Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 29

How Would You Like to Live in This isKnW f. A Jr. --TOii-fliaM T. 1 hiA 'zi -AVir -Jfi 1U! rV -A tVjW-W 1 4 om Which Every One of the 160 Rooms Is Designed for the Accommodation of Spirits, fv and Where Departed Souls II This Is the House the Spirits Built IN the freak California home of the late Sarah L. Winchester, widow of the firearms magnate's son, there are: Thirteen doors to every rfom.

Two thousand doors. Ten thousand-windows. One hundred and sixty rooms. a Thirteen carpenters working all the time on new additions. It took thirty-six years to build the odd structure.

Enough materials arc left by the widow to continue building for forty years. Already it has cost $5,000,000. voice" told her to build it. Wander at Will Mai Ji Wo, At IMH IH i Yr S- i 'Zip's-- J. pmfA Jj -1 Keep on I Mfiv- 1 building" 1 'J 4 "Ns.

prrf tYY" ff. ''4 -tY nA HhA v.d r. I Ht- ft1 1 si, If -ir, v' y- i 1 A 4 1 i tea1 j. --fr ou snaii Yvm as long as Mu gables, cupolas and spires yet it is all one housel Within is a wilderness of rooms, where windows appear sometimes in, walls, sometimes in ceilings, floors, chimneys, or against blank partitions. Doors open at unexpected places occasionally from some upper chamber directly to the outdoors and a sudden fall sometimes to the roof, or to a closet so tiny that even a book cannot be shut inside.

Open a gold-plated screen, framed in richest mahogany, and find behind it a gorgeous art -glass and maple door back of that, the wall! Open a heavy door, go up a metal-bound flight of stairs, turn and come out into the same room you have just left! 'npHE white satin chamber," so called because walls and ceilings were draped in that material and even the floor covered with it held central interest in the owner's lifetime, for it was flere that she sought communication with her beloved husband. No one else entered it. During her last years, Mrs. Winchester used to be taken to this room from one cf the elevators that led from basement to garret, wheeled to the door, and the nurse dismissed. After several hours' 1 ifiJr The architect of this home for wandering ghosts tore out handfuls of hair trying to make blueprints conform to the speciQcations of the master builder, who, he was assured, was a spirit, and then threw up the job.

The master carpenter followed suit and the building rambled on into a maze of rooms and strange crannies. At the right Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester is shown holding a favorite cat 70ULD you spend five million dollars- 'V on a house for homeless ghosts? Perhaps you imagine that "spirits that move in darkness having no substance or shape" aren pining lor an earimy domicile? CW IL Wii3 AJJUlb tilitb UJICVICU Clio late Sarah L. Winchester, widow of the son of the founder of the famous firearms concern, to spend a fortune on a dwelling where departed souls might wander at will.

The Winchester Mystery House near Ban Jose, California, is the result. It is the largest private residence in the world, containing t60 rooms, goodness knows how many closets and cubbyholes! and it was in process of building for more than thirty-six years. "So longas you continue to build, bo long as you never entirely complete the -dwelling;" the specter is said to have tfd Mrs. Winchester, "just so long will you continue to live." And for more than a third of a century a corps of thirteen carpenters and artisans was constantly employed, building, tearing down and reconstructing; hammers and saws echoing always through the grotesque "manse of the spooks." In spite of the ghostly promise, not long ago, while the patchwork of rooms increased and the thirteen artisans and carpenters still 'kept up a determined clatter of tools, the twisted thread of the owner's life snapped, and the Mystery House stood as a gigantic monument, fantastic, magnificent, incomplete. Forty years ago, death des'olated the Winchester home, taking husband and child, and leaving a heart-broken wife and mother.

The fact that a thousand dollars a day came to her from royalties alone, and that her fortune was almost limitless, helped her not at all. That this fortune was derived from the manufacture and sale of weapons designed "to kill tormented her. She tried to balance things by establishing charities the Winchester- Sanatorium for. tubercular sufferers at her early home in New Haven, Connecticut, being a conspicuous example of her but nothing served to comfort her. "You shall have gold without stint," her husband had said to her, in the dear days before they were parted.

"You shall build yourself a house any kind of a house ihat you desire." OUT of all the conversations between, them in the years they lived together, that one staved with her. She came to think that he would be happier if she built that house, and she traveled far and wide to find a fitting site, arriving at length in San Jose, California, then a email town in the lovely Santa Clara Valley. One day, as she drove along Stevens Creek road she came upon a thirty-acre lot on which a Dr. Caldwell was building himself an eighteen-room house. She stopped her carriage.

Here was the homesite of, her. dreams! She Alighted, and she did not return to her equipage until she had persuaded the doctor to let her purchase the property. An ardent Spiritualist, she communi- cated with the unseen realm, which she felt sure had guided her" to her choice, and received the above astounding message, to build a home for spirits. JShe retained the construction force employed by the doctor, but now no step was taken without' the advice of the spirits. Rooms appeared of a size and shape amazing to contemplate, corridors and stairways were erected where no human need for them could be imagined.

