Winchester Mystery House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
California Historical Landmark No. 868[2]
View of the mansion from the southeast
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Location	525 South Winchester Boulevard, San Jose, California 95128
Coordinates	37°19′6.10″N 121°57′2.74″W / 37.3183611°N 121.9507611°W / 37.3183611; -121.9507611Coordinates: 37°19′6.10″N 121°57′2.74″W / 37.3183611°N 121.9507611°W / 37.3183611; -121.9507611
Built	1884; 138 years ago (1884) to 1922; 100 years ago (1922)
Architectural style	Queen Anne, Late Victorian
Website	winchestermysteryhouse.com
NRHP reference No.	74000559[1]
CHISL No.	868[2]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	August 7, 1974
Designated CHISL	1925

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. Located at 525 South Winchester Blvd. in San Jose, the Queen Anne Style Victorian mansion is renowned for its size, its architectural curiosities, and its lack of any master building plan. It is a designated California historical landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is privately owned and serves as a tourist attraction.

History

Windows inside the house

In Sarah Winchester's later years, the toilet had a window for a nurse to check on her.

After her husband's death from tuberculosis in 1881, Sarah Winchester inherited more than US$20.5 million (equivalent to $576 million in 2021). She also received nearly 50% ownership of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, giving her an income of roughly $1,000 per day, equivalent to $28,000 a day in 2021.^[3]

After her infant daughter died of an illness known as marasmus, a children's disease where the body wastes away, and her husband died of pulmonary tuberculosis, a Boston medium^[4]—supposedly channeling the spirit of her late husband— told her that she should leave her home in New Haven and travel West, where she must continuously build a home for herself and the spirits of people who had fallen victim to Winchester rifles.^[5]

She left Connecticut and headed for California. She may have simply sought a change of setting, and something to keep her occupied during her lengthy depression. However, others maintain that she believed she must move West, and continuously build a house, the sounds of whose construction would keep at bay the spirits of those who had fallen to her late husband's firearms.^[5][6]

In 1884, she purchased an unfinished farmhouse in the Santa Clara Valley and began building her mansion. Carpenters were hired and worked on the house day and night until it rose to seven stories. Eschewing architects, she directed the additions herself, augmenting the building in a haphazard fashion. Before the 1906 earthquake, the house had been seven stories high and carpenters may have been brought in initially to repair damage caused by the quake.^[7] Today it is only four stories, and many of the "strange" architectural choices, such as stairs and doors leading to nowhere, were a result of repairs made after the earthquake. Environmental psychologists have theorized that the house's odd layout itself contributes to the feeling that it was haunted.^[7][8]

The house is predominantly made of redwood, as Mrs. Winchester preferred the wood; however, she disliked the look of it. She, therefore, demanded that a faux grain and stain be applied. This is why almost all the wood in the home is covered. Approximately 20,500 U.S. gallons (78,000 L) of paint were required to paint the house.

The home itself is built using a floating foundation that is believed to have saved it from total collapse in the 1906 earthquake and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. This type of construction allows the home to shift freely, as it is not completely attached to its brick base. There are roughly 161 rooms, including 40 bedrooms, two ballrooms (one completed and one unfinished) as well as 47 fireplaces, over 10,000 panes of glass, 17 chimneys (with evidence of two others), two basement levels and three elevators. Winchester's property was about 162 acres (66 ha) at one time, but the estate has since been reduced to 4.5 acres (1.8 ha) – the minimum necessary to contain the house and nearby outbuildings. It has gold and silver chandeliers, hand-inlaid parquet floors and trim, and a vast array of colors and materials.

Due to Mrs. Winchester's debilitating arthritis, special "easy riser" stairways were installed as a replacement for her original steep construction. This allowed her to move about her home freely as she was only able to raise each foot a few inches. The home's conveniences were rare at the time of its construction. These included steam and forced-air heating, modern indoor toilets and plumbing, push-button gas lights, and Mrs. Winchester's personal (and only) hot shower from indoor plumbing. There are also three elevators, including an Otis electric and one of which was powered by a rare horizontal hydraulic elevator piston. Most elevator pistons are vertical to save space, but Winchester preferred the improved functionality of the horizontal configuration.^{[citation needed]} There was only one working toilet for Winchester.

Manual and emergency tools for the Otis Automatic Electric elevator

Mrs. Winchester never skimped on the many adornments that she believed contributed to its architectural beauty. Many of the stained glass windows were created by the Pacific American Decorative Company.^[9] Some were designed specifically for her, and others by her, including a "spider web" window that featured her favorite web design. This window was never installed but exists in the so-called "$25,000 storage room" – so named because its contents were originally appraised at a value of $25,000. The value today is inestimable, but $25,000 would be equivalent to $405,000 in 2021.

