Sarah Winchester Blub Description
Few locations in American history have inspired as much mystery, speculation, and supernatural folklore as the Winchester Mystery House. Built by Sarah Winchester, widow of the Winchester rifle fortune, the sprawling mansion became famous for its endless construction, bizarre architecture, hidden passages, and stories of restless spirits said to haunt its halls.
This lecture explores the fascinating life of Sarah Winchester and the historical events that shaped both the woman and the legend. Students will examine the rise of spiritualism in nineteenth-century America, the tragedies that affected Sarah personally, and the myths surrounding her belief that she was pursued by the ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles.
The session will also investigate the architecture of the Winchester Mystery House itself, separating documented history from supernatural folklore. Finally, the lecture will analyse the 2018 horror film Winchester, exploring what the film-makers portrayed accurately and where dramatic licence transformed history into Gothic horror.
Combining history, culture, architecture, literature, and the supernatural, this lecture examines why the Winchester Mystery House continues to occupy such a powerful place in popular imagination.
Speaker Bio:
Gretchen Ivey is originally from the United States. She has lived and worked extensively abroad, including in Mexico, Bolivia, Switzerland, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, before making her home in England in 2002. She holds bachelor’s degrees in History and Spanish, as well as a master’s degree in Creative Writing.
Her academic and personal interests centre on the supernatural and the ways in which supernatural beliefs have shaped history, culture, folklore, and literature across different societies and historical periods. Through her research and lectures, she explores how ideas surrounding ghosts, witchcraft, hauntings, and the unexplained continue to influence cultural identity, storytelling, and collective memory.
Curated & Hosted by
Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience, Lena’s New Book – Mythical Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore is now available on Amazon
Don’t worry if you can’t make the talk live on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day
