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Heavily Investigated

The Winchester Mystery House feels less built than dreamed into being: a Victorian maze of sealed doors, stairways to nowhere, dead ends, narrow passages, and rooms that seem to fold back on themselves. Its haunted reputation centers on Sarah Winchester, the rifle fortune widow said in legend to have built endlessly to confuse or appease spirits connected to Winchester firearms. Visitors come for the architecture, but the unease lives in the pattern of the house itself—160 rooms arranged like a séance in wood, glass, and shadow.

Sarah Winchester purchased a modest San Jose farmhouse in 1886 and — allegedly on the advice of a spiritualist who told her restless souls killed by the Winchester rifle demanded it — proceeded to build without pause for 36 years until her death in 1922. The result: a Queen Anne Victorian sprawling across 24,000 square feet, with 160 rooms, 47 staircases, 10,000 windows, and doors opening onto sheer drops. It is a designated California Historical Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The official record calls it eccentric architecture; the legend calls it a deal with the dead.