EPISODE 36 - The Winchester Mystery House

She just has not changed at all . Oh , that's so cute , yeah .

Oh , and they were like , yeah , I'm going to eat , didn't even pay any petrol in . Idiot , turn straight round . We're back to the car . I started to put petrol in like a normal person .

actually important .

It's not like something that you know when you get bad news and you think , well , that's not something I can fix , that's not something that is going to be like an easy well , we'll just get a loan and pay it off . I can't throw money at it . Yeah , yeah , exactly , but yeah , so I'm sorry for you that that that happened with your car .

It's all right because , I'm glad you're safe and healthy and I'm glad that you're all together and that's it .

We didn't manage to get to where we was going , but the place that we was going to let us rebook the tickets for a different day , so we've not missed out . So we're going to try again in a few weeks . So it could have been well worse , but it was just . It was just shitting it . But yeah , I've got a random plan this time . Yeah , how about that ?

But you know , it doesn't really get well received when you say to people that yeah , I love watching anime , like I said 30 year old woman , Isn't it ? Oh no , Well , I'm not 30 and I see it . I've surrounded myself with the wrong people . Perhaps yes ?

You have to watch it in Japanese with English subtitles , because the Japanese are just so over the top , like dramatic , dramatic . It just makes it so much better . So , but Josie hates the sound of it on the telly because it's obviously in Japanese .

But yeah , I love Stephen King . I watch a lot of Stephen King If I've got work to do and that kind of thing , nine times out of 10, .

If I'm not watching some kind of 80s film , I will put on Stephen King's it film and the original one from the 90s and the two new ones , chapter one , chapter two , and I have probably seen them in the thousands , thousands of times .

I think we gave her a shout out a little while ago , but that was for a different reason . A shout out to Amy . Oh yeah , amy was previously recovering from a detached retina . I believe she's all fitting well now , but she donated to our . Buy me a coffee . Oh , yeah , so thank you , left us a lovely little review .

Honestly , when I was doing the editing , I was like why have I started doing that ?

Maybe I was like an old time policeman or something . Yeah , morning .

It's captivated the curiosity of everyone who sees it and , due to its unique design and fascinating story and , to be honest , the sheer size of it , it is beautiful , absolutely beautiful , and if you are watching on our YouTube channel , you'll be seeing it Now . You can't see it at the moment , sarah , but no . I'm not seeing it .

The house was built by the other Sarah , not you , I don't think , did you ? I didn't build a house ? No , okay , it was built by Sarah Lockwood Pardi Winchester , who was born in 1839 in New Haven , connecticut , and she was the wife of William Wirt Winchester , who was the son of Oliver Winchester .

And Oliver Winchester was the founder of the Winchester Repeating Rifle , oh yeah , and he was the owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and , that was said , the gun that won the West . Oliver died , leaving his vast wealth to the already seriously ill William . So when William died , sarah reportedly inherited $20 million plus 50% in the Winchester Arms stock .

Oh , okay , so she was loaded , I think .

was a severe form of malnutrition . Oh , I know . Sarah sold their house in Newhaven and purchased an 8 room farmhouse in San Jose . Soon after arriving there , sarah began some renovations on her beloved La Landa villa , later known as the Winchester Mystery House .

So the story goes that Sarah became convinced that the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifles were haunting her . In order to appease these spirits and find peace , sarah sought the advice of a medium who reportedly told her that she must constantly build and never stop constructing her home .

Apparently , this medium made contact with her husband and he her husband confirmed that she was indeed cursed and in grave danger . He told her that the house would have to be lavish and extravagant so as to attract good spirits .

Apparently , apparently , the more beautiful this house was , the better class of spirit , yeah , that upmarket spirit , yeah you tend not to get the . you know the ratty , angry , grisly spirits that you know are going to take you down when you're at the top of the stairs .

So the house had to be beautiful , the house must be large and she must never stop construction or the curse would take her down . They weren't his words , but you get the point . He said the curse had already taken her mother and father-in-law and him and their child , and now it was coming after her . I'll backtrack slightly .

