Experience the mystery of Winchester House

Visit Winchester Mystery House, a mansion that has floors with windows, stairs that go nowhere and rooms that are too small to stand up in. The crazy mansion in San Jose in California is so big and confusing that if you went in there alone, you could get lost forever.

Winchester Mystery House was once the home of Sarah Winchester, the widow of William Winchester, who owned the gun company, Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Sarah was so disturbed by the deaths of her baby daughter in 1866, and young husband in 1881, that she went to see a psychic to ask why they had died.

The psychic told Sarah that the Winchester family was cursed and that the ghosts of all the people killed by Winchester guns wanted revenge on them. The psychic then told Sarah to build a house for the ghosts and to never stop building the house – because if she stopped building it, she would die.  

Sarah started building the Winchester mansion in 1884 and continued building it until she died, 38 years later. The house was originally seven storeys high but part of it was destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and today it is four storeys high. It has 160 rooms, including 40 bedrooms, 10,000 windowpanes, 47 fireplaces and two basements.

As if all that wasn’t strange enough, Sarah was obsessed with the number 13 and so the house has a chandelier with 13 candles, a sink with 13 holes and a stained glass window with 13 stones. The garden has a tree in the shape of the number 13. And every Friday the 13th, the owners of the house ring a bell 13 times at 13:00.

You can take a two-and-a-half-hour tour of the Winchester Mystery House, which is open every day except Christmas Day, for about $35.