This story began in September 1839 with the birth of the daughter of Leonard and Sarah Purdy. The child was born in the small town of New Haven, Connecticut, and was named after his mother - Sarah. Having reached maturity, Sarah became the first beauty of the city and was a welcome guest at all receptions in the city, thanks to her extraordinary personal charm, excellent piano playing and fluency in the four foreign languages. Although she was petite, standing no more than four feet ten inches tall, what she lacked in height she made up for in personality, charm, and was popular with the city's young men.
At the same time that Sarah was growing up and becoming beautiful, another prominent New Haven family was growing up an interesting and distinguished young man named William Wirt Winchester. He was the son of businessman Oliver Winchester, manufacturer men's clothing, who in 1855 acquired the Smith and Wesson arms company. Financial success allowed him in 1857 to buy the New Haven Volcanic Repiting Arms company, which he successfully reorganized into the New Haven Weapons company", and in 1867, to the company " Self-loading weapons Winchester. Since 1857, Oliver's son William Wirt Winchester became one of the leaders of the company, reorganized it, applied technical innovations, and began to produce the same carbines and rifles that “conquered the West,” namely Winchesters with a Henry bracket. This weapon turned out to be the fastest-firing and most popular in the Army of the North during Civil War, so the Winchester family prospered.
The courtship of a respectable and socially recognized groom was received favorably by Sarah Purdy. She was 25 when, on September 30, 1862, at the height of the Civil War, she married William, the son of “that same” Oliver Winchester, whose multi-shot production, as they would later say, decided the outcome of the American Civil War. William Wirt Winchester and Sarah Pardee were married in front of many guests in an extremely solemn ceremony in New Haven. The family rapidly grew rich from military orders, the newlyweds lived in love and prosperity. Everything promised the couple a long and happy life.
Four years later, on July 15, 1866, Sarah gave birth to a daughter named Annie Purdy Winchester. However, it soon became clear that the child was seriously and terminally ill. The girl died on July 24. From grief, Sarah was on the verge of madness, and only ten years later, as they say, she came to her senses. The Winchester couple had no other children. And soon Sarah was overtaken by a new grief. William, now heir to the Winchester Empire, contracted pulmonary tuberculosis and died on March 7, 1881. Sarah inherited $20 million, an incredible sum, especially in those days (she received half of the firm's profits), and she received an income of approximately $1,000 a day, which also until 1913 it was not subject to any tax. However, Mrs. Winchester was inconsolable.
Trying to understand why fate was punishing her so cruelly, she went to Boston to see a medium. The medium arranged a seance, during which, according to him, he determined that William's spirit was in the same room. The medium described in some detail what Sarah's husband looked like during life, and this gained Sarah's trust. Next, the medium gave Sarah a message from the spirit of William Winchester. The spirit reported that the family was cursed by thousands of those who died from the terrible Winchester weapons. That Sarah's life is also in danger. The spirit said that to save her own life, Sarah must sell her property in New Haven and move west towards sunset, and at the place indicated to her, stop and begin building a house. She will be guided in her quest by the spirit of her husband, and when she finds Right place, then he will immediately feel it. "You must begin new life" said the medium, conveying to the widow a message from the spirit, "and build a house for yourself and for the spirits of those who died from this terrible weapon also. You must not stop building. As long as you continue to build, you will live. Construction will stop and you will die."
Shortly after the session, Sarah sold her house in New Haven and moved west to California. In 1884, she reached the Santa Clara Valley (San Jose), where, according to her assurances, the spirit of her husband told her to stop. At the place indicated by the spirit there was a six-room house that belonged to Dr. Caldwell. Sarah entered into negotiations with him and soon convinced him to sell her the house and the 162 acres on which the house was located. Immediately after the purchase, Sarah Winchester began rebuilding and expanding the house and did this for 38 years in a row, without resorting to the services of professional architects. Local workers and craftsmen built, rebuilt, destroyed and restored one section of the house after another. 22 carpenters all year round, 24 hours a day they banged with hammers without stopping.
The house grew and expanded rapidly, although Sarah claimed to have no construction plan, and every morning she discussed work plans for the day with the dispatcher, making handwritten sketches. The plans were often chaotic, but demonstrated the widow's real talent for construction. Sometimes they were made with a mistake, but Sarah always found a quick solution to correct the mistake.
