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And the arms started to sway like they were dancing,” she said. “I just kind of kept singing, I don’t know why. She thought a friend was playing a joke on her, but when she turned around, no one was there. In preparation for the new tour, she was cleaning the room of cobwebs and singing to herself when she felt two arms wrap around her. The room’s peaked roof creates a unique capability: If you stand in a certain place, your voice resonates to create an eerie surround sound effect.Įvery tour guide has a ghost story to tell, and Foster says the Witch’s Cap is also where she had her own inexplicable experience back in January.
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The new tour allows visitors to get a close-up look at the Crystal Bedroom, named for the glimmering mica embedded in the room’s wallpaper, as well as an attic-like storage space in the house’s north wing where windows and balustrades from the fallen seventh-floor tower are on display.īut the highlight has to be the South Turret Witch’s Cap, the only circular room in the house and the place tour guide Jamie Foster said Harry Houdini once held a seance in 1924. At one point, visitors are required to don hard hats - branded with the Winchester Mystery House logo, naturally - because of the low ceilings and exposed pipes. (A new guest book awaits them at the end of the Explore More tour - if they make it out, of course.)įrom the front door, the tour winds through the house in disorienting fashion, creaking through narrow hallways and up and down staircases that will be new to even frequent visitors. Winchester wasn’t home.Īs the first tour groups - which included San Jose City Councilman Chappie Jones - passed through the threshold, they were greeted with a guest book signed by visitors from 1924. He came to the front door, which no one ever did, but was denied entrance by the servants because Mrs. Supposedly, Theodore Roosevelt, on a tour of the West during his presidency, traveled to visit the mansion, situated among orchards west of San Jose. As with everything about the house, there’s a great story to go with the door, which may be true or just another legend.
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“Some of them have incredible history, some of them have amazing stories associated with them, and some of them are just really freaking cool.”Īnd while the regular mansion tour takes you through decorated bedrooms, ballrooms and kitchens, part of the charm of the new tour is that many of the rooms are in an unfinished state or show evidence of damage from the 1906 earthquake that toppled the top three stories of the house, which is said to have been under continuous construction until Winchester’s death in 1922.įor the first time ever, a tour now includes the mansion’s front door, which was rarely used even in Sarah’s time. “I just asked ‘What are these places?’ So gradually I was snooping around and started looking at all these incredible rooms that we’ve never been able to put on the regular tour. After he went on the guest tour of his new domain, he noticed doors that were boarded with locks that just had skeleton keys. But that changed when Walter Magnuson - general manager of the Winchester Mystery House - arrived two years ago.