Loading summary
Transcript11 lines
- [00:00]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and.
- [00:18]
B
Affiliates Price and coverage match limited by.
- [00:21]
A
State law not available in all states.
- [00:24]
B
Lowes knows to bring your vision to life, it's important to find the right color. That's why Mylo's Rewards members get a free paint or exterior your stain sample to test your look and find the perfect color to confidently refresh your space. Lowes we help you save Offer Valid in store only 58 through 514 limit one per customer while supplies last. Discount taken at time of purchase. See Associate for details. Program subject to terms and conditions. Details@lowes.com Terms subject to change.
- [00:55]
A
Hello and welcome to My Victorian Nightmare. I'm your host Genevieve Manion, and I'm here to talk about mysterious deaths, morbid fascinations, disturbing stories, and otherwise spooky events from the Victorian era. Because to me, there's just something especially intriguing, creepy, and oddly comforting about horror and mayhem from the 19th century. So listener discretion is advised. Hello friends, and welcome to this, my 42nd episode. I hope that you had a wonderful week. You will be pleased to know that I was not murdered by a poltergeist. Since our last show, this episode is not being broadcast to you from the great beyond. I managed to make my way through the week unscathed. Just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about. On last week's episode, I mentioned how my television was simply turning itself on at very frightening times. But it has not happened ever since that day. So either the ghosts got bored or, as some listeners suggested, it may have been like a rogue remote signal from another apartment. I may never know. I'm just happy to still be among the living undead as I may be. Okay, a little haunted housekeeping, guys. I reached 5,000 ratings on Spotify this week. I am still so, so grateful for those and for those of you who have rated it, please continue to rate the show. Spotify has actually stopped pushing my show like it used to. I think it's because the ratings slowed down. So I could really use as much juice as you guys can offer with those ratings to keep the show going. And if you want to hear the show ad free and support the show, you can join my Patreon. I am so grateful for every one of my Patreon members. Thank you. You can find the link@myvictorianightmare.com oh, and I won't go too deeply into it, but apart from the leaks and the threats of poltergeists, it's been a pretty tough couple of weeks. Like all of us, there's a lot going on, and some of it's really tough. So I decided to do what I always do when things get dark, I get darker. I'm delighted to announce that I am bringing back my other podcast, Dark Poetry. I've been finding so much peace in these eerie, dark, romantic treasures from the 19th century. I've been including some of my favorite poems on this podcast, but I really felt it could be very healing to bring back that show. And I was right. If you're looking for another podcast to creep you out and fall asleep to, that's the one. You can find Dark Poetry wherever you find your spooky podcasts. Man, I had the most wonderful dream last night. I dreamt that I went camping with Kurt Cobain, and he was so happy. And I asked him, I said, didn't you die in 1994? And he said, no. He said he faked his own death. Like belle gunness. Episode 40 must have still been clanking around in my mind. And I asked him why, and he said he just wanted to be happy. He wanted to play music just for him and live in peace. And he played guitar by the fire with his those bright blue eyes. They say you can't see color in dreams, but his eyes were so blue. And just before I wake up, he said, genevieve, don't forget life is for living. And I woke up and cried. I love that my brain took the horrifying story of Belle Gunness and turned it into a revisionist history where sadness didn't take Kurt Cobain. I think I'm gonna go have another quick cry about it. Brb. Okay, Today for you, dear listener, I will be discussing a topic that I've said numerous times that I would never discuss on the show. I will be discussing the Winchester Mystery House. Now, I've said that I didn't want to talk about it because just about everything you've heard about House, if you've heard anything at all, is probably untrue. So I didn't think that I could pull enough tasty, spooky snacks out of it to make a yummy enough episode. But I took some time to dig. And while looking for evidence of spooky stuff, I met a really lovely lady instead, who I would like to introduce you to the real Sarah Winchester. I'm going to thoroughly debunk for you all of the falsehoods, the embellishments, and downright lies about this very generous, very kind woman and her weird and wonderful house, and I'll give you some great trivia night factoids in the process. But before we get to the Winchester Mystery House, it's time for another installment of my fairly new