On The Road Again: Winchester

Winchester Mystery House San Jose, Calif.

ABOVE: The sprawling estate of the Winchester Mystery House is dominated by the main building, which takes up 24,000 square feet of space. Except for a couple outbuildings, the structure is all under one roof. (Photo www.winchestermysteryhouse.com)

LEFT: The house contains stairways to nowhere, such as this one terminating at the ceiling. (Photo provided by Winchester Mystery House)

By RAY BALOGH | The Municipal

The haphazard and befuddling layout of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, Calif., is as intriguing as the mystifying and beleaguered psyche of its matriarch, Sarah Lockwood Pardee Winchester.

The numbers regarding the sprawling mansion tell only part of the story: • The house’s footprint measures 24,000 square feet, the equivalent of a square of land with each side stretching more than half a football field. • The house contains 160 rooms, including 40 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms and six kitchens; 10,000 windows; 2,000 doors; 52 skylights; 47 stairways; 47 fireplaces; and 17 chimneys. • The structure originally towered seven stories, but the top three floors were rendered inaccessible by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Many of the rooms were later dismantled. • Except for a brief hiatus after the earthquake, construction crews worked on the house for 38 years, from 1884 until Sarah’s death on Sept. 5, 1922, earning it a nod from the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest continuous house construction.

But the impetus for renovating and expanding the original two-story, eight-room farmhouse reveals the deeper, sometimes macabre and often baffling tale of a woman inwardly tortured by the instrumentality of her wealth.

In 1862 Sarah, then 23 years old, married William Wirt Winchester, the only son of Oliver Winchester, who invented the Winchester repeating rifle, known as “The Gun that Won the West.” Oliver passed away in 1880, leaving his substantial fortune to William.

William died of tuberculosis three months later, leaving his legacy of just over half a billion dollars in today’s money to Sarah. Interest and stock dividends provided her an income of nearly $27,000 per day.

William’s death was the second in Sarah’s household, the couple having lost their only child, Annie, when she was barely six weeks old.

To find either solace or an explanation for the personal tragedies in her life, Sarah, a devotee of the paranormal and numerology, who then lived in New Haven, Conn., consulted a medium in Boston. Supposedly channeling William, he urged her to settle out west and continuously build a residence for herself and the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles. According to some historians, Sarah imposed upon herself the incessant premonition that the moment she stopped construction she would die.

And so she built—and never stopped building—without any master plan, all with the tandem motives of providing a peaceful resting place for the departed spirits and thwarting the demons she felt were chasing her. So, although the construction materials, appointments and furnishings were elegant, the house’s design was deliberately haphazard.

Sarah spent her grief-filled life alternating between her roles as hostess and fugitive.

She directed construction crews to prepare two areas specifically to entertain the ghosts. Many nights, at the stroke of twelve, Sarah proceeded to the dark and windowless Blue Room, announcing her arrival to the spirits by ringing a bell and offering her ethereal guests elaborate dinners.

On the other hand, she availed herself of all 40 bedrooms, never sleeping in the same room two nights in a row, and she kept only one working shower among the 13 bathrooms, all to stymie the malevolent spirits she was convinced sought to avenge their deaths from the Winchester family’s violent commercial enterprise.

The labyrinthine halls and stairways were also designed to confuse the spirits. Doors open into solid walls, staircases lead to ceilings without egress and skylights are placed where sunlight never shines. Past one door’s threshold is an 8-foot drop into a kitchen sink. One step through another door results in a two-story plunge into a garden next to the house.

As riddled as her life was with mourning and depression, Sarah still appreciated the beauty of nature. She kept immaculate gardens and orchards on the 161-acre estate, and the property’s landscaping team now One of the doors in an upper room opens to the floor below. (www.wickedhorror.com)

Sarah Winchester slept in each of the mansion’s 40 bedrooms, but never in the same room on two successive nights, in order to hide from malevolent spirits she felt were looking for her. (Shutterstock.com)

tends a multitude of original trees, 10,000 hedges and hundreds of varieties of flowers and other plant life.

Ever obsessed with the number 13, Sarah left a will with 13 clauses and signed the document in 13 places. She left her estate to her favorite niece, Daisy Merriman, who served as her personal secretary and lived with her for 15 years.

Sarah wanted Daisy to preserve the house as a haven for the spirits, but Daisy wanted nothing of the sort. The house was appraised for a paltry $5,000, given its unfinished construction, earthquake damage and impractical design, and was purchased by a local investor at auction for $135,000.

Five months after Sarah’s passing, the home’s lessees, John and Mayme Brown, opened the Winchester Mystery House for public tours. In the 98 years since, more than 12 million visitors have toured the mansion, and a not insignificant portion of them have reported wisps of paranormal activity.

Winchester Mystery House, which offers a variety of tours and operates a gift shop, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday (though closing times may vary). It is closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The mansion is located at 525 S. Winchester Blvd., San Jose, Calif. For more information, call (408) 247-2000 or visit www.winchestermysteryhouse.com.