The Winchester House in San Jose. Sarah L. Winchester, widow of William Wirt Winchester, began construction on this house after she moved from Connecticut to San Jose in 1884 after she was consumed by depression and grief, caused by the deaths of her infant daughter and her husband. Her husband had been the president of the company that developed and manufactured the Winchester repeating rifle, the gun that was said to have “won the west.” Mrs. Winchester inherited a massive fortune from her husband’s company, but apparently she was plagued by the idea that she and her family were being haunted by the spirits of dead American Indians and Civil War soldiers that had perished due to the Winchester rifles. She came to the conclusion that she was being haunted after consulting a medium to help her deal with her grief. She was supposedly instructed by spirits to build a house, and to never cease its construction.
April 18, 2010