Winchester Mystery House San Jose, CA

Today Nancy, I and our daughter Chris went to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.
This house was built by the wife of the second President of the Winchester Arms & Mfg Co. She was the only heir to the estate as here only daughter died at infancy and her husband died soon after. She had this vision after their deaths that she was to purchase this 160 are farm & buildings. Her vision told here that if she would build continually on the house to appease the spirits for all the deaths that had been caused by the Winchester Rifle that she would live for eternity. She started in 1890 and construction went on 24 hrs a day until she died in 1928. There was a crew of 12 carpenters that worked around the clock. The mansion has 160 rooms 47 fire places & one bathroom. It has many bizarre features such as doors & windows that open onto blank walls, a staircase that goes from floor to ceiling, a door that open outward to an 8 ft. drop off, and beautiful stained glass windows from Tiffany's in New York. She was a woman under 5 Ft. in height with arthritis so most of the stairs risers are only 3 or 4 inch's high. She inherited 30 million and had $1000 a day income. When she died she only had 2 million left. No one was ever in the house other than the servants, carpenters & hired staff. She was very difficult to work for she paid her help $3 cash every day. If any of them questioned what she was doing or anything she would give them their $3 send them out the gate never to return. It is said that the only person to ever come close to entering the house was Pres. Roosevelt. He was reportedly visiting in the area and decided to call on her and on the way to the front door one of the helpers told him if he wanted to see her he needed to go to the servants entrance like everyone else. It upset him and he left never to return. The front door was installed at a cost of $3000 and no one ever used it as she had no guests in the 38 years that she lived there.