Winchester Mystery House

Sarah Winchester, widow of firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester, bought an eight-room farmhouse in San Jose in 1886 and kept builders working on it nearly continuously until her death in 1922, producing a sprawling structure with roughly 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, and 10,000 windows. The popular legend holds that a medium told Winchester she was cursed by the spirits of everyone killed by Winchester rifles, and that she could appease them only by building an endless, maze-like house, complete with staircases leading to ceilings and doors opening onto blank walls.

The house's most famous oddities (stairs that end at ceilings, doors that open onto nothing, a chimney that stops short of the roof) have long been cited by tour guides and paranormal investigators as deliberate spirit-confusing design. The story was popularized nationally by Susy Smith's 1967 book "Prominent American Ghosts," which named a medium, "Adam Coons," as Winchester's spiritual advisor.

No historical record of a medium named Adam Coons has ever been found. Architectural historians attribute many of the house's strangest features to mundane causes: significant damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake sealed off entire sections including the original grand entrance, and Winchester, in declining health and reportedly fond of unusually shallow stair risers, kept redesigning and rebuilding around her own changing needs rather than any spiritual blueprint. Paranormal researcher Joe Nickell has attributed visitor ghost experiences to ordinary old-house phenomena, like drafts, settling, and creaking, amplified by the house's reputation and suggestive tour narration.

Open daily for guided tours of the mansion's famously labyrinthine rooms and staircases. Book tickets in advance, especially during the Halloween season when night tours run.