Wide Unclasp'd

By: Christopher J Garcia
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  • Summary

  • Wide Unclasp'd looks at the Winchester House, it's history, and the connections it has to the city of San Jose, the paranormal, and the people who have walked through it's shadows. Host Chris Garcia brings decades of research, and a deep abiding love of the House, to the stories of the paranormal, architectural, and just plain weird.
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Episodes
  • S1E13 - Episode 12 - A Strange Article

    S1E13 - Episode 12 - A Strange Article
    Dec 2 2022
    11 mins
  • S1E12 - Episode 11 - The Winchester Rifle Museum

    S1E12 - Episode 11 - The Winchester Rifle Museum
    Oct 24 2022
    Episode Notes Take a look at our Patreon Transcript by otter.AI In the 1970s, Keith Kittel took over managing the Winchester house. It's a big job largely because in the 50 or so years since Sarah Winchester had passed, the house had fallen into something of disrepair. The large number of visitors who were continually going through the House didn't help matters, he really is deserving of the credit of reestablishing the house as we know it today. Well, at least as of the two early 2000s, before the sort of explosion and turning into a bigger tourist destination. Adding multiple tours and different attractions such as a shooting gallery kill was very much about accentuating the house and the Winchester story, not to mention the advertising. But one of the big elements that came about during his time was the Winchester rifle Museum. Now calling it a museum is a bit of a stretch, it was really just two and a half rooms, but you would walk in, and there were display cases full of the rifles, dozens of them, the earliest rifles, the rifles that inspired the Winchester Repeating rifle, and all the way on up through the history of the product, including occasionally getting updated so that there were more guns from the late 90s and 2000s. They were very simply presented, they were on as I remember wooden holders with a red background, there was a low display case that had a couple of the handgun. But this is just the simplest display methodology show the thing that is on the wall, and let it speak for itself. Now, as someone who's been to the house during this period, the hundreds of times, I would sometimes even just visit to walk through the museum. Because it wasn't a particularly contemplative space. It was a little cramped, it was basically a sort of winding hallway. And the story of the Winchester rifle was there told almost completely without words, it was the progression of the gun shown very simply, no cutaways, no great, AV just simple presentation of object. Now a museum guy, I have a connection with museological technique. And this is as simple as it gets. And that, in a way, it's sort of like a minimalist music, though, you're seeing the same thing over and over, you're coming to appreciate the incredibly subtle differences. And though they were behind cases, you could get very close, you were intimate with the pieces, you could go in and see the firing mechanism on the outside, you could see the lever, the trigger, the barrel, the site was all right there in front of you. There are a few examples of historical rifles predating the Winchester rifle, which were cool. In fact, I think that the oldest rifle I've ever seen was in that might be one older I saw it the met in New York. But this was a clear, clean, well presented collection simple. Honestly, it didn't need anything else. This is the type of thing I'm sad to see going to the wayside. In the current version of the house I'm I asked what the space is being used for. And they said just storage and some setup space makes sense. It's a good spot for that. But the transformation of the courtyard, moving a concession stand out there, putting in the shooting gallery. And if you consider the courtyard to also run down that tea that runs away from the bathrooms towards the main portion of the gardens, the axe throwing, it's all fine. I do miss the arcade. But the idea of the house as a representation of just the Winchester story is sort of lessened by it. The other prominent museological type display, I guess, was the Winchester products museum. And I'll talk about that in a future episode, because that still exists to a degree, there's so much more they could do to tell the story of the rifle. And I do wish they would do that in a space that is in the house. In fact, there are a couple of places that would truly benefit from that. I've often said that the best use they could make of the what they call it used to call the million dollar showroom now it's where the AV display that tells the story, the Winchester story, the best thing they could do is to turn that into his to make that the sort of gathering point for the two are what they do now in the space outside but instead, move it to you have to walk in through the short past the short door down that little hallway. So you would gather in the million dollar store room and there, they could make a great display of those rifles, Winchester products, various things while you're waiting for your tour, in essence, do what they do in Disneyland, make the weight actually a part of the attraction. It's not a perfect idea. No, but it has its charm so stay tuned for that. First episode where I will be talking about the Winchester products Museum. A little bit about the 100th anniversary of the passing of Sarah Winchester a lot going on so I don't know when or how or why, but it'll be soon by my drums. Thanks for listening to widen class. I'm Chris Garcia. Find out more at https://...
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    5 mins
  • S1E11 - Episode 10 - The Daisy Windows

