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#1906 earthquake and never rebuilt
marzipanandminutiae · 14 days
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i just reblogged that post about saying nice things abt prev but i wanna send an ask too, so: thank you for being one of the only people to be correct about the winchester mystery house and sarah herself!! so many people spread the stories of her being weird/crazy/whatever when she was just. a woman who suffered some tragedies and liked architecture.
i went on a tour of graceland recently and was intrigued by how they barely talked about elvis as a person, whereas winchester tours are basically a trap where you think you're getting to explore a weird fucked up house but actually you're going to hear about how wonderful sarah winchester was for an hour and if you say anything mean about her design skills one of the tour guides will push you out the door to nowhere.
i go through your winchester tag sometimes when i'm nostalgic and missing the house (i got laid off during quarantine) and it's just nice to see that even people who didn't devote years of their lives to the house can genuinely understand and appreciate it.
I'm so glad it's gotten better! Someone once anonymously told me the guides had to sign a contract saying they would only stick to the story made up by that ridiculous carnie family that bought her house in the 1920s, and even though it was an anon and therefore unverifiable...I believe it, sadly. For Profits often are more about...well, profit. As opposed to history. But it's good to know the guides care about getting the truth out there.
In Sarah Winchester I see a woman whose character assassination for being different(tm) has carried on after death. It's not that she was perfect- far be it from me to lay perfection at the feet of a white 19th-century gun fortune heiress -but she seems like a genuinely caring person in many ways, about her workers and her community. She was an unattached woman of means with an unconventional hobby (architecture), though, and that seems to have made wagging tongues nervous. During her lifetime that meant claiming she thought she'd live forever if construction never ceased (it did, several times), and after- well. The tale of the mad widow fleeing from invisible ghosts has come to prevail.
It feels unfair to me that she should forever be remembered by what her detractors said about her, instead of her own triumphs and setbacks, merits and flaws. And that her beautiful house, where she poured so much love and attention, should be so misrepresented. I'm glad people are trying to fix the narrative.
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deadpresidents · 9 months
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Have you ever been to the Palace Hotel where Harding died?
I have! I've never stayed there, but I've been there several times while in San Francisco, and even if President Harding hadn't died there, it would still be a place with an amazing history.
It was actually pretty much destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and rebuilt afterwards. It was the site of many Presidential visits both before and after the death of Harding. Ulysses S. Grant stayed at the Palace Hotel after he left office and William McKinley stayed there a few months before he was assassinated in 1901. The last King of Hawaii, King Kalākaua, died while staying at the original Palace Hotel in 1891.
Here's a photo of the original Palace Hotel (which was demolished after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake) when President McKinley stayed there in 1901:
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This is pretty much what the hotel would have looked like to President Harding and his party when they arrived for their visit in 1923:
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And this is what the Palace Hotel looks like if you visit it in San Francisco 100 years later:
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xplrvibes · 2 years
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I was the anon that brought up the research thing and i wanted to add this regarding the Winchester House if anyone was curious because that video irritated me so much i actually almost tried to contact them about it as if that would do anything lol. Anyway, enjoy:
Most of what is said about the Winchester Mystery House and particularly Sarah Winchester in general is pure marketing fluff that has been sold to the public for over a century in order to sell tickets with no historical evidence to back it up. 
The basic history of the Winchester House is that a woman lost her entire life, became one of the richest women in America due to inheriting everything her late husband left behind, moved out to San Jose, CA to be with her remaining family and started building a house for herself - likely as a family home but also probably because she didn’t know what to do with all that money. Rumors spread about her primarily because she was so recluse and reserved, no one ever saw her and one San Francisco Chronicle newspaper article circulating was the jumping point that turned her into a living ghost story in the public eye. After she passed away, the next couple that lived there started embellishing the already existing false rumors as a means to sell tickets for tours eventually turning Sarah Winchester’s house into what is now: the biggest tourist attraction in the San Jose area.
There are two reasons the house looks the way it does - what with its architectural oddities like the staircases to nowhere and door to the outside that could easily kill you. The first is that the house was once much larger than it is today. I believe the tallest point was once 7 stories but in 1906, a major earthquake hit the area and many of those stories came crashing down. They never rebuilt upwards, just around some of the destroyed areas. The second being that Sarah worked as her own architect on the house even though she had no experience with that type of work. No other architect would do what she wanted and eventually she just said “fuck it, I’ll do it myself,” and many of the weird parts could simply be her trying to correct her own design flaws. She even wrote about the annoyances of that in her journal that we have.
You know how they always say shit like, “this is the exact bed she died in”? Completely false. All of her furniture was sold after she passed away. I don’t think we even know what the house looked like inside when she was alive because she was an extremely private individual. We only have one singular picture of her from all the years she lived in San Jose and it’s not even what you would consider a good picture.
She most likely wasn’t obsessed with the number 13. The references to it were added after she passed away. My favorite example is in the Seance Room (which I’m convinced they call it that because we don’t know what the fuck it is, it very well could have been a giant coat closet for all we know). They always say “and on the wall you’ll see 13 hooks” because oooooh spooky but if you were lucky enough to get a sassy, sarcastic tour guide who didn’t give a fuck, they’d include, “and if you look closer you’ll see the marks from where we’ve taken down the 14th and 15th hooks.” 
There’s absolutely no evidence she went to visit a medium. I have no issues with that personally and I always tell people to remember that she literally lost her husband and newborn daughter within a year of each other, so if she wanted to try to communicate with them, who gives a shit but nobody knows if it actually happened. It’s most likely completely fabricated. Not to mention, seances at the time weren’t really what we see them as today. They were essentially parties you would invite your friends to, they were social events, she wouldn’t have been doing them alone as the story says.
Many builders and servants who worked for Sarah actually tried to clear her name of the rumors in the press after she passed away but it fell on deaf ears as the legend of mediums, spirits, and haunted houses had already been completely absorbed by the public and still is to this day to the point that it’s insanely difficult to find any real sources on the factual story or even Sarah as a person and it’s all a bit sad to me honestly.
It's so fascinating how urban legends can sometimes take over the real story and become the real story after time...all because they are more interesting to the public at large than the truth.
Poor Sarah- being remembered forever, but being remembered for a story made up about you and not who you actually were. What a comedy of errors.
Thank you for sending this in!!
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dry-valleys · 2 years
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Although the result of engineering and art, the Golden Gate Bridge seems to be a natural, even an inevitable entity as well, like the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. Kevin Starr.
What is now the Bay Area was home to Native Americans for thousands of years, and the modern city was founded by Spaniards in 1776 (the same year in which the United States of America was founded, though the two didn’t overlap at first).
Mexico won its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821 and California was part of this new state, until the Mexicans lost the Mexican-American war of 1846-48 and the United States of America took control in 1850.
The city was swelled in the 19th century not only by Spaniards, natives who had always lived here and Californios (the ruling class between 1776 and 1850), but by African-Americans, Europeans, Jews, Asians (from China, Japan, and other parts of Asia) and throughout the world.
As soon as the United States of America took control, they saw the need to defend their new city, and built (5) Fort Mason in 1851 and Alcatraz in 1852 (please see here for my photoshoot from Alcatraz) though they can’t have imagined they’d soon be fighting themselves.
This is, though, what happened when the US Civil War broke out in 1861. California supported the Union; it was often attacked by the Confederates, though they never seized it and the Unionists won in 1865.
The railway came here in 1860, which means that it was first used to ‘help’ shed blood, but was later used to help build a city that kept growing and growing, though hindered by a lack of road or rail links to towns across the bay such as Oakland, Berkeley and (10) Sausalito.
A massive setback came with the earthquake of 1906. Of this calamity, which killed over 3,000 (the full number will never be known) and wrecked homes and workplaces, Jack London said:
Not in history has a modern city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories and a few homes that were near the edge of the city. Its industrial area is gone. Its business area is gone. Its social and living areas are gone. The factories, great stores and newspaper buildings, the hotels and the huge homes of the very rich, are all gone.
Despite thid, the city soon rebuilt itself. It played a full role in World War 1 and was seen as the focus of San Francisco and all of northern California, but by the 1930s, the need was clear to cater for the expanding city and to give work to those left unemployed by the Great Depression. Roads and railways were not thought to be enough, so the answer to both these issues was to build a bridge between the city and its hinterlands.
In 1936, Bay Bridge was built to link San Francisco to Oakland; President Herbert Hoover called it “the greatest bridge yet constructed” but it was soon to lose this accolade when this, the Golden Gate Bridge, was built in 1937 by Joseph Strauss to link San Francisco to Sausalito, across which I cycled.
I went on the ferries and they are fun, but only a road bridge could meet the needs of a growing city and its hinterland. To help mollify local opposition, Strauss made the bridge a fine design. This made the bay, in my opinion and that of many others, even more gorgeous than it was before 1937.
Harold Gilliam, on his way home from World War 2 (I will share San Francisco’s war history in later posts), said “This was the place and the symbol every man aboard had been dreaming of during the months and years of exile", and so it will be for me when I come back. (In 2002, the Lone Sailor memorial was built here; it can be seen at (9) and is in tribute to the Navy, Coast Guard, and all seafarers).
This helped the city grow further; not just the city itself, but its outlying toqns, such as Sausalito, which I cycled to and found to be a fine bohemian town showing what attracted Otis Redding, Sterling Hayden, Alan Watts, Shel Silverstein, Jean Varda and Sally Stanford .
On its 50th anniversary, Judy Borello wrote of the bridge and its crossing that:
Born of a dream ‘It can’t be done’, they cried, But gallantly she stands, A monument to man, His aspirations and his pride.
The bridge still striked anyone coming here for the first time or coming back here as I will; landing at the airport (built in 1927) I knew I was finally here when I saw it from above, which is if anything even better than from sea or land.
