Mysterious flaws in the design of Donald Trump’s glitzy new White House ballroom have sparked comparisons with perhaps one of the most famous “haunted” houses in U.S. history.
The Daily Beast published a report on Sunday on how plans for the president’s new 90,000 square foot addition to the East Wing appeared to have been marred by key structural flaws—including two windows opening out onto one another, and a staircase leading up from the South Lawn directly into a brick wall.
The stair to nowhere architectural quirk bears a marked similarity to stairwells at the Winchester Mystery House, a sprawling Victorian-era Gothic mansion in southern California.
Built continuously from 1886 to 1922 by Sarah Winchester, the widow of the heir to the Winchester Rifle fortune, the house contains hundreds of rooms, staircases leading nowhere, doors opening into walls, and secret passages.
Local legend says Winchester was guided in her designs for the building by a psychic who told her she’d been cursed by the spirits of those killed by her late husband’s guns, and that only constant construction would appease them.
The comparison wasn’t lost on Beast readers. “When I read about the stairs to nowhere it reminded me of the famous Winchester House in San Jose,” one person wrote in an email.
“If the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose can be built with all its convoluted passageways and doors opening to nowhere, surely Trump’s East Wing can be restored at some point,” another added in the comments section under the Beast’s previous story.
Trump’s construction of the new East Wing ballroom comes as his administration faces fierce political and public backlash over its handling of recent developments in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case.
With Halloween approaching at the end of the week, some X users found another haunted house link.
“It will ALWAYS be the Epstein Ballroom,” one person wrote. “Epstein’s ghost will haunt Trump until his death.”
“Of course Trump is building a money-laundering ballroom version of the Winchester House,” another added. “He has to keep building to keep the spirits of justice away.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