Days, weeks, months flew by, the house continued to grow. Rooms were added to rooms, then turned into wings of the building; windows were added to the doors, levels became towers and peaks, and eventually the house was built on seven levels. Three elevators and 47 fireplaces were installed in the house. And that's not counting the countless staircases that led nowhere; a blind chimney that ends abruptly in front of the ceiling; toilets whose doors open to blank walls; double-reverse hallways; skylights, one above the other; doors from which you fall directly onto the lawn well below the level of the door; and many other quirks. Even all the railing posts were installed upside down, and many of the bathrooms had glass doors at the entrance.
It is also clear that Sarah was intrigued by the number "13". Almost all windows contained 13 panes of glass; there were 13 wall panels on the walls; the greenhouse had 13 domes; many of the wooden floors contained 13 sections; some of the rooms had 13 windows and all but one of the staircases had 13 steps. This exception is unique in its own way; it is a winding staircase with 42 steps located where in theory there should have been only 3 steps. However, the steps of the unique staircase are no more than two inches (5 cm) high, making a total of about nine feet (3 meters).
While all this construction is for ordinary person sounds crazy, it made sense to Sarah. She believed that in this way she could confuse the spirits of evil or vengeful people if they tried to get to her. What if the bandits, killed by Winchester rifles while alive, want to wreak havoc on Sarah’s life? The house was turned into a labyrinth to thwart the evil spirits in their plans to harm the owner. It is known that Sarah did not sleep in the same bedroom two nights in a row. It was a tactical maneuver - in this way she was hiding from evil forces. Windows and doors opening onto a blank wall served the same purpose. And stairs that lead to the ceiling. Trap roads. The premises were often rebuilt and remodeled. Sometimes several times a day. Sarah did not lead a social life. Of the living people, she communicated only with her workers and assistants. She willingly did charity work. Sometimes she played music - there is a small piano in the house. One day, President Theodore Roosevelt himself wanted to visit amazing woman, but Sarah refused to accept him. The President was not offended. The house continued to grow and by 1906 reached a height of seven floors. Sarah continued building and expanding the house while living in all alone, surrounded only by employees and workers and at night also by spirits. Every midnight a gong sounded, and the hostess retired to a special room for a seance. In the same room, in the wardrobe there were 13 dressing gowns, which the hostess changed into when receiving guests. At night. During these hours the servants heard the sounds of the organ, which the hostess, who was ill with arthritis, could not play.
The tragedy occurred during the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. Then the Winchester Mansion was seriously damaged, the best three floors of the house were destroyed, and were never restored. In addition, the fireplace located in the room where Mrs. Winchester slept on the night of the earthquake collapsed, turning the room into a kind of trap. Mistress, afraid of persecution evil spirits, slept in a new place every night, and after the earthquake the servants, who did not know where she was this time, did not immediately find her under the rubble. Sarah interpreted what happened as an invasion of evil spirits in the front part of the house and some kind of warning to her that she was almost finished with the house. The 30 unfinished rooms were locked and boarded up so that the incompleteness of the building was obvious, and also to bury in this clogged part, as if in a trap, any spirits that might get there.
Over the next few months, workers worked to repair the damage caused to the building by the earthquake, although in fact the giant house suffered far less damage than its neighboring buildings. Only a few of the rooms suffered significant damage, and the highest floors and several domes and towers also fell.
But the reconstruction and expansion of the house began again. The number of bedrooms increased from 15 to 20 and then to 25. Chimneys and fireplaces were installed everywhere, although their construction was completely pointless and pointless. Perhaps they were only added because old stories say that ghosts like to appear and disappear through them. No other guests were expected here. By the way, it is known that only 2 mirrors were installed in the entire huge house.... Sarah believed that ghosts were afraid of their own reflection.
On September 4, 1922, after communicating with spirits, Sarah died in her sleep at the age of 83. She left all her property to her niece, Francisca Marriott, who managed Sarah's affairs for a long time. Little did they know that by this time Sarah's large bank account had been significantly depleted. According to rumors, there was a safe in the house that contained the mistress's jewelry and a table service cast in pure gold that Sarah used for her ghostly guests. Sarah's relatives found and opened many safes, but all they found were old fishing rods, socks, newspaper reports about the death of her daughter and the death of her husband, a locket with the child's hair, and a set of woolen underwear. No gold dinner service was found.
