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| *Travel Tips>>>San Jose Travel Tips |
Anyone know anything about the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose,CA? |
Travel Info All I know is its a 160 room mansion. Is something going on that isn't mentioned to anyone who asks about it? Travel Tips In 1884, a wealthy widow named Sarah L. Winchester began a construction project of such magnitude that it was to occupy the lives of carpenters and craftsmen until her death thirty-eight years later. The Victorian mansion, designed and built by the Winchester Rifle heiress, is filled with so many unexplained oddities, that it has come to be known as the Winchester Mystery House. Sarah Winchester built a home that is an architectural marvel. Unlike most homes of its era, this 160-room Victorian mansion had modern heating and sewer systems, gas lights that operated by pressing a button, three working elevators, and 47 fireplaces. From rambling roofs and exquisite hand inlaid parquet floors to the gold and silver chandeliers and Tiffany art glass windows, you will be impressed by the staggering amount of creativity, energy, and expense poured into each and every detail. ---http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/st... I went there a couple of years ago and took a tour. It was very cool. Some of the rooms were strange. There were doors that opened into wall, a bathroom with glass walls so the owner could spy on people and very confusing hallways. Others Its a mystery www.winchestermysteryhouse.com This is the actual website and should answer your questions. www.winchestermysteryhouse.com It is very interesting. The widow of the gun manufacturer was afraid of ghosts and made stairs and doors leading nowhere. The tour of the house requires a map to keep from getting lost. Mr Winchester was the manufacturer of the rifle and its famouse for the phrase "Gun that won the West". So a medium convinced his wife Mrs Winchester believed that all the guns that were used to kill people that their spirits would haunt her and her family. So she built this huge house with many rooms and passages to confuse the spirits and help her with eternal life. Sorry its really long. 鈾?br /> Winchester of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1862. Their only child, a six-month-old daughter died in 1866, and William died of tuberculosis a few years later. The distraught woman visited a Boston psychic who told her the deaths were revenge from the ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles, and that Sarah could escape the spirits' wrath by moving west and building a house that would never be finished. Winchester took her $20 million cash inheritance and $1,000 a day income and moved west to California in 1884. She bought an unfinished eight-room farmhouse near San Jose that is now known as the Winchester Mystery House. She soon started building on the house maniacally, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and she never stopped. For the next 38 years, the house grew like kudzu along a Virginia highway, swallowing up everything around it, including the barn and water tower. Opinions vary about why Sarah kept building the Winchester House. While some say she thought it would prevent her death, others reckon that she was just a crazy rich woman with too much money and a poor sense of building design. Every night, Sarah is rumored to have retreated to her seance room to consult the spirits, who gave her building instructions. Neither Sarah nor her spirits were good architects, and the Winchester House grew without plan or blueprint. By April, 1906, the Winchester House rose seven stories high. A massive earthquake struck, setting off fires that destroyed much of San Francisco. In San Jose, Sarah Winchester was imprisoned in her bedroom. When freed, she announced that the earthquake was a message from the spirits that she was spending too much time in the front rooms. She boarded up 30 of them, blocking access to her new $3,000 front doors, and never used them again. Sarah spent over $5 million building and rebuilding the bizarre Winchester House, but it didn't ensure her immortality. She died in her sleep on September 5, 1922. Construction stopped abruptly. Some say carpenters stopped without hammering in the nail they were working on. By then, Winchester had created a sprawling structure covering 6 acres with 160 rooms, 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, 40 staircases, 47 fireplaces, 2,000 doors and 10,000 windows. A small clue to Sarah's thoughts was found in the contents of her safe after she died. Servants opened it, no doubt thinking it might contain items of great value, but all they found were locks of her husband's and infant daughter's hair, along with copies of their obituaries. Even if Sarah really believed that the building would help her live forever, she had a contingency plan: a will written in 13 parts and signed 13 times. She provided for some of her servants, left her furniture to her niece and said nothing about the building she had spent so much of her energy on. The niece sold most of the furniture, which was carried away by the truckload: eight truckloads a day for six and a half weeks. The Winchester House was sold and turned into the tourist attraction it is today. On a saner note, Sarah donated almost $2 million to the Winchester Fund for treatment of tuberculosis at New Haven Hospital, which she founded after her husband's death. |
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