Yesterday we didn’t feel much like going into San Fran proper. I looked on the Internet for tickets to Wicked but the only reasonably priced tickets that popped up for Saturday evening’s performance were snapped up before I could check to see if my wife wanted me to buy them. Instead we decided to head to San Jose to visit the Winchester House. We’d both heard a story about its eccentric owner on National Public Radio a long time ago.
The story in brief:
Sarah Winchester, four foot ten wife of the President of the Winchester Rifle Company inherited a fortune when her husband died at the tender age of 40. Already grieving over the loss of an infant she consulted a medium who advised her to move from New England to California where she might be able to hide from the ghosts who’s lives were claimed by the Winchester. To additionally confuse them she was advised to build a home and keep building as the racket would drive the spectres away.
She did and she did. She moved to San Jose with a fortune that put her in the ranks of her Era’s Bill Gate’s. She built a house and didn’t stop for the next 36 years. Construction was 24/10. She oversaw the construction, destrution and remodeling of over 600 rooms. The current house has 150 of them and you would be hard pressed to find a more confusing labarynth. (darn it I wish I could figure out how to use a spellchecker on this from the lap top)
As Sarah Winchester’s eccentricities were described in what we were told was a mile of traveling through her home with windows built into ceilings and doors to nowhere I leaned over and whispered to Claudia that if one had to choose a response to the guilt over one’s responsibility for so many deaths I thought Alfred Nobel’s was a little more practical. After inventing dynamite he put his war waging millions into the Nobel Peace Prize.
To atone for the millions lost in the Civil War Mrs. Winchester built her own version of the Red Plan – to keep the ghosts confused. She would have fit in nicely on the Duluth School Board. At least she spent her own money.
