Winchester Mansion: A widow built a house for over thirty years because a medium said she would die if she stopped

In San Jose, California, there is a house called the Winchester Mystery House. From the outside it looks unremarkable, but inside there are some 160 rooms, staircases leading straight up to the ceiling, doors that open onto empty air, and windows installed in the floor.

The owner was a widow named Sarah Winchester. Her husband belonged to the family that made Winchester rifles. In 1866, her daughter died a few months after birth, and in 1881 her husband died of illness. Legend has it that, overcome with grief, she consulted a medium in Boston. The medium told her: Your family's guns have killed so many people, and those spirits are haunting you. There is only one way: move west, build a house, and never stop construction. If you stop, you will die.

So, from 1884 until her death in 1922—a full thirty-eight years—workers were almost daily at work in the house, clanging away without cease. Every night she would sit alone in a special room, listening to the spirits "give their instructions," and the next day, according to the drawings she made, they would continue altering the house. By the end, the house had taken on every sort of haphazard form: doors leading to walls, staircases leading to ceilings, and the number "thirteen" everywhere—thirteen steps, thirteen windows, thirteen holes in the bathroom.

In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake struck, and several floors of the house collapsed. She was trapped in her bedroom. Afterwards, she sealed off the most severely damaged section and never went in again.

This is the version tour guides love to tell. But scholars who have studied the family's history say there is no direct evidence that the medium existed. She was quite wealthy and liked to tinker, treating house-building as a hobby, with gardening and design, and she even installed then-novel elevators and heating in the house. Many of the "strange" features were actually altered after the earthquake: staircases were broken by the quake, doors opened onto hanging spaces because the floor beyond had collapsed.

In September 1922, she died in her sleep at the age of eighty-three. In her will, she distributed her furniture and property among her relatives, but mentioned nothing about the house.

The mansion is now a tourist attraction, with queues all year round. Guides will lead you along a very winding route, saying it is to confuse the ghosts.

#Ghosts #网络转载 #鬼屋