segment With Their Own Eyes where I share with you Spine Tingly Victorian Ghost Encounters and you'll be pleased to know that I was actually able to find out who today's ghost was and how she came to be a ghost. And I'm making this one a two parter because she was seen and experienced numerous times by numerous unsuspecting and petrified Victorians. I'll read the first few encounters today and save the other ones for next week's episode. This article is called the Frenzied Lover's Murder in Boston, sequel to the Hobbes Ghostly Manifestations and Interesting Revelations, and it reads, about a year ago the house occupied by the Hobbs family at the time of the murder was leased by a Mr. Gross, and the dwelling has been used as a boarding house until quite recently. About two months after this time, one of the boarders returned home at a late hour and retired, just as the iron tongue of Midnight hath told 12 and he immediately retired to his chamber in the Upper Story. He went to bed, but had scarcely settled himself comfortably when the door, which he had taken the precaution to lock, quietly opened, and an unwelcome and unbidden visitor appeared and glided toward the bed. He recognized in his visitor the figure of Mrs. Hobbs, who he had frequently seen prior to her death, and the apparition, of course, had startling effect upon him, as each individual hair did perhaps stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine. The ghostly figure flitted about the room for a short time, and, without making any communication or other manifestation, as silently departed as it had entered. Upon reaching the dining room on the following morning, the boarder related his midnight experience and was laughed at for his pains, and quizzed considerably on his story. The matter was soon forgotten, but after a while the ghostly revelations were revived by a lady who occupied the back parlor on the first floor. This lady reported to the family that she was troubled by a nocturnal visit from a strange lady, for whose appearance she could not account. Twice she was visited by this person, and she described the figure so accurately that there was no room for doubt as to the description being that of Mrs. Hobbs. This was considered very singular, as the boarder had never seen the deceased lady. On another occasion, during a temporary absence of Mrs. Grose from the city, Mr. Grose retired to bed one night and after locking the parlor door, turned in. He had assumed a recumbent posture when the door which he had just locked, opened quietly, as if by invisible means. He jumped up from the bed immediately and ran to the door and closed it again. He tried the key and found the door locked as tightly as when he first left it to retire. The phenomenon he reported to his spouse and as the parties were non believers in spiritualism, they considered it very singular, but could not account for it. End quote. As mentioned, Mrs. Hobbs will return next week with even more spooky encounters. Okay. Firstly, this woman's name was Katie A. Hobbs. This article, including many about her murder, didn't name her at all. They identified her as only by her husband's name, Mrs. Alva Hobbs, a common issue in this time. This man, who also killed her, was also not her lover, as the article title suggests, calling him a frenzied lover. But you know what? I'm starting to think that in this time the idea of stalker or infatuated creep wasn't quite fully formed. That if someone was obsessed with someone else, even if the person was not at all open to their affections, they may still have been regarded as a lover of this person. Person like in that story I read about the opera singer's quote unquote lover who was nothing but a stalker in episode 39. Could be a semantic thing. Anyway, here's what happened to poor Katie Hobbs. She and her husband lived in this very house in 1869. And one night, while Katie and her husband, as well as two other house guests were enjoying a quiet evening in their parlor, another house guest named Thomas White came bounding up the stairs. Ms. Hobbs noticed that he was holding a gun as he was approaching the parlor, and she ran up to slam the door on him. He shot through the door and killed her. This man apparently knew the Hobbs family from when he was a boy and by some accounts had a strange and violent infatuation with Mrs. Hobbs and often lived with them. It's a little unclear exactly why they continued to allow him to live with them, considering he had already tried to kill her in 1861 with a butcher's knife. Her husband luckily wrestled it out of his hands. He was actually sent to a lunatic asylum after this for several years. He was described in a few articles as being a monomaniac. This is a 19th century term for someone who was like a singular obsession and is partially in insane. He was a Civil War veteran and when he returned from the war he developed a habit of randomly brandishing his gun and even shooting at walls and floors. He also spoke very loudly to himself, so loudly and