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These were constructed to help Sarah Wincheter be more mobile through her house due to the great pain she suffered from with arthritis. Less than 6 months after Sarah died, the house was bought, leased to a couple called John and Mayme Brown and opened up to tourists. The house is owned by a company called Winchester Investments LLC today, which represents the interests of the Browns’ descendants. It’s unclear why the number 13 was deemed so important by Sarah, but it recurs repeatedly throughout the construction and design of the house. There are 13-paned windows, 13-panelled ceilings and 13-step flights of stairs. Since 1923, many guests and employees have experienced strange phenomena while inside Sarah Winchester’s beautiful mansion.
SOME SAY THE SYMBOLS IN THE HOUSE POINT NOT TO GHOSTS, BUT FRANCIS BACON.
One mover told American Weekly the Winchester House was a place "where downstairs leads neither to the cellar nor upstairs to the roof." Instead of building a university or a library, Sarah Winchester built a counter-legend to the thousands of American gunslinger stories. And in this counter-legend, the ghosts of the gun casualties materialize, and we remember them.
AHEAD OF HER TIME
This newfound money made her one of the wealthiest women in the world at the time. We offer the Mansion Tour for guests to learn about the amazing woman at the heart of this home, and to see all the bizarre architectural designs and mysterious elements of the Winchester Mystery House. But there is only so much we can show you and tell you about in one hour.
Legend and lore
All that talk of paranormal sometimes worries parents that the tour will be to scary for children. Not to worry – all ages are welcome and the tour is very family friendly! Children five and under are free and ages 6-12 will need a ticket. Want to hear more ghost stories about the Winchester Mystery House?
Through the medium, William told his widow that their tragedies (the couple had only one child, a daughter named Annie, who died at six weeks old) were a result of the blood money the family had made off of the Winchester rifles. In order to protect herself, William said that Sarah must "build a home for [herself] and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon." Sarah Winchester herself was an ardent spiritualist who "fell under the thrall" of a medium who told her that she would be haunted by the spirits of the dead who had been killed by her family's guns. Never allow the spirits to find a way through its corridors to her.
There, she bought a simple eight-room farmhouse that she would go on to transform into a marvelous, madcap, 160-room mansion that would come to be known as the Winchester Mystery House. Perhaps the same mental process happens with a country’s historical narratives about its most contentious and difficult topics—war, conquest, violence, guns. The family name was synonymous by the 1900s with a multi-firing rifle, and the Winchester family had made its fortune sending more than 8 million of them into the world.
AN EARTHQUAKE ONCE RATTLED THE HOUSE AND TRAPPED SARAH.
"I think Sarah was trying to repeat that experience by doing something they both loved," Boehme told the Los Angeles Times. She also suspects that Sarah was just an ardent—albeit eccentric—philanthropist who used her family fortune to purposefully employ the San Jose community. "She had a social conscience and she did try to give back," Boehme offered, noting the hospital Sarah built in her husband's name. The house took some 38 years to build, supposedly inspired by the advice of a psychic, and construction went ahead without an architect or plans. The result is a haphazard, labyrinth-like structure full of odd features, such as corridors to nowhere and doors that don’t open. Instead of taking you to another floor, they lead right into the ceiling.
The Guided Mansion Tour
Visitors to the house have long been troubled by unexplained phenomena and the feeling of an other-worldly presence. The third floor, in particular, is said to be a hot spot for eerie goings-on and supernatural occurrences. Another version of the story says she believed her inheritance was cursed by the spirits of those killed by Winchester firearms and that she moved to escape them. The more prosaic theory suggests that after a double tragedy Sarah wanted a fresh start and a project to keep her mind occupied. The full story of the Winchester Mystery House is featured in season 3, episode 1 of House Beautiful's haunted house podcast, Dark House.
The Winchester House has many 13-paned windows and 13-paneled ceilings, as well as 13-step stairways. But the pièce de résistance might be the house's 13th bathroom, which contains 13 windows of its own. In 1906, the great San Francisco Earthquake caused three floors of the then seven-story house to cave in.
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. We do ask that any minor be accompanied with an adult at any time. Charming Sausalito is a great place to spend a day, and can be easily reached on a beautiful ferry ride from San Francisco. This tranquil escape within Golden Gate Park is full of history, culture, and beauty. The Winchester Mystery House offers four different tours (more on each below), plus seasonal tours and scary encounters to be had.
Its ballroom features two meticulously crafted Tiffany art-glass windows. The windows have stained glass panels with lines from Shakespeare. One reads, “These same thoughts people this little world.” It’s from the prison soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Richard II.
12 Most Haunted Houses in America - Travel + Leisure
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There was no plan – no official blueprints were drawn up, no architectural vision was created, and yet a once-unfinished house took shape on a sprawling lot in the heart of San Jose, California. Inside, staircases ascended through several levels before ending abruptly, doorways opened to blank walls, and corners rounded to dead ends. Closing times vary, please check our Buy Tickets page for current tour times. Her shower shoots jets across at chest level which was made to keep her hair dos intact; hairdos that were costly and time consuming to create.
We have been listed on plenty of “world’s most haunted places” lists, but we encourage you to come and find out for yourself. However, none are quite as strange as the story of the Winchester Mystery House, which has captured popular imagination for its unusual and sinister past. Winchester’s mansion conveys a restless, brilliant, sane—if obsessive—mind and the convolutions of an uneasy conscience. Perhaps she only dimly perceived the sources of her unease, whether ghostly or profane. But she wove anguish into her creation, just as any artist pours unarticulated impulses into her work. Over repeated visits, I came to think that if a mind were a house, it would probably look like this.
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. Gold and silver chandeliers hung from the ceilings above hand-inlaid parquet flooring. Dozens of artful stained-glass windows created by Tiffany & Co. dotted the walls, including some designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. One window, in particular, was intended to create a prismatic rainbow effect on the floor when light flowed through it – of course, the window ended up on an interior wall, and thus the effect was never achieved.
While she was presumably looking for solace or closure, she was instead given a chilling warning. After Sarah Winchester passed away, there were no blueprints left behind. Explore this all-digital floor-plan of the Winchester Mystery House.
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