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The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California is one of the most beautiful mansions in the world.

It’s also one of the most bizarre. Windows in the floor. Doors that open to a two-story drop. Secret passageways. Stairways to nowhere (which could have been a famous song by Led Zep had they ever written it).

Why such an odd construction? It was built by ghosts.

The mansion was the brainchild of Sarah Winchester, the wife of William Wirt Winchester, who was the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune. After her infant daughter and husband died, Sarah Winchester sought the guidance of a spiritualist.

The Boston Medium explained to her that her family was cursed by the ghosts of all those who died by the “The Gun That Won West.” The only way to appease the spirits and save her life was to move west and use her blood money to build the spirits a house.

Legend has it that Mrs. Winchester literally let the spirits design the house. She would conduct nightly séances where good spirits would give her instructions that she passed to her foreman every morning.

That turned the mansion into a sprawling 7-story maze of 160 rooms, 47 stairways and 13 bathrooms. In fact, the number 13 appears quite a bit in the house: rooms with 13 windows, walls with 13 panels, chandeliers with 13 candles, even walls with 13 coat hooks.

The unusual design of the mansion was also spawned by Mrs. Winchester’s attempts to disorient evil spirits that were stalking her. She allegedly never slept in the same room two nights in a row and would often sneak through secret passages to deter ghosts… because ghosts can’t pass through walls or anything.

Mrs. Winchester also believed that if construction never stopped, she would live forever. So her crew worked around-the-clock, even on weekends and holidays, for 38 straight years, until Mrs. Winchester died of heart failure in 1922. Today, her eccentric $5.5 million construction (that’s around $20 million in today’s money) still remains in an unfinished state… which I’m sure didn’t look good on the architect’s resumé.

The tour of the house was an informative and entertaining look inside the mind of a woman gone mad. And you have to stay with the group, because if you get lost, they literally have to send a search and rescue team to find you (if the bad ghosts haven’t gotten you yet). I always had the feeling that one wrong turn would lead us into a portal to nowhere; after all, the mansion is basically a mirror maze away from becoming a carnival fun house.

Unlike the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, however, when you leave you don’t hear a man say, “…and a ghost will follow you home!” Bummer – that would have been a cheap souvenir.

By: Bret Ahmed

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Some people travel for fun, others for excitement, but perhaps the most alarming genre of tourists are the ones who get their kicks from visiting the most horrifying and ghoulish destinations from throughout history. If you plan on going to any of the top 10 most terrifying places on earth, you might just want to adjust your travel insurance cover to incorporate the possible outcomes…

1. Haunted House

Optional travel insurance: cover for potential ghostly nightmares.

The Winchester Mystery House in San Hose, California, is a well-known California mansion that was built continuously for 38 years from 1884 and 1922, and is thought to be haunted. It once was the home of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester. Sarah Winchester thought the house was haunted by ghosts of people killed by Winchester rifles and that only continuous construction would appease them.

2. Eerie Instruments

Optional travel insurance: for accidental execution.

Museum of Execution Instruments, Paris, Fountaine de Vaucluse – Its founder was personally acquainted with the issue – he had worked as an executioner for more than ten years. It comprises execution instruments of all times and nations. At first glance you may consider the giant guillotine to be the most dreadful instrument. But smaller instruments, so ordinary and harmless at first sight, may turn out much more dreadful.

3. Frightful Field

Travel insurance: considered essential for the sinful or senseless.

The field of the Valley of Death in Tibet is full of bones – yogis go there to die; other people to find purification or obtain the secret knowledge. Few return with their original mental state, and it is believed that in the Valley of Death the human sole undergoes a special trial and that sinful or senseless lives are ended.

4. Mortifying Museum

Optional travel insurance: cover for general mental health.

The Museum of Anatomopathology in Vienna is a monument to pathologies, abnormalities, genetic mutations and harsh medieval medicine. Situated in the isolation ward of a former lunatic asylum, even the most cynical tourists agree that this place is horrifying.

5. Chilling Chapel

Optional travel insurance: for bone-related accidents.

The Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic is a small church filled with the sculls of plague victims from the Black Death. The macabre building contains approximately 40,000-70,000 human skeletons. In 1870, Frantisek Rint, a woodcarver, was employed to put the bone heaps into order, and he artistically arranged them to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. Four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners and an enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the center of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vaults.

6. Creepy Castle

Travel insurance recommended: against bloodsucking vampires and impalement.

Dracula’s Castle in Transilvania, Romania The medieval castle of the famous vampire is situated on the edge of an abyss. After passing through narrow passageways, dark rooms and resonant stone stairs, you find yourself in the bedroom, where, on the big bed with a canopy, the vampire used to suck his victims’ blood. This castle accommodated Vlad the Impaler, one of the most monstrous personalities of the Middle Ages, who had impaled hundreds of innocent people.

7. Horrendous History

Optional travel insurance: against historical fascist dictators.

