The Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester Mystery House

Cionna Washington (10th), Reporter

 The Winchester Mystery house is a mansion in San Jose, California that was once the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester. The house became a tourist attraction in 1923, just nine months after Sarah Winchester’s death.

After W. Winchester’s death, S. Winchester, the widow, inherited roughly $20 million as well as fifty percent of the Winchester Arms company. Newly in possession of a massive fortune and struggling with the loss of her husband and daughter, she sought the advice of a medium she hoped, perhaps, to get advice from the beyond as to how to spend her fortune or what to do with her life. The medium told her to leave her house and go to CA to build a home for the spirits who have fallen victim to the Winchester rifle, lest she be haunted for the rest of her life.

There was no plan, no official blueprints were drawn up, no architectural vision was created, and yet a once unfinished house took shape on a sprawling lot in the heart of San Jose CA. Inside, staircases ascended through several levels before ending abruptly, doorways opened to blank walls, and corners rounded to dead ends. Also inside the house were 24,000 square feet, 10,000 windows, 2,000 doors, 160 rooms, 52 skylights, 47 stairways and fireplaces, 17 chimneys, 13 bathrooms, and 6 kitchens. Since S. Winchester was very short and had arthritis. She made the stairs very small and had them go back and forth 4 times to just get up to the next level. So for over the course of 40 years, S. Winchester had the house built to her bizarre specifications, in order to appease the ghosts she thought were haunting her.

In the Winchester house she had 3 big heavy doors, and inside those doors was a safe with her daughter and husband’s lock of hair and ashes, because she loved and cared for them more than the money she received. 

YouTubers, Sam and Colby, believe that she was not only talking to the spirits but also her beloved husband and daughter. In the room she held seances, she wouldn’t let anyone else go up there and had secret doors in and out.

They also had a theory that S.Winchester was using the numbers 7, 11, 22 and other numbers to communicate with people in the future to tell them about the house.