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MYSTERY HOUSE SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA HOW TO

You don’t visit all of the house but more parts of the house are now included in the tour than ever before. We choose the tour of the house which seemed just the right amount of time for our family. You have a choice of a tour of the house (1 hour) or the house and gardens (2 hours). So, I guess in that respect the Browns were right on the money. Like a giant fun house at a fun fair but without the plastic ghosts jumping out at you. The kids thought it was more wacky and fun than scary. There is nothing particularly scary in the house. Our tour group had about 20 people of which 5 were children. There are regular tours that take you through the Winchester Mystery House. More attractive than the inside of the house which was pretty dark even on a clear summer day, Visiting the Winchester Mystery House

The house has 10,000 window panes, 467 doorways, 160 rooms, 52 skylights, 47 fireplaces, 40 bedrooms, 40 staircases, 17 chimneys, 6 kitchens, 3 elevators, 13 bathrooms, 2 mirrors and 1 shower.

There have been so many addition and changes to the farmhouse that its now hard to know where the original house rooms would have stood. Winchester bought the house it was an 8 room farmhouse set on 161 acres. Here are some random facts about the Winchester Mystery House that are interesting. Unfortunately no photographs were allowed of the inside of the house. So, there you have it… a choice between a haunted house or a Masonic conspiracy. Unfortunately, Sarah was born a woman in a time when women weren’t allowed to be architects and so everyone just thought she was a little crazy. She wanted to build a house that was a puzzle similar to Rosslyn Chapel which figured so heavily in Freemason thought (according to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code). She was fascinated with the English Renaissance philosopher, Francis Bacon, Freemasonic concepts of encryption and mathematics. If you want to read an alternative theory about Sarah Winchester, the book Captive of the Labyrinth by historian Mary Ignoffo puts forth the theory that Sarah just wanted to be a visionary architect. The Mystery House designation was given to the house in a newspaper article after a visit by famed illusionist, Harry Houdini.

MYSTERY HOUSE SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA HOW TO

John Brown had a history of working in carnivals and he knew how to sell a good story. In 1923, the house itself was sold at auction and eventually wound up in the hands of a John Brown who saw the possibilities in opening it up as a tourist attraction. Without a 160 room mansion, the furniture contained within those 160 rooms would be a little hard to store! She left all the furniture in the house to her niece who put it up for auction. Clearly she had done a good job of outrunning malevolent spirits. In any event, Sarah Winchester died in 1922 at the ripe old age of 82. The Pardee side of the family were wealthy in their own right so it wasn’t like she was going to be poor if she got rid of the Winchester money. She neither got rid of her shares in the evil Winchester money nor the money that came from it. Without the money, the spirits had no reason to haunt her.

I wondered why Sarah Winchester would not have just given away her inheritance to charity. The construction foreman had a house on-site. All those Native Americans, civil war soldiers, outlaws, sheriffs etc who had been killed using the Winchester rifles did not go gently into that good night. Is the Winchester Mystery House Haunted?Īccording to the legend, when Sarah was living on the East Coast, she consulted a famous medium who told her that she was a victim of the blood money of her inheritance. Even in today’s money, Sarah’s inheritance would be considered a nice chunk of change but back in the late 19th century, it made her an enormously wealthy woman. She had about a $1000 a day to spend as she wished. Upon William’s death, Sarah inherited $20 million dollars in cash and shares in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. She traveled the world for 3 years and then eventually settled in California where she had relatives from the Pardee side of her family. When William died in 1881 at the age of 43, Sarah was devastated.

Unfortunately, they lost an infant daughter to a rare disease in 1886. The couple were happy, young socialites living a charmed life in New England. Advertisements for the Winchester Rifles which played a major part in US history.