by Penny Warner
I spun around to introduce Brad. “Jonathan, this is my friend Brad Matthews. He . . . helps me with some of my events. I hope you don’t mind my bringing him and my mother along.” I decided not to mentioned that Brad had been at Hella-Graphics yesterday, cleaning up after one of his employees. Maybe Jonathan wouldn’t recognize him.
“Not at all,” Jonathan said, although his tiny frown said otherwise. “Nice to meet you.” He shook Brad’s hand, then stopped. “Have we met before?”
Brad said nothing, but pulled his hand out of Jonathan’s grip. I interrupted before things got uncomfortable. “I can’t wait to see the place again.”
Mother touched Jonathan’s arm. “How’s your father, Jonathan?” Her eyes pleaded for a positive response.
“He’s holding his own,” Jonathan said, placing a hand over hers. “Thanks for asking. As I told Presley, he’s lost use of his left side, but the doctors are optimistic. With physical therapy, medication, and perhaps a motorized wheelchair, Dad should be up and around and back at the care home soon.”
Mother let out a breath. “I’m so relieved.” The others probably didn’t notice, but Mother’s eyes had clouded with tears. She blinked them back as she turned away.
“Well,” Jonathan said, rubbing his hands together. “Shall we get started? The last tour ends at seven so we’ll have the place to ourselves. I’ve arranged for the manager, Mia Thiele, to give us a private tour. She’s excited about the prospect of a Séance Party here at the house.”
We followed Jonathan as he led the way, ducking under the low roofline that must have been just right for the diminutive Sarah Winchester. At four feet ten inches tall—I remembered that only because I was taller than she was by the time I was in junior high—she could apparently maneuver the narrow hallways, staircases, and doorways with ease, while Brad, Jonathan, and I, at five ten and over, would have to watch our heads at every entrance, elevation, and turn. Mother just had to watch her bouffant hair.
We entered the gift shop and Jonathan knocked on the door nearly invisible to shopping tourists. Without waiting for an invitation, he opened the door and led us inside. The tiny space was cluttered with a small desk and a table filled with a computer, printer, shredder, and other electronic equipment. They all seemed completely uncharacteristic for the setting. What had I expected? A butter churn and a printing press?
An attractive fortysomething woman with wavy shoulder-length auburn hair, manicured nails, and big green eyes looked up at us from the desk and gave a lip-glossed smile.
“Mr. Ellington, I présumé?” the woman said, rising to her feet. She was dressed in black slacks and a “Winchester Mystery House” T-shirt with the image of a skull superimposed on the outline of the house. She held out a hand.
Jonathan shook it firmly. “Ms. Thiele?” Was that a glint in his eye I saw as he looked the woman over?
“Please,” she said, smiling as she returned to her seat, her face flushed. “Call me Mia.” She tore her eyes from Jonathan and glanced at the rest of us.
Jonathan gestured a hand toward me. “This is Presley Parker, the premiere party planner I told you about.”
“Event planner,” I corrected, reaching for her extended hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“And this is Presley’s charming mother, Veronica Parker, a very close friend of my father’s.”
Mother nodded and blushed. She wasn’t much of a hand shaker.
When it became quickly evident that Jonathan didn’t plan to introduce Brad—perhaps he’d just forgotten his name?—I said, “This is my . . . coworker Brad Matthews. He’ll be helping me with the event.” I hoped that wouldn’t be as a crime scene cleaner.
Mia took his outstretched hand and held it—a little too long for my taste. There was an unmistakable sparkle in her eyes when she smiled at Brad, much like the one she’d given Jonathan. I made a mental note to stab her at the first opportunity.
What an interesting party this was turning out to be, full of intrigue and mystery, with a side of possible romance. And I hadn’t even sent out the invitations yet.
“So I understand you want to host a party here, with a séance theme—is that right?” She spoke mostly to Jonathan.
Jonathan took the reins. “Yes. It’s my father’s idea. He thought it would be a great way for me to showcase my newest product for investors. I’d like to get a ballpark figure for renting out the place and . . .”