Let Kevin Starr have the last word: “The bridge is a triumphant structure, a testimony to the creativity of mankind. At the same time, it also asserts the limits and brevity of human achievement in a cosmos that is as endless and ancient as time itself”.
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longmachines · 2 years
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Mystery house san jose california
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#MYSTERY HOUSE SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA MOVIE#
#MYSTERY HOUSE SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA FULL#
#MYSTERY HOUSE SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA FULL#
SOME SAY THE SYMBOLS IN THE HOUSE POINT NOT TO GHOSTS, BUT FRANCIS BACON.Īn alternate theory on the Winchester House's perplexing design declares that Sarah was creating a puzzle full of encryptions inspired by the work of English philosopher Francis Bacon. One mover told American Weekly the Winchester House was a place "where downstairs leads neither to the cellar nor upstairs to the roof." 7. When movers were called in after her death, one lamented its labyrinthine design that includes many winding hallways. So Sarah may be the only person who ever truly knew all of its secrets. She was the sole architect of this extraordinary home, and no master building plan has ever been uncovered. Some say the labyrinth layout was meant to confuse the ghosts, allowing Sarah some peace and a means to escape them. THE HOUSE WAS DESIGNED LIKE A LABYRINTH.īy Library of Congress, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons She had to be dug out by her staff, as its entrance was blocked off by rubble. As for Sarah, she was safe but stuck in the Daisy Bedroom, named for the floral motif in its windows. That tower-plus several other rooms destroyed in the disaster-were never rebuilt, but cordoned off. A 1900 postcard of the place shows a tower that was later toppled by the natural disaster. In 1906, the great San Francisco Earthquake caused three floors of the then seven-story house to cave in. AN EARTHQUAKE ONCE RATTLED THE HOUSE AND TRAPPED SARAH. There are also doors that open to blank walls, and a dangerous door on the second floor that opens out into nothing-save for an alarming drop to the yard far below. Sarah issued many bizarre demands to her builders, including the building of trap doors, secret passages, a skylight in the floor, spider web windows, and staircases that led to nowhere. THE HOUSE IS FULL OF ARCHITECTURAL ODDITIES. It's said that upon hearing the news of Sarah's death, the carpenters quit so abruptly they left half-hammered nails protruding from walls. The work only stopped on September 5, 1922, because the octogenarian mastermind behind the home died of heart failure in her sleep. She employed a crew of carpenters, who split shifts so construction could go on day and night, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for 38 years. In 1886, Sarah purchased an eight-room farmhouse in San Jose, California, and began building. Sarah Winchester's bedroom / Library of Congress, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons THE HOUSE WAS UNDER CONSTANT CONSTRUCTION FOR 38 YEARS. "If you continue building, you will live,” the medium warned Sarah. There was just one catch: construction on the house could never stop. Sarah was advised to leave their home in New Haven, Connecticut, behind, and move west, where she was to build a grand home for the spirits. In order to protect herself, William said that Sarah must "build a home for and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon." He warned that vengeful ghosts would seek her out. Through the medium, William told his widow that their tragedies (the couple had only one child, a daughter named Annie, who died at six weeks old) were a result of the blood money the family had made off of the Winchester rifles. While she was presumably looking for solace or closure, she was instead given a chilling warning. Overcome with grief in the wake of her husband's death from tuberculosis in 1881, folklore states that Sarah sought out a spiritualist who could commune with the dead. MANY BELIEVE SARAH BUILT WINCHESTER HOUSE OUT OF FEAR. Construction on the 24,000-square-foot home, which is located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, California, began in 1886. Sarah Lockwood Winchester-the wife of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, whose family created the Winchester rifle that was heralded as "the gun that won the west”-designed and oversaw the construction of the sprawling Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion that bears her name. THE WINCHESTER HOUSE IS NAMED FOR ITS MISTRESS.
#MYSTERY HOUSE SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA MOVIE#
But before you go to the movie theater, wander through the curious past of one of America's most infamous homes. Naturally, it has inspired a chilling horror movie, Winchester, which opens in theaters today. Despite the Winchester Mystery House's cheerful appearance, this massive California mansion's history is edged with tragedy, mystery.
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myhauntedsalem · 3 years
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14 Haunting Facts About the Winchester Mystery House
Despite the Winchester Mystery House’s cheerful appearance, this massive California mansion’s history is edged with tragedy, mystery and maybe some ghosts. Naturally, it has inspired a chilling horror movie, Winchester, which opens in theaters today. But before you go to the movie theater, wander through the curious past of one of America’s most infamous homes.
1. THE WINCHESTER HOUSE IS NAMED FOR ITS MISTRESS.
Sarah Lockwood Winchester—the wife of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, whose family created the Winchester rifle that was heraldedas “the gun that won the west”—designed and oversaw the construction of the sprawling Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion that bears her name. Construction on the 24,000-square-foot home, which is located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, California, began in 1886.
2. MANY BELIEVE SARAH BUILT WINCHESTER HOUSE OUT OF FEAR.
Overcome with grief in the wake of her husband’s death from tuberculosis in 1881, folklore states that Sarah sought out a spiritualist who could commune with the dead. While she was presumably looking for solace or closure, she was instead given a chilling warning.
Through the medium, William told his widow that their tragedies (the couple had only one child, a daughter named Annie, who died at six weeks old) were a result of the blood money the family had made off of the Winchester rifles. He warned that vengeful ghosts would seek her out. In order to protect herself, William said that Sarah must “build a home for [herself] and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon.”
Sarah was advised to leave their home in New Haven, Connecticut, behind, and move west, where she was to build a grand home for the spirits. There was just one catch: construction on the house could never stop. “If you continue building, you will live,” the medium warned Sarah. “Stop and you will die.”
3. THE HOUSE WAS UNDER CONSTANT CONSTRUCTION FOR 38 YEARS.
In 1886, Sarah purchased an eight-room farmhouse in San Jose, California, and began building. She employed a crew of carpenters, who split shifts so construction could go on day and night, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for 38 years. The work only stopped on September 5, 1922, because the octogenarian mastermind behind the home died of heart failure in her sleep. It’s said that upon hearing the news of Sarah’s death, the carpenters quit so abruptly they left half-hammered nails protruding from walls.
4. THE HOUSE IS FULL OF ARCHITECTURAL ODDITIES.
Sarah issued many bizarre demands to her builders, including the building of trap doors, secret passages, a skylight in the floor, spider web windows, and staircases that led to nowhere. There are also doors that open to blank walls, and a dangerous door on the second floor that opens out into nothing—save for an alarming drop to the yard far below.
5. AN EARTHQUAKE ONCE RATTLED THE HOUSE AND TRAPPED SARAH.
In 1906, the great San Francisco Earthquake caused three floors of the then seven-story house to cave in. A 1900 postcard of the place shows a tower that was later toppled by the natural disaster. That tower—plus several other rooms destroyed in the disaster—were never rebuilt, but cordoned off. As for Sarah, she was safe but stuck in the Daisy Bedroom, named for the floral motif in its windows. She had to be dug out by her staff, as its entrance was blocked off by rubble.
6. THE HOUSE WAS DESIGNED LIKE A LABYRINTH.
Some say the labyrinth layout was meant to confuse the ghosts, allowing Sarah some peace and a means to escape them. She was the sole architect of this extraordinary home, and no master building plan has ever been uncovered. So Sarah may be the only person who ever truly knew all of its secrets. When movers were called in after her death, one lamented its labyrinthine design that includes many winding hallways. One mover told American Weekly the Winchester House was a place “where downstairs leads neither to the cellar nor upstairs to the roof.”
7. SOME SAY THE SYMBOLS IN THE HOUSE POINT NOT TO GHOSTS, BUT FRANCIS BACON.
An alternate theory on the Winchester House’s perplexing design declares that Sarah was creating a puzzle full of encryptions inspired by the work of English philosopher Francis Bacon. There’s speculation that clues to the house’s true meaning are hidden in the ballroom, the Shakespeare windows, and the iron gates. This theory suggests that Sarah was a member of a mystic society like the Rosicrucians, or a secret society like the Freemasons—or possibly both.
8. THERE ARE OTHER THEORIES, INCLUDING THAT SARAH WAS “CRAZY.”
Others speculate Sarah was coping with her grief with a flurry of activity, or that she was simply “crazy.” However, Winchester Mystery House historian Janan Boehme paints a happier picture, imagining that the continual renovations reminded Sarah of the good times when she and William built their New Haven home together.
“I think Sarah was trying to repeat that experience by doing something they both loved,” Boehme told the Los Angeles Times. She also suspects that Sarah was just an ardent—albeit eccentric—philanthropist who used her family fortune to purposefully employ the San Jose community. “She had a social conscience and she did try to give back,” Boehme offered, noting the hospital Sarah built in her husband’s name. “This house, in itself, was her biggest social work of all.”
9. ONCE IN WINCHESTER HOUSE, SARAH WAS RECLUSIVE, BUT NOT ALONE.
There is only one known photo of the widow Winchester, which was taken surreptitiously. Though she was reclusive, she was never alone. She had 18 servants, 18 gardeners, and the ever-present construction team working on the grounds. Every morning, Sarah met with the foreman to discuss the always-evolving building plans. And it’s said that each night, she visited the Séance Room to speak with the spirits, who weighed in on plans for the house’s unusual design.
10. THE HOUSE WAS AS OPULENT AS IT WAS ODD.
The home boasts 950 doors, 10,000 windows, 40 stairways, 52 skylights, 47 fireplaces, six kitchens, plus a trio of elevators, and once-groundbreaking elements like wool insulation, carbide gaslights, electricity, and an indoor shower, complete with a sewage drainage system.