Furnishings, personal property and unused Construction Materials were removed from the house, and the house itself was sold to a group of investors who planned to use the house as a tourist attraction. It was initially believed that the house had 148 rooms, but the incredible complexity of the house plan led to the fact that the number of rooms was counted many more times. Five years later, the number 148 was changed to 160. But even now there is no complete confidence in this figure.
Now Winchester House has three floors. It has approximately 160 rooms, 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, 40 stairs. The rooms have 2,000 doors, 450 doorways, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces. The house was built to confuse the spirits, so the doors here open into the walls, and the stairs rest on the ceilings. The corridors are narrow and winding, like loops. Some doors on the upper floors open outward, so that an inattentive guest will fall straight into the courtyard, into the bushes; others are designed so that, after passing the flight, the guest must fall into the kitchen sink on the floor below or break through a window built into the floor of the lower floor. Many bathroom doors are transparent. Secret doors and windows open in the walls, through which you can quietly observe what is happening in the neighboring rooms.
Everything in the house is adjusted to the standards of its long-gone owner. The steps are low so that she can easily climb them old woman. To lean on the railing, you have to bend down - Sarah, let me remind you, was short. The corridors and passages are very narrow - Sarah was thin.
I went to the mysterious Winchester house with the feeling that someone was playing a trick on me, and quite brazenly: the entrance ticket cost a little more than $30. And this is for seeing a haunted haunt in the heart of Silicon Valley, i.e. in three minutes from the headquarters of the famous Cisco and Adobe. After all, it’s already the 21st century, but superstition is, of course, a strong thing.
No one claims that Sarah, the owner of the Winchester house, "had everyone at home." But, because on late XIX century, her income was approximately $1,000 a day, which was not taxed until 1913, when Sarah was called not crazy, but eccentric. And today we see the result of her madness in the form of the Winchester house in the American city of San Jose, which by the way is on the list historical monuments The United States, which many consider quite logical: America honors its heroes, no matter what they do.
But first things first. Sarah Lockwood Purdy grew up to be a quite pretty petite girl who attended the best private schools, spoke four languages, and played the violin and piano. And in 1862 she married William Winchester- son of the famous Oliver Winchester, manufacturer of repeating shotguns. Such a gun existed before, but Oliver decided to put this thing on the conveyor belt. By the way, many people liked the gun, thanks to which, in fact, the Wild West was conquered. In general, the Winchester family managed to quickly get rich.
And then a series of tragedies began in Sarah's life. First, her daughter dies before she reaches two weeks of age. As soon as the woman began to come to her senses, a few years later her husband, having contracted tuberculosis, also passed away. 27-year-old Sarah Winchester becomes heiress huge fortune, valued at $20 million. This is where the story of the mysterious Winchester house begins.
Arriving at an appointment with a famous clairvoyant, Sarah learns that her family is under a terrible curse - the spirits of all those who were killed with Winchesters are taking revenge on them. A woman decides to leave for the Pacific coast, buys a house and begins its endless reconstruction. Sarah Winchester believed that as soon as she stopped building her house, the spirits would immediately kill her.
In general, the Winchester house, which is now visited by thousands of tourists every year, grew in the most unpredictable way. Sarah had no architect, no drawings, just a lot of money and workers: a room was added to another room, a new wing was formed, on top of which the next floor was built, and so on. Judging by the number of stairs in the Winchester house that lead to the ceiling, doors that rest against the wall, and windows in the floor, Sarah tried to confuse the spirits in this way so that they would finally leave her alone.
Of course, all assumptions about what Winchester house in San Jose was built under the guidance of spirits, mostly legends. After all, Sarah herself did not leave any explanations behind, and when the safe was opened after her death in 1922, they found only a will, newspaper clippings and curls of her late daughter and husband.
With the number 13, Sarah had special relationship. There were 13 palm trees in front of the Winchester house(now only 9 remain), all 40 staircases, with the exception of one, consist of 13 steps, many windows have 13 frames, there are also 13 drain holes in the kitchens, and 13 hooks on the hanger.
