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SYSK Selects: What's with the Winchester Mystery House? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's me your old pal Josh, And for
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: this week's s Y s K Spooky Selects, I've chosen
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: How the Winchester Mystery House Worked. Uh. It debuted on
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Halloween of two thousand thirteen, and um, on the surface,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: it's about some cookie rich woman who believed in ghosts
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: on her and so she made this crazy house that's
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: super interesting. But um, if you peel back beneath the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: surface of the story a little more, you find like
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: a clear picture of the person um that she was.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: And she was as interesting as her house was. So um,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: hopefully you'll enjoy this one. Uh. It probably won't scare
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: the pants off of you, but it's at the very
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: least interesting, So check it out and enjoy. Welcome to
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and happy Halloween, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Go do what you're about to do, Chuckers and Jerry.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Jerry's saying, uh, well, you put the three of us together,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: me Josh Clark, there, Chuck Bryant and there Jerry. Yeah,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and you've got stuff. You know. The Halloween edition. We
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: got a big old tup of candy corn. Here we
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: got have you Have you tried Starburst candy corn? My goodness,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I don't like candy corn, and I like Star Wars
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: candy corn. Now is it Starburster? Is it candy corn?
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: It's candy corn with Starburst flavors, but not Starburst texture.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: No candy corn texture. Okay, some mad scientists threw it
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: all together. Interesting, Yeah, I'll try it. You got one.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I have a warm one in my pockets, been in
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: there for a few days. Perfect. Here you go, soften
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: it up there. Oh that's delicious. Make a chewing Yeah,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: it's straw strawberry and lint. Yeah, it's exactly right. Chuck. Uh. Yeah,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: so we got candy corn. It's a Halloween edition, and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed our Halloween episode. Our story. It's
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: probably my favorite thing of the year that in Christmas episode,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: we've gotta get cracking on the Christmas extravaganza. Yeah, work,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: running out of stories, I probably you know, I got
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: one up my sleeve. I've got an idea. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Otherwise we can just make stuff up. Yeah you know. Yeah,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: and then everything worked out okay because it was Christmas
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the end Chuck. Yes, have you ever heard of the
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Winchester Mystery House. I have, indeed, I have to thank God,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: because that'd be a surprise. If I was completely unprepared,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: it would be I would be surprised. I can tell
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: you that. Yeah, uh yeah, I've heard of it. I've
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: never been there, but I would like to go for
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: sure and check it out. I might. I might do
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: that next time I'm in the Bay area, I might
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: venture towards San Jose to check this thing out. Yes, well,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I've already cleared it with you me that we're going
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: next time. We're in the San Francisco area. Right, how
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: far aways San Jose from San Francisco, I don't know close? Right?
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Do you know the way to San Jose? I do
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: not know the way to San Jose. Apparently, Um, but
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: if I could find my way there, we would find
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: the Winchester Mystery House, because apparently it sticks out like
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: a sore thumb. I bet um. It was originally in
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: some pretty rural area, and over time, the the acreage
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I think a hundred and sixty two acres is what
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the Winchester House grounds eventually covered, has been whittled away
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and now it's just like the suburbs with this enormous
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Victorian mansion situated in the middle of it. Yeah, and
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: when we say enormous, we mean enormous. Um supposedly about
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty rooms. Even though, and I think
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: this is part of building up the lore, some say
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: they cannot be counted because you will get lost in
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: the house and never get an accurate count and never escape.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I say that's hokem, hokem, because hey, if you can
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: put a man on the moon, you can count the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: rooms in a house. Yeah, and what do you suggest
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: using a post it note? Just put a post it
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: note up and yeah, you don't even need to write that.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Just the very presence of a post it note indicates
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: you're you've been there before. Then counter all the post
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: it notes, Right, you could just you could write the
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: numbers on them. Even better, you wouldn't even have to
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: count them. You just write one and then keep in
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: mind the last number you wrote down the right, the
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: next number that comes after that on the next post
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: It note. Right, And you know we should do it
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: would be funny if we did a little video series
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: where you and I are big smart guys tried to
