Sunday, May 1, 2011

The Winchester Mystery House

In March I accompanied my sister to a Conference for the California Association of Public Cemeteries. The Conference was held in Sacramento and you can read more about the actual conference and costume party they held HERE. But today I want to share with you a side trip my sister and I made to a place we have longed to go to for years! The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California.

If you've ever driven anywhere North in California on Highway 99 or I-5 or Highway 1 or 101 you will see signs for the Winchester Mystery House. Every time we would see one of these signs we would say how much we've always wanted to go there, yet we never had.

San Jose is about 120 miles from Sacramento, so it wasn't just a side trip, we actually took the whole last day with the thought in mind that we were going to make this trek and finally get this out of our system.

The Winchester Mystery House is a mansion that belonged to Sarah Winchester, who was the wife of William Winchester who was the son of Oliver Fisher Winchester who was the manufacturer of the Winchester repeating rifle. Mrs. Winchester was married to William in 1862 and they lived in Connecticut. The couple had one daughter named Annie. Annie unfortunately died in 1866 of a mysterious childhood disease and William died in 1881 of tuberculosis, leaving Sarah alone and in a deep depression.

Legend has it that Sarah sought the guidance of a spiritualist who told her that the reasons for the death of her loved ones and for her being left alone was because of all the spirits that had been killed with the rifles manufactured by the Winchester family. She convinced Sarah that she was next, but that she might be able to appease the spirits by moving west and building a house for them and if the house were to be continuously built then the spirits would leave her alone and she might even have eternal life.

So Mrs. Winchester moved to California and in 1884 she purchased a lot with an unfinished farmhouse about three miles west of San Jose. Building then began and non-stop for the next 38 years! Sarah did not hire an architect to build this house, she was her own architect and that is perhaps why this house has 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and 6 kitchens! She had doors that led into ceilings and doors that opened out into nothing. In the very top picture of this mosaic you can see double doors. If you were to open them from the other side and not pay attention you would drop down into nothing!


The tour that we took included the inside of the house, but not the gardens, which was a shame because the gardens were beautiful and I wish we could have gotten photos of them. We did walk around the back of the house after the tour and took photos of the back part which had some pretty gardens, but nothing like what we could see out the windows during the tour in the front of the house.


We had a good time touring the house and hearing more about the history of it. It's out of my system now and while I would never pay to see this again, it was worth it the first time just to know that we did it! Now we just need to visit with World's Largest Ball of Twine and we'll be done!

Just kidding...it's a memory my sister and I will always have and I thank her so much for taking me and I thank her husband for staying home so I could go!


Have you ever visited the Winchester Mystery House? If you would like to go and need information on pricing and directions, or just want to read more about it, please click HERE.

And I'm joining Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday.


24 comments:

  1. Interesting! And lovely mosaics! Hope you have a good week,

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  2. Great mosaic! I actually saw a show about this house once...pretty odd.

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  3. I've heard about it, but never visited. I would like to visit the Ball of Twine. ☺ Ha! Thanks for the fun and a great mosaic.

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  4. i have never been, and probably will never now that we are in TX. But I do remember hearing stories from my friends, when i was a kid, about how cool it was and have always wanted to go. :O) Funny how different things are when we were kiddos!
    You are looking beautiful by the way! Hope you are feeling well too! HUGS!

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  5. Interesting post and looks like you had a wonderful time. Happy Monday!

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  6. black eyed susans kitchen - It does seem like a pretty odd story and the house was odd.

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  7. Vee - I believe there really is a huge ball of twine somewhere...lol

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  8. Braley Mama - Summur, you should go if you ever get back to California. The girls would enjoy it!

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  9. Snap - Anytime my sister and I do anything together its a wonderful time :-D

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  10. I've seen this house on shows on PBS or HGTV many times and it is really cool and really strange and really "twisty" all at the same time! How cool you actually WENT there.

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  11. Fascinating story written in your lovely style!
    I tend to believe the spiritualist was right, and perhaps Sarah did well to follow his advice.

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  12. We toured this house a few years ago and I really enjoyed it. I don't remember the gardens on the tour, so I must have missed that. The place is fascinating!

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  13. Wow! I know I've heard about this place as well. Did you get a sense of...um...mental imbalance while you were there? I'm wondering if her zest to appease the Winchester-Gods was still felt in that house. I wonder if she ever felt any peace, poor thing.

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  14. Strange place, but sounds really fascinating! Great shots, looks like you had a great time with your sister!

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  15. Keetha Broyles - It was really twisty! She had horrible arthritis so all her stairways were built as risers and there were many of them!

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  16. DUTA - Thank you for the compliment my friend! It's odd that she had a room that was just for holding seances in, which she did often. I must admit I had an odd feeling both in that room and in her bedroom.

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  17. Paula - Cool that you also visited it! Not sure what time of the year you went but everything was blooming when we went so you couldn't hardly drag your eyes away from the gardens when you were looking out from the upper level windows! And those windows!!! The stained glass ones, Oh wow!

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  18. kathryn - You know...you couldn't help but feel that there was mental imbalance just from the sheer oddity of the house itself. Then when you heard stories about Sarah herself, like how she held seances in a special room and no one but herself could enter, or how she would dismiss employees at the drop of a hat. It was a strange place to be.

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  19. carol @ there's always thyme to cook - We did have a great time and we fulfilled a dream, a small one but we had both always dreamed of visiting the house.

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  20. I'd heard about this weird house before, I'm glad you got to see it! Was it painted in oddball colors?

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  21. I saw a documentary on this house and was fascinated. Looked really interesting.

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  22. This is such a wierd story about the house, but intriguing that I would love to visit. Hopefully one of these days I will take a roadtrip and stop by. Thanks for sharing, you always have interesting stories.

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  23. One on our list. I have seen this on PBS and we really want to visit.

    P.S. We did a lot of hiking in Sedona. You should go, lots of experience with vortex everywhere.

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Please leave a comment.I would love to know your thoughts!