aggressively that they often would send their poor servant girl to tell him to keep it down in his room. The servant girl said luckily he never threatened her life because of this, only Mrs. Hobbs, but he was still terrifying. Again, very confusing why they continued to allow him to live there. There is one indication in one of the articles that I read that suggested Mrs. Hobbs felt sorry for this young man again. She knew him from when he was a little boy and he doesn't seem to have been able to have gotten it together in life. So I think she just took pity on him and housed him. Katie died instantly when she was shot and Mr. White was found guilty of her murder not too long after the event. I have to tell you, my life has gotten a whole lot easier and a lot tastier this past week with Factor's two Minute Gourmet Meal kits. I usually spend my Sunday nights meal prepping, spending a lot of time in the kitchen when I would much rather be on my couch watching something spooky. I'm a pretty good cook, but by the end of the week what I've prepped is all old and I'm already sick of everything. So I've really enjoyed not doing that and instead having all of my dinners already prepared so I can just eat them while watching something horrifying. I like that you can choose the meals they're not just like sprung on you. With 45 weekly menu options, you can choose from calorie smart protein plus keto and incredible smoothies. You can order breakfasts on the go, lunches, snacks and desserts, apart from from the very tasty dinners this week I had beef ragu with herbed ricotta, marinated meatballs, Southwestern turkey, white chili, jalapeno, sweet corn, polenta chicken, and of course I treated myself to a garlic butter shrimp with creamed kale. They were all filling and I have to be honest, I was a little afraid popping them in the microwave would make the chicken like cardboard, but it was shockingly delicious and perfectly juicy. Get started at Factor Meat Victorian 50 off and use code Victorian 50 off to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. That's Victorian 50 off at FactorMeals.com Victorian 50 off for 50% off plus free shipping okay, to the Winchester Mystery House we go as I said I very much resisted this topic because the lore surrounding the house sounds so much spookier than the facts. And although I make mistakes sometimes, I do try to be as factual as I can with my subjects. I don't just want to give you jump scares. I want to give you facts that you can share with your family members at Christmas to make them very uncomfortable that are well researched with quality sources. And I understand why people want to hear about the house. What they've been told is all the hooks, spooky seances, mazes to confuse ghosts, an heiress to one of the bloodiest imaginable fortunes wracked with guilt, feverishly adding more and more additions to her crazy home full of dead end doors and windows to nowhere, etc. Like, I love all of that. Tell me more. Ugh. But spooky bubbles are my very least favorite bubbles to burst. But none of this is true. However, I realized it might be interesting to separate the facts from the fiction about this film. Fascinating place and its creator, Sarah, otherwise known as Sally Winchester. So let's begin with the lore and then we'll dig a little deeper into the facts. The lore of this mansion centers around a belief that Sarah Winchester, the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, built the house to create a maze for the vengeful spirits of those killed by her deceased husband's rifles. According to legend, she she was a devout spiritualist and at a seance one evening a medium told her that if she didn't stop building, she would die. There's also a part of the legend that this medium told her that she needed to also make this home increasingly complicated maze like to prevent all of the ghosts that lived inside from harming her because that way they'd get lost. And indeed, the home is labyrinth like with odd architectural features. Features including windows with views of walls or roofs. Some of the doors and staircases lead to nowhere. It was believed that she was essentially a reclusive madwoman, tormented by guilt and forever running for her very life from ever increasing amounts of ghosts that came to find her in her home and make her pay somehow. So in a nutshell, that's the lore. And there is even a terrible movie based on all of this that actually has based on true events in the opening titles called Winchester. This one made me so sad. I really wanted to like it, even though I knew it wasn't actually based on true events. Not even the vibes could save it. It looks really cool, but it wasn't enough. Nor Dame Helen Mirren. Not even she could save this turkey of a movie, so don't bother. But if you find this concept of a spooky labyrinth mansion full of ghosts that's haunted by the lady of the house who wants to suck even more ghosts inside by murdering people who enter, you should absolutely seek out my very favorite