I spoke to Sarah Winchester’s biographer Mary Jo Ignoffo about the reality of Sarah’s life and she had a vastly different picture to paint. Mary Jo spent five years researching Sarah Winchester’s life for her book Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune. Mary Jo slaved over a ton of first-hand information from sources such as letters that Sarah had exchanged with her attorney; the daybooks of her ranch foreman John Hansen; and property deeds from Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Interestingly, when I questioned Ignoffo about Sarah’s relationship with medium Adam Coons, the pivot-point for the entire legend, she informed me that in all of her research she had never been able to locate a record of a medium by that name. It wouldn’t be surprising if a recently widowed woman with a fortune at her disposal was preyed upon by a number of characters looking to pedal spiritual advice for a price, but I also couldn’t locate any actual evidence of one named Adam Coons.
Sarah soon travelled to Santa Clara valley in San Jose, California, where she bought forty-four acres of land and an eight room farmhouse that was under construction. It is said that the townsfolk watched in awe as Sarah brought many wagons of materials, at all times of day and night, to build her ambitious new home. Sarah spoke only to the architects and the carpenters on any regular basis and she was regularly dressed in black mourning clothes and a veil, which would be traditional grieving garb for the era.
The ‘mystery home’ of Sarah Winchester would finally settle with an astounding 160 rooms, 110 of which are currently available for the public to view on regular tours that are still held there. The house is an Eastlake shingle Queen Anne design that would end up costing Sarah more than five million dollars to construct. The building work wouldn’t actually end until Sarah’s death on 5 September 1922.
The crews of carpenters and masons worked day and night for several years. After a time, Sarah fired her architect, because she wanted to be fully in charge of providing the designs. The home looked like a typical Victorian mansion from the outside and fit well into the landscape of the town, but much to the surprise of the locals, it continued to expand and grow beyond expectations. Keeping in mind that no one in the local community had any idea about Sarah’s supposed premonitions, they only knew what they saw from a distance. The casual passers-by could see Mrs Winchester, still in mourning, lurking around the extensive grounds, but they say that she never acknowledged or spoke to anyone on the outside. She remained an enigma, keeping fairly secluded, not socialising much with the locals.
Mary Jo Ignoffo also provided some insight into how Sarah was perceived by the local San Jose community: ‘At the time, Sarah Winchester was perceived as building an excessively large and decorous house and as not ‘going in’ with the neighbors (quote from newspaper). A few very close neighbors visited her property and occasionally did favors for her.’
Sarah may have been in deep mourning and isolation, but she did enjoy the inheritance worth nearly twenty million dollars, plus an income from the Winchester Repeating Rifle Company profits that would equal around $1,000 per day. Cost was clearly not an issue for Sarah and her bizarre home renovations reflect that fact.
The former workmen from the home would spread stories and rumours about what they saw while in the home, to the eager ears of the local townies. The interior of the home was a mysterious labyrinth of mazes. There were passageways connecting many of the rooms, which Sarah would use on a regular basis to move around the home unbeknownst to the staff. There were stray hallways and corridors that led nowhere. It is said that the layout was so unnerving that new servants didn’t like to stray from the known hallways. There is one particular seven-story staircase that was 9ft tall and had forty steps, each of those steps being only 2ins in height. This oddity is likely due to the severe arthritis that Sarah suffered from.
By the turn of the century, the house engulfed the outbuildings and stables on the land and any others were soon gone. All of the original eight rooms of the house had disappeared. She had to add a high fence to keep people out who came to get a look at her and the house. She even planted a high cypress hedge and hired gardeners to focus on the hedge to nurture it into a thick green wall to keep away prying eyes. Any request to see her or her servants was refused.
In 1904 Sarah had withdrawn from society so completely that she could no longer deal with the servants or workmen anymore. Sarah’s niece Margaret Merriam soon moved in to assist as a liaison to all people. No one was allowed to see Sarah anymore without her full veils and mourning garb and they certainly weren’t allowed to communicate with her directly. The butler would see her in a more relaxed state, only because he had access to her for the purpose of serving her meals.
The seven-story house soon became somewhat of an attraction that drew visitors from miles around. Sarah had a particular obsession with the number thirteen. One press release from the ‘Winchester Mystery House’ details her preoccupation: ‘Her will had 13 parts and was signed 13 times. The house has 13 bathrooms, and the 13th bathroom has 13 windows and 13 steps leading to it. Many windows have 13 panes and rooms have 13 ceiling panels.’ The peculiar mansion spans 24,000sq ft of space and boasts 2,000 doors, fifty-two skylights, forty bedrooms, three elevators, two basements, six kitchens, thirteen bathrooms, forty staircases, forty-seven fireplaces and ten thousand windows.
It is said that the turnaround was high amongst the servants. The legends say that the servants would sometimes leave out of intense fear, and sometimes they were fired for prying or defying orders. Eventually a regular staff was established who would stay with Sarah and protect her from the prying, hurtful eyes of the outside world. The wall of secrecy surrounding the widow and her house only continued to grow as the years went by.
Mrs Winchester would use her secret séance room on a regular basis, but she was so suspicious of prying eyes that she would take a variety of different corridors and secret passageways to the room each time she used it. The séance room was a small, blue room with a barred window and only one obvious entrance and exit. The secret exit did exist, but it was carefully hidden inside a closet. Sarah would spend hours in the room, hoping to consult the spirit of her dearly departed husband. Servants are said to have been able to hear, from outside the door, her speaking out loud to him during these sessions. There were many legends surrounding these supernatural sessions, mostly purported by ex-staff members and local gossips. One such tale spun the yarn that the servants could hear a baby crying from within the room, and another instance entailed a servant who hid in the room. She claims to have seen an ethereal and mystic hand appear out of nowhere with an ornate chalice that Mrs Winchester subsequently drank from in some sort of bizarre ritual. These claims, however, remain absolutely unsubstantiated gossip and urban legend.
Another legend states that Sarah had announced to her servants one day that she would be hosting a lavish ball that very evening, seemingly out of nowhere. A new ballroom had just been completed in the home, with a gorgeous Tiffany chandelier, and she intended to host a celebration ball with food and rare wines. A troupe of musicians were hired and brought in that night to entertain and delight the partygoers with song. A luxurious and decadent dinner was also served on beautifully decorated buffet tables. The ball began with all the appropriate fare, including the butler announcing the names of guests as they arrived. The band is said to have looked on, confused and disturbed, as people were being announced and the ball was rocking along – but there were no actual guests present. The musicians, unnerved by the entire evening, finally fled the eerie scene at two in the morning.