If you haven’t found enough spooky things to do in Sacramento, one of the most famous haunted houses in the U.S. is only a couple hours drive.  The Winchester Mansion is located at 525 S. Winchester Blvd, San Jose, CA 95120.  So if you are looking for some ghostly fun they are having flashlight tours on Friday, October 31, Halloween night.  The tours of the 160 room mansion are conducted with only moonlight and the flashlight each person will receive at the beginning of the tour.  Tickets are $43 and you can buy them online; it is probably a good idea to do that before you make the drive because I hear they sometimes sell out on spooky occasions like this.  Click on this link for ticket info. 

Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA

This house had its beginnings as an 8 room farmhouse purchased in 1884 and expanded to 160 rooms by a stream of carpenters scheduled to work on a 24 hour basis by Sarah Winchester the widow of William Winchester who made his fortune with the Winchester Rifle Company.  Legend has it that she was depressed after the death of her daughter Annie in 1866 and her husband in 1881, so she sought the advice of a medium who told her she had to leave her home in New Haven and move west.  She believed that the ghosts of all the people killed with Winchester Rifles haunted her and the medium convinced her she must keep building or she would die.  Construction stopped when she died in 1922 and is estimated to have cost $5.5 million which would translate to about $70 million in 2008 dollars.  Although I’m not sure about the truth of this, some say she slept in a different room every night to confuse the ghosts.  Maybe she just couldn’t find the way back to her bedroom because the house has 40 bedrooms and as many stair cases (some that lead to nowhere), and many of the rooms have secret passages and rooms attached. 

If you are an amateur architect or design buff like I am, you may agree with me that this sounds like lots more fun than staying home with HGTV and designing on a dime.  I can’t think of a better way to spend Halloween than exploring all the nooks and crannies of this quirky sprawling Victorian Mansion.  But if you are taking the kids trick-or-treating and can’t come on Halloween, or if you are just faint-of-heart and afraid of the dark, the Winchester Mystery House has daytime tours too so keep it on your list of fun things to do for future reference.