Are there ghosts or spirits in the Winchester house?
“I really don’t know. But one thing I’m sure of is that the medium who said Mrs. Winchester’s fortune was haunted by spirits that would harm her was evil. She took advantage of a woman’s grief after the death of her husband and told her lies that destroyed her.”
For the rest of her life all Mrs. Winchester’s energy and money was spent on protecting herself from her strange imaginings.
Mrs. Winchester was convinced by a spiritualist medium that the lives of her husband and baby daughter had been taken by spirits of those killed by the Gun That Won the West. She, too, would share their fate unless she never stopped building a mansion for the spirits. She would live only for as long as she continued to build. She built for almost thirty-eight years. The lavish, 160-room mansion, with forty-seven fireplaces, thirteen bathrooms, and endless spiritualistic symbols sprawls over six acres and is a California Historical Landmark. Now known as the Winchester Mystery House, it is located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, and is open for tours daily. For more information, visit winchestermysteryhouse.com or call (408) 247-2000. Also be sure to check out the 2018 fictional portrayal starring Helen Mirren.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and events are purely fictitious and a product of the author’s imagination. In no way does this story reflect on the present fine management of the Winchester Mystery House, which has been offering guided tours of this unique mansion on a daily basis since 1923.
A PLEA FROM THE GRAVE
CEDARHURST MANSION, HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA
Someone is in need of help at Cedarhurst mansion—but who?
There was food—champagne, caviar, paper-thin slices of Smithfield ham, canapés, smoked turkey, and more. A band played ragtime, jazz, the strident notes of “Somebody Stole My Gal,” and then the romantic ballad “Roses Are Blooming in Tripoli,” which started many of the guests reminiscing. The musicians played until shortly after midnight, and it was almost one o’clock before everyone had left.
Stephen Scott, of Germantown, Pennsylvania, along with several others, had been invited to Cedarhurst Mansion in Huntsville, Alabama, for the weekend. Stephen was enormously pleased when he saw Cedarhurst for the first time, for it was just the sort of home that he had always envisioned Southerners living in.
It wasn’t quite as sumptuous as the houses in Gone With the Wind, Stephen thought as he dressed for the party, but it was still a magnificent place. He was amazed at the architecture—the rooms were immense, the ceilings high, the walls fifteen inches thick. That was why his room was pleasantly cool.
There was so much history here. In the early years families had lived close to each other, and the afternoon of the big party, Stephen had visited the family cemetery of the Ewings. Stephen S. Ewing had purchased land here in 1823 from Ebenezer Titus. (What an odd name Ebenezer was, Stephen mused. Were people ever named that anymore? It had some Biblical meaning, he thought.) Stephen had visited many of the Ewings that afternoon—not in the flesh, but at their graves. During the almost half a century that the family had lived in Cedarhurst Mansion, those who had passed on to the next world were buried out there in the cemetery.
Stephen rather enjoyed looking at the carved marble flowers and reading the inscriptions on the stones. Some of the epitaphs were admittedly flowery, but others had real feeling in them. These days a few words, or simply a name and date, suffice to characterize the deceased or the sentiments of those left behind. Were feelings deeper in the past, Stephen wondered, or were some of these epitaphs simply the custom of the period?
The next morning, he slept late. It was nine-thirty when he made his appearance at the breakfast table. His host and hostess were already having their coffee, and soon the cook appeared, carrying covered silver serving dishes from which rose the steam of scrambled eggs, grits, country ham, fried chicken, and hot biscuits. With the exception of the grits, which he considered tasteless, Stephen found everything delicious.
Stephen’s life as a young stockbroker at a major Philadelphia firm was reasonably pleasant, and, even though his salary was a modest one, his parents had left him a comfortable income. Stephen had never been seriously interested in any woman and was quite content to return alone, night after night, to the family home. Nellie, the same lady who had helped his mother, still came each Monday and Thursday, as she had done for years. She would straighten the house, change the sheets, and see that “Mr. Stephen” had an ample supply of clean attire. On the first of October, Nellie put the down comforter on his bed; on the last day of March, she removed it and tucked the lightweight summer blankets under the crocheted spread that his mother had made.
Back in his room at Cedarhurst Mansion that night, Stephen reflected on the day’s events before going to bed. He liked people and fancied that he understood their feelings. Someday, when he retired, he thought he would write. The contribution he would make to literature would be stories about people he had known, stories filled with fresh, clever insights. He might even attempt a novel of manners mixed with humor, something that savored of Aldous Huxley. In any case, the novel would be pleasantly predictable, a tale with no violence and no disorderly, tragic lives with all their loose ends. The unpredictable gave Stephen indigestion, and he
