[KayEl]

I just came back from a three week trip overseas and just spent the last 4 days or so at San Francisco. I took the opportunity to visit the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.

Needless to say I was a little disppointed because I wasn't as spooked as I hoped I would be. Given the fact that the place seems to be constantly crowded, I wonder if all those supposed haunting in the house are genuine.

[robster184]

I always wanted to check it out. I don't know too much about haunting there, besides people reporting hearing hammers in the house.

I like the stairways to nowhere, and the door drop off. Was that stuff cool/scary?

[Fluffybunny]

I have been there several times, and I really like the wierd architecture. I didn't really think that it felt all that haunted.

The tour is amazing, I can't imagine how much it would cost to duplicate that house today. Mrs. Winchesters story is amazing, how sad to think of how badly she had been taken advantage of by her "psychic" advisors...

I would highly reccommend the tour to anyone who happens to be in the area, it is worth the time and money to see it. I doubt you would see any ghosts, but who knows...

[Ruthie]

Hi!
What is the Winchester Mystery House?

[Charles]

The Winchester Mystery House is the California mansion of Mrs. Sarah Winchester, dowager heiress to the famous rifle company. She had lost her husband and an infant daughter and blamed these occurances on the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles. Mrs. Winchester visited a medium who told her that the spirits wanted her to build a house, and to never stop construction.

Thus, Sarah set out and bought a farm house and began building. She built rooms, closed others, modified roofs, tore wings down, etc, making no accomodation for practical or sensible design. After the 1906 earthquake, Sarah's mansion was nearly leveled. Several 7 story towers collapse and Mrs. Winchester was trapped for an hour, because she slept in a different room each night.

After picking up the pieces, construction continued until the day she died. Nails weren't pounded in all the way, store rooms were left full of building materials, furniture and chandeliers.

Roaming through this relic of an eccentric mind, one sees a fascination with the number 13. There are thirteen steps in every staircase except one, and that one has 42 steps but only rises 9 feet... There are 13 lights on the silver chandelier in the ballroom, thirteen bathrooms and thirteen jewels in leaded glass windows.

Stairs lead to nowhere, cupboards open onto corridors and windows drop through floors. Sarah's séance room has one entrance, but three exits.

Thanks for the information, Charles. Lets keep it there and leave out the advertisements.

This post has been edited by Aslan: 11 January 2004 - 12:55 AM

[Charles]

I am in no way commercially affiliated with Belcourt Castle, I'm merely a sixteen year old boy in Canada with a great interest in architecture. If you were to know me as a person in real life, it would be evident that I don't act as an advertisement agency for Belcourt Castle. It is merely an example of an accessible, haunted location that I know of.

I thought my post was harmless and I used an image from my own space. If I knew a lot about say, the Lizzie Borden house, I might have gone on a spiel about that.

[KayEl]

Well, the pics I took of the house, much to my chagrin, did not show a ghost in any of them!

Strangely, one entire roll of film, which also have several pics of the house came out blank when they developed it. I was so peeved...it also have pics of Alcatraz island and Chinatown.

Perhaps the spirits didn't want those pics developed....

Anyway, you will not be spooked by the house, there were at least 20 people in our group, and the guide was constantly making jokes. Kind of ruined the atmosphere.

[Charles]

A keen search usually yields some places in your area that are haunted and open to the public.

[algenon_iii]

[KayEl]

Oh yeah, it's a tourist attraction! There's a gift shop(and a large one at that), a cafe, and right across the street is a mall and theater!

Oh yeah. this guy and his girlfriend was making out during the entire tour...

[algenon_iii]

[trekgirl]

I've been to the Winchester Mystery House a couple of times. The one that was really spooky was the flashlight tour they do for a week during Halloween. They turn out all the lights and everyone gets a flashlight and they take you on the tour...in the dark...it was really spooky.

The room that I really felt weird in, was Sarah's seance room also called the Blue Room. Every night just after midnight, the bell in the bell tower would toll which signaled the arrival of the spirits and it would toll a few hours later signaling their departure. There was only one way into this room- a winding pathway through various rooms and hallways- so that the "bad spirits" would get confused and lost and not be able to reach the Blue Room. Sarah communicated with spirits in this room everynight. Here is where she got the ideas on what to build and where to build them. The ghosts would tell her what to build and as long as she kept building on the house, the ghosts of those slain by the Winchester Rifle would be appeased and would leave her alone. So everynight when she left the Blue Room she had various pieces of paper with architectual sketches on what she was to build- Sarah had no training in architecture or drafting she couldn't have come up with those sketches herself.

There is no doubt in MY mind that the house is haunted- there have been numerous psychics who spent various nights in the house and they have sensed ghosts including an elderly servant couple, and Mrs. Winchester herself. There have been red glowing orbs seen, the smell of chicken soup in the air, and even a few things caught on film.

It's a cool house, even if you don't believe that it is haunted, it's an interesting house in itself.

[KayEl]

Well, there WAS one spooky moment. We were in the seance room and our guide, Erik, showed us the way to the dressing room, where Sarah Winchester put on her regalia before conducting seances. The dressing room was adjacent to the seance room and is accesible through a "double door", that is, one door panel is really a fake door and is actually part of the wall, while its companion panel is the true entrance.

The dressing room was this unfinished looking, not to metion, spooky looking room. Erik tells the kids in our group to go in and take a look. The kids, unlike me, were spooked by the dressing room and wouldn't go in despite Erik's urging. Mainly because Erik said that there is only one way into the room (via the double doors) and they were afraid he might lock them him!

Erik: Anybody want to go in there?

No takers. Not even the adults. I finally walked in and took a look around.
"There's nothing in here. It's okay."
Erik: See, an adult went in!

Seeing that I wasn't eaten by a monsters, the kids sauntered in, followed by the rest of our group. OF course, there WAS another way out of the place.

You know, I think it would be a lot scarier if we knew we were the only ones in the house. In our case, we could hear and see other groups in other parts of the house. It was a weekday that we went to the house and it was STILL crowded!

I wonder where all the money goes....?