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it's said that Sarah purposely designed this house with its stairs to the ceiling and doors to nowhere so as to
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confuse the spirits that meant to do her harm for 38 years the sounds of hammering never stopped as Sarah and her
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workers built room after room after room after room [Music] now it's your turn to experience the
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unique features of this house on Winchester Boulevard in San Jose California there's a giant Victorian
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Mansion the National Park Service describes it as a bizarre multi-gabled house it has 160 rooms quilted together over
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time it's been called the most haunted house in the world and it's said to be the inspiration for the Haunted Mansion
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at Disneyland it was built by a woman named Sarah Winchester in 1881 her husband William Winchester
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died of tuberculosis leaving her reported 20 million dollar Fortune there will be nearly 500 million dollars today
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and with the money she built a house some say it was designed to be haunted the story of the Winchester House is a
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story about gossip grief and a very famous gun I'm Phoebe judge this is criminal
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in 1862 Sarah Pardee married William Winchester in New Haven Connecticut she had repeated miscarriages for years and
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finally gave birth to a baby daughter Annie something was wrong with the baby she couldn't digest food and starve to
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death then Sarah's mother died then William died and Sarah Winchester reportedly went to
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a medium to try to communicate with them millions of Americans believed in spiritualism which is basically a
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conviction that the living can communicate with the dad and that the world's the living and the dead are
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overlaid so it wasn't at all unusual that Sarah might have been interested in that idea and it might have run its
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course as an idea except for the Civil War this is Pamela Hague she's the author of the Gunning of America
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business and the making of American Gun culture after the Civil War it gained momentum again because of the the
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heartache and tragedy in American families caused by the war and that's desire to be able to communicate with
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with the dead was was even more keen even the Lincolns tried to summon the spirit of their dead son in the White
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House when Sarah visited the medium she was told that people around her were dying
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as retribution for all the deaths caused by her family's gun business the Winchester repeating Arms Company
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now the biggest part of the legend holds she became increasingly convinced that she was being haunted by the spirits of
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everyone killed by Winchester rifles and that in order to make amends after her husband's death
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she was to move out to California and start building a house and keep building and never stop and this house was either
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to accommodate all of the ghosts killed by Winchester rifles or perhaps to appease them
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the Winchester rifle was Innovative for its time since it could consecutively shoot 15 bullets before reloading
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it was so popular that it was nicknamed the gun that won the West making the blue Chester family
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Sarah and her husband very rich indeed [Music] the Winchester repeating Arms Company
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was started by William Winchester's father Oliver Winchester Oliver Winchester owned a shirt factory
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before he switched to making and selling guns in 1857. it's said that Oliver Winchester had
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never even fired a gun until he started selling them and in 1860 the Winchester repeating
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Arms Company patented a rifle that changed the world not only because of what it could do but
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because of how people felt about it okay so the repeater rifle was a revolutionary new kind of gun design
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before the repeater rifle guns were laborious to load it's really difficult to load them it was hard to get off more
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than maybe one or two shots a minute the repeater rifle in a lot of ways was kind of the first semi-automatic rifle
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kind of began the whole era of the modern gun the repeater rifle was a huge Advance
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toward semi-automatic guns they were much more lethal and quite shocking to people who had
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never seen this sort of gun technology before it really changed Warfare it changed how Shooters thought about
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themselves and what they could they could do with their guns before this repeater rifle even a very skilled
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shooter could only fire two shots in a minute then they'd have to stop stand up and
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reload making themselves a target for example the blackfeet Indian had learned the Indians had learned that
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um 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
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when he did that they could Ambush him the repeater rifle completely changed that kind of conflict and was quite
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stunning when when the Model 66 the Winchester Model 66 was first used in a skirmish and the blackfeet Indian came
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to call the gun the spirit guns because they couldn't imagine how quickly the gun was firing they couldn't understand
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or account for how it was shooting so quickly American Indians would soon adopt the Winchester repeater rifle
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including using it to defeat General Custer in the Battle of Little Bighorn gun manufacturers made most of their
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money selling to the government Oliver Winchester had hoped that his revolutionary new gun would be a major
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seller during the Civil War that didn't happen he was unable to secure big army contracts
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phew Civil War soldiers were issued the Winchester repeater rifle but it was so good that many soldiers
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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
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or each individual they could now get off more shots more quickly as if there were 16 or 20 soldiers
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um there were reports in the Civil War of um Shooters who would spit on their rifles and they would Sizzle because
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there were so many shots gotten off so quickly so you weren't part of a troop anymore regiment you were your own Army
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you were a host unto yourself in the in the language of the day Oliver Winchester leaned into this he
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rebranded to market the rifle as a symbol of individualism something every American needed
