11 March 2024 , 15:11
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A man has been left on edge after making a creepy discovery in his new house - so strange it belongs in the Winchester Mystery House. In a post on Reddit, the homeowner shared how the staircase to his attic starts halfway up the wall, meaning he has to climb onto a counter before he can get to the steps.
Confused, he simply said: "Can someone explain how this was allowed to happen?" However, he got more than he bargained for as social media users started comparing his house to the Winchester Mystery House, a mansion in California renowned for its size and architectural curiosities.
The San Jose mansion was funded by an empire built on a precedent of violence and death. Its size is mainly due to the frantic guilt of Sarah Winchester, who sought to assuage her family’s sins by continually reconstructing her home. Dubbed the “rifle widow”, Sarah was the heiress of her repeat-rifle magnate, father-in-law Oliver Winchester’s empire.
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But after her husband, Will Winchester died, Sarah dedicated 38 years of her life to the ceaseless building and re-building of the house. She worked on her home with shifts of 16 carpenters who were paid three times the going rate and worked 24 hours a day, every day, from 1886 until Sarah’s death in 1922.
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The original, unassuming eight-room cottage spiraled into a sprawling, maze of rooms that now comprises 200 rooms, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces, and 2,000 doors, trap doors, and spy holes. Sarah sketched designs on napkins or brown paper for carpenters to build additions, towers, cupolas, or rooms that made no sense and had no purpose, sometimes only to be plastered over the next day.
The house has 200 rooms, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces, and 2,000 doors, trap doors, and spy holes (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)In 1975, workers discovered a new room. It had two chairs, an early 1900s speaker that fit into an old phonograph, and a door latched by a 1910 lock. She had apparently forgotten about it and built over it. People were baffled by Sarah Wincehster’s escapades. But Sarah had become disturbed. She lived in almost complete solitude.
Endlessly unsettled by the blood on the hands of her family, she became convinced that her misfortunes, the death of her husband and one-month-old daughter, were retribution for the souls killed by Winchester rifles.
Inside the Winchester Mystery House (GETTY)Inside her eccentricity is apparent, and arresting. A staircase, one of 40, goes nowhere and ends at a ceiling. Cabinets and doors open onto walls, rooms are boxes within boxes, small rooms are built within big rooms, balconies, and windows are inside rather than out, chimneys stop floors short of the ceiling, and floors have skylights.
A linen closet as big as an apartment sits next to a cupboard less than an inch deep. Doors open onto walls. One room has a normal-sized door next to a small, child-sized one. Bull’s-eye windows give an upside-down view of the world.
View of the Winchester Mystery House (Getty)Commenting on the man's staircase discovery, one Reddit user said: "If it leads to the attic it's not that weird. If this is the only access to the second floor it's very weird." Another user added: "Architect: I have a crazy idea… Sarah Winchester: Do it!"
A third user said:" I have dreams about places like this all the time, it's wild." One more user added: "I’d say this is the part of the horror movie where you nail the door shut but we all know in the next scene while they are trying to sleep they will be woken by the sounds of nails slowly hitting the tile floor one by one as they are pushed back through from the other side."