San Jose - Winchester Mystery House

This Victorian gentleman's residence (525 South Winchester Boulevard) with 160 rooms must be the strangest ever. When it was built in 1884 by Mrs Sarah Pardee Winchester, who inherited the Winchester rifle-making firm, it was a farmhouse with eight rooms. For some 38 years carpenters and other craftsmen worked day after day on this house which by the time Mrs Winchester died had been extended considerably but was still unfinished. Mrs Winchester, taken by the building craze, insisted on drawing up all the plans herself, although she was far from being a trained architect. Numerous curiosities were the result: staircases leading nowhere - one even ended at the ceiling - doors opening on to blank walls and windows which are nothing of the