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Pamela Hague writes one answer to the question of why Americans love guns is simply that the gun industry invited us
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to there was much more of a sense of the gun as something that every real boy would want to have that was a phrase
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from a Winchester advertisement in the 1920s and they were associated much more with masculinity with the idea of a
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viral outdoor culture or sporting culture so emotions around guns grew increasingly strong from the 1800s
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into the 1900s in 1885 alone the Winchester repeating Arms company made 1.8 million dollars
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the more successful the Winchester company became the more money Sarah Winchester inherited so a lot of the
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shares kind of trickled down to her over the decades I'm not sure how much precisely she
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inherited but her shares toward the end of her life her shares on the 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 5 million building her house
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Sarah Winchester hired dozens of construction workers to work in shifts nearly 24 hours a day seven days a week
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to keep working on her house making it bigger and more confusing until it was bigger than any house in the world
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neighbors and newspapers speculated about why happy to repeat the rumor that she was
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in there alone tormented by the ghosts of those who had been killed by the guns that made her
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Fortune [Music] it it doesn't really make sense if you're if you're an onlooker right Jan
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and bomi Winchester House historian feel she she moves out here she's wealthy she
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starts building this house that's all fine and good and then she never stops and pretty soon people like man is she
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ever gonna stop and then you know somebody new comes to the valley and they go look at that house she never
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stops building she just keeps building and building pretty soon you know it turns into this 24 hours a day seven
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days a week she never stops building what's going on um yeah that's how the stories grew
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because it didn't really make sense to people welcome to the Winchester Mystery House
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my friends um it should be a very fun time I'm about to can't have you right now so what are
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you guys names my name is Phoebe Phoebe all right Lauren Zach oh nice to meet you ladies nice to meet you all right so
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there are a couple of different types of tours at what is now called the Winchester Mystery House
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we did not go on the ghost tour which requires a hard hat Lauren Spore and I opted for the private
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tour was that guller an actor who's been working as a tour guide here for a few months
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we started the tour with one of The house's stranger features so right here we actually have a staircase that goes
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up to the ceiling oh look at that it doesn't go anywhere yeah yeah absolutely nowhere but the ceiling
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um I always like to tell people on my tours that I would not recommend going up the stairs in a hurry simply because
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you probably would not remember much after that but again I don't know exactly why Sarah would put this here
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maybe to confuse the alleged spirits that inhabited 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 always 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
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entirely completed she will die this Superstition has resulted in the construction of a maze of Domes turrets
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and Towers covering territory enough for a castle Mrs Winchester was a very short woman
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four feet ten inches tall she went up to about below my shoulder on myself I'm six feet tall now most of my chagrant of
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the house is custom built for a person that is of Sarah's size and we're actually going to walk up these stairs
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right here it's a perfect example of that it's 44 steps in length and it makes seven complete twists and turns
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but it only takes you nine feet above to your next stop so and you'll see with the way these stairs are oriented
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they're very very shallow so uh wow here we go oh look at this is the point of the tour where my guests typically start
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losing their minds so oh basically yeah they just they're just astounded a few stairs and then I remind
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them we're just getting started so so there are 40 bedrooms in the house one of the uh one of the main theories
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why there are still many scattered throughout the house is according to Legend Mrs Winchester would sleep in a
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different bedroom every night as a way to confuse the spirits that it habited the inside so yeah and there's 40
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bedrooms total throughout the Mansion so 40 bedrooms 13 bathrooms there are more
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than ten thousand Windows that's more than the Empire State Building in 1895 San Francisco Examiner piece
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described it as dreamlike and a bewildering spectacle this is Sarah's Seance room and standing inside of it is
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typically a very special privilege simply because this room is said to be strictly off limits to everyone except
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for Sarah herself now according to Legend Sarah would come inside this room every single night she would communicate
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with the spirits of those who were killed by the Winchester rifles and they would then give her instructions on how
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to build the house the gun was becoming more and more popular when someone was murdered with a
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Winchester rifle newspapers would often say so sometimes speculating on whether it was
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the power of the Winchester that made a shot deadly some people wanted the Winchester taxed
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it was too easy to use and people were getting killed here's Pamela Hague it it definitely made killing faster to some
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extent easier some of the advertisement said that you can get all several shots without even really really having to aim
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so there was a sense that these encounters are more destructive haphazard faster more lethal we don't
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know if Sarah Winchester followed these stories but it was said that her Seance room was
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full of outfits that she would put on to try to communicate with the victims so we can never know what Sarah was seeing
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or feeling in her own head and we can never know for certain what she actually believed to be true but it does seem
