Popular legends aren't always what they seem, and although we may enjoy ghost stories

and wild tales, all too often they displace some true history that might have much better

content.

There is no better example of this than the Winchester Mystery House in the California Bay Area,

said to be the construction of a ghost-obsessed widow bent on escaping her demons.

That's today on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid, I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

De-mystifying the Winchester Mystery House.

In the center of the great California metropolitan area of San Jose, sits an enormous tourist

attraction, a gigantic Victorian home on the National Register of Historic Places.

It was built by Sarah Winchester, widow and ares of the Winchester Rifle Fortune at the

turn of the 20th century.

It has, approximately, 24,000 square feet, seven stories, at one time, hundreds of rooms,

thousands of doors, and scores of stairways and fireplaces.

The legend is that Sarah built it on the advice of a psychic in order to escape the tormented

spirits of all those killed by Winchester rifles.

She held nightly say-onses in a special room, advising her on what to build next.

She believed that she must build every day, which went on for 38 years around the clock.

For the moment she stopped building, she would die.

As a result, the whole house is a crazy jumble of doors and windows and corridors and stairways

to nowhere, twisted passages, and hidden chambers.

It is the result of a tragic obsession and devotion to the supernatural combined with endless

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