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Mini: The Winchester Mansion · Why We Do What We Do

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why We Do What We Do. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to Why We Do What We Do Mini. I'm your host, Abraham.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: And I'm your host, Shane.
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  Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
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  Speaker 1: that humans and non-human animals do. And in the month
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  Speaker 1: of October, we talk about the spooky, creepy things that
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  Speaker 1: humans and non-human animals and non-corporeal entities do. And so
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  Speaker 1: for these minis, these short form episodes, they're only about
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  Speaker 1: 15 minutes or less. These release on Mondays. Our full
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  Speaker 1: telling a friend, joining us on Patreon. I'll talk more
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  Speaker 1: about that at the end of this discussion. If you're
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  Speaker 1: joining us for the first time, then welcome. I hope
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  Speaker 1: that you enjoy what you hear in this discussion. And
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  Speaker 1: if you're a returning person, then welcome back. Thank you
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  Speaker 1: for continuing to find us. But it's a mini, so
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  Speaker 1: we got to dive in. Are you ready? Let's do it.
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  Speaker 1: All right. I think there are fewer places that command
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  Speaker 1: the kind of mystical aura bolstered by tangible evidence, meaning
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  Speaker 1: that there are all these like fantastical stories, but then
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  Speaker 1: there's actually like a real... thing that exists that is
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  Speaker 1: the foundation of these stories. And I feel like there's
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  Speaker 1: nothing more clear and famous than the story of the
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  Speaker 1: Winchester Mansion. And this bizarre house is notable for its
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  Speaker 1: labyrinth of over 160 rooms, stairs to nowhere, hidden passages
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  Speaker 1: and doors that open to solid walls or multi-story drops.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the house was largely built by the widow
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  Speaker 2: of William Wirt Winchester. Her name is Sally Winchester. And
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  Speaker 2: there are many stories about why she built the house
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  Speaker 2: the way she did and how this strange, elaborate monster
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  Speaker 2: of a house came to be and why. So we're
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  Speaker 2: going to tell the story with a twist at the end.
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  Speaker 1: A little twist, if you will. So let's go ahead
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  Speaker 1: and dive into it. Sally Lockwood Pardee was born as
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  Speaker 1: Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1839. Her parents changed her name
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  Speaker 1: to Sally from Sarah in honor of her paternal grandmother,
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  Speaker 1: whose name was Sally, who passed away shortly after her birth.
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  Speaker 1: So she went from Sarah to become Sally. So Sally
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  Speaker 1: Lockwood Pardee is who we're talking about. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Now, William Wirt Winchester, which is the most 1800s name
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  Speaker 2: I've ever heard in my life.
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  Speaker 1: Except for the WWW part. That's very modern.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That part is modern. When you go
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  Speaker 2: play a video game cabinet and the top initials are WWW,
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  Speaker 2: please know it's William Wirt Winchester.
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  Speaker 1: He's back.
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  Speaker 2: It was born in 1837 to Oliver and Jane Winchester.
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  Speaker 2: If that name sounds like the name of the famous
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  Speaker 2: Winchester rifle, it's because it is. Oliver Winchester founded the
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  Speaker 2: Winchester Repeating Arms Company that manufactures rifles and generated a
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  Speaker 2: truly enormous wealth for their family.
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  Speaker 1: So William is the son. He wasn't the person who
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  Speaker 1: designed the company, but he was the son of the
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  Speaker 1: man who did build the company. And Sarah and William
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  Speaker 1: married in 1862. She would have been, I guess, 23
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  Speaker 1: at the time or 22. They had a daughter four
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  Speaker 1: years later in 1866, although the daughter passed away from
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  Speaker 1: medical complications after only a month. So she was very young,
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  Speaker 1: very common at the time. And then from 1880 to 1881,
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  Speaker 1: she suffered several, just a slew of more losses. She
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  Speaker 1: lost her mother, her father-in-law died, and then her husband
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  Speaker 1: also died of tuberculosis, which was maybe more commonly called
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  Speaker 1: the consumption at that point.
