Day 12: The Winchester House

Expectations lead to disappointment, I guess. And while my high expectations for a good time at the Winchester Mystery house were largely met by the house itself, the mysterious loss of the photos taken is one of my life's great disappointments.

If you don't know the story of the house, here is a breif history. Sarah Winchester was the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, and was convinced by a psychic that she was being haunted by the ghosts of those who had been killed by her family's guns. The only way to keep the ghosts from haunting her was to start building a house and never stop. So in short, this crazy rich lady had a bunch of people build her an enormous house with no rhyme or reason - due to the constantly rushed construction, there were countless oddities such as stairways leading into roofs, doors that lead to three story drops, and just generally oddly shaped rooms.

Jacki and I went to the house first thing in the morning, took a ton of photos (some of which showed unquestionably ghostly shapes), and... not much to tell after that, unfortunately. The house is just as awesome as you'd expect from the description, I only wish there were pictures to tell the story with. Words can only say so much... I only wish that the house was not located in the middle of San Jose and was rather somewhere out in the woods, as Alan Moore mistakenly depicted it (or "the Cambridge Mansion") in one of his great "Swamp Thing" comics.