Case file · Haunting
Winchester Mystery House
Sarah Winchester's sprawling San Jose mansion, opened as a tourist attraction months after her death in 1922, and wrapped in legends that she built endlessly to appease ghosts.
1922 CE · 37.32, -121.95 · status: legend
The account
Winchester, widow of the firearms heir, lost her baby daughter and much of her family. The house's odd staircases and doors fed stories that she was driven by spirits.
The sceptical view
Popular writers embellished or invented much of the story; the move-west myth seems to come from Susy Smith's 1967 book Prominent American Ghosts.
Connections in the atlas
- Myrtles Plantation
- Winchester Mystery House