11. NO ONE IS SURE HOW MANY ROOMS THE HOUSE HELD.
Following Sarah’s death, Winchester House was converted into a tourist attraction. But when trying to get a room count, the new owners kept coming up with different numbers. After five years of renovations, they estimated the number of rooms to be about 160, which is the number most often quoted today.
12. SARAH HAD AN OBSESSION WITH THE NUMBER 13.
Among the secrets Sarah took to her grave was why she insisted that so many things relate to the number 13. The Winchester House has many 13-paned windows and 13-paneled ceilings, as well as 13-step stairways. Even her will had 13 parts, and she signed it 13 times. But the pièce de résistance might be the house’s 13th bathroom, which contains 13 windows of its own.
13. IT’S A NATIONAL LANDMARK.
The Winchester Mystery House earned landmark status on August 7, 1974. The fascinating mansion is still owned by the family (families?) who purchased it from the Winchester estate in 1922 for $150,000—however, their identity is another Winchester House mystery. But thanks to them, tourists can now explore 110 of the 160-some rooms Sarah dreamed up. The Winchester Mystery House even boasts special tours on Halloween and Fridays the 13th.
14. IT’S REGULARLY CITED AS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTED PLACES IN AMERICA.
To this day, Winchester House is a destination for believers who hope to have a paranormal encounter of their own. A popular spot for such activity is the corridors of the third floor, where tour guides have claimed to hear footsteps and disembodied voices whisper their names.
In a Reddit AMA, a Winchester House tour guide confirmed that the house’s third floor—only a portion of which is accessible during house tours—is definitely the spookiest part of the house, “because that’s where the servants lived, so there’s been a lot of reported activity there. Also, when you are on that floor you can never really hear any of the other tours, so you feel pretty isolated.”
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helloblobbyblobfish · 4 years
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Big Romance 2
Sota Tanaka was finishing his third year at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology (STIT for short), one of the most prestigious tech school in the entire world. After the earthquake of 1906, San Fransisco had to be rebuilt, and japanese immigrants helped a lot to the reconstruction, being use to seismic events in their home country. Since them, the city only grew, taking both its American and Japanese roots and blooming, becoming a melting pot of all ethnicities and the place in the west coast where new tech appears. Sota isn't one of the brightest students, but his work on prosthesis, notably on the neurological connection between the mind and the prosthesis, were quite advanced and he was sure to succeed and live a fulfilling life. However, he was working on how to use his latest breakthrough for a quite selfish and amoral purpose.
 You see, Sota was quite enamored with his classmate Tadashi Hamada. To be fair, so was more than half the school, with several more-or-less officials and open fan-clubs. Tadashi was quite the prince charming: Always ready to help with your homework or your inventions; except if he had to take care of his younger, trouble-making little brother Hiro or help his aunt; with who Tadashi and Hiro lived since the death of their parents when they were young, run her café. He never swore, was always patient and gentle with anyone, even those who were rude to him; the smartest of his robotic class; and even those who weren't working with robotic tech could receive guidance from him. He also was the star pupil of the dean, professor Callaghan.
 Tadashi was of mixed Japanese and American heritage, was 5 feet 9; slender with a large built. he had large, warm and innocent brown eyes, black hairs cut shorts, a somewhat-large jaw. He was always wearing Cardigans sweaters, Blazers and crew neck t-shirts, varying between black, red, white and green in color. He also always wore, even in buildings, a black San Fransokyo Ninjas cap with red-and-gold lettering.
 On the other hand, Sota was 5 feet 7, had blue eyes that screamed hostile, a pointy chin, dark brown hairs that reached his shoulders, and worn a collection of leather jackets, sleeveless shirts covered with oil and fat. he however was hitting the gym from time to time, so he didn't have much fat in his body, yet wasn't much muscular. He clearly didn't have the look easy to hang on with, yet he actually was friendly, albeit rash and blunt.
 Despite the fact that almost everyone in the student body and the faculty knew about Tadashi's success, and that he was either loved or loathed because of it he himself was one of the few to not have a single idea of how popular he was, and as such hanged regularly with only a select few friends, who made quite sure he wasn't bothered by fans.
 However, Sota was someone Tadashi sometimes went to see to check his progress, and as such, visits to Sota's weren't checked by his chaperones, which helped a lot. To go back to Sota's invention, he managed, by incident, to make a chip that would allow to influence on someone's else neural system, controlling their thoughts, body and memories. When Sota discovered that during a test where he was trying to control a prosthesis worn by somebody else, he made sure the subjects didn't recall what happened in the office, and started planning on how to make Tadashi Hamada his.
 Luckily for Sota, Tadashi did one of his surprise visits in the afternoon, after Sota finished to work on a needle that would not be feel when penetrating the skin. While Tadashi was busy taking out stuff from his bag to show them to Sota (not that the latter wasn't interested in what Tadashi was making. It was often the subject of a lot of rumors, and it appeared like he was on something big, given all the nigh-timers he pulled recently), he received the chip in the neck.
 At once, Sota gave a quick mental command for Tadashi to follow anything he say, and to feel pleasure while doing it, and to not find it weird, to begin with. Tadashi fell to his knees and started to convulse on the ground in pain. Sota did feel a bit of guilt at that. Reconfiguring neural response hurt, quite a bit. But if a bit of pain at the beginning was necessary to have the perfect boyfriend, so be it. It's also why Sota decided to make the changes gradually, so that it hurt less. After a few seconds, Tadashi rise up, not understanding where did that pain came from and where did it go.
 Sota decided to see what were the extent of his control over Tadashi "Tadashi, give me your cap so I can wear it." It was already a big ask, as previously stated, Tadashi wore it even in class, he only took it if he had to put on the helmet for his moped. And yet, Tadashi immediately said "Sure." and handed him the cap, that Sota eagerly took and put on his head. "So how do I look?"
 "Okay, I guess, but I would prefer if it was on my head, to be honest. Without wanting to force you to hand it b-back, d-d-d-don't get me wrong, Sota."
 Sota had just asked the cap to see if Tadashi, however, and seeing the eagerness to please and the puppy look of longing, ha gave back the cap without any fuss. Sota then sent the modifications so that Tadashi would be in love with him, and would ask him out. Tadashi barely even seemed to be affected, only a slight pinch, before kissing Sota. The happiness of Sota was important, and he kissed back once Tadashi pulled them apart. To Sota's surprise, however, Tadashi suddenly stopped to kiss him, and instead started to nibble his neck. Sota was surprised that angelic Tadashi was the biting type, but that wasn't something he would complaint about. Instead he started to zip off Tadashi's fly, only to be stop and to hear "Hum, I'm sorry, Sota, but I'm not ready to do that yet. Sorry. But I do want people to know about us, so that's something?" Tadashi was clearly sad, and he seemed self-conscious about perhaps not giving Sota what Sota wanted. Sota could have just made Tadashi okay with it, but Sota did want to respect Tadashi consent to an extent, so he closed off the fly.
   -----
 Now it is the annual science fair at SFIT, and not only Tadashi is gonna present his invention, a robot nurse named Baymax, his little brother Hiro is gonna make his presentation. Sota was really surprised to learn that the little bro was 13 when he finished college. Even smarter than Tadashi but a much more selfish guy. The only reason he was interested to begin with was to impress professor Callaghan, who's a major celebrity in robotics world. Hiro's invention really interesting, however: microbots that can do anything you mind can think off. Sota is really interested to, because he might find a use in his research.
 In the last few month, Sota put chips in everyone close to Tadashi, both friends and teacher. He has yet to be invited to Tadashi's house, because Tadashi isn't sure how to introduce Hiro and Sota, but it's okay. Hiro will soon be okay with Tadashi neglecting him, if Sota manage to get close. Sota also made a second type of Chip he put in himself, one that allow him to know the feelings of those he injected. He can't have their thoughts, but that would just be impossible.
 After the standing ovation for Hiro's invention, everybody goes out to celebrate. Tadashi take Hiro on the side to discuss. All of a sudden, a fire is started. Professor Callaghan is presumed inside and Tadashi want to go to save him. Sota see this and send a command for Tadashi to stop. However, it goes against Tadashi's moral, and he fall in pain to the ground. That does however save him, as ten seconds later, the building explodes. However, Sota feel that Callaghan's chip is actually getting away from the site, and fast. So, he takes his own motorbike, and goes that way, after sending a message to stop where nobody will see them and to wait for Sota. Callaghan will then obey everything Sota says and tell him everything, because Sota think the dean is responsible.
 And indeed, he is. He started the fire to steal Hiro's microbots, because his daughter went missing during an experiment on dimensional travel by Krei tech, and he wanted revenge. Well, Sota make him stop any plan of revenge, and come back to STIT, saying he manage to survive due to quick-thinking and the bots.
 Sota send some reassuring vibes to Tadashi, and get invited to sleep at the Lucky Cat Café, because Cass, Tadashi's aunt, figured out the link between Tadashi and that guy he keeps talking about....
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aion-rsa · 4 years
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Warrior: The Historical Inspiration for Nellie Davenport
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This article contains Warrior spoilers.
In “The Chinese Connection,” the second episode of Season 2 of Warrior, a new character named Nellie Davenport (Miranda Raison) enters the show. She’s a wealthy widow committed to ending the exploitation of Chinese women by leading police raids on brothels and offering alternatives to Warrior’s favorite brothel madam, Ah Toy.
“We introduced the character of Nellie Davenport,” reveals Warrior showrunner Jonathan Tropper, “She was based on an actual person.”
Tropper is quick to point out that Warrior is not a docudrama. He sees it as more like a martial arts fable or graphic novel that takes its inspiration from historical people and events. Nevertheless, the inspiration for Davenport is based on a remarkable San Franciscan heroine, Donaldina Cameron.
“She was all we talked about for a while,” Tropper says. “She was based on the nun who devoted herself to the rescuing of young Chinese girls who were forced into sex working.”
