Hunting Ghosts in San Jose

Friday, August 25, 2009

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Hunting Ghosts in San Jose

By J’AMY PACHECO

I’m not the bravest person on the planet. In fact, I tend to walk on the fraidy-cat side of the street.

But it’s been a wish of my 13-year-old daughter to tour the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose for several years. This 160-room Victorian mansion is mysterious for several reasons — but that’s a story for another day. The house is also said to be haunted.

After she saw the house described in a book of weird California places, we booked a tour that was to take place during a visit to San Francisco. Unfortunately, the tour was cancelled at the last minute due to rain, and we never got around to heading north to try again.

Until last weekend, that is.

A former teacher of my daughter’s learned about her wish to see the house and expressed interest in seeing it herself. The teacher is an adventurous soul who does crazy things like spending Halloween in Transylvania (last year) and Salem, Mass., (this year). She suggested the three of us make a weekend of it.

Saturday morning, we headed to the airport before the sun was up. By 9:30 a.m., we were in San Jose, had deposited our backpacks in a hotel room and found a cab to take us to Sarah Winchester’s house.

I’d toured the Winchester House as a child but barely remembered it. It seemed surprisingly small and well-hidden by the modern city that has grown up around it.

Once inside the Winchester compound, however, it was like entering a different world. We bought tickets for every tour offered at the house and promptly set out to see what Sarah had created.

A believer in the occult, Sarah Winchester apparently believed that as long as she kept construction going on her house, the spirits of those killed by her family’s legendary guns would not bother her. Consequently, the house is an architectural wonder, containing staircases that lead to the ceiling, doors that open into sold walls or multi-story drops, and scores of other features that make the house a place where a guide is 100 percent necessary.

It was a beautiful house, however, containing jeweled Tiffany windows, intricately carved wood details and expensive wall coverings.

Our second tour took us into the home’s basement, which was surprisingly clean and modern-looking with its concrete floors and brick walls. But it contained long tunnels that led into blackness, and even I was mildly creeped out when the tour guide mentioned the basement was supposed to be one of the most haunted parts of the house.

My favorite picture from the tours is one of my daughter in the basement. Under her hard hat, she is smiling and trying to look brave, but it’s obvious she can’t wait to get out of there.

All told, we spent more than six hours at the Winchester House, doing guided and self-guided tours, perusing the Products Museum, and buying souvenirs. It was great fun.

We headed across the street to a trendy outdoor shopping mall called Santana Row. There, we experienced the delight of “Kara’s Cupcakes” while watching people frolic with their dogs — welcome in most shops and restaurants. It was a great place to brush off the cobwebs of the past and unload thoughts of ghosts.

By the time we got to bed that night, we had walked a bazillion miles and were exhausted. But the day’s adventures quickly caught up with my ghost-hunting daughter, who managed to freak herself out to the point of becoming nauseated.

It was probably my fault — as the teacher and I perused the hundreds of digital photos we’d taken that day, we pointed out anomalies of light that we speculated might be ghosts. We were kidding, of course; our downloaded pictures show nothing unusual beyond our own reflections in some windows and mirrors.

The end result, however, was that my daughter had trouble falling asleep, and we had to keep the lights blazing.

That dream fulfilled, my daughter next wants to visit the Whaley House in San Diego. It, too, is rumored to be haunted, and a pal of mine swears she once saw a doorknob there moving up and down when there was nobody on the other side.

I’m game but a little bit worried about the whole freaking-out-later thing. And I don’t think Kara makes cupcakes in San Diego.

I suppose we could always book the trip — and then hope like heck for rain.