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Is California’s Winchester House the most haunted house in America? Does the Winchester Mystery House hold untold secrets? Do more terrifying spirits – not just ghosts – lurk in locked rooms and unexplored corners?
Something scared Sarah Winchester, badly. She was trying to outrun something.
The Winchester Mystery House was the focus of a stylish 2018 movie starring Helen Mirren.
Some of the house’s strange elements aren’t quite what they seem, and – in historical context – may have been more practical than spiritual.
Well, maybe.
I’m not sure what to think about the recent discoveries in Sarah Winchester’s attic. My initial reaction was, “Oh, that was staged.”
Then I started wondering if it was staged for drama… or if it’s hiding something in plain sight.
Looking more closely, we may see a far darker aspect of Mrs. Winchester’s life.
I have the feeling it’s right there, in front of us, but we haven’t recognized it yet.
Much of the Winchester house’s most compelling paranormal evidence isn’t obvious. It’s layered in history, mystical beliefs, and secrets.
So, yes. I believe the Winchester Mystery House is a haunted house. And whatever haunts it is extreme.
Extreme enough that it stands out as one of the most baffling haunts in the world.
Winchester House Videos
These videos will introduce you to the strange (and sometimes chilling) Winchester story.
The next video is a 7 1/2 minute visual tour of the Winchester Mystery House. The soundtrack is entirely music, no verbal descriptions.
If you’re looking for ghost stories or history, you may want to skip ahead to the “Winchester Mystery House – Secrets of the Mansion” series, further down this page. That series delivers a tour of the house plus details of Sarah Winchester’s life, and how the house was built.
Winchester House Secrets & Mysteries
I recommend the following four short (4-5 minutes, each) videos in a series, “Winchester Mystery House – Secrets of the Mansion.”
The sound quality is okay, but not great. Despite that, if you want a good overview of the history – including some ghostly legends – this series is worth your time. You’ll gain a far better understanding of why the Winchester story is so compelling. And why we may have only scratched the surface of what lurks there.
My next link to a Winchester Mystery House video starts around the 3:20 mark, and includes an interesting paranormal story. It resonates with similar stories I’ve heard in other haunted locations. To me, it seems credible.
(After she finishes telling her story, fast-forward to the 7:46 point. There, another tour guide describes her own eerie experience. After the 8:19 mark, the video shows a little more of the house, but no additional stories.)
YouTube videos I did not include:
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- Ghost Adventures S05E04 Winchester Mystery House – a YouTube video posted by Perdue Adrian. It’s probably the full episode (or more), but the haunted house is shown in a skewed screen-in-screen image. If you want to see that episode, as of January 2018 it’s at Daily Motion.com.
- Ghost Adventures S12E11 Return to Winchester Mystery House 1080p HDTV x264 tNe – another skewed screen image, with a link to another website “to see in full HD.” I don’t click on links like that. Instead, I recommend watching the full episode on Hulu. (That link was current in Jan 2018.)
- If you’re looking for the Ghost Hunters episode (Season 2, Ep. 11) that includes the Winchester Mansion, it’s at Daily Motion, too.
- Winchester Mansion: The House That Spirits Built – It Is Written. It explains why God warns us about seances and believing in ghosts, and uses the Winchester Mystery House as an example. (If you don’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses, and you’re looking for a fairly high-quality Christian video, that’s probably the best relevant YouTube option. The video references: Job 7:9-10, Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, Leviticus 19:31, 2 Corinthians 11:14-15, and so on.)
Additional Winchester House Resources
If you’re a fan of the Winchester story, be sure to see the stylish, old-school (1963) video about the mansion, narrated by Lillian Gish, Mrs. Winchester’s House. For me, it was 30 minutes well spent.
I also enjoyed the first-person stories about the haunted house – and Mrs. Winchester – during her lifetime, in Sarah Winchester, My Neighbor. It’s a short book by a cheerful (if slightly nosy) neighbor, and it helped me understand the era when Sarah Pardee Winchester was building her very strange – and haunted – house.
In that historical context – when most wealthy women like Mrs. Winchester occupied themselves with hobbies, and walking their dogs, etc. – I saw how very odd she was. More than I’d expected. Was she fleeing something more than her own mortality? And just how terrified was she…?
Why didn’t she just pack her bags, sell the property, and live far away from whatever-it-was?
Perhaps it was something she couldn’t outrun.
In general, I think the Winchester house is one of America’s more enigmatic haunted houses. The mansion’s eerie legends and quirky history raise many questions. Some may only be answered by the ghosts… and whatever else lurks there.
Well, there’s another one that I can’t stand: Helen Mirren, the crazy feminist who thinks that men putting their arms around women is “like ownership.” Oh, well. The movie might still be good.
