The Mysterious Winchester Mansion

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Photo by flickr user bella731

Every Friday 13th and around Halloween, the public is invited to torchlight tours of the Winchester Mystery House. It stands on South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, set in immaculate, palm-scattered gardens, and today has a total of 160 rooms, though it once had more. Its turrets, inlaid floors, numerous fireplaces, lifts, gas lights, central heating and unique architectural features are clearly the result of years of painstaking, costly work. It is estimated that the enormous building, which incorporates all the most expensive modern conveniences available at the time, took 38 years to complete, at a cost of around five and a half million dollars. However, the source of inspiration for the mansion was not simply self-indulgence on the part of its wealthy creator.

Sarah Winchester, who planned the building of the house, married the son of Oliver Winchester. Oliver, his son and Sarah's baby son all died within fifteen years of each other and Sarah became convinced that the family was cursed. Records seem to suggest that she consulted a spiritualist medium for help in lifting the curse and the medium confirmed her suspicions: that the Winchester family had made its money from the Winchester firearms company, and the souls of all those whose lives had ended with a bullet fired from a Winchester rifle were now intent on revenge. It is said that the medium went on to instruct the Winchester widow to use her inherited fortune to build a house for herself and the wandering spirits, and the Winchester Mystery House is the result.

Though the house is clearly a masterpiece of craftsmanship of its time, it is not this which sets it apart from other stately homes of the era, but rather the incorporation of Sarah's spiritualist beliefs into its structure. Her lucky spider web motif is repeated throughout the house, most notably in a patterned Tiffany window which is encrusted with thirteen precious stones - a number which she surrounded herself with in hundreds of decorative items. There was never a clear plan for the layout of the house and it seems that Sarah continued to add to it in a desperate, haphazard fashion, which rather seems to corroborate the story that her consultant medium told her never to stop building, for fear of death. Stairs lead to the ceiling or run upside-down, doors open up to nowhere and rooms lie within rooms.

The surreal sense of chaos certainly adds to the ghostly air of the place. Poltergeist activity is regularly reported, and the ghost of Sarah Winchester is said to linger along with those she worked to accommodate when alive.

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Written by  larapiegeler.

Comments, reviews and questions by other travellers

Still a mystery, the famous Winchester House is home to a spooky, eccentric story.

Still a mystery, the famous Winchester House is home to a spooky, eccentric story.

Sarah Winchester was a local belle in her hometown of New Haven, Connecticut and married wealthy William Wirt Winchester, who garnered some of his wealth from the family business manufacturing the famous Winchester repeating rifle. After the untimely deaths of the couple’s daughter and William himself, Sarah Winchester moved to California.

Legend has it that Sarah believed ghosts of Native Americans and others killed by Winchester rifles were haunting her family, and she intended to build a home to appease the spirits. With virtually unlimited financial resources, Sarah turned an eight-room home into a seven-story mansion with little architectural sense. The home is famed for its winding passages which end mysteriously, steps which descend only to rise again, secret passages and more oddities. Sarah believed that if construction continued, she would be free from dangerous spirits.

Today the bizarre structure on the now 161-acre estate is open for guests to visit and explore themselves.

 Christine Fisher - posted 28th January 2011