h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In 1884, a crazy (and short) old lady by the name of Sarah Lockewood Pardee Winchester moved out to California from New Haven, Conneticut on the advise of a Boston Psychic. This psychic told her that the reason she lost her husband and daughter to fatal diseases early in their life was due to the fact that her husband manufactured firearms (The famous Winchester rifles) and the spirits of those killed by these famous guns were exacting their revenge by killing the makers and their relatives, and Sarah was next on the list. So the Psychic told her to most out west, buy an unfinished house, and build on it forever and never finish it. By doing so she would not die, but in fact live forever. So she moved out to california and did just that. She bought an eight room unfinished farmhouse three miles west of what was then San Jose, CAlifornia, and began to build. She hired 13 (she was preoccupied with this number) carpenters to work and build on the house 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These well-paid builders did this for 38 consecutive years, only stopping briefly for the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. Sarah Winchester died in 1922, the house having 160 rooms, remaining unfinished to this day.

to be continued