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  Speaker 2: Yep, yep, yep. If you are familiar with Red Dead
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  Speaker 2: Redemption 2, or if you're familiar with Doc Holliday, those
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  Speaker 2: are famous examples of the consumption in media.
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  Speaker 1: Nice.
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  Speaker 2: I'm sure there's more, but those two stand out to
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  Speaker 2: me because they're cowboys. Now, Sarah's health was also declining
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  Speaker 2: due to rheumatoid arthritis. In 1886, she decided to move
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  Speaker 2: from her long-term home in New Haven, Connecticut, where she
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  Speaker 2: purchased a, quote, modest two-story, eight-bedroom ranch house in San
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  Speaker 2: Jose in the Santa Clara Valley in California, which she
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  Speaker 2: named La Nata Villa. La Nata Villa.
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  Speaker 1: I actually looked up the pronunciation and either way could
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  Speaker 1: be considered correct. So Yanada or Lanada.
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  Speaker 2: Probably depends on where you're from. And I know the
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  Speaker 2: Puerto Rican dialect would say llanada. Now, because of her
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  Speaker 2: perception that it resembled llanada alavesa in the Basque region
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  Speaker 2: in Spain. Now, this home would not stay modest for
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  Speaker 2: very long. Sarah had an ambition to expand the property
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  Speaker 2: and expand she did.
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  Speaker 1: Indeed. It's important to set some context here. And at
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  Speaker 1: the turn of the 20th century, spiritualism was very common
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  Speaker 1: in the cultural zeitgeist. But it's not spiritualism like you
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  Speaker 1: might think today, where people often mean spiritual to refer
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  Speaker 1: to being religious. This is not religious spiritualism. Spiritualism back
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  Speaker 1: then referred to the practice of communicating with the ghosts
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  Speaker 1: of the dead.
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  Speaker 2: Now, rumors swirled that Sally was deeply into spiritualism and
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  Speaker 2: that she paid construction workers to build room after room,
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  Speaker 2: expanding the property endlessly to appease the ghosts of the
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  Speaker 2: people who had been killed by the Winchester rifle, that
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  Speaker 2: Sally believed that if she stopped building, she would die,
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  Speaker 2: and that the confusing layout of the house was meant
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  Speaker 2: to confuse ghosts that they wouldn't easily find her. So,
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  Speaker 2: there's a few things in there that I think are
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  Speaker 2: worth unpacking. She was supposedly building the house and expanding it.
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  Speaker 2: because of guilt related to the people who were killed
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  Speaker 2: by the winchester rifle she believed that ghosts were going
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  Speaker 2: to have rooms there she believed that if she stopped
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  Speaker 2: building she would die and she also believed that the
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  Speaker 2: house supposedly i say i say she believed supposedly she
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  Speaker 2: believed all this she built it to be confusing so
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  Speaker 2: the ghost couldn't find her to kill her and take
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  Speaker 2: revenge because of the guns and.
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  Speaker 1: That's why she plastered the place with ads yeah so
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  Speaker 1: many posters All right, we're back. Just kidding. There were
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  Speaker 1: not ads in the Winchester Mansion. I mean, there might
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  Speaker 1: be now, but at the time, that was not a
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  Speaker 1: thing that she did. Construction did essentially continue nonstop until
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  Speaker 1: her death in 1922, ending with the final sort of
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  Speaker 1: product being this 160-room, 24,000-square-foot maze with 10,000 windows and 2,000 doors.
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  Speaker 1: And although some further additions and renovations did take place
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  Speaker 1: after her death... many of them shortly after her death,
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  Speaker 1: or at least in the few decades afterward. So it
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  Speaker 1: has still seen a little bit of like new construction,
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  Speaker 1: but for the most part, it was the construction generally
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  Speaker 1: finished at the time that she died in 1922.
