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| The Winchester House today. |
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| Oliver Winchester |
Oliver Winchester
Oliver Winchester was born on November 30th, 1810. The son of Samuel Winchester and Hannah Bates was an American businessman. He was also a politician. On February 20th, 1864, Winchester married Jane Ellen hope in Boston.
In New Haven, Connecticut and New York City, Winchester had started a clothing manufacturing company. Winchester soon come to the realization that the Smith and Wesson firearms business sales had plummeted rapidly. Seeing a chance of opportunity, Winchester brought forth a group of stockbrokers to acquire the Smith and Wesson division. In 1850, the company was known as Volcanic Repeating Arms Company. He had relocated the company to New Haven in 1857 and had the company's name changed to the New Haven Arms Company.
The company struggled with business early on. Due to the Volcanic's poor performance and design, rival company's products were more in the line of succession. Luckily, Benjamin Tyler Henry, an engineer of Winchester's, thought of a brilliant idea for Winchester. Henry had improved parts of the Volcanic repeating rifle. Henry increased the size of the rifle's frame, allowing it to accommodate seventeen brass cases. This new rifle so called the "Henry Rifle" brought fame to the company. Approximately 12,000 of these rifles were produced in a span of six years. Due to the success of the company, Winchester decided to rename it again. The company was then known as Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Nelson King, a company employee, had improved known flaws to the Henry rifle by moving the loading gate to the side.
In the American Civil War, the Winchester rifle was not used even though repeating were used. The United States Army decided not to used too many new technology repeating rifles at the time, as they deemed it was untested.
The Winchester rifle is considered one of the earliest repeating rifles. By Western settlers it gained a reputation as "The Gun that Won the West."
Though a famed rifle manufacturer, Winchester was also active as the Republican Presidential elector in 1864. From 1866-1867, he was also the Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut.
Winchester died on December 11th, 1880. The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was handed down to his son, William Wirt Winchester.
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| William Wirt Winchester |
William inherited the company from his father. However, prior to that, he married Sarah Lockwood Pardee on September 30th in 1862. On July 15th, 1866, they gave birth to Annie Pardee Winchester, however died six weeks later.
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| Sarah Winchester |
Construction of the Winchester House
The death of her daughter Annie brought Winchester into a great depression. As a superstitious women, Winchester felt that the family was cursed by spirits killed by the Winchester rifle. A reported Boston psychic had told Winchester that spirits would keep haunting Winchester if construction of her house had halted.
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| The original house is shown with seven stories. Today it is only four due to the earthquake of 1906. |
Construction was unorganized, leading to a very large and complex building. Construction workers had to navigate through the house using a map.
When Winchester died on September 5th, 1922, construction of the house ended.
The Winchester Mystery House
The house was built with elegant rooms and stairs to nowhere. There were two main theories to why the house was built with stairs to nowhere. Many people had thought that Winchester wanted to confuse bad spirits. Good spirits would find their way to elegant rooms of gold. The house has many small steps as short as 2 inches due to Winchester's small, 4foot 10inch frame. Today, some bathrooms had to be switched with glass mirrors due to tourist thinking they were functional. The house also includes a massive garden that Sarah Winchester would stroll though on her horse-drawn carriage. Some speculate there is a solid gold room worth a fortune, hidden somewhere in the establishment. To this day, it still had not been found. The house was passed down to Winchester's niece after her death, however sold the house to the highest bidder in 1923. Today it is known as the "Mystery House" because of Harry Houdini had called it a mystery house during his visit in 1924.
Alleged Hauntings
Since public opening in 1923, tourist and employees have reported many strange phenomenons. A house caretaker had reported sounds of footsteps and creaking wood late at night. One night he reported the sound of a working screw, as if a construction worker was working. A sudden "plop" sound tempted him to turn on the lights. Nothing had changed. Nothing had fell on the floor. The caretaker had reported many pranks the mischievous ghost had played on him. One night, he checked that he had turned off the lights. He had. When he got down to the car, he had discovered that the entire third floor had been left on. He said that anyone would forget one room's switch, but rarely an entire floor. His last report had occurred when he had not been at the desk.
Many people had also felt presences, creaking, and the feeling of being touched. Many tourist who took pictures also reported faint apparitions on their images.
Well there's just a bit of info on the Winchester house. I really want to go there one day and really see how it's like in this house.
If you had ever experienced any creepiness please tell me! I wanna know!
Have a great day full of cookies!
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