There's a house that gets summoned every Halloween season. It's the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.

The story goes something like this: To appease the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifle, the widow supposedly spent 38 years continuously repairing and renovating the house.

Honestly, when I first heard it, I was creeped out too. But after a few late nights at work, questions start to arise. Who paid for all that labor for 38 years of 24/7 construction?

So this time, instead of ghost stories, I looked for some records. To cut to the chase, there's quite a gap between the legend and the history.

First, let's talk about the main character. Sarah Winchester was the wife of William Wirt Winchester, who inherited the Winchester repeating arms company.

She lost her daughter when she was an infant, and her husband passed away from tuberculosis in March 1881. She was left with immense wealth and a significant loss at the same time.

Then in 1886, she moved to California and purchased a two-story farmhouse near San Jose. This house became the starting point of what is now the Mystery House.

After that, the house kept expanding. It's now said to have a total area of 24,000 square feet and about 160 rooms.

There are also claims of 10,000 windows, 2,000 doors, 47 chimneys, 40 staircases, and 3 elevators. Just looking at the numbers, it's more like a small campus than a house. If I were in charge of cleaning, I'd quit immediately.

There are actually structures like staircases that end at the ceiling, doors that open to walls, and second-floor doors that drop outside. These are perfect ingredients for spreading legends.

But this is where the story diverges. The interpretation of why such a house was built.

Historian Mary Jo Ignoffo wrote a biography after digging through Sarah's letters, legal records, and photos and journals left by families who worked in the house for a long time. The book is titled Captive of the Labyrinth.

The first point she made is that the claim that construction never stopped is itself incorrect. Sarah's letters show that she had workers sent away for months at a time.

So the idea that there was hammering 24/7, 365 days a year is closer to an inflated version for tourism. It's true that remodeling was done often and for a long time, though.

The second point is the source of the ghost stories. The anecdote that she started construction after hearing about a curse from a medium has no basis in Sarah's letters, newspapers, or estate documents from her lifetime.

The room where she supposedly held seances is the same. There are no contemporary records of her summoning spirits there.

So why did the bizarre structures come about? The house was significantly damaged in the San Francisco earthquake on April 18, 1906, and the tower, which was seven stories high at the time, collapsed.

After the earthquake, instead of repairing the damaged areas, Sarah continued construction on other parts. The unfinished spaces and connected pathways created the maze-like feel we see today.

Considering that the owner, who originally loved architecture, added ideas on the fly without blueprints, it makes much more sense that staircases ending at ceilings are due to that rather than ghosts.

What surprised me the most was that, according to Ignoffo, what Sarah truly dedicated herself to was not the mansion but a hospital fund for tuberculosis patients.

That same disease that took her husband. In fact, based on her donations, the William Wirt Winchester Hospital was established in New Haven, Connecticut.

Sarah passed away on September 5, 1922, and construction stopped that day. Shortly after, the house opened as a tourist attraction.

In October 1924, the magician Harry Houdini, famous for exposing fake mediums, visited the house. Events like this likely contributed to solidifying the ghostly image as part of the marketing.

To summarize, it's true that construction went on for a long time, and the earthquake damage is also a fact. However, the idea that it couldn't stop because of ghosts is not supported by records.

Personally, I found it a bit bittersweet that a woman who wanted to live quietly after losing her family has been consumed as a crazy widow character for over a century. Being wealthy but not appearing in high society, she was treated as an odd person.

In today's terms, it seems like a case of an introverted architecture enthusiast suffering from malicious rumors. There was no fact-checking back then, after all.

That said, I'm not saying the tour isn't enjoyable. In fact, knowing this background makes every staircase and window look different.

If I were to go again, I think I'd pay more attention to the traces of the earthquake and the connections from the expansions rather than looking for ghosts. That's much closer to the real story of Sarah Winchester.

If you plan to visit this Halloween, enjoy the scary stories as they are, but it would be nice to remember Sarah from the records at least once. It's a story that feels much more human than you might think.