Haunted House stories they tell in the north

by sarah k grundy

Love for houses travels through time, blueprints, into stories that live and breathe behind walls and neatly set bricks, and in the artifacts that tell the story—making a house a home or not.
You see, some houses were never meant to be a home. A place for love and family, a home protects and nurtures, it has a heart, but for some houses, there’s only a stomach feeding upon and digesting all that’s good.

The Winchester House:
Picture it. It’s the 1800s and an eccentric artist, scholar, designer, architect, and witch, Sarah Lockwood Pardee, becomes heir to the most immense rifle fortune in the world—the guns that won the west, The Winchester Repeating Arms.

Darkness and tragic deaths befell Sarah Lockwood Pardee—her daughter Annie, husband William, and mother-in-law. Sarah spoke many languages, and in all of them, knew the language spoken by the spirits of the dead, especially those that died at the hands of the Winchester rifles. They haunted and killed her family. This horror was deeply known by Sarah and confirmed by a medium who feared Sarah was next. So the story goes.

“After the sudden death of her family, firearms heiress Sarah Winchester becomes convinced that she's haunted by the souls of those killed by the guns.”
USA TODAY

Peculiarly, Marasmus, an unusual illness for a wealthy child, killed Sarah’s daughter. Marasmus means “severe energy deficiency”. The body withers away as if being fed upon. Sarah’s husband died from Tuberculosis, once called “Consumption”, because of the way the body dwindles as if being devoured.

To appease the hungry, scorned spirits, Sarah designed and built a palace to hide from, and house the souls of those killed by the firearms that made her family massively wealthy. The project took over 38 years to complete and consumed Sarah’s lived experience.

“There is a vast network of secret passages twisting throughout the property. One cabinet door opens to a hive of 30 additional rooms.”
-Everything You Need to Know About the Winchester Mystery House

“…stairs leading to the ceiling and doors that open to nowhere.”
-NY Times

In the end, we’re all stories, and so are homes. Sarah lives on in The Winchester House, and many believe she does not walk there alone.

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House published in 1959 is based on the haunted Winchester House.