One for Halloween this. I was recently commissioned by Dawn of the Unread to produce a comic book about Notts legend The Fifth Duke of Portland (Eccentric toff who liked tunnels etc.) But whilst we (me James Walker, Adrian Reynolds and Toni Radev) were putting it together though, we started to make connections with a women in America who was alive at roughly the same time and also had a weird mania for strange building projects. Here’s a bit more about her and a short poem/film. Sarah Lockwood Pardee (1837-1922), who would later become Mrs Sarah Winchester when she married gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, appeared to suffer some sort of nervous breakdown after losing her only daughter, followed by her father and husband some few years later. It is at this point that history is blurred heavily with legend and folklore. As the story goes, Sarah, racked with grief approached a medium, seeking solace in his consultation. She received nothing of the sort and instead was informed that she would never find peace until she’d appeased all the souls of the dead killed by her late husband’s gun trade. She promptly relocated west and began building a house, and she went on building house until she died aged 84. She had intended to build a room for each victim lost to a Winchester rifle, only then would they and she have found rest. The site of the house, (a popular tourist attraction in northern Carolina) is an impressive six acres in total and is a sprawling and strangely beautiful creation full of lost cellars, stairs that lead to nowhere, dark angled corridors and secret entrances. Whether Sarah Winchester was insane or as some have suggested, a charitable benefactor and employer with an amateurs love for architecture, will probably always be unclear. I think it’s safe to say that I was definitely obsessed with the former when I wrote the poem. Those with an interest in this sort of thing might want to dig out a copy Swamp Thing 45 a brilliant issue of a superb comic book written (at the time) by the infinitely talented Alan Moore. youtube/watch?v=XuUghX-A-3Y&feature=youtu.be
Posted on: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:47:48 +0000
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