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: do this and we kept getting confused I would watch that.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I would watch that over and over, and then we
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: find the lost wine cellar, and everything's kind of peters
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: out from there. Alright, So what we're talking about, well,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: let's clue those of you who don't know what we're
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: talking about in we're talking about the Winchester Mystery House,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: which was, as Chuck said, an enormous mansion of an
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: indeterminate number of rooms. I think they estimate a hundred
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: and sixty. But even um, the state of California on
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: their tourism website says, um, it is an odd dwelling
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: with an unknown number of rooms. A tourism website said that, yes,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: because a tourist attraction exactly. They're trying to, you know,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: draw people in with the mystery of the mystery. Yeah.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: And the whole thing was the brainchild and the result
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: of a four ft ten inch little uh firecracker. Yeah.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Nicknamed the Belle of New Haven in her day, named
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Sarah Pardi who became Sarah Party Winchester. Yeah, new Haven, Connecticut.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: She's born in eighteen thirty nine, not New Haven, New Jersey. Um.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: And she was very smart, spoke four languages, could play
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the piano like a champ with her elbows. Yeah, she's beloved. Um.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: She married in eighteen sixty two William Winchester of the
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Winchester Repeating Arms Company, because it's a big part of
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the story, it is h they developed what was known
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: as the Peter the Repeating Rifle, which is the coolest
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: rifle ever. The Lone Ranger head one did he According
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: to the Lone Ranger placet that I have, he did.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: I believe that he mainly used the old revolver though, yeah,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: and the um, the cudgel. Yeah, the rifleman famous for
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: the Rifleman used the repeater for sure. The Lone Ranger
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: did too, okay, Um. But basically it was a revolutionary
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: gun that you could fire really quickly. Um. And yeah,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: you can fire once every three seconds, which was pretty
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: amazingly fast for a rifle especially. It was the gun
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: that won the West, and it was the gun that
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: helped the Northern troops defeat the Southern troops in the
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Civil War. And when the west depends on your vantage point,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: but yes, it was the The westward expansion took place
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: at the barrel of the Winchester Repeating Rifle. M So
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: she marries William Winchester, heir to that fortune. Uh. They
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: started family in eighteen sixty six and very very tragically
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: lost their lone daughter, Annie in infancy, and it was
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: something that Sarah never recovered from. Basically, No, it was
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: a pretty sad thing to see it. Apparently the child
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Um was alive for either twenty eight days or forty
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: two days, I guess, depending on who you ask. Um,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: So she made it the term she was born, and
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: then she died of a wasting disease called morasthmus, which
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: is a disease of malnutrition. So no matter what they
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: fed her, she just wasn't taking in the nutrients and
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: she died of malnutrition. And at the time morasthmus was
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: still mysterious, so it seemed like, what the heck just
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: happened to my kid? I'm feeding the kid. Also, here
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I go right along the edge of completely losing my
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: sanity forever, and I'll never be quite the same again.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: But I'm gonna come back a little bit. And then
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: when I do a few years later, my husband's going
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: to die an early death at age forty three. Yeah,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: fifteen years later to be exact. And Um, which, by
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: the way, can I take a second here, Sure, so
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: money wrote in, and I don't I can't find the email,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: but they wrote in for our dying podcast, we mentioned
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: life expectancy and we said that, um, you know, we
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: made the assumption that people used to um only lived
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: at like age thirty or something like that, because the
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: average life expectancy was so low. And this this person
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: pointed out that that's not the case. That people typically
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: lived to old age like they live now. But the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: infomortality rate was so high that if you took all
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: of the infant deaths and all the people who survived
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: it and put it together, you had an average life
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: expectancy of thirty. Right, So it's not like everyone was
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: dying in their forties. They were dying in their ones
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: and twos exactly. So if you made it out of
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: your ones and twos, you would probably live a pretty
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: long life. So that was the discrepancy that I never
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: understood until the person wrote in. So, whoever wrote in,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: thanks for writing that in. You didn't catch you a
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: name or anything. I don't know. Uh so where are we?