Stephen King series, Rose Red. I think you can find it on YouTube. It's loosely based on this lore, and I believe it's the only series that Stephen King wrote only for TV that wasn't based on any books or short stories of his. At least this was true at the time when it was made in the 90s. It may still be. He also has a great cameo as a pizza delivery guy that gets a door slammed in his face. It just makes me giggle. Treat yourself. It's simply wonderful. So if all of this is only lore, what's the truth? And how did this become the lore anyway? And most importantly, what are my sources here? Among a few others that are listed in the in the show notes, I found a skeptical inquirer.org article by Adrienne Hill to be the most thoroughly researched. Ms. Hill really digs deep and she shows her notes. She also personally updated the Wikipedia article that was tragically full of falsehoods, cited all of her sources, and a staff member of the house, which still does ghost tours and such, tried to replace the her facts with unfounded spooky ooky falsehoods, and Wikipedia found their updates to be untrustworthy. So they maintained Ms. Hill's updates based on her evidence and didn't accept theirs. Why would an employee of the house do this? Although the house is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, leading you to believe that it's a not for profit national landmark, it isn't. It's a privately owned, for profit enterprise still owned by the descendants of the family members who bought the house after Ms. Winchester died. The business model of the home's tours are supernatural, spooky oogie, and the more folks find out about the reality, the less intriguing the home is. So employees of the house have an incentive to keep the lies going, which is really lame if you ask me. The home belonged to a real woman with real talents whose life included real tragedies, who was a beloved employer to many people, and the lies told about her should be corrected by credible sources. So Ms. Adrienne Hill's research is my main reference for today. Let's begin with the life of the creator of the house, Ms. Sarah Winchester, who was actually known as Sally Winchester to all of her friends and family. When she was born, she was named Sarah Lockwood Pardee. But very soon after her birth, her very beloved paternal grandmother, named Sally, passed away. And so the family decided to call her by her name, Sally, instead of Sarah. Ms. Winchester also referred to herself as Sally, Signing her correspondence with that name. So I'll refer to her as such going forward. She was born in 1839, the fifth daughter to her parents, Leonard and Sarah Pardee, in New Haven, Connecticut. Three of her siblings would die of cholera when she was very young. Her family was well to do and very progressive. They were supporters of abolition, women's suffrage, and animal rights. She continued to support animal rights throughout her life. I read an anecdote where she essentially chased a boy off her property who asked her permission to hunt robins around her home. She married the son of the founder of the Winchester repeating arms company, William Wirt Winchester, during the Civil War in 1862, they remained in Connecticut. Four years later, she would give birth to a daughter named Annie, after William's sister, who died in childbirth, who sadly also died only a month later of marasmus. This is a form of severe malnutrition. I did some digging into this. It was unclear how a baby with surely the best medical care could die of this condition. But it can be caused by more than just malnutrition. It could be caused by meningitis, Lactose intolerance, malaria, Heart diseases, and pneumonia. So perhaps the baby baby had any one of these conditions. The death of their child was so devastating that both Sally and her husband retreated from society altogether, With Sally remaining entirely secluded for almost a year. But during this time, she started intensely studying architecture and design. It had always been a hobby of hers, so she took this time to really focus on learning more. In 1880, Ms. Winchester lost three very close family members. Her mother, her father in law, and William, her husband, who all died from tuberculosis in 1882. Tuberculosis killed one in seven people in the United States and in Europe, which is just unfathomable. Sally's health was also deteriorating, not from tuberculosis, but due to rheumatoid arthritis. She must have been living in pain every single minute of her day. In Sally's time, and still today, no amount of money could buy you freedom from pain or from grief.
- [22:06]
B
Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with uber eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well groomed lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered a Cabana? That's a no. But a banana? That's a yes. A nice tan? Sorry, nope. But a box fan? Happily, yes. A day of sunshine?
- [22:24]
A
No.
- [22:25]
B
A box of fine wines? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app.
