Winchester Mystery House

On Sunday, we went down to San Jose to visit the Winchester Mystery House. I have been wanting to go here since we moved here so it was fun to finally see it!
 

This house & the story behind it are pretty cool. Essentially, this chick Sarah married William Winchester, of the Winchester family that made and sold rifles. After her husband died, she moved to CA and built this mansion with all of the money she had from marrying rich, thanks to the success of the rifle company.

She apparently had spirits that told her to keep building onto this mansion in a strange way. Construction went on for 30+ years, around the clock, to create this weird house. She wouldn't tear down walls to create new rooms, she would have a new room just built right next to the old one. Therefore, there are doors and staircases in the oddest places such as a set of stairs that leads to the ceiling and doors that open into other doors.

 Um, these were in the gift shop and we did not know what the heck they were made of. You know what they look like! haha

Check out these cool Halloween shades....

 We went on a tour that took about 1.5 hours. You weren't suppooooosed to take pics in the house but I HAD to see if I could get any ghostly orbs in the photos. hah. We have seen this house on various ghost hunter shows!

 Old kitchen

 Ball room with an organ that does not work, but some people hear organ music in the house. Eek!

 Old walls

 More kitchen shots & old appliances

 Windows in the middle of the house because she built onto existing rooms. Here, she put walls up around the outside porch to make a new room!

 Stairway to the ceiling. Now, this might seem "spooky" but really what happened was she had a room built over the staircase & never took into consideration that the staircase would get cut off!

 Beautiful glass windows in her "storage" room made by Tiffany's!

 This is the Switchback Staircase that is super narrow & the steps are small and flat. This was put in when Sarah got bad arthritis.

 One of a kind glass window, that is not facing the sun so it never gets lit up!

 From the top floor, you can see all of the different roofs on the house thanks to all of the construction

 After the house tour, we did the basement tour. We also saw the front gardens and statues.

Sarah's lucky number was 13 so they have this shrub to showcase that.

No basement photos because we were a small group and the tour guide would've seen me. haha. After the house, we stopped on Santana Row for a snack. Santana Row is a little area with lots of shops and restaurants - tons of people were sitting outside because it was SO nice out!

We came back to our place for dinner and Erik's Mom made us Chicken, rice & beans. So good!