From afar, the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose looks a lot like a whimsical, larger-than-life Victorian dollhouse, with its bright exterior, red roofs, scalloped shingles and elaborate windows. But the closer you look at this beautiful but bizarre house, with its secret passageways, a staircase that dead ends at the ceiling, doors leading to nowhere and a labyrinthine layout, you realize there’s more than meets the eye.
Sarah Winchester, heiress of the Winchester Rifle fortune had all the money in the world—$20 million, to be exact, with a $1,000 per day income—but her life was wrought with tragedy, notably the death of her daughter in 1866 and her husband in 1881.
Despondent, she consulted a psychic who told her there was a curse upon her family because Winchester rifles had taken so many lives. According to popular belief, the psychic recommended that Winchester leave her home in Connecticut, move westward, and build a home for herself and for the vengeful spirits who were haunting her. To appease these spirits, the psychic warned she would have to keep building the house or she would die.
Winchester bought a small farmhouse in California, and began a construction project that lasted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 38 years until her death in 1922. The result was an architectural marvel: a 160-room mansion built entirely without blueprints. It’s sa
id that Winchester received building instructions from spirits whom she consulted in a secret séance room.
Was Sarah Winchester a visionary or was she just crazy? Take the 65-minute mansion tour and decide for yourself. It starts in a room whose floor was part of the carriage driveway, where you’ll see the only existing photograph of the diminutive heiress.
Then, it’s up a twisted staircase, reminiscent of a surreal M.C. Escher drawing, to see such strange features of the house as a door opening to an 8-foot drop into the kitchen below; another door opening to a 14-foot drop outside; cupboards only inches deep; and skylights in floors.
Winchester was also fixated on the number 13, and her obsession shows throughout: windows with 13 panes, walls with 13 panels and even drains with 13 holes. Spider web motifs are also prevalent, as she thought they could capture spirits; even some of the expensive Tiffany stained-glass windows contained spider-web designs.
Although today the house is an odd anachronism in the heart of Silicon Valley, it was considered high-tech in its day with rare conveniences such as steam and forced-air heating, indoor plumbing, a hydraulic elevator and push-button gas lights.
After the fascinating house tour, find out more about the inner workings of the sprawling mansion with the “behind the scenes” tour, where you’ll see rooms that were previously closed to the public and learn about Victorian architecture.
Afterward, take the self-guided garden tour, which includes recorded narratives at each of the 10 stops on the map. The impressive grounds include nearly 14,000 miniature boxwood hedges, hundreds of flowers and plants, unique fountains and 13 palms lining the front driveway.
Gun aficionados will appreciate the Winchester Firearms Museum, which traces the evolution of the “Gun That Won the West.” The Winchester Antique Products Museum, inside the gift shop, is also worth a gander—it showcases a rare collection of items the Winchester Products Company manufactured after World War I.
As weird as Mrs. Winchester’s world may have been, her legacy lives on as one of Silicon Valley’s most unique attractions. —Stephanie Soong
