Sarah Winchester was married to the son of the Winchester Rifle manufacturer. After the untimely death of her baby daughter and husband, she was convinced by a medium that continuous building on her house would appease the evil spirits and help her attain eternal life.
Mrs. Winchester inherited $20,000,000 and continued to add on to her house until her death at 82 years old. She kept carpenters working for 24 hours a day for 38 years. There are 160 rooms in the house and building style was very bizarre. Parts of the house weren't even finished when she would decide to move on to another builidng project. Also she didn't use or live in most of the house.
Mrs. Winchester was a tiny person and had trouble picking up her feet as she climbed the stairs, so she removed the normal stairs and had tiny stairs installs (see photo of people walking up the tiny stairs). These stairs had to be built in a switchback pattern to get the next floor.
Among the bizarre things we saw were: doors and windows opening onto blank walls (see photo with table and chairs), 
staircases that went down to nowhere and then back up again, doors opening to nowhere (an 8 foot drop). Pictured are pictures showing the door from a distance and the door close up.
staircases that went down to nowhere and then back up again, doors opening to nowhere (an 8 foot drop). Pictured are pictures showing the door from a distance and the door close up.
This Victorian house has many more oddities which are too many to mention, but we have to say that it wasn't worth the $50 we paid to tour it. It is located in San Jose, which is within 1/2 hour of our RV park, and was an easy drive when we had nothing else to do .
