July 8, 2025 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the mansion she built is world-renowned, as much for its many design curiosities and innovations as for its reported paranormal activity. Here to tell the story is Ashley Hlebinsky, former co-host of Discovery Channel’s Master of Arms, former curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum, and president of The Gun Code, LLC.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Sarah Winchester was
a woman of independence, drive and courage who lives on
in legend, and the mansion she built is world renowned
as much for the many design curiosities and innovation as
it is for the reported paranormal activity. Here to separate
(00:31):
fact from fiction is Ashley Lebinski. Ashley is the former
co host of the Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the
former Curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum, and
President of the Gun Code LLC. Here's Ashley today.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I want to talk about a brilliant, charitable woman, but
most people don't know her actual history because her name
is Sarah Winchester. If you're not familiar with that name,
it is kind of an ominous history because a lot
of people associate her with her house out of San Jose, California,
(01:11):
and it's been featured in pretty much every ghost show
that's ever happened. And it was also in a movie
that Helen Miiran did by the Winchester name, which is
a loosely based, not historically accurate horror movie. Although I
did like the horror movie Missus Winchester Wild in Construction,
(01:33):
the spirit killed by the rifle. We lock them away.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
This spirit is a how we've not.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Seen before, but it's not It doesn't do justice to
who Sarah Winchester was, So I'm not going to focus
on that right now. Let's just talk about who she
was and where she came from and how she got
to have this crazy.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Rumor about her life.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Sarah was born and new Haven, Connecticut, and she actually
came from a family of engineers and designers. Her father
was a carriage maker and she kind of took that
knowledge that she learned and developed those types of interest herself.
She was considered a savant. She was very well educated.
She spoke several languages. I think she spoke French and Turkish.
(02:21):
She was a composer. So she's this brilliant woman. She's
known as the Belle of new Haven. And she of
course meets another very famous family out of new Haven
in the eighteen hundreds, the latter half of the eighteen hundreds,
and that family is the Winchester family.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
If you're not familiar with the Winchester.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Family, they are known for the quote unquote gun that
won the West, although that was their own marketing slogan
that they did, but they're most well known for their
lever action repeating rifle, and that was developed based on
several other designs, but the first one that was really
called a Winchester was eighteen sixty six, and that kind
of idea, that image of the company really took off
(03:02):
and it plays a very important role in Sarah's life,
especially later on.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Sarah meets the family, and.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
You know, as a socialite family and a socialite family.
She meets Oliver Winchester's son, William Wirt Winchester, and they
fall in love and they get married, although the beginning
of their marriage and the length of their marriage is
really marred by tragedy. Their first daughter, and Party, which
was also Sarah's maiden name, she passed away a few
weeks after she was born. Then the husband and wife
(03:30):
they decided, you know what, we're not going to have
any more children. The tragedy hit them so hard that
they didn't have any more kids. And the original plan
for the Winchester family was that when Oliver stepped down,
his son would take over the company, and he did
very briefly after his father died, but William Wirt Winchester
actually passed away fifteen years after their daughter died, and
(03:52):
he died from tuberculosis. They didn't know what it was originally,
but they were able to pinpoint that it was tuberculosis
that killed him. So Sarah is left alone in New Haven, Connecticut,
and she's got a great reputation, I mean, everybody loves
her there, but she's lonely. And he passes away and
she basically inherits a major fortune immediately. She inherited seven
(04:16):
hundred and seventy seven shares of Winchester essentially overnight, and
that basically paid out an annual salary of forty three,
three hundred and thirty five dollars, which may not sound
like a lot of money, but when we're talking the
eighteen eighties, that is a lot of money, and so
she has instant wealth. She also inherits a lot of
shares from like four or five other companies that the
(04:36):
Winchester family were involved in that weren't related to firearms,
and she was set to inherit two thousand, seven hundred
and seventy seven more.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Shares after her mother in law would pass away.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So a lot of people speculate that during this time
she was worth twenty million dollars. So she's a very,
very wealthy woman and she is trying to figure out
what she's going.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
To do with her life. She doesn't really want to
stay in.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
New Haven, and there's just too many ghosts there, and
she decides that it's time to move on. She suffers
from rheumatism and arthrite. It's really bad. There's a belief
