Located in San Jose, California, lies a peculiar mansion built by the troubled heir to the gun manufacturing firm, Winchester Repeating Arms Company. What started as a nondescript eight-bedroom farmhouse, was transformed by Sarah Winchester into an architectural wonder over 36 years of almost continuous renovations. What remains is one of America's strangest houses...
By the time she passed away in 1922, the house had become a vast mansion covering 24,000 square feet with a colossal 160 rooms. Before an earthquake destroyed three top floors in 1906, it rose seven storeys high. Illusionist Harry Houdini visited in 1924 and dubbed the property ‘The Mystery House’, helping to cement its place in American folklore.
Today, the mansion is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and features a network of shadowy passages, twisting staircases and mysterious doors. Winchester’s immense estate has shrunk from 162 to four-and-a-half acres, but the house remains just as imposing as it was almost a century ago. Let's take a look inside the Winchester Mystery House...
Through the grand double front doors, the interior walls are panelled with rich brown wainscotting and lined with intricate Lincrusta wallpaper in emerald green. Stained-glass windows feature heavily throughout the property, casting an eerie glow on the surrounding walls. There's no logical progression to the rooms; wander down a winding corridor and you may find yourself in a kitchen, bathroom or at a dead end.
Inside, the home is a mix of different styles with Winchester opting for plainer décor in many of the rooms. However, on closer inspection, the house reveals engraved brass handles, glossy tiles and intricate wooden carving. It's been said that Sarah Winchester would sit in front of fires, sealing all the doors and windows to ease her arthritis.
Like a hidden jewel, the grand ballroom is a thing of beauty; an opulent, extravagant space with hand-laid parquet floors, rich brocade wallpaper and a fabulous carved wood organ. It's been said that Winchester’s obsession with the number 13 influenced many of the design details throughout the home including the number of steps on staircases, the number of lights in chandeliers and the number of panels in the walls.
This vintage kitchen is one of six in the mansion and while it may look basic, at the time it had modern plumbing with hot and cold water and steam heating to keep it cosy throughout the year. The gorgeous metal stove would have been an expensive purchase but with a $20 million (£15.2m) fortune, money really was no object for Sarah Winchester.
Situated in an older part of the house, the Venetian Dining Room is one of three in the property. This room has wooden-clad ceilings and walls and features a large fireplace and a patchwork of different rugs. Although Winchester’s niece did live with her for a period of time, she would have spent much of her later life wandering these expansive rooms alone.
The once-grand crystal bedroom may have suffered the ravages of time, but it still reveals some unexpected gems. The heavily flocked brocade wallpaper is coated in crushed mica, a silicate mineral that shimmers and sparkles in the light. The whole room would have originally been covered with this paper, creating a dazzling effect when sunshine trickled in through the windows.
In some places, the house has fallen into disrepair. However, expanding the mansion was a Herculean task and it’s claimed that Winchester employed a team of constructors to work day and night on her project, spending a rumoured $5.5 million (£4.2 million) in the process. Yet when she died, the property was valued at a mere $135,000 (£104k), damaged by earthquakes and considered a sinkhole for investors.
Step into one of the mansion’s two conservatories and the house takes on an altogether different vibe. Flooded with light, these two sunporches would once have been filled with plants. The floors are made from zinc with removable hardwood floors, allowing excess water from the pots and planters to drain into the garden.
Legend has it that Sarah believed herself to be haunted by the spirits of the people killed by the Model 1873 rifle; one of the most popular guns produced by her husband’s company. To confuse the malevolent ghosts, she built a house that was intentionally mystifying with fake staircases, doors to nowhere and hairpin bends. This strange set of stairs leads straight up to the ceiling.
This skylight sits above a false floor, leading to some impressive trickery of the eye. Among the house’s other curiosities are a door that opens onto an eight-foot drop down to a kitchen sink and a cabinet that extends over 30 different rooms. There are doors that open onto walls, rooms without floors and windows in unexpected places. The mansion has countless secret passages, purportedly used by Mrs Winchester to traverse the house unnoticed by the spirits that pursued her.
Amongst this unusual house’s other curiosities are a door that opens onto an eight-foot drop down to a kitchen sink and a cabinet that extends through 30 different rooms. One of the property’s quirkiest features is the ‘Door to Nowhere’; a panelled door on the exterior that opens onto – well nothing. It's unclear if this was an intentional design feature or if Sarah Winchester simply changed her mind about building an additional wing.
The Linen Room offers a glimpse into life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fully furnished with Bentwood chairs, treadle tables and a mirrored cabinet, it's modest yet unmistakably refined. Note the intricate floral carvings in the wood and the elaborate brass handles on the dresser.
