baffling, eerily eccentric and undeniably haunted..
Sarah Pardee of New Haven, Connecticut.
The baby was also named Sarah, as she reached maturity she became the belle of the
city, well received at all social events, thanks to her music skills, her fluency in various
foreign languages and her sparkling charm.
Her beauty was also much admired by the young men in town, despite her diminutive
size, although she was petite, standing only four foot - ten inches tall, she made up
for this in personality and loveliness.
At the same time that Sarah was growing up, a young man was also maturing in
another prominent New Haven family, the man`s name was William Wirt
Winchester and he was the son of Oliver Winchester, a shirt manufactorer
and business man, in 1857 he took over the assets of a firm which made the
Volcanic Repeater, a rifle that used a lever mechanisim to load bullets, a
breech loading rifle, it became the first true repeating rifle and a favourite
among the Northern troops at the outbreak of the civil war.
Money began to pour in and soon and William married Sarah Pardee.
Four years later on July 15th 1866 Sarah gave birth to a daughter but disaster
struck and the infant died, Sarah withdrew teetering on the edge of madness,
the couple never had any more children.
William whom was then the heir to the the Winchester empire sadly died,
struck down with pulmonary tuberculosis, Sarah inherited over $20 million dollars.
Sarah was told by a `medium` to sell her house and move to California, she did as
guided having been dabbling in a lot of spiritual dealings since her husband's death.
In Santa Clara Valley she found a six room house under construction, she
convinced the owner, a Dr Caldwell to sell the house to her incuding the
`162` acres of land surrounding it. With a team of construction workers she
spent the next `36` years on home improvements, retaining a team of
22 carpenters that worked `24` hours every day of the year, the house grew
to include `26` rooms. After days, weeks and months passed the house
continued to grow, rooms were added to rooms, then turned into entire
wings, doors were joined to windows and the property eventually expanded to`7`storeys
high.
Other assorted eccentricities included:`47` fireplaces, countless stairs which led nowhere, closets that opened to
blank walls, trap doors,double-back hallways, skylights located one above
the other, doors that opened to steep drops and dozens of other oddities.
It was obvious that Sarah was obsessed with the number `13`, almost
all the windows contained `13` panes of glass, the greenhouse had `13`
cupolas, the wooden floors contained `13` sections, some of the rooms
had `13` windows and every staircase had `13` steps, except for a winding
staircase of `42` steps which only rose to a height of `9` feet
because each step was only `2` inches high.
While all this activity seems like madness, it all made sense to Sarah, who believed that
this was the way she could control the spirits who visited the house for evil
purposes, or outlaws or vengeful people in their previous lives. The house had
been designed to confuse and discourage the bad spirits.
Over the years the house continued to grow, so that by `1906` it was
up to `7` stories high.
A tragic event happened the same year, San Francisco was struck by an
earthquake. Sarah was convinced that the spirits were angry because the house
had not seen completion and also that some of the spirits had fallen during
the earthquake and were trapped inside the house forever.
On September 4th after a conference session with the spirits in the
seance room, Sarah retired to her bedroom for the night and at some point
in the morning hours she died in her sleep at the age of `83`.
She left all her possessions to her niece, Frances Marriot, who had
been handling most of Sarah`s business affairs, but little did anyone know
that by this time Sarah`s large bank account had dwindled considerably.
Rumour had it that somewhere in the house there was a hidden safe
containing a fortune of jewellery and a solid silver dinner service that
Sarah had used to entertain her ghostly friends. Her relatives found and
forced open a number of safes in the mystery house but only found old
fishlines, socks, newspaper clippings about her daughter and husband's
deaths, a lock of baby hair and a suitof woollen underwear. No such silver
dinner service was ever found. The furnishings, personal belongings and
surplus contruction materials were removed form the house and it was
sold to a group of investors who planned to use it as a tourist attraction.
Most people wouLd say such a place surely still harbours at least a few
of the ghosts who came to reside there at the invitation of Sarah
Winchester. The question is though, do they really haunt the place?
Some cynics would say that perhaps no ghosts ever walked there at all
and the Winchester mansion is nothing more than the product of
an eccentric woman`s mind and too much wealth being allowed into
the wrong hands....