Today in 1974, a new addition to the National Register of Historic Places: an unusual mansion in San Jose, California known as the Winchester Mystery House.
And when we say unusual, we mean unusual: a decades-long renovation project turned an eight-room farmhouse into hundreds of rooms, and sparked endless rumors that at least some of those rooms are haunted.
The woman behind the renovation was Sarah Lockwood Pardee Winchester; her husband William ran the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, at least until he died of tuberculosis in 1881.
The couple had also lost their daughter a few years earlier, so Sarah Winchester lost her whole family and then gained an enormous fortune.
She left the East Coast and moved to California, where two of her sisters lived.
Winchester may have bought her farmhouse with the idea that the whole extended family could live together; in any case, she started adding onto the place… and adding and adding and adding.
Part of this was that she decided she wanted to design the place herself, after falling out with several architects.
And sometimes when people DIY home additions, they run into problems they figure they can only solve with more DIY home additions.
Or maybe she just really wanted to express her artistic side, and had enough in the bank so that she never really had to stop.
The bigger the house got, the more people started speculating about what was really going on there.
Newspapers started printing stories about how the reclusive Mrs. Winchester was convinced that she would only stay alive if she kept construction going.
Historians figure that, during a time where there was an economic downturn, people were willing to believe the worst about a wealthy person who kept to herself.
(Ironically, it may have been that Winchester kept building in part to keep workers working during that downturn!)
The work continued until Sarah Winchester died in 1922.
She left almost all of her vast fortune to charity; her even more vast house was sold at auction to a rollercoaster designer who started marketing the place as otherworldly.
The papers started writing about how a lot of the designs came to Sarah Winchester in her seance room, even though she didn’t have one.
Harry Houdini came to the house to debunk the stories of ghosts and spirits, but to publicize his appearance, he played up the nickname “Winchester Mystery House.”
That made sure the legends about the mansion would continue.
Not only has the place been added to the National Register of Historic Places, it’s hosted tens of millions of visitors.
Some of them have come to catch a glimpse of something supernatural; hopefully at least a few have learned about a fascinating and very misunderstood heiress who probably didn’t mean to be so mysterious.
Starting tomorrow in Ohio, it’s the Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival.
Reynoldsburg says it’s the home of the first tomato variety bred for commercial use (or, more succinctly, it’s the “birthplace of the tomato”).
So it has a three day community fair with live music, a dunk tank, a car show, a spaghetti eating contest and a tomato smash.
Everything you think you know about the Winchester Mystery House probably isn’t true (SFGate)
TOMATO FESTIVAL REYNOLDSBURG, OHIO