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: She she's lost her daughter, she's lost her husband. She's
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: very distraught. UM goes and sees a medium which was
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: a big deal at the time. Yeah, in Boston a
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: man named Adam Coons, And which was strange that it
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: was a male medium. It is because you know ladies, um,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: which is why they're all called lady so and so.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: You know, uh yeah, like you know, oh Madam, yeah,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: or madam or like Lady Charlotte or whatever. Um, Lady
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Charlotte's who I go too. That's why I buzz marketed her. No,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: you don't, do you really know? I con see Lady Adam. Um.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: So anyway, she goes and sees Lady Adam, and he says,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be haunted by ghosts for the rest of
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: your life because you married into a fortune of killing
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: and murdering with that Winchester rifle. Remember haunting you Remember
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I said it was important that she married um Mr
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Winchester right here, William. The Winchester family supposedly had a curse,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: according to Lady Adam, that all of the people who
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: had died at the at the um other end of
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: the Winchester rifle now haunted the family, and they had
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: a listed demands that Sarah was going to have to
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: put up with or else she would be gotten by
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: the spirits too, and that's where the house was born. Basically, Yeah,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: the guy said, these spirits need a house, so you're
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: gonna have to build a house for him. More and
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: more of people are dying from the the rifle that
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: your husband's family created every day, so you're gonna have
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: to make it a big house. And you can never
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: cease construction. If you cease construction, you'll die. And there's
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: two different interpretations here, and they're not quite sure how
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Sarah Winchester interpreted it, but whether if she stopped construction
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: she would die, or if she kept construction going she
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: would live forever eternal life. Because the people who are
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: into spiritualism, we're into that whole thing a lot too.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: But either way, she had her her walking papers, her instructions, um,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and she decided to take them out west and follow
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: her husband, who who she believed was leading her, who
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: supposedly told her all this through the medium, and headed
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: towards California. Yeah, she visited had a Nissan Menlo Park
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and eventually found a property three miles west of San
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Jose and the Santa Clara Valley there and she said,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna buy this land. I'm gonna
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: take this house and I'm going to build on it
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: until forever. And um, Lady Adam had a his cousin
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: was a contractor. That's not true. That would have been
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: great though. Yeah, it's like, so you have to build
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: and non stop. Here's my cousin, John Hanson. John Hanson
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: was in fact her foreman. Uh, even though Ms Mrs
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Winchester was her own architect, so hold on. So Mrs Winchester, um,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: who's just really slightly off a rocker now at the
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: loss of her child and her husband has instructions that
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: she is to move west, start building forever a huge
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: house to how's the ghosts of all the people who
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: have died at the hands of her um husband's company's rifles.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: That's where we're at right now. Before we're going to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: further let's um, let's do a message break. Okay before
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: we left, UM, I sort of hinted that she was
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: her own architect, and she was. Not only did you
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: hint it, you said it. Not only was she her
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: own architect, but see she supposedly got instructions on building
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: through seances, right, and she had an architect at first,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: but she fired him later on, apparently, I think, because
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't listen to her. Oh, and she was like, look,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I'm getting instructions from the other side. Pal are you
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: getting instructions from the inside. No, Well, then we go
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: my way. So she had a seance room and UM,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: here's how she would conduct her seance. Would try and
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: trick the ghosts into not following her and disrupting the
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: seance um. So she would set out for the seance room. Um,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: she would traverse basically a labyrinth of rooms and hallways
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: like she would push a button and a panel would
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: fly up. She would step quickly into their shut the door.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: She would open a window to that place, climb out
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: onto like a flight of outdoor steps that took her
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: down a story, come back inside like through a window.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And she was basically trying to to lose these spirits
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: that she felt like we're tailing her until she could
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: finally get into her comforting seance room where she would
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: receive instruction on what to build next. And then when
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: she got into a seance room, which was the Blue room.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It was at the center of the house and I
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: think the second floor. Um, she would get instructions I
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: think from her husband, supposedly, and then also a spirit
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: caretaker named Clyde, and she would get the instructions. At
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: twelve there would be a bell rung that's when the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: spirits arrived at to another bell would ring, signaling their exit.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: And she would do this every night, and then in
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the morning she would go meet the foreman Hanson, John Hanson,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and say, here's what you guys do today, and he
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: would go, all right, but we should say that all
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: through the night, including at midnight at two and the
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: time when she was sleeping after the seance and before
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: she met Hanson, there was construction going on. Yeah, and um,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: like it was twenty four hours a day, sixty five
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: days a year, including Sundays, including holidays. There was always
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: somebody doing construction on that house. Yeah. She she apparently
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: like as long as she could hear those hammers nailing nails,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: then she felt at ease. Um. She would uh sign
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: rooms that would be built on top of other rooms.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: She would build rooms apparently to get to those hundred
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: and sixty rooms. They estimate they may have built five
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: or six hundred over the span of those years, right,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: because if there was something that got in the way,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: she would either build around it have it torn down.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Sometimes there was even um it was even less explicable
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: why a room would get torn down, but she would
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: just order it torn down, even though say they've been
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: working on it a month up to that point. Yeah.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: And the whole trick to all this is to pay well. Um,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: if you weren't paying well, then you probably would have
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: had dudes walking off the job being like, you're crazy lady,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: I'm out of here. Right. She paid double the day, right, yeah,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: which is three bucks three yeah. And so the construction
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: dudes were happy to keep working on this what they
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: thought was this crazy old lady's plans um and they
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: probably frustrating, but that you know, they were getting rich
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: or not rich, but they were doubling their money, right,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: And I think over time to Chuck like, I get
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: the impression and that the people who worked for her,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: both the construction workers who you know, I mean like
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: there would be once they came, they didn't leave unless
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: they were fired because the money was so good. Um.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: So when you work for some crazy old lady for twelve, fifteen,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: twenty years or whatever, like you're gonna start to develop
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: a sense of loyalty. And they She was very much
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: protected from the outside world by these people because her
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: neighbors thought she was a total wacko, maybe a little
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: evil who knows what's going on. She was very she
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: lived in seclusion. She always wore black, she always wore
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: a veil. Yeah. She Uh. One of the first things
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: she did was had built a private had a private
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: planet around the entire house. But she was also very
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: kind of children, especially orphans, would have them over for
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: ice cream. So it's not like she was some awful,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: mean old person. She was just mysterious and liked her
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: privacy mainly. Yeah, and apparently once she moved into town,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: um a lot of the local charities started getting anonymous
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: donations that they never got before she and she of
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: course she didn't need all the glory, but she was
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: still very charitable woman. Yeah, she had a bunch of money. Um.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: The reason she was able to pay double was um
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: a big inheritance obviously about twenty million bucks and a
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: lot of stock in the Winchester Company, and um it
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: afforded her. They guessed about a thousand dollars a day
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: to spend on construction, which is like twenty grand now
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: seven and change a day. Day. And this is the
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: money mostly prior to the era of the income tax,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: So like that was all hers um I and she
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: ended up spending I think five point five million on
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the house in nineteen two dollars. That's a lot of dough,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: it really is. But she didn't have anything else to
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: do with it except give it away to orphans. That's true.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: So um, all of this construction led to some very
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: strange design decisions. And we should say this is probably
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a pretty good point to say, Mrs Winchester didn't leave
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: any diaries, any journals, she was never interviewed. Uh. All
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: we can say for sure is that she went to
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: a medium in Boston, received these instructions that she had
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: to build the house to appease the spirits, and that's
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: what she did. Uh. Everything else is kind of conjecture,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: like her motivations. Beyond that, the details of her motivations
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: and what she thought and believed, um is conjectures. We
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: should probably say that, UM. And there's a lot of
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: room for misunderstanding. Like the staircases that she built had
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: lots of steps and they were like two inches high. Well,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: the reason that she did that was because she had
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: very bad arthritis, and those are the only types of
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: stairs that she could um climb, but they would also
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: double back all of a sudden, or go around in
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: crazy circles of A lot of people say that she
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: thought that you could kind of screw with the spirits
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: and throw them off your trail, I guess on your
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: way to the science room. Um, by having ars constructor
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: like that. At any rate, there's a lot of weird
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: design elements in this huge mansion. Yeah, the switchback stairs,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Um were seven flights that rose only nine ft forty
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: four steps total. She had stairs that would go down
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: leading two stairs that went up stairs that would go
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: into a ceiling. Chimneys that would stop short of the ceiling. Uh,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: you know, hidden doorways, covered up stairwells. It was just
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: sort of a big, beautiful mess of design. There was
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: a there were doors that led from the inside out
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: to the outside, but it would just be a sheer
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: drop if you stepped out the door like that last
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: step as a doozy right. Um. There was an inside
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: door in the sands room, a closet door that opened
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: up onto the kitchen sink another story below. Um, there
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: was a corridor behind a cabinet that went along the
