Winchester Mystery House

The plan was really to enjoy sea breeze at Santa Cruz, but unfortunately, our skin wasn't thick enough to bare the 58 degree cold. So instead, we hit up the place that I always planned on going - The Winchester Mystery House. It's a $70 million history landmark #868, so despite the bad reviews(from quite a lot of sources) and the pricey ticket($26 for a 65-minutes mansion tour), I gave it a go. It turned out....

to be pretty good, actually. Maybe my subconscious told me to squeeze the most out of it and be excited the second I pull out my wallet or maybe it was just a genuinely cool place to check out.

Enough of the intro, here's some interesting part of the tour. I don't want to give it all away( but mostly), it's the parts that I could still remember:

Located in San Jose, the mansion was built in the 1880's.

Humongous estate, used to cover Santana Row and the region around it. The touring spot we see now is only a fraction of its original size.

The mansion, at one point, used to go up to 7 stories high, until SF earthquake hit. Today it stands at 4 stories.

There's never been a guest to house. Rumor has it, our 26th President Theodore Roosevelt was a good fan of the Winchester Firearms, but even he was turned down(owned) when he tried visiting Mrs. Winchester.

Speaking of Mrs. Winchester, here's the family tree.


She stood at 4'11", meaning she could easily walk through this door next to Michelle.
Her favorite number was 13. (I did not make this one up.)

The wealth was gained by the business that Mr. Winchester was doing -Firearms. Mrs. Winchester inherited about 20.5 million(back in 1880's) upon her husband's death. Making her the sugar mama of the time.

She wasn't happy, though, both her daughter and husband died at a young age. Through psychics, she was told that the deaths were caused upon by a curse of the firearms they made- Many were killed by their weapons and the spirits now came to seek vengeance. The only solution was to continuously building a house for it can never be completed for her and the spirits. Then there it was, the beginning of the Winchester Mystery house. The mansion was a continuous work in progress for 38 years, hence the weird window on the floor and stairway that leads to nowhere..etc.

In her later years, she developed arthritis and it was painful to lift her legs, so she changed all the steps to no more than couple inches above each other.


Her room and where she past.

Spooky.

Door with the 8 feet drop.


Window on the floor.


The most expensive window out there.

Custom made by Tiffany from New York. It's original to the house. It cost $1,500 at the time and it's now priceless.

Oriental Room.

We had to do it. I missed taking a picture of the wall paper, but it was all hand drawn and imported from Japan.

This one's the crystal room.

The white spots are small little crystals embedded in the wall paper. (Baller status.)

I wasn't joking when I said her favorite number's 13. She purchased the chandiliar for her grand ball room($9,000 at the time), but it only had 12 gas lights, so she added the 13th one in the center.


If you haven't already know, she's quite superstitious. It was said that an upside down pole could bring you good luck, so she changed every-single-pole in the house upside down.

And that was it, for now.

The crib was truely amazing. We were exhausted from checking out the couple of the 160 rooms in the mansion. But yea, it was must go, I'd say, atleast for a life time.
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Santana Row was right next door, so we went around and put my tripod in use.






It says 523. Don't be hatin'.





Good day, good trip.

-Benson|| Follow me on Twitter || Join the movement|| Check the original website

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