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Winchester Mystery House

San Jose, California, United States

Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester Mystery House is an old house built by the widow of the man who owned the Winchester firearm company. Supposedly she heard voices/spirits telling her that she needed to continue building her mansion. She was well funded, but did not have any architectural training, so her house has a number of strange abnormalities. These include stairways that lead nowhere, doors that open into walls, rooms with no interior doorways, and other weirdness.

There are two tours available - the Mansion Tour and the Behind The Scenes Tour. There is also a self-guided tour through the gardens that you can walk through freely (even without the purchase of other tours).

Mansion Tour

The mansion tour is the main tour at the Winchester Mystery House - the one first-time visitors should go on. It is a 60-minute guided tour that takes you through a number of rooms in the house and gives you a bit of history and stories about the lives of the Winchesters. The house is a neat spot to walk through. There aren't many places like this that are well constructed but make absolutely no sense.

Behind The Scenes Tour

The Behind The Scenes Tour lasts just under an hour. It is another guided walk where you get to walk through the gardens with a guide (although you could do that on your own), go into a couple other rooms outside the house, and into the basement. This tour didn't really add much to the first tour. The add-on cost was only $5, and I thought it was reasonably priced at that.

Cost

When we visited the Mansion Tour cost $30 and the Behind The Scenes Tour cost $27. You could purchase both tours for $35.

Visiting Time

We spent about 3 hours at the house - we had to wait a bit before each tour and also spent a few minutes walking around in the gardens on our own.

Other Notes

Photography was prohibited inside the house or in any of the rooms that were connected to the house. Photography in the gardens was permitted.

I thought the guides we had were disappointing. They were young, somewhat disinterested, and it didn't feel like they wanted to be there.