Llanada Villa once sat upon a massive stretch of land – over 160 acres. Now, it lies nestled between a maze of apartments, restaurants, and the Interstate 280. A labyrinthine behemoth of a house, its nineteenth-century turrets interrupt the surrounding monotonous skyline of boxy apartment complexes in San Jose, California.
Sarah Winchester, the wife of magnate William Wirt Winchester. William Winchester was the treasurer of Winchester Repeating Arms Company, an American firearms manufacturer founded by his father, Oliver. Oliver Winchester created the Model 1873 rifle, which was known as “the Gun That Won the West”.
Normally, I’d say that an old house doesn’t quite meet the standard of “hidden homicide”. But this is my last ever installment of the Hidden Homicides column. Some might say I ought to go out with a bang, but given how stressful the last month and a half of school always is, I wanted to do something more fun and laid-back. And thus, my selection of a spooky house.
So the story goes: after her husband William died from tuberculosis, Sarah visited a psychic medium in Boston who told her that vengeful spirits of the victims of her husband’s gun company were after her. Sarah supposedly believed that if the construction of her house ever finished or otherwise ceased, she would be killed by these spirits.
While urban legends, by nature, are known to spiral into something much bigger than the truth, an 1895 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle seems to be the sole culprit for the foundations of this rumor.
“The sound of the hammer is never hushed,” the article reported. “…The reason for it is in Mrs. Winchester’s belief that when the house is entirely finished she will die.”
I spoke with Janan Boehme, the incredibly talented historian for the Winchester Mystery House, for this article. I asked a lot of mundane questions (mostly to satisfy my own curiosity) such as if their website’s claim of the house having 10,000 windows and 2,000 doors was that exact or just an estimate (it’s an estimate, since nobody wants to count to ten thousand). But then I asked about the myth surrounding Sarah, and what her opinions on the urban legend are.
“As much as people love a good ghost story and tales of the weird, I believe Sarah was a very intelligent, well-balanced woman,” Boehme said. “She was a good businesswoman as well! I’ve read some letters written to her lawyer. She was a private person, but bore a famous name, so people were curious about her and her constantly growing house.
“Local folks started telling tales about her early on, and they got wilder as time went by,” Boehme went on to explain. “I don’t even know if the stories about her consulting a spiritual medium are true. Some of her employees spoke out after her death and said that was all nonsense. It is true that spiritualism was a huge fad in the US during Sarah’s lifetime – it came across from England, and exploded here during the American Civil War as millions of families who lost sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, etc., desperately searched for some way to reach their loved ones in the afterlife. Many people held seances simply for amusement, others were deadly serious, but there were plenty of charlatans around who tried to take advantage of grieving loved ones.”
I was curious to know if the ghostly happenings people have reported over the years was a result of confirmation bias – that is, people go to the house under the assumption it’s haunted, something odd but explainable happens (like creaking noises from foundation settling, for example), which then leads people to logically conclude that the house is indeed haunted. “…many folks come here because of the ghost stories, and people will generally believe what they want to believe,” Boehme reasoned. “That’s not to say categorically that the house is NOT haunted! I keep an open mind about these things, and…I’ve always felt a positive energy in Sarah’s house. If there are any spirits who hang around, I think they are good ones.”
I also wondered about the name “Llanada Villa”. Mary Jo Ignoffo, who wrote a book on Sarah Winchester entitled “Captive of the Labyrinth”, believes that the Santa Clara Valley reminded Sarah of the Llanada Alavesa, an autonomous community in the Basque Country region of Northern Spain.”Llanada Villa” loosely translates to “plains villa” or “villa on the plain” – a fitting name, considering that Sarah’s house was surrounded by eighteen acres of apricot, prune, and walnut orchards, as well as expansive botanical gardens.
Perhaps Sarah Winchester just liked expanding her house. Perhaps the house’s labyrinthine nature was the result of her own tormented demons. Who’s to say? There are countless mysteries hidden within its walls (sometimes literally) and paranormal occurrences aren’t completely off the table. But I’ll let you all decide for yourselves. Happy ghost-hunting!
