In truth, there was no documentation of Winchester meeting any psychic medium, and furthermore, there were no Boston spiritualist named Adam Coons. She was somehow trying to trick or confuse the ghosts away from her, and that it was protection from their vengeance. That account was then cited as the real reason for her ongoing, and often baffling, constant construction. The book reports as fact that Coons told Winchester, "The Winchester family were being haunted by the ghosts of people killed by Winchester rifles," and the only remedy was to build a home for them to wander. How Sarah Winchester's Story Got So Twistedīy all documented accounts made by actual historians and researchers who have studied Winchester's life, her story went into pure fiction with the release of author Susy Smith's 1967 book, Prominent American Ghosts. In it, she describes a meeting between a grieving Sarah Winchester and Boston medium, Adam Coons. In 1970, major restoration to bring the mansion back to its heyday began, and then in 1974, the Winchester Mystery House was granted state historic landmark status. The property then continued with some construction projects and restoration work to make it more of a cultural and tourist destination. However, he suggested the houses tourist tagline: "The Winchester Mystery House." He visited, but did not have time to hold a seance or conduct research. Spreading stories of hauntings, they invited Harry Houdini to visit Halloween night 1924 to investigate the home. In order to add a hook to tourists, Mayme became the property's first guide, and created stories about Winchester's mental state and reasons for her incessant building that painted her as an unstable figure, when she was likely the exact opposite. In 1922, Winchester's story and subsequent legacy starts to take on a new life. John and Mayme Brown leased Llanada Villa and opened the doors to the public as a tourist attraction. RELATED: The True Story of The Amityville Horror But she picked up building once again, which continued until her death in 1922, ceasing 36 years of constant construction. When the earthquake struck six years later, the fourth floor and the seven-story tower was destroyed. From 1890 to 1900, Llanada Villa expanded to seven stories. Sometimes, her erratic choices created design problems, like walled-off windows or staircases that were cut off by new construction. She was exacting, and by all accounts, a serial builder and rebuilder when something did not meet her expectations. According to author Colin Dickey's book, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, she was an accomplished designer who worked with her carpenters closely to bring her ideas and designs to life. She carried that through with Llanada Villa. Sarah was an amateur architect and loved to design extensions and remodel the properties she owned with her husband. Winchester Trailer #1 (2018) | Movieclips Trailers/Rotten Tomatoes Trailers YouTube Marion Marriott (Sarah Snook) appears in Winchester (2018). Was Sarah Winchester a Creative Genius or Just Dodging Ghosts? Lonely and looking to start anew, she packed up her things in Connecticut and moved to San Jose, California, where she bought the aforementioned ranch. She inherited $20 million, but that didn't make her heart any less broken. They never had another child, and just 15 years later, Sarah lost her husband, her mother, and her father-in-law to the plague of her time, tuberculosis. It is true that she married Wirt in 1862 and four years later gave birth to a daughter, Annie Pardee Winchester, who died a month later. But she was also an incredible architectural designer, real estate investor, and empathetic small business woman. In reality, Sarah was certainly an eccentric and deeply saddened by tragedies in her life. In fact, history and urban legends have often portrayed Winchester as a mentally disturbed woman who was obsessed with ghosts that she believed were the vengeful souls killed by the guns made by her late husband, William Wirt Winchester's gun company. RELATED: Unpacking the "Hardcore" Haunted Houses & Heartbreak in SurrealEstate Season 2 The film places Sarah in the home at the time of the quake, but in reality that was never verified, nor was there any documentation that she was injured on the day of the event, as subsequent stories have spun. Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren ( The Queen) played Sarah Winchester, and the film focused primarily on one infamous day in the house's history: the 1906 earthquake that destroyed large sections of the property she named Llanada Villa. In 2018, Hollywood finally brought some parts of Winchester's tragic story to screen in the horror mystery, Winchester ( now streaming on Peacock).
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