In early August, when our son Samuel was visiting, we took him to the local ghost house (there's one in every county). For us, that is the Winchester Mystery House, the former home of Mrs. Sarah Winchester, heir to the Winchester rifle fortune. A refined but eccentric woman, Mrs. Winchester had lost both her infant daughter and husband by 1881. After her husband passed away, the story goes, a spiritualist told her her misfortunes were due to deaths caused at the hands of Winchester rifles. To appease the spirits, she was advised to move West and build a house for the spirits. True or not, she moved out West from Connecticut to visit a neice in Menlo Park and never left the area.
In 1884 she purchased a farmhouse in San Jose, and over the next 38 years, continuously expanded it. This Victorian mansion now has 160 rooms and 7 stories. It is still unfinished. It is this sprawling and odd edifice we visited on a Saturday afternoon in 2021. For a mere $41 you can get an hour long tour of the house. So we donned our masks and took a look. Our tour guide, dressed in period costume, wound us through the patchwork structure.
Mrs. Winchester, who had an unlimited fortune, built whatever took her fancy. That included a seance room (with 13 of everything), and windows in floors, stairs that led nowhere, false cupboards, and a door on the second floor that opened up in a straight drop to the ground. (The latter door we safely viewed from outside.)
She was also fond of spiderweb designs, and had them incorporated into stained glass windows. Standing under 5 feet tall, she had no qualms creating tiny rooms with low ceilings. She also suffered from arthritis, so had special half step stairs built throughout the house. But she was generous with her staff, who she paid double the going rate, and all requests were accomodated.
Here Samuel stands in the unfinished ballroom. Except for the furniture, which her niece sold, the house was left as it existed in 1922 when Mrs. Winchester died. After she died, the grounds were opened to the public, and in fact, the grounds are still used for weddings. Harry Houdini visited the house in 1924 to check for spirits, though what he found or didn't find, was not recorded. I personally am pleased it remains a mystery, like the house itself.
#80 for 111 Places in Silicon Valley That You Must Not Miss.