During and particularly after the Civil War in 1865 , there was a peak in spiritualism because America was full of grieving mothers and wives who were desperate to contact their husband's brothers , father's sons who had all been lost at war . So they were kind of desperate to make contact with them .

So anyone that claimed to be a medium or anything like that , they were like in the right place at the right time .

Anyway , sarah was very spiritual and actually had a seance room built into the house .

Between 1890 and 1900 , the house grew into a seven-story giant . The house was massive . In 1906 , california was hit by a huge earthquake and the Winchester House sustained massive damage , losing most of the fourth floor and one of the huge towers .

Several whole wings of the house were lost and , apart from clearing some of the rubble , they weren't rebuilt but they were just left . Oh , so there's in parts of the house you can see outside a window or something you can see like half walls and things that are just left as they were . I suppose she thought I haven't got time for that . I'm building .

They need to build something else . Yes , 18 story multi-story car park . So I haven't got time to clear that wall .

But because of this earthquake and all the damage , sarah was really scared by it and she kind of took it as a message from the spirits that they were displeased with maybe like that part of the house or something and they'd kind of demolished it . They'd done it themselves . They were like , oh , she's not getting this message .

So the Winchester Mystery House was still an ongoing construction project , with workers tirelessly adding rooms , hallways , staircases and even doors . That just led to absolutely nowhere . The architectural oddities of the house are apparent , featuring numerous dead ends , secret passages and peculiar design elements such as staircases . That didn't go anywhere .

Yeah , they don't go anywhere , they go straight up . And then there's the ceiling . There's windows placed within interior walls , which I actually quite like . I'd like that . I think that's quite a cool design . I mean my sister's house in France . My parents put a window from one room to another room .

I mean , they've got like a balustrade round , yeah , but what's the point ? I understand it . From the downstairs room . You could look up and although if someone upstairs , you'd see right up this skirt .

There were also a lot of doors that when you opened them , there was like a huge drop and there's like there's a really famous one , and I'll put a picture up on YouTube , but there's a door that you can see from I think it's like the front of the house or it's certainly is outside the house anyway , and you can see this door .

So when you open it outside , it's a bizarre design . For whatever the reason , it's a bizarre design . The whole house was truly bizarre , which obviously then started leading to rumours , and there was a lot of rumours going around that Sarah's sanity was questionable .

But those that knew her said that she was a nice woman , she was very sensible and she was , you know , of sound mind . She was fine , there was nothing insane about her .

She would sleep in a different bedroom every night . I mean so they were all furnished as well , oh , decorated and unbelievably so , like , honestly , like you wouldn't believe and I'll , obviously I'll send you some pictures and I'll put some pictures up . But it's incredible , it's of the absolute highest standard . The decoration it's amazing .

It had six kitchens , 13 bathrooms and get this , multiple ballrooms , because you can't just have one ballroom .

Yeah Cool , I'd like to If I had a ballroom . I used to back in the 80s . I used to be able to do like a caterpillar oh yeah , it's known as the worm . The worm , that's it . But if I was still able to do that and I had a ballroom , I would do the caterpillar from one end all the way to the other .

Yeah , I wouldn't want to change it . Cinema room . It'd be wicked as a big cinema room , wouldn't it ? Yeah , 2000 beanbags ? Yeah , that'd be wicked . Oh , my God , I'm going to get onto that . Claire , build us a ballroom ? Yeah , so multiple ballrooms . Who was she ?

Along with its 10,000 windows , it had 2,000 doors , 52 skylights , 47 staircars I'll say that again 47 staircases , not just stairs .

She got them to make really small steps so that she could actually lift a tiny little Sarah legs up and get on there . So yeah , she was a nice person by all accounts . So just that shit crazy . Maybe . It had about 50 fireplaces and it had 17 chimneys , lord I know . And , like we said before , it's highly decorated .

When you said all furnished and decorated like to the highest , highest standard . It was also decorated with every style design in it . So it was decorated with Greek style , japanese decorator . And when I said decorations , it had like I'm talking about like gold wallpapers and Greek , japanese , persian , egyptian , you name it .

