101 Places Not to See Before You Die - Catherine Price [8]
The house has been open to the public, in one form or another, since soon after Winchester’s death in 1922. But unfortunately for anyone intrigued by her story, its legend is more interesting than the tour itself. Part of the problem is that Winchester left all of her furniture, household goods, pictures, and other artifacts to her niece, the alliterative Mrs. Marian Merriman Marriott, who wasted no time in clearing out the house and selling them off. This was no doubt profitable for Mrs. M, but it means that aside from a few rooms that have been refurnished with period-appropriate decor, the gigantic house is empty. What’s more, despite the legend of the house—the séances, the spirits, the psychic—no one really knows for certain why Sarah Winchester built her house the way she did. Maybe the story is true; maybe she was just participating in an early-twentieth-century version of Extreme Home Makeover. Or maybe she was just bat-shit crazy.
Regardless, like all good tourist traps, the opportunities to spend money at the Winchester House don’t end with the tour. In addition to an arcade offering 1980s video games, there’s an antique products museum featuring Winchester flashlights, Winchester roller skates, and Winchester wrenches, and a display titled WINCHESTER HOUSE IMMORTALIZED IN GINGERBREAD. The nearby gift shop is a warehouse-size collection of Winchester House shot glasses, tote bags, T-shirts, and specialty wine, all sharing shelf space with butterfly-shaped wind chimes, novelty dishtowels, and magnets announcing that “STRESSED” IS “DESSERTS” SPELLED BACKWARDS.
The effect of all this—the gift shop, the mile-long tour through endless empty rooms, the near total lack of concrete facts—is to leave you feeling as if you’d just binged on McDonald’s: full, and yet, surprisingly empty. In fact, the only justification for the house’s popularity as a tourist attraction is its size—whereas usually one would balk at the prospect of paying $26 to tour a crazy lady’s empty home ($5 more if you want to see the plumbing system), the Winchester House is so large that with some creative math, it’s almost justifiable: each of its 110 rooms costs less than 25 cents to see.
But still, one question remains: who signs up for the annual pass?
Nota bene: The Winchester Mystery House is not to be confused with the pirate-themed haunted house that opens in Fremont, California, every Halloween. That is totally different—though, incidentally, also not worth seeing.
A. J. JACOBS
The Worst Places in the Encyclopedia
Paris in 1871
During the famous Siege of Paris, food was hard to come by. The residents resorted to “rat paté.” Or, if they were lucky and had connections, they got to eat the giraffes and elephants from the Paris zoo. Not a place you want to visit unless you have an extremely adventurous palate.
The Emperor’s Court in China, Twelfth Century
It’s hard to pick the most evil ruler in the encyclopedia, but among the top ten was probably Emperor Chou. To please his concubine, Chou built a lake of wine and forced naked men and women to chase one another around it. Also, he strung the forest with human flesh.
The Eighth Circle of Hell
In Dante’s book The Divine Comedy, the ninth circle of hell is traditionally considered the worst. In this circle, betrayers are stuck in a frozen lake for eternity, their tears making blocks of ice on their eyes. But personally, I think the eighth circle sounds worse. This one has a river of human excrement that submerges flatterers. To me, ice sounds pretty good next to that.
The North End of Boston on January 15, 1919
This may be a stretch for this list, but I try to mention the Great Molasses Flood in everything I write. And it really was a bad place to be. It occurred when a giant molasses storage tank exploded and sent a fifteen-foot wave of molasses through the streets of Boston. Twenty-one people were drowned in the sticky stuff. Trains were lifted off their tracks and