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If you've visited San Jose, California, one of the first things you'll probably hear about from locals and tourists alike is the story of the Winchester Mystery House. Today, the Victorian and Gothic styled mansion can be found smack in the middle of one of the busiest areas of the city. But back when it was purchased in 1886 by the Winchester rifle heiress, Sarah Winchester, the original home was the only building of note on the 45-acre ranch. In the hands of Winchester, the modest two-story, eight-room farmhouse was renovated into a 24,000-square-foot, sprawling property containing 160 rooms, 2,000 doors,10,000 windows, 47 stairways and fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and six kitchens.
Fact Versus Fiction Regarding Sarah Winchester
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake takes place, devastating the house and separating Eric and Sarah. In the chaos, a possessed Henry escapes his room and is pursued by Marion. Eric encounters several ghosts before seeing the ghost of Ruby his wife. It is revealed that Ruby could see and hear ghosts but was misdiagnosed as "delusional" by Eric. Depressed that he would not believe her, the unstable Ruby shot Eric before killing herself with a Winchester rifle.
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Far after the construction was completed, Winchester continued to make efforts to appease the victims of the Winchester rifles. Public DomainOne of the staircases to nowhere in the Winchester mansion. Staircases would ascend several levels then end abruptly, doors would open to solid walls, and hallways would turn a corner and end in a dead-end. Some visitors have sworn to have seen the "wheelbarrow ghost," a kindly apparition in white overalls who apparently works on the house. "But there's nothing definitive. This really is a perplexing house," says Boehme.
The Fascinating Real Story Behind the Winchester Mystery House
In the years Sarah Winchester lived in the house, the residents of San Jose whispered about its strange construction and even stranger inhabitant, but it was in the years after her death that the wild stories became even wilder. Out of the 13 bathrooms in the home, only one was functional, in an effort to confuse any ghosts wishing to haunt a spigot. Furthermore, she would sleep in a different room every night in the Winchester house, and use secret passageways to get from room to room so that no spirits could follow her.
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After her death in September of 1922, Sarah Winchester left all of her belongings to her niece, Marion, who had served as her personal secretary later in life. However, the Winchester Mystery House was never mentioned in her will, adding to the mystery of the home. Additionally, Winchester insisted that the home be built exclusively out of redwood – however, she didn’t like the look of the wood, so she insisted it be covered with a stain and a faux grain. By the time the house was completed, over 20,000 gallons of paint had been used to cover the wood.
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They never had another child, and just 15 years later, Sarah lost her husband, her mother, and her father-in-law to the plague of her time, tuberculosis. She inherited $20 million, but that didn't make her heart any less broken. Lonely and looking to start anew, she packed up her things in Connecticut and moved to San Jose, California, where she bought the aforementioned ranch.
"But were ghosts haunting Sarah Winchester as people said at the time? There's nothing to confirm that — or deny it, either." A year later, rooms that were never opened to the public were put on display, including sections of the home that had remained unfinished at the time of her death. Even 95 years after her death, it seemed that Sarah Winchester’s house was still holding on to some secrets. Isolated in her labyrinthine mansion, eccentric firearm heiress Sarah Winchester believes that she is being haunted by the souls of those killed by the guns manufactured by her company.
And when it was made public why Winchester was continuously revising the house until her death in 1922, it was also dubbed one of the "most haunted places in the world." The Winchester Mystery House is a mansion in San Jose, California, that was once the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester. The house became a tourist attraction nine months after Winchester's death in 1922. The Victorian and Gothic-style mansion is renowned for its size and its architectural curiosities and for the numerous myths and legends surrounding the structure and its former owner. In 2018, Helen Mirren starred in Winchester as Sarah Winchester herself. The story took the rumors about the hauntings in the house and ran with them, depicting a woman crazed by the ghosts of Winchester rifles.
The Winchester Mystery House® closed its doors to the public for a whirlwind 72-hour film shoot of exteriors, aerials and a few interior rooms. The rest of the filming was done in the director’s home country of Australia. Lead actress Helen Mirren did extensive research and visited the estate privately to better understand Sarah’s story and immerse herself in her world. It is true that she married Wirt in 1862 and four years later gave birth to a daughter, Annie Pardee Winchester, who died a month later.
So, it is only fitting that her story was recently brought to the big screen with the release of Winchester, a supernatural thriller directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, and written by the Spierigs and Tom Vaughan. The film stars Helen Mirren as heiress Sarah Winchester, with Jason Clarke and Sarah Snook, and follows Mrs. Winchester as she is haunted by spirits inside her San Jose mansion in 1906. A reclusive heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, who is haunted by the angry spirits of those killed by her family's famed firearms is at the center of the ghost story Winchester (in theaters Friday). Throughout the years-long construction of the Winchester Mystery House, Sarah Winchester would never confirm that she was building a haunted house. Winchester hired carpenters to work around the clock, expanding the small house into a seven-story mansion.
Ben attempts to murder Sarah, but the pair realizes that Ben is scared of the bullet Eric kept. Eric has been able to see the ghosts in the house due to his dying from that bullet beforehand. Eric uses the bullet in the rifle that Ben used in the shooting and banishes him.
Gold and silver chandeliers hung from the ceilings above hand-inlaid parquet flooring. Dozens of artful stained-glass windows created by Tiffany & Co. dotted the walls, including some designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. One window, in particular, was intended to create a prismatic rainbow effect on the floor when light flowed through it – of course, the window ended up on an interior wall, and thus the effect was never achieved. The true story behind the movie Winchester is one of the greatest haunted house legends ever. "She was Bill Gates-rich from this famous family, so people watched her, talked about her, and speculated," says Janan Boehme, official historian at Winchester Mystery House, now a preserved tourist attraction. "There are many things about the movie that are absolutely real," says Peter Spierig, who directed Winchester with his brother, Michael.
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