Winchester Mystery House [Part 1]
Banban and I went to the Winchester Mystery House yesterday in San Jose. When looking at the mansion from a view, it never looks that big. But to sum it up, our tour guide said that during the tour around the house, we walked about 1.5 miles(2.4km) through 160 rooms.
"The grieving Sarah felt that her family was cursed, and sought out spiritualists to determine what she should do. A medium, believed to be a psychic, allegedly told her that the Winchester family was cursed by the spirits of all the people who had been killed by the Winchester rifle, and she should move west to build a house for herself and the spirits. The medium also is claimed to have told Sarah that should construction ever stop on the house, she would die.
[...]Immediately, she began spending her $20 million inheritance by renovating and adding more rooms to the house, with work continuing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the next 38 years."
Warning: Image Heavy
[The following pictures have been resized. 'right click > view image' to see in original size]
I really like the sound of music boxes. :[ I would have recorded what this music box was playing if it wasn't for our tour starting soon.
But what they also had in the gift shop was...
Some of those candies I recognize but forgot the name to. On the other side of the display was a list of ingredients on how much was used to make the gingerbread alone... and I forgot to take a picture of that...
Anywhack, our tour started soon after that. We were taken to a room which was filled with windows, and it was said that we were near the stables. One of the first rooms that we went to was the storage room. It was filled with wallpaper and pretty stained glasses. Oh, and on our way there, we passed by the stairs that lead to the ceiling. We weren't able to walk up the stairs since it was guarded off.
This window the tour guide pointed out specifically, saying that Mrs. Winchester loved the webbed pattern, as well as the number 13. And yeah, if you count the number of orbs that are on this particular window, there are 13 of them.
We went onto the second floor, and to get there, we walked up a flight of steps.
Though, the steps weren't that high. It was pretty long, and we made a total of... I think 8 turns to make it only 9 feet above where we were previously. I wish I was able to take a picture all the steps that we took just in this small room, but for most of the way up there, we had to watch our heads. I was just tall enough not to hit my head on the flight of stairs above me. XD
Some rooms that we passed by along the way to...
Mrs. Winchester's bedroom. It was said that she died here in this bedroom by heart failure. She was about 86... I think.
Another room that we walked through. This is a picture of outside of a windowed door. It was said that this room was used for Mrs. Winchester to spy on and overhear the servants talking.
A picture of an elevator! There were about 3 elevators in the house. That's pretty impressive considering that this house was built in the late 1800s - early 1900s.
A fireplace, left the way that it was since it was built. The tour guide said that they were trying to preserve it, and I wanted to take pictures of the details.
Unfortunately, there are only a few of the furniture that is original to the house. It was said that when Winchester died, all the furniture was either given to her niece or auctioned off.
Oriental room. At the time, everything in these two rooms were imported from Asia.
The ceilings in the oriental rooms. The white one was in the bedroom.
A room with a window on the floor. :D
We passed by this room too, which would be the tailor room, I'm guessing.
This is the most expensive window in the house. Estimated cost was about $1,500 at the time, meaning that this window is about $33,000 in modern times.
Also in this room was a lovely view of the side of the elevator shaft.
Some more pretty stained glass windows we passed by.
These were parts of the house that were damaged by the San Francisco 1906 earthquake. The magnitude of the earthquake was said to be about 8.0 on the richter scale.
The tour guide told us that since Mrs. Winchester was not a native to California, she hadn't experienced an earthquake before. She took the earthquake as a sign that she was spending too much time on the front of the house, so she started focusing on construction for the back of it. lol |D
There was also this room that was damaged by the earthquake. You can see my reflection there because I took a picture of this room through glass. 8D; A picture of where the door to nowhere leads will be in the next post!
"The grieving Sarah felt that her family was cursed, and sought out spiritualists to determine what she should do. A medium, believed to be a psychic, allegedly told her that the Winchester family was cursed by the spirits of all the people who had been killed by the Winchester rifle, and she should move west to build a house for herself and the spirits. The medium also is claimed to have told Sarah that should construction ever stop on the house, she would die.
[...]Immediately, she began spending her $20 million inheritance by renovating and adding more rooms to the house, with work continuing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the next 38 years."
Warning: Image Heavy
[The following pictures have been resized. 'right click > view image' to see in original size]
I really like the sound of music boxes. :[ I would have recorded what this music box was playing if it wasn't for our tour starting soon.
But what they also had in the gift shop was...
Some of those candies I recognize but forgot the name to. On the other side of the display was a list of ingredients on how much was used to make the gingerbread alone... and I forgot to take a picture of that...
Anywhack, our tour started soon after that. We were taken to a room which was filled with windows, and it was said that we were near the stables. One of the first rooms that we went to was the storage room. It was filled with wallpaper and pretty stained glasses. Oh, and on our way there, we passed by the stairs that lead to the ceiling. We weren't able to walk up the stairs since it was guarded off.
This window the tour guide pointed out specifically, saying that Mrs. Winchester loved the webbed pattern, as well as the number 13. And yeah, if you count the number of orbs that are on this particular window, there are 13 of them.
We went onto the second floor, and to get there, we walked up a flight of steps.
Though, the steps weren't that high. It was pretty long, and we made a total of... I think 8 turns to make it only 9 feet above where we were previously. I wish I was able to take a picture all the steps that we took just in this small room, but for most of the way up there, we had to watch our heads. I was just tall enough not to hit my head on the flight of stairs above me. XD
Some rooms that we passed by along the way to...
Mrs. Winchester's bedroom. It was said that she died here in this bedroom by heart failure. She was about 86... I think.
Another room that we walked through. This is a picture of outside of a windowed door. It was said that this room was used for Mrs. Winchester to spy on and overhear the servants talking.
A picture of an elevator! There were about 3 elevators in the house. That's pretty impressive considering that this house was built in the late 1800s - early 1900s.
A fireplace, left the way that it was since it was built. The tour guide said that they were trying to preserve it, and I wanted to take pictures of the details.
Unfortunately, there are only a few of the furniture that is original to the house. It was said that when Winchester died, all the furniture was either given to her niece or auctioned off.
Oriental room. At the time, everything in these two rooms were imported from Asia.
The ceilings in the oriental rooms. The white one was in the bedroom.
A room with a window on the floor. :D
We passed by this room too, which would be the tailor room, I'm guessing.
This is the most expensive window in the house. Estimated cost was about $1,500 at the time, meaning that this window is about $33,000 in modern times.
Also in this room was a lovely view of the side of the elevator shaft.
Some more pretty stained glass windows we passed by.
These were parts of the house that were damaged by the San Francisco 1906 earthquake. The magnitude of the earthquake was said to be about 8.0 on the richter scale.
The tour guide told us that since Mrs. Winchester was not a native to California, she hadn't experienced an earthquake before. She took the earthquake as a sign that she was spending too much time on the front of the house, so she started focusing on construction for the back of it. lol |D
There was also this room that was damaged by the earthquake. You can see my reflection there because I took a picture of this room through glass. 8D; A picture of where the door to nowhere leads will be in the next post!