winchester mystery house san jose costa rica

Winchester mystery house san jose costa rica full#
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Winchester mystery house san jose costa rica windows#

“She designed everything you see here,” Boehme says. Highly educated,” Boehme says, noting that Sarah spoke several languages, played several instruments and was business-savvy, not only overseeing her nonstop construction projects but also developing practices such as living trusts before such documents were common. She certainly had reasons to want to communicate with lost loved ones. She’d lost her infant daughter and her husband.

Winchester mystery house san jose costa rica full#

But the spiritualism movement was in full swing at the time. Yes, she is said to have been obsessed with contacting spirits. “While there’s much we don’t know, if you read her personal letters, you don’t get that at all. “The other big misconception is that Sarah was crazy,” Boehme adds. Yes, there’s a gift shop with everything from geodes and John Wayne shot glasses to rifle-shaped barbecue lighters, but the Winchester house itself is often considered the crown jewel of Santa Clara Valley history, a study of Victorian architecture and a treasure trove of some of the finest elements of home decor from the era. There are 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces, 40 stairways, 13 bathrooms, six kitchens, three elevators and two basements. The mansion has 160 rooms spanning 24,000 square feet over six acres. Wear comfy shoes for lots of walking and climbing stairs. Peak attendance is during summertime weekends, Halloween season and every Friday the 13th. Most of the items in the room are actual artifacts from storage rooms in the mansion - tables, chairs and even a pump organ, which starts to play when you hit the target just right. Installed just this past month in an original outer building right off the main courtyard, this fun laser-enabled shooting gallery has been whimsically dubbed the “161st room” of the house. Many of these rooms are still as they were when Sarah died in 1922, so it’s a real treat.”įor now, Explore More is only available to club members but may be open for general admission next year.

Winchester mystery house san jose costa rica windows#

“This floor would have been covered with beautiful hardwood parquets, and would have been stunning if completed,” says tour manager Janan Boehme on a recent visit, pointing to the bare-wood subflooring in that section. “For years, people on the tours have peeked through doors and windows to these roped off areas - hallways off the sun room, or into an unfinished stairway. The Skeleton Key Club is the mansion’s new annual pass program ($70 for those 13 and older), which includes discounts, special benefits and the new Explore More Tour, starting in November.Įxplore More will take visitors to rooms that have not been part of general tours in the 93 years the mansion has been open to the public - places such as an attic over the ballroom, or inside the unfinished north turret. (The Candlelight Tour does not replace the long-standing Friday the 13th Flashlight Tours - the next ones will be held in January and October of 2017.) Be advised: Nighttime tours always sell out fast online. There’s no time like the present to check out the past, so we offer a few tips and tricks for a spirited visit. So the biggest boggler of all is why you haven’t been here since you took your St.

And there’s even a motion picture in the works – Helen Mirren is said to be finalizing a deal to play Sarah Winchester in a supernatural thriller, with filming on the property set to start early next year.

Winchester mystery house san jose costa rica plus#

There are new holiday programs, such as the Halloween Candlelight Tour, plus transformed café offerings that provide upscale snacks and themed treats. A very cool shooting gallery, in keeping with the Winchester rifle theme, just opened last month. San Jose’s distinctive Winchester Mystery House has added new features, including a Skeleton Key Club, the mansion’s new annual pass program which includes access to the new Explore More Tour, starting in November. New “Explore More” tours – part of the new Skeleton Key Club annual-pass program – will take curious souls through various rooms that have never been open to the public, through creepy attics, turrets and unfinished spaces that defy any reasonable description.

The 24/7 construction was said to appease the spirits of those felled by the Winchester rifle.Īnd now - instead of merely passing by the quaint Victorian peaks on your way to shop at Santana Row - you can get a little deeper into this enigmatic, historic gem of the Santa Clara Valley. So your inner Nancy Drew rouses, restless to explore those off-the-beaten-tour passageways into darkened, cordoned-off sections of Sarah Winchester’s masterful, maze-like mashup - a ramble of 160 rooms with zigging hallways and zagging stairways, built nonstop from 1884 to 1922.