Episode 2: The Most Haunted Home TRANSCRIPT Today on our show we’ll learn about the most haunted house in the United States. How did the widow of firearm magnate William Wirt Winchester turn an unfinished farmhouse into a 160-room labyrinth-style mansion that was under construction for thirty-six years? This home served as Walt Disney's Inspiration for The Haunted Mansion and was built to confuse evil spirits. But was the owner crazy, haunted, or lonely? ________________ Sarah Winchester unhappily found herself the sole remaining family member after her daughter and then her husband died. Unsure of what to do, she—like many people of the late 1800s—turned to spiritualists to help. Help came in the form of a warning: that she needed to move to the West Coast, build a house large enough to accommodate the spirits of the people killed by Winchester rifles, and not stop the work or she’d die too. The Winchester Mystery House is rich with tales we’ll be exploring today as we explore the story of this most haunted house from the ground up. ________________ The Bay Area of California is rich with legends and lore but few are literally as large as the sprawling, 24,000-square-foot Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion known today as the Winchester Mystery House. Sarah Lockwood Pardee (later Winchester) was born in New Haven, Connecticut sometime between 1835-1845. She was a bit of a child prodigy, mastering four languages, becoming fluent in the classics such as Homer, and gaining notoriety for her skill as a musician as well. New Haven society dubbed her, “The Belle of New Haven.” Her family and the Winchesters were in similar circles: through church and because both had members who were Freemasons. The Masonic preoccupation with secret encryption techniques using numbered cipher systems influenced young Sarah’s world view and—in a way—became real through the many references to the number thirteen in the house. More on this in a few moments. Sarah married William Winchester in 1862. They had a daughter who suffered from an inability to absorb protein and lived just forty days. She was their only child. Her father-in-law and husband died within a year of each other; and, suddenly, Sarah was one of the wealthiest people in the world. And now she was alone. She gravitated toward Theosophy; an exploration of esoteric knowledge, including rituals related to specific religions. Adherents might also participate in seances or other spiritualistic activities. More recently, theosophy became a foundation for the New Age movement, which was at its height during the 1970s. Sarah adhered to the theosophical perspective held by Rudolph Steiner who viewed the universe as a vast, living organism in which all things individually evolving units (or cells) that comprise a greater universal, synergistic body that is “ever building.” Indeed, when it came to ever building, the Winchester House was a literal embodiment. Steiner wrote, “In the universe we have not to do with repetitions, each time that a cycle is passed, something new is added to the world's evolution...” ________________ After spending three years traveling the world, the widow settled in San Jose, California. Lore has it she wound up there after seeking the advice of famous Boston medium Adam Coons. During a séance, Sarah was told that because of the many people who had been killed by the Winchester Rifle, she was cursed by the Winchester fortune. He instructed Sarah the angry spirits demanded she move to California and build them a house. Other accounts presume she wanted to live in close proximity to her Pardee relatives, many of whom had come to California during the Gold Rush. Regardless of motive, she did move and purchased 161 acres of farmland and an eight room house from a local doctor. Located amid wheat fields, fruit trees, and rolling hills, the area also had perfect weather to help soothe her arthritis. She calculated she would be able to purchase nearby land as well as the original farmhouse and soon the building began—a project that would wind up taking 36 years and $5.5 million ($71 million today), only ending when she passed away in 1922. Sarah employed a crew of carpenters and the house was built without an architect or blueprints. The style embraces the era’s popular Aesthetic Movement design, which stood for “art for art’s sake,” welcoming beauty and the contemplation of beauty into the home. Winchester house is loaded with modern marvels such as indoor plumbing, multiple elevators, a hot shower, and central heating. It has over 160 rooms and 40 bedrooms, 10,000 windows, and two basements. Sarah gained a lot of unwanted attention for her fascination with technology—not the kind of thing women of her era were supposed to care about. There are 2,000 doors, but be careful which ones you walk through—one leads to an 8-foot drop down to a kitchen sink and another to a 15-foot drop into bushes in the garden below. Oddities inside include staircases leading straight to ceilings, expensive Tiffany stained-glass windows installed where they receive no light, and numerous secret passages. There is also a cabinet that, when opened, extends through 30 rooms of the house. When Sarah changed her mind about a design she would have her carpenters tear it down and if it was a room they would board it up and build over it. Other curious aspects of the house—like narrow, low-rise, claustrophobic switchback stairs—were built to accommodate the 4-feet-10 Sarah who suffered from crippling arthritis. Theories suggest that Sarah thought building the house like a maze would keep ghosts at bay as they would get lost in the many intricacies of the building. To avoid them, lore says, she would sleep in a different bedroom every night and take labyrinth-like paths through her own home. ________________ In1906 a massive earthquake toppled the top three stories of the seven story house, damaging the other four stories as well. Sarah was safe but stuck in the Daisy Bedroom, named for the floral motif in its windows and had to be dug out by her staff. Some say Sarah Winchester took this as a sign from the spirits that she was too close to completion and she boarded up the unfinished front half of the house. After the earthquake destroyed a third of her work, she confessed in a letter, the house looked like a crazy person