The Auschwitz Museum is on the territory of the former concentration camp where millions died during WWII. In 1947, in remembrance of the victims, Poland founded the museum and by 1994, 22 million visitors had passed through the famous gateway. Not for the faint-hearted.

8. Terrifying Torture-chamber

Optional travel insurance: for torture chambers

Museum of Torture in Mdina, Malta has a tremendous collection of guillotines, tongs for pulling out nails and other instruments of torture. The application of torture instruments is vividly demonstrated by frighteningly lifelike wax figures.

9. Creepy Catacombs

Optional travel insurance: cover for Parisian entombment.

Paris Catacombs, France In the Denfert-Rochereau Ossuary or Empire of the Dead, far below the city streets of Paris, in the quiet, damp darkness, seven million Parisians lie motionless, their skeletons neatly stacked and aligned to form the walls of nearly one kilometer of walking passage.

10. Gruesome Gulag

Optional travel insurance: for disturbing memories.

Millions of people passed through Gulag in the Soviet Union for the twenty years of its existence. The camps had extremely hard conditions; elementary human rights were violated and minor breaches of regime were drastically punished. Mortalities from starvation, diseases and exhausting labor was extremely high. Today, under the northern sky in Solovki, you can see the deserted barracks, tunnels, punishment cells and depositories with prisoners’ clothes and shaved hair.

By: Patrick Chong

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As the summer gets under way all across the UK tents are pitched and the stage is set for a plethora of music festivals, from jazz to classical and from folk to funk, hundreds if not thousands of bands perform under the open skies to audiences from all walks of life.

The most famous, or perhaps the most infamous, must be Glastonbury, it certainly has to be one of the largest and all encompassing festivals that has grown from a small gathering in a cow field to an immense leviathon attended by not only the best international artists, but an audience from the furthest flug parts of the globe.

But it’s not all muddy fields and dreadlocks, the soothing sounds of Glyndebourne’s opera festival in an English country house near Lewes in East Sussex, has a pedigree going back to 1934 and is the setting for the London Philharmonic Orchestra to play a wide variety of classics, but with a slant towards the operas of Mozart.

Many festivals are as oveable as the audiences with many upping sticks and moving as the winds blow them, notably Radio 1’s “Big Weekend.”

The audience has grown up with visiting these pillars of an English summer, but as they have entered the mainstream workforce their expectations have grown with their salaries. What was acceptable 20 years ago is no longer, as many have become used to a soft bed, as opposed to a muddy field, and the idea of a, daily, shower in a room with a flushing toilet has become a luxury impossible to dispense with.

With these in mind most, if not all of the festivals have provided parking and whilst it may not offer the convenience of a fully plugged in campsite, there should be enough water and comfort to last ot the longest of music festival in the UK.

By: Roger Bear

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The UK has seen a increase in seaside breaks over the last ten years. The UK has some popular seaside towns which can provide endless fun for the British holiday maker.

Blackpool is a town on the coast of the Irish Sea in the northwest of England, it flourished during the railway expansion in the 19th century. Further south on the Irish Sea coast is Llandudno, a resort town that similarly began to see its popularity grow with the growth of the railways.

Brighton on the south Sussex coast of England is one of the largest and most famous seaside resorts in England. They call Brighton “London-by-the-Sea”, and the nickname describes the town perfectly. Brighton has a lot of the hustle and bustle of London, but with the advantage of not being landlocked. So when the stress of city life gets to too much for Londoners, they can hurl themselves into the English Channel – or simply hang out at the beach and relax, which is the Brightonian thing to do.

Easily within a return day visit from Manchester Blackpool has long been a seaside venue for people of the North West of England as well as the working classes of the industrial Midlands. Since Victorian times, working people of Manchester have trekked to this nationally famous seaside town for fun and entertainment

Llandudno, the Queen of the North Wales Resorts, lies on a peninsula between two limestone headlands, both great attractions for tourists and naturalists alike, the Great Orme and the Little Orme with the Irish Sea on one side and the estuary of the River Conwy on the other.

Brighton and Bournemouth both lay on the English Channel Coast and are both popular seaside resort destinations.

Bournemouth was founded in the year 1810 but wasn’t officially recognized as a town until 1870. On the North Atlantic Coast, on the English side of the Severn Bridge, is Newquay. It began to see a boom in popularity in the 1960’s as it also has excellent surfing conditions. So much so that during the summer the population increases from 22,000 to 100,000 people. Newquay was built up as a town over the course of the 20th century, it’s often referred as “the Blackpool of West Country” and is a popular destination for hen and stag parties.

Try these seaside breaks if your considering visiting the seaside this year.

By: Thomas Paylor

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So you are in the market for a new pair of binoculars? If that is true, there are a few things you should know before throwing down hundreds of dollars on a pair that you know nothing about. Here are some suggestions on what to look for and how you can locate a pair for a discounted price.