The architect threw up the job in disgust when he saw his careful plans discarded; the master carpenter was discharged when he refused to wreck and renew work he had painstakingly finished; changes in personnel were rapid and varied; Mrs. Winchester became sole designer and absolute autocrat. Her rigid seclusion was subjected to a severe test some twenty years ago when Theodore Roosevelt, then President of the United States, visited the Santa Clara Valley, heard of the Mystery House, and requested the San Jose Chamber of Commerce, which was entertaining him, to arrange visit to its Urgently, the Chamber of Commerce presented its case to the recluse who reigned -over the house that had come to take on the aspect of a small citv, but she haughtily declined to permit their illustrious guest to cross her threshold. Roosevelt, of course, enjoyed the joke of being excluded from an American home much as any one. pHE Mystery' House was built at first 1 about a great central tower, but this was demolished in the earthquake of 1906, and now the huge dwelling rambles from one weirdly imagined room to another, so that the whole of the house may be traversed without passing through any room more than once, until the last three before the south entrance are reached.

So intricate are the windings, the stairways, the corridors and the oddly shaped chambers, that even the guides who now conduct the visitor through the mazes of mystery must have arrows painted on doorways here and there, in order to find their way out when once inside. As the house spread from wing to wing, lands were added, until Winchester Park now comprises an extensive acreage. But not alone for the extra space on winch to build did Mrs. Winchester desire the property she bought. Peace and solitude also spurred her on.

Tall trees, palms, peppers and live oaks, dense hedges and an unscalable fence surrounded the parks and gardens that form a setting for the home for wandering spirits, and effectually shielded it from outside view, but today, the. forbidding iron gates at the gray-graveled entrance stand ajar, the parks have become picnic groves, and guides con duct the curious through the mysterious maze. To examine it all would require weeks. It has been estimated that if one spent a yHy silence, she would ring for the nurse, who would find her outside with the door locked. Unlike most of the rooms, this one had a single window, carefully curtained.

Passersby sometimes reported seeing the shadow of a woman on the curtain, but no one knows what transpired within. The "blue room," or seance chamber, has steel-barred windows and a capacious closet in which were kept numerous marvelously colored silken gowns, each of a hue appropriate to communication with a specific spirit and worn when the ghostly counsel at that shade was desired. "Prism Hall," the main entrance way, is a masterpiece of silver and gold, with chandeliers of prisms so set that they make the hall a rainbow glory. The entrance doors of cut glass are valued at $2000 and were never used. They swung open for the first and only time when the body their mistress was carried out of them for her last journey to the city of the dead.

Mrs. Winchester, her employes, and those few whom she saw in the course of business, entered by a side stairway and used a reception room that seems peculiarly barren and uninviting. The ballroom, in which no carefree feet ever danced, hi3 a irreat oioe "4 1 A "spirit organ from which no fingers ever drew strains of gayety. Fireproof safes and burglar-proof vaults hold treasure of gold and silver plate never banqueted from by merrymaking guests. There are electric and hydraulic elevators, wood-coal and- gas fireplaces, steam, hot-air and electric radiators, forty-seven mantels of brick, tile, brass, stone, wood, marble and even glassl There are rooms floored with trapdoors, there are conservatories with no floors at all! UNCANNY is the first section put up by the tireless builder.

Shattered by the earthquake, this was never rebuilt, for Jlrs. Winchester believed that the spirits had done the damage as a warning of displeasure and the whole section was abandoned just as it stood after the earth shuddered. Embossed plastering hangS from tho ceiling in shreds beveled windows are broken, dubt covers the in kid floors. Things run in mystical numbers in th4 Mystery House thirteen, nine, seven and three. There must be thirteen doors to a room, for example, even if the last one is but a foot high and is squeezed in under a window! Bathrooms boast elaborately tiled walls, mosaic floors, ornamental ceilings and cut-glass windows.

They contaiq the best of modern tubs and fixtures silver-trimmed They are not connected rith bedrooms but are scattered hit or So with kitchen afttr kitchen, possessed of every conceivable convenience and labor-saving device, shin ing with nickel, porcelain and marble. Sinks are encountered everywhere stairs, in hallways, in closets. A room full, of laundry tubs shows the in novation of corrugated side3 so that no washboard is necessary. Mrs. Winchester's household consisted of a secretary, a maid, a housekeeper, 4 aretaker and his wife, all white, and -ix Oriental servants.

No one was permitted to go about the house at will. For twenty-six years the caretaker saw but five rooms, except those in which he. and his wife lived. fTHE main portion of the 160 rooms were designed for accommodation of spirits, each one a departed friend of the recluse, and each room was built in accord with the expressed desires of its ghostly tenant, so the story runs. The owner's faith in the message of life so long as she continued to build is shown by the materials left at her death enough to prosecute the task another forty yearsl It fills three large storehouses and includes excellent stock that could not be replaced today at any minute in each room, more than two hours and a half would be necessary to complete a tour.

Exploration has only begun, for every day some new feature comes to light. rpHE stairs are spooky things "goofy" the guides call them steps two and a half inches high, with eighteen inch treads and narrow casings. In one place forty-five of these stairs are negotiated to obtain a rise of eight feet, with nine turns back and forth; in another, it takes eighteen steps and five turns to reach a room five feet below. Many hallways are only two feet wide. All wood U3ed is of the finest grown, not veneered, but solid, with a polish that reflects like a mirror.

The very hinges of the doors tre sometimes of silver, beautifully chased. The windows are of a rare workmanship and staggering cost, some of the art glass windows being worth $1000 each. Others are of cut glass inlaid with German silver. Windows on each side of a magnificent mantel are inscribed: "Wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts These thoughts people this little world." A view from one of the windows makes the visitor feel as though he looked out upon a foreign city a city of towers and turrets, of belfries and IS 2 4. by TuLUc LdM.