that she was recommended by her doctor to go out
to California where the climate was a lot more amenable
to her medical problems. So she decides that she's going
to move and she moves there in eighteen eighty five,
(05:18):
and she already has family out there, and she buys
a two story farmhouse in San Jose, California, and she
basically this is the story. This is the start of
how her legend becomes this rumor. She buys this farmhouse,
she actually calls it Lenata Villa, and the intention for
her is to build this manner that she hopes her
(05:40):
family will come and live in.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
But what happens here is she moves to California.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
She's a widow, so she is a single, wealthy woman
and she is now in a new world of wealthy
people and socialites, and she's kind of at this point,
she's moved away from that kind of being out in
the public sphere because she is still very much sad
over what happened to her life. She is looking forward
(06:08):
and she's hoping that she can develop this new life
with her family out in California. So she starts building
and the house gets very, very large, and if you've
ever seen it, it is quite peculiar looking. And it
turns into a seven story Victorian mansion between eighteen ninety
and nineteen hundred, and the house constantly changes, and she
(06:30):
constantly changes the house, and she hires all kinds of people.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
She actually pays them more than the going rate of
the time.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
She's got construction workers, she's got people that are cleaning
the house, she's got designers, and she's working to develop
this house all on her own. She's not an architect,
she admits she's not an architect, but you know what,
she's brilliant, so why not. And so she starts building
this house. She employs all of these people. And what's
really neat about this part of the history is that
in eighteen ninety three, the nation is struck by a
(06:59):
major depression. So the Great Depression of eighteen ninety three hits.
But she continued to employ all of these people during
the Great Depression, and so there's some speculation that perhaps
she was doing a lot of that and constantly changing
because she was trying to help out families that would
be unemployed or very much suffering during that time. I've
got a great quote that she wrote in a letter.
(07:21):
She was constantly in contact with Jenny Bennett, who was
the daughter of Oliver Winchester, and so she was constantly writing,
and she wrote for one reason and another. Since I
started in to make alterations in my house, I've not
been able to get anything.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Like settled in the first place.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
It is infinitely more difficult to get work done than
it would be in New Haven.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
And I am.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Constantly trying to make an upheaval for some reason. So
she was constantly trying to change things. Now during this
time period, there's also this kind of belief that she
was very lonely. But in eighteen eighty eight, her niece
Mary and Daisy Merriman actually moves in with her and
she lives there for fifteen years, and so she has
people there, and she's communicating with people and she's talking
(08:03):
to her family and she's visiting her family. And the
other thing that's neat about the house and the historic
site that's there. Now they brag about this all the time,
and everybody wants to brag about this is the house
was insanely advanced for its time. So she had early
gas lights in the house in the eighteen eighties, and
that is incredibly in advance for its time. She had
(08:25):
indoor plumbing, she had fauceted showers. She had this contraption
in the house called an nunciator, so it's basically like
a communication system where she could talk through this system
and talk to her staff at a different part of
the house. So you think about, you know, all of
the ways that we communicate with people today, it's pretty
interesting that she had a nineteenth century version of that.
(08:48):
There's also some belief that it might have been one
of the first homes to have wool as insulation.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
And one story that I love.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Is that there's this belief because a lot of these
things were also her inventions. Possibly Sarah Winchester invented laundry
tubs with the soap trees and the washboards attached.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
They were in the house and the reason.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Why people speculate that maybe she was one of the
first ones was that later in the twentieth century there
was someone that took out a patent for this type
of tub, and there was a legal challenge, and in
the courtroom they actually used the designs from Sarah Winchester
to prove that she had already.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Been doing this.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
So it's a good little anecdote of just kind of
how ahead of the time she was and how ahead
of the time the house was.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And you've been listening to Ashley Lebinski tell the story
of Sarah Winchester and Sarah Winchester's home, which again is
featured in almost any paranormal show or ghost show you've
ever seen, and more when we come back, more of
the story of Sarah Winchester and her house here on
our American story and we continue with our American stories
(10:12):
and the story of Firearms. Heiress our Winchester and her home.
She was a widow from Connecticut who arrived in San
Jose in eighteen eighty six and heiress the Winchester fortune.
