Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester Mystery House stands at 525 South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, California ^{3, 1}. The National Park Service describes it as a 160-room Victorian mansion built by Sarah L. Winchester, wife of the rifle manufacturer William Wirt Winchester ¹. According to the Park Service, the East Lake shingle Queen Anne house was built at an estimated cost of $5 million and includes gold plated fixtures and stained Tiffany glass windows set in silver designs ¹. Continual building and remodeling produced a house of 160 rooms covering about six acres ^{1, 4}.

The current operators put the mansion at roughly 24,000 square feet, grown from an eight-room farmhouse, with 10,000 windows and 2,000 doors ². The 1974 National Register nomination describes light wood frame construction with brick and concrete foundations, and the walls of two basements in the same materials ³. The original Winchester estate covered 161.919 acres before Sarah Winchester's heirs subdivided and sold it ³. The ballroom holds two Tiffany art-glass windows whose stained glass panels carry lines from Shakespeare, among them "These same thoughts people this little world" ⁸. Smithsonian Magazine notes that the mansion now sits between the I-280 freeway, a mobile home park and the remains of a Space Age movie theater ⁸.

The house is listed in the National Register of Historic Places under reference number 74000559 ^{7, 1}. The National Register documentation was published on August 7, 1974 ⁷. The listing cites architecture/engineering and person as its applicable criteria, gives 1884 and 1922 as significant years, and names Sarah L. Winchester as the significant person ⁷. California also recognized the house as Registered Historical Landmark #868 ^{3, 4}.

Sarah Winchester was born Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1839, was known as the Belle of New Haven, and attended the Young Ladies Collegiate Institute at Yale University ⁶. She and William Wirt Winchester married on September 30, 1862 ^{1, 3, 6}. Their only child, Annie Pardee, died about a month after birth in 1866 ^{1, 3, 6}.

William Wirt Winchester died on March 7, 1881 ^{1, 3}. SFGATE reports that he died of tuberculosis, and that Sarah left the East Coast afterward ^{9, 6}. Her share of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company amounted to roughly a $20 million inheritance, 50 percent ownership and an income of about $1,000 a day ^{9, 6}. The Firearms Research Center account states that she initially inherited 777 shares, close to half the company's stock ⁶.

SFGATE reports that she moved west for family reasons, not supernatural ones: her brother-in-law was president of Mills College, and two of her sisters already lived in the Bay Area ^{9, 6}. According to the National Register nomination, she bought an eight-room farmhouse in what is now San Jose from a Dr. Caldwell ³. She called the place Llanada Villa ⁶. In her husband's honor she gave $1,325,000 to build a tuberculosis center in Connecticut, a building that remains a chest clinic ^{6, 9}.

Government sources state that construction began in 1884 and continued until Sarah Winchester's death in 1922 ^{1, 3, 4}. The site's own operators date the start to 1886 and describe 36 years of building ^{2, 5}. Smithsonian Magazine's account has her employing shifts of 16 carpenters, paid three times the going rate, working around the clock from 1886 until her death ⁸. SFGATE reports that the work stopped repeatedly, citing Winchester's own letters about dismissing workmen and suspending construction ^{9, 6}.

Her niece Marion Daisy Merriman moved in with her in 1888 and lived there for 15 years ⁶. Samuel Franklin Leib served as Winchester's legal consultant, advising her on property sales, investments and taxes, and History San Jose holds his papers ¹⁰. John Hansen was ranch foreman on the estate from the late 1890s until Winchester's death in 1922, and his daybooks, which record the work and Mrs. Winchester's movements, are also held by History San Jose ¹⁰.

The house carried features ahead of their time, including early gas lights, indoor plumbing, showers, an annunciator communication system and possibly wool insulation, and Winchester herself invented a greenhouse drainage system and laundry tubs with attached soap trays and washboards ⁶. An Otis elevator was installed in 1916 to give her access to the second and third floors after she began using a wheelchair late in life ^{5, 2}. Easy risers were installed in frequently used areas to make stairs easier as her rheumatoid arthritis worsened, and a needlepoint shower let her bathe without climbing into a tub ⁵.

Sarah Winchester died in September 1922 at the age of 85, on September 5 according to the National Register nomination ^{1, 3}. At her death the house had 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms and six kitchens ^{6, 2}.

The National Park Service account says that Mrs. Winchester, upset at the deaths of her husband and daughter, reportedly consulted a spiritualist who told her that victims killed by Winchester rifles sought revenge, that they had cursed her, and that she must build ceaselessly to appease them ^{1, 3}.

