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Photograph courtesy of Cookie Curci-Wright
Secret Garden: Sarah Winchester's mansion was a local curiosity as early as 1905.
Remember When
Halloween rekindles creepy tales of the mystery house
By Cookie Curci-Wright
Resting in the quiet shadows of San Jose's urban spread is the Winchester mansion, a house filled with closed doors and darkened corridors and crowned with peaks, gables and turrets that play host to haunting images.
Its projecting rooftops cast piggyback shadows over an endless array of rooms and cubbyholes, whose only inhabitants now are spiders, cobwebs and termites.
Local folklore as well as the dimensions and architecture of Sarah Winchester's unique house set it apart from any other. So different, in fact, that it was granted state landmark status as a unique embodiment of elaborate architectural details no longer possible to reproduce in any one structure.
The acreage that once surrounded the Winchester estate has been devoured by a growing city. Several of the original palm trees still stand; like ancient bastions, their tall spindly trunks guard Mrs. Winchester's house and its endless stairwells and doors that sometimes lead nowhere or open to a 50-foot drop.
Its mixture of architectural styles gives the Winchester house a bizarre appearance. The Eastlake, Queen Anne styling of the mansion, its rooftop of multiple gables and its 160 rooms are constant reminders of our city's late, eccentric citizen.
Following the death of her husband, William Wirt Winchester, Sarah Pardee Winchester left New Haven, Conn., and came to the Santa Clara Valley. It was in 1884, when she inherited a reported $20 million, that strange additions to the house began to appear. Sarah ordered elaborate golden fixtures, and windows designed by Tiffany Co. that were continually installed, ripped out, and then set into place again.
It was around 1905 when my great-grandfather Vincenci was hired to prune and graft the trees on the Winchester estate. Even back then, the Winchester house was shrouded in mystery, and the strange behavior of mistress Sarah inspired rumors among the local townspeople. Great-grandpa himself heard talk among the servants of Sarah's late-night seances and attempts to contact the spirits of her late husband and child, and of the super-natural powers that supposedly instructed her to continue adding on to her house.
All of this mysterious behavior gave Great-grandpa and the other household employees a feeling of disquiet. It also gave him many interesting tales to tell his family when he returned home each night. One of Great-grandpa's most exciting stories, and the one he loved to tell the best, was the day President Teddy Roosevelt passed through town and paid a visit to the Winchester place.
One day, according to Great-grandpa, there was much excitement at the Win- chester mansion. Additional servants were hired, extra gardeners employed, and a bevy of activity was taking place inside the house.
Instructions went out to Great-grandpa and the other caretakers to keep the grounds especially neat and tidy that day, for the carriage of President Roosevelt was soon expected.
In a display of respect for the president, the caretakers were ordered to line up alongside the carriage the moment it arrived.
When the president's sleek, horse-drawn carriage appeared, Great-grandpa scrambled to line up and pay his respects. Unfortunately, the entourage disappeared so quickly into the house that he got only a glimpse of the president's top hat.
Later that day, as Great-grandpa was working high atop a ladder in the orchard, he felt a tap at the base of his ladder. He looked down to see a smiling Teddy Roosevelt looking up at him. "Fine job, my man, fine job," said the president. Great-grandpa, using his best English, gratefully acknowledged his stately visitor. Eternally proud of his historic moment, Great-grandpa repeated this story at every family gathering and holiday celebration thereafter.
Photograph courtesy of Cookie Curci-Wright
Grandpa Salvatore Vincenci.
In later years, around 1920, my Grandpa Salvatore (Vincenci's son) had occasion to visit the Winchester house. At the time, he was a butcher's apprentice working for Wentz's downtown meat market. One of his duties was to deliver large orders to the Winchester estate. Grandpa felt great trepidation upon entering the gates of the mysterious mansion. A strange foreboding crept over him every time he entered the house. A kindly old cook welcomed him at a side door, in the subarea of the kitchen. It was her habit to invite Grandpa to stay for a biscuit and a cup of tea after he finished putting away the deliveries. On cold mornings, her steaming tea kettle created a warm atmosphere in the otherwise cold kitchen. The remainder of the house gave Grandpa the willies. Grandpa asked the friendly old servant how she could bear to hear the constant rat-tat-tat of the carpenter's hammers, noises that sounded to Grandpa like a thousand woodpeckers constantly at work. It was then the cook confided that she was almost deaf. Grandpa felt her hearing loss was actually a blessing. He believed the poor women would surely have gone mad from the endless noise of all that hammering.
Sarah Winchester never made an appearance while Grandpa was around, but she made her presence known by the constant ringing of the servant's bell. Other times, Grandpa could see Sarah's small, lonely figure standing at a third-floor window, peering down at him as he made his deliveries.
The hammering stopped on Sept. 5, 1922, when Sarah Winchester died at the age of 85. Some people say the repeated sounds of a carpenter's hammer and a servant's bell can still be heard echoing through the forlorn mansion on Halloween night. The creaks, cracks and distant echoes heard inside this timeworn house inspire a ghostly mystery--a small, shadowy figure, still seen lingering at the third-floor window, that keeps the mystery alive.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
