Winchester Mystery House by Niki2

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Winchester Mystery House

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Sunday, February 28, 2010 06:43
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Saturday, February 27, 2010 9:59 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Okay, I mentioned the Winchester Mystery House and Mike knew of it, so it encouraged me. This is about a mansion in San Jose which is famous and weird and beautiful, so don’t go further if you’re not interested. It should probably go in Talk Story, but hey, it IS a real world event, so...I took Choey down there yesterday and we did the tour; photos aren’t allowed any more, so I got these off the internet. We’re going to go back sometime with the little camera, because if you drop behind the tour, you can take photos. She built a lot of skylights in so the house is surprisingly light in many places. But meanwhile, bear with me, I got these off the internet and some may not come out but I can’t know that until I put ‘em up, so if I find any bad ones I’ll go back and fix.

I grew up down there, so have been through it often. It’s weird; the minute I go inside it’s like coming home; Sarah and the house are so entwined it’s like the house IS her, which I guess in a way it is.

It was built by Sarah Winchester, the wife of the heir to the Winchester Repeating Rifle fortune—in other words, RICH! She was obsessed with the spirit world, and believed that the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifles had taken the life of her husband and their child. She therefore did everything that she could to try and appease the spirits, lest they harm her. She was told by a medium that they wanted her to keep on building; as long as she did, she would live forever, so she moved West from Connecticut, bought a small farmhouse in San Jose, and built and built until her death: all in all, continuous construction for 38 years. In the end it had 160 rooms and covered 4.5 acres. The tour winds in and out of rooms, and in the end you’ve walked one mile. You couldn’t find your own way out if you wanted to, trust me. The rooms are small, in the style of the era and the way she built made it a real maze.

As I mentioned, it was the inspiration for Stephen King’s Rose Red. It’s nothing as spectacular as that house; all the furniture was willed away so removed on her death, and the only rooms they’ve re-created were done with period furniture from elsewhere. I’m not going to show photos of most of the rooms, we’ve all seen Victorian rooms. But these give you an idea of how the house was. It ended up, upon her death,

This is the house as it appears today. It was originally seven stories high, but in the ’06 quake the tower fell, leaving it four stories high. Here’s the original:

This is the only known photograph of Sarah, sitting in her carriage:

Naturally, it’s supposedly haunted. There have been a number of strange events reported at the Winchester House for many years and they continue to be reported today. Dozens of psychics have visited the house over the years and most have come away convinced, or claim to be convinced, that spirits still wander the place. In addition to the ghost of Sarah Winchester, there have also been many other sightings throughout the years.

In the years that the house has been open to the public, employees and visitors alike have had unusual encounters here. There have been footsteps; banging doors; mysterious voices; windows that bang so hard they shatter; cold spots; strange moving lights; doorknobs that turn by themselves.... and don’t forget the scores of psychics who have their own claims of phenomena to report.

Sarah was obsessed with the number 13. Many windows have 13 panes and there are 13 bathrooms, with 13 windows in the 13th Bathroom. There are also 13 wall panels in the room prior to the 13th Bathroom, and 13 steps leading to that bathroom. The Carriage Entrance Hall floor is divided into 13 cement sections. Her will was in 13 parts and she signed it 13 times. Here are even more thirteens: 13 rails by the floor-level skylight in the South Conservatory, 13 steps on many of the stairways, 13 squares on each side of the Otis electric elevator, 13 glass cupolas on the Greenhouse, 13 holes in the sink drain covers, 13 ceiling panels in some of the rooms, and 13 gas jets on the Ballroom chandelier. (Mrs. Winchester had the thirteenth one added!)
Mrs. Winchester traveled through her house in a roundabout fashion, supposedly to confuse any mischievous ghosts that might be following her.

She was only 4’10” high, so the ceilings are low. In order to keep building, she rebuilt many rooms over and over, and put in tons of detail everywhere. There are things like the staircase that goes into the ceiling:

Doors and cupboards which open onto nothing but walls:

The Door to Nowhere from the outside. From the inside, it opens onto what you see; a two-story drop to the ground.