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that there are some tantalizing clues that she might have continually been revisiting this Legacy this Blood
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fortune and that she was haunted by it and that she built constantly in an effort to paste over repress cover up
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redo the house certainly looks like the the product of a very restless conscience to me
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[Music] honestly I can't help thinking that she had a sense of humor because sometimes
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I'll look at things in this house and they just make me laugh um I think she was having a good time I
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really do Jan and bowmy Winchester House historian I think she was having fun and
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I think that she and her workers probably um kind of brainstormed and bounced ideas off of each other so some of the
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ideas were probably hers some might have been her Architects or her Carpenters um I think there were some things that I
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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
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the bad weather she wanted to keep them working and she'd say I wanted to go over here and build a few rooms you know
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and and do whatever you want yeah I'm not really sure but I think that she enjoyed the process she did say once
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that it was her Hobby House she was different I mean I think about it a woman in her time who controlled
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her own fortune controlled her own life she was suspect automatically because women didn't do that back then
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Sarah Winchester reported on and sometimes ridiculed in the papers she was described as obsessive reclusive
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guilt-stricken childless always wearing a black veil and gloves one article from 1911 called her home
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The Spook Palace The Spook Palace you know would soon be you know something about how death would soon visit the The
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Spook Palace or something like that the the article was full of nonsense I mean it just it hardly got anything right
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except her name in the name of her estate but people just you know they would make stuff up
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um they would talk about things that they had heard elsewhere they would exaggerate it a little bit to make it
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sound more interesting and basically some articles called her hysterical they called her crazy they called her
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um you know many different things but they all made her sound as if she were mentally Disturbed
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either because she was haunted by the ghosts of the victims of Winchester guns or her husband and daughter
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right yeah yeah and so they they couldn't understand her and they just made of her what they wanted and she
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would not engage with the media her some of her people have read letters that some of the people close to her had
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written saying I I'm not going to talk to these people they won't listen to me anyway you know I know people have tried
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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
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as for the theory that Sarah was haunted by Winchester victims it may have been started by jealous
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neighbors angry about Sarah's money angry about her never-ending construction or her refusal to socialize
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it could have come from anti-gun activists or reporters looking for a story we sat down with Jan and bomi in Sarah
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Winchester's dining room she's been in love with the house since she was a little girl her great uncle
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used to work on the grounds and for her the house has a warm feeling she wonders if Sarah's continuous
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construction was actually a form of therapy perhaps a way to feel connected to her late husband
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they'd spent years building and designing a home in New Haven together she enjoyed architecture she did her own
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drafting she collected architecture journals and studied manuals in the Grand Ballroom downstairs Sarah
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had two custom stained glass windows made they're on either side of the fireplace
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both are inscribed with obscure Shakespeare quotes cryptic ones one is from troilus and Cressida it
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reads wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts the other comes from Richard II it reads
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these same thoughts people this little world Sarah Winchester continued working on
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her house for 38 years construction finally stopped on September 5th 1922 when she died of
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heart failure in her sleep she was 82 years old one of the last things that Zach showed
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us on the tour was a giant door right next to those stained glass windows when Mrs Winchester passed away this
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door was opened and behind it was revealed a giant safe almost the size of this door now upon that first layer you
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guys might be thinking that's where Mrs Winchester just kept all of her leftover
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money gold jewelries those types of valuables but actually that giant first safe was opened inside of it was
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actually revealed a very valuable smaller second safe and inside that second safe was an even more valuable
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smaller third safe now at this point it's got to be something that is more valuable to Mrs Winchester than anything
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else in this world and that's indeed what it was there were only four items inside that third and final safe it was
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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
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it's a really tragic story honestly when I tell it 22 profile in the Oakland Tribune reads
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the rasping of the saw has been replaced by the song of the hummingbird and the methodical tap tap of hammers has given
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way to quiet five months after Sarah Winchester died the house was open to the public more
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than 12 million people have visited to hear the story of this Widow haunted by guns to walk through the rooms she
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built hoping to see a ghost before they leave they have a chance to visit the gift shop
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where you can buy a shot glass shape like a shotgun shell [Music] criminal is created by Lauren Spore and
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me Nadia Wilson is our senior producer audiomix by Rob Byers special thanks to Susanna Roberson
00:21:31
Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at this
00:21:37
criminal.com where we've also got 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 studios of
00:21:50
North Carolina public radio wunc we're a proud member of radiotopia from PRX a collection of the best
00:21:58
podcasts around I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal foreign [Music]