"Though we all grew up with the supernatural legends surrounding the San Jose house, they're simply not true. As definitively explained in South Bay author Mary Jo Ignoffo's 2012 book "Captive of the Labyrinth," the mansion's namesake Sarah L. Winchester never gave any indication in her lifetime that she was haunted by any ghosts, let alone angry ones who had been killed by the rifles that her family produced. She probably never held a séance or had any interest in spiritualism at all."
"Pretty much all of the spooky mythology around her started to spread around 1895, according to Ignoffo - long after she had moved to the Santa Clara Valley from New Haven, Connecticut, and begun transforming a simple two-story, eight-room farmhouse into a never-ending construction project in 1886 - and intensified after her death in 1922. First spread by distrustful locals and the San Jose newspapers (seriously, our bad), the stories were meant to paint the independent and extremely reclusive Winchester as an outsider"
The Winchester Mystery House is enveloped in supernatural legend but the central claims are unsupported by contemporary evidence. Sarah L. Winchester showed no indication of being haunted, of holding séances, or of embracing spiritualism. Most spooky mythology emerged around 1895, well after her 1886 relocation and continuous construction, and grew after her 1922 death. Distrustful locals and local newspapers amplified rumors to depict the reclusive owner as an outsider and to market the house as a tourist attraction. Those myths, however, helped ensure the mansion's survival, preserving a rare piece of San Jose and Santa Clara Valley history.
Read at The Mercury News
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