Adventures at the Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester House is considered one of the top most haunted places in America. Over two million people pass through the 160 room mansion each year. The mansion was built by Heiress Sarah Winchester. She was convinced that the mansion was haunted by the many that were killed by the Winchester rifle, which bears her name. A spiritual advisor told her that she "should never stop building". Sarah had an enormous amount of money and she thought the appease the spirits she should build the best and most extravagant home to make them "feel comfortable". So, build she did, 24 hours a day for 32 years. Even to this day, after Sarah died in 1922, the house is still being worked on with the up keep on the mansion and the gardens, to keep them in line with what Sarah wanted.

The house covers 24,000 square feet and includes 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces and doors that open to an 8 foot drop to the outside. Also, stairs exist that go no where (except the ceiling). To confuse the spirits, the mansion is an extravagant Victorian maze of rooms put together in no particular order. All the thirteen bathrooms had glass doors.....hmmmmm not much privacy, to you think? Each step on the stairways had a 2" rise to the next step. This was done to make it easier for Mrs. Winchester to move about her home.....she had disabling arthritis and guess what....each stairway had thirteen steps! As you may have noticed, Sarah had a fixation with the number thirteen. Various places throughout the house reflected this.......in one of the closets there were thirteen hooks. In other rooms there were thirteen designs in the wooden flooring or thirteen windows. In her kitchen she had drains that had thirteen holes in the drain covers. These just name a few of the repeated number thirteen.

Some of the extravagance is portrayed in the front doors. The doors are exquisite, European made and very expensive......$3,000.00 At the time her advisers told her that the spirits are saying she is spending too much money on the front of the house. So, once the doors were installed, they were locked and have never been used since. A story was said that President Roosevelt came to visit. He knocked at the front doors and had no answer......a Gardener seeing him there (and not recognizing him) told him he needed to go to the back of the house "like everyone else does". President Roosevelt left...........

Some of the windows in the house are Tiffany of New York and each costing about $1,500.00. They are splendid !!

So much more could be written about this mysterious mansion and woman. I have shared highlights of this pleasurable tour, while enjoying some quality time with my son. Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.