Episode 107: The Widow and the Winchester

Feb 1, 2019

When Sarah Winchester's husband died, she inherited millions from the family business: the manufacture of the famous Winchester Rifle. A medium reportedly told Sarah that she would be haunted by the victims of that rifle unless she used her fortune to build a house, and never stop building. That's exactly what she did.

Pamela Haag’s book is The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture.

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hi it's Phoebe just a quick note to let you know that we started another podcast it's very simple thing it's just me reading a classic mystery novel a chapter a day it's called Phoebe reads a mystery and you can get it wherever you're listening to this right now okay here's the show

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it's said that Sarah purposely designed this house with stairs to the ceiling at doors to nowhere so as to confuse the spirits that meant to do her harm for 38 years the sounds of hammering never stopped as Sarah and workers built room after room after room after room now it's your turn to experience the unique features of this house

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on Winchester Boulevard in San Jose California there's a giant Victorian Mansion the National Park Service describes it as a bizarre multi gabled house it has a hundred and sixty rooms quilted together over time it's been called the most haunted house in the world and it's said to be the inspiration for the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland

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it was built by a woman named Sarah Winchester in 1881 her husband William Winchester died of tuberculosis leaving her reported 20 million dollar Fortune though be nearly 500 million dollars today and with the money she built a house some say it was designed to be haunted the story of the Winchester House is a story about gossip grief and a very famous God

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I'm Phoebe judge this is criminal in 1862 syrup Rd married William Winchester in New Haven Connecticut she had repeated miscarriages for years and finally gave birth to a baby daughter Annie something was wrong with the baby she couldn't digest food and starve to death then Sarah's mother died then

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William died and Sarah Winchester reportedly went to a medium to try to communicate with them on millions of Americans believed in spiritualism which is basically a conviction that the living can communicate with the dad and that the world's the living and the dead are overlaid so it wasn't at all unusual that Sarah might have been interested in that idea and it might have run its course has an idea except for the Civil War this is Pamela Hague

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she's the author of the Gunning of America business and the making of American Gun culture after the Civil War it gained momentum again because of the the heartache and tragedy in American families caused by the war that desire to be able to communicate with with the dead was was even more keen even the Lincoln's tried to summon the spirit of their dead son in the White House when Sarah visited the medium she was told that people around her word

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dying as retribution for all the deaths caused by her family's gun business the Winchester repeating Arms Company now the biggest part of the legend holds she became increasingly convinced that she was being haunted by the spirits of everyone killed by Winchester rifles and that in order to make amends after her husband's death she was to move out to California and start building a house and keep building and never

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up and this house was either to accommodate all of the ghost killed by Winchester rifles or perhaps to appease them the Winchester rifle was Innovative for its time since it could consecutively shoot 15 bullets before reloading it was so popular that is nicknamed the gun that won the West making delicious stir family including Sarah and her husband very rich indeed

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the Winchester repeating Arms Company was started by William Winchester's father Oliver Winchester Oliver Winchester owned a shirt factory before he switched to making and selling guns in 1857 it said that Oliver Winchester had never even fired a gun until he started selling them and in 1860 the Winchester repeating Arms Company patented rifled the change the world not only

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because of what it could do but because of how people felt about it okay so the repeater rifle was a revolutionary new kind of gun design before the repeater rifle guns were laborious to load it's really difficult to load them and it was hard to get off more than maybe one or two shots a minute the repeater rifle in a lot of ways it's kind of the first semi-automatic rifle kind of began the whole era of the modern gun

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on the repeater rifle was a huge Advance toward semi-automatic guns they were much more lethal and quite shocking to people who had never seen this sort of gun technology before it really changed Warfare it changed how Shooters thought about themselves and what they could they could do with their guns before this repeater rifle even a very skilled shooter could only fired two shots in a minute then they'd have to

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stop stand up and reload making themselves a target for example the blackfeet Indian had learned the Indians and learned that a white man might come into their territory get off a shot but then he'd have to stand up to reload his rifle and when he did that they could Ambush him the repeater rifle completely changed that kind of conflict and was quite stunning when

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when the Model 66 the Winchester Model 66 was first used in a skirmish and the blackfeet Indian came to call the gun the spirit guns because they couldn't imagine how quickly the gun was firing they couldn't understand or account for how it was shooting so quickly American Indians would soon adopt the Winchester repeater rifle including using it to defeat General Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn gun manufacturers made most of their money

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into the government Oliver Winchester had hoped that his revolutionary new gun would be a major seller during the Civil War that didn't happen he was unable to secure big army contracts few Civil War soldiers were issued the Winchester repeater rifle but it was so good that many soldiers went out and bought it with their own money it made it possible for one man to be

