Hey, looky what I found! It’s a souvenir coin from the Winchester Mystery House, one of the inspirations for Grandchester Mystery Mansion in the Fallout 4 Nuka World DLC.

I visited the place back in the 1990s. That’s when I bought the coin. I was in my 20s at the time, and I’d wanted to visit ever since I’d first learned about the place in 4th grade, because of it’s association with the Old West, ghosts and Victorian Era seances.

To be honest, it was kind of a drag. I’m glad I went, it was an interesting place, but I felt sorry for Sarah Winchester. She’d lost a baby in 1866, never had any more children, and then lost her mother and husband in 1880-1881. A lock of her baby’s hair was found in her safe, after she died.

The overall vibe of the house was much less “haunted mansion” and much more “sad old woman being scammed out of her fortune.”

The story goes that Sarah Winchester, widow of firearms magnate William Winchester, believed the angry spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles were haunting her. The constant ongoing renovations and strange architecture of her home were intended to confuse the spirits.

This is also the basic plot of the 2018 supernatural horror film Winchester starring Helen Mirren.

Rumors and urban legends included tales of nightly seances, an obsession with the number 13, and the belief that she would die if renovations were ever completed. The San Jose Evening News dismissed such rumors as “foolish superstition” in 1897, and none of her former employees, servants or relatives ever claimed she was mad or superstitious.

But those stories were later played up when the place was turned into a tourist attraction, shortly after her death in 1922. Later renovations and the installation of a Winchester rifle museum in the 1970s and 1980s also took advantage of the rumors to attract visitors.

Like me. Maybe I was actually the one scammed out of money?

~ J.L. Hilton

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