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On September 5th, 1922, at 10:45 pm, Sarah Lockwood Winchester passed from this life to the next. The cause was heart failure. Popular mythology would have us believe that Sarah died at the hands of supernatural forces that she had unsuccessfully tried to placate, through unrelenting construction of a mansion which, in the fruit-laden tree orchards of the Santa Clara Valley, seemed oddly out of place to many nearby residents. For, as the myth goes, Sarah Winchester was the earthly servant of slain innocents who had turned against her, having been gunned down by the Winchester Repeating Rifle, "the gun that won the West". She was terrified, so the story goes, that she would be struck down, by these same angry spirits, if she ever stopped construction at the home, for it was a home to be built only for the spirits of those murdered by the rifle.
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| Sarah Winchester (Publlic Domain - Wikipedia) |
Sarah Winchester had gone West, as so many others before her, ostensibly to make a new start for herself. A life which had seemed so full of promise on the East Coast of the continent, had been shattered by tragedy - not once, but twice. It seems Sarah may have been wishing for new horizons which she could only find if she left everything behind and forged a new life - a new story - for herself.
For a brief moment in time, she lived a life only dreamed about by so many others. Born Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1839 in New Haven, Connecticut, Sarah came from a lineage which could trace its' origins close to the very beginnings of the state. She married William Wirt Winchester on September 30th of 1862. William was the son of Oliver Winchester, founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Oliver had been a New York city clothing manufacturer who had switched to making guns when he saw an opportunity and formed an investment group to purchase a struggling arms manufacturer in 1855. Over the ensuing years, Oliver built the business to a point where it was a successful manufacturer of repeating rifles and ammunition.
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| Advertisement for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company (public domain image - wikipedia) |
When Oliver died on December 11th, 1880, ownership of the company passed to his son William. One would think this passing of the legacy to the next generation would have been a time to look forward in anticipation of great things to come. Sadly, this was not the case, as William was not well and would not survive through the next year. He had been stricken with the dreaded tuberculosis, then an incurable disease which ravaged the body and left its' victims starved of breath until they died of suffocation. He died on March 7th, 1881 in New Haven, Connecticut. This was not the first tragedy to befall Sarah, as she and William had endured the loss of their first and only child, Annie, who died a little more than a month after being born, on July 25th, 1866.
While it may not have been any consolation to Sarah at the time, William's death meant that his fifty percent ownership of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company passed directly to her, along with a $20 million inheritance. This made her, at that time, one of the wealthiest women in the world.
Sarah travelled west in 1886, settling in San Jose, California, where she purchased an eight room, two-story farmhouse and ranch named Llanada Villa. While she would purchase other properties in California - including two homes in the exclusive community of Atherton and a houseboat in the waters off Burlingame - it was Llanada Villa which people couldn't help but notice. Over the course of 35 years, Sarah transformed the simple farmhouse into a rambling, quirky Victorian mansion, full of (literal) twists and turns that seemed to defy rational explanation.
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| Winchester House (public domain photo via Wikipedia) |
By the time of her death in 1922, the "Winchester place", as it was referred to in some of the local newspapers, was a massive structure, with a total of 102 rooms, surrounded by 161 acres of land. Crippled by arthritis in her later years, Sarah rarely spent time at the mansion, preferring her homes in the wealthy community of Atherton, south of San Francisco.
Many people assume that, because she was a wealthy woman, Sarah Winchester must have been a socialite. As it turns out, she was anything but outgoing, preferring to be left alone to tend to her business and family affairs privately, away from the soirees and bright lights of high society. Her reluctance to interact with those around her seems to have led to frustration and then to gossip, with many tall tales being told about the wealthy widow. The facts seem much less exciting than the gossip; Sarah Winchester, it appears, was simply a very wealthy elderly woman who was, as the years went by, increasingly frail and simply enjoyed her privacy.
A Transformation Begins - Roller Coasters and Home Tours
After her death, the "Winchester place" as it was called, consisting of the structures on the property and 161 acres was put up for sale at auction, on December 1st, 1922. The home and a pumping station on the property were appraised at a mere $5,000. Barnett & Phelps, a local San Jose real estate company, paid a total of $135,531.51 for the home and the surrounding property. By the fifteenth of the month, the sale had been finalized. The next day, it was reported in the Oakland Tribune that Barnett planned to resell the property to a group of investors, of which they were a part. This group included Barnett & Phelps, Hugh Hersman (democratic congressman), V.T. McCurdy (local pear grower), N. Zarevich (believed to be Nickolas Zarevich, local Santa Clara fruit tree grower), and W.P. Boulder.
