A small detour from San Francisco led us to the wonderful city of San Jose. Just a 30-minute drive from downtown San Francisco, the Winchester Mystery House is located just off of several highways.

The mansion was built by Sarah Winchester, wife to the famous rifle company owner. This oddity was created by her after her husband died. A fateful trip to a psychic led Sarah to believe that unless she built room to house all of the spirits killed by way of Winchester rifles, she would be haunted for the rest of her life.

Sarah then began to build. The building was helter-skelter, 24-hour a day work, and continued until the day she died - 38 years later.

With that bit of history out of the way - the mansion is fascinating! All of the television specials in the world could not have properly shown off this beauty. While only part of the original mansion stands (the rest was lost in the 1906 earthquake), what remains is monstrous. Sarah Winchester was a crazy genius, and it shows through in much of the architecture. As an example, the garden room floors slope slightly downward, plus the tiles can be removed so water can be collected and reused elsewhere after the plants have been watered.

A lot of the wild building has been showcased again and again, but some of the highlights include the repeated use of the number 13 throughout the house (13 drain holes in the kitchen drains), the "door to nowhere" and the staircase to the ceiling. Winchester also had a custom-created stained glass window that is absolutely stunning, but she continued to build around it, so no light ever shines through the window.

Overall, the mansion may be pricey, it is well worth the price. I would also recommend taking the behind the scenes tour as part of the "Grand Mansion" package. It's not worth the cost by itself, but for the extra $5 as the package, go ahead and splurge!

Visit the Winchester Mystery House website for directions and details.

Sarah Winchester would have been considered a crazy lady except for one thing--she had more money than she could spend in her lifetime. Since that was the case she was then instead considered "eccentric". She was the widow of the Winchester firearms firm manufacturer and as such inherited the company upon his death. She then got the idea that in order to appease the spirits of those slain by the Winchester rifle, she would need to build onto her home everyday for the rest of her life. This led to her to San Jose and the purchase of an 8 room farmhouse which became as we know today the 160 room Winchester Mystery House. Because of all the changes done during the course of the building of this house, many rooms, hallways, doors, etc. seemingly have no purpose other than to "exist". Most of the rooms are furnished with period pieces (though all of the original furniture has long since disappeared). There are many beautiful examples of doors and windows still remaining as is some of the damage caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. She had construction being done everyday of her life from 1884 until her death in 1922. What remains is the sole purpose of her life--her mystery house.

Sarah Pardee Winchester, widow of the President of the Winchester Rifle Company and heiress to his fortune, visited a Boston psychic who gave her an odd directive: build a house to appease the spirits of all those who died at the hands of Winchester rifles. So in 1884, she moved to San Jose, California, bought an eight-room farmhouse, and transformed it into a 160-room Victorian mansion with 40 bedrooms, 13 baths, 2,000 doors, and 10,000 windows. Notable for both its architectural interest and for the eccentricity of its creator, the Winchester Mystery House merits a visit.

Not only did Mrs. Winchester attempt to appease the spirits, she also sought to confuse them by building stairways that lead to the ceiling, doors that open onto brick walls, and windows into the floor. (She may have used the windows to spy on her staff.) She also had carpenters install supporting posts upside down.

The superstitious Mrs. Winchester kept a seance room to which only she had access. It was these seance sessions that gave her the ideas for modifying the estate. She incorporated the number 13 into many architectural features: 13 windows in a room, 13 panels in a ceiling, 13 drain holes in a sink. The cobweb motif appears in many areas. Besides being superstitious, Mrs. Winchester was also diminutive. Several doorways were built to her 4’-10" height and many of the stairways feature tiny, low-rise steps.

The on-going construction of the house took 39 years and cost Mrs. Winchester $5.5 million of her $20 million fortune. Many of the rooms were left unfinished, and the 1906 earthquake damaged others. (The quake also took down the seven-story bell tower that once loomed over the house; the highest point now is four stories.) Although several main rooms have been recreated with period antiques, the house remains largely unfurnished, adding to its eeriness.

Sixteen bucks buys you a basic one-hour tour of the mansion. This allows you to see many of the rooms. Afterward, you can take a self-guided walk through the beautifully kept grounds. Audio recordings at stations along the way describe life on the estate, including an anecdote about a truncated visit from Teddy Roosevelt. Other, longer tours are available, but I found the basic house tour sufficient. However, special flashlight tours given on Halloween and Friday the Thirteenths sound like they might be a hoot.

At one time, the estate stretched 160 acres. It since has been reduced to four, but its gardens are an oasis amid the charmless strip malls and suburban sprawl of San Jose. The estate also houses a firearms museum in one of the out buildings. Here you can see the Winchester Repeater, "The Gun That Won the West." And, of course, the tour ends in the gift shop.