She began building her mansion, which was fifty years at
least ahead of its time. Let's pick up or we
(10:32):
last left off with Ashley Lipinski.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
The other thing that happens with the house is that
she starts changing things, and there's lots of reasons why
she starts changing things. One of the biggest impacts is
the San Francisco earthquake that happens at the turn of
the twentieth century, and the seventh floor mansion all of
a sudden.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Loses several floors.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
But by nineteen ten, she actually starts to spend a
lot of time outside of the house. She's already traveling
and seeing her family and everything during this time, but
in nineteen ten, she actually buys a house in Atherton,
and she also owns a houseboat in San Francisco, and
so she is spending a lot of her time during
this So this idea that she was constantly there and
alone in her villa, you know, isn't true. There are
(11:16):
stories of kids in the community garden that she had,
you know, people having picnics. There was a lot of
life in the house. She had events in the house,
she had plays in the house.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
She just wasn't necessarily interested in getting involved in a
lot of the social strata.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Of the community.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
And so early on you've got a rich woman, a
brilliant woman in the nineteenth century who moves out to
a place where.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
People don't realize she's got family.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
And so this story starts to be constructed that Sarah
is haunted by the ghosts killed by Winchester rifles. The
story starts to take off in the local community, and
the entire story goes that she visited a Boston medium,
a well known Boston medium, and he told her that
(12:02):
she was being haunted, that her family was cursed, and
that she had to, you know, go out to California
and continuously build this house.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
And not just build a house, but that the house
was you.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Know, informed, the house was changed because she was getting
information to build a house by the spirits.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
There was a lot of speculation that she was a spiritualist,
which was popular during that time, a lot more popular
during that time than in other time periods, and that
she had these seance rooms where she would communicate with
the dead or believe she communicated with the dead, and.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Obviously that's a it's quite the story, right.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
So it takes off, and the rumors continue, and Sarah
largely ignores the rumors, but it starts to become really
overbearing when the newspapers start publishing the stories. So you know,
now it's not just speculation, it's not just this, it's
not just that. You know, now there is you know,
hard writing that is saying that this story is true.
And I want to qualify that with the fact that
(12:59):
there has been primary source research that's been done and
there hasn't been evidence that she went to see this medium.
And also at the time of all of this happening, Winchester, Yes,
they've got this image of being a Western firearm but
they're not really engaged in a lot of military contracts.
You know, they really take off as a military company
in World War One, but it's not to the extent
(13:21):
that a lot of people kind of the presentism of it.
You look back and you see it as a specific company.
And so this story takes off, and it follows her
her whole life, and there is evidence that people were
trying to debunk it, that her family was trying to
debunk it, that her workers were trying to debunk it.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
And I did find an article that.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Was published a few years before she died that tried
to kind of dispel a lot of these rumors. And
in it, part of the quote says, perhaps not more
than a dozen people in California know that Missus Winchester
is a musician with a genius for composition, that she
is a remarkable businesswoman, that she is a French scholar,
(14:00):
that her philanthropies alone would make her a national figure
if they were known. This quote goes on and on
and onto sing her praises, and so this person is
saying she is a national treasure and that the people
of California do not.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Recognize what she has done.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
And one of the things that she has done at
this point is she's become very charitable. And one of
her the charities that she kind of takes on is
back in New Haven. So she was again very struck
by the death of her husband, the death of her daughter,
and so she actually donated one million, three hundred and
twenty five thousand dollars to a New Haven hospital to
(14:36):
build a tuberculosis center in honor of her husband. And
that actually still exists. It's changed over the years, but
it does still exist as a chess clinic that bears
the Winchester name. So you have this really interesting spectrum
of how people perceive Sarah you've got new Haven, which
(14:56):
sees her as you know, the bell of the tw still,
and you know, she's charitable and she's giving, and she's
you know, still a part of the Winchester you know,
legacy and name. Although she was not actively involved, you know,
with the company, she was still involved and engaged. Was
she just wasn't an engineer for the company. She wasn't
running the business, but she was the major shareholder. But
(15:18):
then you got California, where she, at her death has
this house that, yes, is rather eccentric at the at
the time of her death, it has one hundred and
sixty rooms, two thousand doors, ten thousand windows, forty seven stairways,
forty seven fireplaces, thirteen bathrooms, and six kitchens. Now, not
(15:38):
only is that incredibly large, the other thing is that
it's a lap of luxury when you look at like
she spared no expense for the things that she put
in the house. And one of the things that people
always mention is the tiffany stained glass that was in
her house, which is gorgeous. And so she passes away
in nineteen twenty two and the story kind.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Of really takes off.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
The house is bought out of the estate sale and
it is bought by John and Mamie Brown, who have
a background in amusement parks, and they actually want to
initially install a roller coaster on the property, but that
gets ultimately poo pood, So they open the house for
public tours really quickly after she passes away, and there's
(16:22):
a lot of mystical things that are centered around the house.
