The Winchester Mystery House —Some legends say it is haunted by every person killed with a Winchester Rifle.
Deeply saddened by the deaths of her daughter Annie in 1866 and her young husband in 1881, and seeking solace, Winchester consulted a medium on the advice of a psychic. According to popular history, during a séance, the medium told Winchester there was a curse on the Winchester family because the guns had killed so many. The psychic told Winchester her husband and child died because of vengeful spirits and she was next.”
The Boston Medium told Winchester that she must “build a home for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon. You must never stop building the house. If you stop, you will die.”
Sarah Winchester inherited more than $20.5 million upon her husband’s death. She also received nearly 50 percent ownership of the Winchester Rifle Company. Giving her an income of roughly $1,000 per day. This amount today is roughly equivalent to $21,000 a day so she was well able to fund the mansion she began building.
In 1884, Sarah began a construction project that lasted thirty-eight years. The Victorian mansion is filled with so m
any unexplained oddities, that it has come to be known as the Winchester Mystery House.
For the next 36 years, they built and rebuilt, altered and changed and constructed and demolished one section of the house after another. She kept 22 carpenters at work, year around, 24 hours each day. The sounds of hammers and saws sounded throughout the day and night.
There were countless staircases which led nowhere; a blind chimney that stops short of the ceiling; closets that opened to blank walls; trap doors; double-back hallways; skylights that were located one above another; doors that opened to steep drops to the lawn below; and dozens of other oddities.
Nearly all of the windows contained 13 panes of glass; the walls had 13 panels; the greenhouse had 13 cupolas; many of the wooden floors contained 13 sections; some of the rooms had 13 windows and every staircase but one had 13 steps. This exception is unique in its own right…. it is a winding staircase with 42 steps, which would normally be enough to take a climber up three stories. In this case, however, the steps only rise nine feet because each step is only two inches high. Only 2 mirrors were installed in the house…. Sarah believed that ghosts were afraid of their own reflection.
When the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 struck the fireplace in the Daisy Room (where Mrs. Winchester was sleeping on the night of the earthquake) collapsed, shifting the room and trapping Sarah inside. She became convinced that the earthquake had been a sign from the spirits who were furious that she had nearly completed the house. Sarah never slept in the same bedroom two nights in a row and she spent from midnight to two a.m. conversing with spirits. On September 4, 1922, after a conference session with the spirits in the seance room, Sarah went to her bedroom for the night. At some point in the early morning hours, she died in her sleep at the age of 83. The building stopped the next day.
Sarah had managed to spend nearly every penny of her wealth. Rumor had it that somewhere in the house was hidden a safe containing a fortune in jewelry and a solid-gold dinner service with which Sarah had entertained her ghostly guests. Her relatives forced open a number of safes but found only old fishlines, socks, newspaper clippings about her daughter’s and her husband’s deaths, a lock of baby hair, and a suit of woolen underwear. No solid gold dinner service was ever discovered.
One of the first to see the place when it opened to the public was Robert L. Ripley, who featured the house in his popular column, “Believe it or Not.”
In the years that the house has been open to the public, employees and visitors alike have had unusual encounters here. There have been footsteps; banging doors; mysterious voices; windows that bang so hard they shatter; cold spots; strange moving lights; doorknobs that turn by themselves. Some special events include flashlight tours every Friday the 13th and at Halloween.
McVille
ed my love of story.
“This house backs to a farm for retired thoroughbreds,” said our realtor.
Either way, the writer in me got to thinking about horse races. It doesn’t take much for the set-up.
The writer in me is seeing a plot-twist in the making. When I write the book with the horse race, there’s going to be more at stake than just the winner’s purse. Anyone else envisioning Snidley Whiplash in a shadowy corner? When the time comes, I’m going to have fun with this story! 
Hello Darlings,
Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Children, South Boston (moved to Waltham in 1887) — Massachusetts State Reform School, Westbrorough (later “Lyman School for Boys”)
The State Asylum for the Incurably Insane in Hastings Nebraska (pictured above) had a cemetary with graves bearing a number rather than a name, so deep was the shame of having a mentally ill family member. Years of lawsuits were required to get the identities of those buried there and only last May did the Nebraska Supreme Court finally rule that medical privacy laws didn’t cover death records.
Good Morning!
Well, although it’s not true that I travel by horseback when I go out of town, it is true that I would rather drive than fly or take a train. Why? The answer is easy: The countryside. There are so many things to see and places to visit and history to learn — all conveniently advertised along the roadside. On my trips across country (and I’ve probably driven across country now more than a dozen times) I’ve seen canyons that stretch on forever (the Grand Canyon comes to mind); I’ve seen caves — two enormous different ones — and have learned that the rocks in these caves are alive. Did you know that? They grow like any life thing and they can die if you touch them — thus, there are many, many signs in these caves not to touch the rocks.
Actually I didn’t lose my way on this trip until I was well into Vermont, and then I took a wrong turn and ended up at the scene of a very beautiful statue of Ethan Allen. Although I was very lost, I had driven into a spot where the trees were alive with autumn color and I really do mean live. They were bright, bright yellow and gold. So bright that an overcast day looked sunny. And the trees were overlooking the road as I drove by them. I’m not certain I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful in Nature. The only thing that might even come close would be perhaps the Grand Teton area in Wyoming — and of course the Glacier Mountains in Montana.
The picture here was taken in Montana in the Glacier Mountains which set up against the Blackfeet reservation. Once another author and myself visited a deserted train station — trying to envision the people who had once used it. Another time we searched out a town in Louisana called Transylvania. Nancy Richards Akers and I once skirted along the Choctaw trail and another author and I learned of a legend of a young Indian princess who threw herself off a mountain to avoid marrying a man she didn’t love. (Her true lover followed her over the cliff, by the way). And another time, fellow author, Heather Cullman, and I visited Sky City — I’m only calling it that because I can’t recall exactly the name of the town. Here we were taken on a tour, learned the history of the town and learned that the town was used as a safe refuge in a time of uncertainty.
Perhaps I took tha invitation to heart.
I guess we Americans — or maybe I should just say we humans — love to travel. And whatever the cause, I do enjoy my trips — even though it might take me longer to go from here to there. I bet you’ve had some incredible adventures here in the heartland of America. And I’d love to hear about your own trips. So please come on in and let’s chat. And don’t forget to pick up your copy of Black Eagle today.
alternating corners were fortified and defended by two cannons.
Hi everybody!
Ah apologize for being slow to announce the winner of Jodi Thomas’s autographed book. Ah’ve been chasing my durn mule, trying to catch the fool animal. Ah’m plumb out of breath.