The White Devil Who Freed Chinese Sex Slaves
Donaldina Cameron was born in 1869 and immigrated from New Zealand to California when she was only three. She was raised on a sheep ranch in San Gabriel Valley, but after twenty years living out in the sticks, she moved to the big city – San Francisco. She accepted a job in Chinatown, working as a sewing teacher at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls, a refuge founded by the Presbyterian Church in 1874. The Home rescued Chinese women from slavery, predominantly prostitution, which was a major problem at that time.
In 1875, the Page Act banned Chinese women from entering America. As a result, Chinese women were smuggled into the country and sold as indentured servants or slaves. By the late 1880s when Cameron arrived in San Francisco, slavery of Chinese women had run rampant. It was known as the “Yellow Slave Trade” and its victims seldom survived for more than five years beyond when they landed in the States. 
Seven years after the Page Act, the more stringent Chinese Exclusion Act was established. The Exclusion Act is brought up in this episode of Warrior during the political rally. It’s a major part of Buckley’s (Langley Kirkwood) agenda, legislation that he’s aggressively working towards, and it provides a time frame for when the events of the show are set.
The Chinese Exclusion Act a significant and shameful point in U.S. history. It was the first and only time that the United States of America singled out and banned an ethnic group with a blatantly racist law. The Chinese Exclusion Act suspended Chinese immigration and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization with the objective of maintaining white “racial purity.” Many Chinese had already immigrated to America for the Gold Rush and to build the transcontinental railroad.
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As a result of the Exclusion Act, American Chinese faced even more oppression, especially the women. When Occidental Mission Home rescued these women, mostly girls, they provided them sanctuary and taught them English, homemaking skills, and Christianity.
From sewing teacher to heroine, Cameron became the superintendent of the Home in only two years despite her lack of prior experience. Over the next 40 years, she saved thousands of Chinese women from the clutches of human traffickers, pulling them from brothels herself and escaping through the labyrinthian alleys and rooftops of Chinatown.
The Tongs controlled this slave trade and had the police department in their back pockets. The Chinese Six Companies, which is also an organization that is referenced in Warrior, attempted to stop the Tongs. However, like the police, they had also been infiltrated by Tong corruption. Established in San Francisco in 1882, the Chinese Six Companies eventually shook off the Tongs and evolved to become the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, a respected organization that has dozens of branches across North America today.
Cameron worked tirelessly at her mission, earning the wrath of the Tongs and slavers. They called her “White Devil” and “White Witch,” a moniker that the press picked up and spread. She was also called “Chinatown’s Angry Angel” which became the title of her biography by Mildred Crowl Martin, one of three biographies that retold her inspirational story. 
Cameron had her critics too. The women she rescued were not allowed outside of the Mission Home unescorted. They were forced to convert to Christianity and their Chinese heritage was scrubbed from their education. They were subjected to Presbyterian programming and were kept within the house until they married a good Christian man, and even then, that man had to be approved by Cameron. However, given that the alternative was a life of prostitution and an early death, Christian conversion was a path of redemption.
It’s easy to criticize Cameron’s shortcomings now, but in the context of the times, she was revolutionary. She fought diligently for the rights of Chinese immigrants until she retired in 1934. The Chinese Exclusion Act wasn’t repealed until 1943. Ironically, that was the same year that Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps in Manzanar and Tule Lake. Cameron died in Palo Alto in 1968.
Cameron’s legacy survives to this day. The Donaldina Cameron House is the official San Francisco landmark #44. It stands on 920 Sacramento Street at Joice on the outskirts of Chinatown where the Occidental Mission Home for Girls once stood. The original Mission Home was destroyed during the 1906 earthquake. And while the city was in flames, Cameron searched through the burning rubble to recover the log book so she could prove that she had guardianship of the women she had rescued, assuring that the traffickers could not lay claim on them once again. The building was rebuilt in 1908 using the bricks that had been salvaged from the original structure. 
Today the Cameron House has evolved into a comprehensive family service organization. Cameron House serves the needs of low-income and immigrant Asian youth and families in San Francisco. It provides services such as counseling, domestic violence intervention, food distribution, adult ESL and computer classes, support groups, youth afterschool and summer programs, sports, arts, and camping experiences, leadership development, and volunteer opportunities, serving over 1,000 low-income immigrant children and families.
It remains a Presbyterian organization and upholds the following three Christian principles: Firstly, their work is a manifestation of God’s love–they demonstrate God’s loving kindness through their service and stewardship. Secondly, all people are welcomed. Every person is worthy of love and respect and will be treated as such. And third, they promote justice for all.
Nellie Davenport on Warrior
Nellie Davenport’s story in Warrior is quite different than Cameron’s. Cameron was not a rich widow. She was engaged at age nineteen but for some unknown reason, never married. Davenport is a fictional character, and her story arc will Warrior diverge significantly from Cameron’s in the episodes to come. Nevertheless, the heroic spirit of a revolutionary woman coming to the aid of her fellow women, regardless of race, inspires Davenport’s character and gives Warrior the means to subtly share Cameron’s story.
According to Tropper, Davenport will bring out a completely different perspective on one of the Warrior’s other leads.
“Nellie Davenport comes in and develops an interesting relationship with Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng),” he says. “We definitely spent a good piece of exploring the moral contradictions of Ah Toy, a woman who is a champion of her people and at the same time, she’s exploiting them. And that’s something we didn’t want to avoid. We actually have Ah Toy confronting that about herself.”
Her relationship with Nellie will open up a whole new aspect of Ah Toy, one that will surely be explored in upcoming episodes.  
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Warrior Season 2 can be seen exclusively on CINEMAX. You can learn more about Donaldina Cameron here.
The post Warrior: The Historical Inspiration for Nellie Davenport appeared first on Den of Geek.
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ecotone99 · 5 years
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Cable Car 19 to Make Historic Debut for Muni Heritage
Cable Car 19 to Make Historic Debut for Muni Heritage By Jeremy Menzies
This year's Muni Heritage Weekend is slated to be perhaps the most historic year ever. As a special treat, Muni's largest and oldest cable car, former Sacramento-Clay Line Car 19, will hit the street for revenue service for the first time in 77 years!
Car 19, or "Big 19" to distinguish it from Powell Cable Car 19, is a true survivor and thanks to the hard work of the Cable Car shop and operations crews, it will be in service on the California Street Cable Car Line on both Saturday, September 7th and Sunday, September 8th. This rare opportunity to ride the oldest operating Cable Car in the world is not to be missed!
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This shot shows Cable Car 19 on Washington Street in 1908, possibly a posed photo to show the rebuilt car in service on the Sacramento Clay Line.
Built in 1883 by the Central Pacific Railroad Company in Sacramento, Car 19 began its life running on Market Street under the Market Street Cable Railway Company. This company was consolidated into the United Railroads of San Francisco (URR) in 1903 and Big 19 continued running on Market until the 1906 Earthquake and Fires. Following the '06 disaster, all cable lines were removed from Market Street and the fleet of cars including 19 were drafted into service on other surviving cable lines.
In 1907, URR rebuilt the car for service on the Sacramento-Clay Line, a route quite similar to today's 1 California bus which ran from downtown to Fillmore Street via Sacramento and Clay Streets. For the next 35 years it plied the streets over Nob Hill until the Sacramento-Clay Line was replaced by bus service in 1942, marking the last year it carried passengers in regular service.
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Car 16, an identical sibling of Big 19, is at the end of the line at Fillmore and Sacramento Streets in this 1918 photo.
Acquired by Muni in 1944 during the merger with Market Street Railway Co. (URR's successor), Car 19 was too large for the Powell Street Cable Lines and as such it was sold at auction in 1948. Since then, it has survived as a relic of the golden era of cable cars, mostly held in storage while plans to make it a proper museum piece never quite materialized.
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Car 19 is being loaded for transport to the Cable Car Barn in this 1966 photo. The car was meant to go on display in the new Cable Car Museum but those plans never came to fruition.
Early this year, a small group of keen folks at Cable Car Division looked into getting the 136-year-old Car 19 up and running, initially just to see what the car needed to become operational. The preparations and testing went perfectly due to the work of the shop and operations teams and thanks to their dedication, Car 19 will hit the streets to carry passengers for the first time in 77 years.
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Car 19 on a test run in 2019 passes by the same location on Washington Street as the 1908 photo seen above.
Don't miss this rare opportunity to ride a special piece of San Francisco history. Come on down to the San Francisco Railway Museum, the epicenter of Muni Heritage Weekend activities, on Steuart Street between Market and Mission. Saturday and Sunday, September 7-8 will be chocked full of rides on Muni's heritage fleet of buses and special rail vehicles plus kids activities and special exhibits about our vintage vehicles.
Want to learn more about Car 19? Check out this great blog by Market Street Railway and read about it on their vintage vehicle roster here. Check out more of our historic transit photos at the SFMTA Photo Archive and follow us on Instagram!
Published September 05, 2019 at 06:32PM https://ift.tt/2UAcikK via Blogger https://ift.tt/2MWj4Ai
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San Francisco!!!
I was looking back through old posts and realized I did not continue to post throughout my trip to Singapore, which is sad now that I look back on it, but I will try to be better about San Fran!
We got in very late last night, so we were pretty tired for most of today, but it was a good day all in all! We had tickets for a hop on/hop off bus with 20 stops around the city as well as included walking tours, so we spent the day getting our bearings in the city.
One of the stops was at the “Painted Ladies,” the row of Victorian houses that includes the house from Full House, so we hopped off for some pictures there.
We went on a walking tour of San Francisco’s Chinatown, which is the oldest and most densely populated Chinatown in America. They speak Cantonese there rather than Mandarin because, when the Chinese started immigrating to San Fran in the mid-19th century, China was under the Qing dynasty, and immigrants at that time came primarily from Guangdong were Cantonese was spoken. Our tour guide said Chinese culture continues to thrive in the area, though the generation that’s growing up now are much more aware of/involved in American culture than any of the previous Chinatown generations.
