October 12, 2023 • 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 it is for the reported paranormal activity. Here to tell the story is Ashley Hlebinsky, the former co-host of Discovery Channel’s “Master of Arms,” the 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.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Here's Ashley.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Today.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Not historically accurate horror movie.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Although I did like the horror movie.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
This is Winchester Wild in Construction, the spirit killed.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
By the rifle.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
We luck them away.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
This spirit is a how we've not seen before.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
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 rumor about her life. Sarah was born in
New Haven, Connecticut, and she actually came from a family
(02:04):
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. She was a composer.
So she's this brilliant woman. She's known as the Belle
(02:25):
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. If you're not familiar with the
Winchester family, they are known for the quote unquote gun
that won the West, although that was their own marketing
(02:46):
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 and it plays a very important role in Sarah's life,
especially later on.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Sarah meets the family, and you.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Know, as a social like 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.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Passed away a few weeks after she was born.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Then the husband and wife 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
(03:51):
daughter died, and 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. And 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
(04:12):
a major fortune immediately. She inherited seven 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.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And so she has instant wealth.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
She also inherits a lot of shares from like four
or five other companies that the 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 4 (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 to do with her life.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
She doesn't really want to stay in.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
And she basically this is the story. This is the start.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Of how her legend becomes, this rumor. She buys this farmhouse,
she actually calls it Lenada Vila, and the intention for
her is to build this manner that she hopes her
family will come and live in.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
But what happens.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Here is she moves to California. 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, you know, sad over what
(06:05):
happened to her life. She is looking forward 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,
(06:27):
and the house constantly changes, and she constantly changes the house,
and she hires all.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Kinds of people. She actually pays them more than the
going rate of the time.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
She's got construction workers, she's got people that are cleaning
the house, she's got designers.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And she's working to develop this house all on her own.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
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 major depression, so the Great Depression
of eighteen ninety three hits, but she continued to employ
(07:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I've got a great quote that she wrote in a letter.
Speaker 4 (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 like settled in.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
The first place.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
It is infinitely more difficult to get work done than
it would be in New Haven. And I am 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
(07:58):
for fifteen years, and so she has people there, and
she's communicating with people and she's talking to her family
and she's visiting her family.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
And the other thing that's.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
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 indoor plumbing,
she had fauceted showers. She had this contraption in the
(08:29):
house called an enunciator, 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. There's also
some belief that it might have been one of the
(08:51):
first homes to have wool as insulation. And one story
that I love is that there's this belief because a
lot of these things were also her inventions. Is it
possibly Sarah Winchester invented laundry tubs with the soap trees
and the washboards attached.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
They were in the house.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
And the reason 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 been doing this.
So it's a good little anecdote of just kind of
how ahead of the time she was and how ahead
(09:29):
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 to 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 4 (10:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
One of the biggest impacts.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Is the San Francisco earthquake that happens at the turn
of the twentieth century, and the seventh floor mansion all
of a sudden loses several floors. 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
(11:05):
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 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.
You know, she just wasn't necessarily interested in getting involved
(11:27):
in a lot of the social strata of the community.
And so early on, you've got a rich woman, a
brilliant woman in the nineteenth century who moves out to
a place where people.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Don't realize she's got family.
Speaker 4 (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, and not just build a house,
but that the house was you know, informed, the house
was changed because she was getting information to build a
house by the spirits.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
You know.
Speaker 4 (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
obviously that's a that's quite the story, right, So it
takes off, and the rumors continue, and Sarah largely ignores
(12:42):
the rumors. But it starts to become really overbearing when
the newspapers start.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Publishing the stories.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
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 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
(13:10):
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 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,
(13:31):
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. And I did find
an article that 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
(13:51):
that Missus Winchester is a musician with a genius for composition,
that she is a remarkable businesswoman, that she is a
French scholar, that her philanthropies alone would make her a
national figure if they were known. This quote goes on
and on and on too, 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 4 (14:15):
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 and honor 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.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
You've got new Haven.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Which sees her as you know, the bell of the
t town 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.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Was she just wasn't an engineer.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
For the company. She wasn't running the business, but she
was the major shareholder. But then you've got California, where she,
at her death has this house that, yes, is rather eccentric.
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,
(15:38):
not 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 of
(16:00):
really takes off.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
The house is.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
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 a lot of mystical
(16:24):
things that are centered around the house.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
After that, Harry Houdini.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Like and wasn't the actual model for the Haunted Mansion,
there's belief 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
(16:58):
so it took 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 2 (17:20):
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 a
life of its own.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
And now what's 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
(17:58):
man in that ghost story was how happening, it wouldn't
be as interesting. You know, 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
(18:21):
lot to say, and we 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 in 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.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Here's Ashley.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Today.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Not historically accurate horror movie.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Although I did like the horror movie.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
This is Winchester Wild in Construction, the spirit killed.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
By the rifle.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
We luck them away.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
This spirit is a how we've not seen before.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
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 rumor about her life. Sarah was born in
New Haven, Connecticut, and she actually came from a family
(02:04):
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. She was a composer.
