- The Winchester mansion in San Jose is a labyrinth, filled with staircases that lead to nowhere and doors that open into walls.
- It has 160 bedrooms, 40 staircases, 13 bathrooms, and 47 fireplaces. There are a whopping 10,000 windows and 2,000 doors.
- Many believe Sarah Winchester built the home in the 1800s to confuse and trap evil spirits that haunted her, but historian Janan Boehme said the 38-year renovation was just Winchester’s passion project.
- Winchester was interested in stained-glass windows and the number 13 – both of which can be seen throughout the house.
- Many people say they have seen or heard ghosts while visiting and touring the Winchester mansion.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Across America, there are haunted places that have been scaring people for decades. The Winchester mansion in San Jose, California, is one such place as it’s shrouded in mystery.
The bizarre, massive mansion is built like a labyrinth, and it features winding staircases that lead to nowhere and doorways that lead to walls. While the 24,000-square-foot house is a character in and of itself, there’s another interesting character in this story: Sarah Winchester, the woman behind the odd construction. Her story and the house’s history are intertwined to create a mystery no one can seem to solve.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the house is closed to visitors but virtual and outdoor tours are still available. While guests are still not able to go inside, these photos will give a closer look at the eerie home with a strange history.
Sarah Lockwood Pardee grew up in Connecticut in the 1800s and eventually married into the wealthy Winchester family.
In 1839, Sarah Lockwood Pardee was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to a working-class family. During the Civil War, at age 23, she married William Winchester, the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, a rifle company.
"Winchester was quiet, which suited Sarah because she was very quiet herself," the home's historian, Janan Boehme, told Insider. "She was also a very tiny lady. She stood at about 4 feet 10 inches. She was a private person."
Over the next few decades, Sarah experienced several tragedies that would shape her life forever.
William and Sarah had one daughter, Annie, who died at just 6 weeks old. They never had any other children, and William died 15 years later from tuberculosis, in 1881 at age 43. William's fortune from the gun company was left to Sarah.
In 1885, a widowed Sarah Winchester moved to California to start a new life in a farmhouse she built on 40 acres.
At the time, newspapers were filled with advertisements, luring people to move across the country and settle in the newly incorporated California. Winchester first lived in San Francisco, but the weather bothered her arthritis. Instead, she decided to buy 40 acres of land and build a small farmhouse in the Santa Clara Valley.
Winchester quickly started to remodel the home to make it bigger so that her three sisters could move in with her.
According to Boehme, Winchester had a passion for remodeling and building homes after she helped construct one back in Connecticut. Boehme said the remodels were nothing but a passion project for Winchester.
"It was something to keep her busy," Boehme said. "It helped her employ people and share her wealth that way. She just never really stopped building."
But many think that Winchester's remodels had more sinister motives.
There are many conspiracy theories surrounding the mansion, but the most popular lore is that Winchester went to a spiritualist and learned that she was being haunted by spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester gun company. Because she was living off the gun company's fortune, the spiritualist told her to move to California and build a home that would appease and trap the ghosts who follow her.
Boehme said there is no proof of that story, but Winchester did likely practice spiritualism.
"It was quite popular during and after the Civil War," she said. "Women had lost so many of their loved ones. They were looking for some way to communicate with them."
No matter the motive, Winchester remodeled her mansion nonstop for 38 years.
Although there are theories that the construction went on for 24 hours a day, Boehme said that is fiction. It is true, however, that the remodeling of the house went on for decades. Winchester would employ around 13 workers at a time. 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.
Today, the house is not only known for its creepy history but also for its massive size.
Winchester spent $5.5 million on her 24,000-square-foot home, which has 160 bedrooms, 40 staircases, 13 bathrooms, and 47 fireplaces. There are a whopping 10,000 windows and 2,000 doors. Boehme said the house "grew organically."
Odd design elements, like stairways that lead to nowhere, also make this house infamous.
Throughout the house, you can find staircases that lead to nowhere, doors that open onto walls, and rooms with windows on the floor. The bizarre design elements feed into the theory that Winchester was trying to trap and confuse the ghosts that haunted her, but Boehme said there's a more realistic explanation. Winchester designed the home with no blueprints and no formal design experience. These design oddities may have been mistakes or a simple change of mind. However, it is unclear to this day if these choices were deliberate or accidental.
Despite the home's oddities, it's still a gorgeous example of Queen Anne Revival architecture.
The pointed spires, the wraparound porch, the shingles, and the elaborate columns are all popular features of a Queen Anne Revival, according to Boehme.
In its heyday, the home stood seven-stories tall. Today, after the 1906 earthquake badly damaged it, it's just four levels.
The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 damaged the Winchester mansion all the way out in San Jose. After seeing the damage, Boehme said Winchester decided to remove the top few floors because it was too dangerous.
Winchester restored most of the damage inflicted by the earthquake.
Most of the house still stands today. Before the pandemic, visitors were able to tour it daily. Now they can only take garden tours.
Before the pandemic, visitors would enter through the carriage room, which has large double doors.
