Haunted Visit # 3: The Winchester Mystery House

Location: San Jose, California



the Winchester Mystery House is quite the spectacle.
stairs leading to the ceiling, doors leading to brick walls, even a door that leads nowhere.





confused?
the house was owned by the Winchester family who made their fortune with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company...a rifle that was popularly used in the beginnings of the wild west during the days of cowboys and indians.

with the mysterious deaths of her husband, William Wirt Winchester and their daughter Annie, Mrs. Sarah Winchester consulted a psychic to find answers to their untimely deaths.

supposedly the psychic found that there was a curse on the house put there by all the people who were killed by the Winchester rifle. the medium then told her to,

" build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon, too. You can never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live. Stop and you will die."

another version of the story stated "the spiritual medium told Sarah Winchester that wherever she went, the spirits would follow to haunt her so she built an outrageously confusing house and slept in different rooms every night to confuse the ghosts pursuing her."
- wikipedia.org

Mrs. Winchester didn't take this advice lightly...she began construction on the crazy maze of a mansion with all sorts of bizarre construction designs.



"As the days, weeks and months passed, the house continued to grow. Rooms were added to rooms and then turned into entire wings, doors were joined to windows, levels turned into towers and peaks and the place eventually grew to a height of seven stories. Inside of the house, three elevators were installed as were 47 fireplaces. There were countless staircases which led nowhere; a blind chimney that stops short of the ceiling; closets that opened to blank walls; trap doors; double-back hallways; skylights that were located one above another; doors that opened to steep drops to the lawn below; and dozens of other oddities. Even all of the stair posts were installed upside-down and many of the bathrooms had glass doors on them.



It was also obvious that Sarah was intrigued by the number "13". Nearly all of the windows contained 13 panes of glass; the walls had 13 panels; the greenhouse had 13 cupolas; many of the wooden floors contained 13 sections; some of the rooms had 13 windows and every staircase but one had 13 steps. This exception is unique in its own right.... it is a winding staircase with 42 steps, which would normally be enough to take a climber up three stories. In this case, however, the steps only rise nine feet because each step is only two inches high.



chandelier with an extra candle added to it to make it 13:



While all of this seems like madness to us, it all made sense to Sarah. In this way, she could control the spirits who came to the house for evil purposes, or who were outlaws or vengeful people in their past life. These bad men, killed by Winchester rifles, could wreak havoc on Sarah’s life. The house had been designed into a maze to confuse and discourage the bad spirits." - prairieghosts.com

i've been to the Winchester House twice and both times were so amazing. the story of Mrs. Winchester's madness to appease the ghost is quite unbelievable. the lengths she went through were bizarre.

if you ever stop in San Jose, definitely check it out.



"There have been a number of strange events reported at the Winchester House for many years and they continue to be reported today. Dozens of psychics have visited the house over the years and most have come away convinced, or claim to be convinced, that spirits still wander the place. In addition to the ghost of Sarah Winchester, there have also been many other sightings throughout the years.


In the years that the house has been open to the public, employees and visitors alike have had unusual encounters here. There have been footsteps; banging doors; mysterious voices; windows that bang so hard they shatter; cold spots; strange moving lights; doorknobs that turn by themselves.... and don’t forget the scores of psychics who have their own claims of phenomena to report." - prairieghost.com

one of the only pictures taken of the strange old Mrs. Sarah Winchester: