Of all the haunted houses in the world, none has a more remarkable story than the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose California, pictured above. It started out as a relatively modest eight room home, but when Sarah Winchester purchased the property in the eighteen hundreds, she added on to it continuously for more than thirty years, until her death in 1922.
She did this on the advice of a Boston medium who told her that she and the entire Winchester family was cursed by the many victims of the Winchester Rifle, developed and patented by her father-in-law. Driven nearly mad with grief over the death of a beloved daughter and then her husband, she turned to spiritualism as a refuge, and it became her prison. She moved to San Jose, purchased the property, and began construction, which went on around the clock, seven days a week. As soon as she died, construction halted immediately.
She was told that the spirits would never leave her in peace unless she did this. According to some sources, they instructed her as to how to proceed during the course of her nightly seances. According to others, she designed the home in order to confuse the spirits, and in the meantime slept in different rooms every night to throw them off the scent.
There are stairs that ascent to solid walls. There are doors that open up to sheer drops. One closet has no floor, and to step therein would lead to one being dumped unceremoniously into the kitchen sink below.
There is a winding staircase made up of 43 steps that ascend all of nine feet. Even that, however, is secondary to her lunatic decision to install a window-in a floor, thankfully in a small area cordoned off by a banister.
So what is the truth? Was Sarah Winchester stark raving mad, or perhaps clinging by a thread to her sanity, her tenuous grip on reality further debilitated by a severe arthritic condition? Or was this condition in fact the only thing that forced her to retain some small semblance of sanity?
Or, seeing as how it is highly unlikely that Sarah Winchester was truly haunted by what she believed was haunting her, is it possible she was the victim of a cruel and deliberate hoax by demonic entities-or perhaps by more human agents?
Well, what would be the point, if the answer were the former? My guess is, Mrs. Winchester was the victim of a series of cons that pretty much amounted to the most bizarre transfer of a personal fortune ever recorded.
By the time she died, she had spent all of 5.5 million dollars on the house, over a thirty year period.
Of course, we will probably never really know the answer for sure, but one thing we do know. The house was quite advanced in some respects. It contained one of the few existing examples of the day of indoor plumbing, featuring steam heat and heated showers, as well as push-button gas lights.
More impressively, it sits on a floating foundation, which has allowed it so far to survive two major earthquakes.
As if that were not enough, there might even be a ghost in the basement.
What more could you ask for in the way of a haunted house? If you do ever visit it, however, you are strongly advised to watch your step.
