GAIL DRAKE: The rifle that built the Mystery Mansion

“Every wise woman builds her house, but a foolish woman tears it down with her hands.”

— Proverbs 14:1

John Wayne entrenched himself in our American culture, riding his trusty horse and strategically aiming his “Gun that Won the West” — the Winchester rifle with a repeating action.

The famed rifle was developed by Oliver Winchester, the lieutenant governor of Connecticut, who took over a bankrupt arms business and developed stronger mechanical systems in their rifle designs. Little did he know that his “repeating rifle” would result in a monstrosity of a mansion in San Jose, Calif., with legends of haunting spirits and seances. It is known today as the Winchester Mystery Mansion.

Winchester’s son, William, married Sara Pardee, the “Belle of New Haven,” and together they swirled through the best of New England society. However, their infant daughter died, and 14 years later, William and his father died of tuberculosis. The grieving widow left Connecticut, toured Europe for three years, then in 1884 she relocated to the Santa Clara Valley in California.

As heir to the Winchester fortune, she inherited millions with an ongoing income of $1,000 per day ($25,000 in today’s dollars). She bought a 160-acre orchard with an eight-room farmhouse. She immediately hired carpenters, sketched out designs, and within 20 years had built a seven-story mansion with 200 rooms. Foregoing architects, Sara Winchester met with her foreman regularly with her latest designs and remodels. It is estimated that more than 500 rooms were built, but through remodeling only 160 rooms remain. The 38-year construction project cost $5.5 million.

The 24,000-square-foot home showcased the finest in Victorian elegance and taste — and innovation. The home boasts custom-made Tiffany stained-glass windows. It features carbide gas lights fed by the estate’s gas plant and an electric elevator. Beautiful and bizarre, the house is filled with architectural oddities. There are 47 stairways, several of which lead to nowhere. The house contains 10,000 windows and 2,000 doors, some which open into a wall and one that opens to the outdoors — on the third floor with no steps. Of the 47 fireplaces, only 17 have chimneys. The 13 bathrooms feature spiderweb windows but only one bathroom is fully functional. The home is filled with 13s: 13 steps, 13 gaslights, and 13 rails on balconies.

Sadly, the ornate Grand Ballroom, with rare parquet hardwood flooring, silver chandelier and pump organ, never hosted a ball. In fact, Winchester hosted almost no guests. The 1906 Earthquake caused extensive damage throughout the San Francisco area. The seven-story tower of the Mystery Mansion toppled, and portions of the house collapsed, entrapping Sara Winchester in her favorite Daisy Bedroom. Terrified, she sealed off the front half of her home. And she kept remodeling her mansion until she died in her sleep at age 82. Because the house was still unfinished, it sold at auction for $135,000.

Why would a woman spend her lifetime and her fortune building rooms, only to tear them down? Why did she refuse to hire an architect who could design a complete plan? Some experts declare that Sara Winchester was providing jobs for locals and paid three times the going wage. Other scholars have opined that she was exposed to Rosicrucian beliefs and had embraced Baconian mathematical concepts, that her home was a carefully designed puzzle to display the “higher dimensional dynamics of the geometry of space.”

The common folklore recounted at mansion tours suggests that grief-stricken Sara Winchester visited a Boston medium, who informed her that she was haunted by the ghosts of those killed by the Winchester rifle, specifically Indians and Confederate soldiers. She was allegedly advised to move West and build a house for these spirits, that her life would continue so long as construction of the house continued. Whatever her motive, the Winchester Mansion stands today as a monument to elegant chaos. It displays the consequence of when there is no plan.

In our personal lives, we are admonished to wisely build our homes. Wise building means to consider our purpose and to plan accordingly; to employ foundational principles and methods in building our homes and families, to determine in advance some God-directed goals and guiding rules of conduct. The lack of a purpose and plan, the absence of a personal anchor, can lead to a random life that resembles a mansion of madness.