My attention lagged at the financial details, and I quickly became distracted by some of the photos and news articles Mia Thiele had framed and displayed around her small office. There were enlarged but blurry black-and-white snapshots of the house from every angle, along with snapshots of the once-plentiful acreage where Sarah Winchester grew orchards of apricot and plum trees. Her property was apparently self-sustaining, and she’d harvested, canned, and sold her own fruit, even though she certainly didn’t need the money.
But my gaze caught on the large portrait of the woman herself, hanging behind Mia’s chair. Petite, dressed in a long full skirt, hat, veil, and gloves, she sat in a carriage, almost oblivious to the camera. With her small closely set eyes and pale white skin, she looked as frail as a child. Mia caught me staring at the portrait.
“That’s the only known photo ever taken of Sarah Winchester after she moved out West. She had a fear of having her picture taken and wore a veil to keep prying eyes away.”
I nodded at another one of Sarah Winchester’s eccentricities.
“So, what’s it cost to clean this place?” Brad asked out of the blue.
Everyone stared at him, surprised at the question, but Mia took it in stride, and brightened her smile as she replied. “Plenty. We have a full-time cleaning staff that dusts, sweeps, cleans fingerprints, and so on. And we have the place repainted throughout the year. It takes roughly twenty thousand gallons of paint, working every day for a year, to finish the house. By then, it’s time to start over.”
“Whoa,” Brad said, under his breath.
“What about the number thirteen?” my mother asked. She’d been standing quietly listening until now, but apparently felt the meeting had opened up to random questions. “I hear it’s everywhere throughout the house.”
Jonathan sighed and I sensed he was becoming irritated at going off topic.
“That’s true,” Mia said patiently. Obviously she’d heard all these questions before, but she seemed to enjoy sharing the quirky details of Sarah Winchester’s house. “You’ll find the number thirteen throughout the house, along with spiderweb motifs. These symbols were especially important to Mrs. Winchester—she thought they would protect her from the unhappy spirits. The chandelier holds thirteen candles, the hooks on the walls are in groups of thirteen, and the spiderweb-patterned stained-glass windows have thirteen stones. There’s even a topiary tree in the garden shaped like the number thirteen.”
Mother’s eyes widened. She loved this kind of folklore.
“Shall we begin the tour?” Jonathan asked, obviously anxious to get started. No wonder he was CEO of his own company, with leadership skills like this.
“Right this way,” Mia said mostly to Jonathan. She squeezed past us, and we followed her, one by one, out the door toward the inner sanctum of the so-called haunted house. Just after I exited the room, I heard a loud thump, followed by a whispered curse, coming from behind me. I whirled around to see Brad rubbing a red spot on his forehead.
“You all right?” I asked, grimacing in sympathy.
“Yeah, fine,” Brad grumbled.
If bumps on the head portended bumps in the night, I had a feeling we’d just received our first “warning.”
Chapter 5
PARTY PLANNING TIP #5
When gathering participants for your Séance Party, invite those who are willing to suspend disbelief and are open to possibilities of a world beyond. Or at least those who won’t laugh out loud.
“Sarah Winchester never slept in the same bedroom two nights in a row, to confuse the evil s
pirits. This is the bedroom where Sarah Winchester passed away from heart failure, on September 4, 1922, at the age of eighty-three,” Mia said, nodding reverently toward the heavy dark-wood bed on the intricate parquet floor. In fact, everything about the room was heavy—the lavender velvet drapes, the needlepoint-cushioned chairs, the woven Oriental rug. “She’d just had a session in the séance room with her psychic.”
We’d spent the last thirty minutes winding our way through the hundred-and-sixty-room mansion, which had more twists and turns than Lombard Street in San Francisco, also known as the “crookedest street in the world.” Mia had led us past hidden rooms, up low-rising staircases, and through secret passageways that Nancy Drew would have loved. Mother leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Some people call this the ‘Dead Room.’ ”
“It’s true,” Mia said, who’d apparently overheard her.