It had no one like theme , if you like . It had multiple , multiple stained glass windows . She ordered loads of them and some of them , like she didn't even have installed . They were like in a room , all stacked against each other . And these weren't just normal stained glass windows . They were like beveled crystal , real gold inlays and things like that .

It was fucking bonkers . It had great big pillars on the outside and on the inside , japanese style woodwork and wood framings , things like that , glass and gold statues and ornaments and , honestly , like the list goes on .

But to see it is to believe it . So I'll put a load of pictures up so you can have a look , because it's incredible . I'd love to live in that house . Whether it's haunted or not , I'd love to live in it . The build price in 1923 was $5 million . Today that's the equivalent of about $71 million . Geez , oh , I'm gonna get a surprise .

Maybe it's the air to the Winchester Mystery House . Oh , that'd be lovely . Oh , that'd be nice . I'll be right with that . On the 5th of September 1922 , sarah joined her husband and her daughter . It is said that the moment that she took her last breath , construction stopped .

Like literally when she was taking her last breath , you could still hear the hammering of construction and as soon as she took her last breath , the hammering ceased , tools went down and the workers very literally just stopped working and walked away to the point where tools were left right , where they were , nails were left half sticking out still .

Yeah , and wood was left half cut I don't mean drunk , I mean half sword . After she died in 1922 , the house was valued at just five grand . Why , I don't know .

Maybe partly , I think , one because of the rumours , two because a lot of the rooms and staircases and things like that were like , yeah , they were just like someone's going to pop out to get a glass of milk or something and they'll never be seen again . They'll just get lost in the house . It was sold at auction to Thomas Barnett for $135,531.50 .

But also a strange fact after she died there was something discovered behind one of the beautiful crafted wooden doors in the house . When you opened it there was a big , thick metal door . So they were like weird , but not weird for this house , because a lot of the doors you open it's a wall , yeah .

And you're like okay , and some obviously are a drop , open the door , death , open the door wall . So you never know what you're going to get . The whole house is like a box of chocolates , yeah . So when you open this , like what looked like a cupboard door , when you opened that there was a metal door .

When you opened that there was what looked like a big metal safe . And when you opened that safe door there was another little metal door . And when you opened that there was the safe , and in the safe there was this little metal box .

That was the only thing that was in there and obviously after going through all those multiple doors they thought , blimey , she was really protecting something of value in here . What are we going to find ? And there was a little metal box .

And when they opened the box they found just a little lock of her only daughter's hair and the obituaries of her husband and her daughter , and that was precious to her , but not to anybody else Very , very precious to her , and I think that says a lot about her character and who she was Harold of course , when she died , she was born in 1939 .

So , oh , she was well in her eighties then . Yeah , it stands as a testament to Sarah Winchester's belief in the supernatural and her desire to create this labyrinth to confuse the spirits that she believed were haunting her .

Others say that she tried to trap the spirits in parts of the house and others say that she was just eccentric and that's what she wanted to do . But in 1910 , sarah purchased a second home near her sister Isabel and her niece's house in Atherton , where she spent most of her time until her death in 1922 .

But it was also rumoured that she moved out of the Winchester house because she was trying to get away . She was still continuing construction and she would still go back there , but her moving out to a separate property was her trying to get away from the ghosts and things . But she couldn't get away from the curse , so she had to just keep building .

The Winchester Mystery House has become a popular tourist destination now , not only for its architectural intrigue but also for its rumoured ghostly presence . Many visitors have claimed to have witnessed paranormal activities within the house , such as unexplained footsteps , doors would mysteriously open and close .

There's been apparently apparitions that have appeared in various rooms and in 1924 , so two years after Sarah passed away famous magician Harry Houdini spent Halloween night in the house in an attempt to debunk all of the mysteries of the house . I don't know if you knew , but Harry Houdini , he believed that magic was like trickery .

It wasn't actually magic , it was just something that you learn and you were either good at it or you weren't . So he , in the 1920s , he would debunk a lot of magic shows and things like that and he was like I'll tell you exactly how you did that . You did this , isn't it ? So he'd been like fool us by pen and teller . Yes , exactly like that .

So he was a bit of a like . He would go to these people and labelled themselves as like mediums and things like that , and he would go there and he would debunk how they were doing these things .

