Winchester Mystery House Stein

In 2008, I went off on one of my best and most memorable adventures. (I know this won't sound exciting or adventurous to most of you, but it was perfect and just what I needed at the time.) My friend Todd was getting married in Pasadena, so I flew out to San Francisco with one friend, where we met the other two members of our party and drove down to LA. Besides the wedding (and amazing reception), we also visited Disneyland and Muir Woods and Fisherman's Wharf with The Musee Mecanique and The Huntington and The World's Largest Monopoly Board.

Oh, and The Winchester Mystery House, a silly, bizarre, amazing attraction in San Jose. You can click on those two links to learn more, but here are the basics: Sarah Winchester was the widow of William Winchester, heir and treasurer of The Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The story goes that Sarah, overwhelmed with grief at the loss of her husband and infant child, was told by a medium that all the people killed by the Winchester Rifles would haunt her. Unless, that is, she built a new house, and continued building every day. So her mansion was always under construction until the day she died, even though the constant renovation for renovation's sake made little sense. There are doors that open onto brick walls, a closet with no floor, and a staircase that ends at the ceiling. And they say there are ghosts. I'm a skeptical guy, and I don't truck with psychics or mediums or ghost stories, but I think the image of Sarah Winchester moving slowly through her house, alone like Miss Havisham, dreaming up crazier and crazier renovations, is plenty haunting enough.

I didn't get this stein until about 18 months later, and it's a glorious 70's-era thing. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about antiques, and this mug doesn't have a manufacturer's mark of any kind, so I can't nail down the year conclusively. There are similar souvenir steins with different molds, but this mug right here has an identical mold and is for the Expo '74, in Spokane, Washington. So I'd imagine this is contemporary to that one.


The mold on this is fairly elaborate, though my copy of this stein is well-worn on the front and back sides, probably due to decades of storage against another souvenir stein. (I bought another mug at this same store, which I'll post sometime.)