Winchester Mystery House

Before the Thompson Reunion started we spent the night in San Jose because it's been a wish of mine to walk through the Winchester Mystery Mansion since my mom and sister went through it way back in like 1999. I thought I would never get the chance since the move to Utah so when it came up in our plans for California I just wanted to go. Matt didn't care about going but his brother did so I had nothing holding me back. Grandpa stayed with Evan at the Hotel so the three of us just went. It was awesome! Matt even thought it was worth the money to go see it. There is so much history about it so I don't remember everything but this is a great website that can tell you,
http://www.prairieghosts.com/winchester.html

Here are some amazing facts about the place:
Number of rooms: 160
Cost: $5,500,000
Date of Construction: 1884 - September 5, 1922. 38 years of 24 hours, 7 days of week of building and rebuilding the house.
Number of stories: Prior to 1906 Earthquake - 7; presently 4
Number of acres: Originally 161.919; presently 4
Number of basements: 2
Heating: Steam, forced air, fireplaces
Number of windows: Frames 1,257; panes approx. 10,000
Number of doors: Doorways 467, doors approx. 950 not including cabinet doors.
Number of fireplaces: 47 (gas, wood, or coal burning)
Number of chimneys: Presently 17 with evidence of 2 others
Number of cars at her death: 2 (a 1917 Pierce Arrow Limousine & a 1916 4 cyl. Buick truck)
Number of bedrooms: Approx. 40
Number of kitchens: 5 or 6
Number of staircases: 40, total of stair steps - 367
Number of skylights: Approx. 52
Number of gallons of paint required to paint entire home: Over 20,000
Number of ballrooms: 2 (one nearly complete, and one under construction)
Blueprints available: No, Mrs. Winchester never had a master set of blueprints, but did sketch out individual rooms on paper and even tablecloths!

Here are some pictures that we took of the place:
Part of the outside of the house showing a door from the second story that goes to nowhere
One of the staircases that leads to the ceiling.
They call this the $25,000 storage room because at the time of her death everything in the room was appraised at $25,000. These doors and windows were waiting to be put in the home but some of them were exchanged for other pieces. Today this collection of Tiffany glass windows and doors appraise around 3.5 Million. These pieces are just gorgeous!
This is the bedroom where she died in. None of the furniture in the house is original. It was all sold after her death.

This is the Seance Room. There's only one way in but you can't go out that way and three ways out. One way is through this window (see below).

It's a window that drops into the kitchen sink. The other way is through a door that leads to a shallow closet. The only way out that wont trap you or maybe even hurt you is through a door that doesn't have hardware on the other side, so once you are out, there is no way of going back in.

One of the elevators in the house.

When she would go into town and find fabric that she loved, she will buy the entire stock of it so no other women would have the same fabric. She would put the fabric in this room.

This is the most expensive window she bought. It cost $9,000 at the time and that's enough to build nine homes back in those days. Wow! The sad thing about this is that she put this on the side of the house where no sun will ever hit it and then built a wall behind it.

This is the room she was sleeping in during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. She feared the spirits were trying to get her because the house was nearing completion. Without fixing the damage she boarded up the front of the house so it would never be completed. A guy walked in front of it but that's where a fireplace was. It fell two stories and shifted the room causing her to be trapped inside the room till her servants found her. They had to use a crow bar to open the room and the damage is still there.



This is the front door. Only three people ever walked through them and they were herself and the two carpenters that hung them. She had no visitors. President Roosevelt was a fan of the Winchester Rifle and wanted to go visit Sarah so he could have been the fourth person to walk through those doors but when he was walking up to the door, the gardener didn't recognize him and told him if he's looking for a job to go through the servants entrance. He was offended and never saw her.


Here is one of the Grand Ballrooms

This chandelier was imported from Germany. It originally had 12 candles but she put a 13th one. She was fascinated by the number 13. The number 13 is associated a lot around the house.

This is the unfinished Ballroom. It's part of a different tour that we didn't go on because we ran out of time but I was able to find it walking outside and took a picture of it through the window.


Sarah developed crippling arthritis in her old age so she replaced most of the stairs with these easy risers. They only raise a couple inches.

Sarah stood 4ft 10in tall. She could easily walk through this door.

These two pictures show what the house used to look like before the 1906 earthquake hit and today. We walked over a mile in the house during the tour. It was a lot of fun and extremely worth the time spent there. I wish we had time to take the other tour where it would take us beneath the house and of course see the unfinished ballroom. Maybe next time we are up there. If you are ever in the area you should go take a tour.