2015-08-17 - Northwest Road Trip - San Jose
The Winchester Mystery House is a large mansion in San Jose, California currently operated as a tourist site. It used to be the home of Sarah Winchester, widow of famous gun-maker William Wirt Winchester. The tour is ran with the backstory that the house is haunted by ghosts and originally built to appease the ghosts of people killed by the Winchester rifle. The tale goes that Winchester under the mystic guidance of spirits was ordered to built a house that would never be completed, to serve as a boarding house for all the dead. Thus, work begun and ran nonstop, 24-hours a day for 38 years. The work was finally stopped on her death in September 5, 1922. This led to a behemoth of 160 rooms, 40 bedrooms, 47 fireplaces, and 3 elevators. The guides will also tell you that the number 13 was Sarah's favorite number and point out various number 13's represented on the property including the 13 bathrooms, although they were all built in different times and one is barely started. Sarah was a quiet, reserved women during her lifetime, especially in her ceaseless mourning after her husband's death. The ghost story was accepted at a time when everyone wondered about her eccentric activities and no other explanation was available.
We did both the Mansion Tour and the Garden Tours. They were pricey but worth doing once. The guide provided Chinese audio guides for my parents for the Mansion Tour which was nice. The property is certainly eccentric including inverted columns and tiny stairs as well as stairs and doors that lead to nowhere. There are also many innovations that sometimes get downplayed by the spiritual hoopla. These include modern indoor toilets and plumbing, steam and forced-air, a personal hot shower, elevators, one used to move plants between the garden and indoor greenhouse-like room, and integrated washboards to sinks. A few of the innovations may well have been Sarah's own invention. It took a great amount of wealth to construct the house, funded from Winchester's inheritance. She certainly did not go cheap. A window designed by Tiffany for example, is designed to cast a rainbow into the room when sunlight hits it. Nowadays however, it only shows the side of another wall.
A more plausible explanation for the property as presented by some researchers into the subject is that Sarah Winchester was an aspiring architect in a time when female architects did not exist. Not needing anyone's permission or funding, she simply did it herself, on her own home, over time. These innovations and constructions over time, especially reconstruction after an earthquake that trapped her in her room, has led to the eccentric nature of the house. She also grew fruits and sold them after drying, seemingly doing it for fun as she did not want for more money. No ghost story incorporates that. And if you believe in the ghost that haunts the house, well apparently the ghost has changed. There is a photo of workmen in the house, and the suspicious-looking one in the photo was supposed to be haunting the house, pushing a cart in the basement. Well, from the lead guide himself, he said that when he started working there many years ago, they were told the ghost was one man and since then, it has changed to another. All the while, he has never seen the spiritual visitor himself. It certainly is a cool place to explore. It is well-furnished and decorated. Still under repair, it is well maintained by the current owners and seem to be making a great deal of money. Perhaps, the ghost stories just draw more nonspiritual visitors.
A more plausible explanation for the property as presented by some researchers into the subject is that Sarah Winchester was an aspiring architect in a time when female architects did not exist. Not needing anyone's permission or funding, she simply did it herself, on her own home, over time. These innovations and constructions over time, especially reconstruction after an earthquake that trapped her in her room, has led to the eccentric nature of the house. She also grew fruits and sold them after drying, seemingly doing it for fun as she did not want for more money. No ghost story incorporates that. And if you believe in the ghost that haunts the house, well apparently the ghost has changed. There is a photo of workmen in the house, and the suspicious-looking one in the photo was supposed to be haunting the house, pushing a cart in the basement. Well, from the lead guide himself, he said that when he started working there many years ago, they were told the ghost was one man and since then, it has changed to another. All the while, he has never seen the spiritual visitor himself. It certainly is a cool place to explore. It is well-furnished and decorated. Still under repair, it is well maintained by the current owners and seem to be making a great deal of money. Perhaps, the ghost stories just draw more nonspiritual visitors.
After a subpar lunch at a Chinese takeout place that somehow had good reviews, we ended our daytrip with a visit to the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden. It is an attractive historical landmark that welcomes thousands of visitors each year. Free and open with something in bloom every season, it was pleasurable for a short visit. And there you go, two of my mother's favorite things: houses and flowers.
