Sarah L. Winchester was an heiress and the owner of the Winchester Mystery House. Sarah Winchester was born in September 1839 in Connecticut. She married William Wirt Winchester, the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company empire. They had only one daughter, who died a few weeks after her birth in 1866. In 1881, her husband William died of tuberculosis leaving her 50 percent of the company, which fetched an income then of $1,000 per day.
In her grief, Sarah was led to believe that the family was cursed by the ghosts of people killed by Winchester rifle. A psychic advised that to exorcise herself, she should move west and build a house for herself and her spirits.
In 1884, she moved to what is now San Jose, California where she bought a house located on 162 acres of land. She began extending the house without any apparent plan, a procedure that continued 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for 38 years. Two issues obsessed her -- 1) the number 13 and 2) the belief that if she ever stopped building she would die. She tried to incorporate 13 wherever possible, like having 13 bathrooms, windows with 13 panes etc. Since the construction went on haphazardly, it was full of anomalies such as staircases that led nowhere and windows opening onto walls. A stage was reached where workers had to navigate by using a map. Construction stopped only when Sarah Winchester died in 1922 at the age of 83.
Today, the Winchester Mystery House is a historic national landmark. It is open to the public seven days a week except for Christmas.
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