There is a very real story of a
very real house that many believe was actually responsible for stealing
a woman’s mind. Her name was Sarah Lockwood Pardee, a young, vibrant East Coast
girl who many would call a member of the “upper crust” of society. She had not
a care in the world as she enjoyed her youth in Connecticut, and was eager to
live a fabulous life.
Falling in love with a highly
intelligent man, Sarah became the wife of William Wirt Winchester, who was
famous for being the creator and owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms
Company. Guns and weaponry were his focus, a focus that would one day cost a
woman her sanity.
Sarah Winchester was a young
mother and a good wife, yet the curse of the ghostly spirits who had been
killed and tortured at the end of a Winchester rifle began to slowly take their
revenge. After the sudden death of her child, Annie (who survived only a few
weeks after her birth), and the loss of her husband to tuberculosis, Sarah
began to see the bloody path that lay in front of her.
Seeking out a psychic for help,
Sarah was allegedly told that the curse of the Winchester family would continue.
This “odd” medium—whose name is still unknown to history—told Sarah she would
need to find a house where the spirits of the “victims” could reside. But if construction
on the house ever stopped, Sarah would be taken by the ghosts and sent straight
to the depths of Hades where she would pay for all eternity.
Sarah’s mind was slowly falling
into a rotted state of confusion. In 1884, she traveled to California and
purchased an eight-room farmhouse that was already under construction. Located
in San Jose, Sarah enclosed herself within the walls of what would become her
inner sanctum, and began to listen to the ghosts and goblins that followed her
there. The largest construction project ever to be taken on began, as Sarah
used her incredible $20 million fortune to continue the round-the-clock building,
trying to calm the monsters that were calling out to her morning, noon, and
night.
The Winchester Mystery House is
an authentic realm that defies explanation. In the very depths of the
monstrosity is a séance room, a room where the ghostly talks and visits would
occur on a nightly basis. At midnight, every night of Sarah Winchester’s life, the
bell in the clock tower of her mansion would ring out (although no one was ever
at the very top to make this happen manually.)
But when the bell struck
midnight, Sarah would make her way through the maze of rooms, staircases, and
hallways to sit at the small table with one chair as she spoke, listening and
begging the spirits to forgive her for what happened to them. Across the
hallway from the séance room was the grand ballroom—one of the most beautiful and
expensive rooms ever created.
Through this door, as she looked
up from her table, it was said that Sarah saw the spirits walk past, sneering
and screaming, demanding that she do more for them. Music could be heard coming
from the antique organ in the ballroom, as the chandelier (with thirteen
candles) hanging from above highlighted the bright, transparent orbs that
always seemed to float in the air. According to Sarah (and the many tourists
who have viewed the orbs on their cameras and cell phones) inside each one of
these orbs is a spirit, a ghost that will stay in the house forever in order to
make sure Sarah continues to pay for her family’s mistakes.
No one knows where Sarah’s other
obsession came from. Perhaps it was the spirits themselves who spoke to Sarah
about the power that the number thirteen carried. Whether it came from the “other
side” or simply ingrained in Sarah from the talks she had with the medium, she
was absolutely fascinated with the number thirteen. The diagrams and
architectural plans Sarah would draw while sitting at the séance table every
night, always included that powerful numeral. As she created the next room, the
next window, or the next staircase in her mind, Sarah made sure that each new
building project was somehow an ‘ode to thirteen.’ The house has thirteen
bathrooms, thirteen bedrooms, and thirteen hooks in the closets, windows that have
thirteen panes of glass, thirteen chandeliers, thirteen drains in the sink, as
well as thirteen steps in as many staircases as she could build.
There is a creation in the
Winchester House, however, that is barely spoken about: a stained-glass window
that is one of the most powerful and haunting creations a person could ever lay
their eyes on. Twilight turns to daylight in this magical scene created in a myriad
of colors that, unexplainably, makes one’s own mind begin to spin.
Many tourists will simply stare into
the window and think about the past, wondering what Sarah Winchester was
pondering when it was created. In this window there are thirteen orbs, orbs
that seem to represent the celestial bodies in the sky. Here perhaps, is a “shout
out” to the original thirteen signs that once made up the horoscope charts,
before the Pope threw out the 13th sign as being pure and utter evil.
In 1906, the San Francisco Earthquake
hit and trapped Sarah in her bedroom: the 13th bedroom in the house.
When she was finally pulled out of the ruins and rose from the ashes of her
monstrous home, she told the construction crews to stop working on the nearly
completed front part of the house. Immediately it was boarded up. According to
legend, Sarah believed that the sprits were angry with her for working on the
front rooms and not the ones they wanted to live in that were located in the
interior of the Winchester Mansion.
But as with all ghostly tales,
Sarah’s finally came to an end. In 1922, the hammers stopped pounding and the
rooms were left unfinished, as the construction workers—after thirty-eight
years—finally called it a day. Sarah Winchester passed away in her bed, leaving
a will that was written in thirteen sections, which she signed thirteen times.
The belongings were auctioned and the house was sold to the highest bidder, who
then turned it into a place that would be forever known as the “House That Fear
Built.”
There are many legends, such as a
visit from the President that went awry, as well as a tour taken by Harry
Houdini in his heyday, and many fictional accounts of the mighty Winchester
Mansion. Included in these fictional tales is a lesser-known story regarding a
treasure that is buried inside The Winchester House…
It is told that one night while
Sarah Winchester lay in her bed sleeping, yet another predator entered the
infamous home. This man was very real: the self-proclaimed Devil, Aleister Crowley. Crowley walked
the halls of the Winchester Mansion on his own mission to hide two very
specific orbs, orbs that played a part in the 13th sign that Sarah Winchester
was so intrigued with. Here, in a staircase that was built directly across the
hallway from that mind-bending stained-glass window, Crowley buried his ‘package’
in the 13th stairs Sarah Winchester still in that house?
Is she still trapped
in the world that she simply could not depart from during life? There are many
such sightings inside the Winchester Mystery House every year. Orbs that simply
hang in the air and are caught on camera, as well as sightings of a small woman
dressed in white vintage clothing sleeping on Sarah Winchester’s bed. Perhaps the spirits allowed her
to become a part of their group. Perhaps Sarah is simply tied to that house
because of all that happened to her inside of it for so many years, an
albatross around her neck that she simply can’t rid herself of. The final
sighting that many visitors have documented is within the small séance room.
This is the room where a purely cold, frightening feeling comes over people…perhaps
because this was the room where the evil magic happened—where a poor woman was
drained of her sanity.
For believers, thrill-seekers, and
historians, this 160-room Victorian mansion seems to hold many unexplained
feelings, sightings, and emotions. Over time, the Winchester House has proven
to all naysayers that the “other side” really exists.
Perhaps Sarah Winchester truly
created a gate between Heaven and Hell!
To see more…Follow the Tallent & Lowery Adventures with 13!
Happy New Year!
Amy
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