SPECTRALWhat happened here
Sarah Winchester was the widow of William Wirt Winchester, heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. After losing her infant daughter and then her husband, she inherited a vast fortune and, in 1886, bought an unfinished farmhouse in the Santa Clara Valley.
She kept remodelling and adding to it until her death in 1922. The 1906 earthquake brought down its seven-storey tower, leaving the house at four storeys. Its oddities — a staircase of 44 steps that rises only nine feet, windows set into floors, the number 13 repeated in its details — have been puzzled over ever since.
The legends
The legend says a Boston medium told Sarah that the spirits of everyone killed by Winchester rifles would haunt her unless she built without stopping. Construction supposedly went on day and night for 38 years, and each night she held a séance in a secret room to receive the next day's plans.
Staff and visitors report footsteps, turning doorknobs, cold spots and a figure like a workman in the basement.
Fact or legend?
Historians have found no evidence for the medium or the nightly séances. Her biographer Mary Jo Ignoffo argues that Sarah was a determined amateur architect who liked to build and rebuild, and that much of the legend was spread by newspapers and later by the attraction itself. Nor was building continuous: it stopped for long periods.
Visiting
The house is a busy attraction open daily, with guided mansion tours, and candlelight and Halloween tours in season.