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  Speaker 2: Right. Now, sensationalist stories ran with the idea of her
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  Speaker 2: spiritualism and paranoia and speculated widely about seances and paranormal
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  Speaker 2: activities in the house. Even the people who maintain the
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  Speaker 2: house and lead people on tours continue to support these
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  Speaker 2: claims and hype the ghostly features of the house.
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  Speaker 1: Now, unfortunately, or fortunately, the stories have been significantly exaggerated
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  Speaker 1: and many aspects of what has been said about this
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  Speaker 1: were fabricated out of whole cloth. There's no evidence, for example,
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  Speaker 1: that Sally was ever actually into spiritualism or ever held
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  Speaker 1: a seance in her house or even ever spoke to
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  Speaker 1: a medium of any kind. She was a Baptist and
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  Speaker 1: didn't believe in that kind of occult type thing. So
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  Speaker 1: there's just no evidence that any part of that aspect
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  Speaker 1: of the story was true, that she had these beliefs
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  Speaker 1: about the ghosts and having seances and all these spiritualist things.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and further, there was no evidence that the building
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  Speaker 2: onto the house was due to her paranoia about wanting
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  Speaker 2: to appease the spirits of those felled by the Winchester rifle.
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  Speaker 2: So for one thing, at the time, the rifle was
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  Speaker 2: considered important for survival and did not have the social
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  Speaker 2: stigma that had been attached to guns in more modern times.
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  Speaker 2: So there is no reason to suspect that she would
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  Speaker 2: have ever felt guilt over the lives lost to the rifle. Instead,
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  Speaker 2: she was very interested in architecture and wanted to try
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  Speaker 2: her hand at architectural design. Though it sounds like she
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  Speaker 2: was bad at it.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I think she wasn't necessarily bad at it. She
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  Speaker 1: also just wasn't necessarily experienced with it.
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  Speaker 2: Trained. Yeah, she wasn't trained at it.
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  Speaker 1: She wasn't trained. But that's the actual explanation in terms
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  Speaker 1: of why she kept building and iterating was that she
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  Speaker 1: wanted to kind of do architecture things. But she was
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  Speaker 1: a woman leading an architectural project in the late 1800s,
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  Speaker 1: early 1900s. And that because of this, or seemingly because
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  Speaker 1: of this, this is why she was perceived as being incompetent, superstitious,
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  Speaker 1: and erratic, which was just not true. She was self-taught
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  Speaker 1: and could not have received training in architecture. So instead,
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  Speaker 1: she had to learn from magazines and then input from
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  Speaker 1: contractors that she would hire. And then through trial and error,
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  Speaker 1: through her attempting the designs that she thought would look good,
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  Speaker 1: and then she might change course on when she saw
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  Speaker 1: how they actually turned out. But she was a woman
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  Speaker 1: in charge of a construction project and people had a
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  Speaker 1: difficult times wrapping their minds around that concept. And so
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  Speaker 1: and painted her with this brush of being this eccentric, erratic,
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  Speaker 1: crazy person.
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  Speaker 2: Right, which is unfortunate. Now, the confusing layout of the
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  Speaker 2: house is actually explained by the fact that the style
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  Speaker 2: at the time was large, elaborate homes. Further, she had
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  Speaker 2: the means to build and design and iterate. She might
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  Speaker 2: have decided to add a wall that was an exterior wall,
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  Speaker 2: so what was once a window to the outside now
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  Speaker 2: connected to a room, or if she didn't like how
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  Speaker 2: a room turned out, she would have had it redone.
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  Speaker 1: And that meant that there might be some sort of
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  Speaker 1: weird and incongruent features from room to room that they
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  Speaker 1: might expand or contract, that they might have A new
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  Speaker 1: room added on to an exterior wall, etc. But then
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  Speaker 1: other things happened. There were several earthquakes during construction. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: this went on for like 40 years almost.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: 30 years that they were doing construction. And that meant
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  Speaker 1: that some of the rooms and wings were destroyed and
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  Speaker 1: had to be rebuilt, resulting in some strange features. such
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  Speaker 1: as where stairs once went to a wing of the house.
