


Legend has it, however, the widow believed herself haunted by the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles. (The average daily wage back then was $1.50.) After her husband, William Wirt Winchester, passed, she received an inheritance of $1,000 a day. Sarah could build such a lavish abode because she was heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune. Just as extraordinary is its sheer size: what started as a two-story farmhouse was transformed by Sarah into a seven-story, castle-like residence, with 160 rooms, 47 fireplaces and 10,000 panes of glass. There are also many decorative spider-web patterns – people believed the latter would bring good luck at the time. (Guides nickname this room “the mother-in-law suite.”)Įerie motifs abound: the number 13 appears everywhere (ceilings with 13 panels 13 coat hooks in the “seance room”. Look out for staircases that lead to ceilings windows set into floors a door that opens onto a 12-foot drop. The house, a sprawling puzzle of carnival funhouse-esque quirks, perplexes mere mortals as much as malevolent spirits. Stealing a peek inside the house isn’t confined to the theater, though – you can easily visit yourself. The Oscar winner portrays Sarah Winchester, who it’s said designed the eccentric home to bamboozle ghosts.
#Inside winchester mystery house movie
But it has drawn international travel attention thanks to the 2018 release of “Winchester,” a horror movie starring Helen Mirren. Winchester Mystery House has loomed large in the imaginations of San Jose locals ever since it was built in 1884. It’s not a convoy of self-driving cars or a brigade of AI robots, but an extravagant, four-story, gabled and turreted Victorian mansion said to be “the most haunted in America.” There’s an odd sight just outside downtown San Jose, California’s “capital of Silicon Valley.”
