mystery house - View this location on map  'Sarah L. Pardee, born in New Haven in 1840, married into the Winchester family, known for its famous repeating rifle, 'the gun that won the West.' Distraught after losing her husband and her infant daughter to illness, she is said to have visited a spiritualist who told her she had been cursed by the rifle's victims and should move west and work nonstop on a house, so the clatter would ward off the troubled souls. She did, and her team of carpenters worked round the clock, 365 days a year, on the sprawling Victorian, now known as the Winchester Mystery House (408-247-2101; open every day but Christmas, $19.95 for adults, $13.95 for children ages 6 to 12). It has staircases leading nowhere, windows built into the floor, about 950 doors and 47 fireplaces. It's a tourist trap, with requisite gift shop and perky tour guides, but go anyway: the house is a monument to the human capacity for odd conviction. Winchester believed that the Great 1906 Earthquake was her fault and was rich enough to act on all her whims.'' New York Times 525 south winchester boulevard, San Jose, CA Historical, Kids |