“Have there been any . . . ghost sightings?” Mother asked. A longtime fan of the occult, she’d been obsessed with the reincarnation recordings of Bridey Murphy, the predictions of Edgar Cayce, the hypnotizing techniques of Anton Mesmer, and films like The Haunting.
“I mean,” Mother continued, “if there are such things as ghosts, this would be the place to see one, right?” She glanced around, no doubt looking for floating white sheets, flickering candles, or fiery red eyes.
Mia smiled indulgently. “A few strange events have been reported. As you can imagine, lots of psychics tour the place and, of course, they’re always convinced that spirits still wander aimlessly around the mansion. Some of our tour guides claim they’ve heard footsteps, banging doors, whispered voices, strange lights, doors that close by themselves or creak when they open—the usual. Some even say they’ve seen the ghost of Sarah Winchester.”
“Awesome!” Jonathan nearly shouted with excitement. “That’ll add to the atmosphere of the party we’re planning.”
“I hate to disillusion you,” Mia continued, “but nothing’s ever been documented. We mostly leave it up to the imaginations of our visitors.”
“How did she die?” Brad asked, scanning the room. No doubt he was imagining the cleanup involved.
“Nothing too dramatic. She died quietly in her sleep, in spite of the continual construction.” Mia paused dramatically, then said in a lighter tone, “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you the séance room.”
“How did she sleep through all that noise?” Mother whispered to me. I shrugged, then lingered a few moments after everyone left the bedroom to see if I could get a sense of the woman who had lived—and died—here. But all I felt was sadness for her obsessive-compulsive disorder and superstitious nature. I caught up with the others as they turned another corner.
“What was Sarah Winchester like?” I asked, curious about the enigmatic woman.
We shuffled up a narrow stairway, all the while keeping an eye out for lost spirits. “From early newspaper reports,” Mia replied, “she appeared to be quite pretty, in spite of being only four feet ten inches tall. Men found her charming, quite the belle of the ball.” I reflected on the only surviving picture of Sarah Winchester that hung in Mia’s office, taken by a gardener who would have surely been fired on the spot if he’d been caught. That snapshot was of an elderly, wizened woman—nothing like the “belle of the ball” Mia had just described.
“She had money and social position,” Mia continued, “and eventually married William Winchester, the son of the wealthy rifle manufacturer . . .”
Mia fell into her tour-guide mode, repeating a speech about the Winchester rifle that she’d obviously given hundreds of times in the past. My mind drifted as I imagined what Sarah’s life must have been like back in the mid-1800s. Piano recitals. Ballroom dances. Elegant parties . . .
“. . . four years later she gave birth to a daughter, Annie,” I caught Mia saying, “but the baby became ill with a disease called marasmus and died nine days later.”
“How sad,” my mother said softly.
Mia nodded. “And worse, she lost her husband to tuberculosis in 1881. At that point she was a forty-two-year-old widow with a twenty-million-dollar inheritance and nearly fifty-percent ownership in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. That gave her an income of about a thousand dollars a day.”
“Holy crap,” Brad said.
“Yes, a lot of money at that time—even today,” Mia confirmed. “But it didn’t do much to ease her pain.”
I shivered. Must have been a draft in the room we’d just entered. Mother moved closer to me and tucked her arm in mine.
“This is . . . the séance room,” Mia said, with a sweep of her arm.
The area was so small, I had a feeling you couldn’t swing a dead cat, let alone a dead body, without hitting something. It felt crowded even though there were only five of us. I looked up to see sprinkler pipes webbing the ceiling. On one side of the room was an unfinished closet, with wood slats and remaining bits of plaster—and no floor. Not much in the room suggested “Ghosts meet here.”
I pulled out my iPhone and snapped a couple of pictures to use as a guide for party decorations—although there was no way we could fit many guests in the tiny room.