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almost like the equivalent of 16 soldiers so it was magnifying The Killing power of each individual Soldier or each individual they could now get off more shots more quickly as if there were 16 or 20 soldiers there were reports in the Civil War of Shooters who would spit on their rifles and they would Sizzle because there were so many shots gotten off so quickly so you weren't part of a true

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my name or regiment you were your own Army you were a host unto yourself in the language of the day Oliver Winchester leaned into this he rebranded to market the rifle is a symbol of individualism something every American needed Pamela Hague rights one answer to the question of why Americans love guns is simply that the gun industry invited us to there was much more of a sense

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of the gun as something that every real boy would want to have that was a phrase from a Winchester advertisement in the 1920s and they were associated much more with masculinity with the idea of a virile outdoor culture or sporting culture so emotions around guns grew increasingly strong from the 1800s into the 1900s in 1885 alone

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the Winchester repeating Arms company made one point eight million dollars the more successful the Winchester company became the more money Sarah Winchester inherited so a lot of the shares kind of trickled down to her over the decades I'm not sure how much precisely she inherited but her shares toward the end of her life her shares in a company alone in modern terms and modern value

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would have been close to half a billion and she spent an estimated five million building her house Sarah Winchester hired dozens of construction workers to work in shifts nearly 24 hours a day 7 days a week to keep working on our house making it bigger and more confusing until it was bigger than any house in the world neighbors and newspapers speculated about

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I'm happy to repeat the rumor that she was in there alone tormented by the ghosts of those who had been killed by the guns that made her Fortune

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we'll be right back

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it doesn't really make sense if you're if you're an onlooker right Janan bomi Winchester House historian because she moves out here she's wealthy she starts building this house that's all fine and good and then she never stops and pretty soon people like man is she ever going to stop and then you know somebody new comes to the valley that go look at that house she never stops building she just keeps building and building pretty soon you know it turns into this 24 hours a day 7 days a week she never stops building what's going on yeah

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that's how the story is grew because it didn't really make sense to people

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the Winchester Mystery House my friends it should be a very fun time I'm about to can tell you right now so what you guys names my name is Phoebe Phoebe all right Laurens a couple nice to meet you ladies nice to meet you all right there are a couple of different types of tours at what is now called the Winchester Mystery House we did not go on the ghost tour which requires a hard hat Lawrence poor and I opted for the private tour was that color an actor

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been working as a tour guide here for a few months

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he started the tour with one of the houses stranger features so right here we actually have a staircase that goes up to the ceiling oh look at that it doesn't go anywhere yeah it goes absolutely nowhere but the ceiling I always like to tell people on my tour is that I would not recommend going up those stairs in a hurry simply because you probably would not remember much after that but again I don't know exactly why Sarah would put this here maybe to confuse the alleged spirits that have it at the inside which I can get into a little bit more as we go

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the whole place is confusing a Staircase to Nowhere hallways leading to more hallways doors opening to walls

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in 1895 an article in the San Jose Daily News read it is said that the owner of the house believes that when it's entirely completed she will die this Superstition has resulted in the construction of a maze of Domes turrets and Towers covering territory enough for a castle

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mrs. Winchester was a very short woman 4 feet 10 inches tall she went up to about below my shoulder I myself am 6 feet tall now much to my chagrin of the house is custom built for a person that is if Sarah Sighs and we're actually going to walk up the stairs right here it's a perfect example of that it's 44 steps in length and it makes seven complete twists and turns but it only takes you nine feet above to your next stop so and you'll see what the way these stairs are oriented they're very very shallow so wow here we go oh look at this is the point

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War where are my guests typically start losing their mind so oh basically yeah they just they're just astounded at the stairs and then I remind them we're just getting started so

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so therefore T bedrooms in the house one of them one of the main theories why there are so many scams thought the house is according to Legend mrs. Winchester with sleep in a different bed room every night has a way to confuse the spirits that have it at the inside so yeah there's 40 bedrooms total throughout the Mansion so 40 bedrooms 13 bathrooms there are more than 10,000 Windows that's more than the Empire State Building

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in 1895 San Francisco Examiner piece described it as dreamlike and a bill will during spectacle this is Sarah's Seance room and standing inside of it is typically a very special privilege simply because this room is said to be strictly off-limits to everyone except for Sarah herself now according to Legend Sarah would come inside this room every single night she would communicate with the spirits of those who were killed by the Winchester rifles and they would then give her instructions on how to build the house

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with the gun was becoming more and more popular and when someone was murdered with a Winchester rifle newspapers would often say so sometimes speculating on whether it was the power of the Winchester that made a shot deadly some people wanted the Winchester taxed it was too easy to use and people were getting killed here's Pamela Hague it definitely made killing faster

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to some extent easier some of the advertisement said that you can get off several shots without even really hot really having to aim so there was a sense that these encounters are more destructive haphazard faster more lethal we don't know if Sarah Winchester followed these stories but it was said that our séance room was full of outfits that you would put on to try to communicate with the victims so we can never know what Sarah was seeing

