Winchester Forever

The exterior tower of the Winchester Mystery House

I would like to visit the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, where Sarah Winchester, the widow of the gun magnate William Winchester, resided for several years preceding her death.

The story of this house is as follows:

Deeply saddened by the deaths of her daughter Annie in 1866 and her husband in 1881, and seeking solace, Sarah Winchester consulted a medium on the advice of a friend. According to popular history, the medium, who has become known colloquially as the “Boston Medium”, told Winchester that she was crazy, but she had the feeling that there was a curse upon the Winchester family because the guns they made had taken so many lives. She told Winchester that “thousands of people have died because of it and their spirits are now seeking vengeance.”

Although this is disputed, many believe the Boston Medium told Sarah Winchester that she had to leave her home in New Haven and travel west, where she was to build a home for herself and for the spirits who had fallen from the terrible weapon, too. Sarah was to never stop building the house. If she continued building, she would live. Stop and she would die.  Whether this tale is true or not, Winchester did move west, settling in California, where she immediately began construction on her mansion. (via Wikipedia)

The mansion houses approximately 160 rooms, including 40 bedrooms, two ballrooms, 47 fireplaces, 10,000 window panes, 17 chimneys (with evidence of two others), two basements, three elevators, and doors and stairways that lead nowhere (so as to confuse the ghosts and stave off attack).  There is little rhyme or reason to the mansion’s architecture; Sarah continued to build room after room in piecemeal projects up until her death.

I learned about this mansion after seeing an exhibition, The Winchester Trilogy, by the late Jeremy Blake at the San Franciso MoMA a few years ago, which was inspired by the mansion.  Read an interview with Blake on the project here.  View part of the animated video here.

Jeremy Blake, 1906 (still), from Winchester trilogy, 2003; DVD with sound; 21-minute continuous loop; Collection SFMOMA.