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| Winchester House (photo courtesy of National Park Service) |
After the auction sale had been completed, the 161 acre parcel was divided into two separate parcels, one of which included the Winchester House. For the next three months, Barnett and Phelps worked to resell the (now) two properties yet again, in order that the investment group could realize a profit. The first parcel sold quickly. However, there were no takers for the old rambling house and the surrounding acreage. Then, in April of 1923, John and Mayme Brown, from the city of Alameda, came forward, expressing an interest in buying the property. Their plan was to move into the home and erect a "Backety-Back Scenic Railway" rollercoaster on the property. The Backety-Back, one of the first known wooden roller coasters, was the predecessor of the modern-day shuttle roller coaster. While the traditional roller coaster travelled in a complete circuit, the Backety-Back began it's trip going in one direction, reached a certain point on the path and then travelled backwards along the same path to where it had begun its' trip.
John and Mayme had come to Alameda from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where John had been employed in the building trades. He became fascinated with roller coasters, drawing inspiration from the coal cars which traversed iron tracks within the mines. John designed and built his first coaster, the Backety-Back, at the Crystal Beach Resort, located on the Canadian side of Lake Erie, near Niagara Falls. The coaster was a success and John and Mayme looked for other places where they might built yet another thrill ride. When he learned of the proposed sale of the Winchester House, he thought he had found a property that not only could be a home for a second Backety-Back, but could serve another purpose which could increase the return on their investment.
Along with the Backety-Back Scenic Roller Coaster, The Crystal Beach Resort had a House of Mystery, which was very popular with visitors. John and Mayme apparently saw the Winchester House as a place that could be turned into a similar attraction. The fact that many people in and around the city of San Jose already saw the house as a place of secrets and mystery didn't hurt their plans to turn it into a money-making spook house, either.
The only challenge standing in the way of the Brown's plans was that they did not have the money needed to make the purchase of the property. An arrangement was made with the Brown's so they could lease a small portion of the second parcel (the remaining larger portion having been subdivided yet again and sold) with an option to buy it. By the end of April 1923, John and Mayme Brown had themselves a new home. They also had a name for their new enterprise - the Winchester Amusement Company.
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| Backety-Back Scenic Railway (public domain image- Wikipedia) |
All seemed well until it was discovered that local restrictions would not allow for the erection of the Backety-Back Scenic Roller Coaster. This put the Brown's in a precarious situation. Their entire plan had been predicated on the ability to build the roller coaster and use the proceeds to purchase the Winchester House. As it turned out, local interest in the mysterious Winchester House was so great that John and Mayme at some point decided to abandon the idea of the roller coaster and to focus strictly on the house as the main attraction.
In order to market the house to a wider audience than just curious locals, the Brown's began a marketing campaign, which included invitations to local journalists. One of these reporters was columnist Ruth Amet with the San Jose Mercury Herald. It seems Ms. Amet was duly impressed with what she called, "the Winchester House", and she proceeded to write an article full of references to the mysterious nature of the home. She even made reference at one point to the book, "The Fall of the House of Usher", a popular short story by the famed author Edgar Allan Poe. The story, written as Gothic fiction, is full of dark themes - madness, isolation and the metaphysical, themes which, it seems, resonated with people who already had strange ideas about the mysterious Sarah Winchester.
Ms. Amet went on, in her column, to suggest ways the House could most effectively be toured. She thought candle-lit Halloween night tours would be most entertaining (these tours are now given every Halloween, with flashlights instead of candles). She even gave logistical advice, suggesting that the guests be started off on their tours "in foursomes at given intervals (just like a) golf tournament." Was this planned by the Brown's as a way to get an "impartial" endorsement of the House from a major local newspaper? While no one can say for sure, it certainly had an electrifying effect, as shortly thereafter the Winchester House was full of visitors, all clamoring to get a view of the mysterious Winchester House and learn the story (albeit a not necessarily very truthful one) of the widow Winchester.
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| Promotional photo pf Harry Houdini (public domain - Wikipedia) |
The Browns, who obviously had a knack for promotion, next invited the world-famous magician, Harry Houdini, to tour the home in 1924. Houdini, who thrilled spectators the world over with his amazing escapes and illusions, had a side hustle as a debunker of charlatans, people who claimed to have supernatural powers, but who were, in reality, simply hucksters trying to make a quick buck off of the gullible. Houdini was suitably impressed with the Winchester House and toured the property very close to Halloween night. He even claimed to have seen Sarah Winchester within the home, wearing various colored robes, each of which she would use with different spirits within the house. It is Houdini who is credited with calling it "The Mystery House".
By 1931, having created a profitable attraction, John and Mayme Brown were finally able to purchase the Winchester House. Sometime in the thirties, the attraction officially became the "Winchester Mystery House", appropriately attaching the word which so many people had already come to associate with the house, long before the death of Sarah Pardee Winchester. In June of 1945, John Brown passed away. Mayme Brown, who was the first tour guide in the home, remained in that position, giving daily tours of the home with her daughters.
Mayme Brown died in 1951.
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