BrainStuff Classics: Why Is the Winchester House Built So Strangely?

and complain about the inconvenience. But for Sarah Winchester, construction was a way of life. For thirty eight years, she had construction going twenty four hours a day at her home in San Jose, California. This was no ordinary construction job. Though. The house is an odd ball labyrinth of rooms that at one point reached seven stories. It's filled with weird things like stairs and doors that go nowhere. Not to mention the ghosts. Sarah Winchester didn't start out looking for

this kind of project. Born Sarah Party in eighteen thirty nine, she was one of the social stars of New Haven, Connecticut. Although she only stood four feet ten inches, she was known for her beauty and sparkling personality. In eighteen sixty two, Sarah married William Winchester, who was the heir of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The company had developed the Repeating rifle, a gun that was easy to reload and fired rapidly

at a rate of one shot every three seconds. The gun was used by Northern troops in the Civil War, and it was also known as the Gun that Won the West. The young couple started a family in eighteen sixty six, but their daughter Annie died in infancy and mister Winchester died of tuberculosis fifteen years later. Distraught over these losses, Missus Winchester visited a medium for spiritual guidance.

The medium told her that the Winchester family had been struck by a terrible curse and was haunted by the ghosts of all those killed by the Winchester rifle. Their spirits were seeking vengeance and the only way to appease them was to build a house for them. But the ghosts had another request that the house never be completed. Never stop building, the medium told Missus Winchester, or you will die. We can't know exactly how she interpreted this, advice.

She might have thought the spirits would get her if she stopped, or she might have seen the continuous construction as a path to eternal life. Missus Winchester headed west to build a home for herself and her ghosts. She bought a six room farmhouse on one hundred and sixty two acres in California and set to work. She served as her own architect, but it's possible that some ghosts

had a hand in designing the house as well. Every night, Missus Winchester would retreat to her seance room and receive instruction from the spirits on the progress of her house. The next morning should present her construction workers with hand drawn sketches of what was to be done. Sometimes it seemed she didn't care what she built, as long as she could hear the hammers of her crew. The crew might spend a month constructing a room, only to be

ordered to destroy it the next month. Because Missus Winchester paid well, no one disputed her instructions. Missus Winchester had inherited twenty million dollars and just less than half of the Winchester Repeat Arms Company stock. That left Missus Winchester with a daily income of about one thousand dollars to spend on her house. That's equal to about twenty five thousand dollars a day in today's money. But what of

those doors and stairs to nowhere? Doors may open onto walls or, in the case of a second story door to the outside, resulting in a big fall for anyone who might try to exit that way. A closet door on the second floor seance room opens onto a first floor sink several feet below. The stairs to nowhere are pretty much what they sound like. Stairs go up until they reach the ceiling, and then they just stop. These

might have a simple explanation. The stairs were likely part of the original house that Missus Winchester bought, and when she started adding on to the home, she covered up the stairs. Whether it was accidentally or on purpose. Missus Winchester usually covered up her mistakes by just continuing to build around them. Because she had no master plan for the house, her architectural ideas didn't always work out. Since she had no deadline for completion, she'd either tear down

the mistake or cover it up with something else. But the new stairs she built also zigzag back and forth, going around and around in circles, and most are only two inches about five centimeters tall. Some people think that these touches were designed to confuse the evil spirits that were haunting Missus Winchester. The height of the stairs served a very specific purpose, though she had very bad arthritis,

and these small stairs allowed her to get around. However, Missus Winchester might have deliberately installed some of the other weird touches, believing that ghosts would get lost on stairs that went nowhere or accidentally step out of door that went outside. If this sounds strange to you today, you're not alone. Even at the time that Missus Winchester was

building the house, she was regarded with suspicion. Some thought her in eccentric with too much money on her hands, and her home took on the nickname Mystery House not long after her death. Because Missus Winchester left no diary or other communication, we honestly have no idea what might have been going on in her mind. What we do have is her house, which is still open to tourists. Missus Winchester died in her sleep in nineteen twenty two, and the house was sold to a group of investors

who wanted to create a tourist attraction. To this day, it's hard to know exactly how many rooms are in the house because people keep getting lost when they try to count, but it's estimated that about one hundred and sixty rooms are in the home. It had reached seven stories by nineteen oh six, but the top three floors

collapsed after the nineteen oh six San Francisco earthquake. Some other famous numbers associated with the house include its forty seven fireplaces, seventeen chimneys, two basements, six kitchens, ten thousand window panes, and four hundred and sixty seven doorways. Despite these impressive numbers, there are only two mirrors. Missus Winchester thought the ghosts were afraid of their own reflection. Missus

Winchester also had an obsession with the number thirteen. Many things installed in the home feature thirteen of something a, thirteen window panes, thirteen wall panels, thirteen sections of flooring, thirteen stairs. In each staircase, there are thirteen bathrooms, sinks that have thirteen drain holes, and the sands room has thirteen coat hooks. And beyond the stairs and windows to nowhere,

there are other architectural oddities all over the house. Stair posts were installed upside down, and chimneys that served no purpose are all over the house. There are cabinets that are less than an inch deep that's about two and a half centimeters. Missus Winchester ordered a beautiful and outlangily expensive tiffany glass window, but after she installed it, a wooden wall was built behind it so that sunlight could

never shine through the panes. Missus Winchester was convinced that she lived with spirits, but are they still there today? Does the spirit of Missus Winchester herself walk the halls? Some psychics say yes, that upon visiting the house, they sent spirits wandering. Tour guides and visitors report mysterious footsteps, banging doors, and weird moving lights. Some see door knobs move by themselves and feel cold spots. It may be

something you'll have to determine for yourself. The Winchester Mystery House offers daily tours, and for those who want to be particularly spooked, flashlight tours are offered on Halloween and all fridays that fall on the thirteenth of the month. Today's episode is based on the article What's so Scary About the Winchester House story on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Molly Edmonds. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com, and it's produced by

Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.