built it. Did Winchester, as speculated, take building directions from spirits after nightly séances or did she have something much more elaborate in mind? Is the entire house a puzzle inspired by Francis Bacon and echoing fourth dimensions also seen in the work of M.C. Escher, one of her contemporaries? For example, both Sarah and Escher used upside down pillars in their designs. A world governed by four spatial dimensions (based on revolutionary mathematical discoveries about the curvature of space) was a very prominent and popular idea throughout Sarah Winchester’s lifetime and may have guided her ideas in a completely non-ghostly way. There's speculation clues to the house's true meaning are hidden in the ballroom, the windows with Shakespearian quotes, and the iron gates. This idea suggests that Sarah was a member of a mystic society like the Rosicrucians, or a secret society like the Freemasons—or possibly both. Designs incorporate numbers 13, 11 and 7, as well as spider webs, and Anglo-Japanese motifs such as crescent moons, owls, and waves. In any case, rumors arose about this accomplished yet reclusive woman who wore mourning black and rarely entertained visitors. Besides her sister, her niece, Daisy, who served as secretary and lived at the home for fifteen years, and her servants—many of whom lived on the top floor, she kept to herself. The neighbors gossiped instead of getting to know her. Among them, she became known as superstitious and obsessive. ________________ The Winchester Mystery House has been featured on "Mythbusters," "Ghost Adventures," and "Ghost Brothers.” In 2018, it was made into a horror film "Winchester” starring Helen Mirren. The house has also been featured on the 100th episode of American Horror Story and has appeared twice in BuzzFeed Unsolved, as well as numerous podcasts, short films, and comics. In the early 1990s Winchester’s management had a parapsychologist and paranormal investigator conduct a full-scale scientific assessment of the property. Over the course of a month, he ran a round-the-clock investigation that included interviewing over 300 people regarding their experiences on the property, and analyzed every aspect of the environment for any unusual phenomena. The 720-hour investigation documented 1,440 events, averaging two per hour. 81% were determined to have “explainable factors.” But 19% were found to be potentially paranormal in nature (and could not be scientifically explained. During the time the house has been open to the public there have been reports from both staff and visitors about ghostly activity including phantom footsteps, disembodied voices, banging doors and windows, doorknobs turning by themselves, and ghostly figures. One of the ghostly figures is believed to be one of the carpenters going about his day making repairs to different areas of the house. He has been seen fixing a fireplace in one of the ballrooms and pushing a wheelbarrow down hallways. Named one of the “Most Haunted Places in the World” by Time magazine, the house has been the site of many spectral sightings, drawing international paranormal investigators and psychics, including the late Sylvia Browne. There are many, many stories of different phenomena including two featuring Sarah, one while she was still alive—and one after she passed. One night Sarah went into her cellar to get a bottle of wine and saw a shadowy handprint on the wall, it unnerved her enough that she hurried from the room and ordered her carpenters to board it over. To this date the cellar has not been found again. Some tellings of this tale say a vagrant was accidentally shut in, died, and now wanders the underground areas of the house. Now for the haunting from after Sarah passed on. While leading a tour a guide was taking guests to the Daisy room and heard a loud sigh, though nobody was in sight. The guide called out and then saw a small shadow figure disappear around the corner—like the short Sarah Winchester herself. The third floor of the house is considered the most haunted. In fact, many of the tour guides refuse to use these corridors after dark. Some have reported hearing footsteps or a voice calling their name. Psychic Sylvia Browne spent a night in the house and heard hammering, rattling chains, organ music. She also saw orbs of light. In 2016, years after Sylvia’s visit, a new room was discovered in an attic space featuring a Victorian couch, sewing machine, paintings, and a pump organ. Today it can be seen when visiting. Legend holds that before the 1906 earthquake—when her estate was as huge as it would ever be with 200 rooms, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces, and 2,000 doors, trap doors, and spy holes—not even Sarah could have located the original eight rooms of the farm house. Winchester built, demolished and rebuilt, right up until the end of her life. ________________ Even after her death the house continued to fascinate. Harry Houdini visited during his nationwide spiritualism lecture tour in 1924. He spent Halloween night on the premises seeking to debunk the stories and held a midnight séance to disprove the existence of ghosts. At the end of the night, Harry would only say the Winchester house is a true “mystery.” Work only stopped on September 5, 1922, because Sarah died of heart failure in her sleep. Upon hearing news of her passing, the carpenters left so abruptly there were half-hammered nails protruding from walls. Or so the story goes… She left a will written in thirteen sections, which she signed thirteen times. One last mystery involving the number 13. Following her death, the home was auctioned to the highest bidder, carnival workers—the Brown family—who held public tours and made the home one of California’s top tourist attractions. Although they did not start the rumors—many began while Sarah was alive—they embellished stories and made up new ones. The first tourists visited the house just five months after Winchester died. What really drove Sarah Winchester to purchase this property and build (and rebuild it) for so many years? Was she really troubled by spirits or did designing the house distract her from the grief of losing loved ones? And, the biggest question of them all, “Is the house really haunted?” What do you think? If any of you have visited, we’d love to hear your experiences in the comments.