Although I myself am not particularly superstitious, but tricks with my camera still happened in the Winchester house. Having taken several photographs of different parts of the house, and then viewing them on the display, I noticed that many turned out to be color negatives. When I tried to reshoot it, I got the same result. It was the same inside the house. Maybe this is exactly what happens when a ghost appears in the frame?
According to the manager, footsteps are often heard in the Winchester house, lights flicker, doors slam, handles turn, and water from the taps begins to flow. The guide also added his two cents: often at the end of the day the ghost of a carpenter and the spirit of Sarah Winchester herself appear, but at night.
I took such an unforgettable excursion to the mysterious Winchester house in San Jose. Despite the external attractiveness, it was really creepy inside this house, and this is during the day! I can imagine what it would feel like to wander around it on the night of Friday the 13th.
Yes, yes, this house is directly related to the same Oliver Fisher Winchester, who owned the production of rifles that are still named after him to this day. But first things first.
In 1862, during the Civil War, William, the son of Oliver Fisher, married a girl from a good family, Sarah Lockwood Purdy. She studied in the best private schools in Connecticut, spoke 4 foreign languages and played several musical instruments. The young couple moved in the highest circles of the New World and knew no need for anything. But suddenly a misfortune happened: Sarah's recently born daughter unexpectedly died at the age of 6 weeks. This tragedy is the most in a terrible way affected the physical and psychological state of the woman. Until the end of her days, she was never able to overcome this loss and was in constant depression. 15 years after the child’s death, her husband, William Winchester, also died of tuberculosis. He was 43 years old. This event further weakened Sarah Winchester's strength. During this time, she also lost her mother and father and was in complete despair. According to legend, Sarah turned to a Boston medium (psychiatrist) for help.
The medium explained to Sarah Winchester where all the misfortunes come from and what needs to be done now. It turns out that all the misfortunes that have occurred are the revenge of the spirits of people who died from the rifles that their family produces. And the next victim is Sarah herself. The only way out is to change your place of residence and start building a huge house to appease all the spirits. Construction should not stop for a day, and as long as it continues, Sarah's life is not in danger.
And so in 1884, Sarah Winchester bought an unfinished farmhouse in the Santa Clara Valley, 3 miles west of San Jose. Now not far from this house there is a wonderful shopping and recreation area called Santana Row.
Begins grandiose construction, continuous neither for a day nor for an hour for the next 38 years. The result of this construction is an unusual Mystical house Winchester, where now everyone can come on a tour.
The original eight rooms of the farmhouse grew into a seven-story mansion with gardens and plantings fruit trees, auxiliary premises, water tower, etc. At the time of Winchester's widow's death, the house had 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 staircases, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms and 6 kitchens.
Sarah Winchester had virtually unlimited financial resources. She inherited from her husband several million dollars and shares of the Winchester company. And after the death of her mother-in-law, another 2,000 shares of the company were transferred to her, which provided her with a capital of $20 million and a daily income of $1,000 per day! At that time, the money was huge. Therefore, the widow did not skimp on materials and workers and constantly came up with new projects. For example, the main ballroom was made of the most valuable breeds wood: oak, cherry, Mexican rosewood, maple and others.
To imagine how much everything in the Winchester house could cost, it is enough information that just one square foot (30x30 cm) of special wallpaper cost about $1.75 at that time, and the average worker's salary was one and a half dollars a day.
One of the most valuable rooms (valued at $25,000 at the beginning of the 20th century) now contains some of the remaining materials. Several rolls of this wallpaper are stored here, as well as a huge and, literally, precious window, custom-made by the famous jewelry company Tiffany. On the window you can see images of a spider's web - one of Sarah Winchester's favorite patterns. She designed this window herself, like almost everything else in the house. Window decorated 13 precious stones, and this number 13 appears many more times throughout the house.
