Summer Smith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
somethingwithturquoise) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2024-09-27 04:51 am
somethingwithturquoise) wrote in fandomhigh2024-09-27 04:51 am
The Weird, Wonderful, and WTF World - Friday, First Period [09/27].
"Field trip tiiiiiime!" Summer sang, once everyone had gathered around the portalocity office lobby, because they should have all gotten messages to meet here and if they didn't? Whoops! Oh well, she tried! "Let's just head out and then we'll get into what we'll be doing today when we get there!"
And so, soon enough, they would find themselves stepping out in front of beautifully elaborate Victorian-style mansion and Summer gestured toward it. "Welcome," she said, "to San Jose, California, and, more specifically, to the Winchester Mystery House. No relation to Dean and Zoe. I think. But, anyway, we talked a little bit about weird food and weird superstitions, and, actually, some say this one actually ties into that last one, but today's topic is all about weird architecture. Because this house? Is pretty weird.
"The house was once the home of a woman named Sarah Winchester, who was the widow of the guy who made the popular Winchester guns and stuff. Construction began in 1884 and naturally ended after her death in 1922. But that's the kicker....the construction kept going in all that time in between! For you mathheads out there," not methheads, Stewart!, "that's 38 years of ongoing construction. And as you can see, the exterior of the house seems pretty well finished, but the inside? Ah, well, that's where the mystery comes in.
"You see, within these one hundred and sixty rooms, you're going to find doors that go nowhere. Hallways that end abruptly. Stairs you can't actually climb. Dangerous drops. It's said that the maze-like design of the house is due to Sarah Winchester's indecisiveness and constantly changing her plans or finding that the results were not up to her expectations. They say there was a seven-story tower at some point that was torn down and rebuilt sixteen times. With all these changes, some of the old architecture just stayed in place, which is why you'll have oddly placed windows or doors opening to walls, because they just left what they'd built and built the new stuff around it. At it's largest, there was approximately 500 rooms in this place, so what we're seeing now is actually the trimmed down version!
"For all its oddities and strange features, the house is still gorgeous, because Sarah had money and was clearly not afraid to spend it. So in addition to appreciating the weirdness of it, there's a lot of wonderful things to check out here, as well. And, naturally, there are a lot of rumors and speculations on just why the Mystery House is so Mysterious. Was Sarah Winchester just a little bit eccentric? Was she an unrepentant perfectionist? One theory suggests that she made her home intentionally convoluted to confuse the spirits that would plague her; a lot of those theories suggest that it was all the spirits of the people killed by her husband's guns trying to haunt her. Some newspapers contemporary to her speculated that she believed she would have bad luck or even die if the construction ever stopped, so she just had to keep it going. There's a few more, too, but all of these are just speculation.
"And that," Summer concluded, "is enough talk from me. Let's go check out this mystery house for ourselves, and we can see what you think about all these claims and of the house itself."
And so, soon enough, they would find themselves stepping out in front of beautifully elaborate Victorian-style mansion and Summer gestured toward it. "Welcome," she said, "to San Jose, California, and, more specifically, to the Winchester Mystery House. No relation to Dean and Zoe. I think. But, anyway, we talked a little bit about weird food and weird superstitions, and, actually, some say this one actually ties into that last one, but today's topic is all about weird architecture. Because this house? Is pretty weird.
"The house was once the home of a woman named Sarah Winchester, who was the widow of the guy who made the popular Winchester guns and stuff. Construction began in 1884 and naturally ended after her death in 1922. But that's the kicker....the construction kept going in all that time in between! For you mathheads out there," not methheads, Stewart!, "that's 38 years of ongoing construction. And as you can see, the exterior of the house seems pretty well finished, but the inside? Ah, well, that's where the mystery comes in.
"You see, within these one hundred and sixty rooms, you're going to find doors that go nowhere. Hallways that end abruptly. Stairs you can't actually climb. Dangerous drops. It's said that the maze-like design of the house is due to Sarah Winchester's indecisiveness and constantly changing her plans or finding that the results were not up to her expectations. They say there was a seven-story tower at some point that was torn down and rebuilt sixteen times. With all these changes, some of the old architecture just stayed in place, which is why you'll have oddly placed windows or doors opening to walls, because they just left what they'd built and built the new stuff around it. At it's largest, there was approximately 500 rooms in this place, so what we're seeing now is actually the trimmed down version!
"For all its oddities and strange features, the house is still gorgeous, because Sarah had money and was clearly not afraid to spend it. So in addition to appreciating the weirdness of it, there's a lot of wonderful things to check out here, as well. And, naturally, there are a lot of rumors and speculations on just why the Mystery House is so Mysterious. Was Sarah Winchester just a little bit eccentric? Was she an unrepentant perfectionist? One theory suggests that she made her home intentionally convoluted to confuse the spirits that would plague her; a lot of those theories suggest that it was all the spirits of the people killed by her husband's guns trying to haunt her. Some newspapers contemporary to her speculated that she believed she would have bad luck or even die if the construction ever stopped, so she just had to keep it going. There's a few more, too, but all of these are just speculation.
"And that," Summer concluded, "is enough talk from me. Let's go check out this mystery house for ourselves, and we can see what you think about all these claims and of the house itself."
Re: Class Activity: Explore the Winchester Mystery House - WWWTF, 09/27.
Eventually after walking through the house and learning a bit more of the history behind it, Yelena ended up at the stables throwing axes.