Aerial view

A view of the house from a highrise building to the south

When Winchester died, all of her possessions (apart from the house) were bequeathed to her niece and personal secretary. Her niece then took everything she wanted and sold the rest in a private auction. It supposedly took six trucks working eight hours a day for six weeks to remove all of the furniture from the home, an account disputed by Winchester's biographer.^[10] Mrs. Winchester made no mention of the mansion in her will, and appraisers considered the house worthless due to damage caused by the earthquake, the unfinished design, and the impractical nature of its construction. It was sold at auction to a local investor for over $135,000, and subsequently leased for ten years to John and Mayme Brown,^[11] who eventually purchased the house. In February 1923, five months after Winchester's death, the house was opened to the public, with Mayme Brown serving as the first tour guide.^[12]

Today the home is owned by Winchester Investments LLC,^[13] a privately held company representing the descendants of John and Mayme Brown.^[11] The Browns are largely responsible for creating a false narrative that the home retained unique touches that reflect Mrs. Winchester's preoccupation with warding off malevolent spirits. They claimed these spirits are said to have directly inspired her as to the way the house should be built. However, this was not the case and was a legend spun to attract more tourists to the house. Many of the anomalies in the house were in fact a result of repairs to damages caused by the 1906 earthquake.^[14]

Tour guides at the house often make claims of Sarah Winchester having patented various architectural features of the house, but a simple search of the US Patent and Trademark Database produces zero patents assigned to her.^[15][16]

In 2016, it was announced that another room with period furniture was built in the courtyard: an attic space that contains a pump organ, Victorian couch, dress form, sewing machine, and paintings. This room was made available for viewing by the public and features a shooting range game.^[17]

In 2017, the Winchester Mystery House debuted their first new daytime tour in 20 years, the "Explore More Tour". This tour takes guests through rooms never before opened to the public and explores the rooms left unfinished at the time of Sarah Winchester's death.^[18]

In popular culture

• The house is the primary setting for Michaela Roessner's 1993 science fiction novel Vanishing Point, in which it becomes the home of a squatter community following the disappearance of most of the human race.^[19]
• The Winchester house is the setting of a subplot in the 1997 Tim Powers fantasy novel Earthquake Weather.^[20]
• The Haunting of Winchester is a ghost-story musical by Craig Bohmler and Mary Bracken Phillips that takes place in the house. It was commissioned by the San Jose Repertory Theatre for its 25th anniversary season,^[21][22] and premiered in September–October 2005.^{[22][23][24][25]}
• The British paranormal TV investigation show "Most Haunted" conducted a seven-hour live TV investigation of the house for the Travel Channel on Monday October 19, 2007, making it television history, as it was the first ever 7 hour live TV paranormal investigation. Hosted by British presenter Paul Ross, the team consisted of the regular Most Haunted members including Yvette Fielding, Karl Beattie and Dr Ciaran O'Keeffe.^[26][27][28]
• A house with a comparable design and history but set a millennium into the future from the time of the Winchester house is a narrative location in the 2007 science fiction novel House of Suns. Instead of being home to and built by a weapons heiress, it is a cloning heiress responsible due to her fear of the cloned souls exacting revenge for their unwarranted duplication.
• For the 2012 episode of MythBusters "Smell of Fear", the build team visited the Winchester Mystery House to look around and later watch "one of the scariest movies of all time" (the title of which wasn't revealed) on a television that they set up in the grand ballroom, then gather their sweat samples for testing.^[29] (This clip was not seen in full on the American version of the episode.) Later on, in the "Aftershow" about the episode, Kari Byron revealed that after she first visited the Mystery House as a Brownie it had given her nightmares and that the house was "still creepy".^[30]
• Ghost Adventures^[31] and Ghost Brothers^[32] filmed episodes in 2016 related to the house and its spiritual encounters.
• Sarah Winchester, Phantom Opera, is a 24-minute film by French filmmaker Bertrand Bernello, which had its North American premiere at the 54th New York Film Festival, October 2016. It is an imaginative narrative of Sarah Winchester's life with emphasis on the Mystery House.^[33][34]
• In 2017, filming took place on the property for the film Winchester, featuring Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester.^[35] The film was released on February 2, 2018.^[36]
• In 2018, the Lore podcast produce an episode that described the Winchester Mansion called "Locked Away"^[37]
• Winchester is a 2018 supernatural horror film directed by Michael and Peter Spierig.
• In 2019, Criminal podcast produced an episode about the Winchester Mansion titled "The Widow and the Winchester".^[38]
• The Winchester Mystery House was featured twice in BuzzFeed Unsolved which included them staying in the house overnight.
• The Winchester Mystery House was featured on the 100th episode of American Horror Story.
• House of Penance, a Dark Horse comic by Peter Tomasi, Ian Bertram, and Dave Stewart, is a hallucinatory gothic horror story that takes place during the building of The Winchester Mystery House.
• 'Mrs Winchester's Gun Club' a novel by Douglas Bruton (2019)^[39]
• In January 2021, an episode of the award-winning podcast This Paranormal Life^[40] was released discussing the Winchester Mystery House. The hosts deemed all claims of haunting to be false.^[41]
• The mansion in the miniseries Rose Red created by Stephen King is greatly inspired by the Winchester Mystery House.^{[citation needed]}
• The property is the setting for Issue No.45 of Alan Moore's 'Saga of the Swamp Thing, entitled 'Ghost Dance'.

Gallery

• 

  Woodwork surrounding fireplace

• 

  Music room

• 

  Dark wood paneling of walls and ceiling

• 

  One of many instruments

• 

  Sitting area

• 

  Sitting room

• 

  Skylights

• 

  Stairwell

• 

  Clough & Warren Reed Organ

• 

  Stairs to nowhere

• 

  Clothes wringer

See also

• Haunting of Winchester House, a film by The Asylum loosely based on the myths surrounding the house

References

Citations

Bibliography

• Ignoffo, Mary Jo (2010). Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune. Columbia, Mo: Univ. of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0826219053.

External links

Media related to Winchester Mystery House at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• Dunning, Brian (March 22, 2022). "Skeptoid #824: Demystifying the Winchester Mystery House". Skeptoid. Retrieved May 14, 2022.