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: backside of thirty rooms. It's just all sorts of neat stuff.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: There's the very famous stairs that lead to nowhere. Yeah. Uh,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: there were cabinets or only like two inches deep. Um,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: there was a grand ballroom, and you know, it wasn't
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: all just wacky stuff. It was like really gorgeous design
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: in places. Um. The grand ballroom was built without nails,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: which was a feat of engineering in itself and was gorgeous,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: but never used because of an earthquake that was pretty
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: significant in her life. In nineteen o six, there was
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: an earthquake that Um. She was known for sleeping in
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: different rooms every night so she wouldn't be found out
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: by the ghosts, and she was actually trapped in the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Daisy room and not found for a little while by
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: her employees because they didn't know where she was after
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: this earthquake cabin right. Not only did the ghosts not
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: know where she was sleeping, her servants didn't either, So
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: she was in there for a few hours and it
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: f freaked her out, I'm sure, because despite the fact
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: that it had like totally killed a lot of people
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: in ravaged San Francisco and burned it down, she took
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it as a sign that the ghosts were mad at her.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Um that they were afraid that construction was nearing an end,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: and so to appease them, she boarded up a lot
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: of the damaged um interior so that it could never
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: be repaired and then therefore the house could never be finished. Um.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: We should also say that by this time the house
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: had reached seven stories, and the earthquake was so bad
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: it knocked off the top three I believe. Yeah, she
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: ended up sealing the front thirty rooms of the home. Uh,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: including the front entrance to the home. These like grand
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: front doors that they had just put in. Apparently only
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: three people the two guys that put in the door
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and her were the only people to walk through them
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: before she sealed them off forever. Um. Well, she had
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: a beautiful tiffany stained glass window installed and then built
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a wall behind it so no light can shine through it. Yeah,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: you can only see it from the outside. I'm sure
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: it looks kind of dull. And then after the earthquake earthquake,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: which I said freaked her out, Supposedly she went and
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: lived on a houseboat in San Francisco Bay for six years.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: But that was nice. And then when she came back
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: there was it was different like before, there wasn't necessarily
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: much of a plan and so like if she ran
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: into trouble architecturally she just teared the thing down or
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: build around the problem. This was like a different kind
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: of frenetic pace and it was just like build whatever wherever.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Um after the earthquake really got to her, just like
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: crazy person building. Yeah, alright, chuckers, before we go any further,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: how about another message break? Okay, so back to it, Um,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: here's some numbers for you. Forty seven fireplaces, seventeen chimneys, uh,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: two basements, six kitchens, ten thousand window panes, and four
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty seven doorways, and only two mirrors in
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: the whole house because of course, ghosts are rate of
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: their own reflection, and apparently the staff would sneak hand
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: mirrors so they can occasionally see what they look like
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: after getting out of the shower. But she didn't want
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: to have anything to do with the mirrors though. Yeah.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: She Um also supposedly would fire staff who saw her
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: without her veil on. Apparently her butler, Um and her
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: niece were the only people who could see her without
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: a vail and if you saw her without a vail,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: no hard feelings, but you're cute. So we've talked a
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: lot about the fact that she worked as her own
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: designer and made all these weird, terrible choices that made
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: no sense. But we also mentioned earlier on she was
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: a very smart lady. So she actually learned over the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: years more about design and architecture and got better at
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: it um and developed a skill. And she actually had
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: some innovations in her home that were brand new at
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the time. UM. For instance, they say she was the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: first person to use wool for insulation. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Uh,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: they had carved I had gas lights in the house
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: that had their own gas manufacturing plant for the estate,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: which is brand new. And she had electric push buttons
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: installed to turn the lights on and off. She had
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: an inside crank to open and clothes outside window shutters.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: First person to do that that eventually became the norm. Uh.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: What else she had she I guess it was sort
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: of green at the time. She had drip pans under
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the windows and a zinc sub floor in the north
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: conservatory so when you watered plants, the runoff from those
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: plants would be captured by drain pipes for the garden
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: below it. It's pretty cool. And she had something called
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the Annunciator, which is a servant call system allowed her
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: to summon servants from anywhere in the house and it
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: would drop a little card to show the servant which
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: room she was in at the time. That's pretty awesome.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't just crazy weird steps that lead to nowhere.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: There were actually some innovations at the time, and it
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: was it's a gorgeous Victorian like when you look at it,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: really really beautiful house. Yeah, and apparently the construction by
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: the time she died took up six acres six acres
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: of the house, not just the the grounds, because the