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seeing or feeling in her own head and we can never know for certain what she actually believed to be true but it does seem that there are some tantalizing clues that she might have continually been revisiting this Legacy this Blood fortune and that she was haunted by it and that she built constantly in an effort to paste over repress cover-up redo the house certainly looks like the the product of a very restless conscience to me

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honestly I can't help thinking that she had a sense of humor because sometimes I'll look at things in this house and they just make me laugh I think she was having a good time I really do Jan and bomi Winchester House historian I think she was having fun and I think that she and her workers probably kind of brainstormed and bounced ideas off of each other so some of the ideas were probably hers

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some might have been her Architects or her her Carpenters I think there were some things that I look at and I just think okay this makes no sense at all this looks like busy work so maybe on rainy days or during the bad weather she wanted to keep them working and she'd say I want to go over here and build a few rooms you know and do whatever you want I'm not really sure but I think that she enjoyed the process she did say once that it was her Hobby House she was different I mean I think about it a woman in her time who

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control her own fortune controlled her own life she was suspect automatically because women didn't do that back then Sarah Winchester was often reported on and sometimes ridiculed in the papers she was described as obsessive reclusive guilt-stricken childless always wearing a black veil and gloves

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one article from 1911 called her home The Spook Palace The Spook Palace you know would soon be you know something about how death would soon visit the The Spook Palace or something like that the the article was full of nonsense I mean it just it hardly got anything right except her name and the name of her estate but people just you know they would make stuff up they would talk about things that they had heard elsewhere they would exaggerate it a little bit to make it sound more interesting and basically some

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ghost and called her hysterical they called her crazy they called her you know many different things but they all made her sound as if she were mentally Disturbed either because she was haunted by the ghosts of the victims of Winchester guns or her husband and daughter right yeah yeah and so they they couldn't understand her and they just made of her what they wanted and she would not engage with the media her some of her people have

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red letters that some of the people close to her written saying I'm not going to talk to these people they won't listen to me anyway you know I know people have tried to clear the record and they don't listen they don't want to hear the truth so I'm not going to talk to them as for the theory that Sarah was haunted by Winchester victims it may have been started by jealous neighbors angry about Sarah's money angry about her never-ending construction or her refusal to socialize it could have come

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from anti-gun activist or reporters looking for a story

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we sat down with Jan and Bo me and Sarah Winchester's dining room she's been in love with the house and she was a little girl her great uncle used to work on the grounds and for her the house has a warm feeling she wonders if Sarah's continuous construction was actually a form of therapy perhaps a way to feel connected to her late husband they'd spent years building and designing a home in New Haven together

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enjoyed architecture she did her own drafting she collected architecture journals and study manuals in the Grand Ballroom downstairs Sarah had to custom stained glass windows made there on either side of the fireplace both are inscribed with obscure Shakespeare quotes cryptic ones one is from troilus and Cressida it reads wide and clasp the tables of their thoughts

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it's

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the other comes from Richard II it reads these same thoughts people this little world

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Sarah Winchester continued working on her house for 38 years construction finally stopped on September 5th 1922 when she died of heart failure in her sleep she was 82 years old

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one of the last things that Zack showed us on the tour was a giant door right next to those stained glass windows when mrs. Winchester passed away this door was opened and behind it was revealed a giant safe almost the size of this door now upon that first layer you guys might be thinking that's why mrs. Winchester just kept all of her leftover money gold jewelry is those types of valuables but actually that giant first safe was opened inside of it was actually revealed a very valuable

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smaller second safe and inside that second safe was an even more valuable smaller third safe now at this point it's got to be something that is more valuable to mrs. Winchester than anything else in this world and that's indeed what it was there were only four items inside that third and final safe it was a lock of her daughter's hair a lock of her husband's hair and both of their obituary notices so yeah it's honestly it's a really tragic story honestly when I tell it a 1922 profile in the Oakland Tribune

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Moon reads the rasping of the saw has been replaced by the song of the hummingbird and the methodical tap tap of hammers has given way to quiet

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five months after Sarah Winchester died the house was open to the public more than 12 million people have visited to hear the story of this Widow haunted by guns to walk through the room and she built hoping to see a ghost before they leave they have a chance to visit the gift shop where you can buy a shot glass shaped like a shotgun show

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criminal is created by Lawrence poor and me needy Wilson is our senior producer audio mix by Rob buyers special thanks to Susanna Roberson Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at this is Criminal.com we've also

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at pictures of Sarah Winchester and the Winchester House

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follow us on Twitter and Facebook at criminal show Criminal is recorded in the Studio's of North Carolina public radio wnc we're proud member of radio topia from PRX a collection of the best podcasts around I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal

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