    S1E11 - Episode 10 - The Daisy Windows
    Jul 15 2022
    Episode Notes Visit the Patreon! Auto-Generated Transcript WideUnclaspd-The Daisy Windows Wed, 8/3 2:03PM • 16:13 SUMMARY KEYWORDS windows, daisy, tour, nature, house, santa cruz mountains, artistic representation, solid, portion, walking, statuary, divisible, thought, pictures, sarah winchester, room, tree, mikey, luna, find SPEAKERS Christopher Garcia   Christopher Garcia  Welcome to wide unclasp. I'm your host, Chris Garcia. This week, we're looking at two things. One, the daisy windows like I promised and to my most recent tour. early July, they added a new tour to the repertoire called Walking with spirits. And I didn't take this one I was with my youngest, and they were scared. But we did take the mansion tour, which was great led by Mikey, who had never had before, but is a very solid Tourguide Luna does sort of a more, I don't want to say energetic because Mike actually had a lot of energy and a lot of knowledge, maybe not as much as Luna, but definitely was super solid knew the whole thing forward and backwards, like he kind of have to, but also seem to have more, whereas Luna great was very, very much faster. I did get the point out also what Luna had pointed out to me last time, the original painted arrow from the original walking to her, never seen that the tour was good. Moved. Well, we did, he did sort of get bogged down at a couple of points. So we ended up having the group right before us because at that point, they were doing every five minutes. So there was a 145 we were the 150 there was a 155. So it was sort of a little tighter. But I got a story I had never heard about from the Halloween period. They had people the various tour guides stationed up on one of the hallways and they were doing jumpscares and stuff. And where he had been standing the previous nights he was actually down the hall from and for no reason anyone can tell one of the windows shattered inwards, and there were no trees, there was no rock or anything thrown. They couldn't they still can't figure out what caused that breakage. This is the first time I've heard of a window breaking. I have heard of window shaking. I have personally experienced one of them opening and closing. And I have heard a story of a window which when you look through it, you sort of see this hazy reflection that shouldn't be there. I've tried to find this window multiple times and I have yet to succeed. I've been told it's on the front portion of the house on the second floor, but I don't know where. So we will see the tour solid again great for kids. My seven year old enjoyed himself immensely. Walking around, just having a good time really enjoyed the video that played out in the million dollar store room back what it used to be called. They're not calling it that anymore. But ultimately, we did a lot we had about an hour to kill. So we did the gardens, which was fun, took a lot of pictures of fountains and so forth for future episodes. So statuary finally got good picture of the statuary, particularly the eagle that is in the little knock before you get into the final room. The final think it's a dining room or sitting room or entertaining room or some such ballroom, maybe the one with the low Italian at ceiling. It's it was a very good tour wasn't particularly hot yet. And I've done tours where it's been 100 degrees outside and it's unbearable, and there was about 85. So one of the things that the house that you notice when you walk through the house is the various breeze patterns. And I think this leads to a lot of the people who say they encountered cold spots. It's because the house is sort of designed with the Victorian idea of encouraging airflow of a certain type. And one thing I never heard was opening the glass.   Christopher Garcia  The glass that said into the floor of the skylights to bring in cold air from the basement. I never none of the tour guides I had ever had had explained that before. So this was solid. Ultimately, one of the more interesting tours have a beautiful day for a walk. And I very much like the summer house when it's very light. We were there at like one o'clock so it was almost like noon ish light, but you also have people who love it in the drizzle. And the last time we were there it was overcast and drizzly. But ultimately it was a great tour. And this was a tour where I left my little pumpkin in with Mikey and the rest of the crew while I sort of scurried around to the back of the daisy bedroom to get photos of all the daisy windows that I could. I counted 12 there the four main ones that you can actually get really up close to that I got wonderful pictures of all of them do We have 13 petals on the daisies. I then counted a total of 12 Daisy windows in the room. Now this is actually a point of contention with me, I think there are 13. But with the way that the room is positioned, you can only see 12 including a beautiful triangle one, which I could not get a picture of no matter how hard I tried...
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    16 mins

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