by sarah k grundy

Love for houses travels through time, blueprints, into stories that live and breathe behind walls and neatly set bricks, and in the artifacts that tell the story—making a house a home or not.
You see, some houses were never meant to be a home. A place for love and family, a home protects and nurtures, it has a heart, but for some houses, there’s only a stomach feeding upon and digesting all that’s good.

The Winchester House:
Picture it; it’s the 1800s, and an eccentric artist, scholar, designer, architect, and witch becomes heir to the most immense rifle fortune in the world—the guns that “won” the west, the Winchester Repeating Arms.

Darkness and tragic loss befell Sarah Lockwood Pardee—her daughter Annie, husband William, and mother-in-law. Sarah spoke many languages and, in all of them, knew the spirits of the dead, at the hands of the Winchester rifles, haunted and killed her family, confirmed by a medium who feared she was next.
So the story goes.

“After the sudden death of her family, firearms heiress Sarah Winchester becomes convinced that she's haunted by the souls of those killed by the guns.”
USA TODAY

Peculiarly Marasmus, an unusual illness for a wealthy child, took Sarah’s daughter. Marasmus means “severe energy deficiency”. The body withers away as if being fed upon. Her husband died from Tuberculosis, once called “Consumption” because of the way the body dwindles as if being devoured.

To appease the hungry scorned spirits, Sarah designed and built a palace to hide from and house the souls of those killed by the firearms that made the family extremely wealthy.
The project took over 38 years to complete.

“There is a vast network of secret passages twisting throughout the property. One cabinet door opens to a hive of 30 additional rooms.”
-Everything You Need to Know About the Winchester Mystery House

“…stairs leading to the ceiling and doors that open to nowhere.”
-NY Times

In the end, we’re all stories, and so are homes. Sarah lives on in The Winchester House, and many believe she does not walk there alone.