For some reason, I must have been intrigued by this house, because on July, 11, 1983, we stopped at this Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.  I have eight postcards and four pages of brochures in my scrapbook about this mystery house.  One of the brochures says, “Discover the world’s Strangest Monument to a woman’s fears!”  There was a historic firearms Museum also.  We must have spent some there and Joy may have been interested in it.  This mansion was once the personal residence of Sarah Winchester (1839-1922), the widow of firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester.  The house became a tourist attraction after Sarah Winchester’s death in 1922.  The Victorian and Gothic-style mansion is renowned for its size and its architectural curiosities and for the numerous myths and legends surrounding the structure and its former owner.  Sarah had married William Wirt Winchester in 1862.  However, between the fall of 1880 and the spring of 1881, Winchester’s mother, father-in-law, and husband died, so that she was left with a large inheritance from her husband.  In 1885, at the age of 46, Winchester moved to California from New Haven, Connecticut.  She purchased a forty-five-acre ranch near San Jose with a two-story, eight-room farmhouse.  Sarah and her husband had developed an interest in architecture and interior design while building a home on Prospect Hill in New Haven.  In her new home, she designed the rooms one by one, supervised the project, and sought advice from the carpenters she hired. She took inspiration from the world’s fairs that were common then.  While the home was similar in scope to other homes built then, it was unusual for a woman to look after such a project.  She was considered an architectural pioneer in her time.  She was known to rebuild and abandon construction if the progress did not meet her expectations, which resulted in a maze-like design.  In 1897, she tore down and rebuilt a seven-story tower sixteen times.  As a result of her expansions, there are walled-off exterior windows and doors that were not removed as the house continued to grow.  Multiple levels, as much as five stories, were added to different parts of her home.  The design was essentially Victorian, with elements of Gothic and Romanesque features.  There was carved wood on the ballroom walls and ceilings.  A large, brick fireplace was framed by two windows that included quotes from Shakespeare.  The second floor had bedrooms that each had adjoining sitting rooms and sewing rooms.  The wall coverings had a leather or metal appearance.  The ceilings had moldings, stencils, and faux finishes.  There were chandeliers from Germany, art glass from Austria, furnishings from Asia, and paintings from France.  She had an early form of intercom, that called for servants.  There was an indoor garden with slanted floors that would carry excess water to trap doors which had pipes that would supply water to the outdoor flowers.  A generator was installed for a water pump and electricity.  Because of Sarah Winchester’s height of four feet ten inches and health issues, a stairway was built that has 44 steps but rises only ten feet.  In 1924, Harry Houdini briefly visited the house and was reportedly impressed by its unusual layout and architectural novelties.  He suggested that the tour operators call it the “Winchester mystery house,” which it still is named to this day.  In the 1970s, they remolded it and added a ghostly quality to it.  I thought that it was a little bit of a rip off, but still a little interesting.  In 1983, the grounds had twenty places to visit, and there were twenty-five rooms inside on the grand tour that we took.  Have you ever heard of this Winchester Mystery House?