Winchester Mystery House adds fun events
While the legend that Sarah Winchester’s house was under continuous construction for some 40 years is certainly untrue, there’s no denying that the Winchester Mystery House grew over those decades from a modest farmhouse into a 160-room mansion. So in that respect, the landmark’s current caretakers are following tradition with a fairly constant reinvention.
Besides the regular daytime tours of the house and gardens and special evening flashlight tours — the one set for Friday the 13th next week is already sold out — the tourist attraction has added holiday events, an axthrowing area at the stables, a shooting gallery and, most recently, Houdini’s Escape Room experience.
But for this Halloween season, the Winchester Mystery House is amping up the “mystery” with a new Lost in the House tour. It’s described as a “theat
rical paranormal investigative adventure,” which I think is very fancy talk for “haunted house” since it includes special effects, actors and jump scares. General Manager Walter Magnuson says the the Lost in the House tour takes its cue from the various paranormal investigations the famed home has hosted, going back to a visit from Harry Houdini in 1924.
The ticket includes the Jack O’Lantern trail, a selfguided tour through the Victorian Gardens, which will be decorated with dozens of hand-carved pumpkins (It’s also sold separately for guests who’d rather pass on the scares). The front of the mansion again will be decorated with a projection-mapped light show, which was a big hit last year when indoor tours weren’t allowed.
Tickets are already on sale for the All Hallow’s Eve experience, which kicks off on selected nights starting Sept. 10 and adds more dates in October leading up to Halloween. Prices range from $15.99 to $69.99 depending on which tour you pick and if you go on a high-traffic night like a weekend. Get more details at winchestermysteryhouse.com.
MEMPHIS MIRACLE >>
Sunnyvale Community Services was all set to provide school supplies, along with gift cards for new shoes and backpacks, to 1,600 low-income kids on Monday. The back-toschool kits had been ordered and the agency had cleared out space in its warehouse to store the items.
But that warehouse was still empty last week, as the 1,600 kits were in Memphis, Tenn., where they had been stalled for weeks because of shipping delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sunnyvale Community Services Executive Director Marie Bernard reached out to the Sunnyvale Rotary Club, which contacted three Rotary Clubs in the Memphis area. They got through to logistics experts and executives at FedEx headquarters looking for a way to get the supplies to Sunnyvale on time.
The shipment was transferred to another shipping company, which drove the supplies to California, and FedEx executives donated $6,000 to cover the cost. The supplies made it to Sunnyvale Community Services on Sunday night, 13 hours before the students arrived to get them.
TURKEY TROT IS BACK >> After a virtual event in 2020, the Applied Materials Silicon Valley Turkey Trot is planning to come back inperson this Thanksgiving in downtown San Jose. Registration opened Monday for the annual 5K/10K run that usually draws more than 20,000 participants looking to burn off a few calories before Thanksgiving dinner and raise money for local charities.
Registration is $40 through Sept. 15, and you can get more details at svturkeytrot.com.