San Jose, CA

having missed out on halloween, we decided to do something cool a few days later, so on nov.2 (the NEW halloween), we went to the winchester mystery mansion woohoo The story behind it is this...mrs. Winchester, heiress to the winchester riffle fortune was a very spiritual person. After losing her only child at 5 weeks, and her husband 20 years later, she communed with spirits via psychics. Apparently the spirits reported that dead soilders, who were killed by winchester riffles, took her family, and the only way to appease them was to keep building onto her estate. She was to never stop, and never complete it. She did as she was told, and for 38 years, she kept building on to her house and never had any blueprints made...yikes.


You can imagine how crazy the layout is. There are 40 bedrooms in this 60+ room house, and only 1 bathroom. She had many little rooms she used to spy on her servants. Lots of the rooms have doors leading into walls, and windows with bricks behind them.

There’s a set of stairs that goes down 7 stairs, then up 11. So you’re 3 feet higher on the other side, but still on the same floor. Rooms with 1 entrance, but 3 exits. One such room had a door that if you walked through it, you’d fall straight down into the kitchen sink on the floor below. Crazy shit. Amazingly, the house survived the great earthquake of 1906 that devistated 90% of san francisco, ruined san jose, and was felt all the way up to oregon. It also weathered the other huge quake during the ‘89 world series (you may have seen the tv movie of the week about this event...THE BIG ONE...they still play it on lifetime.)