The room is home to two gorgeous antique sewing machines with heavy-duty needles and gilded metal bodies. Whether these were used by Sarah Winchester herself or by paid help is unclear. The mansion’s owner employed up to 20 members of staff at any given time and reportedly treated them very well; providing salaries and accommodation far superior to those offered by other wealthy homeowners.
The original home purchased by Sarah in 1885 had eight bedrooms but this number grew to over 40 as the renovations continued. It was said that she slept in a different one every night; again, as a ploy to muddle the spirits who haunted the mansion. She was heavily influenced by eastern cultures so many of the sleeping chambers – including the Oriental Bedroom pictured here – had furnishings inspired by lands far away.
The master bedroom suite was one of the grandest spaces in the entire house and holds a particular poignancy – this is where Mrs Winchester passed away in 1922, aged 82. With its imposing canopy bed, red velvet drapes and Queen Anne-style furniture, this room offers an insight into her vision of what the house could have been.
Winchester famously commissioned many pieces from Pacific American Decorative Company, some of which were never used. In the $25,000 (£19k) storage room, so-called for the value of its contents, stained-glass panels are on display, each one waiting to be hung somewhere in the immense mansion.
The heiress' keen interest in the paranormal is shown in the design of this stained-glass window. Designed by Winchester herself, it features spiderwebs said to symbolise communication with the deceased and 13 orbs (the number 13 is often associated with death).
This gorgeous Tiffany glass window is one of the most stunning and expensive features in the entire house. It reportedly cost $1,500 (£1,155) and was designed to cast a rainbow across the room when light shone through the prismatic crystals. However, it was bizarrely installed in an interior space with very little natural light, meaning the effect goes practically unnoticed.
As you work your way up through the house, you encounter more and more design quirks. There’s a window in the floor (thankfully surrounded by railings) and a room completely devoid of a floor. This could be due to Sarah Winchester’s haphazard approach to designing: as she continued to extend the house, she was forced to add skylights and interior windows to help natural light filter through the inner rooms.
Despite her best attempts, the mansion still has many shadowy rooms and eerie passageways which do nothing to dispel myths about hauntings. The house swallowed up outbuildings as it grew ever larger, creating dark corners that many would not dare to venture into. In the murky hayloft, light filters through tiny windows placed high on the walls, casting sinister-looking shadows onto the floors.
After an earthquake caused huge damage to the house in 1906, Winchester almost completely abandoned the front wing. Some sources say she saw the destruction as a message from the spirits; a sign that she should cease to expand and extend the house. The mansion was boarded up, leaving rooms like this attic space unfinished and replete with unused building materials.
The highest point in the house is the Witch’s Cap tower in the South Turret. Said to be occupied by a 'heavy, spiritual presence', it can only be accessed via a claustrophobic passageway with ceilings barely five foot high. With its minimal furnishings and echoey acoustics, the room is one of the most unsettling in the entire Winchester mansion.
The only space in the house that stretches from basement to roof is the hydraulic lift shaft. Winchester installed three lifts in the mansion including an electric one and another powered by a horizontal hydraulic piston. The majority of lift pistons have a vertical configuration to save on space, but Sarah preferred to capitalise on the enhanced functionality of the horizontal piston and sacrifice a little of the vast floor plan.
Is this a haunted house? The mansion has two basements, which are said to be hot spots for paranormal activity. Many people claim to have witnessed the ghost of a man pushing a wheelbarrow around the house’s eerie underground passageways. Said to be the spirit of a gardener or landscaper, the apparition appears perfectly content to roam peacefully around the basement.
Aside from the main house, many of the estate’s former outbuildings still exist, including a foreman's house, a fruit drying shed, a greenhouse, and a gardener's tool shed. There’s also an old stable block, rumoured to be another site where ghostly figures roam. There have been reports of haunting orbs floating around the stalls, with some visitors even maintaining to have caught them on camera.
So, what drove Sarah Winchester to purchase this property and develop it into the mystery mansion it is today? Was she really troubled by the spirits of those who passed before her or did designing new parts of the house distract her from her grief of losing her loved ones? Is the mansion really haunted or is it the perplexing layout that causes people to feel so uneasy?
We may never know all the secrets of the Winchester Mystery House but it remains remarkable nonetheless and is the legacy of a woman committed to creating one of the most elaborate and complex homes the world has ever seen. Restored in 1970, the house is now open to the public all-year-round, allowing you to explore the wonders and phenomena of this spectacular property.
Looking for more mystery? Explore this abandoned all-American house steeped in history