What happens when a rumor is allowed to spread
and grow for generations? The past becomes so muddied that we begin
to accept lies as fact. Hi everyone, ken here, welcome to "ThisHouse"!! Today we are exploring the truth behind the
Winchester Mystery House. Make sure to hit that subscribe button so
you never miss an exciting episode of "ThisHouse" If you are familiar with the Winchester Mystery
House, the story you’ve probably heard goes something like this. Sarah Winchester was a mysterious and eccentric
recluse who had inherited the Winchester Rifle fortune. She believed that the ghosts of every person
killed by a Winchester were drawn to her, so she turned her house into a labyrinth to
escape their presence, with construction never ending as rooms were added with staircases
to nowhere, trapdoors to four story drops, and a bell tower to call on ghosts. She was obsessed with the occult and conducted
seances every night to plead with the spirits haunting her home and became enamored by the
number 13, building windows, doors, and rooms in sets of 13. What if I told you that this entire story
is false? That, definitively, none of this ever happened? So where did this story come from? Let’s go all the way back to 1862 to find
out. Sarah married the love of her life, William
Wirt Winchester, whose family had founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The young couple began planning their life
together in New Haven, Connecticut, and had their first and only child, a baby girl they
named Annie. But she was born sick, and quickly passed
away. Not long after, her husband and his father
both passed away as well. Leaving her an inheritance of about 362,000
dollars, most of which was in stocks, the modern day equivalent of about ten and a half
million dollars. Instead of simply retiring and enjoying her
money, she made a series of wise investments causing her fortune to grow year after year. When she was 46 years old, Sarah developed
rheumatoid arthritis, which is when her doctors advised her to move to a warmer climate. She had fond memories of traveling to San
Francisco with her late husband, so she headed out west to California to begin searching
for a property. She met up with an agent for the Winchester
Repeating Arms Company in 1886 who began showing her around the region. While they were in San Jose, he showed her
an 8 room farmhouse set on 45 secluded acres. She found the setting peaceful and purchased
the home, naming it Llanada Villa for its resemblance to Spain’s countryside. Upon settling in, she invited her niece to
come live with her, eventually gifting her a home nearby as a wedding present. She became very active in the local charity
scene, frequenting fundraisers with her niece, becoming significant donors to the American
Red Cross. All the while, she began imagining the possibilities
of her property. She had greatly enjoyed building her and William’s
home in Connecticut, picking out décor and collaborating with architects and interior
designers. She even expressed that if a woman of status
should be allowed to work, she would like to become an architect. But the reality of the time is that such dreams
were prohibitive. For her house in San Jose she hired 2 architects,
but quickly dismissed them. She decided to follow her dreams, and build
for herself. She began sketching plans for her dream house
and hired a large staff to live on site while construction commenced. Every morning she would gather her team and
instruct them as to their plans and goals for the day, planning out and managing every
step of the construction process. As the house grew in size, she would make
adjustments to the plans, calling for some rooms to be ripped out and reworked. And when a room was finished out and it did
not meet her vision, she went back to the drawing board. This series of intermittent renovations, spurred
on by someone without formal training in design, lead to a seemingly haphazard floor plan with
long narrow halls and misaligned rooms. Because of her advancing arthritis, standard
stairs were painful for her to climb, so she had more manageable staircases built, using
44 steps to climb ten feet. In addition to her love of architecture and
creation, she was an avid gardener with an expansive collection of indoor plants. Even with more money than she could spend
in a lifetime doing whatever she wanted, conservation was important to her. She created a water run-off system in her
house resembling trap doors. Any excess water from her indoor plants would
travel through a series of pipes to water her outdoor garden. The interior finishes of the home became a
reflection of her personality with quotes decorating the walls and custom millwork tying
rooms together on neat, geometric grids. She collected stained glass windows, collecting
hundreds of them to be installed in different rooms, and changing up the décor to better
accent the art glass. Just as her house of 500 rooms was nearing
completion, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake violently shook the region. Entire wings of her house collapsed along
with a seven story tower. By this time, her health was failing and she
was too tired to redesign her house. She instructed her team to simply clean up
the mess and seal off the house from the elements. This lead to doors being permanently locked
on what were now exterior walls, and staircases being boarded up in place where their landings
had failed. Her water drainage system could not be repaired,
so without plants to water, the indoor drains were covered over. The earthquake eliminated an estimated 340
rooms, leaving her with only 160 rooms in her mansion. As her illness progressed, she went into town
less and less, being too tired and sick to leave the house. She passed away in 1922. Without any proper heirs, she left the entirety
of her estate to be divided equally amongst her niece and staff who had become her best
friends, working side by side to realize her artistic vision. Later that year, the house was sold to investors
who leased the house to John and Mayme Brown who began devising a plan to turn the house
into a tourist attraction. Haunted houses were becoming a popular around
this time, so they fabricated a story about superstitious and occult happenings centered
around Sarah Winchester. The initial reaction from neighbors and friends
of Sarah was that of outrage, as she had been a kind, creative, and generous woman of the
community. They further went on to imagine a medium in
Boston by the name of Adam Coons who they said instructed Sarah to move to California
to escape the ghosts of everyone killed by Winchester rifles. No such person by that name lived in, or much
less, ran a business as a psychic in Boston during that time period. They further went on to claim that the house
had been intentionally designed to confuse ghosts, ignoring the earthquake’s catastrophic
impact on the house, going even further to add rooms and windows to create sets of 13
pairings throughout. On tours of their haunted house you would
hear that seances were conducted in the blue room, which is highly unlikely given that
this was the live-in gardener’s quarters and Sarah would not have invaded his space. The fabrications seemed to have no end, even
claiming that the bell tower was used to call on ghosts when it was actually used to signal
staff for shifts. The Browns were so successful with their story
telling that Authors around the United States began to write fictional novels based on the
Browns’ stories, further feeding into the lore, which the Browns would then use as “evidence”
for their fabrication. Now, 100 years later, over 12 million visitors
have heard this version of Sarah’s life. Instead of celebrating the life of a woman
pioneering architecture in a male dominated field, or the life of a whimsical artist who
offered steady employment to dozens of people for nearly 40 years, Sarah’s legacy has
been distorted to the point that that there is no longer a shred of truth to her legend. Maybe someday, her life’s work and contributions
can be reframed to become a candid reflection of Sarah Winchester. Thank you all for watching, I really hope
that you enjoyed this video. Did you find this piece shocking? Let me know down below in the comments section. And while you’re there, make sure to hit
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