Based on real events.
A scary phrase that should make you
believe what's happening on the screen and make you poop your pants a little bit.
in your pants, especially when it comes to a horror movie.
This weekend I watched a fresh movie called
Winchester.
The House That Ghosts Built.
And it's a hilariously funny comedy.
And it greets us with these words, "Based on
"based on true events."
Hey, everybody, I've told you many times before that
that you can't trust a catchphrase like that.
I'm sure you're not stupid and you understand, but still.
this is a show.
And we're here to find out exactly why it can't be trusted.
This story is shrouded in mystery, but today we're going to try
to get to the bottom of it, if we have the
the courage.
But first, let us remember what this house is famous for.
Oliver Winchester was an American entrepreneur who founded
the company that made the shotguns that would eventually become known as
Winchester.
Here is this very Winchester from 1873.
You can see it in every Western movie.
Anyway, this thing is very, very famous and it's
that plays a major role in this story.
Oliver Winchester had a son, William, who inherited
inherited the company.
This son married Sarah Lockwood, who after the death of
of her husband's death, got a lot of money and started building
an incredibly strange house.
This is where the story of the Sarah Winchester Mansion begins.
Sarah Winchester, a single woman who one day
turned to a medium who told her that she was haunted
by the spirits of people killed by the Winchester rifle.
There was only one way out of this situation. For 38 years without interruption.
a seven-story house had been under construction in California.
It was like a maze.
Windows and stairs leading nowhere, doors that
opening into the wall.
It was all designed to confuse those
the very spirits.
After all, Sarah believed that if she finished building
the house, they would find her.
The house is also famous for its frequent appearance
the number 13.
Some call her crazy, and some have no doubt
that her story is true.
But is it all true?
Actually, there really is such a house.
Sarah Winchester is a real person, and the people who
have been in this house, they say it's haunted.
And it kind of doesn't matter what they say.
They're just people.
It's inherent in them to be wrong or to lie.
You can even go there now.
All you have to do is buy a ticket for a few dozen dollars.
Hear a ghost story and walk through a house where
every creak will tickle your nerves, and for the special
extreme, there's a special night tour with flashlights,
where the only rule is to live until dawn.
But when you get out of it, there will be music waiting for you on the first floor and in the
the courtyard will have music, dancing, partying, drinking,
and why, Yes, because there are not only
terrible adventures, but also celebrations and weddings.
Weddings in a haunted house.
And until death do you part.
Congratulations.
I told you not to do that.
Would it please you if I entered you without asking?
into you.
That's how you let strangers in.
Well, that doesn't prove anything, anyway.
Maybe ghosts like hanging out at weddings.
It's like we weren't ghosts and we're judging.
But even to this day, this house makes people scared.
There keep appearing videos on YouTube about this subject, making
movies and so on.
Well, I guess it's time to get to the bottom of it all.
Let's begin.
Here's what all the sites that mention this house say.
A woman named Sarah Winchester lost her daughter just
after she was born.
A little later she immediately lost her beloved husband.
It's a very sad story, but that's not what happened.
Yes, she did lose her daughter, but she lost her husband
not a little later, but 15 years later.
But either way, it's a very big blow.
Reading further, after the death of her spouse, Sarah sought
for help from a medium in Boston, who, through a Ouija board
seance was able to communicate with the spirit of her deceased
lover.
The spirit of the deceased informed her that all tragic events
Sara had to do with the vengeance of the fallen from the rifle created by
by her father.
Well, that's probably the end of it.
Some psychic informed her about ghosts.
She was gullible and lonely, she succumbed, she was deceived
by a charlatan, that's what I thought when I read the story,
but what I learned next didn't fit my idea
of revelations.
This medium's name was Adam Koons.This information appeared in 1967 in the book Prominent
American Ghosts."
This book was written by Susie Smith.
She wrote a lot of nonsense that
that doesn't stand up to criticism.
But even leaving that aside, there's no evidence
that such a person ever existed, that Sarah Winchester
had ever been to a psychic.
In 1857 a magazine was founded in Boston which
called Banner of light.
It was a mystical magazine that was very mystically
attitude.
It published all the names of all the mediums that existed at that time
psychics that existed at the time.
Yes, unfortunately there were some, but even there the name wasn't
Adam Koons.
Loser.
Well, let's finish this story to the end.
To avoid further problems, the widow must build
a special house in which the spirits cannot harm her.
The cessation of repairs threatened her with death.
This is some kind of crazy story, you might say.
Who came up with this in the first place?
But in order to figure it out, we'd have to go to
to the Internet, where few people have been.
The paid Internet.
So I took out a subscription to the newspaper archives, where I
went through every newspaper that mentioned the name Winchester.
My search led me to the 1895 paper that started it all.
it all began in.
