![]() ![]() She named it Llanada Villa and immediately started construction. In 1885, Sarah moved to California and purchased an unfinished 8-room farmhouse the following year. She had no children or nearby relatives to support her or to grieve with. She’d lost one child, then in quick succession, her father-in-law and her husband. Sarah inherited an estimated $20 million, plus 50% of the company’s stock. Then, just a few months later, in 1881, William died of tuberculosis. In 1880, Oliver passed away, leaving his fortune to William. Sarah and William had a daughter, Annie, who died of a wasting disease at only five and a half weeks old in 1866. ![]() Oliver, at the time, owned the famous Winchester Repeating Firearms Company and had amassed quite a fortune. ![]() In 1862, Sarah Pardee married William Winchester, who was the only son of Oliver Winchester. The question is, “What possessed Sarah Winchester to create such an immense home?” The Winchester Mystery House is an architectural oddity and quite a spooky site. Rather, it’s what Sarah did with the house and why that draws people from all over the world.Īccording to its website, “The Winchester Mystery House has 160 rooms including 40 bedrooms, 40 staircases, 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, 10,000 window panes, 2,000 doors, 52 skylights, 47 fireplaces, three elevators, two basements, and just one shower.” It’s located in southwest San Jose, California, and was once owned by Sarah Winchester – heiress to the Winchester Firearms fortune.īut this isn’t why people are paying to get inside. Helen Mirren is amazing, obviously.The Winchester Mystery House is the product of over 35 years of construction on what began as an 8-room farmhouse. She must have been awfully lonely.Įdited to add lip service, because it would be crappy not to mention the movie, but I’m sure the movie’s fine, for what it is (hanging as much of a tapestry of fiction on this story as on The Conjuring). All of the stairs have been replaced with zig-zagging rows of “low-riser” stairs, so that the elderly Sarah Winchester could make her way through, windows that once faced the sun now face drawing rooms (or hallways, depending on what side you’re on), and it’s not zany so much as it is depressing. Here’s part of an old documentary on her and the house:ĭuring our honeymoon, we drove by the Winchester House and couldn’t help ourselves…and not to poop on anyone’s supernatural parade, but we mostly found it jarring how commercial it had become (the arcade was out of order, but you could order chicken fingers in the cafe still), nestled directly across from several hotels and a movie theater, and incredibly sad how obvious it was, as you move through it, that the house was the byproduct of an addled mind taken advantage of by unscrupulous contractors. Of course this is less a biopic, more a supernatural thriller, but Winchester’s story is truly interesting. She is building a prison, an asylum for hundreds of vengeful ghosts, and the most terrifying among them have a score to settle with the Winchesters… But Sarah is not building for herself, for her niece (Sarah Snook) or for the brilliant Doctor Eric Price (Jason Clarke) whom she has summoned to the house. To the outsider it looks like a monstrous monument to a disturbed woman’s madness. Built by Sarah Winchester, (Academy Award®-winner Helen Mirren) heiress to the Winchester fortune, it is a house that knows no end.Ĭonstructed in an incessant twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week mania for decades, it stands seven stories tall and contains hundreds of rooms. On an isolated stretch of land 50 miles outside of San Francisco sits the most haunted house in the world. Directed by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig (The Spierig Brothers) with a script by them and Tom Vaughan, Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built is being distributed by CBS Films and Lionsgate. The film, which I reported on last year, also stars Jason Clarke, Sarah Snook, Angus Sampson, and Finn Scicluna-O’Prey. Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built has a first trailer today. I’ve been in love with the Winchester Mystery House for many years so you can imagine my excitement over Helen Mirren playing Sarah Winchester in a new film. ![]()
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