olivehurst ca to winchester mystery house san jose

Winchester and her extreme superstitious nature and set the time period. They need to re-furnish these rooms with period-appropriate pieces to flesh out the feel of the house.Īlso helpful would be a video to set the mood, describe Mrs. Winchester's furnishings were auctioned off after her death. Sadly, many of the rooms were empty as Mrs. I would like to see the tour follow the additions in the order they were build along with some floor plans to illustrate how the house grew.

Our guide provided information about the various rooms that we saw, but there was very little sense of how the house evolved or why certain rooms were added (assuming anyone knows). They start and finish you in a large gift shop of tchotchkes.

Parking is included in your ticket price. Sadly, that may be the future highest and best use for this antiquated, irrelevant relic. The property is now surrounded by high rise apartments and mid rise commercial buildings. The building is hot and stuffy in places, and you walk a lot of steps and stand in small rooms with a group of 18 other people/strangers. The newly restored rooms are interesting shows of Victorian area rooms and antiques, but you can see they can't keep up with the maintenance of the exterior/facade. There is little historical relevance, nor any innovations that would draw you to the property. The tickets are expensive (approx $42 per adult), and while the house is interesting and sprawling (you get to see maybe 100 of the 160 rooms, on a one hour guided tour), none of the furnishings are intact, though a number of finishes are. I think basically it was a waste of money. With some spare time on our hands, and reading the favorable reviews, we thought this would be a good filler. Our friends visiting from Texas absolutely loved the tour but were also disappointed that there was very little mention of the rifle and it’s connection to the house. We did not experience any event personally. Isaac played up the mystery & shared some reported paranormal events that made it more exciting. That poor tour guide did not believe any of the legends & ruined the “mystery” of the house. We had a good tour guide this time (Isaac). Those spirits allegedly haunted her causing the constant construction of the house over the 38 years. History should not be re written! Her guilt over all who were killed by that rifle was responsible for her moving to California. They used to have a display of old rifles and also let you hold a rifle as a prop when they took your group’s photo. I understand being sensitive in light of mass shootings but that is a huge part of the history of this house. This tour would have been 5 stars if they had not disassociated themselves from the Winchester rifle. Overall, really happy with the experience you really should go if you have the opportunity. That said, our tour guide was Jennifer, and we also very much enjoyed how informative and nice she was. You do get access to rooms you don't see on the house tour, but overall it wasn't QUITE our scene. Our second tour was the Spirits tour, and I'd thought it would mostly be about Victorian spirituality, and it was partially about that, but there was also a lot of ghost stories. That said, our house tour was with Freddie, and she was amazing - really lovely and informative we very much enjoyed her and the tour. So I'd say maybe don't depend on that number or email. I ended up buying a second set of tickets (totaling $200 for three people for two tours), and after four days of not hearing back, asked for the refund at the ticket counter, which they gave me without any problems. Well, I emailed and called 5 times each (plus reached out on Facebook and Twitter) and didn't get a response. I saw on the site and in the confirmation email that you could get a refund or rescheduled date by calling their number or emailing. One hiccup: We made a reservation for a Tuesday, but when an atmospheric river came through our area, it was too treacherous to drive (San Jose is more than an hour from our house). We took my mom on her 82th birthday, and overall we had a great time.

Olivehurst ca to winchester mystery house san jose