William Wirt Winchester Born - June 22, 1837 Married Sarah Lockwood Pardee – September 30, 1862...
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Transcript of William Wirt Winchester Born - June 22, 1837 Married Sarah Lockwood Pardee – September 30, 1862...
William Wirt Winchester
Born - June 22, 1837
Married Sarah Lockwood Pardee – September 30, 1862
Had one child Annie Pardee Winchester Born July 15, 1866 Died July 24, 1866, of marasmus
Father – Oliver Fisher Winchester Manufactured and marketed the
Winchester repeating rifle Died on December 11, 1880 Ownership of company given to
William Winchester
Died March 7, 1881 of tuberculosis
Sarah Lockwood Pardee
Born in 1839
Death of only child Became deeply depressed Never had any more children
Father-in-law and husband died within 3 months of each other
50% ownership of Winchester Company upon husband’s death
Income $1,000 a day (equal to $22,000 a day in 2008)
Died September 5, 1922 – 83 years old
Winchester Mystery House
Sarah - convinced Winchester family was cursed
Went to a psychic Family cursed by spirits killed
by Winchester rifle Should move west Build house for herself and
spirits Construction should not stop or
Sarah would die
Moved to San Jose, California from Connecticut
Bought eight-room farmhouse on 162 acres
How did Sarah keep building constantly according to the psychic’s directions?
How big is the house?
What are some unique features of the house?
Why did Sarah build the house the way she did?
What happened after the earthquake?
What happened to the house after Sarah died?
Is the Winchester House haunted?
Plenty of money ($20 million dollar inheritance)
Hired workers to build
13 full-time workers 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year For the next 38 years!
Workers caught not working immediately fired
Covers 4 acres
Had 7 stories (earthquake brought it down to 4 stories)
2 functional basements
160 rooms
40 bedrooms 13 bathrooms 5 kitchens
To paint entire house 20,000 gallons
3 elevators
47 fireplaces
@1,257 window frames
@10,000 window panes
467 doorways
950 doors
40 staircases
Repeating number 13 theme
13 Chandeliers 13 panes in many
windows 13 bathrooms 13 steps on most
staircases (one has 39)
Doors that open into walls
Stairs that lead nowhere
Windows that look into walls
Following psychic’s instructions
Held seances (spirits “told” her how to build the next day)
Strange design
Wanted to confuse spirits Wasn’t a trained architect
Slept in a different room every night
Believed if she stopped building, she would die
Earthquake in 1906
Top 3 stories collapsed
Sarah trapped in her room
Convinced spirits were angry because house almost complete
Boarded up front 30 rooms of house Ensure house would
never be complete Trap spirits that fell
through the floors
All building stopped
Left possessions to niece, Frances Marriot
Took 6 weeks to remove furniture
House auctioned to investors
Turned into a tourist attraction
Many visiting psychics claim to see spirits
Numerous claims of ghost sightings
Employees/Visitors
Footsteps
Banging doors
Mysterious voices
Windows bang so hard they shatter
Cold spots
Strange moving lights
Doorknobs that move by themselves
Light orbs in pictures
Sarah was mentally unstable.
Suffered severe depression from the loss of her husband and daughter
Was not in a good mental state when she went to a psychic
Lived as a recluse for 38 years Lack of communication with people did not help her
sanity.
Bizarre events can be explained:
Light orbs are reflections of flash off of dust particles. Cold spots are normal in a huge house with
inconsistent heating. Strange noises in a house where tours are given could
be explained by other tourists making them. People want to see ghosts so badly, they interpret
normal events as ghosts. There are so many windows, some are bound to break.