying features: staircases that end at the ceiling, indoor balconies, skylights built into floors, doors that open onto walls. In San Jose, she purchased an eight-room farmhouse that she began to renovate in 1886. Winchester decided to leave her home in New Haven, Connecticut, and head to California, where two of her sisters lived. This staircase in the Winchester Mystery House leads to the ceiling. Her husband, William Wirt Winchester, died in 1881, leaving his widow with a vast fortune: 50 percent ownership in the Repeating Arms Company and a $20 million inheritance. Four years later, she gave birth to a daughter, Annie, who died about a month later. Sarah Lockwood Pardee married into the Winchester family in 1862. The narrated video tour spans more than 40 minutes, providing insight into the property and the mysterious woman who built it: Sarah Winchester, wealthy and reclusive heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, which manufactured an innovative rifle that became a fixture of Westward expansion. But as Michele Debczak reports for Mental Floss, you can now explore the Winchester House from afar via a detailed video tour posted on the mansion’s website. Built by a millionaire widow over the course of 36 years, the sprawling mansion features more than 200 rooms, 10,000 windows, trap doors, spy holes and a host of other architectural oddities.Ī popular tourist attraction, the house, along with many other cultural institutions in the United States, has closed to help curb the spread of coronavirus. Featuring vendors selling strangely unique collectibles, antiques, and handmade wares-from taxidermy to dark art-the Menagerie Holiday Oddities Market is the San Francisco Bay Area’s official Oddities & Curiosities event.The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, is one of the nation’s most curious landmarks. On Saturday, December 3 and Sunday, December 4, Winchester Mystery House will host the 4th Annual Menagerie Holiday Oddities Market. The show takes place on 13 evenings from Friday, September 30 through Monday, October 31, 2022. and all ticketed guests will receive a commemorative cabinet card and will be encouraged to leave flowers, cards, photos, and mementos in the front gardens that day.ĭue to the pandemic the popular Halloween show had been cancelled, and it now returns with Unhinged: Nightshade’s Curse. On September 5, 2022, exactly 100 years since Sarah Winchester-heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms fortune-passed away at home in her bizarrely beautiful mansion, Winchester Mystery House will welcome guests to a Celebration of Life for Sarah Winchester. Per organizers, the Winchester Mystery House has inspired films, books, and television shows for 100 years: The Winchester Mystery House has fascinated and inspired millions since doors opened to the public in 1923, and it is our mission to keep the house open for future generations to enjoy.” “The Centennial is an opportunity to not only celebrate the world-famous house, but to honor Sarah’s incredible legacy. “We are so proud to have been given the opportunity to be the caretakers of Sarah Winchester’s home for the past 100 years,” said Winchester Mystery House General Manager Walter Magnuson. The iconic San Jose landmark founded in 1923 will host its birthday celebration from 2022 through 2023. Winchester Mystery House has announced its celebrating its centennial with a series of events, programs and exhibitions.
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