Inside one of the most mysterious mansions in California, which is said to be haunted by the eccentric heiress who built it and features staircases and doors that lead to nowhere
- The Winchester Mystery House is a 160-room, Victorian mansion in San Jose, California, that was built by eccentric heiress Sarah Winchester, who inherited the fortune to the firearm company Winchester Repeating Arms when her husband died in 1881.
- The estate's mystery stems from a century-old legend: that Winchester built the mansion to escape the angry spirits of those killed by a Winchester rifle, which her husband's company invented.
- Construction on the home spanned over 30 years until Winchester's death in 1922. Crews reportedly worked around-the-clock to maintain a steady building rate.
- Inside you'll find quite a few architectural oddities, like a staircase that leads to nowhere, cabinets that open into walls, and a door that open up to a 12-foot drop.
- Since 1923, tours have been taking curious visitors through the gargantuan mansion, which remains a famous tourist attraction today.
- "Some of them love the architecture, some want to see the ghosts, some like the history," Janan Boehme, the historian at the house, told Business Insider.
- We took a 65-minute tour through 110 rooms of the unique estate. Take a look around.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The colossal Winchester Mystery House is no ordinary estate — it's the unique and mystifying architectural result of a decades-old legend about a grieving widow.
Source: Atlas Obscura
The tech-centric city of San Jose, California, with its high-density housing, has since surrounded the mansion, and tech giant Apple's headquarters is in nearby Cupertino.
Source: Business Insider
But the mammoth, 160-room home still stands as one of the most distinctive landmarks in this part of California — and the country.
Source: Winchester Mystery House
It all started with Sarah Winchester, a reclusive heiress who inherited a portion of the massive fortune of the Winchester Repeating Arms company — a firearm company credited with inventing the Winchester rifle — when her husband, William, died in 1881.
Source: Atlas Obscura
Her husband's death wasn't the only tragedy to impact Winchester at the time — she also lost her infant daughter, her parents, and her older sister around the same time period, house historian Jana Boehme told Business Insider.
So the most well-known legend goes that, in her despair, she paid a visit to a psychic who gave her some frightening news: the loss she suffered was payback for the deaths of those killed by Winchester rifles.
Source: Atlas Obscura, Biography, Travel Channel
The psychic reportedly told her to leave her home in Connecticut and move out west to appease the vengeful ghosts and to continuously build upon a home to avoid her demise at the hands of the spirits.
Source: Atlas Obscura, Biography, Travel Channel
Winchester looked to California's Santa Clara Valley, where orchards were plentiful at the time, and bought a farmstead, a working ranch, and 40 acres on which to build her mansion, Boehme said.
The original farmhouse she purchased came with eight rooms. But starting in 1886, what seemed like around-the-clock construction began on the estate, which grew to 24,000 square feet with 160 rooms in total by the time Sarah died in 1922.
Source: Winchester Mystery House
In total, the home cost $5 million in 1923, which is $71 million in today’s dollars.
Source: Winchester Mystery House
Crews were rumored to work 24/7 on the house to maintain a steady rate of construction in hopes of keeping the angry spirits at bay.
Source: Atlas Obscura
Some reports say that it's because of the obsessive construction rates on the Winchester Mystery House that there are some odd architectural feats within its walls.
Source: Biography
There's a staircase that leads to nowhere …
… a 44-step staircase that only goes up one floor ...
… cabinets that open up into walls ...
… and doors that open to a 12-foot drop, among other things.
Because of the enormity of the house, there's also simply a lot of everything.
Victor Madeiros, a tour guide who's been giving tours of the property for over a year, told Business Insider that the house has 2,000 doors, 52 skylights, 47 fireplaces, 40 staircases, 40 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, six kitchens, three elevators, and two basements.
Winchester integrated the latest decorative innovations of her time into the estate, with elaborate Victorian patterns and embossed wall coverings, all perfectly preserved in the house, Boehme said.
"It's like a time capsule really," Boehme told Business Insider.
The mansion also has 10,000 windows, according to Madeiros — that's more windows than New York's Empire State Building.
Source: CNN
One such window cost Winchester $1,500, or $40,000 in today's dollars, Madeiros said, except the glistening panel was installed in the middle of the house — meaning the sun could never shine on it.
One hundred of the 10,000 windows are stained-glass panels, Boehme said, some of which are displayed in what used to be the carriage house.
This is also where the only known photograph of Winchester is located, Madeiros said.
A measuring panel stands next to it showing Winchester's short height — she stood at 4-foot-10. She also suffered from arthritis, Madeiros said. And so the staircase with 44 tiny steps made climbing them easier on her.
Winchester was also rumored to practice spiritualism or Wicca. She held the only key to a seance room in the house, Madeiros said, which also happens to be the room that is statistically the center of the mansion and the heart of the home.
Historians don't know for sure what Winchester did in this room, but spiritualism and seances were not only common in Victorian times, they were accepted, according to Boehme.
Madeiros said the seance room has three exits but only one entrance.
One door opens into a drop leading to a kitchen sink on the floor below. And another exit is through a door that is missing a doorknob, which means coming back through it is impossible.
Adjacent to the seance room is an unfinished room that Madeiros said is thought to perhaps be a dressing room. It's not the only unfinished part of the house either — when Winchester died in 1922, all building on the property stopped at the drop of a hat.
And since Winchester didn't use blueprints when she built, there was no way to know what each room was originally designed to be, so resuming construction proved difficult.
