October 24, 2010
Of all the paranormal creatures studied thus far, the Winchester Mystery House has been by far the easiest to locate and prove the existence of. It’s a house. It hasn’t moved in over a hundred years. Check for yourself, South Winchester Blvd, CA, 95128. MapQuest and there it is. Case closed, investigation over.
Well no, not really, because it isn’t the house we are in search of, but what is inside the house that we are in search of. Ghosts. Lots and lots of ghosts. You see, the woman who built this house was sure that ghosts were out to get her. Obviously, this blog needs a better title.
No, not right.
No, not right either.
Sheesh. Oh that hurts. That is so bad it hurts.
The house was built by Sarah Winchester, the great grandmother of Charles Emerson Winchester III. Her father, Charles Emerson Winchester Volume I, was the inventor the Winchester rifle. The Winchester rifle was the most popular weapon of the West and she herself owned 50% of the Winchester Company. The other 50% had been bought by George Soros and sold to the Chinese.
Charles and Grandma Sarah. Which is the face of mental health?
After her husband’s death, Sarah believed that she was haunted by all the people who had been killed by Winchester rifles. She was sure that the vengeful ghosts would one day take revenge on her. And indeed, Sarah began to see spirits of American Indians haunting her house. Winchesters were the rifle of choice back in the Old West, and most of the victims were Indians, hunted down and brought to the brink of extinction by Darth Vader. That sounds right to me. After all, I am a product of the NYC school system.
In her later years, Sarah had many regrets about the Winchester rifle, but even more regrets that she left poor Joe Remington at the altar.
Of course, many investigators believe that there is a perfectly logical explanation. They scoff at the idea of ghosts and put forward their own theory, that Sarah was still troubled by a childhood trauma that continued to affect her for the rest of her life and left her susceptible to suggestion.
Sarah believed that the only way to avoid the ghosts was to sleep in a different room every night. Had she been a poorer woman she might have become the biggest slut in San Jose, but she was quite rich and used her money to build her mansion into the huge monstrosity we know today. It was her belief that the ghosts needed a place to stay, and if she ever stopped working she would die. Of course, the law of opposites applies too, so that if she ever died the work would stop, and that is just what happened many years after. Sorry ghosts. Work continued around the clock daily and even after the great San Francisco earthquake damaged the house, she still kept at it. In fact, she left the damaged front part as was and just built new rooms in the back. Those ghosts were vicious taskmasters. Sarah claimed that it was they, not her, who often directed the workmen, a fact disputed by the lack of wigwams on the estate.
To escape the ghosts she built winding stairways that led to blank walls, doors that opened on sheer drops, rooms with ceilings only a few feet high, slanted walls, windows in the middle of rooms peering into other rooms, windows that look open onto brick walls, rooms with miniature furniture, upside down columns, trapdoors, and even rooms decorated with nothing but paintings of Richard Nixon. Though he was born in 1913 and only nine years old when construction ended, the spirits knew.
There also dozens of non-working bathrooms, which may not have bothered the ghosts but pissed off the workmen to no end. So to speak.
This door eventually led to The Batman Craze of 1966, in which everything had a label.
Obviously, the legends of Indians being excellent trackers must be overrated as, for 38 years, she managed to avoid the ghosts in her own home. Or, as critics say, just perhaps, maybe, possibly, there were no ghosts.
Sarah consulted the best psychics and mediums of her time, many of whom directed the construction. The building went on everyday for decades, and at the time of her death was still unfinished. The biggest loss was that, just days after her death, construction was due to begin on the beef jerky room, and thousands of cattle had to be sent back to the ranch.
Today the house has became a major tourist attraction, though construction long ago stopped, putting scores of Doozers out of work.
However, the Winchester Mystery House is still supposedly haunted and is still a favorite target of psychics and paranormal investigators.
What is up with the sponge on that guy's head?
Was Sarah Winchester haunted by ghosts who demanded she build and build and build? I dunno, but as the official Winchester Mystery House website asks:
It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. But if you had $20,000,000 and all the time in the world to help you cope, can you imagine what you would do?
Yes. Yes I can. And building a crazy mansion is not on the list.
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