It said that Sarah Winchester believed that
that when the house is completely finished, she will die.
Perhaps she has discovered the secret of eternal youth and will
live on while the house is under construction.
Funny, where did they even get that from?
Sarah Winchester never talked to her neighbors,
never gave interviews, so people had to
make up stories on their own.
Yes, of course it was a lot of fun.
Did you see anything?
Of course I did.
Then I saw it, too.
Just like when we were kids.
You go by the old house and tell your friend that
there's a witch living in that house and she eats children,
and she's got tentacles.
By the way, she's a zombie and you should avoid that house,
but you knew very well that you're a little liar.
But you are not ashamed.
But still, 38 years of continuous construction of the house.
Is that true?
It's a very cool legend.
You finish construction and you die right away.
But no, it was under construction for 20 years until the 1906
an earthquake that destroyed the top three floors
of the house.
It used to be 7 stories and looked like this.
After that, it was just fixed and nothing
completed anything.
It's also come to light that, after all, based on Sarah Winchester's letters.
from Sarah Winchester, she did at least once let
all of her workers for an entire winter.
That doesn't add up.
And it all came to light thanks to one person,
Mary Jo Ignafo, a historian at DeAnza College.
Spent five years of her life to write the only
complete biography of Sarah Winchester.
She collected information about her by the scraps.
A lot of historians and librarians
and librarians.
But the main facts were found in the archives of the San Jose Museum.
There is not a single picture of this book on the Internet,
or even the book itself.
It's very copy-protected, but for the sake of
for a full investigation, of course I bought it.
She was very interesting to read.
In her book, she indicates that she collected old newspaper
clippings, talked to people who talked to people
who used to work in that house.
In short, it's a very complicated scheme and they say that
Sarah Winchester didn't build such a big house to
to confuse the spirits, but so that the workers
in this town to have jobs, and she paid very well.
Sounds kind of weird, but it's just somebody else's words.
Now, let's look up Sarah Winchester's biography and see,
she was a philanthropist.
She bought houses for her family and did charity work.
She built a hospital and established the William
Winchester and invested a lot of money to fight tuberculosis,
and now the historian's words don't seem so unfounded.
Don't they?
Especially when you consider that Sarah's father was first a laborer
and very often couldn't find work.
And why were the ghosts haunting her, too?
At the end of the 19th century, Americans suddenly began to feel
guilt about exterminating Indians like that.
Suddenly it became a bad thing and who was to blame?
The gun manufacturer, of course.That's the dumbest logic ever.
Well, actually, that's what happened.
The press started blaming Sarah for all these murders.
And then there was this rumor that everyone who was killed
with that rifle would follow her around until the end of time.
of time.
Goddamn you.
You killed me.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
I wonder if Winchester would have been making
not guns, but sausages.
Would he be haunted by the people who used to choke on them?
choked on them?
And my personal favorite.
Sarah Winchester's house has windows and doors that lead nowhere.
that lead nowhere.
Doors that lead from the second floor directly to the street.
Stairs that lead to ceilings.
Stairs in the form of mazes and things like that.
That's what I like about stairs, doors.
One staircase that leads to the ceiling, one door,
that leads to the street.
One staircase in the form of a labyrinth.
Wow, it's just mysterious.
Sarah Winchester actually had rheumatoid arthritis,
which is why there are stairs scattered all over the house where
where the stairs only go up a couple of centimeters.
It's not to confuse the spirits, it's to
to get around the house at all.
And all this nonsense about stairs and doors to nowhere was invented
was also invented by the press.
They didn't think in 1906, when there was that earthquake,
when the top three floors fell, some of the doors
and staircases were just blocked off because a lot of
of the rooms were never rebuilt.
They didn't think that the windows inside the house were once
windows that lead to the street.
It was just that the house was constantly being completed, that the windows in the floor used to be
on the roof, that the chimney that leads to the ceiling used to
also led to the roof.
But why do we need this boring stuff?
Let's just say that she used to have these strange
ladders and doors to confuse the spirits.
I'm serious now.
A lot of people think she was building this weird
house to confuse ghosts.
To confuse ghosts.
Excuse me, can you tell me where the exit is?
Go to hell.
Rookie.
You found someone to ask.
They're 100 years old and they don't know the way out.
We'll make it quick.
The phantom route is built.
That way.
I'm gonna call you Casper.
Why?
Simple.
After that, of course, there was the rumor that Sarah
Winchester was communicating with spirits, and she even had a room
she even had a room built for it.
And look at that.
If you ever want to go and visit this
house, the tour guides will tell you that it was
she was summoning spirits in this room, but that's not surprising.
Spiritualism, i.e. communicating with spirits at the end of the 19th century.
was right at the height of its popularity.
