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Her father-in-law Oliver Winchester, manufacturer of the famous repeater rifle, died in 1880, and her husband, Will, also in the family gun business, died a year later. After she moved from New Haven, Connecticut, to San Jose, Winchester dedicated a large part of her fortune to ceaseless, enigmatic building. She built her house with shifts of 16 carpenters who were paid three times the going rate and worked 24 hours a day, every day, from 1886 until Sarah’s death in 1922. In order to protect herself, William said that Sarah must "build a home for [herself] and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon." The remnants of the seven-story tower that toppled during the 1906 earthquake—finials, rails, and decorative trimmings that rained down like beads from a chandelier—are kept in the cavernous attic space.
The Sarah Winchester Story
It had over 160 rooms, including 40 bedrooms, 10,000 windows, and even two basements. Of course, its size is not the only thing that is unique about the house. Not all the 2,000 doors can be walked through—one leads to an eight-foot drop to a kitchen sink, another to a 15-foot drop into bushes in the garden below. Staircases lead straight to ceilings, expensive Tiffany stained-glass windows were installed in places where they would get no light, and there are more secret passages than Narnia. A particularly odd delight is a cabinet that, when opened, extends through 30 rooms of the house.
IMMERSIVE 360° TOUR
There was no plan – no official blueprints were drawn up, no architectural vision was created, and yet a once-unfinished house took shape on a sprawling lot in the heart of San Jose, California. Inside, staircases ascended through several levels before ending abruptly, doorways opened to blank walls, and corners rounded to dead ends. Plus, make sure to stroll through the estate and stop by the Menagerie Oddities Market, open only during Holiday Candlelight Tour days!
Never Miss A Mysterious Moment
Eventually, Winchester became the muse for my book on the history of the American gun industry and culture. The true nature of Winchester’s motivations is likely to remain a mystery. But as the video tour points out, the house she built was not only bizarre—it was innovative.
Among the secrets Sarah took to her grave was why she insisted that so many things relate to the number 13. The Winchester House has many 13-paned windows and 13-paneled ceilings, as well as 13-step stairways. But the pièce de résistance might be the house's 13th bathroom, which contains 13 windows of its own. An American-Australian co-production, the film was released in the United States on February 2, 2018, and in Australia on February 22, 2018. The staircase landing opens onto an array of finished and unfinished rooms, including the Crystal Bedroom, where pale yellow, mica-flecked wallpaper gives the walls a luminous quality. One reason this room had been off-limits for so many years is concern about what sunlight might do to the wallpaper, so at some point it may need to be sealed off again.
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After her husband passed away, a psychic told her that to evade the spirits, she would have to move out west, buy a home, and build nonstop. To avoid them, she allegedly slept in a different bedroom every night and took labyrinthine paths through her own home. Starting Friday the 13th we will be hosting Flashlight Tours every Friday evening till February 24th. These self-guided tours give guests the opportunity to roam through the halls of the purportedly haunted Victorian mansion while hearing tales of its former and (possibly current!) inhabitants. Guests will guide themselves through the mansion that is famous for its dizzying floorplan and lack of formal blueprints. Tour Hosts will be stationed throughout the house to ensure guests don’t get lost.
The Winchester Mystery House
No one knows what happened, but Houdini found the visit memorable enough that he sent a newspaper clipping about it to the house’s owner. Near the home’s front door—now in use again—is a room with bare-board walls and a shallow butler’s pantry at the back, like a book squeezed into the end of a shelf. “She often would carve little spaces out of what existed,” Boehme explains.
Guide to Winchester Mystery House, San Jose's spooky historic mansion - San Francisco Chronicle
Guide to Winchester Mystery House, San Jose's spooky historic mansion.
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Death Notices
From Sarah Winchester’s initial visit to San Jose to the present day, every step of the journey unveils a new chapter in the mansion’s rich tapestry of history. With additional unique architectural elements and captivating stories to share, Explore More promises a deeper look into our story like never before. Other than household staff, few saw the home’s interior during Winchester’s lifetime. She kept to herself following the deaths of her husband and infant daughter, Annie, from illness. “There’s a story about Teddy Roosevelt making an appearance in San Jose and wanting an audience with the Winchester widow,” says Magnuson. “He knocked on the front door and was not even let in.” Her eccentricity and the ghost stories—not to mention the scandal of a woman living autonomous and alone—have always been amplified in the house’s history.
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But thanks to them, tourists can now explore 110 of the 160-some rooms Sarah dreamed up. The Winchester Mystery House even boasts special tours on Halloween and Fridays the 13th. There is only one known photo of the widow Winchester, which was taken surreptitiously. She had 18 servants, 18 gardeners, and the ever-present construction team working on the grounds. Every morning, Sarah met with the foreman to discuss the always-evolving building plans.
The Winchester Mystery House offers four different tours (more on each below), plus seasonal tours and scary encounters to be had. Overcome with grief in the wake of her husband's death from tuberculosis in 1881, folklore states that Sarah sought out a spiritualist who could commune with the dead. While she was presumably looking for solace or closure, she was instead given a chilling warning.
Others say she created a labyrinth to confuse and evade the spirits that followed her. Whatever you believe the reason is, the Winchester Mystery House is sure to stay in your mind long after your visit. Though the house has a reputation as a dim warren, its estimated 10,000 panes of glass reflect Winchester’s desire for natural light. At one point, an outdoor patio was enclosed, so she had a skylight installed in its floor to pull light from above into the newly shrouded room below.
Children five and under are free and ages 6-12 will need a ticket. Winchester made charitable donations, certainly, and if she had wanted to, she could have become a philanthropist of greater renown. But the fact remains that she chose to convert a vast portion of her rifle fortune into a monstrous, distorted home; so we can now wander through her rooms imagining how one life affects others. Perhaps the same mental process happens with a country’s historical narratives about its most contentious and difficult topics—war, conquest, violence, guns.
It’s as though she carved tunnels through the house to let light penetrate. Some heroic construction work went into making sure the new spaces were safe, according to Michael Taffe, head of the house’s operations and maintenance team. “There’s a lot of modifications to actually make that a route,” he says. “You had raw redwood that wasn’t finished; it had to be framed and covered with plaster.” Wonky nails were pounded flat, old earthquake debris was cleared out, and floorboards installed.
But plenty of Halloween lovers begin their celebrating in the summertime, when Halloween looms large on the near-ish horizon and orange-and-black decorations start to appear on the shelves. If you're in the last category, and you're looking for an adventure that has some of the eekier vibes of the season coming next, look to the... The conspicuous absence of the house in her will has puzzled many.
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