We went on another walking tour of the Barbary Coast of San Francisco, which was the “unsavory” part of San Francisco where gangs/prostitution/gambling ran rampant until about the 1920s. It’s actually built on “landfill” and several wooden ships are buried under the ground. There were tunnels underground in which a lot of bad things went down because if you used the tunnels, you didn’t have to waste any money bribing the police. We got to see a tiny stretch of tunnel that remains under an art supplies store, but the stories of terrible people spiriting teenager girls kidnapped from China through the tunnels to sell them into prostitution in Chinatown kind of soured that experience. :/
We had pizza for lunch, and we stepped into a famous bookstore called City Lights Books. I of course made a beeline for the children’s section. Caitlyn waited very patiently while I perused it for half an hour.
We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, too, and hopped off for pictures, but it was tough to take pictures when the wind was threatening to bowl us over. Caitlyn literally stumbled at one point from the wind. This means the most important fact I learned today was that all of those scenes in Charmed in which the whitelighters are sitting on top of the Golden Gate Bridge are INACCURATE because there was never ANY wind in those scenes!!!
In the evening, the bus took us over the Bay Bridge to Treasure Island, which, yes, Mother, is named after the book, although for no particular reason other than that it needed a name.
Some fun facts we learned today:
-Everything in San Francisco’s history apparently relates back to the earthquake in 1906! Seriously, it must have been mentioned at least 100 times. We learned the earthquake itself was very destructive but wasn’t nearly as destructive as the fires that raged for three days after. Most of the buildings were wooden at the time, so they went up in smoke immediately. Many of the buildings that were rebuilt couldn’t afford to rebuild with brand new bricks, so they collected charred bricks from the debris, and you can recognize easily which buildings those are today. Once in a while, our various tour guides mentioned the 1989 earthquake, but apparently San Fran was better prepared for that one. Today buildings must have rebar fixtures to insure that even if the buildings fall during another earthquake, they will fall in on themselves rather than out sideways onto the street.
-The Palace of Fine Arts influenced George Lucas’s design of R2D2. :)
-We learned about one the gangs in the Barbary Coast, the Sydney Ducks, who were convicts from Australia. They liked to light things on fire, and when the owners of saloons, hotels, shops, etc. who were volunteer fire fighters went to put out the fires, the Sydney Ducks looted their businesses. Also, they liked to murder people. All in all, they were pretty bad, and they became so impervious to the law that regular citizens started a militia, grabbed the leaders of the gang, and hanged them downtown. Although that was obviously very illegal, it worked like a charm, and the Sydney Ducks stopped being a problem in San Francisco.
-A related “fun” fact--apparently the police would find dead bodies often enough that they would simply take the bodies to an undertaker, pay him $5, and have him bury the body in a pine box in an unmarked grave. Being entrepreneurs, some of the undertakers would accept a body (and the $5), shave it/change the clothes/alter the appearance, and put it back in the street so the police would bring it buy again the next morning and pay the undertaker another $5. Good to know people have always been industrious.
-We learned that Coit Tower was built after Lillie Hitchcock Coit (who was a bit of a character, born in 1853, and did things such as dress up like a man in order to gamble) donated 1/3 of her estate to the city of San Francisco with the instruction that they “make something pretty for the city that I love.”
-The modern version of Chinese fortune cookies actually started as a treat served with tea (and with the fortune under the cookie rather than in the cookie) in the late 1890s/early1900s in a Japanese Tea Garden.
-There are now only three cable car lines in operation with 45 cable cars in use. They cost $7 one way per ride, which might seem like a ripoff, but it’s because the cost of maintaining the cable cars is pretty high. For purposes of safety, the cable cars keep the brakes on the entire time they’re going downhill, and this shreds the brakes fairly quickly; they have to be replaced every three days! Originally, the cable cars were invented to carry heavy loads up the hills because horses were constantly failing in the effort, breaking their legs, twisting their ankles, and needing to be put down after. Today, the cable cars are the only moving national monument!
-Caitlyn would like me to add that a woman at the end of the day today said that “I know it was a very hot day today” when, in fact, it didn’t get above 72 and breezy.
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carmafidler344-blog · 5 years
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Two times Is Actually Equally As Nice.
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newstfionline · 6 years
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Quakes and Fires? It’s the Cost of Living That Californians Can’t Stomach
By Conor Dougherty, NY Times, Dec. 12, 2017
OAKLAND, Calif.--Russel Lee and his wife spent the past few years going online to do the depressing math of how much less housing costs pretty much everywhere that isn’t California. They looked at Idaho, Arizona, North Carolina and Kentucky, but Mr. Lee, who was born in San Francisco and has lived in the Bay Area his entire life, could never quite make the move. Then the fires came.
In October, as the most destructive wildfire in state history swept through Northern California, Mr. Lee’s three-bedroom home in Santa Rosa was consumed by the flames. He lost everything: his tools, his guns, his childhood report cards. Forced to confront the decision of whether to stay and rebuild or pick up and go somewhere else, Mr. Lee finally decided it was time to go. He used the insurance payment to buy a $150,000 home outside Knoxville, Tenn., and will soon leave California for good.
“It was like ‘Welp, it’s time,’” Mr. Lee said. “It’s kind of like ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ in reverse.”
For the half-century after World War II, California represented the epitome of middle-class America on the move. As people poured into the state in search of good weather and the lure of single-family homes with backyard orange trees, the state embarked on a vast natural engineering project that redirected northern water southward, creating the modern Southern California and making the state the most populous in the nation.
Those days are long gone. For more than three decades, California has seen a net outflow of residents to other states, as less expensive southern cities like Phoenix, Houston and Raleigh supplant those of the Golden State as beacons of opportunity. California still has a hold on the national imagination: It has lots of jobs and great weather, along with the glamour of Hollywood and the inventiveness of Silicon Valley.
Still, for many Californians, the question is always sitting there: Is this worth it? Natural disasters are a moment to take stock and rethink the dream. But in the end, the calculation almost always comes down to cost.
Last Friday was Saul Weinstein’s last day at work, and the start of his last weekend as a Californian. Mr. Weinstein, a 67-year-old commercial banker, retired and moved to Nevada. He has lived through several fires, and the 1994 earthquake that killed 57 people and shook him and millions of other Southern Californians out of bed at 4:30 in the morning.
But what finally sent him packing was money. Mr. Weinstein is selling his 2,000-square-foot house in Baldwin Park, east of Los Angeles, for $570,000. He paid less than half that for a similarly sized place in Pahrump, Nev., about an hour’s drive west of Las Vegas. He moved on Monday.
“When you retire you have to watch your money,” Mr. Weinstein said. “The San Andreas Fault is what they politely call ‘overdue,’ and I will be much more comfortable when I’m away from that. But if it wasn’t for the cost of living I probably would have stuck around and taken my chances.”
California was once a migration magnet, but since 2010 the state has lost more than two million residents 25 and older, including 220,000 who moved to Texas, according to census data. Arizona and Nevada have each welcomed about 180,000 California expatriates since the start of the decade. Next week, as people start decamping for the holidays, airports throughout the South and Southwest will fill up with people who are from California and are now traveling West to see the family they left behind.
Next year, Heather Birdsell is likely to be among them. Ms. Birdsell, a 33-year-old legal assistant, grew up in Orange County and now lives in a two-bedroom condominium in Lake Forest, Calif. After years of watching friends move out of state and listening to them talk about how much easier life was and how much bigger their homes were, Ms. Birdsell and her husband finally put their home on the market. They are in escrow now and plan on moving to Phoenix early next year.
“The money we make in California is more than sufficient to work in any other state,” she said. “We’re just excited about finally getting what we want and not being strapped to make it happen.”
Fire is an annual affair, and even as climate change stretches the burning season from summer and early fall clear into December, people here accept that pleasant weather and destructive forces are linked.
California has 40 million people and has grown through much worse. San Francisco was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire and was rebuilt in time to host the 1915 World’s Fair. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the worst since 1906, was followed by the 1991 Oakland fires, followed by the 1993 Malibu fires, followed by the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
None of this was enough to dissuade Silicon Valley from expanding into the world’s technology capital, or to induce Hollywood to leave Hollywood. “The wrath of God has failed to deter companies from thinking this is a great place to be, although it is expensive and crowded,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.
Living here means accepting the existential threats. Out on the horizon, beyond the periodic fires, floods and landslides, lies the knowledge that at some point the next great earthquake is going to cause a staggering amount of destruction and, if it damages the water system, could render large parts of the state uninhabitable. But shortly in the aftermath of a disaster, after checking the first aid kit and refilling the fresh water bottles, Californians go back to living.
“It’s a kind of episodic mindfulness and then you retreat back to oblivion,” said Jim Newton, a journalist, historian and lecturer at the U.C.L.A. Luskin School of Public Affairs. “People talk about traffic; people talk about the price of homes.”
Right now it is the Republican tax plan that is causing people to rethink their finances and ultimately where they want to live. The plan, while still a work in progress, is almost certain to land harder on California and other heavily Democratic states if it passes. The state’s median home cost is $500,000, twice the national level, and for decades residents have softened the blow from high home prices and high state and city taxes by using generous federal deductions that lower their taxes.
Curious as to how this might change Californians’ outlook, Redfin, a national real estate brokerage firm based in Seattle, recently asked a sample of 900 homeowners if they would consider moving if they could no longer deduct state and local taxes. Some 37 percent of Californians said they would consider it. Californians looking elsewhere are already among the most popular searches on the Redfin website.
“We have real estate agents all over the country who meet their customers in airports,” said Glenn Kelman, the company’s chief executive. “They’re coming from California.”
