Winchester Mystery House

A sprawling Victorian mansion that kept growing for nearly 40 years, famous for stairs and doors that lead nowhere.

When Sarah died, the house had 160 rooms, about 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows and 47 stairways. Some staircases end at ceilings, and some doors open onto walls or drop outside. That is why people call it a mystery house.

Who was Sarah Winchester?

Sarah moved from Connecticut to California in 1885 after the deaths of her baby daughter, her father-in-law and her husband. In 1886 she bought a farmhouse on a ranch near San Jose and named it Llanada Villa. She then kept adding rooms, designing them one by one and getting advice from the carpenters she hired. At its biggest, the house had around 500 rooms.

Legend and facts

A popular story says Sarah kept building to confuse ghosts of people killed by Winchester rifles. There is no proof of that, and historians say it is a legend. Some of the odd doors and stairs are real, but many were caused by additions and by damage in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which wrecked upper floors and left doors that opened to nothing. The claim that building never stopped for 38 years is also described by researchers as an error.

On the globe

The model shows the sprawling mansion with its many roofs, towers and stairs.