Audio samples: (more)

When All of the Loving is Over
MP3 / Real / Windows Media

A Trio of Dead Men
MP3 / Real / Windows Media

A Peak in Wyoming
MP3 / Real / Windows Media

Book and lyrics by Mary Bracken Phillips
 
More Information: San Jose Rep

The Winchester House, which is located in present-day San
Jose, California, is a 160-room, Victorian mansion valued at over five million
dollars. It was designed by Sarah Winchester, wife of William Wirt Winchester,
the son of the manufacturer of the Winchester Repeating Rifle. Sarah and William
had one child, Annie, who died after only one month of life. Fifteen years
later, on March 7, 1881, William died of pulmonary tuberculosis. 

The deaths of her loved ones upset Mrs.
Winchester greatly. She eventually paid a visit to a spiritualistic medium. This
medium informed her that the spirits of every person who had been killed by the
rifles that her family manufactured, had sought revenge by taking the lives of
those she loved most in the world. The medium also explained to her that these
spirits had placed a curse upon her and would haunt her forever and that the
only way that she could escape the curse would be to move west, buy a house, and
build on it constantly. In 1884, Sarah moved to what is now San Jose and bought
an eight-room house from a doctor named Robert Caldwell. She began to build
immediately and didn't stop for 38 years. Throughout those years she had about
18 servants, 22 carpenters, 16 gardeners and field hands at work for her. There
were no building plans; she just built continuously, every hour of the day until
she died in September 1922.