While the upper three levels were being razed due to the severe damage, the heiress temporarily relocated to a completely normal abode in Atherton twenty miles due northwest before moving back. Winchester reportedly took the quake as a sign that spirits were angry with the way she had built the mansion. As our tour guide explained, Winchester believed the maze-like layout would keep any malevolent spirits from tracking her down (and for what its worth, both our tour guides this day claimed to have personally encountered spirits during their time at the house.)Īt that time, the house stood at seven stories. Doors that open into walls and stairways that go nowhere were common, as well as more unusual features like pantry doors built into the floor and, perhaps most strikingly, the third floor door (the so-called "Door To Nowhere") that leads directly outdoors. The skeptic might say the story sounds too crazy to be real, but as we discovered, the often non-sensical layout of the house does nothing to dispel the legend. Overhead view of the Winchester House from the 1930s
Furthermore, construction on the house must never stop in order to appease those spirits.
However, it was his death, coupled with the unusual death of their only child (from Marasmus, a childhood malady which made it impossible to metabolize certain vital proteins) that, as the story goes, left Winchester distraught and led her to seek out answers for her misfortune.Īs the tale relayed by our tour guide continues, a meeting with a Boston-area medium led her to believe that the Winchesters were cursed by the spirits of those killed by the company's weapons, and that a move out to California to build a house to ward off those spirits was needed. When Sarah's husband passed away from tuberculosis in 1881, she turned out to be the sole heir to what would be the equivalent of 500 million dollars today as well as half of the existing company. One model, the Winchester 1873 Repeater, was marketed by the company as "The Gun That Won The West." The Winchester name gained immense fame and fortune through their line of rifles, which became the weapon of choice for many European settlers moving to parts west. This Winchester Rifle testimonial, located in the on-site Winchester Rifle Both the Pardee and Winchester family traveled much of the same social circles in New Haven, CT, so it wasn't a complete surprise when Sarah married the head of the Winchester family, William Wirt, in 1866. Boiled down, the Winchester House relates to Sarah Winchester (nee Pardee), a woman who was both intelligent (she was fluent in numerous languages and was fond of classic literature) and a talented musician. Time: Allow 2 hours minimum.As most visitors to the house do, we started with the main Mansion Tour, which covers the basics behind the house’s namesake occupant as well as the house itself.
Halloween Candlelight and Friday the 13th Flashlight tours also are offered. The Mansion Tour includes a 65-minute guided walk through the interior, a self-guiding tour of the Victorian gardens and access to two museums displaying collections of Winchester rifles and other products made by the arms manufacturing company. The design was so complex-160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 13 bathrooms, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces, blind closets, secret passageways and 40 staircases-that the heiress and her servants needed maps to navigate their way around. Bristling with a multitude of gables and cupolas, the wooden structure was under continuous construction for 38 years until Winchester passed away in 1922. (between I-280 and Stevens Creek Blvd.) This Victorian mansion's labyrinthine layout was designed to baffle the spirits that allegedly haunted Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Arms fortune and mistress of the house.
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