After that, Harry Houdini visits the house and claims that
Sarah came to him during that time. There's also stories
that Walt Disney was inspired by the house.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Although it doesn't look like and wasn't.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
The actual model for the Haunted Mansion, there's beliefs that
there was some connection there and inspiration that he visited
the house, and so this really just continues and grows,
and people are fascinated by the macab It's really an
interesting story, and not a lot of primary source research
is done on it right away, and so it took
(16:59):
out a life of its own, and now every literally
every ghost show, like growing up, I believe the story
completely because every ghost show I've ever seen has gone
to the house, and rightly so it's definitely an interesting house.
And if the story of Sarah being haunted isn't true.
You know, they're not saying that there aren't some spirits
up in.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
There, right.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
The Winchester House is perhaps the most bizarre and mysterious
mansion in the United States. It's warren of hidden passageways,
stairways that lead nowhere, and doors that open into mid air.
But it's also reputed to be a haunted hotbed of
paranormal phenomena.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
And so the house just kind of took out of
a life of its own. And now what's.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Disappointing to me is that that story is more important
than a brilliant, inventive businesswoman way ahead of her time
in the nineteenth century, And that, to me is the
real tragedy of her story. And you know what, sometimes
I think maybe if she was a man in that
ghost story was how it wouldn't be as interesting. You know,
(18:02):
it becomes eccentric and fascinating when a wealthy man has
those perspectives. And I hope when people go and visit
it they get to see all of her great inventions,
because the house really does tell about her inventions, because
they're quite proud of them. So when you go to
the house, definitely think about a woman who had quite
the life and had a lot to say, and we
(18:22):
should continue to talk about her accomplishments instead of telling
a ghost story.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler,
and a special thanks as always to Ashley Levinski for
her excellent storytelling and what a story she told about
not only a remarkable woman, but one in the end
whose story got co opted by well the paranormal crowd,
and whether you're part of it or not, that's what happened.
(18:49):
And all of her innovation, all of her intuitive genius,
especially in the area of home innovation, was all lost,
including her being a great investor and philanthropy. The story
of Sarah Winchester and her home here on our American
Story
And we continue with our American stories. Sarah Winchester was
a woman of independence, drive and courage who lives on
in legend, and the mansion she built is world renowned
as much for the many design curiosities and innovation as
it is for the reported paranormal activity. Here to separate
(00:31):
fact from fiction is Ashley Lebinski. Ashley is the former
co host of the Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the
former Curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum, and
President of the Gun Code LLC. Here's Ashley today.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I want to talk about a brilliant, charitable woman, but
most people don't know her actual history because her name
is Sarah Winchester. If you're not familiar with that name,
it is kind of an ominous history because a lot
of people associate her with her house out of San Jose, California,
(01:11):
and it's been featured in pretty much every ghost show
that's ever happened. And it was also in a movie
that Helen Miiran did by the Winchester name, which is
a loosely based, not historically accurate horror movie. Although I
did like the horror movie Missus Winchester Wild in Construction,
(01:33):
the spirit killed by the rifle. We lock them away.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
This spirit is a how we've not.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Seen before, but it's not It doesn't do justice to
who Sarah Winchester was, So I'm not going to focus
on that right now. Let's just talk about who she
was and where she came from and how she got
to have this crazy.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Rumor about her life.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Sarah was born and new Haven, Connecticut, and she actually
came from a family of engineers and designers. Her father
was a carriage maker and she kind of took that
knowledge that she learned and developed those types of interest herself.
She was considered a savant. She was very well educated.
She spoke several languages. I think she spoke French and Turkish.
(02:21):
She was a composer. So she's this brilliant woman. She's
known as the Belle of new Haven. And she of
course meets another very famous family out of new Haven
in the eighteen hundreds, the latter half of the eighteen hundreds,
and that family is the Winchester family.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
If you're not familiar with the Winchester.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Family, they are known for the quote unquote gun that
won the West, although that was their own marketing slogan
that they did, but they're most well known for their
lever action repeating rifle, and that was developed based on
several other designs, but the first one that was really
called a Winchester was eighteen sixty six, and that kind
of idea, that image of the company really took off
(03:02):
and it plays a very important role in Sarah's life,
especially later on.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Sarah meets the family, and.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
You know, as a socialite family and a socialite family.
