The Haunted Winchester Mystery House Gardens: The Cryptic Legacy of Sarah Pardee Winchester

Valley of the Heart’s Delight emerges as the historical nickname for the Californian lands which claim the Winchester Mystery House. The diminutive expresses the English translation of Valle de las Delicias del Corazón from the Spanish Mission period of 1769 – 1833 in California’s history. It honors the fertility of the land and the importance of agricultural economies in the centuries before Silicon Valley’s high-tech and tech-startup entrepreneurialism in Santa Clara County. The county seat at San José memorializes:

• The first capital, 1850;
• The first and second legislative sessions, 1850 – 1851.

It shelters:

• Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph;
• Circle of Palms Plaza;
• Hayes Mansion;
• Kelley Park;
• La Galería Museum;
• Lick Observatory;
• Raging Waters;
• Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum;
• Spartan Stadium.

San José also harbors the Winchester Mystery House. The four-story, 160-room mansion has as its physical location its original 525 South Winchester Boulevard address. But it is situated on a super-reduced portion -- at 4.5 acres (1.82 hectares) -- of its original 162 acres (65.56 hectares). It occupies revenue-generating niches as:

• California historical landmark;
• International tourist attraction;
• National Register of Historic Places listee;
• Queen Anne Style Victorian mansion with Tiffany stained glass windows.

It also preserves features which leapfrog the building’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century expansions:

• Earthquake-mitigating floating foundation incompletely attached to the brick base;
• Forced-air and steam heating;
• Hot shower;
• Indoor plumbing and toilets;
• Push-button gas lights;
• 3 elevators, with 1 vertical and 2 horizontal piston-powered hydraulics.

Winchester appears as the mansion’s address and name. It connects with:

• Oliver Fisher Winchester’s (November 30, 1810 – December 11, 1880) arms company of New Haven, Connecticut, 1857-;
• Winchester center-fire rifles, 1873-;
• Winchester consumer goods manufactory, 1918-;
• Winchester household, mail-order, and sporting-good company, 1922-.

Marriage and widowhood explain an Easterner’s westward relocation. They both relate to Sarah Lockwood Pardee’s (September 1, 1839? - September 5, 1922):

• Marrying on September 30, 1862 Oliver’s only son, William Wirt Winchester (June 22, 1837 - March 7, 1881);
• Mourning her and William’s only child, Annie (June 15, 1866 – July 25, 1866), dying from marasmus (inability to digest);
• Receiving 50% company ownership, $1,000 ($23,000.00+ in 2014) daily income, and $20,000,000 ($465,000,000.00+ in 2014) inheritance after William’s death from tuberculosis.

San José’s most famous mansion answers to Winchester Mystery House in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. That name does not perpetuate original designations as:

• John Hamm farmhouse, before Sarah’s ownership;
• Llanada Villa (Flatland House), with Sarah’s purchase in 1886.  

It nevertheless recognizes cryptic interiors, with:

• Ceilinged-in stairways;
• Doll-high steps;
• Floor-located skylight;
• Oversized entrances to small spaces;
• Roofed-in chimneys;
• Undersized entrances to big spaces;
• Upper-floor exits;
• Upside-down posts.

But indoor mysteries support prevailing hypotheses regarding Sarah’s unique designs:

• Commitments to the ideas of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Sir Francis Bacon (January 22, 1561 – April 9, 1626), Theosophism;
• Influences from Boston-based occultists (Adam Coombs [aka Coons], Leonora Piper [June 27, 1857 – June 3, 1950]);
• Lack of blueprints;
• Money to spend whimsically.

Comprehending La Llanada’s outdoors aids in understanding La Villa’s indoors. The gardens are less extensive now. Their six story-high cypress hedges exist no more. But exterior and interior restorations of 1973 onward evoke Sarah’s daily consulting:

• Andrew Downing’s (October 30, 1815 – July 28, 1852) 1841-published A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America;
• Foreman John Hanson;
• Garageman Fred Larson;
• Head gardener Tommy Nishiwara;
• Theosophist Rudolf Steiner (February 25, 1861 – March 30, 1925).

