we survived!

 so friday the thirteenth just passed.  for this most lucky day, melanie and i decided to do something a little ... different.  see, most people try to avoid anything that might be considered creepy or spooky.  we did just the opposite.  we figured it would be a good idea to go on a flashlight tour of the winchester mystery house.  and it's a good thing we figured this a while ago, because a lot of other people had the same idea and the tours have been sold out for over a month. 

since i had never been to the house before, and since photography is not allowed inside (and by the time we got inside it was too dark for that to matter anyway) we showed up a few hours before the tour.  walking around the gardens and the outside of the house is free, so that's what we did.  i ended up taking over two hundred pictures.  i narrowed down the selection, did a little editing, and the better ones are posted here.

 our tour started at 10:30 p.m and ended just before midnight.  all the lights in the house are turned off, and a group of about twenty people are given flashlights and led around by the tour guide.  it's really not a scary experience as they don't try to freak you out at all.  it's pretty much the daytime tour minus the lights.  it was really cool though.  the house it self is pretty crazy, and using the flashlights to look at all the different stained glass was really cool.

and now for the part that everyone is going to ask me.  no, i did not see a ghost.  i did get dizzy and light headed, but i attributed this to just have walked up some crazy ass claustrophobia inducing stairs and being slightly over heated.  so i took off my jacket and the light headedness went away.  i did have one kind of a weird feeling at one point after that though.  i this feeling of intense pressure on my chests and it was a little hard to breathe.  this only happened in mrs. winchester's shower room and the seance room.  after that i was totally normal the rest of the night.  and while i don't necessarily think this was anything of the paranormal nature, it was unusual for me.  and i would love to go back sometime to see if i could experience anything else.  and who knows, maybe next time i will see that ghost.