![]() Among the house’s 160 rooms are extraneous chambers and closets, doors to nowhere, and stairways serving no purpose. Sarah Winchester was heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, and instituted a process of continual and completely uncoordinated house-building for thirty-seven years, believing that this would confound the ghosts of those killed by the weapons bearing her name. The most remarkable thing about the Winchester Mystery House is that it’s much more of an oddity than its fictional relation, if you overlook (so to speak) the fact that Shirley Jackson’s house is a home to malevolent spectres. News this week that Sarah Winchester’s sprawling folly in San Jose is to finally allow overnight stays prompted some investigation. I re-read Shirley Jackson’s novel a few months ago but neglected at the time to follow-up the reference to the Winchester House. The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson. “-are actually on a very slight slant toward the central shaft the doorways are all a very little bit off centre-that may be, by the way, the reason the doors swing shut unless they are held…” They moved uneasily, and Theodora put out a quick hand to take hold of the balustrade, as though she felt she might be falling. I am sure, for instance, that you believe that the stairs you are sitting on are level, because you are not prepared for stairs which are not level-” Angles which you assume are the right angles you are accustomed to, and have every right to expect are true, are actually a fraction of a degree off in one direction or another. Hugh Crain must have detested other people and their sensible squared-away houses, because he made his house to suit his mind. ![]() Every angle”-and the doctor gestured toward the doorway-”every angle is slightly wrong. ![]() “I daresay,” he went on, “that old Hugh Crain expected that someday Hill House might become a showplace, like the Winchester House in California or the many octagon houses he designed Hill House himself, remember, and, I have told you before, he was a strange man. Even I have had my troubles.” He sighed and nodded. Have you not wondered at our extreme difficulty in finding our way around? An ordinary house would not have had the four of us in such confusion for so long, and yet time after time we choose the wrong doors, the room we want eludes us. “One of the peculiar traits of Hill House is its design-” Winchester House, 525 South Winchester Boulevard, San Jose, Santa Clara County, CA.
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