“We’re at the very center of the house, where Mrs. Winchester regularly met with a medium to commune with the spirits and contact her deceased husband. And receive guidance for constructing the house.”
“She seriously believed in this stuff?” Brad said.
“Oh yes,” Mia replied. “Spiritualism was very popular during that time. People held regular séances claiming they were another form of scientific inquiry. Even Mary Todd Lincoln held séances in the White House in hopes of contacting her own dead child.”
Mother tightened her hold on my arm. “Losing a child . . .” she started to say. I saw tears rimming her eyes.
“She often came up here,” Mia continued, pointing toward a wall behind us, “using that secret doorway. If you look down through the opening there, you can see how she spied on her servants working in the kitchen below.” Mia indicated the spot and we took turns peering out of Sarah’s lookout point. “She used secret passages much the same way, not only to escape the spirits, but to spy on her help. There are hidey-holes all over the place.”
“She spied on her servants?” Mother asked, shaking her head at the idea.
Mia smiled, enjoying Mother’s reaction. “Not only did she watch them, but she also listened in on their conversations throughout the house.”
“She’d have made a great spy. How’d she do it?” Jonathan asked, obviously intrigued.
“She’d had listening tubes installed.”
“Listening tubes? Never heard of them,” Brad said.
That surprised me. I thought he’d heard of everything having to do with espionage.
Mia pointed out what looked like one of the plumbing pipes that was exposed on the ceiling. But this one was narrower, and part of it ran halfway down the corner of the room. “Initially they were added so Mrs. Winchester could call her servants from wherever she happened to be. But she also used them to listen in on her servants’ conversations.”
“Paranoid, eh?” Brad summarized.
Mia shrugged. “She was a frail old woman, alone in the house except for her servants—and her spirits. I’m sure she just wanted to protect herself. No doubt the servants found her eccentric, and perhaps not all of them were completely honest.”
“The same could be said for many other types of employees,” Jonathan said.
I shot a look at him. Was he speaking of his own employee George Wells?
Mia continued. “Now, follow me to the Daisy Room, the second-most-famous room in the house after the séance room.”
We did as she instructed, trailing behind her up some stairs she called “Goofy Stairs” because of the way they wound back and forth on tiny steps. Mia explained the “easy risers” were built because of Sarah’s severe arthritis. After several dozen steps, we found ourselves in a brightly lit, cheery room filled with colorful stained-gla
ss windows with daisy motifs. I had a feeling the windows were magnificent when the sun shone through them, but since it was dark out, I could only imagine them lit up.
“What a lovely room,” Mother said, admiring the detail in one of the windows.
“You might not think so if you’d been here the night of April 18, 1906.”
“The earthquake?” Mother’s eyes went wide.
“Yes, indeed,” Mia said. “Sarah Winchester was sleeping in this very bedroom when the earthquake struck, a little after five in the morning. She found herself trapped here for several hours, unable to get out. The rest of the house suffered major damage. The top three floors had collapsed, and this room essentially shifted, blocking her exit. She was lucky to be alive, but she was terrified, as you can imagine, certain this was a sign from the spirits who supposedly suspected she was nearly finished building the house.”
“Poor woman,” Mother said. Most of us native Californians just roll with the occasional quakes. But Mother was terrified of them, having experienced several over the years. She glanced around the room. “How did she get out?”
“At first the servants had trouble finding her because, like I said, she tended to sleep in a different bedroom every night, in an attempt to escape the spirits,” Mia said. “They finally heard her screams and were able to clear the rubble and debris. They got her out, but it took hours, and she never really recovered from the scare. She boarded up the front thirty rooms in an attempt to trap the spirits forever. Then she added more bedrooms, more chimneys, and continued new construction.”
I shivered again. Granted the house was chilly with no heat and I had my black leather jacket on, but this room in particular creeped me out, in spite of the bright and colorful windows. I was also feeling a little claustrophobic. Time to wrap up the tour, I thought, and made a show of checking my watch.
