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
  • S1E10 - Episode 9 - Mrs. Winchester's House

    S1E10 - Episode 9 - Mrs. Winchester's House
    Jul 8 2022
    9 mins
  • S1E9 - Episode 9 - Sylvia Browne

    S1E9 - Episode 9 - Sylvia Browne
    Jun 17 2022
    Episode Notes Was Sylvia Browne the real deal? Yes. Was she a fraud? Yes. Is this all complicated and tied to a bunch of weird things that will be covered in the podcast over time? Yes. I look at Sylvia Browne as a phenomena, tie in personal stories, a look at Alastair Crowley's one true magick trick, and more! You can follow our patreon at https://www.patreon.com/3MinModernist Transcript WideUnclaspd-SylviaBrowne Wed, 8/3 2:04PM • 12:09 SUMMARY KEYWORDS sylvia browne, talk, sylvia, cents, pocket, house, mediums, saratoga, matter, honestly, ability, figure, weird, crash, collective unconsciousness, happen, fraud, parapsychology, sprinklers, dad SPEAKERS Christopher Garcia   Christopher Garcia  Welcome to wide unclasped. I'm Chris Garcia. Today is going to be very house light for a couple of reasons. When I come back, I'm going to talk about the daisy windows in the daisy bedroom, and a lot of stories. But I wanted to talk about Sylvia Browne. And some of you may not cotton to Sylvia, I have a certain love and respect for her. Because of my dad who knew her fairly Willie would guess, enough that she remembered him when we talked last time. But what's interesting is that Sylvia was the real deal. 100% She had a gift.   Christopher Garcia  Also Sylvia was a fraud.   Christopher Garcia  This is what's maddening. And when I talk about the Warrens, which I'll do ad nauseam. I'll get into why those two things are actually connected. Because the truth is she had sight. And I don't know if it's like she always talked about it with her guidance, so forth. And she was not always right, of course. And I think this is actually part of the problem was that at times she caught glimpses of things. I'm not saying 100% all mediums are true. Most are garbage. But there's something there's something weird, maybe it's a collective unconsciousness. Maybe it's spirit guides, who knows. And frankly, who cares. For me, this isn't a great example of something that I've never been able to explain me and a bunch of friends of mine, I think it was my birthday. We went out and I felt weird. We'd had pizza. So it wasn't that but I just I kept saying over and over, something's about to happen something strange. And while we were walking by what used to be my middle school, a car comes careening around the corner, and the sprinklers had been on so the road was wet. And it fishtailed literally in front of us hit the center median, jumped up in the air about five feet landed and then took off. And afterward that feeling that I had that something was going to happen was gone. I honestly think that's what most mediums are is moments like that, that are connected by putting the pieces together.   Christopher Garcia  But I also don't think it's reliable.   Christopher Garcia  And I think when you built a reputation on those things, that you start to try to, well, okay, you could try to force it. Or you could just lie. Either way. I 100% believe that that's what Sylvia Browne was the clearest example I have of her powers. And I really don't want to say powers, but I don't have a better way to put it up her ability. was the last time I saw her. I ran into her at a I think she was at a signing up in somewhere. Maybe it was Campbell, might have been at Westgate or something like that. But I got to our table and we talked for a bit and she said, you know your dad's very proud of you. And I'm like, Well, you knew dad, and you know he's dead. So you obviously are trying to use that. But we talked for a few minutes. And it was really nice. Actually, I always liked her. I know a lot of people thought she was hardcore unpleasant. And I do not doubt them for a minute. But she was always nice to me. This happens to me a lot. So at the end, I'm about to walk away and she calls and says, you still don't believe Do you. You're still skeptical. I said, Yeah, I am. She said, You've got 37 cents in your pocket. And you're gonna give it to someone named Juan. I said Good job, Jeff and took off. And as soon as I was outside, I looked in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing cuz I was wearing this white jacket that I wore all the time. And I looked in it, and I had 37 cents. Exactly. I had gotten it earlier in the day. I believe it's 711. So I put the money back in my jacket and I put it on my seat and I drove home a few days later I go to the Safeway in think the one off of De Anza Boulevard in Saratoga. And every year around Christmas, they have a bell ringer. So the Bell Ringer was ringing and I just said oh, I'm gonna put my hand in and give him some change because one, I don't like change of any sort. And I tossed the 37 cents in my pocket into the can. And then I looked and the guy had a name tag, Juan.   Christopher Garcia  Now you can make all sorts of connections there. How did she know that? I had 37 cents on my wall. My pocket.   Christopher Garcia  Well that's if you're going to make a guess figuring you have a quarter nickel, a ...
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    12 mins
  • S1E8 - Bob's Big Boy

    S1E8 - Bob's Big Boy
    May 31 2022
    # Episode Notes
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    8 mins
  • S1E7 - Episode 7 - Count Five and A Ghost Story

    S1E7 - Episode 7 - Count Five and A Ghost Story
    May 13 2022
    Episode Notes acidrock 1960s paranormal ghost winchestermysteryhouse

    Find out more at https://wide-unclasp-d.pinecast.co
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    Less than 1 minute
  • S1E6 - Episode 6 - The Tour

    S1E6 - Episode 6 - The Tour
    May 4 2022
    Less than 1 minute