Kids would run home after school to have a quick chat
with ghosts, and their parents would tell them, "Don't play with ghosts
"Don't play with ghosts for too long, you'll ruin your eyesight.
What a golden time that was.
But even though almost everybody had a Ouija board.
a Ouija board, Sarah Winchester had nothing to do with it.
If you do a little digging on the Web sites.
you'll find that one Henrietta Severs, a personal assistant
Sarah Winchester, denies that the house was ever the site
in the house.
Believe it without proof?
As if we wouldn't.
Sarah Winchester's biography book could be considered
an entire museum.
And we find that there really was such a person.
Only her name wasn't Severs, it was Henrietta Severs, and she
and she did refute claims that seances were held in the house.
Ouija boards in the house.
One less tale to tell.
I'm satisfied.
Now let's pretend for a second that all the historians
are lying.
Conspiracies and Sarah Winchester were indeed haunted
by ghosts.
And yet it didn't stop her from going around to her other
her other homes, of which there were many.
She had a houseboat in Burlingame, a house in Atherton,
here's another house on Country Road, here's another in Los Altos,
which is still standing.
That's where of course the ghosts won't find her.
A lot of people say she was a recluse, never went out.
and didn't go out, didn't talk to anybody.
How would you behave if you were her?
Incredibly short stature, arthritis that hardly
that made it difficult for her to move, almost no teeth, so...
she often wore a black veil.
It is very sad, but nevertheless she did not sit at home.
Here are pages from her maid's diary that say
that she was driving around somewhere and stopped by her big
ghostly house once a week.Party Girl.
Sarah Winchester was a very fragile, lonely, and kind
person.
She wanted to help everyone, to build her own house according to her own
and the press made her out to be a crazy old lady.
Freaks.
But are there any classic villains in this story.
Certainly John Brown, a man who wanted a
a house, but he didn't have enough money to buy it,
so he rented it with the possibility of buying it
in the future.
He rented it six months after Sarah's death.
Winchester.
And within two months, the house was available as an attraction
with ghosts.
Imagine how much of a creep he is.
He just heard some stories connected
about the house, and of course he knew it wasn't true,
because he'd lived there for a while, but for everybody else.
the rest of us, for tourists, it's certainly the scariest
house in the world.
And why is that?
Dibs.
Of course the money.
Business was tough.
After a while, he could already afford
to buy an entire house.
He'd invite reporters, who, of course, would write that it was haunted and that they
wanted to spend Halloween there.
The influx of new tourists was guaranteed.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. 13 clothes hooks, 13 windows, 13 candles.
I mean, it's weird either way.
According to Sarah Winchester's biography, carpenter James
Perkins said that all of these references were added
after Sarah Winchester died.
By who?
By the new owner of the house, of course.
And to corroborate this story, there's the fact
that until 1929, there was never a press article
mentioning that there was a number 13 in the house at all.
But when it was added seven years after Sarah Winchester's death.
after Sarah Winchester's death, absolutely every article
it showed up, too.
But it's not just biographies that expose fakes, it's
it's also people who are interested in how the
paranormalism.
Famous critic Joe Nickel, in his book "The Science of
"The Science of Ghosts," he gives his investigation, which is pretty much
you won't find anything new there.
There's no evidence that the house is in any way
to do with mysticism.
What's to say.
The head manager of this house for 30 years
Shozo Kagashima, you know what he says?
That he's never seen a ghost or heard anything
and he hasn't heard anything, but he doesn't mind that his employees are spreading
rumors about them.
That's how it is, people who've spent most of their lives
in this house and refute the nonsense.
But people don't want the truth, because as one
a wise man said, "The truth is not for sale." A rich woman who didn't talk to anyone.
The press made up this nonsense about her and so much
so badly planted in people's heads that if you wanted
the truth, you'd spend five years of your life looking for
for at least some facts in museums and personal archives.
And even so, you don't have to believe me
or anyone else, for that matter.
In any case, always see the links in the descriptions and be sure to
look up the information yourself, but back to the Westerns.
"When legend becomes fact, print legend."
- is a famous phrase from the 1962 film The Man Who
shot Liberty Valance."
And come to think of it, you and I have known for a long time that
Amityville is not a haunted house, that Bigfoot
people invented Bigfoot, that the Loch Ness Monster
is just a prank, and horror stories based on real
events are just not true.
But that doesn't stop the media from continuing to print fake information
for the sake of viewership.
And people like anything out of the ordinary.
I wish they'd start to be interested in the truth, because
because sometimes it's even more interesting than fiction.
I'd like to believe it, but it's hard to believe it.
So when you go to this house, you're gonna hear
a lot of stories about ghosts and scary noises, even though the guides
have been known to make up these stories themselves.
Goodbye, everyone.
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