- [22:35]
A
For details When Sally's husband passed away and she inherited the family fortune, she decided to do what I also would have done. She spent her days dressed in black, taking the the New England sea air, staring out at the ocean, allowing the gentle breezes to carry her tears from her cheeks. And then she got the hell out of Dodge and moved to a more beautiful place. She moved to California. Her doctor told her that the drier, warmer climate would be better for her arthritis, which did indeed help a little. She also paid to move all of her sisters and their husbands to California as well. They were weren't as financially comfortable as she was, and she actually supported them throughout the rest of their lives, which is so lovely. In 1886, she purchased what would later be called the Winchester Mystery House. Incidentally, it was Harry Houdini who gave the house that moniker. It was purchased for $12,570 from Jon Hamm. Spelled exactly the same same way, too. Sally would name the property Landa Villa because it reminded her of a place that she and her husband had visited in Spain years ago, called Landa Alavesa. Her original plan was to make extensions to the house to accommodate her entire family, but only her niece Daisy would reside in the house. Due to its constant construction, within the first six months, the house increased in size from eight rooms to 26. Sally became immersed further in architecture and building. She attended expositions that inspired her interior and exterior design, including garden design. It's estimated that Sally included plants from over 110 different countries on the property. She hired at least two architects, but she never really felt exactly happy with the work, so she decided to take the projects on her herself. She created all of the overall design, but didn't have an overall plan. She went room by room, and if she wasn't happy with the results, she just had that section torn down and started from scratch or abandoned it altogether. The result was a maze where a lot of places just didn't match up. Although the design was pretty haphazard, there were still some really beautiful additions made that weren't haphazard at all. All the home included a ballroom with carved wood ceilings and walls. Mixed woods like teak, maple and mahogany were used to make intricate Patterns on the ballroom floor. A large brick fireplace was installed, framed by two large windows that included quotes from Shakespeare. The upstairs bedrooms all had adjoining sitting rooms and sewing rooms. How lovely. The wall coverings had a mat, metal or leather appearance known as lincrusta. This is a deeply embossed wall covering. Something called anaglypta looks very similar. That's what I used to make my faux fireplace mantle appear like it was embossed in tin. On the inside, Sally had beautiful chandeliers from Germany, stained glass windows from Austria, furnishings from Asia, and paintings from France. Although many of her beautiful stained glass windows windows were never installed and just placed in storage. She actually had an intercom system installed in the house used for calling servants. She had an indoor garden solarium that had a water piping system that ran on electricity. La de da. Because Ms. Winchester was very short, only 4 foot 10 inches tall, she had a stairway built with 44 steps that was only 10ft. This made it easy, easier for her to step up. Many of the stained glass windows that were installed had spider web patterns that were very common at the time. But look so extra goth. So beautiful. The house would come to have 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms and six kitchens. And before the great California earthquake in 1906, which damaged a large part of the home, the house had approximately 500 rooms. Despite hiring and firing architects, she kept the local workmen very busy. But because of her reclusiveness and haphazard ways of building, rumors began to spread in the area that she was irrational and superstitious. Rumors that her family, servants and employees tried to correct, but they were too fun for papers not to spread. And they took on a different life as they spread, becoming more and more supernatural. With Sally being afraid of ghosts in her house and building the house to ward off vengeful spirits, etc. All while she was being derided in the press, she was supporting many charities. After the terrible earthquake in 1906, she donated to the San Jose Relief Fund. She supported the Save the Redwoods Fund. When the man who drove her carriage passed away, she bought a home for his family and supported them until she died. She donated what would be millions today to a tuberculosis hospital, which she continued to donate to for over 10 years. She preferred to keep all of her daughter donations anonymous, so very few people even knew she was giving away so much of her money. These rumors of her insanity and superstitions were simply not true. But they sold papers. By 1903. Her arthritis had disfigured her hands and feet, limiting her ability to walk and write. She was losing her teeth. By 1920, she rarely left home at all. And by 1922 she passed away. She was buried next to her husband and little daughter in New Haven. She named five of her closest employees in her will, along with all of her living family members. Her niece Daisy inherited the property. The remaining money left from trusts was to be donated to the tuberculosis hospital, and her will stated that if anyone disputed her wishes, they would receive nothing. Most of her other properties were sold off, but her house was deemed worthless. At this point it was in serious disrepair and bizarre again. It was full of stairways to nowhere, doors to nothing, abandoned, half finished rooms. A man named John Brown was the only person interested in purchasing it, and six months after the purchase, he turned the home into a tourist