outfit details – fox pullover: Sweater Project // skirt: Vera Wang – Princess (buy here) // boots: Blowfish (buy here) // glasses: Derek Cardigan (buy here) // peter pan collar necklace: M Style (Macy’s) // watch: Timex x Disney

I feel like I’m sooo behind on my blog posts. Actually, I am behind.

Case in point: I went to the Winchester Mystery House a couple days before Christmas with Tim and his cousin Sarah from Ohio and I never got around to blogging about it because I was too caught up in Christmas festivities. Legit excuse? So instead of blogging about my birthday trip to the zoo (which happened yesterday) I’ll go ahead and talk about the Winchester Mystery House since today is the 13th day of the year and the 13th year of the 21st century! <– 21st century started in 2001, my bad.

How is this even relevant to the Winchester Mystery House? Well, Sarah Winchester, the woman responsible for the beautiful yet eerily funky Victorian mansion was overly superstitious and obsessed with the number 13. There are many cases where a room has 13 windows, or 13 of… whatever.

Because of copyright issues, we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the inside of the house (although people have because I totally saw some pics of the interior from users on Instagram. Tsk!), but we were allowed to take photos of the garden and whatnot. It’s a shame that visitors aren’t allowed to take pictures inside because they decorated each room with beautifully ornate Christmas trees! Oh, and it would’ve been a crazy amazing photo op to do for a  Downton Abbey-esque outfit picture!

I’ve been wanting to visit the Winchester Mystery House for quite sometime as I’ve always seen it on the Travel Channel. The house was constantly under construction for 38 years until Sarah Winchester died. As I said before, Winchester was overly superstitious and she built the house because the spirits of those who had been killed by the rifles of her late husband’s company (Winchester Rifle) told her she needed to build a house but never complete it. The mansion’s full of strange oddities with staircases leading to nowhere, cupboards that are an inch or two deep, low-rise and confined staircases that zig-zag, and a door that leads to a good  neck-breaking drop (pictured above and below) just to name a few things.

Another thing about this place is that there have been many reports of paranormal activity! As a self professed “scare-dy cat” I was kind of hoping to see a ghost or feel something… because I’m just weird like that. We also added on to do the basement tour and our guide said that guests have reported seeing a ghost down there. I didn’t see anything!

But what made the tour for me was the fact that our tour guide for the interior part of the house was a Whovian (Doctor Who fan, in case you didn’t know)! As we made our way down a sketchy hallway he warned us to beware of any minotaur that might be lurking and that totally made me think of “The God Complex” from season 6. As I walked down the hall I said, “I should’ve brought my Sonic Screwdriver” to which he said “That would have been helpful.” OMG. My nerd heart sang. It’s so fun to find other Whovians, we’re kind of like unicorns y’know? He even asked if anyone went by the name Alonso and proceeded to say, “Allon-sy Alonso!” and mentioned something about the Sonic Screwdriver not having a wood setting. A lot of people in our group were muttering “I don’t get it” but I was jumping up and down because I couldn’t contain my excitement about the Doctor Who-ness that was happening!  Tim asked him if we had to be wary of the statues outside in case of a Weeping Angel attack. The tour guide’s face totally lit up. It was such a fabulous nerdtastic moment!

I definitely want to go back during Halloween because they do these flashlight tours at night and everyone wears headphones and the tour ends in the seance room! I have no idea why I want to scare myself like that. I don’t even like scary movies. o,0

Cheers,
Nina