January 20, 2017 | Leave a comment Sarah Pardee was beautiful and charming, musically talented and fluent in several languages. She lived with her parents in New Haven, Connecticut in the United States. Born in 1839, she was, by the 1860’s well known in social circles, and her company was sought after by many of the town’s eligible bachelors. The young man who won her heart was one William Wirt Winchester, the son of prominent local businessman Oliver Winchester. Sarah Pardee William Winchester The happy couple were married on 30th September 1862, and their future could not have seemed rosier. Oliver Winchester had developed the first true repeating rifle, and with the outbreak of the American Civil War on 12 April 1861, it was an extremely profitable time to be a manufacturer of state of the art weaponry. Winchester senior soon amassed a large fortune, to which William was the heir. Oliver Winchester On 15th July 1866, Sarah gave birth to a daughter named Annie. Tragically the baby almost immediately contracted a wasting disease, and by the 24th July was dead. Sarah was devastated at her loss, and her behaviour was such that concerns were expressed for her mental health. In fact it was almost a decade before she made a substantial recovery, and the couple never had another child. Oliver Winchester passed away on 11th December 1880, meaning William inherited his father’s fortune. However, tragedy was to strike one more time, as William developed tuberculosis and died on 7th March 1881. And so it was that the grief stricken widow came to be worth over twenty million dollars, or about four hundred and fifty million dollars in today’s terms. A staggering sum of money. Additionally, Sarah received 48.9% of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and an income of about one thousand dollars per day, approximately twenty two thousand dollars in current terms. However, Sarah remained a troubled woman, grieving for the loss of her husband, and not completely recovered from the death of her daughter fifteen years earlier. A friend suggested she seek solace by consulting a medium. Not an advisable course of action, but in her fragile state of mind she was desperate to alleviate her grief, and the thought of being able to communicate with her departed loved ones must have appealed to her. Spiritualism was also at the height of it’s popularity in the late nineteenth century. The encounter with the medium was a disaster. The name of the individual is not recorded, but he or she either had a grudge against Sarah or her family, or had no clue as to the consequences of the information they were about to impart. “Your husband is here.” the medium began, and continued “He says for me to tell you that there is a curse on your family, which took the life of he and your child. It will soon take you too. It is a curse that has resulted from the terrible weapon created by the Winchester family. Thousands of people have died because of it, and their spirits are now seeking vengeance.” As the seance continued, Sarah was told to sell her house in New Haven and head west, where she would be guided by her husband, until she found her new home. The encounter concluded with the medium telling her “You must start a new life, and build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon too. You can never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live. Stop and you will die.” Many people would simply have dismissed the curse as palpable nonsense. The trouble was that Sarah believed every word! She sold her house as instructed, and set off westwards, eventually reaching the Santa Clara Valley in California, in 1884. Here she came upon a house under construction, and entered into negotiations to purchase the partly built home and all 162 acres of land associated with it. The owner, a Dr. Caldwell, quickly agreed to sell; she presumably having made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Sarah immediately dispensed with the original plans for the house and embarked on her own unprecedented construction project, that would continue 24 hours of every day, for nigh on 38 years! Sarah never employed an architect or drew up a master plan for the house. Instead, she met daily with the foreman and presented him with a hand sketched plan for the day’s work. Her design, such that it was, was for a house that would confuse the spirits that she was obliged to share it with, and so discourage them from doing her harm. Numerous staircases and corridors were constructed that led nowhere, there were cupboards that opened to reveal only the wall, upstairs doors that opened to sheer drops to the ground level below, and fireplaces with chimneys that did not even reach the ceiling! The house would eventually contain many other bizarre design features, such as a staircase with forty two steps that rose less than one storey, as each step was just two inches high! Stairway to Nowhere Dangerous Doorway Doors for all Sizes By 1906 Sarah’s idiosyncratic project had reached an astonishing seven stories in height. But disaster was just around the corner. In that same year the San Francisco Earthquake caused the top three floors to collapse. Fortunately, the rest of the house had suffered less severe damage, and work quickly commenced to repair what remained. The top three floors, however, were never rebuilt. Sarah took the earthquake to be a sign that the spirits were furious that the house was nearing completion, and so the construction continued apace. Sarah Winchester in Old Age On the morning of 5th September 1922, Sarah was found dead in her bed. She had died in her sleep the previous night, at the age of 83. At last the hammers and saws fell silent. Today the house is a popular tourist attraction. However, a couple of mysteries remain unanswered. So confusing is the interior, no one seems to be able to agree on how many rooms it contains. Certainly there are at least 148, although many claim to have counted up to 160. You may like to try and count them yourself, if you ever get the chance to pay the Winchester House a visit. And what of the spirits that so troubled Sarah? Surely just the product of a disturbed mind. But what if the medium was right? It might not be just the rooms you find yourself counting! WOOoooo!!!! Winchester House Source: https://www.prairieghosts.com/winchester.html