Ghost TV

So while we were at the Winchester Mystery House, we heard stories about ghosts and creepy paranormal activity.  One of the tour guides said she had seen such a ghost herself.  I myself have never seen a ghost but I like to believe that the various credible sources from which I have heard ghost stories (which include close friends) are not out of their minds and that ghosts do in fact exist. 

Now while we were there, we heard that the ghost hunting show had been to the house in recent years.  We also heard that they were complete assholes to everyone and didn't even stay the whole night because it was "too scary" (the employees stay until 4am on a regular basis as part of their job).  Now I've seen the show Ghost Hunters before and I thought that was kind of odd because they didn't really seem like the type that would be assholes or even scare easily.  So today I decided to track down the episode after Kris informed me they were available on youtube.  It turns out there was two ghost hunting shows that investigated the Winchester Mystery House (Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures) and it didn't take long to figure out which show the employees were talking about.

Behold the level of douchebaggery...

 

The guy from Ghost Adventures is unbearable.  At one point he actually attempted to open two of the bathrooms in the house because he has to pee and then complains to the tour guide about those bathrooms being a cocktease.  Who the fuck tries to use the bathroom in a historical landmark?  If I was in charge, I would have told him to get the fuck out. 

"Crazy" Mrs. Winchester

The story of my life.  Kris is off on vacation busy doing awesome vacationy things and she STILL manages to post before me.  But its cool because for this particular adventure, we were together!

See? Its us. TOGETHER!

After three LONG years apart, Krangela was finally reunited for 10 whole days!  We spent one of those days at the Winchester Mystery House because neither of us had ever been there and Kris really wanted to go and I really wanted an excuse to drive to San Jose to see it.  Totally worth it.  Fun times were had by all.  Even the tour guide was cracking himself up at practically every stop.  Its nice to know that he was enjoying his job.  It seems like tour guiding could get a bit tedious. 

Also, Kris got to meet my husband.  Not that day, they met earlier when we picked Kris up from the airport.

Evidence that Kris and John met

I think it goes without saying that they hit it off because everyone loves my husband... and everyone loves Kris too so there was really no way for this to go wrong. 

In the gift shop, there was a candy house replica of the mystery house.

It looked exactly like this.  And here's a pic of the actual house for comparison. 

Nailed it

Fun story, apparently the ghost hunters filmed an episode here and they were jerks to everyone and didn't even stay the whole night because it was too scary even though nothing happened.  I wonder if I could track down that episode.  It would be interesting to watch. 

Alas, Kris left us for Canadaland on Monday.  I can only hope it wont be another three years before we see each other again.  We're working on convincing her to move to California which shouldn't be too difficult because we have awesome sushi.  Apparently our mediocre sushi is way better than their "really good" sushi.  Perhaps if we had taken her to the best sushi place, she would never have left. 

The House of Winchester

Due to travel and issues with the internet, I have not been able to get around to this week's topic (which was actually meant to be an adventure topic, but Angela decided to turn it into this week's topic :p).

Every picture I've ever seen of the Mystery House has it nicely surrounded by farmland.  This picture clearly demonstrates how this is not the case:  see the movie theater sign on one side, the busy street behind the sign, and the housing on the other side.  The House of Winchester is now in a sea of city, looking oddly out of place, and all the more like a tourist trap rather than a historical site.

We weren't really allowed to take pictures of the inside of the house, but I got some neat shots of the outside.  It's hard to tell how big the house really is from these, though, because it looks much smaller than one might think.  The inside is indeed a labyrinth, but it seemed much more straight forward than they wanted us to believe.  They said if you straggled behind on the tour, you would get very lost and wouldn't be able to find your way out.  Yet, I noticed a lot of doubling back on the tour, which led me to believe it would be very easy to find your way out as long as you knew what you were looking for.  Mrs. Winchester and her guests needed to be able to find thier way around the house after all.

There is in fact a "Door to Nowhere"

Teresa and I couldn't help bending the rules a little...technically this is outside the house

Angela and John being cute in the garden

The statue built to appease the Native American spirits who died from Winchester guns

I would definitely recommend taking both parts of the tour to anyone who wants to go.  You only see parts of the house on either tour, but it's only $5 more to see both and as much of the house as they open to the public.  We didn't see any ghosts, but apparently others have, plus you can spend as much time wandering through what remains of the estate (outside of the house) as you'd like for free.