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: grounds are like a hundred and sixty acres um. And
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: when she she dies, finally it's a And apparently the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: legend has it that she died at a time when
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: construction stopped. The workman took a break or something to
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: play cards and never started back up again because they
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: discovered that she died in her bed sleeping ino and um.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Right afterwards, she left everything to basically her nieces and nephews,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: and one of her nieces I think the only one
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: who was allowed to see without a veil, came in
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and was like, let's just auction this stuff off, and um,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: it took six weeks supposedly to get everything out of
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the house because there was that much stuff and it
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: was that difficult to find your way out and you
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: really got into the interior. Yeah, and some really valuable
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: things too that were locked away in storage that were
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: never even uh used, like you know, furniture and furnishings,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: just sitting and wait. Basically, didn't you say that there's
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: a wine seller that's lost. Yeah, I think they can't
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: find the wine seller to this day, which also sounds
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: a little like lower to me. It does. Why can't
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: you find the wine seller? I don't know, it's lost. Uh.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: It is a popular tourist attraction today and um, still
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: being renovated and maintained. Apparently it's continually being painted. The
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: exterior is all year long. They finished painting it and
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: they start once again, because it takes sixty five days
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: to complete the job, I would imagine. So, and it's
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: been a tourist attraction almost since she died. Like the
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: house was sold to a group of investors who wanted
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: to start it as a tourist attraction UM for a
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five thousand dollars. That's that is crazy,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: even though she dropped five point five million into it.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: UM And again like, if you're interested in this, you
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: can go check out the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. UM.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: They have a website. I just imagine you type in
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Winchester Mystery House, but also look up UM something called
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Mrs Winchester's House. It's a documentary from nine kp i
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: X I think is a San Francisco television station. It's
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: narrated by Lilian Guess. It's just a half hour long,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: but it's really spooky and black and white and just interesting.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: It's a neat one, very cool. Yeah, check that out.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: All right, so we're going, okay, let's go before that though, chuck. UM.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: If everybody wants to read this article, you can type
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: in Winchester Mystery House in the search bar at how
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com and we'll bring this up. And
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: I said search bar, So that means it's time for
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: a listener mail. Yeah, I'm gonna call this a sexuality.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Uh callback I just listened to your A sexual podcast. Guys,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: found it very interesting. One thing really caught my attention.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: You said a sexual rules were classified, there's a separate
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: group outside the range of homosexual to heterosexual. I think
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: it could be different. So Paul is proposing an idea here,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: instead of the range being in number line with a
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: subgroup that doesn't fit, it should be more like a
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: coordinate plane. Not all people are equally sexual. I'm sure
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: you know people who don't really think about sex often,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: and then people who it dominates a large portion of
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: their lives. That made me think that it could be
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: a coordinate plane with homo and hetero on the left
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: and right, and a sexual too extremely sexual. I want
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: to say nymphomaniacal even but I feel like nymphomania is
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: more complicated than a born sexuality, or at least we
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: don't know enough about it to say whether it is. Yeah,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: so what is describing as like a plus sign? Yeah,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: so sexual orientation on left and right, and then the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: intensity of your sexuality going up and down exactly, so
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: you can have like, uh, high homosexuality, low heterosexuality, and
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: so on exactly. It's a good idea. I've actually seen
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: that elsewhere, to coordinate plane. It just makes sense. He
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: says that way, all the people could be accurately plotted
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: it to some degree, at least, not saying it would
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: count for everything perfectly, but I think it would clarified
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: a bit more. Anyways, I'd love to know your thoughts
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: on that idea you just got him. Yeah, has it
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: been done before or have you read about that? I
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: have not. I do not know. I saw in a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: paper somewhere somebody proposing that similar thing that it's um,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: who was it the the sex study year Kinsey Kinsey?
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah that he yeah, he um. They really kind of
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: missed a really obvious aspect of intensity rather than just orientation.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: It's just stuckt orientation. Dummy. It's a good idea. I agree.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: So Paul of Uniontown p a. Uh, we we think
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: it's a swell idea. Get to work on it. Yeah,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: go Paul. Maybe you can call it the Paul Paul's
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: sexual plane. Paul's a one sexual plane and a girl. Yeah.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Uh that's good. Thank you, Paul, Thank you for that.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: And if you like, Paul has some great thoughts ideas
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: on things that we've talked about, more expansive ideas. Um,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: we want to hear them because we like that kind
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: of stuff. You can tweet to us at s y
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: com slash Stuff you Should Know, and Hey guys, come
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: hang out with us at our website. Stuff you Should
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Have dot com for more on this and thousands of
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: other topics. Does it, How stuff works dot com