Anyway, I hope that it is not inappropriate to post something that may be only tangentially related to this post, but I have a suggestion for you. One theory states that we are all ghosts, but that some of us (like you and me) have managed to connect to physical bodies. If this is correct, it brings up the question of why biological bodies are connected to so often by ghosts. Why not rocks, or dirt? One possible answer is that it is easier for ghosts to connect to carbon, and other materials that we call “biological” than it is for most other materials. I recently saw some support for this possibility when reading about some ancient traditions of magick and mysticism which declare that it is necessary, when trying to contact ghosts, to use biological materials that used to be animals – sometimes even materials that used to be human animals – during the rituals. (By the way, I’ll spell the word “magick” with a K to try to distinguish real magick from stage trickery.) We probably shouldn’t do that, today, but it might be worthwhile to try to experiment with carbon and other different kinds of materials and see if you can get a sense of which materials seem easiest for the ghosts to move when you go to haunted places.
By the way, I’m also reminded of something that Tom DeLonge said in an interview with, I believe, Joe Rogan. In case you don’t know, (and it is entirely possible that you don’t know because DeLonge’s role has not been properly reported on by most of the mainstream media organizations) DeLonge (of Blink-182 fame) was the one whose work, behind the scenes, has gotten the release of those UFO videos and information by the US government, first reported on in that bombshell New York Times article in December. One of the most shocking parts of the article was the metals that were claimed to have come from UFOs, and that the US government has. In the interview with Rogan, I believe that DeLonge said something about “consciousness” being able to connect to certain kinds of metals. Could the US government have some of these kinds of metals? Is it possible for ghosts to connect to these kinds of metals? It is something to think about. Also, if you haven’t, already, I would recommend that you read DeLonge’s Sekret Machines books. The one with the “Chasing Shadows” subtitle is, according to DeLonge, historical fiction. However, the one with “Gods” as the subtitle is nonfiction, and, for a book about UFOs and extraterrestrials, it goes into a lot of information about magick, mysticism, shamanism, etc. At least, it goes into more information about those subjects than I thought that such a book would. It might give you a different perspective on certain things with respect to your research.
LOL, Mark. As a woman, I know the kind of “arm around” Mirren is talking about, and I’m in total agreement with her. The only men who get to do that with me are my husband and my son. The exception is if someone asks, first, and that’s usually for a photo. (Otherwise, it’s creepy.)
If she’s talking about hugging… well, there’s the Hollywood hug, which everyone seems to do with everyone. It’s not gender specific, and often includes air kisses. I’m okay with that, but not with the guys who hug too tightly or for longer than a split second. (The difference may not be clear to people who’ve never been in Hollywood, or in a “green room” with lots of Hollywood people. I’m also reminded of when I was a Scout leader, and the rule was “if you hug one, you have to hug them all.” I’m uneasy if someone keeps hugging me, but no one else.)
In England, the hug seems to be rare. In fact, any physical contact is rare, except for shaking hands. That may be done with both hands, one hand grasping yours and one hand over it, in the European style, but even that seems to be cautious when I’m in the U.K.
Generally, I’m a big fan of Mirren’s work. The current movie has been getting dismal reviews, but it looks as if the movie wandered into horror rather than a good ghost story. If the writer, producer, or director didn’t understand the difference… well, the movie may still attract a cult following.
I’ll be interested in whether the movie sparks more interest in ghosts, haunted places, and the Winchester mansion.
But anyway, getting back to the topic of ghosts…
The “we’re all ghosts” concept is interesting, perhaps even good. It may be more palatable as “spirits.”
I tend to believe in animism, in the Irish context: Everything can have a spirit/energy in it, but not everything does. So, in the early Irish language, you don’t own an object (there was no word for ownership), but it “likes you” or “likes to be near you.” Otherwise, you won’t have it around you.
I’ve never made a clear decision about those spirits/energy, and if they’re the same as people. But, as a child, I was convinced that my dolls were “real,” and – when shopping, especially at antiques shops, I’m cautious about the energy I sense when I touch an object. That’s especially true about anything metal. (This could related to the idea that we exchange molecules with almost everything we touch, so it could be similar to a residual energy haunting, in a way.)
I’ll check those references you recommended. Thanks!
For the record, Mirren doesn’t even like when a boyfriend puts his arm around a girlfriend’s shoulders, and, presumably, she doesn’t even think that it should be done in private, because it is “like ownership.”
https://pagesix.com/2015/09/16/why-helen-mirren-wants-men-to-stop-draping-their-arms-around-women/
Also, I don’t pay much attention to critics because I so often disagree with them. Like, I saw The Birds the other night, for the first time, and I didn’t even think that it was all that great. On the flip side, my favorite Star Trek movie is the one that just about everyone else hates the most: the fifth one.
Anyway, thanks for letting me know about this animism stuff. I never heard that term, before, but I wanna look it up, now. I’m starting to think that, even if spirits can possess anything, they might prefer certain types of materials. If I go to a haunted place, I’m gonna take some carbon with me.
Interesting. I’ll look forward to hearing your results.
Also, I didn’t know that about Mirren. It sounds like a phobia, which is an entirely different issue.
Putting arms around is merely a pantomime act.Jack london wouldn’t agree with a rock having a spirit.It’s ok with me,even while i’m JL’s ardent follower.
Nicely described, Vivek, thanks!