Obama House
According to Joe Nickell, claims that native residents heard “ghostly music” coming from the house are explained by the fact that Winchester usually played the pump organ within the Grand Ballroom when she was unable to sleep. The tower bell was used to call workmen and to function a fireplace alarm on the property. According to Joe Nickell, fanciful claims later arose that it was used to “summon spirits”. The belief that Winchester built her home in its strange, maze-like manner to confuse and maintain spirits from harming her and that her sanity was questionable began within the mid-Eighteen Nineties and has grown in scale past her demise.
After the damage from the earthquake, Winchester didn’t rebuild the home. Emily Mace, a scholar, and others have seemed by way of issues of Banner of Light, which was a spiritualist periodical, and in the Boston city directories, which listed spiritualists in the space, and nobody named Adam Coons might be found. Winchester’s story has been embellished over time by numerous rumors, hyperbole and myths, and well-liked writers have misrepresented or invented particulars about the home and its proprietor to be able to improve the legend.
As claimed by Bruce Spoon, a student from San Jose State College who decided to write his master’s thesis about Winchester in 1951, the reasons for constructing her massive house had been to keep staff employed and to express her inventive vision. He reached this conclusion after interviewing people who remembered her and after reviewing newspaper and magazine articles. She was identified to rebuild and abandon construction if the progress did not meet her expectations, which resulted in a maze-like design. In the San Jose News of 1897, it was reported that a seven-story tower was torn down and rebuilt sixteen instances.
One entire wing was destroyed together with the third and fourth story additions. Winchester had the rubble eliminated however had little extra done to the property after the earthquake. This left doorways that opened to nothing, where balconies had as soon as been, pipes that have been protruding from what had been as soon as window bins, and staircases that when led to higher floors, ending suddenly.