![]() Winchester headed west to build a home for herself and her ghosts. We can't know exactly how she interpreted this advice she might have thought the spirits would get her if she stopped, or she might have seen continuous construction as a path to eternal life. Never stop building, the medium told Mrs. The ghosts had another request: that the house never be completed. Their spirits were seeking vengeance, and the only way to appease them was to build a house for them. The medium told her that the Winchester family had been struck by a terrible curse and was haunted by the ghosts of all those killed by the Winchester rifle. Distraught over these losses, she visited a medium for spiritual guidance. Winchester died of tuberculosis 15 years later. The young couple started a family in 1866, but their daughter, Annie, died in infancy, a blow that Mrs. The gun was used by Northern troops in the Civil War and was also known as "the gun that won the West". The company had developed the repeating rifle, a gun that was easy to reload and fired rapidly, at a rate of one shot every three seconds. In 1862, Sarah married William Winchester, who was the heir of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Although she only stood 4 feet 10 inches, she was known for her beauty and her sparkling personality. Born in 1839, Sarah Pardee was one of the social stars of New Haven, Conn. Sarah Winchester didn't always want to build a haunted mansion. And I haven't even mentioned the ghosts. It's filled with weird things like stairs and doors that go nowhere. This was no ordinary construction job, though the house is an oddball labyrinth of rooms that at one point reached seven stories. For 38 years, she had construction going 24 hours a day at her home in San Jose, Calif. But for Sarah Winchester, construction was a way of life. We worry about the expense and complain about the inconvenience. Most of us want to get home construction over as soon as possible. "This house, in itself, was her biggest social work of all.Photo courtesy Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, CA "She had a social conscience and she did try to give back," said Boehme. ![]() Janan Boehme, the house's longtime historian, believes there's a logical explanation for the continual, maze-like construction Sarah commissioned during the second half of her life. While the upcoming film plays up Sarah's spiritualism with scenes like a séance that may or may not have taken place in the house's front turret, also called the "witch's cap," not everyone is convinced the heiress had otherworldly motivations. Staffers found her in a bedroom that had been obscured by rubble. She also had a habit of sleeping in different rooms (to hide from ghosts perhaps?) which posed a problem after a 1906 earthquake caused three floors of her house to cave in. ![]() Some point to Sarah Winchester's reclusive nature as proof of her guilt. ![]() "And I can only imagine that people who make fortunes to this day from selling armaments have pause at some point, especially if they are Christians: 'Am I going to pay?'" "If you have made a fortune out of death, you have to pay the price, a psychological price and a spiritual price," Mirren continued. "Was she a Rosicrucian? Was she a straight-down-the-line Christian? Was she haunted? Was she crazy?" Times during an interview that took place in the storied house last May. "There are many understandings of her," Mirren told the L.A. ![]()
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