Adventure #18 -- A Gingerbread House for the Crazy

Adventure - Marty

Description: To truck our way down to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose and, well, walk around inside it.


(Marty's Report):

Heather and I were down in Fresno for the Cooper's Thanksgiving, saying a final goodbye to Gpa's house, although we all agreed that Gpa was utterly outofthere. Sometimes, after someone has died, you have a sense of their energy still hanging around. Not here. It was like the last bit of wax, and then the wick, got burned up and that's that.

Anyway, on the way back, I saw the billboard for the Winchester Mystery House--they are peppered around the Bay Area, and I've been seeing them for years, flashing on a few memories of when my father took Corey and I there, probably 30 years ago. This time, it stuck in my mind, and when Heather (thinking I'd draw a blank at her question) asked me what I'd planned for a weekend adventure...voila! The WMH!

Now, Heather being from the East Coast, sorta, maybe more accurately the South East Coast, banjo land, North Carolina de Hayseed, etc., she'd only vaguely heard of it. But she was game, so having hit the internet for info and directions (you know, I'm going to have to digress into an "Isn't that f-----g amazing!" digression: I can remember not that long ago, asking Dad to get all the U.S. maps that AAA had available, when I was too cheap or poor to sign up with their service. I had these bags of maps around, on the shelf, for years--not at all sure where they went to, come to think of it--and now that's all as obsolete as the orange sugar crust that they used to spread on the matrimonial sheets of newlyweds (I've read). Now you just go online and ask the magic Internet for directions and lo, all is revealed. That's just wild. Really.), and we were off!

But en route, we stopped off over at Casa de Smurf (nee the Sharp-Madson's house), and hung out with James, Benjamin and Ariana. James looked a bit bedraggled from his morning with kids (Robin was off teaching), and we arrived just before nap time, which meant we got to participate in the bedtime ritual. Benjamin hadn't seen us for a while, so he was a bit standoffish, though when we were upstairs and he saw Heather brushing my hair, well, he couldn't be left out and came over to brush mine, and then finally gave us big hugs as we left James to finalize the sleep process.

Then we headed down to San Jose, down the outrageously beautiful Hwy 280, across the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and into the heart of the SJ. There should be something horrible about the SJ, with its sprawling suburban ethos, but for whatever reason it doesn't. Hm. All the techies?

The Winchester Mystery House is just off the freeway, next to a mobile home park, a Cinedom theater, and across the street from an upscale mall. I don't think it was like that 30 years ago; I don't remember it reminding me of the Vatican as surrounded by Home Depots. It's obviously got a lot of money available; the place is manicured and seems like it was just painted. And it charges $26 a head, which is probably why it looks so good.

We got on a tour in the mid-afternoon, with a young man who Heather described as, to paraphrase, a "Cranked-up Jon Lovetz." He took us on the one mile sojourn through a very odd house, a structure built up over many years by a, well, crazy woman. She inherited a butt-load of cash from her husband, who cashed in on the American tendency for violence by making a lot of rifles. His wife apparently was a wacky Spiritualist who was told by a medium to keep building lest she be set upon by the spirits of those killed by the rifles. Logical. So she kept building on the house for her whole life, which is to say, she hired workers to work for her around the clock.

And the results are not bizarre so much as just lightly odd. It kind of makes sense for an eccentric arthritic old woman, but it's hard to hold a concept of the place, to make a mental map of the house. I felt disoriented by the end in a rather unpleasant way, not spooked out at all, but just lightly addled. Being inside an odd mind is...odd. If the place actually had people and current life in it, it might feel different. But with it's both empty and frozen in time quality, it's, well, odd.

On the way back, Heather suggested dinner in Half Moon Bay, on the water. So we headed over Hwy 90, past the various tree farms, previously pumpkin farms, where we'll be next week getting a tree with the Sharpe-Madsons. We found an odd little neighborhood, at Mavericks, where the famous big wave competition is held. We ate at the Brewery, overlooking the water, where the water was mostly glassy, and a solo wind surfer wobbled across the water under the antenae ball thingy on the peninsula. I must say, it was about the best raviolis I've ever had.


(Heather's Report):

I'd heard of the Winchester Mystery House. Well, not on the East Coast, but only once I moved out here. I mean... how could you NOT have heard of it with all the damned signs, billboards and bumper stickers screaming "Come see this extremely weird house thingie!!" I paraphrase. Greatly. I mean, really, bumper stickers for a whack house?

But speaking of whack houses, I love them. I love houses with little quirks and oddities. Although, I have to say, this was a bit... over the top, in that department.

Which leads to humans and their love of money no matter how one gets it. So this guy Winchester decided, as Marty put it, to cash in on extremely surface potential violence of human beings, especially that of the burgeoning America. You know, Winchester... you might have heard of him. Or at least his product. Guns. Specifically rifles. At the Whacky House of Winchester Widow, there was a small museum containing all sorts of forms of easy purveyance of death. The evolution of the projectile weapon, from small single hand held powder/ball type to quick loading, quick fire rifles. And we know that from the time of that invention, money has been invested to make more! And sell more! And yep, people buy more!

So, basically, Winchester made a shit ton of money. Which Whacky Winchester Window all got when he died. Maybe she didn't agree with Winchester's choice of money making avenues or maybe she was just crazy, but for some reason she decided to see a medium about it all and was told that she needed to keep building the house in order to appease the souls of all those killed by her husband's products. I mean, the money was basically blood money right?

But considering how the house was built, I wonder if she wasn't building just to build but to confuse. Like Marty said, it's very hard to orient oneself in this maze of hallways and interlinking rooms. Maybe she was hoping to confuse a few hundred thousand spirits set on revenge. I'd be pretty damn confused as a spirit bent on revenge too. Turn a corner to go up a set of stairs you think leads to Whacky Winchester Widow's bedroom in order to do her in and meet ceiling after half a flight.

In any case, our too energetic guide who really did look and speak like John Lovetz of Saturday Night Live, led us around the house, explaining in that "I'm such a bright and perky tour guide and I'm going to beat you into liking this tour no matter what you think!" voice, about the various quirks of the house and the woman and all that. At the end he said we'd walked a mile and I really believe it. Even though the house was only on a set space within a bit of a sprawling plot. Right in the middle of town. But still, a damn mile inside one house because of all the ups and downs and turn arounds and the way it was put together. And build on top of and within. A lot of parts weren't finished, as attentions got turned elsewhere or maybe Whacky Winchester Widow felt the ghosts were getting too close and started changing her mind about corridors and such. Whacky.

It was fun however, although it certainly didn't give me any quirky house ideas as there wasn't really anything that I wanted to replicate. Well, the stairs were pretty cool even if not designed for very tall peoploe. Apparently she was pretty short and designed these stairs for very short legs, not steep, somewhat wide, spiraling in a square fashion up and around. Easier on the legs I think than a real set of stairs. I'll take those. Or maybe a cool little chair lift. She didn't have any but I'd design one. Especially when I get older and more crazy.