A Home With a Smaller Version Inside and Other Eccentric Houses

Looking to buy a new mansion?  We’re not sure if any of these are for sale, but they are so weird that you might get a good price. 

Here’s a home in San Jose, California with a weird history. As you may have gathered, the owner was the heiress of the Winchester Rifle fortune, Sarah Winchester, and we assume she decided to spend lots of that money on creating this home.

The story goes that the spirit of Mrs. Winchester’s dead husband guided the construction. Husband and wife would consult over seances in the turret room, which happens to look like a witch’s pointy hat.  

Ghosts were just one of Sara Winchester’s obsessions. She also put a lot of stock in the number thirteen. As opposed to most people, she loved the number. To that end, she installed thirteen bathrooms, staircases with thirteen steps, and chandeliers with thirteen arms, just to name a few eerie features. 

As opposed to Mrs. Sarah Winchester, most people are terrified by the number thirteen. Buildings worldwide number their floors without including a floor number thirteen, so elevators go from floor twelve to floor fourteen. But this home in Osaka, Japan is proud to feature thirteen levels.

It looks to us like architect Yo Shimada had a lot of fun designing the House in Miyamoto. Floors and ceilings seem unmatched, and the home looks like someone was trying to put together a puzzle. It seems like Shimada decided to defy architectural basics and makes the space feel disorienting.  

When most people are house shopping, their first question is, “How much storage space is there?” Not so this family; they actually requested that there be no built-in storage since they didn’t want to hide anything.

Would you be interested in living in what is called “the strangest home in the world?”  Welcome to Körner’s Folly in Kernerville, North Carolina. Even Sara Winchester would admire the bizarre nature of this place. The house was built in 1880 by Jule Gilmer Körner who was known as ‘the Man of a Thousand Peculiarities.’

Each room in the home is completely unique. All have different ceiling heights; some are shorter than six feet, and some are as high as 25 feet. No two doorways or windows or identical. In addition, each chimney and fireplace differs from the other. 

Walking through this house is like paging through Korner’s decorating catalog – a visitor could just walk from room to room and decide which style they liked.  Other oddities include the oldest home theater in America and an outdoor toilet designed to look like a mini-mansion.   

Just looking at the image below, would you want to step in and visit? This is Ukraine’s Pidhirtsi Castle. It was built between 1635 and 1640 for Grand Crown Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

After World War II, the Soviets took over the castle as administrative headquarters. There were reports of horrific acts of torture, but none that can be verified by first-hand reports. The Castle then served as a tuberculosis hospital until 1956. In 1956, a huge fire ruined the building and left little to restore.  

An alchemical laboratory is supposedly hidden away in the basement of this mammoth home; Apparently, there are valuables stored in many rooms. Even more interesting – a ghost called the “White Lady” reportedly haunts the castle.  

If just looking at this house gives you the creeps, you are not alone. The evil-looking house made it the perfect setting for the book and movies called The Amityville Horror.  The home is located about 30 miles outside New York City, in the town of Amityville. 

Someone did buy the house. Just about a year after the mass murder, the Lutz Family purchased it and lived there for about four weeks when they suddenly moved out. The reasons for their abandonment of the home are terrifying. 

Some wondered whether the Lutzes just wanted publicity because they had purchased the famous house. We’ll never really know because both parents passed lie detector tests. Since then, five other families have lived there, and none have claimed that anything unnatural happened.  

In the famous city of Pompeii, Italy, stands the Villa of the Mysteries. Built in the 2nd century BCE, it lies on the outskirts of the city.  It is a huge and magnificent structure built on a large property. The entire home, of course, was buried under lava in 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted.

During the excavation, experts found that much of the building was intact, and the rooms they uncovered were magnificent and artistically decorated. Many rooms have colorful frescos, but the most interesting are in the main hall, which is also called the red room.

Many historians and archaeologists have studied the frescoes and tried to reason out what they depict. Some theorize that it is a simple play or party game, while others conclude that these are images of a bride readying herself for her wedding. 

Standing in its beautiful location for decades and kept in pristine condition, the unique Bellosguardo mansion in Santa Barbara, California, has been unoccupied since the 1960s. 

Huguette Clark was the daughter of the copper baron William Clark, who was also Montana’s Senator at one time. Huguette lived a lavish lifestyle. She was born in Paris in 1906 and grew up in a grand mansion in New York City. 

With her mental health in decline, Huguette Clark moved back to New York in the 1950s. She ended up being hospitalized for emotional problems and lived the last 20 years of her life in a hospital. She died in 2011. 

What’s known as Dundas Castle is located in the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York. It is known as the most mysterious home in the United States.  It is nicknamed the “Castle of Sorrow” for good reason.

A year after her husband’s death, Wurts-Dundas’ widow, Josephine, was declared mentally ill and committed to an asylum for treatment. At that point, the couple’s daughter, Murial, inherited the home. 

Since the 1970s, the castle has remained unfinished and abandoned; it continues to deteriorate. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places but is not open to visitors. The house and grounds are under the supervision of a caretaker. 

Pictured below is Monte Cristo in Junee, New South Wales. It currently holds a reputation as Australia’s most haunted house. It was built in 1885 by a local pioneer staking out land for his family. His name was Christopher William Crawley; the house belonged to the Crawley family until 1948. 

The Ryans soon found out that the eerie stories were true. They tell stories of hands touching them, lights randomly going on and off, and hearing footsteps. Others who’ve visited the house have reported similar experiences. 

In the late 19th century, as one story goes, a maid became pregnant with the baby of the owner, Mr. Crawley. In her state of anxiety and confusion, she apparently threw herself off the second-floor balcony.

Driving through posh Beverly Hills, visitors gasp in awe at the stately, sprawling mansions with stunning grounds. Each house is worth millions, and one is more beautiful than the last. But there is one house that is the exception to the rule. 

The Witch’s House, also known as the Spadena House, was designed and built by the famous Hollywood art director Harry Oliver. It was actually built on a Hollywood studio lot in 1920.

Ward Lascelle and his wife Liliane lived in the house but divorced shortly after they moved in. Liliane managed to keep the house, then married her former servant Lou Spadena. That’s where we get the name “Spadena House.”