Grave of Sarah Winchester

After outliving the rest of her immediate family at a relatively young age, Sarah Winchester, of the famous Winchester Rifle clan, sought guidance from a psychic to see if the Winchesters were cursed and what she should do about it if they were. The psychic advised that to keep at bay all the restless spirits of the people killed by Winchester rifles, she must build a house and never stop its construction.

So in 1884, Sarah purchased a large farmhouse in San Jose, CA, and then began the endless work on what today is known as the Winchester Mystery House. By the time of her death in 1922 at the age of 83, the eight-room house had turned into a 160-room Victorian mansion with cutting-edge modern amenities and strange quirks that included cabinets that opened into other rooms, windows in the floor, staircases ending at ceilings, and doors opening onto two stories of nothing.

When she died, she was buried in her home state of Connecticut in the family plot alongside her husband William and infant daughter Annie. The grave is located in Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven. It’s a sizeable cemetery and even though the grave marker is an eight-foot-tall rough-hewn stone, there are quite a few in the cemetery, making hers difficult to find.

To locate it, take a left at the crematorium near the entrance to the cemetery and then follow the outside path. The Winchester plot is on that path, on the right, just past the first curve. Besides the stone, there is also a carved basin, a bench donated in Sarah’s honor, and a low stone curb that outlines the plot. Adapted with Permission from: The New England Grimpendium by J.W. Ocker