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Why is Winchester's house so unusual? The image of Sarah Winchester in local society was contradictory and ambiguous. On the one hand, she was quite generous. Instead of the usual rate of one and a half dollars a day, she paid workers and builders $3. Particularly distinguished personnel could live and eat at the house, and married couples the owner could even build a house nearby. Various charity organisations periodically received substantial donations from an anonymous source. Neighborhood children were sometimes allowed to play in the garden near the house and even eat ice cream. But, on the other hand, Sarah Winchester wore mourning until the end of her days, hiding even her face under a black veil. Employees who fell out of favor for the slightest mistake (for example, seeing her face) were instantly expelled from the house. She could ask a painter to paint the walls of a room red one day, and order them to be painted white the next day. According to one legend, when hiring a new gardener, she told 3 applicants to plant cabbage seedlings with their roots facing up. One did so, the second refused, and the third said that he, of course, would do it, but in general, cabbage grows with its roots down. He got the job because he knew his business, was not afraid to speak, but at the same time recognized her as the main Boss.
According to another legend, President Theodore Roosevelt himself once drove by and stopped by Winchester’s house, knocking on the front door, as he was a big fan of rifles. The servants did not recognize him, telling him to go to another exit, since the front door had never been opened to anyone. The President was offended and left.
The whole house was built completely unusual. To get to the second floor of a house, for example, you need to climb 44 steps, make 7 full turns on the stairs and walk 30 m. Sarah Winchester was a petite lady, and not entirely physically healthy - she could barely lift her legs when walking. Therefore, the steps in the house are very low, and the ceilings on the stairs are very low. Consequently, in some places visitors need to duck well to avoid hitting their heads. As our guide joked, you need to watch the steps, watch the ceiling, and those who don’t watch this will have to watch their expressions :)
There is not much original furniture left in the house. Most were sold at auction after Sarah Winchester's death in 1922. The furniture that can be seen during the tour is mainly furniture from the same era, as close as possible to the originals. Initially, the original furniture was great amount– it took 8 trucks per day for 6.5 weeks to remove all the furniture. Most of this furniture was inherited by her niece. The widow bequeathed the remaining savings to her other relatives, her beloved employees, as well as several million dollars to a tuberculosis clinic in Connecticut for research and treatment of the disease from which her husband died. This clinic still exists today. The house itself was not included in the will and was sold by her trustees. Sarah Winchester was buried in Connecticut next to her husband and daughter. In the safe, opened after her death, they found strands of hair from her beloved daughter and husband... In the courtyard of the house you can see a copy of the tombstone.
The day after her death, all work on the house stopped for the first time in 38 years. Now we see the house in the same unfinished state as it was at the time of Sarah's death. We only added windows in the doors of the toilets so that tourists could see what was behind the doors, and also installed some pipes according to the requirements fire safety in the middle of the 20th century. It took engineers several years to understand the drawings of the house and several kilometers of pipes to put the entire system in order.
The number 13 appears many times in a home: there may be 13 windows in a bathroom, 13 steps on a staircase, 13 candles in a chandelier in a large ballroom, etc. The thirteenth bathroom was the most modern and was not even completed. It even had electricity, an unheard-of luxury at that time. And Sarah Winchester's house had its own personal electric generator. This bathroom also has a shower, which was a rarity. Of the 13 windows in this bathroom, 6 are decorated with Sarah's favorite spider web decoration.
There is a room in the house connected to her bedroom where the widow “communicated” with the spirits of those killed by rifles. The spirits gave her advice on building a house, here she drew her endless crazy drawings at night, and the next morning she handed them over to the builders to bring them to life. From the same room she “spyed” on her employees having lunch in the adjacent kitchen. She eavesdropped on their conversations and made decisions about who could be trusted and who would discuss and judge her. She paid very good money and expected exceptional loyalty in return.
One of Sarah Winchester's most beautiful and favorite rooms is a greenhouse with exotic plants from all over the world. It is located on the second floor of the house and there is even a hydraulic elevator leading here so that the owner of the house can quickly get to it. In this greenhouse there is... a window in the floor.
Some rooms in the house are equipped with electronic bell buttons. With these calls, Sarah called the servants when she needed help.
The house has secret rooms, there are windows in the floor, there are stairs to the ceiling, there are doors that lead to nowhere: into the wall or even onto the street on the top floor. There are stairs that you need to go down first, then up, then down again and end up on the next, higher floor. All this was done in order to confuse the spirits if they began to hunt for Sarah. For safety reasons, the widow also never slept two nights in a row in the same bedroom. On the one hand, she built this house so that it would be convenient for spirits and ghosts, in order to appease them (patterns of cobwebs, the number 13, many fireplaces through which spirits fly into the house), but on the other hand, she was very afraid of them.
Such an illogical and strange house design was not without mistakes. For example, extraordinary beauty a colored stained glass window, custom made by the Tiffany company for fifteen hundred dollars, was supposed to reflect sunlight and play with all the colors on fine days. However, it was installed in the northern part of the house, and then it was also blocked from the outside by new extensions, so that all its value was simply lost.
In addition, the terrible earthquake of 1906 destroyed the top three floors of the house out of seven, and the servants could not immediately find Sarah Winchester under the rubble because they did not know where she slept that night. They had to go through every room in the house. The destroyed part of the house was never rebuilt and now the Winchester house is a building of 4 floors. 
In fact, no one knows for certain why Sarah Winchester started this construction, and why it did not stop for a minute. Even after her death, the builders and servants did not shed light on the secret of the house. Of course, there were many rumors and speculations, which have now turned into legends. Anyone can come and see the mysterious Winchester house and find the answer to this question themselves.
You can take a tour of the Winchester House by paying from 25 (children's ticket) to 33 dollars (adult). This tour of the house takes about an hour. A full tour, including support facilities and a walk through the gardens, costs between $30 (child ticket) and $40 (adult) and lasts 2.5 hours. On a tour of the auxiliary rooms and the yard near the house, you will learn about the internal communications, heating system and drying chamber for dried fruits. There are also special tours every Friday the 13th and in October before Halloween. They last about an hour and cost $49. These tours are very popular and it is recommended to book tickets at least a month in advance. There is also a museum with a collection of rifles on the territory of Winchester’s house in California. different years release.
This story began in 1855, when Oliver Winchester, the owner of the manufactory, bought the Smith-Wessen arms factory. Financial success allowed him two years later, in 1857, to buy the New Haven Volcanic Repairing Arms Company, which he successfully reorganized into the New Haven Arms Company, and in 1867, into the Winchester Self-Loading Arms Company.Oliver designed a rifle that used a lever mechanism to load bullets into the breech. The new weapon had the ability, unique at that time, to fire one shot every three seconds, becoming the first repeating rifle for a long time who knew no equal. Winchester soon became the owner of a huge fortune thanks to a government arms contract and other lucrative deals.
His father's fortune was inherited by his son William. Since 1857, William Wirt Winchester became one of the leaders of the company, reorganized it, applied technical innovations, and began to produce the same carbines and rifles that “conquered the West,” namely Winchesters with a Henry bracket. This weapon turned out to be the fastest-firing and most popular in the Army of the North during the Civil War.war, so the Winchester family prospered.
In 1862, at the height of the American Civil War, William Winchester married Sarah Lockwood Purdy.
Sarah was born in 1839 in Connecticut. The best private schools, four languages, piano and violin. Petite (only 147 cm) Sarah was considered one of the beauties of Connecticut and, of course, the courtship of such a prominent groom in society as William Winchester was received favorably.The family quickly grew rich from military orders, the newlyweds lived in love and prosperity, but soon numerous inexplicable misfortunes began to haunt the Winchester family
In 1866, Sarah and William had a daughter, Annie, who died at the age of two weeks. The mother's grief knew no bounds, and for seven days she did not eat anything or speak to anyone, sitting over the body of the deceased child. The woman fell into a deep depression and spent several years in the hospital, still remaining silent.
Sarah almost went crazy, and only ten years later, as they say, she came to her senses. The Winchester couple had no other children. Soon a new misfortune befell the family. William fell ill with tuberculosis and died in 1881. Sarah turned out to be the owner of a twenty million dollar fortune, which at that time was fabulous.
In addition, the widow owned 50% of the shares of the company, Winchester Repeating Arms Company (“blood money,” Sarah later said about her capital), producing weapon, bringing in an income of about $1,000 a day. This was enormous wealth, because the dollar in those years was worth twenty times more than it is now. There are many widows who will not grieve for long under such circumstances, but Sarah was inconsolable.
Despite her enormous wealth, the heiress felt like the most unhappy person in the world. A friend advised Sarah to consult a Boston medium who was said to have the ability to communicate with the spirits of deceased relatives. The woman was very pious and at first flatly refused to turn to mystical powers, but in the end she decided to take a risky step.