Before the 1906 earthquake, there were seven stories in the mansion. But after the quake, the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh floors were taken off, Madeiros said.
Some rooms on those floors were still being worked on at the time of the earthquake and were left unfinished following the disaster, Madeiros said.
The only part of the fourth floor that remains today is a balcony, which is the highest point of the house, Madeiros said.
The bell tower can be seen from the balcony. It used to ring every day back in Winchester's day, but now it's rung on the anniversary of her death on Sept. 5 and every Friday the 13th, Madeiros said.
Winchester died of heart failure in 1922 in her bedroom inside her beloved mansion, Boehme said.
The estate, which cost $5 million to construct, was then sold to a new owner for $135,000, Madeiros said. And in 1923, nine months after her death, tours began taking curious locals and tourists through the massive home.
Locals were especially eager to glimpse inside their mysterious neighbor's property. Winchester was a private person, and rumors swirled around her long before she died or before the Winchester Mystery House became a major tourist attraction, Boehme said.
"The newspapers talked about her as a female architect or they talked about her as a crazy woman who was chased by ghosts," Madeiros said.
Nowadays, thousands are still clamoring to get a peek inside, especially around Halloween time, Boehme said.
This year is no exception. A former Disney producer, who was brought onto the team a few years ago, wanted to do "something more magical" for visitors during this Halloween season, Boehme said. The property’s "Unhinged" show this fall is a theatrical and immersive experience as a result.
And Boehme said there was a big uptick in visitors leading up to the release of the 2018 movie "Winchester" starring Helen Mirren and Jason Clarke.
Source: CBS
Boehme said the movie is not a true biography or any kind of historical recounting, but said Helen Mirren gave life to her portrayal of Winchester.
Whether it's because of the movie buzz or its colorful past, Boehme said everybody has something different that they're looking for when they visit the house.
"Some of them love the architecture, some want to see the ghosts, some like the history," Boehme said.
And ghost tales are something the Mystery House is not short of.
Source: CNN
Madeiros said the most popular apparition is a former employee at the estate. The folks at Winchester Mystery House call him the Wheelbarrow Ghost.
Madeiros said he's seen pushing a wheelbarrow oftentimes in the basement and sometimes in the ballroom tending to a fireplace. They currently don't have any record of his name.
Madeiros said Winchester was extraordinarily kind and generous to her employees, so the reported Wheelbarrow Ghost is likely not lingering for any malicious reason.
Boehme said she's "never had the privilege" of seeing an apparition in the house, but she's heard things she can't explain, like loud footsteps in parts of the house where it's impossible for someone to be.
She also said similar instances have happened to the property's maintenance manager, who Boehme said is "not a fanciful man," but still has experienced strange and unexplained noises.
Boehme said every once and a while, a tour guide or a visitor claims to see a small, cloudy apparition of a figure in dark colors. Winchester was reputed to don black garments in her later years, so there are reports that perhaps the mansion's mistress herself still lingers.
But spirits or not, Boehme said there is nothing malevolent about the energy in the house, with even psychics visiting and concluding that there's a nice aura about the place.
And at the end of the day, while the most highly-publicized theory behind the home is based in the supernatural, there are some holes in that theory.
Boehme said there's no documentation that Winchester ever suffered from the guilt those killed by a Winchester rifle.
There's also no concrete evidence that she ever visited a medium that pointed her west, Boehme said.
What is a possibility is that Winchester simply wanted to start a new life, Boehme said.
"There was a lot of personal tragedy, and I think at that point in time, California was just this mythical, magical place," Boehme said.
Winchester had lost a handful of family members all in the same period, and advertising for the West Coast at the time made it seem like paradise, with the temperate climate and fertile land, Boehme said.
At the age of 43, she was able to become the mistress of her own home for the first time in her life, Boehme said.
And instead of being motivated by fear of the ghosts that met their demise at the end of a Winchester firearm, Boehme said Winchester referred to the mansion as a kind of "hobby house" in one of her letters.
Her father was in woodworking, and she may have enjoyed keeping herself busy by building out and toying with a construction project, Boehme said.
Boehme said Winchester was a sharp and intelligent businesswoman, and so she was able to take on such an endeavor, quite successfully too.
So Boehme said that's just as plausible a theory as the more ghoulish tale that's more commonly spun, though all the home's eccentricities can sometimes be difficult to explain.
"Some of those do make me scratch my head," Boehme said.
But the years spent remodeling could easily explain them, Boehme said, like the staircase that leads to nowhere.
Boehme said it, at one point, actually did lead upstairs, but Winchester decided to put a hallway right above it — so she had a floor built that just covered up the staircase.
Another explanation could be that she found it amusing. "I also think maybe she had a sense of humor," Boehme said.
But at the end of the day, no one knows for sure.
"We don’t have documentation, but what everyone has always loved is the legends and the lore," Boehme said.
Winchester’s reported Wiccan tendencies weren't out of the norm, but there is also no documentation of her practicing, Boehme said.
"She may have tried to contact her loved ones," Boehme said. "I wouldn't have blamed her if she did."
Boehme said Winchester also didn't suffer from any kind of existential crisis either. She likely wasn't motivated by a desire to avoid death at the hands of angry spirits. Boehme said contrary to popular belief, work on the home did pause occasionally.
"She knew she was going to die just like everybody else," Boehme said.
But the truth died with the mansion's mistress until someday something is discovered that could help shed light on the true story behind the estate, Boehme said.
"There is always going to be a certain amount of mystery attached to this mystery house," Boehme said.
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