![]() ![]() ![]() The house feels less dynamic and vital, like a really giant set of Lego's Winchester spent her life playing with. ![]() Seen this way, it's hard to imagine a less Havisham-like project. When the 1906 earthquake caused part of the house to collapse, she supervised the preservation of every possible thing and had them stored for use in future constructions. She was also an unusually fair employer, paying her workers twice the mandated minimum wage, and furnishing the house with three elevators - including one for the servants. For another, Sarah Winchester was highly respected by her business associates - one described her as better than most men when it came to affairs of finance. For one thing, Winchester's husband and daughter died 16 years apart it's not quite the double-whammy the "grieving widow" story suggests. None of this quite scans, as Dickey points out. When construction stopped, her life would end. There was no escape, but she could go west and build a house for herself and the spirits. There's a (probably apocryphal) story about a medium who told her that her family was cursed thanks to the provenance of its wealth. Still, for decades, the story told about the house was that Sarah Winchester (neƩ Pardee) - crazed by the loss of her husband and infant daughter and wracked with guilt over the thousands of deaths caused by the Winchester rifles that made her rich - started building the house in a kind of superstitious bid to placate the dead. But there's more to the house than its spookiness, and that's thanks in part to its mysterious creator. It's unsettling, no question: The legendary stairway to nowhere does exist. I visited the house in preparation for the film, and what surprised me most was how bright and playful much of it felt. And on that score, Winchester actually fares better than most. Mostly, though, the Winchester Mystery House is a kind of Rorschach test of the people trying to tell its story. ![]()
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