MYSTERY HOUSE SAN JOSE REVIEWS FULL

The medium reportedly instructed her to constantly build a house for these ghosts. Popular lore has it that she was a keen follower of the Spiritualist movement, which was rooted in the idea that dead souls can interact with the living, and consulted a medium who told her she had been cursed by victims of Winchester rifles. Sometimes, she would have features built and plastered over the next day.Įxactly why Winchester embarked on this dizzying cycle of building, undoing and rebuilding is impossible to say. The designs, wrote Pamela Haag for Zócalo Public Squarein 2016, were Winchester’s she sketched them onto napkins or pieces of brown paper, then handed them over to a team of carpenters. The construction project continued until Winchester’s death in 1922, producing an enormous, labyrinthine mansion filled with logic-defying features: staircases that end at the ceiling, indoor balconies, skylights built into floors, doors that open onto walls. In San Jose, she purchased an eight-room farmhouse that she began to renovate in 1886. Winchester decided to leave her home in New Haven, Connecticut, and head to California, where two of her sisters lived.

This staircase in the Winchester Mystery House leads to the ceiling. Her husband, William Wirt Winchester, died in 1881, leaving his widow with a vast fortune: 50 percent ownership in the Repeating Arms Company and a $20 million inheritance. Four years later, she gave birth to a daughter, Annie, who died about a month later. Sarah Lockwood Pardee married into the Winchester family in 1862. The narrated video tour spans more than 40 minutes, providing insight into the property and the mysterious woman who built it: Sarah Winchester, wealthy and reclusive heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, which manufactured an innovative rifle that became a fixture of Westward expansion. But as Michele Debczak reports for Mental Floss, you can now explore the Winchester House from afar via a detailed video tour posted on the mansion’s website. Built by a millionaire widow over the course of 36 years, the sprawling mansion features more than 200 rooms, 10,000 windows, trap doors, spy holes and a host of other architectural oddities.Ī popular tourist attraction, the house, along with many other cultural institutions in the United States, has closed to help curb the spread of coronavirus. If the Tour Lead position wasn't a thing, the house would be one of the best places to work.The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, is one of the nation’s most curious landmarks. I didn't go into the job looking for pay, even if the wage was pretty decent. I loved cleaning the house and taking care of a historical property. Even if you are scheduled for 8, you might only get 5 if they run out of tours on slow days, or if they don't decide to schedule you a lunch because they don't lay attention.Īs for tours, I loved being a tour guide and working with the public. despite also being told on hire that I would be guaranteed hours. Oh and I was also told upon hire that I was the 'lowest rung' in the company when I simply went to ask about why hours were so short and that seniority takes priority. They also don't tell you about 'slow season' where for the first half of the year, you will only work close to 7 days a MONTH if you're lucky.

If you aren't in with a lead, you will be by yourself and ignored.

Training is brief and asking questions is met with attitude.

MYSTERY HOUSE SAN JOSE REVIEWS FULL

If you're sick, you will still be expected to do a full 8 hour shift, despite the lies of being told you can be accommodated for upon hire. Issues are written off and ignored, they're incredibly cliquey and mismanaged with no upper checks and balances, they lose timecards and expect you to use a mobile app to manage everything. The leads who are tour essential bosses don't know anything about managing a company, let alone workers. I've only been working a few months but I've begun to miss my old retail job in that time span.

Mystery house san jose reviews