TABLE OF CONTENTS The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California is a 160-room, Victorian mansion designed and built by Sarah Winchester, the wife of William Winchester, son of the manufacturer of the repeating rifle that bears his name. Fifteen years after marrying William, he died of tuberculosis, leaving Sarah a widow.
Upset by the death of her husband, Sarah took the advice of friends and family and consulted spirit guides as a way to help lessen the pain of loss. They convinced Sarah that the spirits of those who had been killed by Winchester rifles haunted her, and that those same spirits were exacting revenge on the Winchester family. Furthermore, they convinced Sarah that those same spirits had placed a curse on her with every intention of haunting her for the rest of her life.
The only saving grace was that Sarah s advisors informed her that she could evade the curse by moving from Illinois to California, buying a house, and beginning an endless process of addition and remodeling, creating a warren of doorways and portals throughout the house that would confuse and mislead the spirits. Furthermore, they informed her that as long as she never interrupted the construction process, she would enjoy immortality. So in 1884, she moved to San Jose, purchased an eight-room farmhouse on a large piece of land and immediately began her endless building project. Figure 5-1 shows some of the house s remarkable details.
Sarah never had...