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myhauntedsalem · 4 years
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14 Haunting Facts About the Winchester Mystery House
Despite the Winchester Mystery House’s cheerful appearance, this massive California mansion’s history is edged with tragedy, mystery and maybe some ghosts. Naturally, it has inspired a chilling horror movie, Winchester, which opens in theaters today. But before you go to the movie theater, wander through the curious past of one of America’s most infamous homes.
1. THE WINCHESTER HOUSE IS NAMED FOR ITS MISTRESS.
Sarah Lockwood Winchester—the wife of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, whose family created the Winchester rifle that was heraldedas “the gun that won the west”—designed and oversaw the construction of the sprawling Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion that bears her name. Construction on the 24,000-square-foot home, which is located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, California, began in 1886.
2. MANY BELIEVE SARAH BUILT WINCHESTER HOUSE OUT OF FEAR.
Overcome with grief in the wake of her husband’s death from tuberculosis in 1881, folklore states that Sarah sought out a spiritualist who could commune with the dead. While she was presumably looking for solace or closure, she was instead given a chilling warning.
Through the medium, William told his widow that their tragedies (the couple had only one child, a daughter named Annie, who died at six weeks old) were a result of the blood money the family had made off of the Winchester rifles. He warned that vengeful ghosts would seek her out. In order to protect herself, William said that Sarah must “build a home for [herself] and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon.”
Sarah was advised to leave their home in New Haven, Connecticut, behind, and move west, where she was to build a grand home for the spirits. There was just one catch: construction on the house could never stop. “If you continue building, you will live,” the medium warned Sarah. “Stop and you will die.”
3. THE HOUSE WAS UNDER CONSTANT CONSTRUCTION FOR 38 YEARS.
In 1886, Sarah purchased an eight-room farmhouse in San Jose, California, and began building. She employed a crew of carpenters, who split shifts so construction could go on day and night, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for 38 years. The work only stopped on September 5, 1922, because the octogenarian mastermind behind the home died of heart failure in her sleep. It’s said that upon hearing the news of Sarah’s death, the carpenters quit so abruptly they left half-hammered nails protruding from walls.
4. THE HOUSE IS FULL OF ARCHITECTURAL ODDITIES.
Sarah issued many bizarre demands to her builders, including the building of trap doors, secret passages, a skylight in the floor, spider web windows, and staircases that led to nowhere. There are also doors that open to blank walls, and a dangerous door on the second floor that opens out into nothing—save for an alarming drop to the yard far below.
5. AN EARTHQUAKE ONCE RATTLED THE HOUSE AND TRAPPED SARAH.
In 1906, the great San Francisco Earthquake caused three floors of the then seven-story house to cave in. A 1900 postcard of the place shows a tower that was later toppled by the natural disaster. That tower—plus several other rooms destroyed in the disaster—were never rebuilt, but cordoned off. As for Sarah, she was safe but stuck in the Daisy Bedroom, named for the floral motif in its windows. She had to be dug out by her staff, as its entrance was blocked off by rubble.
6. THE HOUSE WAS DESIGNED LIKE A LABYRINTH.
Some say the labyrinth layout was meant to confuse the ghosts, allowing Sarah some peace and a means to escape them. She was the sole architect of this extraordinary home, and no master building plan has ever been uncovered. So Sarah may be the only person who ever truly knew all of its secrets. When movers were called in after her death, one lamented its labyrinthine design that includes many winding hallways. One mover told American Weekly the Winchester House was a place “where downstairs leads neither to the cellar nor upstairs to the roof.”
7. SOME SAY THE SYMBOLS IN THE HOUSE POINT NOT TO GHOSTS, BUT FRANCIS BACON.
An alternate theory on the Winchester House’s perplexing design declares that Sarah was creating a puzzle full of encryptions inspired by the work of English philosopher Francis Bacon. There’s speculation that clues to the house’s true meaning are hidden in the ballroom, the Shakespeare windows, and the iron gates. This theory suggests that Sarah was a member of a mystic society like the Rosicrucians, or a secret society like the Freemasons—or possibly both.
8. THERE ARE OTHER THEORIES, INCLUDING THAT SARAH WAS “CRAZY.”
Others speculate Sarah was coping with her grief with a flurry of activity, or that she was simply “crazy.” However, Winchester Mystery House historian Janan Boehme paints a happier picture, imagining that the continual renovations reminded Sarah of the good times when she and William built their New Haven home together.
“I think Sarah was trying to repeat that experience by doing something they both loved,” Boehme told the Los Angeles Times. She also suspects that Sarah was just an ardent—albeit eccentric—philanthropist who used her family fortune to purposefully employ the San Jose community. “She had a social conscience and she did try to give back,” Boehme offered, noting the hospital Sarah built in her husband’s name. “This house, in itself, was her biggest social work of all.”
9. ONCE IN WINCHESTER HOUSE, SARAH WAS RECLUSIVE, BUT NOT ALONE.
There is only one known photo of the widow Winchester, which was taken surreptitiously. Though she was reclusive, she was never alone. She had 18 servants, 18 gardeners, and the ever-present construction team working on the grounds. Every morning, Sarah met with the foreman to discuss the always-evolving building plans. And it’s said that each night, she visited the Séance Room to speak with the spirits, who weighed in on plans for the house’s unusual design.
10. THE HOUSE WAS AS OPULENT AS IT WAS ODD.
The home boasts 950 doors, 10,000 windows, 40 stairways, 52 skylights, 47 fireplaces, six kitchens, plus a trio of elevators, and once-groundbreaking elements like wool insulation, carbide gaslights, electricity, and an indoor shower, complete with a sewage drainage system.
11. NO ONE IS SURE HOW MANY ROOMS THE HOUSE HELD.
Following Sarah’s death, Winchester House was converted into a tourist attraction. But when trying to get a room count, the new owners kept coming up with different numbers. After five years of renovations, they estimated the number of rooms to be about 160, which is the number most often quoted today.
12. SARAH HAD AN OBSESSION WITH THE NUMBER 13.
Among the secrets Sarah took to her grave was why she insisted that so many things relate to the number 13. The Winchester House has many 13-paned windows and 13-paneled ceilings, as well as 13-step stairways. Even her will had 13 parts, and she signed it 13 times. But the pièce de résistance might be the house’s 13th bathroom, which contains 13 windows of its own.
13. IT’S A NATIONAL LANDMARK.
The Winchester Mystery House earned landmark status on August 7, 1974. The fascinating mansion is still owned by the family (families?) who purchased it from the Winchester estate in 1922 for $150,000—however, their identity is another Winchester House mystery. But thanks to them, tourists can now explore 110 of the 160-some rooms Sarah dreamed up. The Winchester Mystery House even boasts special tours on Halloween and Fridays the 13th.
14. IT’S REGULARLY CITED AS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTED PLACES IN AMERICA.
To this day, Winchester House is a destination for believers who hope to have a paranormal encounter of their own. A popular spot for such activity is the corridors of the third floor, where tour guides have claimed to hear footsteps and disembodied voices whisper their names.
In a Reddit AMA, a Winchester House tour guide confirmed that the house’s third floor—only a portion of which is accessible during house tours—is definitely the spookiest part of the house, “because that’s where the servants lived, so there’s been a lot of reported activity there. Also, when you are on that floor you can never really hear any of the other tours, so you feel pretty isolated.”
10 notes · View notes
myhauntedsalem · 4 years
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14 Haunting Facts About the Winchester Mystery House
Despite the Winchester Mystery House’s cheerful appearance, this massive California mansion’s history is edged with tragedy, mystery and maybe some ghosts. Naturally, it has inspired a chilling horror movie, Winchester, which opens in theaters today. But before you go to the movie theater, wander through the curious past of one of America’s most infamous homes.
1. THE WINCHESTER HOUSE IS NAMED FOR ITS MISTRESS.
Sarah Lockwood Winchester—the wife of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, whose family created the Winchester rifle that was heraldedas “the gun that won the west”—designed and oversaw the construction of the sprawling Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion that bears her name. Construction on the 24,000-square-foot home, which is located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, California, began in 1886.
2. MANY BELIEVE SARAH BUILT WINCHESTER HOUSE OUT OF FEAR.
Overcome with grief in the wake of her husband’s death from tuberculosis in 1881, folklore states that Sarah sought out a spiritualist who could commune with the dead. While she was presumably looking for solace or closure, she was instead given a chilling warning.
Through the medium, William told his widow that their tragedies (the couple had only one child, a daughter named Annie, who died at six weeks old) were a result of the blood money the family had made off of the Winchester rifles. He warned that vengeful ghosts would seek her out. In order to protect herself, William said that Sarah must “build a home for [herself] and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon.”
Sarah was advised to leave their home in New Haven, Connecticut, behind, and move west, where she was to build a grand home for the spirits. There was just one catch: construction on the house could never stop. “If you continue building, you will live,” the medium warned Sarah. “Stop and you will die.”
3. THE HOUSE WAS UNDER CONSTANT CONSTRUCTION FOR 38 YEARS.
In 1886, Sarah purchased an eight-room farmhouse in San Jose, California, and began building. She employed a crew of carpenters, who split shifts so construction could go on day and night, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for 38 years. The work only stopped on September 5, 1922, because the octogenarian mastermind behind the home died of heart failure in her sleep. It’s said that upon hearing the news of Sarah’s death, the carpenters quit so abruptly they left half-hammered nails protruding from walls.
4. THE HOUSE IS FULL OF ARCHITECTURAL ODDITIES.
Sarah issued many bizarre demands to her builders, including the building of trap doors, secret passages, a skylight in the floor, spider web windows, and staircases that led to nowhere. There are also doors that open to blank walls, and a dangerous door on the second floor that opens out into nothing—save for an alarming drop to the yard far below.
