Tradition says that ghosts have fun at Halloween. But in San Jose, California, they have fun all year in a 160-room eccentric house built for them.
The house's creator was Sarah Winchester, who inherited the vast fortune of the Winchester rifle company. The rifles were very popular in the Wild West. When Sarah's baby and husband died young, she visited a medium. The medium told her the spirits of all the people killed with Winchester rifles wanted vengeance. To protect herself, Mrs Winchester must build a house for the spirits. If she continued the construction of the house, she would not die.
Spirit Builders
In 1884, she bought an eight-room house. She started building rooms. Builders worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Every night, at midnight, she went to her seance room, where she believed thirteen ghosts told her what to build. At 2 a.m., she went to sleep in one of the house's 40 bedrooms, a different one each night.
The house is very eccentric. There are stairs that go up to ceilings, or go up and then down again, going nowhere. Doors open onto brick walls. Sarah Winchester was obsessed with the number 13, which is normally considered unlucky. There are 13 bathrooms. The thirteenth has 13 windows. The chandeliers have 13 sections…
Earthquake
Mrs Winchester constantly changed the house. It is estimated that more than 500 rooms were built, though only 160 survive. In 1906, there was a terrible earthquake in California. The Winchester House suffered a lot of damage. Mrs Winchester was trapped in the house for hours.
On 5 September 1922, Sarah Winchester died and the construction finally stopped. Today, the house is a museum. You can view the timeline of the house here.
There are special Halloween visits at night. At the beginning, the guide gives a warning: don't lose the group. Stay together, because it is easy to get lost in the labyrinth of rooms. And if you are alone in the house at Halloween, maybe you will meet Mrs Winchester's ghost friends!
Helen Mirren played Sarah Winchester in this 2018 biopic:
Copyright(s) :
Winchester House
DreamArt123/Shutterstock
> Scare Yourself Silly: Halloween in London
> A “Thrilling” Halloween
Tag(s) : "biopic" "California" "celebrations" "Halloween" "haunted house" "Horror" "superstitions" "traditions" "U.S.A." "weapons" "Winchester"
