A move west
Sarah Winchester was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1839. Widowed in 1881, she controlled a large holding of Winchester Repeating Arms Company shares, and a doctor advised her to seek a warmer, drier climate for her health.
Llanada Villa
In 1886 she bought a farmhouse on a 45-acre ranch in the Santa Clara Valley and named it Llanada Villa. She designed the house herself, room by room and without an overall plan, sometimes tearing sections down to build them again.
Legend and record
Popular stories claim the house was built to confuse spirits, but there is no evidence for them, and the room said to have been used for nightly séances was in fact her gardener’s bedroom. The legends grew after her death, once the house opened to visitors in 1923.



