Determined to rid herself of the curse and the ghosts, Sarah Winchester sought the advice of a psychic who convinced her she needed to start building a grand house to appease the ghosts, and to never, ever, finish building. To be successful, the construction would need to be continuous—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Mrs. Winchester set straight to work. Moving from Connecticut to San Jose, California, she bought a piece of land surrounded by fruit orchards. The result of her efforts is San Jose’s famous Winchester Mystery House, now a historical landmark.
From the outside, the 160-room house looks beautiful – with big picture windows, balconies and turrets. But the inside paints the picture of a lonely, scared woman slowly losing her mind. Room after room, staircase after staircase was built at her whims over the span of 38 years. Contrary to how most people approach home building, she spared no expense but didn’t do much advance planning which is evident in the floor plan today.
Mrs. Winchester’s eccentricities didn’t stop with the building. She liked to know what her servants were doing at all times, and several of the windows enabled her to spy on them or to overhear their conversations. If any of the servants dared to give her advice on construction, they were given their walking papers at the end of that day. She had bells rigged throughout the house so that when she needed something no matter which room she was in, a servant could come to her. When an earthquake severely damaged a wing of the house, she just had it sealed off, never bothering to fix it or tear it down.
She was also fixated on the number thirteen. Multiple rooms in the house have thirteen windows. There are thirteen bathrooms and there are even trees outside sculpted into the numbers one and three.
The Winchester Mystery House holds tours daily and popular evening flashlight tours every Friday the 13th. It is definitely worth a look if you are in town and have an afternoon to sightsee.
Winchester Mystery House Facts:
- Construction started: 1884
- Construction ends: 1922
- Cost of Construction: $5,500,000
- Length of Construction: 38 years
- Rooms: 160
- Doors: 2,000
- Windows: 10,000
- Stairways: 40
- Fireplaces: 47
- Chimneys: 17
- Bathrooms: 13
- Kitchens: 6
- Gallons of paint needed for exterior: 20,000
Source: Winchester Mystery House
Deborah Lacy loves crime fiction a little too much. You can follow her on Twitter (@quippy), if you dare.
You make me want to hop on a plane and come visit right now!
So for years I drove past the signs for this house and always wondered what is it? Why do people go there…and now I know. Pretty cool.
You make me want to hop on a plane and come visit right now.
Cool article, Deb! It’s a big part of the setting for Tim Powers’ contemporary fantasy Earthquake Weather (1997), the conclusion of a magical, electrical, ghostly trilogy that makes use of the mystery house’s hidey holes and twisty-turns into nowhere. After reading that, I’ve always wanted to visit, and what fun it would be to be touring it tonight by flashlight. ooooooohhhh
@SleuthsisterKim – What are you waiting for?
@Clare2e – the evening flash tours are pretty cool. The place adopts another whole character in the dark.
I had no idea that such a place existed. Thanks for this.
@Terrie – you have to go next time you even come near San Jose.
Sarah’s story was so sad. She’d lost the people she loved and was preyed on by psychics. She lost her mind looking for all the answers and a way to communicate with her husband and baby.