During a seance, the medium said: “Your husband is here” and accurately described William’s appearance. Spirit had never met the deceased and could not know what he looked like during life, so Sarah unconditionally believed him. The medium said that the spirit of Winchester said that there was a curse on the family that caused the death of Annie and William. The curse is the result of invention and production by Oliver Winchester lethal weapons, which, as they say, decided the outcome of the Civil War.
Tens of thousands of people in different ends lands were killed by bullets fired from a rifle, and their souls thirst for vengeance. Sarah was told by the spirit of her deceased husband to sell all her property in Connecticut and move towards the setting sun (Sarah decided that this meant the Pacific coast).
Her husband will be her guide on this journey, and when she reaches her new home, William will let her know. A woman must build a home. The logic here was somewhat strange: all the disembodied spirits of the murdered needed a roof over their heads. The Spirit warned that construction should never be completed. If the sound of hammers stops, Sarah will die immediately.
The Winchester heiress followed the advice, sold the property and house in New Haven, and went to California, sincerely believing that all her actions were guided by the spirit of her husband. Sarah stopped in Santa Jose in 1884, where she took a liking to a small six-room house that belonged to Dr. Caldwell (where she claimed her husband's spirit told her to stay). The estate area was 166 acres; Caldwell had no intention of selling the property, but Mrs. Winchester offered an amount that he simply could not refuse.
Sarah hired workers to demolish an old house, and began the construction of a new one. She intended to never finish building. The work did not stop for a minute. The twenty-two carpenters hired worked all year round, 365 days, twenty-four hours a day, and so on for 38 years.
The construction of the house was not carried out according to a specific plan, as is usually done, but was completely disorderly and chaotic. Every morning she gathered the workers and announced to them the work plan, and since they were well paid, and it was clear that they would be provided with work as long as the owner was alive, they carefully followed her instructions. Even if it was necessary to destroy everything that they had been building for a week.
Work stopped on the day of her death, the workers dropped everything and walked away, leaving half-driven nails, because Sarah paid them at the end of the day.
The house was built to confuse the spirits that would come after Mrs. Winchester. Therefore, the house was replete with doors, behind which there was often a blank wall, and the stairs rested on the ceilings.
The corridors are narrow and winding, like snake loops.
Some doors on the upper floors open outward, so that an inattentive guest will fall straight into the courtyard, onto the lawn; others are designed so that, after passing the flight, the guest must fall into the kitchen sink on the floor below or break through a window built into the floor of the lower floor.
Many bathroom doors are transparent. Secret doors and windows open in the walls, through which you can quietly observe what is happening in the neighboring rooms.
Rooms were added to rooms, gradually turning into another wing of the building, awkwardly connected to the rest of the house.
Some bedrooms had fireplaces, total number 47. Elevators were built inside the house, and there were hatches on the roof that opened directly from the rooms.
False chimneys decorated the roof. As Sarah believed, in this way it is possible to deceive ghosts, because it is through pipes, according to legend, that the latter enter houses.
Dozens of fire escapes were attached to the outer walls. Year after year, a floor was built on top of a floor, a wing was attached to a wing, which looked completely unnatural, different parts of the house had a different number of floors, from one to seven. Real architectural madness.
Before the famous San Francisco earthquake in 1906, the house had seven floors, after which four remained: three floors collapsed into the garden and it was decided not to restore them.
Sarah saw in the cataclysm a signal that the spirits did not like the finished façade. She boarded up the 30 rooms at the front of the house and never returned to them.
Sarah was literally obsessed with the number 13. Luxurious stained glass windows from Tiffany consisted of 13 segments, the windows had 13 glasses, the parquet floors contained 13 sections, the walls consisted of 13 panels, the staircases had 13 steps, the roof of the building was crowned with 13 domes. In expensive foreign chandeliers, the number of candlesticks changed from 12 to 13, and the number of coat hooks on the walls was always a multiple of 13.
There were many mirrors installed inside the house and even outside, because Sarah believed that ghosts and spirits of evil were afraid of their reflection.
