more on the Winchester house

One of the quite beautiful stained glass pieces in the house. This one's placement is odd; it's located in a place where, because of surrounding structures, it never gets the sun shining directly on it.


This is what the house looked like before the earthquake that knocked down it's tower and destroyed much of the front of the house.


These are the stairs that go nowhere (i.e. directly into the ceiling).


The door goes nowhere but out. Our guide said that "legend has it" that Sarah built stuff like this in so that the spirits that were killed by her husband's product (Winchester rifles) couldn't find her and, perhaps, might just fall out of the house if they tried to go this way.


A view of the house from one of the windows.

We were told that there were no blueprints for the house. Sarah got the plans during seance sessions in her special seance room which noone but herself ever entered. She would scribble them on scraps of paper and hand them to her foreman the next morning.

Building took place there for 38 years, 24/7. Apparently, she was told by a medium that if she bought a house and built it, never finishing, she would have eternal life. Well, not only did that not work out the way she anticipated but she ended up with the most bizarre dwelling ever. Some of the lowpoints:

• Rob and I, when talking about it later, recalled that there was nowhere in this house where one could feel truly private. Every room could be looked directly into from some other room.
• There's shiny glass everywhere. Even if you aren't seeing someone in another room, you're always seeing someone reflected somewhere. Talk about a structure that would feed into your fears.
• There's more than a hundred rooms, some with doors that don't go anywhere. Her favorite room, the Daisy Room, had one of these doors. When the earthquake hit and the wall slid to wedge her entrance shut, she was trapped. Sure, there was another door in the room. It opened on an intact wall.
• The earthquake damaged the front of the house. They say that Sarah believed that it was because she was close to completing that section and that the earthquake was a sign that they should close off the front and not use it anymore. Myself, I'd start doubting the supernatural beings giving me the building plans if I discovered that they'd planned a building on a fault. Any dummy can build on a fault.
• While we expected (somewhat) to be a bit freaked by the fact that the building plan was acquired through supernatural means, we actually weren't. It was more sad than anything else. To think that she lived her life in bondage to her fears, obeying either her own delusions or malicious beings, leaving behind a monument (literally) to this bondage that screams out for mercy ... it boggles the mind.