I used to work in a comic book shop, and the owner used to be a tour guide for the Winchester Mystery House when he was a teenager. He got bored with the standard tour info, so he used to make stuff up about how one room's floor was supposed to be cursed, so Sara Winchester would swing across the room like a monkey using the exposed pipes from the ceiling. He got fired soon after that... but he later went on to write Justice League for DC for a while.
Ooh! I remember the ads at the drive-in in Alameda Ghostly lady's voice: keep building. . . keeeep building. .
When I was a teenager I worked at the Mystery House one summer. I wasn't a tour guide but worked at the snack bar. One time we had an employee party at night and had a scavenger hunt through out the house. That was pretty fun. Years ago when I was in grammer school they had a wax museum there. We used to sneak in check out all the guns, wax figures and other stuff they had on display. I'm pretty sure the wax museum is no longer there though. The took it out before they built the snackbar/cafe in the mid 80's.
Basically, there was this whacked out lady named Sara Winchester who was the heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune. She was apparently very superstitious, and a fortune teller told her that she would be haunted by all the ghosts of people killed by the guns made by her family, and that the only way to avoid the curse would be for her to continuously add onto her house... so she had this huge ass house built, with no real buidling code inspector OKs... door open into walls, stairs go to a ceiling with no opening... etc... Home Depot and Bob Villa would've loved her. She apparently died when the construction crew was on a break... I grew up in San Jose (where the house is), and I have never been inside for a tour...
yeah,,she was Winchester's wife and she was too build a room for each of the men her husbands rifles had killed.
It's something like 106 rooms. I'd love to see that 'Keep building...' drive-in commercial again. That always crept me out as a kid.
Two really great restaurants on Winchester, Khan’s, excellent Vietnamese, try the Vietnamese special rice dish! And Krung Thai, for great Thailand dishes! The Neua Kra-Praw is wonderful! Unfortunately Khan’s does not have a website, but here’s a review: http://www.topix.net/content/cj/15057993663317137257 http://www.newkrungthai.com/
yeah I remember going to Frontier Village when I was a kid. That place was pretty fun. It went out of business once Great America opened up.
Remember the fishin' hole? Fishin' for trout with corn. I think they closed to build an old folks home. That was one of my favorite places as a kid, along with the Boardwalk and Santa's Village. Good times.
