There are many hunted places to visit in California but one of the best to visit is the Winchester Mansion in San Jose. This is a huge 160 room mansion was home to the heir of the Winchester rifle company, Sarah Winchester who was told by a psychic to keep building this home to keep the evil spirits away.
Some of you maybe wondering whose evil spirits haunted this wonderful mansion and they would be the spirits of people killed by the Winchester rifles. Sarah Winchester was told by a psychic in Boston about the spirits who has cursed her family and caused the deaths of her daughter and husband. The same psychic said to move west and build a mansion to appease the sprits, and Sarah believed this, moved to California, and bought land to begin building.
Sarah Winchester would begin adding on to this mansion and would continue to do so for 38 years until her death in 1922. There was always some type of building going on in the mansion, all hours of the day during these years. This mansion cost a whopping 5.5 million dollars and that is in terms of the value of money back in the 1920’s. One can only imagine what it would cost to build a mansion like this today.
There once were seven stories to this magnificent Winchester mansion, but with earthquakes and other disasters since that time, only four floors remain. What is inside this mansion? Almost 59 fireplaces, which included gas, wood burning and coal fired fireplaces, some of which had very detailed mantels on them and were huge. Most of the 35-40 bedrooms had a fireplace, but the fireplaces were also in various areas of the house.
Some of the fireplaces were used and some were for decorative pieces only, or perhaps they were built so the ghosts could sit by the fireplaces and relax. With 160 rooms in this Winchester mansion one can imagine how 467 doorways would be, rooms had multiple doorways and some rooms had doors, which opened to walls, or other doors. It is ventured that there were so many rooms within this mansion so that the ghosts could wander at will.
Located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard, San Jose California this architectural marvel draws in thousands of visitors yearly. The Grand Estate Tour will cost Adults $28.95 and it is money well spent if you love history. You will have wonderful day learning much more about this huge mansion then you can imagine. Tours begin at 9 am and end at 3 pm most days and when I did the tour, there was a good-sized crowd in the afternoon, so it is better to visit in the morning.
On this tour, you will see the fine artisanship that went into the building of this Winchester mansion. You will see stairwells that go to the ceiling as if they were meant for ghosts to glide upon. There is a window, built in a floor that looks into the room below. Most people venture that this window was placed in that position possibly, to see ghosts walking above or below and this is just one of the 12,000 windows in the Winchester mansion.
If you would like to read more out this wonderful Winchester mansion, please visit the links below. I feel that the last link has worthwhile information on it for those who love a good haunting!