She meets Oliver Winchester's son, William Wirt Winchester, and they
fall in love and they get married, although the beginning
of their marriage and the length of their marriage is
really marred by tragedy. Their first daughter, and Party, which
was also Sarah's maiden name, she passed away a few
weeks after she was born. Then the husband and wife
(03:30):
they decided, you know what, we're not going to have
any more children. The tragedy hit them so hard that
they didn't have any more kids. And the original plan
for the Winchester family was that when Oliver stepped down,
his son would take over the company, and he did
very briefly after his father died, but William Wirt Winchester
actually passed away fifteen years after their daughter died, and
(03:52):
he died from tuberculosis. They didn't know what it was originally,
but they were able to pinpoint that it was tuberculosis
that killed him. So Sarah is left alone in New Haven, Connecticut,
and she's got a great reputation, I mean, everybody loves
her there, but she's lonely. And he passes away and
she basically inherits a major fortune immediately. She inherited seven
(04:16):
hundred and seventy seven shares of Winchester essentially overnight, and
that basically paid out an annual salary of forty three,
three hundred and thirty five dollars, which may not sound
like a lot of money, but when we're talking the
eighteen eighties, that is a lot of money, and so
she has instant wealth. She also inherits a lot of
shares from like four or five other companies that the
(04:36):
Winchester family were involved in that weren't related to firearms,
and she was set to inherit two thousand, seven hundred
and seventy seven more.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Shares after her mother in law would pass away.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So a lot of people speculate that during this time
she was worth twenty million dollars. So she's a very,
very wealthy woman and she is trying to figure out
what she's going.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
To do with her life. She doesn't really want to
stay in.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
New Haven, and there's just too many ghosts there, and
she decides that it's time to move on. She suffers
from rheumatism and arthrite. It's really bad. There's a belief
that she was recommended by her doctor to go out
to California where the climate was a lot more amenable
to her medical problems. So she decides that she's going
to move and she moves there in eighteen eighty five,
(05:18):
and she already has family out there, and she buys
a two story farmhouse in San Jose, California, and she
basically this is the story. This is the start of
how her legend becomes this rumor. She buys this farmhouse,
she actually calls it Lenata Villa, and the intention for
her is to build this manner that she hopes her
(05:40):
family will come and live in.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
But what happens here is she moves to California.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
She's a widow, so she is a single, wealthy woman
and she is now in a new world of wealthy
people and socialites, and she's kind of at this point,
she's moved away from that kind of being out in
the public sphere because she is still very much sad
over what happened to her life. She is looking forward
(06:08):
and she's hoping that she can develop this new life
with her family out in California. So she starts building
and the house gets very, very large, and if you've
ever seen it, it is quite peculiar looking. And it
turns into a seven story Victorian mansion between eighteen ninety
and nineteen hundred, and the house constantly changes, and she
(06:30):
constantly changes the house, and she hires all kinds of people.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
She actually pays them more than the going rate of
the time.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
She's got construction workers, she's got people that are cleaning
the house, she's got designers, and she's working to develop
this house all on her own. She's not an architect,
she admits she's not an architect, but you know what,
she's brilliant, so why not. And so she starts building
this house. She employs all of these people. And what's
really neat about this part of the history is that
in eighteen ninety three, the nation is struck by a
(06:59):
major depression. So the Great Depression of eighteen ninety three hits.
But she continued to employ all of these people during
the Great Depression, and so there's some speculation that perhaps
she was doing a lot of that and constantly changing
because she was trying to help out families that would
be unemployed or very much suffering during that time. I've
got a great quote that she wrote in a letter.
(07:21):
She was constantly in contact with Jenny Bennett, who was
the daughter of Oliver Winchester, and so she was constantly writing,
and she wrote for one reason and another. Since I
started in to make alterations in my house, I've not
been able to get anything.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Like settled in the first place.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
It is infinitely more difficult to get work done than
it would be in New Haven.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
And I am.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Constantly trying to make an upheaval for some reason. So
she was constantly trying to change things. Now during this
time period, there's also this kind of belief that she
was very lonely. But in eighteen eighty eight, her niece
Mary and Daisy Merriman actually moves in with her and
she lives there for fifteen years, and so she has
people there, and she's communicating with people and she's talking
(08:03):
to her family and she's visiting her family. And the
other thing that's neat about the house and the historic
site that's there. Now they brag about this all the time,
and everybody wants to brag about this is the house
was insanely advanced for its time. So she had early
gas lights in the house in the eighteen eighties, and
that is incredibly in advance for its time. She had
(08:25):
indoor plumbing, she had fauceted showers. She had this contraption
in the house called an nunciator, so it's basically like
a communication system where she could talk through this system
and talk to her staff at a different part of
the house. So you think about, you know, all of
the ways that we communicate with people today, it's pretty
interesting that she had a nineteenth century version of that.
