Winchester Mystery House

This mansion in San Jose CA is the spookiest location I’ve been in recent years, primarily because it was the actual home of Mrs. Winchester, the wife of the inventor of the Winchester rifle. The house is the longest continuous construction site in the whole world, taking 38 years to build, and yet it lies largely unfinished. The construction went on only as long as the madame of the house was alive, but as soon as she died, the construction stopped.

Mrs. Winchester was convinced that she was being haunted by the souls of everyone killed by the Winchester rifle. Proof of that convinced her of this were the deaths of her husband and of her daughter. I think she became bonkers by then; she decided to build a mansion where all the souls that wanted to terrorize her would be lost and won’t find her.

Thus, using her bulging savings account, she started building a modest house with 160 rooms and seven floors. The guide called some of the stairs “easy rider” stairs because of the height of the steps. Mrs. Winchester suffered from arthritis, and she couldn’t lift her legs too high. In fact, the steps were so low that it would take seven flights of thirteen steps each to reach the other end of the room. She also had closets built that were as big as rooms and one-way doors (once you’ve closed the door, you can’t exit that way). There were also ascending stairs that end up on the room below the one you’ve started on! The house was really strange! The stained glass windows were so expensive because they were bought from Tiffany’s. The gardens were also vast and really maintained…

What’s so spooky about this great house then? There’s a part of the mansion that was entirely blocked off ’til the tourism board took over. In this section, which was left unrepaired, were the damage left by the 1906 San Francisco quake. The whole section was in disarray. It really looked sad and abandoned. Plus, since the house was really a gigantic maze, the tour guide warned us early on that if we ventured away from the tour group, we might get lost forever! Creepy! I’m one person who’s easily spooked.

Once the tour was finished, the guide told us we walked over a mile inside the mansion… but that included only a little over a hundred rooms. The rest of the house was still not open to the public. SCARY!!!!