attraction, leaning into into all of the lies that were told about Sally in the house, much to her remaining family's disappointment. So let's do some more debunking for Sally's sake and get the record as straight as we can. Firstly, if it wasn't ghosts, if it wasn't guilt, if it wasn't madness, why did she create such a bizarre home? Why did she continue to build and build for years and years? What's the truth? There is no, no clear reason other than she had the means to play with what she loved, architecture. She also clearly lived with so many tragedies, so many deaths in the family. She also lived in a great deal of pain for most of her life. Not to mention she was disfigured by her arthritis. This caused her to keep mostly to herself. She didn't like to leave the home, but it must have been terribly lonely. Perhaps she did it to keep her mind off of things, to busy herself. Maybe it was a form of therapy for her, something to concentrate on. She also cared deeply for her employees, according to her employees. And her home provided work for them and for many in her community. Perhaps it was another outlet for taking care of folks, maybe for bringing folks to her home because she didn't feel comfortable leaving again. There's no way to know exactly why, but I would imagine these aspects of her life may have played a part. We do certainly know what weren't the reasons, thanks to folks like Adrienne Hill, who did a fine job pulling apart the falsehoods. So let's undo some more misconceptions. It had been stated that Sally inherited $20 million when her husband died. This would have been been nearly $700 million today. This is not true. Her inheritance was large. It was in the millions, but not that large. It was probably closer to about 12 or 13 million in today's currency. Another false statement commonly made about the house is that the construction never stopped, not for 38 years. Workers worked around the clock because she was afraid she would die if they ever put the down their hammers and hand cranked drills. I don't know if their drills were hand cranked. Power tools incidentally, didn't come on the scene until 1895, but the house was still being futzed with at that time. That must have been very exciting for her. Regardless, this isn't true that the working never stopped. Breaks were often taken during construction so she and the builders could rest because the season wasn't conducive for construction. But she did indeed allow construction to continue during the economic depression of the 1890s and after the San Francisco earthquake, which damaged a portion of the house. She provided consistent work for folks who desperately needed it during these times, which was very appreciated by her workers. So it wasn't a fear that she would die that kept the building going. It did stop from time to time, but she made the work available, especially especially in times where work was very much needed by local builders. The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation, Botox Cosmetic Adobotulinum Toxinae is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet and forehead lines look better in adults.
- [32:36]
B
Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficult difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Don't receive Botox Cosmetic if you have a skin infection. Side effects may include allergic reactions, injection site pain, headache, eyebrow and eyelid drooping and eyelid swelling. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Tell your doctor about medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome and medication including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. For full safety information, visit botoxcosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300.
- [33:17]
A
See for yourself@botoxcosmetic.com Another falsehood is that Sally was obsessed with the number 13. There were after all 13 bathrooms, 13 windows in one bathroom alone. 13 holes in a wash basin, 13 steps in a staircase, 13 hooks in the seance room, and 13 candles in a chandelier that originally only held 12. According to one of the carpenters who worked on the property for years, most of these features that people attribute to her obsession with 13 were added after her death. A sloppily added 13th candle holder was added to a beautiful German chandelier. And it was noted by Hill that if she really wanted a chandelier with 13 candlesticks, she would have bought one. Even though the house was haphazard and built strangely, she still expected impeccable materials and workmanship. This candle was not added in her lifetime. Ms. Hill also noticed in a tour of the house that she herself did that the staircase purported to have 13 steps, actually at 14. So this rumor is clearly nothing more than that, just another six spooky adjacent falsehood. Okay, there's one particularly specific and wild rumor that Ms. Winchester visited a medium named Adam Coons, who told her to build the house in crazy ways to outsmart all of the ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles who were piling up in the house and coming to get her. And she felt tremendous guilt about all those killed by those rifles as well. First of all, the notion that she would feel guilty about owning the company is entirely outlandish. This woman lived through the Civil War. There was no shame about guns in this era. They were considered necessary tools, not just for war, but for hunting, for protection of the home. So this notion is not only unlikely, there is no evidence that she ever expressed any guilt about this. She was also said to be an avid spiritualist and even had her own seance room in the house. Firstly, the room they call the seance room was actually the gardener's bedroom. Ms. Winchester was a Baptist and very much not a spiritualist. There is no evidence that she ever visited with mediums, much less hosted seances in her home. Extensive