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The room is also notable because there is a strange door that opens onto a wall and another door that is too small to walk through. "It helped her employ people and share her wealth that way. She just never really stopped building." According to Boehme, Winchester had a passion for remodeling and building homes after she helped construct one back in Connecticut. Boehme said the remodels were nothing but a passion project for Winchester. However, due to the exposed areas of the basement and the third floor, which require safety helmets, children under 5 are not permitted. It is recommended that children must be 5 and up and be able to walk unassisted.
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Over the years, staff and visitors have reported several strange encounters, including hearing footsteps when no one is present, banging doors, mysterious voices, and the sounds of someone or something running across the rooftops. The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, was the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Winchester. To ward off spirits, Winchester hired laborers to constantly build and renovate the mansion 24 hours a day for 38 years. Today it is renowned for its size and its architectural curiosities. This unique tour takes you beyond the ordinary, exploring areas of the house that you don’t see during the daily mansion tour.
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Even 95 years after her death, it seemed that Sarah Winchester’s house was still holding on to some secrets. After appraisers deemed the house worthless due to its strange design, damage from the earthquakes, and long-winded construction, Marion took everything in it and auctioned it off. The current owners of the house claim it took six weeks to empty the house of all furniture, though the report is uncorroborated. In the years Sarah Winchester lived in the house, the residents of San Jose whispered about its strange construction and even stranger inhabitant, but it was in the years after her death that the wild stories became even wilder. Those looking to explore even more of the beautiful but bizarre home of Sarah Winchester should book the Mansion Tour and spend more time in the gardens and gift shop. Outside on the grounds, one staff member reported seeing a small woman dressed in black, who was thought to be none other than Sarah Winchester herself.
Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, California
The Mansion Tour ticket also includes access to the Victorian Gardens. Unlock the secrets of the Winchester Mystery House and learn about Sarah Winchester’s vast Estate with all-new audio and content. Sarah Winchester was a woman of independence, drive, and courage who lives on in legend. And the mansion she built is world renowned as much for the many design curiosities and innovations (many ahead of their time) as it is for the reported paranormal activity that resides within these walls. Located in the front portion of the house, the Daisy Bedroom, called such because of the floral motif in the stained-glass windows, is also said to be haunted. It was here that Mrs. Winchester was trapped during the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
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The quality of the construction did not seem mansion-like to me in that the rooms did not display wealth or exceptional architectural features. But those stories do, in some way, conceal the real Sarah Winchester. Publicity-shy though she may have been, she was more anchored in the real world than the spirit one. The consensus among the house’s staff is that she was a creative do-gooder who endured through profound personal loss. “She would give to causes that were dear to her, and she’d usually do it anonymously,” Boehme says.
Experience the Winchester Mystery House’s daily tour – Walk With Spirits – and explore the paranormal as explained through the Spiritualism movement. During the Walk With Spirits Tour, guests will attend the wake for a departed soul in the parlor of the home, ascend to the third floor to experience a Victorian era seance and end in the dark and foreboding basement. The Winchester Mystery House is open daily for mansion and estate tours. Unlock the secrets of the Winchester Mystery House and book your tour today. Once referred to as an “important” room to Sarah Winchester by world-renowned psychic-medium James Van Praagh, the Witches Cap had it’s doors opened on the Explore More Tour in 2017. Famous for its alleged paranormal activity and the odd shape, the Witches Cap is a popular favorite amongst guests.
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Plus, make sure to stroll through the estate and stop by the Menagerie Oddities Market, open only during Holiday Candlelight Tour days! With a variety of unique vendors, you are sure to find the perfect gift (ticket purchase necessary). What many consider to be the heart of the mansion, the séance room was once the very private and off-limits room to everyone but Sarah Winchester herself. Legends say that nearby residents heard the bell tower (located outside of the séance room) at midnight and again at 2am. Was this to summon and release spirits to communicate with them? One exit is through the entrance door, another leads to an 8-foot drop into the kitchen below, and the final is a one-way door that resembles a secret passageway.
There are many conspiracy theories surrounding the mansion, but the most popular lore is that Winchester went to a spiritualist and learned that she was being haunted by spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester gun company. Because she was living off the gun company's fortune, the spiritualist told her to move to California and build a home that would appease and trap the ghosts who follow her. Starting Friday the 13th we will be hosting Flashlight Tours every Friday evening till February 24th.
Due to the historic nature of the Winchester Estate, the Mansion Tour is not wheelchair accessible. The ADA tour includes a video tour and the self-guided Sarah Winchester Garden Tour. Guests will be able to see the infamous rooms of Sarah’s stately mansion, known around the world as the Winchester Mystery House®, and see the bizarre attributes that give the mysterious mansion its name. My daughter and I found visiting the Winchester Mystery House to be an entertaining way to spend an afternoon.
The tale that she believed she had to keep building or she would experience death is not backed up by the actual construction record of the building. There are no records of séances being held in the house and staff members claimed that Sarah had no interest in them. Sarah’s relatives did not back up the claims of her being superstitious and her reclusiveness may have been due to her many physical ailments.
You must purchase tickets to go inside the Winchester Mystery House. There are several tour options available, including a guided mansion tour, a Walk with Spirits tour, and a garden tour. The Guided Mansion Tour features the larger rooms in the mansion and guests will be able to experience the house like never before. During the one-hour adventure, you will see 110 rooms in the mansion, as well as the 3rd and 4th floors.
Most of the house still stands, and visitors can explore it today. At the time, newspapers were filled with advertisements, luring people to move across the country and settle in the newly incorporated California. Winchester first lived in San Francisco, but the weather bothered her arthritis. Instead, she decided to buy 40 acres of land and build a small farmhouse in the Santa Clara Valley. All that talk of paranormal sometimes worries parents that the tour will be to scary for children.
Over repeated visits, I came to think that if a mind were a house, it would probably look like this. An American Penelope, working in wood rather than yarn, Winchester wove and unwove eternally. Winchester hastily sketched designs on napkins or brown paper for carpenters to build additions, towers, cupolas or rooms that made no sense and had no purpose, sometimes only to be plastered over the next day. It had two chairs, an early 1900s speaker that fit into an old phonograph, and a door latched by a 1910 lock.
Winchester Mystery House™ offers complimentary parking to guests. Parking is available in the front lot, and there is overflow parking in the Santana Row garages across the street. Please arrive 30 minutes before your scheduled tour time to find parking or use a ride share service.
You’ll have to come see for yourself what lies on the other side. I must have been hoping that the house would yield up its secret to me. At first glance I was deflated, for the unusual reason that from the outside, the house wasn’t entirely weird.
The medium reportedly instructed her to constantly build a house for these ghosts. The Winchester Mystery House is a mansion in San Jose, California, that was once the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester. The house became a tourist attraction nine months after Winchester's death in 1922. The Victorian and Gothic-style mansion is renowned for its size and its architectural curiosities and for the numerous myths and legends surrounding the structure and its former owner. One ghost said to linger is that of a handyman who continues repairing a fireplace in the Grand Ballroom. The black-haired man has often been seen pushing a spectral wheelbarrow or working on the fireplace.
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