5. AN EARTHQUAKE ONCE RATTLED THE HOUSE AND TRAPPED SARAH.
In 1906, the great San Francisco Earthquake caused three floors of the then seven-story house to cave in. A 1900 postcard of the place shows a tower that was later toppled by the natural disaster. That tower—plus several other rooms destroyed in the disaster—were never rebuilt, but cordoned off. As for Sarah, she was safe but stuck in the Daisy Bedroom, named for the floral motif in its windows. She had to be dug out by her staff, as its entrance was blocked off by rubble.
6. THE HOUSE WAS DESIGNED LIKE A LABYRINTH.
Some say the labyrinth layout was meant to confuse the ghosts, allowing Sarah some peace and a means to escape them. She was the sole architect of this extraordinary home, and no master building plan has ever been uncovered. So Sarah may be the only person who ever truly knew all of its secrets. When movers were called in after her death, one lamented its labyrinthine design that includes many winding hallways. One mover told American Weekly the Winchester House was a place “where downstairs leads neither to the cellar nor upstairs to the roof.”
7. SOME SAY THE SYMBOLS IN THE HOUSE POINT NOT TO GHOSTS, BUT FRANCIS BACON.
An alternate theory on the Winchester House’s perplexing design declares that Sarah was creating a puzzle full of encryptions inspired by the work of English philosopher Francis Bacon. There’s speculation that clues to the house’s true meaning are hidden in the ballroom, the Shakespeare windows, and the iron gates. This theory suggests that Sarah was a member of a mystic society like the Rosicrucians, or a secret society like the Freemasons—or possibly both.
8. THERE ARE OTHER THEORIES, INCLUDING THAT SARAH WAS “CRAZY.”
Others speculate Sarah was coping with her grief with a flurry of activity, or that she was simply “crazy.” However, Winchester Mystery House historian Janan Boehme paints a happier picture, imagining that the continual renovations reminded Sarah of the good times when she and William built their New Haven home together.
“I think Sarah was trying to repeat that experience by doing something they both loved,” Boehme told the Los Angeles Times. She also suspects that Sarah was just an ardent—albeit eccentric—philanthropist who used her family fortune to purposefully employ the San Jose community. “She had a social conscience and she did try to give back,” Boehme offered, noting the hospital Sarah built in her husband’s name. “This house, in itself, was her biggest social work of all.”
9. ONCE IN WINCHESTER HOUSE, SARAH WAS RECLUSIVE, BUT NOT ALONE.
There is only one known photo of the widow Winchester, which was taken surreptitiously. Though she was reclusive, she was never alone. She had 18 servants, 18 gardeners, and the ever-present construction team working on the grounds. Every morning, Sarah met with the foreman to discuss the always-evolving building plans. And it’s said that each night, she visited the Séance Room to speak with the spirits, who weighed in on plans for the house’s unusual design.
10. THE HOUSE WAS AS OPULENT AS IT WAS ODD.
The home boasts 950 doors, 10,000 windows, 40 stairways, 52 skylights, 47 fireplaces, six kitchens, plus a trio of elevators, and once-groundbreaking elements like wool insulation, carbide gaslights, electricity, and an indoor shower, complete with a sewage drainage system.
11. NO ONE IS SURE HOW MANY ROOMS THE HOUSE HELD.
Following Sarah’s death, Winchester House was converted into a tourist attraction. But when trying to get a room count, the new owners kept coming up with different numbers. After five years of renovations, they estimated the number of rooms to be about 160, which is the number most often quoted today.
12. SARAH HAD AN OBSESSION WITH THE NUMBER 13.
Among the secrets Sarah took to her grave was why she insisted that so many things relate to the number 13. The Winchester House has many 13-paned windows and 13-paneled ceilings, as well as 13-step stairways. Even her will had 13 parts, and she signed it 13 times. But the pièce de résistance might be the house’s 13th bathroom, which contains 13 windows of its own.
13. IT’S A NATIONAL LANDMARK.
The Winchester Mystery House earned landmark status on August 7, 1974. The fascinating mansion is still owned by the family (families?) who purchased it from the Winchester estate in 1922 for $150,000—however, their identity is another Winchester House mystery. But thanks to them, tourists can now explore 110 of the 160-some rooms Sarah dreamed up. The Winchester Mystery House even boasts special tours on Halloween and Fridays the 13th.
14. IT’S REGULARLY CITED AS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTED PLACES IN AMERICA.
To this day, Winchester House is a destination for believers who hope to have a paranormal encounter of their own. A popular spot for such activity is the corridors of the third floor, where tour guides have claimed to hear footsteps and disembodied voices whisper their names.
In a Reddit AMA, a Winchester House tour guide confirmed that the house’s third floor—only a portion of which is accessible during house tours—is definitely the spookiest part of the house, “because that’s where the servants lived, so there’s been a lot of reported activity there. Also, when you are on that floor you can never really hear any of the other tours, so you feel pretty isolated.”
19 notes · View notes
myhauntedsalem · 5 years
Photo
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14 Haunting Facts About the Winchester Mystery House
Despite the Winchester Mystery House’s cheerful appearance, this massive California mansion’s history is edged with tragedy, mystery and maybe some ghosts. Naturally, it has inspired a chilling horror movie, Winchester, which opens in theaters today. But before you go to the movie theater, wander through the curious past of one of America’s most infamous homes.
1. THE WINCHESTER HOUSE IS NAMED FOR ITS MISTRESS.
Sarah Lockwood Winchester—the wife of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, whose family created the Winchester rifle that was heraldedas “the gun that won the west”—designed and oversaw the construction of the sprawling Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion that bears her name. Construction on the 24,000-square-foot home, which is located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, California, began in 1886.
2. MANY BELIEVE SARAH BUILT WINCHESTER HOUSE OUT OF FEAR.
Overcome with grief in the wake of her husband’s death from tuberculosis in 1881, folklore states that Sarah sought out a spiritualist who could commune with the dead. While she was presumably looking for solace or closure, she was instead given a chilling warning.
Through the medium, William told his widow that their tragedies (the couple had only one child, a daughter named Annie, who died at six weeks old) were a result of the blood money the family had made off of the Winchester rifles. He warned that vengeful ghosts would seek her out. In order to protect herself, William said that Sarah must “build a home for [herself] and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon.”
Sarah was advised to leave their home in New Haven, Connecticut, behind, and move west, where she was to build a grand home for the spirits. There was just one catch: construction on the house could never stop. “If you continue building, you will live,” the medium warned Sarah. “Stop and you will die.”
3. THE HOUSE WAS UNDER CONSTANT CONSTRUCTION FOR 38 YEARS.
In 1886, Sarah purchased an eight-room farmhouse in San Jose, California, and began building. She employed a crew of carpenters, who split shifts so construction could go on day and night, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for 38 years. The work only stopped on September 5, 1922, because the octogenarian mastermind behind the home died of heart failure in her sleep. It’s said that upon hearing the news of Sarah’s death, the carpenters quit so abruptly they left half-hammered nails protruding from walls.
4. THE HOUSE IS FULL OF ARCHITECTURAL ODDITIES.
Sarah issued many bizarre demands to her builders, including the building of trap doors, secret passages, a skylight in the floor, spider web windows, and staircases that led to nowhere. There are also doors that open to blank walls, and a dangerous door on the second floor that opens out into nothing—save for an alarming drop to the yard far below.
5. AN EARTHQUAKE ONCE RATTLED THE HOUSE AND TRAPPED SARAH.
In 1906, the great San Francisco Earthquake caused three floors of the then seven-story house to cave in. A 1900 postcard of the place shows a tower that was later toppled by the natural disaster. That tower—plus several other rooms destroyed in the disaster—were never rebuilt, but cordoned off. As for Sarah, she was safe but stuck in the Daisy Bedroom, named for the floral motif in its windows. She had to be dug out by her staff, as its entrance was blocked off by rubble.
6. THE HOUSE WAS DESIGNED LIKE A LABYRINTH.
Some say the labyrinth layout was meant to confuse the ghosts, allowing Sarah some peace and a means to escape them. She was the sole architect of this extraordinary home, and no master building plan has ever been uncovered. So Sarah may be the only person who ever truly knew all of its secrets. When movers were called in after her death, one lamented its labyrinthine design that includes many winding hallways. One mover told American Weekly the Winchester House was a place “where downstairs leads neither to the cellar nor upstairs to the roof.”
7. SOME SAY THE SYMBOLS IN THE HOUSE POINT NOT TO GHOSTS, BUT FRANCIS BACON.
An alternate theory on the Winchester House’s perplexing design declares that Sarah was creating a puzzle full of encryptions inspired by the work of English philosopher Francis Bacon. There’s speculation that clues to the house’s true meaning are hidden in the ballroom, the Shakespeare windows, and the iron gates. This theory suggests that Sarah was a member of a mystic society like the Rosicrucians, or a secret society like the Freemasons—or possibly both.
8. THERE ARE OTHER THEORIES, INCLUDING THAT SARAH WAS “CRAZY.”
Others speculate Sarah was coping with her grief with a flurry of activity, or that she was simply “crazy.” However, Winchester Mystery House historian Janan Boehme paints a happier picture, imagining that the continual renovations reminded Sarah of the good times when she and William built their New Haven home together.
“I think Sarah was trying to repeat that experience by doing something they both loved,” Boehme told the Los Angeles Times. She also suspects that Sarah was just an ardent—albeit eccentric—philanthropist who used her family fortune to purposefully employ the San Jose community. “She had a social conscience and she did try to give back,” Boehme offered, noting the hospital Sarah built in her husband’s name. “This house, in itself, was her biggest social work of all.”