Cupboard opens onto wall. On the other side of this one is a cupboard which, when you open it, gives onto the rest of the house.

Window that opens onto wall:

These are the “easy riser” staircases she had put in; in her later years, she suffered from crippling arthritis, so had staircases removed and these put in. The first one is the “Y staircase” It continues off to the right, down to the kitchens, and the stairs leading up on the other side end up 9” higher than where they start. So you can go down to go up to go up and down to go down.

This one, you go up and around and around and around, just to go up 9 feet.

In this one, you can see the shadow of the original staircase, which she had removed:

Bedroom where she died (refurbished in period pieces)

This is the grand ballroom...never used. She never had company except family in the house.

http://www.terragalleria.com/images/us-ca/usca34988.jpeg

The house is filled with Tiffany stained-glass windows and doors. This is from what they call the “$25,000 room” (in 1900 dollars), all the leftover stained-glass windows and doors which were never put in.

Here are samples of the Tiffany windows and doors throughout the house:

That’s the front door; since she had no visitors, the only people who ever used it were Sarah herself and the workmen!

She had a thing for spiders, too, which shows up throughout the house:

Sarah designed this one herself; hence the spider motif.

Her favorite flowers were daisies, so they show up a lot too. She designed this one, too; it’s from the bedroom she was in when the ’06 quake hit; 13 windows, of course.

She thought the quake was aimed at her, so closed off the entire part of the house where she’d been when it hit; it wasn’t opened again until after her death.

The wallpapers were fantastic:

This is what’s left that wasn’t finished...rolls and rolls of expensive wallpapers:

...and the woodwork and ceilings:

She had elaborate spying features built into the house to keep an eye on her servants. There are also stories of how she sometimes appeared noiselessly behind them to watch them work. This is the séance room, which has a glass “door” through which she could watch her servants in the kitchen below:

Looking up from the kitchen to the séance room:

There were three exits to the room, but only one entrance. To leave, you went through what looked like a cabinet, but actually a door to another room—but there were no handles on the other side of it, so you couldn’t get back INTO the séance room that way. Here’s the room and the “cabinet” door to the closet next door:

Obviously, I could go on forever. Photos are no longer allowed, which pissed Choey off. But if you hang back behind the group, you can take photos, so we’re going to go back sometime and sneak shots. She and I are both tweaked out by a lot of the neat details others didn’t photograph...there are so many details in the house, it’s amazing.

The grounds are spectacular too; they have a tour just for that. Maybe when we go back we’ll take that one, as well. The “Mansion Tour” takes over an hour, and to do mansion, gardens and behind-the-scenes tour takes three. Lotta walking!

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Saturday, February 27, 2010 12:42 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

It is astonishing, and in a way very, very sad. Here was this exceedingly wealthy woman who was just quietly losing her mind, and doesn't really seem to have ever sought real help. But what came out of her descent into madness is whimsical, magical, beautiful, and heartbreaking.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero, Real World Event Discussions

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Saturday, February 27, 2010 7:21 PM

OPPYH

I saw this on Ripley's Believe it or Not in the early 80's.
It had always been in the back of my mind, but the last few years I was starting to wonder if I imagined it(I was 7 or 8 when I watched it).
I'm not crazy. Thanks for posting this Niki.

-------------------------------------------------

70's TV FOREVER

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Sunday, February 28, 2010 6:43 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Glad you guys enjoyed it. Yes, Mike, it's sad--of COURSE she wouldn't seek help; in that age, to do so would be to admit you're mad, and she'd be locked up probably. Only the rich could get away with being that mad back then (including Hearst, who built his "castle", and many others).

No, Oppyh, you certainly didn't imagine it. If anyone gets near San Jose on a vacation, I highly recommend it. It's neat. hell, if you get to SF, get my phone number and I'll TAKE you there; I have many people, and I'm always up for going!

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