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The Winchester Mystery House is a mansion in San Jose, California, that was once the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester.

The house became a tourist attraction nine months after her death in 1922.

In 1866, Winchester gave birth to a girl named Annie Pardee Winchester. In 1886, Edward "Ned" Rambo, a San Francisco agent for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, took Winchester on a tour of the Santa Clara valley to look for a home.

When Winchester died in 1922 the house had 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and 6 kitchens.

Past neighbors, friends, and workers for Winchester were distressed when they read about superstitious claims being made about the house and Winchester, and were upset the Browns were making money from falsehoods. According to some accounts, Houdini suggested tour operators use "Winchester mystery house" as a promotional name for the property. As of 1963, after both John and Mayme Brown had passed away, the house was incorporated as Winchester Mystery House, LLC, a private business that represents the descendants of the Browns and continues to preserve Sarah Winchester’s house.

Claims of Winchester inheriting as much as $20 million and earning $1,000 per day in royalties from her inheritance can be found in tourist literature purchased at the Winchester Mystery House.

In Smith's version of events, Winchester visited a medium in Boston named Adam Coons who told her that she and her family were being haunted by the ghosts of people killed by Winchester rifles, that she must construct a house for these ghosts, and that she must never complete the project.

While Winchester lived at the Atherton house, her relatives stayed at the San Jose home for almost a year in 1915 to attend the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, which ran for nine months.

After the damage from the earthquake, Winchester did not rebuild the house.

Subsequently, it has been mentioned in most articles about Winchester and her house.

In 1960, the Winchester Mystery House was used as the Cyrus Zorba House in the film 13 Ghosts. The tale of the Winchester Mystery House was inspiration for The Haunted Mansion ride at Disney theme parks, the first of which opened in 1969 at Disneyland. The plot of the 2002 miniseries Rose Red (written by Stephen King) was inspired by the lore surrounding Sarah Winchester and the Winchester Mystery House. In 2011, Ghost Adventures featured the Winchester Mystery House in the fourth episode of season five. In the MythBusters episode "Smell of Fear", the build team visited the Winchester Mystery House to look around and later watch "one of the scariest movies of all time" on a television that they set up in the grand ballroom, with the purpose of determining if fear does smell different by gathering their sweat samples for testing at the end of the night. In 2017, filming took place on the property for the film Winchester, featuring Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester. In 2019, the podcast Criminal produced an episode about the house titled "The Widow and the Winchester". In January 2021, an episode of the award-winning podcast This Paranormal Life was released that discussed the Winchester Mystery House. The "Winchester Mystery House" episode of Destination Fear (Season 4, Episode 5) aired on December 23, 2022. In June 2024, content creation group OfflineTV featured the Winchester Mystery House in a video on their YouTube channel, where they played hide and seek and explored the history and myths surrounding the property. In October 2025, pinball manufacturer Barrels of Fun announced their third title, Winchester Mystery House, which is inspired by the unique design and supernatural elements associated with the Winchester mansion.

Quick Facts

• As of 1963, after both John and Mayme Brown had passed away, the house was incorporated as Winchester Mystery House, LLC, a private business that represents the descendants of the Browns and continues to preserve Sarah Winchester’s house.
• In 1960, the Winchester Mystery House was used as the Cyrus Zorba House in the film 13 Ghosts.
• The plot of the 2002 miniseries Rose Red (written by Stephen King) was inspired by the lore surrounding Sarah Winchester and the Winchester Mystery House.
• Claims of Winchester inheriting as much as $20 million and earning $1,000 per day in royalties from her inheritance can be found in tourist literature purchased at the Winchester Mystery House.
• In October 2025, pinball manufacturer Barrels of Fun announced their third title, Winchester Mystery House, which is inspired by the unique design and supernatural elements associated with the Winchester mansion.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Winchester Mystery House". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.