So yeah , he actually went there in 1924 , but he was unable to debunk anything when he was there and apparently it said that he left with more questions than answers . So , who knows , he was unable to debunk anything .

Oh , I haven't been able to watch it yet , but I am planning to watch it whilst on holiday this coming week . I think it'd be a really good episode to cover in our Blam episodes . Yeah , we'll both watch it . Yeah , exactly .

Also , I'll let we'll put an advert on Facebook and TikTok and all the social media stuff that you do really well and I have no idea about and don't get involved with .

But I think we'll put in advance , we'll put when we're going to bring out a Blam episode and what episode we're going to kind of base it on , and if there's anything that we're going to watch or listen to or anything like that , we'll put that on there as well , so that our listeners our subscribers , should I say will be able to maybe watch Winchester as

well , and then , when we're talking about it , they'll know what we're talking about . And blam , blam , blam . They can . If they've seen it , they can message us and we'll include it as part of the episode , that kind of thing , yeah , anyway , today the house is open for events and tours .

You can wander the halls and the maze like corridors , and decide for yourself if the spirits are really roaming the maze created by Sarah Winchester . So why did I choose this story and why am I perplexed by it ? Well , I found that I was always toying with myself , and I still . I still am on whether Sarah Winchester was haunted by ghosts .

This was a woman who lived her whole life in a state of constant grief , you know , so sad . Was it someone that was haunted by ghosts or was it .

The house was state of the art and things like . She had a special watering system that actually didn't exist at that time but she had , like she had all these ideas and she was like I know what would work . Really well , we'll do this and we'll do this .

And then , you know , she had like this special metal floor designed in her greenhouse , or should I say one of the greenhouses , and it was like this metal floor and it had like wooden slats over the top that you could like lift up like a hatch and she'd put the plants on this metal floor , water them and then it would .

It was made at an angle so the water would all run away and then it would go into a drainage system and lead outside so that it wasn't all like soaking wet and everything with water and , like I say , things that just didn't exist .

She had a shower built with pipes , like in a shower room , and it had pipes going sort of all round it on the walls and she just instructed them to drill loads of holes in these pipes and then run like hot water through it and apparently women were expected to take baths , like showering wasn't a thing .

But she did this because she had arthritis and she struggled to get into a bath . So again , it's like she sat and thought about it and thought how can I clean myself and wash myself without struggling to get in and out of the bath ? The house also had a really sophisticated communication system made .

When you said about there's gonna be tubes and pipes everywhere , the whole thing was made with tubes and pipes and it went like under the whole house and it would come up in all these different rooms so that she could communicate with her servants anywhere in the house , which again , it's like it's something that didn't exist at that time .

But she was like I know what would work . I'll shout into this end of the pipe and then you'll be able to hear me over there . Let's try it . So she did a lot of that . She had things that were built and thought , yeah , that works really well .

We'll keep that and things that didn't work so well , she either ignored or it just kind of got changed halfway through and thought , eh no , you know . So maybe that's why my mum would have definitely built a house like that . If my mum was like a millionaire-esque , 100% , she would have built a house like that because she loved a quirky character house .

Actually , my house has got switches that do nothing . They've got , we've got windows . Have you seen the window at the top of our stairs , on the landing , there's a window . If you go up to the top of our stairs and you've got Jesse's bedroom door there , past Jesse's bedroom door , there's a window that goes nowhere . Oh really , yeah , so it's .

I've got a mini , mini , mini , mini , mini -winter , mini-mini Winchester house . If any of our listeners have been to the Winchester house , please , please , please , get in contact with us and get involved with the BLAM edition that we're gonna do on this Cause I don't know what I think . What do you think ?

I don't think she would have believed that she was cursed and I don't think that she would have believed that she had to build on her house to stop the curse from taking her , and I don't think she would have died any sooner .

My top three definitely , if not my most favorite , is Viola Davis . Yeah , I love her and I love everything she's been in . Octavia Spencer , I love her as well . Yeah , maggie Smith , dame Maggie Smith as she is now . But , yeah , helen Mirren , she's wicked .

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