(08:48):
There's also some belief that it might have been one
of the first homes to have wool as insulation.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
And one story that I love.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Is that there's this belief because a lot of these
things were also her inventions. Possibly Sarah Winchester invented laundry
tubs with the soap trees and the washboards attached.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
They were in the house and the reason.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Why people speculate that maybe she was one of the
first ones was that later in the twentieth century there
was someone that took out a patent for this type
of tub, and there was a legal challenge, and in
the courtroom they actually used the designs from Sarah Winchester
to prove that she had already.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Been doing this.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
So it's a good little anecdote of just kind of
how ahead of the time she was and how ahead
of the time the house was.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And you've been listening to Ashley Lebinski tell the story
of Sarah Winchester and Sarah Winchester's home, which again is
featured in almost any paranormal show or ghost show you've
ever seen, and more when we come back, more of
the story of Sarah Winchester and her house here on
our American story and we continue with our American stories
(10:12):
and the story of Firearms. Heiress our Winchester and her home.
She was a widow from Connecticut who arrived in San
Jose in eighteen eighty six and heiress the Winchester fortune.
She began building her mansion, which was fifty years at
least ahead of its time. Let's pick up or we
(10:32):
last left off with Ashley Lipinski.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
The other thing that happens with the house is that
she starts changing things, and there's lots of reasons why
she starts changing things. One of the biggest impacts is
the San Francisco earthquake that happens at the turn of
the twentieth century, and the seventh floor mansion all of
a sudden.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Loses several floors.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
But by nineteen ten, she actually starts to spend a
lot of time outside of the house. She's already traveling
and seeing her family and everything during this time, but
in nineteen ten, she actually buys a house in Atherton,
and she also owns a houseboat in San Francisco, and
so she is spending a lot of her time during
this So this idea that she was constantly there and
alone in her villa, you know, isn't true. There are
(11:16):
stories of kids in the community garden that she had,
you know, people having picnics. There was a lot of
life in the house. She had events in the house,
she had plays in the house.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
She just wasn't necessarily interested in getting involved in a
lot of the social strata.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Of the community.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
And so early on you've got a rich woman, a
brilliant woman in the nineteenth century who moves out to
a place where.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
People don't realize she's got family.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
And so this story starts to be constructed that Sarah
is haunted by the ghosts killed by Winchester rifles. The
story starts to take off in the local community, and
the entire story goes that she visited a Boston medium,
a well known Boston medium, and he told her that
(12:02):
she was being haunted, that her family was cursed, and
that she had to, you know, go out to California
and continuously build this house.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
And not just build a house, but that the house
was you.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Know, informed, the house was changed because she was getting
information to build a house by the spirits.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
There was a lot of speculation that she was a spiritualist,
which was popular during that time, a lot more popular
during that time than in other time periods, and that
she had these seance rooms where she would communicate with
the dead or believe she communicated with the dead, and.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Obviously that's a it's quite the story, right.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
So it takes off, and the rumors continue, and Sarah
largely ignores the rumors, but it starts to become really
overbearing when the newspapers start publishing the stories. So you know,
now it's not just speculation, it's not just this, it's
not just that. You know, now there is you know,
hard writing that is saying that this story is true.
And I want to qualify that with the fact that
(12:59):
there has been primary source research that's been done and
there hasn't been evidence that she went to see this medium.
And also at the time of all of this happening, Winchester, Yes,
they've got this image of being a Western firearm but
they're not really engaged in a lot of military contracts.
You know, they really take off as a military company
in World War One, but it's not to the extent
(13:21):
that a lot of people kind of the presentism of it.
You look back and you see it as a specific company.