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  Speaker 1: That wing was now no longer there. It looked like
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  Speaker 1: the stairs went to nowhere and they would have to
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  Speaker 1: just put up a wall. were connected. Or there were
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  Speaker 1: rooms that used to, or there were doors that used
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  Speaker 1: to open to rooms, but now open to nothing, to
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  Speaker 1: a wall or a multi-story drop. And so the sort
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  Speaker 1: of construction woes that plagued them were a better explanation
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  Speaker 1: for those strange features of the house. Right.
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  Speaker 2: And after she died, decisions were made to do additional
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  Speaker 2: renovations that actually exacerbated some of the oddities of the
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  Speaker 2: house to deliberately make it creepier and stranger. So, for instance,
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  Speaker 2: the number 13 is present in many of many features
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  Speaker 2: of the house. So, for example, a chandelier with 13 candles,
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  Speaker 2: a bathroom with 13 windows. But some investigative journalists found
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  Speaker 2: that these were some of the things that were altered
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  Speaker 2: or added after her death and apparently somewhat sloppily in
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  Speaker 2: some cases.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like they clearly had this chandelier with 12
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  Speaker 1: candles on it and then someone like glued this extra
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  Speaker 1: arm that doesn't quite match the other ones on to
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  Speaker 1: make it 13.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Or they had a window. There was like 12 windows
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  Speaker 1: or there was 10 windows. They like just put boards
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  Speaker 1: in the middle of it to make it look like
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  Speaker 1: they were two separate windows. So that it would come
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  Speaker 1: to 13. So these were things that were just added
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  Speaker 1: to embellish later. Yeah. So understanding why this happened here,
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  Speaker 1: sensationalist stories are easy to sell. And there are people who,
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  Speaker 1: for whatever reason, were in charge of this property afterward,
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  Speaker 1: were kind of left with, what are we going to
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  Speaker 1: do with this strange property? And they saw an opportunity
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  Speaker 1: to make money off of something that otherwise appeared to
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  Speaker 1: potentially be a money pit. That they could either tear
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  Speaker 1: it down and sell it for parts or do something
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  Speaker 1: with it. They weren't likely going to just sell this
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  Speaker 1: house as a house that people live in and could
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  Speaker 1: potentially make a lot more money treating it as a
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  Speaker 1: ghostly tourist attraction.
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  Speaker 2: Right. Exactly. That makes perfect sense.
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  Speaker 1: All right. So that's to dissuade some of the claims.
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  Speaker 1: There's also some misunderstood information about her inheriting this gigantic
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  Speaker 1: sum of money that was like $ 20 million in 1800,
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  Speaker 1: which would have been a crazy number today. It was
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  Speaker 1: actually more like $ 1 million or $ 2 million, like $ 2. 3 million,
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  Speaker 1: plus possibly some shares in another company or the Winchester
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  Speaker 1: company that totaled to about $ 11 million in today's money, which, again,
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  Speaker 1: would have been a lot of money at the time.
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  Speaker 1: She was a wealthy person, but not this absurd level
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  Speaker 1: of wealth. She's like the 1% of the 1% level
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  Speaker 1: of earnings. Right, right. But anyway, so that's the story
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  Speaker 1: of the Winchester Mansion. If you'd like to tell us
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  Speaker 1: your thoughts about this, or if you've ever been there
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: and would like to share that, we would love to
• 12:26
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• 12:31
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• 12:33
  Speaker 1: to hearing from you. So please do that thing. Giant
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• 12:54
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Everybody.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Everybody wins.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you so much to my team of people without
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  Speaker 1: whom I could not make this. Thank you for recording
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  Speaker 1: with me today, Shane.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you all for listening. Is there anything you would
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  Speaker 1: like to add or that I forgot before we wrap
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  Speaker 1: this up?
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  Speaker 2: Not today.
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  Speaker 1: All right. This is Abraham.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: This is Shane.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Why we do what we do. Minnie is out. Bye.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: going to www.wwdpodcast.com.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.