The Haunted Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester House is well known for its twisting halls, dead ends, and false doors which are supposedly haunted. Its located in San Jose, where Sarah Winchester stayed mourning her dead husband and daughter. Her husband’s business selling the Winchester rifle was passed down to her after his death and she began being thought of as the towns crazy lady ever since she started building the house with the money her husband had left her. Little did the town know- inside the Winchester house, Sarah was being haunted by all of the innocent people that were killed by the Winchester rifle.

People began to make up stories as to why she stayed in her house and continued building random, useless rooms. One theory was that she and her late husband started to build the house together and when he passed she kept building because she was repeating the experience by doing something they both loved to do.

According to a Smithsonian article by Pamela Haag, “Sarah had philanthropic motives at heart. The widow employed dozens of carpenters who worked shifts around the clock every day for 36 years, paying them triple the rate of similarly skilled carpenters. She had tons of money and wanted to keep her workers gainfully employed.”

In 1906 there was an earthquake that toppled the top 3 stories and damaged the other 4 beneath nut Sarah swore that all of the damage had to be fixed while continuing building the other rooms that she had recently designed.

Sure enough, months later the damage had been fixed and there were 4 more rooms toward the back of the mansion. The tragedy proved that Sarah knew nothing would come between her and her building plans and that she would continue building for much longer.

By the time Sarah had died in 1922, there was over 160 rooms, 40 bedrooms, 2,000 windows and 2 basements. The most peculiar thing about the house is that not all 2,000 doors lead to rooms. There are over 15 doors that lead to never ending stairs or even 20-foot drops with kitchen sinks at the bottom. There were also stained glass windows placed against walls instead of leading outside and staircases that led to straight ceilings.

The Winchester house is now open for the public to look at and many claim to have seen or heard Sarah roaming the halls while they were being given a tour. No one will for sure know the reason for Sarah’s building but it’s obvious that she did not plan on ever stopping.