research has been done to track down this medium by the name of Adam Koons. And no medium by this name was ever found to have ever lived in this area at this time. But a medium named Adam Koons was mentioned in a book written by Susie Smith in 1967 called prominent American Ghosts. But still, there's no connection that can be found between this man or Ms. Winchester. Another rumor was that she used the bell tower of the home to summon spirits to her seances, and ghostly music was heard by neighbors coming from it at night. Allegedly, she also held lavish parties for the ghosts and would have food prepared and Served on golden plates that she kept in a safe. Again, her staff and everyone that knew her repeatedly said she had no interest in seances or ghosts whatsoever. This safe, where the gold plates were so supposedly kept, was opened after her death, and the only things in there were some mementos and hair from her little baby who died. The bell tower's main purpose was to summon workers, not ghosts. It also doubled as a fire alarm if necessary. And despite Sally's arthritis, she did play the pipe organ and had a music room in the house. The ghostly music that people claimed to hear was just likely coming from her music room and could be heard outside the house. And lastly, perhaps the most egregious myth is the one I already touched on, that the house is packed with thousands of ghosts. The house has been said to be one of the very most haunted houses in America, which is a breach of copyright. As we Learned in episode 13. The Whaley House owns the registered traffic trademark of being the most haunted house in America, which I still I love that so much. So is the house haunted at all? Not according to professional paranormal investigators and a number of mediums. A man named Joe Nickel, a paranormal investigator, along with historian Mary Jo Ignolfo were some of the first folks to seriously investigate the so called supernatural signs and goings on the house, which were among a few cold spots. Odd smells and feelings of being watched have been reported. Joe Nickel apparently found explanations for all of this phenomena. The temperature variations were just as common in other homes of similar sizes, proving that a drafty large structure will simply have that going on. The unusual sounds were the wind flowing through oddly shaped corridors and gaps in the construction. Strange smells are also common in partially constructed areas where moisture isn't properly accounted for or prevented. Doors and window slamming were also accounted for by the place being pretty darn drafty. The windows were old, weather worn again, the house was in serious disrepair when it was bought and only six months later was open to tourists. So again, all of these events have been pretty easily explained. Perhaps a great part of why Sally was so frankly derided in the press, so lied about wasn't just because of her reclusivity or her building. She was simply a wealthy woman, a widow who was doing what she pleased with her money. She owned many properties and was a very savvy investor. She didn't have children, at least not many knew her only child had died. She was a woman who didn't belong to anyone and the fabricated stories about her really play out like a cautionary tale for other ladies. A Woman with this much freedom is bound to go crazy and live a life of paranoia, loneliness, and weirdness. Little did anyone know know how much she gave, how much she lost, how her own physical pain and disfigurements kept her from feeling safe, to be a part of the very society that ripped her apart for not adhering to the rules women were supposed to follow. As I've said a number of times before, I didn't want to discuss this topic because the spooky, fun parts of the story aren't true. But I'm actually really glad now that I took the time to dig in a little deeper. Sally Winchester wasn't an oddity, and I can frankly see some of myself in her now. How when life is hard, I too dive into my hobbies, what I love. And sometimes the results of those dives are imperfect or even a little weird and a little hard to explain, because the goal of those projects isn't perfection. They're how I keep going. I certainly don't want to speak for Sally Winchester and say this was her motive for designing her house the way she did, because so many others have spoken for her and warped the truth of her life. But I will just say that with everything that she did endure in her life, I'm very happy that she had that house to. To play. And it looks like she had a lot of fun. Before we go, I thought it might be nice to take a little stroll and bring Ms. Winchester some fresh flowers. If you would follow me through this simply lovely Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut. Oh, and I asked a friend to join us. Hello, Jimmy. Hello, darlings. Oh, what a beautiful, beautiful day. Thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. I even packed us a little picnic basket. Oh, perfect. I packed us some Prosecco. I'll take that. Oh, how nice. We can all sit near Sally when we're done. What a lovely stone. It's a cross, but inlaid into a larger stone with flowers and ivy carved into it. Oh, how divine. We brought you some flowers, dear. Just wanted to say I really hope that. That I've helped clear things up a bit. And I'm very happy you're no longer in pain. And would you like to join us for some. What do you have there, Jimmy? Oh, I tried my hand at a chicken salad sandwich and a little bit of potato salad as well. Enough for all four of us. Oh, how nice. To Sally. To Sally. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please rate it on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Please leave me comments and reviews and help yourself to some dark poetry on my other podcast, Dark Poetry, available today. In fact, be kind to yourselves and I will see you in your nightmares.