![]() ![]() Legend has it that she did it to appease or confuse the ghosts of people killed by Winchester rifles. Famously private and eccentric, she built onto her California home on and off for more than 30 years. ![]() The mastermind behind this architectural oddity-a sprawling Queen Anne Revival with 160 rooms-was Sarah Winchester, the widow of the rifle magnate William Winchester. ![]() This might be a minor detail, but it hints at the disorder that unfolds within. One of the first things you notice upon approaching the Winchester Mystery House is that the front door is not aligned with the roof peak above it-it is staggered slightly to the right. “Some of them really enjoy the spaces being something only employees know about.” Magnuson’s vision won out, as he made the decision to restore the front wing of the house to its Victorian-style, albeit sometimes unfinished, glory, and then share it with visitors. “Some of them were very protective,” he says. Magnuson wanted to open some of these rooms to the public, but not all of the house’s long-term employees agreed. “Some of these spaces, you have a lot of questions: What was this room’s purpose? Who stayed here? What was Sarah thinking?” “It was just in a constant state of becoming,” says Magnuson, who came to Winchester from a senior position at Disneyland. He saw jewel-like wallpaper that scattered sunlight into tiny orbs, rows of stained-glass windows mounted inexplicably at waist height, and secret balconies that offered a bird’s-eye view of the many-gabled roof. Some rooms were missing floorboards, others had been closed off after sustaining severe damage in the 1906 earthquake, and still more were just full of broken tiles. He did eventually gain access to these hidden spaces, and what he found was both astounding and in keeping with the home’s reputation for eccentricity. “They said, ‘You know, a lot of these spaces can only open with skeleton keys, and only one tour guide has the keys.’” “I would see doors that were locked, I would see hallways that were kind of dark, and I would start asking about them,” he says. When Walter Magnuson arrived at San Jose’s Winchester Mystery House as its new general manager in 2015, he asked the tour guides at the famed, peculiar mansion to show him everything. ![]()
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