The grounds express Victorian-influenced geometries of:

• Cherub, Cupid, Eagle, Serpent fountains;
• Crescent-shaped, yellow-blooming chrysanthemum hedge;
• Daisy, pink Indian hawthorne, star jasmine beds;
• Deer-stalking Chief Little Fawn, Greek agriculture goddess Demeter statuary;
• Gazebos;
• Greenhouse with 13 cupolas;
• 13 fan palms.

The lawns and 1,500+ ornamentals and woodies are replacements. But originals endure:

• Foreman’s house, for the Hanson quartet;
• Garage, though neither sheltering nor washing -- with ceiling-installed, hot water-dispensing 360°-rotated pipes -- Sarah’s battery-operated 1909 Renault, black-and-grey lavender-striped 1917 Pierce Arrow, and Buick truck;
• 100-year-old elm, English yew, fan and feather palms, ferns, rosebushes.
• Pump house;
• Wrought iron gates.

They hallow:

• Almond, apricot, grapefruit, orange, plum, walnut farming;
• Black locust, catalpa, monkey puzzle, Norfolk pine, peppercorn, pink-flowering crepe myrtle imports;
• One-half ton-capacity, 30-minute process-time dehydrators;
• 1,000-gallon (3,785.42-liter) reservoir- and 35-foot (10.67-meter) tower-generated irrigation and plumbing systems;
• Peony, persimmon, sourberry physic gardens.

They sometimes host garden-strolling ghosts: not of field-, garden-, harvest-specialized dectets, but of:

• John;
• Sarah;
• Tommy.

Interpretations of Sarah’s personality access real-time evidence:

• Extant buildings;
• Surviving plantings.

But physical traces do not communicate Sarah’s actions and agendas alone. They indeed give greater voice to the interactions of built and natural environments with subsequent property owners. Winchester involvement lasts until:

• Sarah’s bequeathing money to employees and the Winchester Clinic of the General Hospital Society of Connecticut, money and trust funds to her sister’s children, possessions and property to Menlo Park-residing niece Marian Merriman Marriott (1869 – 1949);
• Trustees (Union Trust Company of San Francisco) selling farm and mansion.

Architectural enigmas lend themselves to:

• Baconian, masonic, Rosicrucian codes;
• Fibonacci sequences;
• Occult cyphers.

Horticultural configurations contrastingly testify to landscapes:

• Arranged aesthetically;
• Designed practically;
• Haunted sporadically;
• Ideated bio-dynamically.

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

San José landmark: Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph; exterior at dusk
80 South Market Street, San Jose, California: David Leigh Ellis, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StJosephDusk.jpg

San José landmark: Winchester House; view looking northwest
Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey: No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government, via Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) @ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ca0959.color.571113c/

Winchester Mansion: detail of stained glass
Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey: No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government, via Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) @ https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ca0959.color.571114c/

Sarah Winchester: 1865 hand-colored portrait on cabinet card by Taber Photographic Company, 121 Post Street, San Francisco
verso of cabinet card: "Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester"
History San Jose Research Library: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SWinchester.jpg

Winchester Mystery House's Greenhouse
525 South Winchester Boulevard, San Jose, California: HarshLight, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/harshlight/3669386461/

statue of Chief Little Fawn on Winchester Mystery House's front lawn
Chief Little Fawn's statue faces the mansion.: Lisa Jacobs (bunnygoth), CC BY ND 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/bunnygoth/14422132831/

Winchester Mystery House's original Water Tower
Water Tower is located behind the mansion, in a corner across from the Stables and near the Foreman's House and Fruit-Drying Shed.: Konrad Summers (tkksummers), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/tkksummers/7849158368/

Winchester Mystery House's original Foreman's House: angled landscapes of John Hansen's quarters, eight rooms with pamperings such as electricity and indoor plumbing
Foreman's House is across from Stables and near Fruit-Drying Shed and Water Tower.: Alex Gorzen (Zeusandhera), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/zeusandhera/429528350/

Winchester House: east front
Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey: No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government, via Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) @ https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ca0959.color.571112c/

Winchester Mystery House, as seen from a nearby high rise, the Belmont Village Senior Living San Jose, 500 South Winchester Boulevard
westward view, obtained Nov. 3, 2012, from Winchester Mystery House's eastern neighbor, on boulevard's east, even-numbered side: Jim Heaphy (Cullen328), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Winchester_Mystery_House_2012.jpg

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