Party Pauper: The House That Guns Built

Sarah Winchester was a savvy business woman who spoke multiple languages, a tough boss who rewarded her staff with unusually large salaries, free room and board and pensions, and an amateur architect who embraced such forward-minded concepts as electricity and showers. Sarah Winchester was also crazy. And rich. And, as those of you reading this should know, that combination makes her a classic eccentric.

Winchester's San Jose home is a must-see attraction if you're in the area. The closest train station is Santa Clara and that's a $20 cab ride away, so you might want to drive, or try to figure out the bus schedule (we couldn't). The cover charge is hefty, generally around $25, but you can get discounts at local hotels (I think we were able to get tickets for $18). Trust me though, if you're interested in architecture or just weird shit, you have to see the Winchester House.

Sarah Winchester married into the famed family of gun producers. After her husband's death, she inherited a hadsome sum of $20 million. Despite this vast amount of money, she was distraught over both the death of her man and her infant child, who passed away a few years earlier. So, she did what every sensible, grieving woman does, she went to a psychic. The psychic told Mrs. Winchester that her troubles were the result of the gun fortune. So many people had died at the hands of these weapons that the spirits were now out to get her. Now, Mrs. Winchester had to appease the spirits.

If you're like me, you probably thought that the only way to appease angry dead dudes would be to sell the gun business. You would be wrong. In fact, the only way one can settle the animosity of those killed by firearms is to build a house and keep construction going until the day you die.

So this is what Mrs. Winchester did. She moved to San Jose and began constructing and reconstructing a house that would become a local wonder. And she would do this until the day she passed away in this room.

This is the backstory provided by our tour guide Wayne. He was a cool dude, full of strange information that he related in the thickest of Boston accents.

Mrs. Winchester kept her stake in the gun business, making on average $1000 a day. In spite of the fact that she sold the weapons of genocide to the Turks, she was a generous woman who paid her staff at least double of what they would make elsewhere. She also provided room, board and pensions for her most cherished workers. This is the foreman's house.

She was also a woman of extravagant taste, who outfitted her ever-expanding home in Tiffany's most expensive creations.

Mrs. Winchester was also an innovator, installing electricity and showers into her home well before it was common. As the architect of the home, she designed unusually shallow staircases, as arthritis prevented her from lifting her feet high.

It's really easy to trip on those.

Construction ran all day, every day, ultimately resulting in a house filled with staircases that led nowhere, doors that lead nowhere and lots of towers.

The basic tour will take you through 110 of the 160 rooms in the house. There are additional tours that go behind the scenes, I think to areas that were under construction at the time of her death, and through the gardens.