Reconstruction and westward expansion now became the major goals of the limping, bloody country. Army started using these rifles in battle, the Civil War was almost over. He bought out Smith & Wesson’s then-failing enterprise, set his best mechanical engineer to work, and within a few years, the Winchester Repeating Rifle was born. Once the Civil War started, old Oliver saw that some of the same expertise they used to mass-produce gentlemen’s dress shirts could be used to manufacture munitions to aid the Union’s efforts. When Sarah Pardee met William Wirt Winchester, he’d already amassed a fortune manufacturing shirts with his father, Oliver. This particularly harmful, reductive trope is something that has been repeated in our nation’s literary horror canon, over and over.īut why would these spirits wait until Sarah Winchester’s ostensibly guiltier husband died to start haunting her? Doesn't make much sense, does it? Not the least of which centers a wealthy white American woman and her supposedly haunted house in a scenario meant to titillate and amuse instead of educate listeners about the true plight of Native American people, reducing them to vengeful, angry spirits who drove a woman to madness. There’s a lot to unpack with this legend. The legend says that the reason she never ceased working on her monstrous house was due to the restless spirits of the indigenous people her husband and father-in-law’s Winchester Repeating Rifles had killed as the west was “won.” Sarah Winchester’s story is one that encompasses the ambitions of a growing country in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, at the cost of thousands upon thousands of Native American lives. With a forensic eye toward uncovering the truth behind these haunted places, Dickey points to many of our shameful national wounds: slavery, genocide, and the damaging, long-reaching effects of systemic racism, colonialism, and gentrification. I recently read Ghostland by Colin Dickey, which is an exploration of American history through the lens of our regional ghost stories and folk legends. But what’s the real story behind this never-ending house and the woman who owned it? Sarah Winchester and her labyrinthine mansion in San Jose, California have inspired many haunted house stories. But with its hidden rooms and secret doors, the Winchester Mystery House had an undeniable influence on the interior of my own Havenwood Manor.
I based the haunted house in PARTING THE VEIL on several historical mansions, including the Biltmore Estate, Mount Stuart on Scotland’s Isle of Bute, and most specifically, the Earl Wheeler Mansion in Sharon, PA-which is now a parking lot. Rambling old houses have long been a subject of interest for me. CW: Genocide, colonialism, the Civil War, the American Indian Wars, guns, child loss, and a brief mention of slavery.
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