First peek at secret spaces inside the Winchester Mystery House
A new tour lets guests visit rooms previously off limits to the public, including the ornate, seldom-used front door
After nine decades as a San Jose tourist attraction, it turns out the Winchester Mystery House still has a few secrets left to discover. Visitors to Sarah Winchester’s sprawling, 160room mansion got their first look Thursday at 40 rooms, hallways and other strange spaces — most of which have never been seen before by the public — with the launch of the Explore More tour.
Some of the areas now open had been unsafe for the public to access, so they’ve added railings and lighting. Other spaces previously closed were considered simply too odd.
But that changed when Walter Magnuson — general manager of the Winchester Mystery House — arrived two years ago. After he went on the guest tour of his new domain, he noticed doors that were boarded with locks that just had skeleton keys.
“I just asked ‘What are these places?’ So gradually I was snooping around and started looking at all these incredible rooms that we’ve never been able to put on the regular tour. ” Magnuson said. “Some of them have incredible history, some of them have amazing stories associated with them, and some of them are just really freaking cool.”
And while the regular mansion tour takes you through decorated bedrooms, ballrooms and kitchens, part of the charm of the new tour is that many of the rooms are in an unfinished state or show evidence of damage from the 1906 earthquake that toppled the top three stories of the house, which is said to have been under continuous construction until Winchester’s death in 1922.
For the first time ever, a
tour now includes the mansion’s front door, which was rarely used even in Sarah’s time. As with everything about the house, there’s a great story to go with the door, which may be true or just another legend. Supposedly, Theodore Roosevelt, on a tour of the West during his presidency, traveled to visit the mansion, situated among orchards west of San Jose. He came to the front door, which no one ever did, but was denied entrance by the servants because Mrs. Winchester wasn’t home.
As the first tour groups — which included San Jose City Councilman Chappie Jones — passed through the threshold, they were greeted with a guest book signed by visitors from 1924. (A new guest book awaits them at the end of the Explore More tour — if they make it out, of course.)
From the front door, the tour winds through the house in disorienting fashion, creaking through narrow hallways and up and down staircases that will be new to even frequent visitors. At one point, visitors are required to don hard hats — branded with the Winchester Mystery House logo, naturally — because of the low ceilings and exposed pipes.
The new tour allows visitors to get a closeup look at the Crystal Bedroom, named for the glimmering mica embedded in the room’s wallpaper, as well as an attic-like storage space in the house’s north wing where windows and balustrades from the fallen seventhfloor tower are on display.
But the highlight has to be the South Turret Witch’s Cap, the only circular room in the house and the place tour guide Jamie Foster said Harry Houdini once held a seance in 1924. The room’s peaked roof creates a unique capability: If you stand in a certain place, your voice resonates to create an eerie surround sound effect.
Every tour guide has a ghost story to tell, and Foster says the Witch’s Cap is also where she had her own inexplicable experience back in January. In preparation for the new tour, she was cleaning the room of cobwebs and singing to herself when she felt two arms wrap around her. She thought a friend was playing a joke on her, but when she turned around, no one was there.
“I just kind of kept singing, I don’t know why. And the arms started to sway like they were dancing,” she said. “So I was in here, and I got to dance with a ghost.”
The Explore More tour is opening just as interest in the Winchester Mystery House is on the rise, no doubt spurred in part by the thriller “Winchester,” which is due to be released in theaters next February. Oscarwinning actress Helen Mirren, who was recently at the house to film scenes for the movie, was fascinated by everything she saw, said Magnuson, the general manager.
But the new tour — offered only as a package with the regular 110room Mansion Tour for a total 2½-hour experience — may be most valuable to those who think they already know all the house’s secrets. Kryis Lindseth-Reed, who runs the travel website Haunted Honeymoon with her husband, is already an annual pass holder at the Winchester Mystery House, but she was impressed with what she saw Thursday.
“I absolutely adore any nook and cranny of this house that I can get myself into,” she said. “I think it’s absolutely phenomenal that they’ve opened up a new tour so that way we can explore more of the home that I’ve always wanted to see.”
And maybe get a chance to dance with a ghost.