The Winchester House

Sarah Lockwood Pardee was born around 1837 and married William Winchester in the early 1860’s. William was the owner of the Winchester gun factory, which brought many problems into Sarah’s life. At first the family was very happy, even though it was the middle of the civil war. Then, in July 1866, Sarah and William had a daughter named Annie. Every thing was going well until six months later when Annie died of a very rare disease. Sarah believed this was a curse on her family and. Anne’s death was a loss that she would never get over. Later on, in March 1881 Sarah’s husband died of tuberculosis.

Upon William’s death Sarah inherited $20 million and owned half of Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Sarah, no longer being able to control her madness, set out to look for a medium. This did not help her as everyone thought it would. The medium told her that all the people that were killed due to her husband’s guns were haunting her. The medium also told her that the sprits had killed her family. The only way to stop this was to build a house. The medium said that if construction ended on the house Sarah would die as well.

So Sarah went to San Jose in 1884 and built a house with her $20 million. The construction went on twenty-four hours a day seven days, a week, 365 days a year never stopping until the day she died at the age of eighty-five. This seven-floor house which was set on 161.919 acres was unique. The house contained 160 rooms. There were 2,000 doors in the house, and 10,000 windows. Each window had thirteen panes; some rooms had thirteen panels, and others just had thirteen windows. There was one room that had a window on the floor; one room had a door that opened to an eight-foot drop into the garden. The house seemed as if the workers would stop construction and then start up in another spot forgetting where the had stopped. This was not true however. It was the way Sarah intentionally designed the house to look that way.

There have been various accounts of paranormal activity happing in the house. People reported seeing ghosts, hearing organ music playing, seeing book pages turning, and many other things. Sarah slept in a different room every night. When she died the servant opened her safe but to their surprise there was no money, only hair from her husband and daughter, their obituaries and her will. She wrote her will thirteen times and signed it thirteen times. Just about all her servants were taken care of and money and furniture was left to her niece. The one normal thing she did was donate $2 million to the Winchester fund, which was used, for the treatment of tuberculosis.
The Winchester Mystery House is located at 525 S. Winchester Boulevard, between Stevens Creek Blvd. And 1280, San Jose, California 95128.

A survey of students at Common Ground revealed that a lot of students didn’t believe in Haunted Houses. Then they also did not know the story of Sarah Winchester. Learning about the history of the Winchester house did not make them believers. Whether fact or fiction, the Winchester house is one of the most fascinating houses ever built. It still stands to this very day. Even though it’s only four floors high, it is one of the main tourist attractions in San Jose, California.

- Celesta Kearney