In the wee hours of 18 April 1906, the massive San Andreas fault began to rumble and groan. The subsequent earthquake caused immense damage to Sarah’s home and the house became a death trap with Sarah trapped alone in her room. The servants were unable to hear her muffled cries for help for several hours. They finally discovered her in the ruins of her once beautiful bedroom. The front portion of the house, an area that she had ensured was very lavish and expensive, is what sustained the majority of the damage in the earthquake. The tortured widow took the natural disaster as a sign from ‘the beyond’ that her decadence was being punished. New orders were given to board-up that area of the house and no one was allowed there again after that point. The quake shook Sarah so deeply that she left the home to live in various other places. One such place was a houseboat anchored in the San Francisco Bay. Other sites included a ranch, and a home in Atherton. Sarah continued to move around for the next six years. She would send daily orders to the foreman, and construction crews would continue, but she did not return to the home once during this time.
In the spring of 1912, Sarah returned to the home and renewed the building at a near frantic pace. She was suffering from a crippling form of arthritis and her health was beginning to decline. Thanks to her condition she was often confined to her living quarters. A decade later on, the night of 4 September 1922, the evening crew stopped work to play cards and have some whiskey to relax and unwind after a hard day’s work. They hadn’t seen Mrs Winchester for months and weren’t sure if she was even still on the grounds, or living in her other home. The following morning, Sarah’s niece Margaret went to her room in order to check on her aunt. The tortured widow Sarah Winchester was dead; she had died in her sleep.
The obituary in one San Jose newspaper recalled the widow’s life: ‘She has lived a quiet, secluded life here for about thirty years. For many years she has aided financially the department of the Connecticut state hospital devoted to the treatment of tuberculosis patients, as well as being interested in other charitable activities.’ Sarah Winchester may have been laid to rest, but her legend had only just begun.
The beautiful and carefully restored Queen Anne Victorian home at 525 S. Winchester Boulevard still stands today. Today, the six-acre property is a tourist trap. You can visit the home and take tours that include the grand ballroom, private séance chambers and more – there is even a special ‘behind the scenes’ tour. The tour guides will tell tales of the mysterious widow who spent her millions on a home to house the spirits that haunted her.
During the Halloween season tour guides now offer a night-time ‘Halloween Candlelight Tour’ at the home, promoting the supernatural aspects of the legend of Sarah Winchester’s Mystery House. The press release for the tour touts it as a seriously spooky event:
TIME magazine has called us one of the ‘Most Haunted Places in the World’ and this Halloween we’re enhancing what’s already here with an all-new macabre, atmospheric, and truly creepy overlay with our limited time only Halloween Candlelight Tour offering.
Peter Overstreet, one of the successful directors at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco states:
During the candlelit visit some kind of paranormal force will definitely be awakened within the house, much to the shock of guests on the tour…. This all-new experience for guests to the Winchester Mystery House will be both a physical visit and a great example of ‘theater of the mind’ where your imagination is coerced to fill in the blanks to even more frightful effect.
It is commonly thought that after a certain point, Sarah’s isolation may have had a lot to do with her severe arthritis. In reality, she was an intelligent, generous woman who spoke four languages, loved the arts, sent gifts of food from her garden to needy families and, according to her former servants, donated to many charities. The facts surrounding the mysterious widow are actually few and far between. Her legacy is shrouded in legend and hearsay, which all serves to make her life seem far more fanciful and mysterious than it likely was. Mary Jo Ignoffo described Sarah Winchester to me as:
…a brilliant investor, more talented than her peers, male or female; with investments in land, fruit, stocks, bonds. She would not have called herself a feminist or an icon. She wanted to be a talented architect, but she believed the results of the earthquake highlighted her shortcomings in that pursuit. She did not believe in inherited wealth, and so she sought to make her money grow. I think she is far more interesting and believable as a three-dimensional historical figure – someone who faced many challenges in life and found very creative and effective ways to deal with them. To me, it is far more intriguing to understand that, for a dozen years or more, she got up everyday and managed a major construction project – not for some fanciful reason about obsession or ghosts, but because it was a creative outlet and she preferred a life of work rather than leisure. She was a busy woman, right up to the end.
When it comes to the question of her supposed obsession with the occult, Mary Jo takes umbrage with the status quo. ‘I found no historical evidence that Sarah Winchester was obsessed. She could have joined a local group that routinely held séances, and she did not. As for the occult, she belonged to an Episcopalian church.’
When they removed Sarah’s remaining personal items from the home, a small box was recovered that consisted of some of her dear husband’s items and a small lock of blonde hair from her baby. We should perhaps focus on remembering Sarah not as an isolated and superstitious eccentric, but as a devoted wife and mother who was tragically stripped of everything she knew and loved. Sarah Winchester was left with a hollow fortune and, instead of bringing her comfort and distraction, it served only to further drive her intense amount of sorrow and grief. Her elaborate and mysterious home was simply her best way of honouring the memory of her loved ones.
The Winchester mansion boasted one hundred and sixty rooms… or so we thought. During the writing of this book a secret attic room was uncovered by those who run the mansion. The preservation team at the house were able to recover several items from the room, from a Victorian couch, sewing machine, and pump organ, to paintings and a dress form. The room was boarded up after the 1906 earthquake and had not seen the light of day until now. The mansion remains a landmark for both California and San Jose and is even listed in the National Archive of Historic Places.
Chapter Nine
Bakelite: Killer Plastic
Bakelite was one of the more fascinating of the early developments in plastic and, although it was only on the market for a relatively short time, it was utilised during the glamorous era of the Roaring Twenties on many beautiful products, making it very collectible still today. It was ultimately fatal controversy involving the family who invented this amazing product that clings to the memory, and continues to fascinate as one of the more salacious dramas in recent brand history.