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

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