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In 1906, the great San Francisco Earthquake caused three floors of the then seven-story house to cave in. A 1900 postcard of the place shows a tower that was later toppled by the natural disaster. That tower—plus several other rooms destroyed in the disaster—were never rebuilt, but cordoned off. As for Sarah, she was safe but stuck in the Daisy Bedroom, named for the floral motif in its windows. She had to be dug out by her staff, as its entrance was blocked off by rubble. Through the medium, William told his widow that their tragedies (the couple had only one child, a daughter named Annie, who died at six weeks old) were a result of the blood money the family had made off of the Winchester rifles.
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Guests will guide themselves through the mansion that is famous for its dizzying floorplan and lack of formal blueprints. Tour Hosts will be stationed throughout the house to ensure guests don’t get lost. The remnants of the seven-story tower that toppled during the 1906 earthquake—finials, rails, and decorative trimmings that rained down like beads from a chandelier—are kept in the cavernous attic space. To make it accessible to visitors, Taffe’s team has fitted the area with myriad handholds and stabilizing planks. Eventually, the path leads up to the Witch’s Cap in the South Turret, billed as the highlight of the new tour. To reach it you must pass through a corridor scaled for a child’s playhouse, narrow and scarcely five feet high.
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Prepare to uncover hidden secrets and unlock doors to the oldest sections of the home. The Winchester Mystery House is offering guests unprecedented access to the most beautiful and bizarre Victorian Mansion. Enjoy unlimited virtual access in 360° and go behind-the-ropes.
Explore more TOUR
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Turn left onto Winchester Blvd. and proceed two stoplights, and the Winchester Mystery House™ will be on your right. Take Highway 156 East and connect onto Highway 101 North. Take Mission Blvd. exit in Fremont and connect to I-880 South. What many consider to be the heart of the mansion, the séance room was once the very private and off-limits room to everyone but Sarah Winchester herself. Legends say that nearby residents heard the bell tower (located outside of the séance room) at midnight and again at 2am.
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Winchester restored most of the damage inflicted by the earthquake.
Man does not live by bits and bytes alone—so relax in the café, the peruse tech-and-science-y items in the gift shop (especially great for holidays and birthdays). Winchester Mystery House™ offers complimentary parking to guests. Parking is available in the front lot, and there is overflow parking in the Santana Row garages across the street.
I have known about this famous mansion since I was a child. Many years ago, a publishing company put out a series of books that featured cut-out paper models of various haunted, mysterious houses. I took the time to meticulously put together a model of the Winchester Mystery House.
Haunting Facts About the Winchester Mystery House
In order to protect herself, William said that Sarah must "build a home for [herself] and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon." We offer the Mansion Tour for guests to learn about the amazing woman at the heart of this home, and to see all the bizarre architectural designs and mysterious elements of the Winchester Mystery House. But there is only so much we can show you and tell you about in one hour. The Explore More Tour expands on more of the history and architecture of the mansion, taking you through the rooms you do not see on the Mansion Tour. Such beliefs wouldn’t have been particularly unusual at the time. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a surge of what was called spiritualism all over the country.
It is true, however, that the remodeling of the house went on for decades. She was known for paying her workers well above the usual rate. Oftentimes, she would buy homes for her employees' families to live in while they worked on her home. William and Sarah had one daughter, Annie, who died at just 6 weeks old.
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As you walk away from the house’s manicured grounds, the polished facade of the upscale mall across the street smacks you in the face. And you begin to realize that there’s a comfort to the house’s curling, hidden spaces, a freedom in its eccentricities, a majesty in its abstractions. There’s a thrill, too, in knowing that Winchester likely hid some spaces so well that no one has seen them for over a hundred years.
However, the Winchester Mystery House was never mentioned in her will, adding to the mystery of the home. Out of the 13 bathrooms in the home, only one was functional, in an effort to confuse any ghosts wishing to haunt a spigot. Furthermore, she would sleep in a different room every night in the Winchester house, and use secret passageways to get from room to room so that no spirits could follow her. Additionally, Winchester insisted that the home be built exclusively out of redwood – however, she didn’t like the look of the wood, so she insisted it be covered with a stain and a faux grain. By the time the house was completed, over 20,000 gallons of paint had been used to cover the wood.
Sarah supposedly built it that way to confuse the ghosts. But the phantoms are still there, say folks who work at Winchester Mystery House. They swear they hear footsteps in the hallway, voices from the kitchen and doors that seem to slam all by themselves. The Winchester Mystery House earned landmark status on August 7, 1974. The fascinating mansion is still owned by the family (families?) who purchased it from the Winchester estate in 1922 for $150,000—however, their identity is another Winchester House mystery.
"She had a social conscience and she did try to give back," Boehme offered, noting the hospital Sarah built in her husband's name. "This house, in itself, was her biggest social work of all." Some say the labyrinth layout was meant to confuse the ghosts, allowing Sarah some peace and a means to escape them. She was the sole architect of this extraordinary home, and no master building plan has ever been uncovered. So Sarah may be the only person who ever truly knew all of its secrets.
Guests will be able to see the infamous rooms of Sarah’s stately mansion, known around the world as the Winchester Mystery House®, and see the bizarre attributes that give the mysterious mansion its name. The Cap is an unfinished round room constructed with redwood beams. When you stand precisely in the middle of the turret, your voice bounces uncannily off the walls. No one knows what happened, but Houdini found the visit memorable enough that he sent a newspaper clipping about it to the house’s owner.