9. ONCE IN WINCHESTER HOUSE, SARAH WAS RECLUSIVE, BUT NOT ALONE.
There is only one known photo of the widow Winchester, which was taken surreptitiously. Though she was reclusive, she was never alone. She had 18 servants, 18 gardeners, and the ever-present construction team working on the grounds. Every morning, Sarah met with the foreman to discuss the always-evolving building plans. And it’s said that each night, she visited the Séance Room to speak with the spirits, who weighed in on plans for the house’s unusual design.
10. THE HOUSE WAS AS OPULENT AS IT WAS ODD.
The home boasts 950 doors, 10,000 windows, 40 stairways, 52 skylights, 47 fireplaces, six kitchens, plus a trio of elevators, and once-groundbreaking elements like wool insulation, carbide gaslights, electricity, and an indoor shower, complete with a sewage drainage system.
11. NO ONE IS SURE HOW MANY ROOMS THE HOUSE HELD.
Following Sarah’s death, Winchester House was converted into a tourist attraction. But when trying to get a room count, the new owners kept coming up with different numbers. After five years of renovations, they estimated the number of rooms to be about 160, which is the number most often quoted today.
12. SARAH HAD AN OBSESSION WITH THE NUMBER 13.
Among the secrets Sarah took to her grave was why she insisted that so many things relate to the number 13. The Winchester House has many 13-paned windows and 13-paneled ceilings, as well as 13-step stairways. Even her will had 13 parts, and she signed it 13 times. But the pièce de résistance might be the house’s 13th bathroom, which contains 13 windows of its own.
13. IT’S A NATIONAL LANDMARK.
The Winchester Mystery House earned landmark status on August 7, 1974. The fascinating mansion is still owned by the family (families?) who purchased it from the Winchester estate in 1922 for $150,000—however, their identity is another Winchester House mystery. But thanks to them, tourists can now explore 110 of the 160-some rooms Sarah dreamed up. The Winchester Mystery House even boasts special tours on Halloween and Fridays the 13th.
14. IT’S REGULARLY CITED AS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTED PLACES IN AMERICA.
To this day, Winchester House is a destination for believers who hope to have a paranormal encounter of their own. A popular spot for such activity is the corridors of the third floor, where tour guides have claimed to hear footsteps and disembodied voices whisper their names.
In a Reddit AMA, a Winchester House tour guide confirmed that the house’s third floor—only a portion of which is accessible during house tours—is definitely the spookiest part of the house, “because that’s where the servants lived, so there’s been a lot of reported activity there. Also, when you are on that floor you can never really hear any of the other tours, so you feel pretty isolated.”
21 notes · View notes
myhauntedsalem · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
14 Haunting Facts About the Winchester Mystery House
Despite the Winchester Mystery House’s cheerful appearance, this massive California mansion’s history is edged with tragedy, mystery and maybe some ghosts. Naturally, it has inspired a chilling horror movie, Winchester, which opens in theaters today. But before you go to the movie theater, wander through the curious past of one of America’s most infamous homes.
1. THE WINCHESTER HOUSE IS NAMED FOR ITS MISTRESS.
Sarah Lockwood Winchester—the wife of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, whose family created the Winchester rifle that was heraldedas “the gun that won the west”—designed and oversaw the construction of the sprawling Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion that bears her name. Construction on the 24,000-square-foot home, which is located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, California, began in 1886.
2. MANY BELIEVE SARAH BUILT WINCHESTER HOUSE OUT OF FEAR.
Overcome with grief in the wake of her husband’s death from tuberculosis in 1881, folklore states that Sarah sought out a spiritualist who could commune with the dead. While she was presumably looking for solace or closure, she was instead given a chilling warning.
Through the medium, William told his widow that their tragedies (the couple had only one child, a daughter named Annie, who died at six weeks old) were a result of the blood money the family had made off of the Winchester rifles. He warned that vengeful ghosts would seek her out. In order to protect herself, William said that Sarah must “build a home for [herself] and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon.”
Sarah was advised to leave their home in New Haven, Connecticut, behind, and move west, where she was to build a grand home for the spirits. There was just one catch: construction on the house could never stop. “If you continue building, you will live,” the medium warned Sarah. “Stop and you will die.”
3. THE HOUSE WAS UNDER CONSTANT CONSTRUCTION FOR 38 YEARS.
In 1886, Sarah purchased an eight-room farmhouse in San Jose, California, and began building. She employed a crew of carpenters, who split shifts so construction could go on day and night, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for 38 years. The work only stopped on September 5, 1922, because the octogenarian mastermind behind the home died of heart failure in her sleep. It’s said that upon hearing the news of Sarah’s death, the carpenters quit so abruptly they left half-hammered nails protruding from walls.
4. THE HOUSE IS FULL OF ARCHITECTURAL ODDITIES.
Sarah issued many bizarre demands to her builders, including the building of trap doors, secret passages, a skylight in the floor, spider web windows, and staircases that led to nowhere. There are also doors that open to blank walls, and a dangerous door on the second floor that opens out into nothing—save for an alarming drop to the yard far below.
5. AN EARTHQUAKE ONCE RATTLED THE HOUSE AND TRAPPED SARAH.
In 1906, the great San Francisco Earthquake caused three floors of the then seven-story house to cave in. A 1900 postcard of the place shows a tower that was later toppled by the natural disaster. That tower—plus several other rooms destroyed in the disaster—were never rebuilt, but cordoned off. As for Sarah, she was safe but stuck in the Daisy Bedroom, named for the floral motif in its windows. She had to be dug out by her staff, as its entrance was blocked off by rubble.
6. THE HOUSE WAS DESIGNED LIKE A LABYRINTH.
Some say the labyrinth layout was meant to confuse the ghosts, allowing Sarah some peace and a means to escape them. She was the sole architect of this extraordinary home, and no master building plan has ever been uncovered. So Sarah may be the only person who ever truly knew all of its secrets. When movers were called in after her death, one lamented its labyrinthine design that includes many winding hallways. One mover told American Weekly the Winchester House was a place “where downstairs leads neither to the cellar nor upstairs to the roof.”
7. SOME SAY THE SYMBOLS IN THE HOUSE POINT NOT TO GHOSTS, BUT FRANCIS BACON.
An alternate theory on the Winchester House’s perplexing design declares that Sarah was creating a puzzle full of encryptions inspired by the work of English philosopher Francis Bacon. There’s speculation that clues to the house’s true meaning are hidden in the ballroom, the Shakespeare windows, and the iron gates. This theory suggests that Sarah was a member of a mystic society like the Rosicrucians, or a secret society like the Freemasons—or possibly both.
8. THERE ARE OTHER THEORIES, INCLUDING THAT SARAH WAS “CRAZY.”
Others speculate Sarah was coping with her grief with a flurry of activity, or that she was simply “crazy.” However, Winchester Mystery House historian Janan Boehme paints a happier picture, imagining that the continual renovations reminded Sarah of the good times when she and William built their New Haven home together.
“I think Sarah was trying to repeat that experience by doing something they both loved,” Boehme told the Los Angeles Times. She also suspects that Sarah was just an ardent—albeit eccentric—philanthropist who used her family fortune to purposefully employ the San Jose community. “She had a social conscience and she did try to give back,” Boehme offered, noting the hospital Sarah built in her husband’s name. “This house, in itself, was her biggest social work of all.”
9. ONCE IN WINCHESTER HOUSE, SARAH WAS RECLUSIVE, BUT NOT ALONE.
There is only one known photo of the widow Winchester, which was taken surreptitiously. Though she was reclusive, she was never alone. She had 18 servants, 18 gardeners, and the ever-present construction team working on the grounds. Every morning, Sarah met with the foreman to discuss the always-evolving building plans. And it’s said that each night, she visited the Séance Room to speak with the spirits, who weighed in on plans for the house’s unusual design.
10. THE HOUSE WAS AS OPULENT AS IT WAS ODD.
The home boasts 950 doors, 10,000 windows, 40 stairways, 52 skylights, 47 fireplaces, six kitchens, plus a trio of elevators, and once-groundbreaking elements like wool insulation, carbide gaslights, electricity, and an indoor shower, complete with a sewage drainage system.
11. NO ONE IS SURE HOW MANY ROOMS THE HOUSE HELD.
Following Sarah’s death, Winchester House was converted into a tourist attraction. But when trying to get a room count, the new owners kept coming up with different numbers. After five years of renovations, they estimated the number of rooms to be about 160, which is the number most often quoted today.
12. SARAH HAD AN OBSESSION WITH THE NUMBER 13.
Among the secrets Sarah took to her grave was why she insisted that so many things relate to the number 13. The Winchester House has many 13-paned windows and 13-paneled ceilings, as well as 13-step stairways. Even her will had 13 parts, and she signed it 13 times. But the pièce de résistance might be the house’s 13th bathroom, which contains 13 windows of its own.
13. IT’S A NATIONAL LANDMARK.
The Winchester Mystery House earned landmark status on August 7, 1974. The fascinating mansion is still owned by the family (families?) who purchased it from the Winchester estate in 1922 for $150,000—however, their identity is another Winchester House mystery. But thanks to them, tourists can now explore 110 of the 160-some rooms Sarah dreamed up. The Winchester Mystery House even boasts special tours on Halloween and Fridays the 13th.
14. IT’S REGULARLY CITED AS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTED PLACES IN AMERICA.
To this day, Winchester House is a destination for believers who hope to have a paranormal encounter of their own. A popular spot for such activity is the corridors of the third floor, where tour guides have claimed to hear footsteps and disembodied voices whisper their names.
In a Reddit AMA, a Winchester House tour guide confirmed that the house’s third floor—only a portion of which is accessible during house tours—is definitely the spookiest part of the house, “because that’s where the servants lived, so there’s been a lot of reported activity there. Also, when you are on that floor you can never really hear any of the other tours, so you feel pretty isolated.”
43 notes · View notes