And so this story takes off, and it follows her
her whole life, and there is evidence that people were
trying to debunk it, that her family was trying to
debunk it, that her workers were trying to debunk it.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
And I did find an article that.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Was published a few years before she died that tried
to kind of dispel a lot of these rumors. And
in it, part of the quote says, perhaps not more
than a dozen people in California know that Missus Winchester
is a musician with a genius for composition, that she
is a remarkable businesswoman, that she is a French scholar,
(14:00):
that her philanthropies alone would make her a national figure
if they were known. This quote goes on and on
and onto sing her praises, and so this person is
saying she is a national treasure and that the people
of California do not.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Recognize what she has done.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
And one of the things that she has done at
this point is she's become very charitable. And one of
her the charities that she kind of takes on is
back in New Haven. So she was again very struck
by the death of her husband, the death of her daughter,
and so she actually donated one million, three hundred and
twenty five thousand dollars to a New Haven hospital to
(14:36):
build a tuberculosis center in honor of her husband. And
that actually still exists. It's changed over the years, but
it does still exist as a chess clinic that bears
the Winchester name. So you have this really interesting spectrum
of how people perceive Sarah you've got new Haven, which
(14:56):
sees her as you know, the bell of the tw still,
and you know, she's charitable and she's giving, and she's
you know, still a part of the Winchester you know,
legacy and name. Although she was not actively involved, you know,
with the company, she was still involved and engaged. Was
she just wasn't an engineer for the company. She wasn't
running the business, but she was the major shareholder. But
(15:18):
then you got California, where she, at her death has
this house that, yes, is rather eccentric at the at
the time of her death, it has one hundred and
sixty rooms, two thousand doors, ten thousand windows, forty seven stairways,
forty seven fireplaces, thirteen bathrooms, and six kitchens. Now, not
(15:38):
only is that incredibly large, the other thing is that
it's a lap of luxury when you look at like
she spared no expense for the things that she put
in the house. And one of the things that people
always mention is the tiffany stained glass that was in
her house, which is gorgeous. And so she passes away
in nineteen twenty two and the story kind.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Of really takes off.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
The house is bought out of the estate sale and
it is bought by John and Mamie Brown, who have
a background in amusement parks, and they actually want to
initially install a roller coaster on the property, but that
gets ultimately poo pood, So they open the house for
public tours really quickly after she passes away, and there's
(16:22):
a lot of mystical things that are centered around the house.
After that, Harry Houdini visits the house and claims that
Sarah came to him during that time. There's also stories
that Walt Disney was inspired by the house.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Although it doesn't look like and wasn't.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
The actual model for the Haunted Mansion, there's beliefs that
there was some connection there and inspiration that he visited
the house, and so this really just continues and grows,
and people are fascinated by the macab It's really an
interesting story, and not a lot of primary source research
is done on it right away, and so it took
(16:59):
out a life of its own, and now every literally
every ghost show, like growing up, I believe the story
completely because every ghost show I've ever seen has gone
to the house, and rightly so it's definitely an interesting house.
And if the story of Sarah being haunted isn't true.
You know, they're not saying that there aren't some spirits
up in.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
There, right.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
The Winchester House is perhaps the most bizarre and mysterious
mansion in the United States. It's warren of hidden passageways,
stairways that lead nowhere, and doors that open into mid air.
But it's also reputed to be a haunted hotbed of
paranormal phenomena.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
And so the house just kind of took out of
a life of its own. And now what's.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Disappointing to me is that that story is more important
than a brilliant, inventive businesswoman way ahead of her time
in the nineteenth century, And that, to me is the
real tragedy of her story. And you know what, sometimes
I think maybe if she was a man in that
ghost story was how it wouldn't be as interesting. You know,
(18:02):
it becomes eccentric and fascinating when a wealthy man has
those perspectives. And I hope when people go and visit
it they get to see all of her great inventions,
because the house really does tell about her inventions, because
they're quite proud of them. So when you go to
the house, definitely think about a woman who had quite
the life and had a lot to say, and we
(18:22):
should continue to talk about her accomplishments instead of telling
a ghost story.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler,
and a special thanks as always to Ashley Levinski for
her excellent storytelling and what a story she told about
not only a remarkable woman, but one in the end
whose story got co opted by well the paranormal crowd,
and whether you're part of it or not, that's what happened.
(18:49):
And all of her innovation, all of her intuitive genius,
especially in the area of home innovation, was all lost,
including her being a great investor and philanthropy. The story
of Sarah Winchester and her home here on our American
Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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