The Inscrutable Mrs. Winchester and Her Mysterious Mansion

Mrs. Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms fortune, lost her one month old daughter to a rare disease. Fourteen years later her husband passed away from tuberculosis. Seeking a psychic for answers, she was told a curse was put on her family by those killed with the Winchester repeating rifle. The psychic told her to move west and build continuously on a house to appease the spirits. She would do as the psychic instructed, and over the 38 years she lived in San Jose, California, she built a 160-room Victorian mansion. It is said she held nightly seances in which the good spirits would tell her how to build her house. This is the reason given for the oddities of the house. There are stairs that lead nowhere, a door that opens onto a 15-foot drop into the garden, and skylights in the floor to view the rooms below. The number 13 was used throughout the house: 13 lights in a chandelier, 13 hooks in the seance room, 13 bathrooms, etc. Music was heard coming from the house in the middle of the night, and the bell in the tower supposedly rang to call the spirits to her seances. It was said Mrs. Winchester was a recluse who wore a veil everywhere, even inside her home. This biography starts with Oliver F. Winchester and the history of the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. It then follows Sarah Winchester from her marriage to her death. It explores the myths surrounding her, as well as the facts that rarely come to light, in an attempt to find the truth behind the legend.