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Eventually, the path leads up to the Witch’s Cap in the South Turret, billed as the highlight of the new tour. To reach it you must pass through a corridor scaled for a child’s playhouse, narrow and scarcely five feet high. There’s light flowing in from occasional windows, but even so, it’s hard to orient yourself in space as the walls close in. Such beliefs wouldn’t have been particularly unusual at the time. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a surge of what was called spiritualism all over the country. “All these women, they lost their husbands, their sons, their brothers, their fathers.
Tourist attraction
Sarah Winchester was a woman of independence, drive, and courage who lives on in legend. And the mansion she built is world renowned as much for the many design curiosities and innovations (many ahead of their time) as it is for the reported paranormal activity that resides within these walls. The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, is one of the nation’s most curious landmarks. Built by a millionaire widow over the course of 36 years, the sprawling mansion features more than 200 rooms, 10,000 windows, trap doors, spy holes and a host of other architectural oddities. Inside the maze-like estate, visitors may hear that unsettling organ play, or see ghostly figures trapped on dead-end staircases or meandering down twisting hallways. Like any good haunted house, the Winchester estate has its fair share of secret passageways, as well as a dedicated séance room.
"She knew she was going to die just like everybody else," Boehme said.
Even 95 years after her death, it seemed that Sarah Winchester’s house was still holding on to some secrets. In the years Sarah Winchester lived in the house, the residents of San Jose whispered about its strange construction and even stranger inhabitant, but it was in the years after her death that the wild stories became even wilder. Newly in possession of a massive fortune and struggling with the loss of her husband and daughter, she sought the advice of a medium.
"There is always going to be a certain amount of mystery attached to this mystery house," Boehme said.
One of the first things you notice upon approaching the Winchester Mystery House is that the front door is not aligned with the roof peak above it—it is staggered slightly to the right. This might be a minor detail, but it hints at the disorder that unfolds within. The mastermind behind this architectural oddity—a sprawling Queen Anne Revival with 160 rooms—was Sarah Winchester, the widow of the rifle magnate William Winchester. Famously private and eccentric, she built onto her California home on and off for more than 30 years.
… a 44-step staircase that only goes up one floor ...
Some heroic construction work went into making sure the new spaces were safe, according to Michael Taffe, head of the house’s operations and maintenance team. “There’s a lot of modifications to actually make that a route,” he says. “You had raw redwood that wasn’t finished; it had to be framed and covered with plaster.” Wonky nails were pounded flat, old earthquake debris was cleared out, and floorboards installed.
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The legacy of the Winchester Mystery House is embedded in its many unusual architectural and interior design novelties. Boehme finds that the legend has little power to explain Winchester’s unusual construction ideas. “A lot of stories were told about her way before she died, even. She really wouldn’t engage or talk to the press because they said such bad things about her.” During her lifetime, her silence likely fed all sorts of rumors.
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The ballroom is the biggest room in the house with the highest ceiling, reaching 12 feet. A fireplace mantle takes up most of one wall, while wood paneling covers most of the other walls. After this conservatory, visitors pass from the newer part of the house to the older part, using a small set of stairs that once acted as exterior porch steps.
Labyrinth construction
There’s a way that these reports of hauntings, the mythos behind Winchester herself, and the staff’s enthusiasm for it all create an atmosphere of suggestibility. The new Winchester movie plays on that idea, and so do some of the newer upgrades that have been made to the house. Taffe, who used to work at a theme park, has a nose for this kind of theatricality. He and his team recently perfected a high-octane sound clip that replicates the 1906 earthquake that brought down the house’s turreted tower and trapped Winchester in the scroll-covered Daisy Bedroom for hours. “This is the full-length one.” As a speaker in the nearby bedroom emits a rising bellow, the floor starts to shake. Sounds of smashing glass and crockery punctuate the rumbles.
It is true, however, that the remodeling of the house went on for decades. She was known for paying her workers well above the usual rate. Oftentimes, she would buy homes for her employees' families to live in while they worked on her home.
Far after the construction was completed, Winchester continued to make efforts to appease the victims of the Winchester rifles. Public DomainOne of the staircases to nowhere in the Winchester mansion. "I'd like to think that [people] come to appreciate Sarah as more than just this eccentric, ghost-ridden, tragic figure," Boehme said. "She was actually a pretty interesting person, a smart lady, and she was good to her employees. She was never afraid of trying something new. She really was a good person." The Hall of Fires is actually three small spaces that seem to have once been separated by curtains. Strangely, there are four fireplaces and three hot air vents in this space.
We joined a group guided tour that included 12 other people. Our tour guide was entertaining and energetic as she led us on a 65-minute scripted tour of the mansion. Along the way, we encountered a lot of unusual spaces, strange-looking rooms, quirky construction features, and stories of peculiar behavior by the mansion’s owner. Our guide also enhanced the strange and unusual parts of the home with corny jokes, intriguing ideas, and spooky suggestions. Even though it seemed a little too well rehearsed at times, all in all, it was a lot of fun.
After appraisers deemed the house worthless due to its strange design, damage from the earthquakes, and long-winded construction, Marion took everything in it and auctioned it off. The current owners of the house claim it took six weeks to empty the house of all furniture, though the report is uncorroborated. Unfortunately, in 1904, an earthquake struck San Jose, and the Winchester Mystery House sustained a hefty amount of damage. Thanks to the floating foundation (a foundation that equals the weight of the surrounding soil) the entire house was saved from collapse.
In 1884, Sarah Winchester purchased what would later become known as the Winchester Mystery House. At the time of the sale, the house was a small unfinished farmhouse, but that quickly changed. Boehme said the windows share similar motifs and similar glass, but they have different types of designs. The Daisy Bedroom has daisies in its stained-glass windows, for example.
For the most part, no one was permitted even to photograph her. “There’s a story about Teddy Roosevelt making an appearance in San Jose and wanting an audience with the Winchester widow,” says Magnuson. “He knocked on the front door and was not even let in.” Her eccentricity and the ghost stories—not to mention the scandal of a woman living autonomous and alone—have always been amplified in the house’s history. More striking, though, is the extraordinary artistic freedom she exercised in creating it, as well as the lengths to which today’s staff must go to keep the house intact and open. In the 1800s, Sarah Winchester—the peculiar heir to the famed rifle company fortune—began building a labyrinthine Victorian mansion in San Jose, California. The story goes she spent four decades transforming the eight-room farmhouse into a sprawling 161-room complex hoping to outrun the ghosts of the people killed by a Winchester rifle.
She hoped, perhaps, to get advice from the beyond as to how to spend her fortune or what to do with her life. Born around 1840, Sarah Winchester grew up in a world of privilege. She spoke four languages, attended the best schools around, married well, and eventually gave birth to a daughter, Annie. However, tragedy struck in her late twenties when Annie died, followed by the death of Sarah’s husband William more than a decade later. At the time, newspapers were filled with advertisements, luring people to move across the country and settle in the newly incorporated California.
The mansion is open almost every day, save for Christmas, and offers tours of the house, as well as the entire state (extra-spooky basement included). Reports of paranormal activity aren’t unusual at the estate, which is now known as the Winchester Mystery House and is considered one of the creepiest attractions on earth. In addition to 10,000 windows and 47 fireplaces, the manor has at least three ghosts. In 2018, Helen Mirren starred in Winchester as Sarah Winchester herself.
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