So she's this brilliant woman. She's known as the Belle
(02:25):
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. If you're not familiar with the
Winchester family, they are known for the quote unquote gun
that won the West, although that was their own marketing
(02:46):
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 and it plays a very important role in Sarah's life,
especially later on.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Sarah meets the family, and you.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Know, as a social like 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.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Passed away a few weeks after she was born.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Then the husband and wife 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
(03:51):
daughter died, and 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. And 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
(04:12):
a major fortune immediately. She inherited seven 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.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And so she has instant wealth.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
She also inherits a lot of shares from like four
or five other companies that the 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 4 (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 to do with her life.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
She doesn't really want to stay in.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
And she basically this is the story. This is the start.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Of how her legend becomes, this rumor. She buys this farmhouse,
she actually calls it Lenada Vila, and the intention for
her is to build this manner that she hopes her
family will come and live in.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
But what happens.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Here is she moves to California. 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, you know, sad over what
(06:05):
happened to her life. She is looking forward 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,
(06:27):
and the house constantly changes, and she constantly changes the house,
and she hires all.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Kinds of people. She actually pays them more than the
going rate of the time.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
She's got construction workers, she's got people that are cleaning
the house, she's got designers.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And she's working to develop this house all on her own.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
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 major depression, so the Great Depression
of eighteen ninety three hits, but she continued to employ
(07:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I've got a great quote that she wrote in a letter.
Speaker 4 (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 like settled in.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
The first place.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
It is infinitely more difficult to get work done than
it would be in New Haven. And I am 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
(07:58):
for fifteen years, and so she has people there, and
she's communicating with people and she's talking to her family
and she's visiting her family.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
And the other thing that's.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
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 indoor plumbing,
she had fauceted showers. She had this contraption in the
(08:29):
house called an enunciator, 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. There's also
some belief that it might have been one of the
(08:51):
first homes to have wool as insulation. And one story
that I love is that there's this belief because a
lot of these things were also her inventions. Is it
possibly Sarah Winchester invented laundry tubs with the soap trees
and the washboards attached.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
They were in the house.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
And the reason 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 been doing this.
So it's a good little anecdote of just kind of
how ahead of the time she was and how ahead
(09:29):
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 to 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 4 (10:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
One of the biggest impacts.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Is the San Francisco earthquake that happens at the turn
of the twentieth century, and the seventh floor mansion all
of a sudden loses several floors. 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
(11:05):
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 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.
You know, she just wasn't necessarily interested in getting involved
(11:27):
in a lot of the social strata of the community.
And so early on, you've got a rich woman, a
brilliant woman in the nineteenth century who moves out to
a place where people.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Don't realize she's got family.
Speaker 4 (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, and not just build a house,
but that the house was you know, informed, the house
was changed because she was getting information to build a
house by the spirits.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
You know.
Speaker 4 (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
obviously that's a that's quite the story, right, So it
takes off, and the rumors continue, and Sarah largely ignores
(12:42):
the rumors. But it starts to become really overbearing when
the newspapers start.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Publishing the stories.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
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 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
(13:10):
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 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,
(13:31):
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. And I did find
an article that 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
(13:51):
that Missus Winchester is a musician with a genius for composition,
that she is a remarkable businesswoman, that she is a
French scholar, that her philanthropies alone would make her a
national figure if they were known. This quote goes on
and on and on too, 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 4 (14:15):
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 and honor 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.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
You've got new Haven.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Which sees her as you know, the bell of the
t town 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.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Was she just wasn't an engineer.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
For the company. She wasn't running the business, but she
was the major shareholder. But then you've got California, where she,
at her death has this house that, yes, is rather eccentric.
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,
(15:38):
not 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 of
(16:00):
really takes off.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
The house is.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
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 a lot of mystical
(16:24):
things that are centered around the house.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
After that, Harry Houdini.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Like and wasn't the actual model for the Haunted Mansion,
there's belief 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
(16:58):
so it took 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 2 (17:20):
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 a
life of its own.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
And now what's 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
(17:58):
man in that ghost story was how happening, it wouldn't
be as interesting. You know, 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
(18:21):
lot to say, and we 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 in philanthropy. The story
of Sarah Winchester and her home here on our American
Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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