Winchester Mystery House
Seeking mystery and intrigue? Tour Silicon Valley's most amazing landmark, the 160-room Victorian mansion which Sarah Winchester kept under construction 24 hours a day for 38 years! Discover why the heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune designed the mansion with unusual architecture, such as a staircase leading to the ceiling and a door that opens onto a wall.

Amazing Facts of the Winchester Mystery House

• Number of rooms: 160
• Cost: $5,500,000
• Date of Construction: 1884 - September 5, 1922 (38 Continuous years!)
• Number of stories: prior to 1906 Earthquake - 7; presently 4
• Number of acres: originally 161.919; presently 4
• Number of basements: 2 Heating: Steam, forced air, fireplaces
• Number of windows: frames 1,257, approx. 10,000 Number of doors: doorways 467 approx., 950 doors not including cabinet doors.
• Number of bedrooms: approx. 40
• Number of kitchens: 5 or 6
• Number of fireplaces: 47 (gas, wood, or coal burning)
• Number of chimneys: presently 17 with evidence of 2 others.
• Number of cars at her death: 2 (1917 Pierce Arrow Limousine, Buick truck)
• Number of staircases: 40, total of stair steps - 367 Number of skylights: approx. 52
• Number of gallons of paint required to paint entire home: over 20,000
• Number of ballrooms: 2 (1 nearly complete and 1 under construction) [Top]

Winchester Mystery House Package - $89
After exploring the expansive Winchester Mystery House mansion, return to the nearby Park Inn – Milpitas and enjoy an array of complimentary services.  [Top]

This package includes:

• Two tickets to the Winchester Mystery House Deluxe king-size bed or two queen-size beds
• Complimentary deluxe breakfast  [Top]

Package is subject to availability

Gardens of the Winchester Mystery House
The Gardens Tour has nine major points of interest: The Estate's Greenhouse, Garage, Car Wash, Pump House, Tank House, Foreman's House, Fruit Drying Shed and Gardener's Tool Shed. The Winchester House is located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard and is open to the public for tours the year around. For tour hours and admission prices call (408) 247-2101.  [Top]

History of Winchester Mystery House
Our story begins in September 1839 with the birth of a baby girl to Leonard and Sarah Pardee of New Haven, Connecticut. The baby’s name was also Sarah and as she reached maturity, she became the belle of the city. She was well-received at all social events, thanks to her musical skills, her fluency in various foreign languages and her sparkling charm. At the same time that Sarah was growing up, a young man was also maturing in another prominent New Haven family. The young man’s name was William Wirt Winchester and he was the son of Oliver Winchester, a shirt manufacturer and businessman. In 1857, he took over the assets of a firm which made the Volcanic Repeater, a rifle that used a lever mechanism to load bullets into the breech. Obviously, this type of gun was a vast improvement over the muzzle-loading rifles of recent times.

In 1860, the company developed the Henry Rifle, which was easy to reload and could fire rapidly, one shot every three seconds. It became the first true repeating rifle and a favorite among the Northern troops at the outbreak of the Civil War. The family prospered and Oliver Winchester soon amassed a large fortune from government contracts and private sales. He re-organized the company and changed the name to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.

On September 30, 1862, at the height of the Civil War, William Wirt Winchester and Sarah Pardee were married in an elaborate ceremony in New Haven. Four years later, on July 15, 1866, Sarah gave birth to a daughter named Annie Pardee Winchester. Just a short time later, the first disaster struck for Sarah, as her daughter contracted an illness known as "marasmus", a children’s disease in which the body wastes away. The infant died on July 24. Sarah was so shattered by this event that she withdrew into herself and teetered on the edge of madness for some time. Not long after Sarah returned to her family and home, another tragedy struck. William, now heir to the Winchester empire, was struck down with pulmonary tuberculosis. He died on March 7, 1881. As a result of his death, Sarah inherited over $20 million dollars. She also received 48.9 percent of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and an income of about $1000 per day, which was not taxable until 1913.

But her new-found wealth could do nothing to ease her pain. Sarah grieved deeply, believing that her family was cursed by the weapon created by the Winchester family. A spiritual medium told her that “thousands of persons have died because of it and their spirits are now seeking vengeance.” Sarah was then told that she must sell her property in New Haven and build a new home and never stop building the house or she will die..

Shortly after the seance, Sarah sold her home in New Haven and with a vast fortune at her disposal, moved west to California. She believed that she was guided by the hand of her dead husband and she did not stop traveling until she reached the Santa Clara Valley in 1884. Here, she found a six room home on 162 acres under construction. She tossed away any previous plans for the house and started building whatever she chose to. She had her pick of local workers and craftsmen and for the next 36 years, they built and rebuilt, altered and changed and constructed and demolished one section of the house after another. She kept 22 carpenters at work, year around, 24 hours each day. As the house grew to include 26 rooms, railroad cars were switched onto a nearby line to bring building materials and imported furnishings to the house. The house was rapidly growing and expanding even though Sarah claimed to have no master plan for the structure.

It was also obvious that Sarah was intrigued by the number "13". Nearly all of the windows contained 13 panes of glass; the walls had 13 panels; the greenhouse had 13 cupolas; many of the wooden floors contained 13 sections; some of the rooms had 13 windows and every staircase but one had 13 steps. While all of this seems like madness to us, it all made sense to Sarah. In this way, she could control the spirits who came to the house for evil purposes, or who were outlaws or vengeful people in their past life.

The house continued to grow and by 1906, it had reached a towering seven stories tall. Sarah continued her occupancy, and expansion, of the house, living in melancholy solitude with no one other than her servants, the workmen and, of course, the spirits.

The most tragic event occurred within the house when the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 struck. When it was all over, portions of the Winchester Mansion were nearly in ruins. She became convinced that the earthquake had been a sign from the spirits who were furious that she had nearly completed the house. In order to insure that the house would never be finished, she decided to board up the front 30 rooms of the mansion so that the construction would not be complete - and also so that the spirits who fell when portion of the house collapsed would be trapped inside forever. For the next several months, the workmen toiled to repair the damage done by the earthquake, although actually the mammoth structure had fared far better than most of the buildings in the area.

The expansion on the house began once more. The number of bedrooms increased from 15 to 20 and then to 25. Chimneys were installed all over the place that served no purpose. On September 4, 1922, after a conference session with the spirits in the seance room, Sarah went to her bedroom for the night. At some point in the early morning hours, she died in her sleep at the age of 83. [Top]