Winchester wanted the carriage room to be covered with a roof so that she could get in and out of the house without ever getting wet by the rain. The room is also notable because there is a strange door that opens onto a wall and another door that is too small to walk through.
Near the carriage room is an odd staircase that has 44 steps and seven turns ... just to get to the second floor.
While some believe this staircase was meant to confuse ghosts, Boehme said Winchester actually designed the smaller steps so that she could easily get upstairs with her arthritis.
Upstairs is Winchester's elaborately designed master bedroom, which is where she died.
Boehme describes the room as "elegant" with embossed wallpaper that surrounds the space and elaborate furniture that fills the room. Although it's beautiful, there is a darker reason why this room is so famous. This is the room where Winchester died of heart failure in 1922, at age 82.
Just down the hall from Winchester's bedroom is a smaller room where many believe she performed seances. There is only one way into the room, but three ways out.
Boehme describes this blue-trimmed space as an "odd little room" because there are bars on the window. Even stranger, there are two doors in this room that act as exits but not as entrances. If you use one of the doors, you will fall into the kitchen sink on the first floor, and if you use the second door, you will find yourself in the closet of an adjacent room.
Around the corner, you can find the first conservatory in the house.
Boehme said Winchester loved to make her home look and feel beautiful. She did that by adding some plants to the mansion, though it's unclear what kind she filled this space with.
The conservatory leads into a space known as the Hall of Fires because there are seven heat sources for the small room.
The Hall of Fires is actually three small spaces that seem to have once been separated by curtains. Strangely, there are four fireplaces and three hot air vents in this space. Boehme said it's likely that Winchester used this space as a sauna to help ease her arthritis.
Winchester was heavily inspired by other cultures, so a few bedrooms are Asian in style.
Winchester's niece lived in this room for 15 years until she got married in her 30s.
The next stop in the house is the south conservatory, which is the room with the most windows.
There are windows on each of the four walls in this room, including on the ceiling and on the floor. This conservatory is down the hall from Winchester's bedroom.
One of the best rooms in the older part of the house is the Venetian dining room.
After this conservatory, visitors pass from the newer part of the house to the older part, using a small set of stairs that once acted as exterior porch steps. The Venetian room is in this part of the house.
Overall, there are three dining rooms in the house and six kitchens.
But the real showstopper in this part of the house is the decadent grand ballroom.
The ballroom is the biggest room in the house with the highest ceiling, reaching 12 feet. A fireplace mantle takes up most of one wall, while wood paneling covers most of the other walls.
While the ballroom has only two stained-glass windows, the home itself is known for them, as Winchester was famously infatuated with them.
Winchester became known for her stained-glass windows. She commissioned most of these glass pieces in 1890. Boehme said the windows share similar motifs and similar glass, but they have different types of designs. The Daisy Bedroom has daisies in its stained-glass windows, for example.
Along with stained-glass windows, Winchester seemed to be obsessed with the number 13, as the notoriously unlucky number bizarrely pops up throughout the house.
There are several examples of Winchester's obsession with the number 13 throughout the house. For instance, there are 13 bathrooms, 13 hooks in the seance room, 13 bricks on some fireplaces, and 13 ceiling panels in the entrance hallway. There are even 13 parts to Winchester's will.
Beyond the number 13, guests have reported strange occurrences throughout the house.
Time magazine once named the Winchester house one of the most haunted places in the world.
"Outside in the front gardens of the mansion, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. It was what appeared to be a bushy-haired woman staring out of one of the windows on the second floor," a guest identified as N.R. told the Winchester Mystery House staff, per Boehme. "As soon as she saw me, she turned and walked away. I originally thought nothing of it, but a few weeks later I learned that when photos were taken with these specific second-floor windows, sometimes a bushy-haired woman had appeared in the background."
Some say they've seen small orbs floating around the stables.
"After doing a behind the scenes tour that was being video recorded, we could see 'orbs' in the scene shot in the stables. That video is still accessible, and at one point you can actually see one of the orbs on my arm," a person identified as T.R. told the Winchester Mystery House staff.
Others claim to have observed ghosts in the gardens.
"I was going to clock out for the day and on the way, I saw a small woman dressed in black near the picnic gardens. It put me a little on edge, so I hurried to clock out. On my route, back through the estate, the women was not there anymore. The woman looked like Mrs. Winchester," a person identified as N.B. told the Winchester Mystery House staff.
Although historian Boehme said she has had similar paranormal experiences, she hopes people will understand that the Winchester history is more than just a ghost story.
Despite providing more realistic theories for Winchester's mysteries, Boehme admitted that she has heard her name whispered behind her back when no one else was in the room. However, she hopes people come to the house to learn more about how Winchester was a creative businesswoman.
"I'd like to think that [people] come to appreciate Sarah as more than just this eccentric, ghost-ridden, tragic figure," Boehme said. "She was actually a pretty interesting person, a smart lady, and she was good to her employees. She was never afraid of trying something new. She really was a good person."
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