She ordered secret passages to be built in the house, so that she could disappear unnoticed in one room and suddenly appear in another at the opposite end of the building. In addition, the matron had the habit of putting on several dresses at once, one on top of another, in order to quickly change her appearance. All these tricks pursued one goal - to deceive the forces of evil.
In general, Sarah was quite inconsistent in her relationships with spirits. It seems that she invited them herself, and then ran away from them. The widow, for example, hid from them in different rooms every night, and none of the 18 servants knew which of the 40 bedrooms she slept in.
Sarah dedicated the rest of her life to Winchester House until her death on September 4, 1922, when she died quietly at the age of 83.
Mrs. Winchester left all the property to her niece Frances Marriott. Frances believed that somewhere in the house there was a safe filled with gold that belonged to the Winchester family, but it was never found. The bank account was not as large as it once was; Sarah spent too much money on the construction and improvement of the estate. If the amount construction estimate convert to modern money - it turns out to be 70 million US dollars.
Over time, the heirs sold the house to a group of entrepreneurs who wanted to turn the building into a tourist attraction. They wanted to draw up a plan for the building, but it turned out to be not so easy to do.
At first, 148 rooms were counted in the house, but with each new attempt to find out the exact number of premises; their number turned out to be new. This was mainly explained different heights floors in different parts the buildings, corridors, stairs and rooms had such a complex layout that even the engineer and architect who took part in the construction sometimes got lost and had difficulty finding the exit.
Currently, the Winchester estate is declared a historical landmark. Many people believe that the house is haunted. In any case, Sarah's ghost was seen several times.
Now Winchester House has three floors. It has approximately 160 rooms, but there is no complete certainty about this (including 40 bedrooms), 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, 40 stairs. The rooms have 2,000 doors, 450 doorways, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces, 17 chimneys, 2 basements and 3 elevators.
Every Friday the 13th at 13:00 the large bell rings 13 times in memory of Sarah Winchester.
House with the ghosts, damn house, a strange house, the shame of the Winchester family - this is about him, about an unusual building called "The Winchester house".
This building is located in the city of San Jose, California, USA. It was the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of William Wirt Winchester, the same arms magnate who revolutionized the arms business. It is clear that he was very rich - perhaps this fact became the determining factor in the construction of this house. But first things first.
William married Sarah in 1862. In 1866, their daughter Annie was born, but the baby lived only a few months. The couple had no more children. Sarah, deeply shocked by the death of her daughter, withdrew into herself, completely stopped communicating with others, and eventually left for parents' house. The pain began to subside, but in 1881 William died of tuberculosis. Sarah became the heir to 20 million dollars and a weapons business.
In those years, it was very popular to engage in spiritualism, and Sarah began to attend such sessions. The medium strengthened her belief that the death of her loved ones is connected with the curse of the Winchester family - and the curse is connected specifically with the weapon invented by her husband, which killed thousands of people. Dead Souls took Sarah's relatives to live with them...
To cope with the curse (this is also according to the medium), Sarah had to leave her native place and find a place to build a new home - for herself and for the evil spirits that haunted her. The house was supposed to become a labyrinth in which the spirits who came for Sarah would get lost. And the house turned out just like that.
It was built for 38 years, without a design, everything was redone many times and became even more confusing. This is a large building - it has 40 bedrooms and 160 rooms, 2 ballrooms, 47 fireplaces (and in some of them the chimneys do not lead anywhere), 40 staircases and the cult of the number 13. Many staircases have 13 steps, many rooms have 13 windows, many windows have 13 glasses. 13 candles are lit in the chandeliers, and every Friday the 13th at 13:00 the bell rings 13 times.
But that’s okay - the house is actually a labyrinth with dead ends and riddles: the stairs lead to nowhere, resting against a blank wall; in one room the window is on the floor; some doors to the toilet lead to a blank wall; from the upper floors there are also doors to the street - in general, a ghost can get lost, not to mention an ordinary person.
Mrs. Sarah Winchester died in 1922, aged 82 years. Five months after her death, the house was opened to visitors and is now a popular attraction. tourism business. They are attracted by the legend of the Winchester family itself, as well as the opportunity to personally verify the existence of ghosts. They say that they live in a house - doors slam, door handles turn by themselves, footsteps, creaks and rustles are constantly heard. In my opinion, nothing surprising - where else could they live if not here?
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