Abby Connolly
If you love stories of ghosts and haunted houses, you’ve got to know about the Winchester House. If you don’t, buckle up.
The Winchester house is a mansion Sarah Winchester famously renovated in San Jose in the late 1800s and has been claimed to be one of the most haunted homes in the world.
Sarah Winchester was born in Connecticut in 1839. In 1862, she married William Wirt Winchester, the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The two of them had a baby girl named Annie a few years later, but she tragically died as an infant.
Then, Sarah’s world changed when William and a few other relatives of hers died more than a decade later. When William died in 1881, she was left with a massive inheritance and 50% of the arms company.
Struggling with grief and unsure of what to do with her fortune, Sarah sought out the help of a medium. It is rumored that her medium claimed to have been channeling William, who wanted Sarah to leave her home state of Connecticut and move to California.
Additionally, some claim the ghost of William wanted her to build a large home for the spirits of those who had been killed by the guns made by the Winchester company.
So, in 1884, Sarah bought what would later be known as the Winchester House in San Jose, California. It was originally a farmhouse with eight rooms, but she began what is considered one of the longest home renovations in the world to turn it into the mansion it is today.
Renovations on the Winchester house began in 1884 and did not cease until 1922, the year Sarah died. Sarah’s reputation as a well-educated socialite transformed into an isolated widow who spent her later years building a mansion with many oddities.
For instance, inside the mansion, which has 160 rooms, are staircases leading to nothing, dead-end corners, and doors that open to walls.
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