This tale begins with the founding of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1866. The company’s fabled rifles and shotguns quickly became a staple with hunters from Maine to California, and their lever guns have been coined as “The guns that made the west safe for Colts.”
Winchester’s rifles and carbines rode the western range in the saddle scabbards of cowboys, posses and on the ponies of Native Americans. Texas Rangers, town marshals, soldiers, Mounties and desperadoes used them as they carved their way into history. The U.S. armed forces began carrying Winchesters in 1895, continuing that tradition through the Vietnam War. Even the Russian Army bought about 300,000 Model 1895 lever rifles in 1915.
Since its introduction, hunters have purchased more than 7 million Model 1894 lever action rifles, making it arguably the most popular woods-hunting rifle in history — continuing in its popularity today.
Innumerable waterfowl and pheasants have graced the dinner table while trap and skeet fields have heard the thunder of the company’s Model 97, 12 and 21 shotguns for over a century. While most Winchesters have gathered nothing more than wild game, broken clay targets or dust, it’s certain that many others have ended the lives of both the innocent and the wicked, sending their spirits to drift away into the ether — many headed in opposite directions.
Mystery mansion
After Sarah “Sallie” Lockwood Winchester’s husband, William Wirt Winchester’s death in 1881, the new heiress of the company’s fortune landed an inherited income of $1,000 per day, which would be nearly $31,000 when adjusted into today’s bucks.
She decided a new home was in order and, following her doctor’s recommendations, she chose to move to the warmer climate of San Jose, California. The Queen Anne Victorian mansion, which she named Llanada Villa, was purchased for $12,570 (about $421,631 in today’s value) in 1886 and was situated on a 45-acre ranch in the Santa Clara Valley. Today, it’s renowned for its size, architectural curiosities and its apparent lack of any master building plan. Or was there a plan?
Some think ghosts may have had a hand in the design of what would later become best known as the Winchester House — and today as the Winchester Mystery House. Popular rumors of the time indicated that Sarah believed that many of those departed souls were quite upset with their premature parting caused by slugs from her company’s products. She was certain that her family and fortune were haunted by ghosts of the people who had fallen as victims.
Did some of those whose death was caused by a Winchester bullet decide to stick around to protest an untimely demise? During a séance, a popular fad during the Victorian era, a spiritualist suggested that the only way to appease these hauntings was to continue to add rooms to the house. These mystics explained that doing so would provide those wandering specters a comfortable space and possibly even confuse these drifting phantoms. This, they claimed, was in the hopes that these additions would keep the ghosts from disturbing her family or its financial resources, though I’m sure the clairvoyant charlatans did their best of tapping the latter.
Other people, familiar with the house and Sarah, have said that most of these claims were exaggerations and that the construction was based upon the heiress’s interest and study of that time’s architecture, incorporating Victorian, Eastlake and Stick design elements.
Before the 1906 earthquake, the house had grown to be seven stories high, but due to damages suffered during the event, it was reduced to the four stories evident today. The home contains numerous oddities. Doors and stairs that go nowhere, windows overlooking other rooms and stairs with odd-sized risers. There are 160 rooms, including 40 bedrooms, two ballrooms, 47 fireplaces, over 10,000 panes of glass, 17 chimneys, two basements and three elevators. Most windows contained 13 panes, the walls have 13 panels, the greenhouse 13 cupolas, many of the floors contained 13 sections, some of the rooms have 13 windows, and every staircase but one has 13 steps.
Hauntings of the Winchester House have been reported since it was completed. There have been footsteps, banging doors, mysterious voices, windows banging until they shatter, cold spots, strange moving lights and doorknobs that turn themselves. Sarah died in the home in 1922 and some think it possible that she may have never really moved out.
You can visit this historical landmark and get a glimpse into the Victorian age and the building’s oddities. The site offers guided tours and of course, a haunted visit of the house during the weeks leading up to Halloween — a spooky event that they like to call “The Unhinged Hotel.”
The Winchester Mystery House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is located at 525 South Winchester Blvd. in San Jose, California. Besides the Winchester Museum, special flashlight tours are offered on every Friday the 13th, Halloween and Christmas. If you’re ever out that way, maybe Sarah will give you a personal tour. To learn more, visit winchestermysteryhouse.com.
“If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.”
— Chuck Palahniuk