SFGATE credits a San Francisco Chronicle article of February 24, 1895 with laying the foundation for the legend, and notes that the article described her belief that she would die when the house was finished, not ghosts ^{9, 6}. SFGATE reviewed dozens of California newspaper articles about Winchester and found none published during her lifetime that described her hiding from ghosts ⁹. The same reporting notes that there are no contemporary accounts of her holding seances in the house, and that the so-called seance room was reportedly a gardener's quarters ^{9, 6}. The Firearms Research Center states that there is no evidence she had a seance room at all ⁶. Her lawyer, Samuel Leib, said after her death that she was as sane and clear-headed as any woman he had known, with a better grasp of business than most men ⁹.

Smithsonian Magazine describes a staircase, one of about 40, that rises and ends at a ceiling, along with cabinets and doors that open onto walls and windows set into interior walls ⁸. The Firearms Research Center explains the stairway to nowhere as the result of boarding up upper floors badly damaged in the San Francisco earthquake, and the door that opens onto a drop as a workers' construction entrance for a materials pulley ⁶. In 1975 workers found a room holding two chairs, an early 1900s phonograph speaker and a door latched by a 1910 lock, apparently forgotten and built over ⁸.

The operators' FAQ says that since 1923, guests and employees have reported hearing voices and footsteps when no one was there, feeling an unexpected presence, and seeing figures in the halls ². The operators suggest that some of the spirits said to linger may be former members of Sarah Winchester's staff, and later museum staff, while stating that they cannot say what causes the experiences ².

The operators describe the mansion's two basements as areas infamous for their reported paranormal activity ⁵. On the Basement & Attic Access add-on they say that paranormal investigation equipment may be available for guest use in select areas, which they call among the most active parts of the mansion ⁵. Guests may submit photographs to a Paranormal Photos Gallery, and the operators state that their staff are not photo analysis experts and cannot confirm or deny unexplained phenomena in those images ².

The operators note that the daytime Mansion Tour is not a paranormal tour and focuses on history and architecture ².

Visitors commonly describe cold spots in particular rooms, doors and door handles that seem to move on their own, and the sense of being followed through the narrow upper hallways. Tour guests and staff also report the smell of cooking near the old kitchens, faint music or organ notes around the ballroom, and the figure of a man with a wheelbarrow in the basement, a story tour staff tie to a handyman on Sarah Winchester's payroll. Many visitors report nothing unusual at all and come away talking about the architecture instead.

The National Park Service says the house was sold shortly after Sarah Winchester's death in 1922 and then opened to the public as the Winchester Mystery House ¹. The Firearms Research Center states that John and Mayme Brown, who had backgrounds in rollercoaster design and amusement parks, bought the house after her death and opened it to tours ⁶. SFGATE instead reports that the Browns rented the house when it went up for rent, and began playing up its strangeness ⁹. The mansion opened to the public in 1923, according to its current operators ². The 1974 nomination estimated that roughly 3,000,000 people had toured the house in more than 50 years of operation, with more than 150,000 in the preceding year ³.

Winchester Mystery House, LLC, a private organization, owns the property ². The estate is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends, and closes on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day ². It fully closes 90 minutes after the final tour begins, and the entrance gates close 15 minutes after the final tour departs ². The guided Mansion Tour passes through 110 of the 160 rooms and runs about 60 to 65 minutes, and garden access is complimentary with a Mansion Tour ticket ^{5, 2}. Children four and under are free, advance online ticket purchase is recommended, and questions about hours and visits go to 408-247-2000 ².

The mansion interior is not wheelchair accessible and the tour involves many stairs, while the grounds and gift shop are accessible and an onsite ADA video tour is offered ². There are 47 staircases in the mansion, and the three elevators Sarah Winchester installed are inoperable for guest safety ². Two free parking lots serve the site, one in front and one behind off Olsen Drive, with overflow parking at Santana Row, and lockers are available for valuables ². Pets are not permitted except service animals ². Cafe 13, inside the gift shop, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and food is not allowed on tours, though sealed bottled beverages are ². Non-flash photography is allowed inside the mansion on daytime tours, but videography and live streaming are not ². The house is not climate controlled, with no central air or heat, so guests are advised to dress for the season ². The site also offers venue rentals for private events and weddings, and group tours for 20 or more guests ².