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Early life:
She was born in Connecticut as Sarah Lockwood Pardee, a daughter of Leonard Pardee and his wife Sarah W. Burns. [1] On September 30, 1862 in New Haven, Connecticut, Sarah married William Wirt Winchester, the only son of Oliver Winchester, the owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.
The couple had one daughter, Annie Pardee Winchester, who was born on July 12, 1866, but died after a few weeks. Sarah fell into a deep depression following the death of her daughter, and the couple had no more children. Oliver Winchester died in 1880, quickly followed in March 1881 by William, who died of tuberculosis, giving Sarah approximately 50 percent ownership in the Winchester company and an income of $1,000 a day.

Origin of the Winchester House:
The grieving Sarah felt that her family was cursed, and sought out spiritualists to determine what she should do. A medium allegedly told her that the Winchester family was cursed by the spirits of all the people who had been killed by the Winchester rifle, and she should move west to build a house for herself and the spirits. The medium also is claimed to have told Sarah that should construction ever stop on the house, she would die.In 1884, Sarah moved to California and purchased an eight-room farmhouse under construction from Dr. Robert Caldwell. It stood on 162 acres (0.7 km²) of land in what is now San Jose. Immediately, she began spending her $20 million inheritance by renovating and adding more rooms to the house, with work continuing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the next 38 years. She was fascinated with the number 13 and worked the number into the house in many places. (There are thirteen bathrooms, windows have thirteen panes, and so forth.)

After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Sarah was trapped in her bedroom for a short time, no more than a few hours. However, when she got out, she told the construction crews to stop working on the almost-finished front part of the house and left most of the extensive earthquake damage unrepaired; she thought the spirits were angry with her because the front rooms were near completion. Work continued on new additions and remodeling the other parts of the structure.

Due to the lack of a master plan and constant construction, the house became very large (160 rooms) and quite complex; many of the serving staff needed a map to navigate the house. The house also features doors that open into walls, staircases that lead nowhere and windows that look into other walls.

Sarah's death:
Construction stopped on the Winchester Mystery House when Sarah died on September 5, 1922 at the age of 83. She was buried next to her husband and infant child in Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut.
Sarah Winchester left a will written in 13 sections, which she signed thirteen times. The belongings in Winchester Mystery House were left to her niece, Mrs. Marian Merriman Marriot (M is the 13th letter of the alphabet) who immediately auctioned them off. It took days just to load all of the belongings into trucks. The home was auctioned off and in the early 1970s, the owners turned the home into a museum and asked for a fee to explore the labyrinth home.