There are many things to consider when looking for a new pair of binoculars. The first thing is the field of view. When you look into them, the widest area that you can see is known as the field of view. So if you are at 500 yards in distance away from an object, the field of view represents the width of the image that you are able to see. The higher the field of view in number denotes a reduction in clarity of what you are looking at.

You should also consider a variable called exit pupil. This determines how much light is actually transmitted to your eye. The reason you want to consider this depends upon what time of the day and what area of the wilderness you are going to be using this scope.

For instance, if you are looking at things in broad daylight where there is plenty of natural light to illuminate everything you are seeing, then you can probably spend a few hundred dollars less on the model you are looking at because there will be no need to adjust for low light settings.

Another thing to consider is collimation which refers to the mechanical and optical alignment. If you decide to pay less money, collimation will automatically be offset. They will not take the time to adjust it in a laser precision manner if you are only paying a few dollars. However, high-end models will allow you to enjoy the scenery around you without the worry of headaches for eye strain that typically accompany cheaper models that are not adjusted properly.

A final thing to consider are the objective lenses that are found in the front which are called prisms. These are used to gather light which is first represented as an upside down image that needs to be re-reflected upright. Regardless of the type of prism that you get, understand that the higher the price, the better the quality, and the clearer the image will be.

Purchasing a pair of binoculars does not have to be a financial burden. You can usually pick up a decent pair that you can use in almost every setting that has adequate light for a few hundred dollars. You can find even better deals on the Internet looking at websites that sell them exclusively.

By: Bobby Winchester

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Many visitors to the UK choose London for their base when visiting the country. If you’re planning to stay in the capital, then let’s take a look at some other great locations that can easily be reached for a day trip.

The great thing about staying in London is that it truly is a city that never sleeps. With great entertainment, from musicals to plays, it’s a place where you will rarely be short of things to do.

In the evenings, you’ll find that England’s capital city is a great place to enjoy the nightlife, with top quality restaurants, bars and nightclubs.

Be sure that you get out and explore some of the rest of the country too though. There are plenty of benefits in spending time away from the city, including getting to see a bit more of the real England.

My own home county, Hampshire, has plenty on offer. You can reach the the most southerly part of the county in less than 90 minutes by car (or train from London Waterloo) and you’ll find that the short trip is well worth it.

Hampshire includes one of the UK’s newest National Parks, the New Forest. It also has a large number of great unspoilt English villages, complete with thatched cottages, country pubs and village greens. In many ways, this part of the country reflects many visitors ideas of what England should be like.

If you don’t leave London and its immediate surroundings then this may well be a part of the country that you’ll miss out on.

Any discussion of the joys of a visit to Hampshire would be incomplete without making mention of Winchester. Winchester, the ancient capital of England, can be reached in less than an hour by London and has some great transport links.

It’s also heaped in history – this is the place where Jane Austen lived during the final years of her life. It also boasts a Norman Cathedral, the site of William the Conqueror’s Castle and its renowned links to King Arthur.

Winchester is a truly mystical place and is part of a wonderful part of the country – be sure not to miss it.

By: Keith Barrett

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When you think of why you’d need travel insurance you probably get images of broken legs whilst skiing, Car rental mishaps in the Mediterranean and eating some dodgy shrimp. You wouldn’t normally associate a weekend break within the UK as somewhere you’d need travel insurance.

But the truth is that wherever you go in the UK you are still going to need travel insurance, just not in the way you’d normally expect. Since you’ll still be in the UK you won’t be claiming against your life insurance if you get injured, that’s what health insurance is for.

The situations you’d need to claim against travel insurance would normally be the occasions where you have to cancel your holiday or cut it short. One such situation could be that you go on holiday for two weeks, when halfway through you injure yourself meaning you have to go to the hospital, subsequently cutting your holiday short. Aside from the medical costs you could end up being lumbered with charges for your accommodation even though you’re stuck in a hospital bed and not even at the hotel anymore!

This is unfortunate but hotels are well within their rights to charge you as otherwise they could have filled that booking with someone else. Luckily your travel insurance policy covers events such as these and can help regain most of the expenses which normally would be lost.

It’s also becoming more popular for people to take advantage of cheap domestic flights and taking the plane as opposed to a long and winding road trip, so if you were to cancel your holiday even due to bereavement then normally you’d be left out of pocket, travel insurance covers this too fortunately. This would also cover lost luggage as even with domestic flights it’s not unknown for your bags to disappear off the face of the earth!

Invariably whilst you’re away you’ll be taking a camera with you, and in this day and age probably a mobile phone or MP3 player too, if you were to lose or damage it while on holiday then you may not be able to afford a replacement out of your own money.

So as you can see there are plenty of occasions where you’d need travel insurance, no matter where you go, be it abroad or the other side of the country. If you have any doubts or questions it would be best to check with your current travel insurance company or a travel agent as they’d be best to advise on the level of cover for your chosen destination, you should also familiarise yourself with your insurance emergency claims line which are normally open 24 hours, 365 days a year

By: Andy Adams

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