Mansion reopens for tours Monday
Visitors can follow selfguided route to explore Winchester Mystery House
Winchester Mystery House in San Jose will reopen its doors for touchless, selfguided tours beginning Monday, July 13.
The 160room mansion, which closed on March 12 in accordance with California health officials’ recommendations for slowing the spread of the coronavirus, plans to allow guests to explore the grounds on their own using audio and signs as their guides, with staff members positioned throughout the estate to assist guests as needed.
To ensure that social distancing protocols are followed, tour groups will be restricted to members of the same household. A oneway tour path will focus on the largest rooms of the estate, with sanitization stations available along the way. Capacity will also be limited.
All guests and employees will be required to wear masks.
“This experience leverages the house’s unique design elements and provides guests with ample time and space to engage with the estate’s history while remaining compliant with social distancing guidelines,” said Walter Magnuson, the Winchester Mystery House general manager, in a statement.
Ticket sales began Friday, July 10. The tours include access to the Sarah Winchester Garden.
The Winchester Mystery House is regarded as a Northern California treasure. The sprawling estate was the brainchild of Sarah Winchester, the widow of firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester. She spent 40 years and millions of dollars on the mansion.
According to lore, New Englander Winchester moved to California with an unusual purpose. After the premature deaths of her daughter, Annie, and her husband, president of the Winchester
Repeating Arms Co., she followed the advice of a Boston medium to construct a grand, yet strange, Victorian manor to appease the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles.
Sarah Winchester gave the name Llanada Villa to the rambling and stillunfinished mansion.
Using most of her $20 million inheritance and an income of $1,000 per day, she employed workers beginning in 1884 to transform a small farmhouse she purchased. They labored for 24 hours a day, yearround, until her death in 1922.
Tours take visitors through a maze of staircases, hallways and rooms. These include the seance room where Sarah Winchester purportedly communicated with the spirits who helped her plan the construction of her home.
Some people believe the house is haunted. That question has lured the likes of Harry Houdini, paranormal investigators and psychics.
The home does possess quirky, unexplained architectural details, such as a staircase ending at a ceiling, a door opening to a sheer drop outside, and ceiling columns placed upside down. It also contains exquisite, custommade stained glass windows, including several with images of daisies, designed by Sarah Winchester.
The mansion was the subject of a 2018 major motion picture, “Winchester,” starring Helen Mirren and directed by Australian filmmaking duo Peter and Michael Spierig (“Daybreakers,” “Jigsaw”).