The Winchester Family Story
The Winchester family story is an interesting one
. One filled with death, insanity, and even ghosts. It all wraps up into the form of a house, the Winchester House. Some believe the house to be haunted, and be the product of a womans insanity.
The story of the Winchester House really began in 1857 when the son of Oliver Winchester, William Wirt Winchester, took over the assets of a firm which made the Volcanic Repeater, a rifle that used a lever mechanism to load bullets into the breach. This type of gun was obviously a vast improvement over the muzzle-loading rifles, but Winchester still saw room for advancement.
In 1860, the company developed the Henry Rifle, which had a tubular magazine located under the barrel. Because it was easy to reload and could fire rapidly, the Henry was said to average one shot every three seconds. It became the first true repeating rifle and a favorite among the troops at the outbreak of the Civil War.
Money began to pour in and a large fortune was soon accumulated from the Henry Rifle for the Winchesters. On september 30, 1062, at the height of the Civil War, William Wirt WInchester and Sarah Pardee (the southern belle of the time) were married in an elaborate ceremony in New Haven.
Four years later, Sarah gave bith to a daughter, but a short time later the first disaster for Sarah struck, her daughter died. Sarah was so shattered by this event that she withdrew into herself and teetered on the edge of madness for some time. In the end it would be nearly a decade before she returned to her normal self, but they would never have another child.
Her second disaster struck when William, who had by now been the heir of the Winchester empire, was infected with pulmonary tuberculosis. He died on March 7, 1881. Sarah inherited over $20 million dollars, and also received 48.9% of teh Winchester Repeating Arms Company and in income of $1,000/day, which was not taxable until 1913.
Sarah grieved deeply for the loss of her child and husband. A short time later, a friend suggested that she might speak to a spiritualist medium about her loss. The spiritualist told her that her husband wanted to tell her something. According to the spiritualist, William told Sarah that there was a curse on the family, which took the life of him and their child, and would soon take her. It is a curse that has resulted from the terrible weapon created by the Winchester family. Thousands of people died because of it and their spirits were seeking revenge.
Sarah was then told that she must sell her property in New Haven and head towards the setting sun. She would be guided by her husband and when she found her new home in the west, she would recognize it. The spiritualist told her one last thing. "You must start a new life, and build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon. You can never stop building the house. If you could continue building, you will live, stop and you will die.
So Sarah left, and moved west to California. She believed to have been guided by her husband to Santa Clara in 1884. Here, she found a six room home under construction which belonged to a Dr. Caldwell. He sold the house to her along with the 162 acres which it rested on. She tossed away any previous plans for the house and started building whatever she chose. She kept 22 carpenters at work, year round, 24 hours each day.
The house was rapidly growing and expanding, and while Sarah claimed to have no master plan for the structure, she met each morning with her foreman and they would go over the plans she had hand-sketched for the days work. The plans were often chaotic and didn't always work out right, but if that happened they would just build another room around the existing one.
She seemed to have a fixation with the number 13, because every window contained 13 panes of glass, the walls had 13 panels, and every staircase but one had 13 steps. The one staircase that didn't have 13 steps, had 42. And went up only 9 feet.
To anyone else, Sarahs preoccupation might seem like madness, but to Sarah it made sense. In order to ensure that the house would never be finished, she decided to board up the front 30 rooms that had been destroyed by an earthquake some time before so that they would never be finished.
Over all, the house was 7 stories tall, had around 148 rooms (though the floor plan was so confusing that you could never get a definite count), had 25 chimneys (although most were just for decoration rather than to vent out smoke), and there were only 2 mirrors in the entire house. Sarah believed that ghosts were afraid of their own reflection.
Today, the house has been declared a California Historical Landmark and is registered with the National Park Service as a "large, odd dwelling with an unknown number of rooms."
by: Chelsea McVey
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