Crazy lady...

Today we went to the Winchester Mystery House, which is in San Jose – about 40 miles south of San Francisco. The last time I was there I was about sixteen years old… so it’s been a couple years. It was back when my older brother Bob lived in Sacramento, and we flew out to see him. (That was the trip we took with my cousins Steve and Kevin, and Steve made a sign that said “honk if your horn is broken” and we taped it to the window of our rented minivan. I was amazed by how many people actually honked… What’s even more amazing is that I still HAVE that sign back home in a scrapbook…) We’d picked up Bob in Sacramento and drove the hour-long drive to the San Francisco/San Jose area and spent the day here. I remember it like it was yesterday, because, as I said, I was sixteen years old. Which practically WAS yesterday…

Anyway, Rick and I took the tour of the Winchester house today, since he’d never been there before. If you don’t know the story of the Winchester house, let me see if I can sum it up: the original house was a nine-room farm house, and it was owned by Sarah Winchester, the widow of the president of the Winchester Rifle company. Mrs. Winchester was apparently a big fan of psychics and séances, and one of her psychic friends advised her that the spirits of all those people who’d been killed by Winchester rifles were very restless. Very restless indeed. And if Mrs. Winchester wanted to appease the spirits (after all, as the heiress of the Winchester rifle fortune, she was, in some vague, indirect way, responsible for sending them all to their place in the afterlife…) she would have to start adding on to her little farm house. In fact, she would have to continually build on to the house for the rest of her life. Which, I believe, turned out to be 38 years. So for 38 years straight – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – workers were building rooms and adding on to the house.

And they weren’t building in a way that made sense – most of the house seems to be random and haphazard, like it was constructed without any kind of plan whatsoever. And it probably was – when you have to continually add rooms and floors and cupboards and windows to a house – without stopping to consider what you’re doing – you’re bound to end up with some major mistakes. And in the Winchester house, the “mistakes” are pretty obvious – a staircase that goes nowhere, doors that open into walls, windows in the floor, strange nooks and crannies that have no rhyme or reason or purpose. It’s bizarre and more than a little creepy. In fact, one of the theories for all these “mistakes” in the house construction is that Mrs. Winchester was hoping to confuse the spirits that apparently haunted her for most of her life…

It seems to me that if you were some kind of heiress who felt responsible for people’s deaths, that you could find a better use for your money than making your own house bigger and bigger. What kind of crazy spirits are only appeased if you’re living in a bigger house? Does that make any sense at all?

Spirit #1: Can you believe what that Winchester lady did to us?

Spirit #2: Yeah, you know what she deserves? Another kitchen.

Spirit #1: Absolutely. Three or FOUR kitchens. And maybe a conservatory.

Spirit #2: And, like, a dozen extra bedrooms or something.

Spirit #1: She is SO gonna pay when she gets lost on her way to the bathroom…

I just think it would’ve made more sense to take all those millions of dollars she spent on the crazy house, and donated it to a hospital or something. Because then it could’ve been used to SAVE a few of those Winchester rifle victims. But perhaps Mrs. Winchester really DID know what she was doing – after all, no one would pay admission to see a plain old nine-bedroom farm house. So for all the money she SPENT on the house, I suppose even more has been EARNED by the house.

No word on whether any of that admission price is donated to the local hospital…

P.S. I do have some pictures, but I'm having trouble getting them to load right now... so I'll just post this and try to post pictures tomorrow. :)