photo by Baron Moe

This palatial summer home was built by Amir al-Mumenin al-Mutawakkil ‘Ala Allah Rab ul-Alamin Imam Yahya bin al-Mansur Bi’llah Muhammad Hamidaddin, Imam and Commander of the Faithful.  Why don’t we call him Imam for short?

Imam was the King of Yemen from 1926 to 1948, when he was assassinated.  We don’t go too far into politics or anything here on YLW, but apparently he was a pretty fair and nice guy, and he had 14 sons, so they were probably pretty sad.

Back to Dar Al-Hajar, though, because is that a beautiful place or what?  Imam had the place constructed as a summer home, and it was constructed on an already-existing prehistoric structure.  This particular valley that Dar Al-Hajar overlooks is a fertile ancient land that is talked about in rock drawings, for Pete’s sake.  Scholars speculate that the old construction on top of the mountain where Dar Al-Hajar was built was older than recorded history.  That’s, needless to say, pretty darn cool.

The structure itself is 7 stories tall, with open courtyards and little pools everywhere.  It has 35 rooms and the stairs look like they were built into the rocks.  They probably were.  The entrance has a 700-year old tree in it.  Even though Imam had the place built in the 1930′s, it looks like a place completely out of time.  A place of beauty and wonder that I’m sure his 14 sons enjoyed – from ducking in and out of the courtyards to exploring the caves beneath (unless the caves were really used for corpses, as rumors say).

Dar Al-Hajar is open to the public now as a sort of museum, though the Yemen travel website says that its “only jewel is the building itself.”

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photo by Yogi

Imagine having a contracting job that went on for almost 40 years.  That was the case with the Winchester mansion, a grand estate located in San Jose, California.

If the name Winchester sounds familiar it’s not a surprise.  William Wirt Manchester was the magnate of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, maker of Winchester rifles.  William’s father, Oliver, was the first president of the company, and developed the famous “Henry” model of the Winchester rifle.  The famous “Gun That Won The West”, the model 1873, was developed a short time after.

Young William took over the company, but died soon after from tuberculosis.  His grief-stricken wife, Sarah, looked for ways to cope with the death of her husband and the earlier death of their only child, Annie.  She was sure that ill had befallen her family because the family was cursed.  She sought spiritual and occult guidance from The Boston Medium, who told her that her family was indeed cursed – by the souls of individuals who had been killed by Winchester rifles.

A medium with an anti-violence agenda, or truth?  Sarah believed it to be the truth, and took it to heart when the medium told her that to break the curse she must move to California and build a house – to keep building or Sarah, too, will die.  Perhaps it was a medium with anti-gun beliefs and a contractor brother in California?  We’ll never know, I guess.

Either way, Sarah purchased an 8-room farmhouse in San Jose, California and embarked on a 38-year construction project with absolutely no architectural plan or forward-thinking.  The construction went on every day, ALL day, for that entire time period.  The result is a house full of twists and turns, supposedly designed to confuse the many ghosts that were supposed to haunt it.

Sarah died in 1922, leaving an unfinished, sprawling mansion with 13 bathrooms, 40 bedrooms, 2 ballrooms, and a few quirks.  Sarah was obsessed with the number 13, so all the windows had 13 panes, and the number 13 carries through many of the details of the house.

The Winchester Mystery House was auctioned in the 1970′s and the owners turned it into a museum.  You can take tours there and in honor of Sarah they ring the bell  every Friday the 13th – 13 times.