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Informationen zum Autor Emma Carlson Berne; Illustrated by Ted Hammond Klappentext "In 1884, Sarah Winchester began building a large mansion in Santa Clara County, California. Under Sarah's direction, the house rose to be seven stories high and filled with mysterious features, including stairs that lead to nowhere and windows that look into other interior rooms. The house is more than just oddly designed, however: Many people believe that it is haunted. What made the heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, an independent woman in many ways ahead of her time, create such an unusual house? Is it really filled with ghosts and spirit energy? Find out more in this nonfiction title about one of America's most famously unexplainable and possibly haunted houses"-- Leseprobe What Do We Know About the Winchester House? In the spring of 1886, a well-dressed woman rolled into the Santa Clara Valley, California, in her carriage. Her name was Sarah Winchester. She was a widow, and she was very rich. She had moved from New Haven, Connecticut, on the East Coast, and she wanted warm weather, peace and quiet, and lots of space. Sarah, who was nearly fifty years old, moved into an eight-room farmhouse on forty-five acres that she called Llanada (ya-NAH-dah) Villa—Spanish for “the house on the plain.” Almost right away, she began building. In the first six months after she moved in, the house grew to twenty-six rooms! The ambitious woman never really stopped building. Over the next thirty-six years, Llanada Villa, later known as Winchester House, grew from eight rooms to a hundred and sixty rooms. Spreading over six acres, the size of more than six football fields, the enormous house eventually had six kitchens, two thousand doors, thirteen bathrooms, forty-seven staircases, and ten thousand windows! No plans were drawn, and no architects had been hired. Sarah ordered her builders to add rooms wherever she wanted them, and if she didn’t like how the room looked, she would order them to tear it down. Then she would ask them to start over. Sarah loved her house. She decorated it with expensive wood floors and paneling made of rare teak, mahogany, and rosewood. The sunlight streamed through elaborate stained glass windows. Flowered tiles surrounded the fireplaces, and very expensive wallpaper covered the walls. Llanada Villa was a beautiful home. Llanada Villa is now called Winchester House. And it is still quite beautiful. But visitors to the home today find that it is also very odd. One stairway goes up seven steps. Then it goes down eleven. One doorway opens out into midair. Take an extra step, and you’ll plummet into a kitchen eight feet below! The rooms and hallways twist and turn like a maze. Anyone could get lost. Why did Sarah build her house so strangely? Why are there so many things numbering thirteen in the house—thirteen bathrooms, thirteen holes in a sink drain, and thirteen windows in the thirteenth bathroom? And thirteen gas jets on the grand chandelier in the ballroom! Why are there so many hidden passageways and odd openings to look through? Llanada Villa started as a simple farmhouse. Sarah Winchester built it into a massive, confusing mansion. Over time, stories grew and grew about why her house looked the way it did. Was the house haunted by spirts? Did Sarah Winchester invite those spirits into her home? Today, people are still asking those questions. Visitors can take tours and wander the bewildering rooms that Sarah Winchester built at Llanada Villa. Will they meet spirits and ghosts as well? Some say they have. Others say the mysterious house is simply misunderstood and perhaps not quite haunted. But no one can know for sure. Chapter 1: Life in New Haven Sarah Pardee Winchester was not the first Sarah in her family. She was th...
