Picture a mansion with 160 rooms, 10,000 panes of glass, 17 chimneys, 47 fireplaces, two basements, three elevators, doors that lead to nowhere.
And then you have the stairs that lead to nowhere and even a wardrobe that opens into 30 extra rooms. Phew!
While it may sound like something out of a strange fantasy movie, it actually exists in San Jose, California.
Known as the Winchester Mystery House, it was built with no master plan. But there are a lot of architectural oddities that remain a mystery today.
The Victorian and Gothic style mansion is sometimes claimed to be the most haunted place in the world. But mostly it’s considered just a lore with no evidence of any haunting.
The story behind the person who built the house is just as strange as the house itself.
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A Large Fortune
Sarah Winchester was the wife of gun tycoon William Winchester of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The company was famous for its rifles, especially the Model 1873, which was known as “The Gun that Won the West”.
The Winchester rifle was special because it could fire up to 15 rounds without being reloaded, which was vastly different from most of the rifles used in the Civil War.
So you can imagine the amount of damage the rifle did you were able to shoot round after round after round without reloading.
When William died of tuberculosis in 1881, Sarah inherited around $20 million dollars, which is around $500 million dollars today.
She also inherited 50% ownership of the Winchester Arms Company. Massive treasure, isn’t it?
The Curse of the Dead
Sarah had already been struggling with depression over the death of her infant daughter years ago and her husband’s death seemed to send her over the edge.
She was obsessed with the notion that she was cursed by people who had been killed by Winchester rifles.
She sought the help of a medium named Adam, who held a séance.
He claimed to channel her husband when he told her that she needed to move West and build a home for the ghosts of people who had fallen victim to Winchester rifles.
Even though the psychic was likely a scam artist, Sarah believed him wholeheartedly.
Winchester Mystery House: A House for Ghosts
So in 1884, she packed her bags and moved to San Jose, CA, and began construction on her ghost house.
22 carpenters worked year round, 24 hours a day for 38 years to placate Sarah’s every wish. They worked with a floor plan, following her directions to a T, even if they made no sense.
Like building a door upstairs that leads nowhere and would plunge you to the ground below you stepped through it.
At one point the house was 7 stories tall, but the 1906 earthquake knocked 3 stories off. You have to wonder why Sarah Winchester was hellbent on tirelessly adding to her house.
She believed that the spirits would curse her if she ever stopped, and indeed, she took the earthquake as a sign of their anger.
Some believe that she built the house as a labyrinth of sorts, trying to confuse the ghosts so that they would have trouble finding her.
It’s rumored she slept in a different bedroom every night. There are over 40 bedrooms in the house, so she had plenty of choices.
Sarah died on September 4th, 1922, and only then did the construction on the house cease. She was 83 years old.
The Winchester Mystery House
This 24,000-square-foot Victorian-style mansion contains an astonishing 160 rooms, 17 chimneys, 47 fireplaces, and more than 10,000 panes of glass, and those are just the ones we know about.
Even to this day, they’re still finding new rooms and new features to this house.
Most buildings start with some drawings, some blueprints, some documents that say, this is what it’s going to look like when it was finished. Hella confusing, right?
What if it was built as a giant puzzle, one that protects a vast treasure that still lies hidden behind one of the house’s hundreds of walls?
The Winchester Mystery House is now open to tourists who wish to witness firsthand the strange architecture of the building.
And, if you’re a believer, maybe you can even catch a glimpse of some scary apparition.
But remember, if you ever visit the house, don’t wander away from the group. If you get lost, you may never find your way out.
