Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, 01Aug2010

 During my trip to San Jose for the weekend I decided to stop by the Winchester Mystery House which is only a couple of miles from the location of my former townhouse.The California mansion was under construction continuously for 38 years, and is reported to be haunted. It once was the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester of Winchester Rifle fame. According to popular belief, Sara Winchester thought the house was haunted by the ghosts of individuals killed by Winchester rifles, and that only continuous construction would appease them. Sara oversaw and planned the day-to-day guidance, its "from-the-ground-up" construction proceeded around-the-clock, without interruption, from 1884 until her death on September 5, 1922.

 This trip I walked inside the Winchester Firearms Museum with lots of nice vintage rifles and pistol then I took a tour of the inside of the house which is laid out in the strangest way. There are short stairs that go for along way only to bring you 9 feet to the second floor. There are stairs that leads to the ceiling, cubbards with no depth, windows on the floor, and many more strange arrangements. Sara Winchester was only 4 feet and 10 inches tall and thus many of the passages/doorway are design to fit her small frame. The number 13 was Sara's favorite number as she was very much into the mysterious. This number can be seen in the architecture with window panes, stain glass sections, decrorative wood panels all having 13 in the desingn. Unfortunately we are not allowed to take pictures of the inside of the house.

Afterwards I took a self walking tour of various spot of the once vast estate. Lots of history. The self guided tour had 20 stations along the Winchester Estate. The Estate which Sara Winchester called Llanada Villa, was self contained at the time and had its own gas lighting plant, water tower, fruit drying shed, greenhouse, coal chute and car wash.

Selected pictures can be seen at the public Facebook site:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67329&id=1507778102&l=ce74ff631d


All 159 pictures can be seen at the Shutterfly site:
share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0IcMnDlm2bMVEYQ