Curiosity and ingenuity may not be unique to the human species, but they are certainly among humanity’s hallmarks. The Winchester Mansion sets an inspiring backdrop for some of the most mysterious tales, tragic events, and ghosts. It is a puzzling house because Mrs. Winchester spent 38 years expanding it. The work was nonstop. The swelling of the mansion seems to lift it up to the Heavens, and it sinks away to the bottom of blackness. The construction happened at such a pace that it seemed like a wild beast was rushing on the spears of hunters to try to complete its construction. One evening, rain was falling in torrents, as if the skies were coming down to unite with the Earth. Dinner progressed through a series of complicated courses, ceremoniously dispensed by a prelatical butler attended by Victoria Venison, and it was evident that Mrs. Winchester took a certain satisfaction in the pageant. As the lightening ceases for a moment, the night seems to add its own darkness to that of the storm; then comes the flash, rending the darkness asunder and lighting up all with a glare. Skills fails, courage sinks, and death seems to come on every wave. The women are stupefied with terror. The thought of their loved ones comes over their minds. Mrs. Winchester thinks of a daughter and husband who have passed away and Mrs. Venison thinks of her kindred. Presently a window is shattered by a stroke of lighting, the chandelier crashes to the table and is crushed to fragments. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Mrs. Winchester presently observed a voice that seemed to come from the ceiling: “If it does come, it will be the biggest crash since ’93.” Mrs. Venison looked terrified, but polite. “This evening has been quite exciting. However, Wall Street can stand crashes better than it could then. It’s got a robuster constitution,” she said. “Yes; but—” Mrs. Winchester replied. “Speaking of constitutions,” Meyrick May intervened: “Ladies, are you not the least bit terrified by the events of this evening? Thankfully no one was harmed. Mr. May saw the colour fade in Mrs. Winchester’s face, and the rings of shadow deepen under her honey brown eyes. At the same moment, Mrs. Venison turned to her with a renewed intensity of attention. There was such solicitude in Mrs. Winchester’s gaze. A moment of silence fell on the group. There was an anxious look in Mrs. Winchester’s eyes. Only a moment ago she had realized something about this, something to do with that dead woman, that shrieking housemaid whose neck that had been snapped. In a haze, she remembered the evening. The mansion was full of rumbling monstrous things; full of foul smoke and deafening noise. Who were the people she had seen around her? Women in dresses such as she wore. She had been terrified then; but her body had been full of aches and misery. Mrs. Winchester recalled that the farmers had unearthed the housemaid’s body. The corpse had been almost completely mummified, even though the young lady had only been missing for a week. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Her neck was broken, but her hands seemed still to group forward, as if to dig. Even more macabre, the body had become impregnated with copper, which had turned it an eerie greenish black. What else they found was dazzling: three small clay tablets with signs that looked like writing. Archaeologist called in suggested that the tablets might date from around 4000 BC and that they originated in the barbarian wilderness of eastern Europe. They believed the body and tablets were placed in a sacrificial pit. The Tartaria tablets, made by a primitive Stone Age farming tribe called the Vinca. Mrs. Winchester starred at the naked bones of the housemaid’s hands. A thin covering of skin overlaid them but it was like silk, more sheer than the dress. She could see blood in it; but it was transparent. And the mere sight of the bones caused her to become dizzy, confused again. The archeologist who deciphered the translation said, “Cursed, cursed, cursed—cursed by the God YHW. You will die cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by YHW- cursed, cursed, cursed.” As Mrs. Winchester was meandering through this vision, Mrs. Venison all at once felt the cold. She sped down the hallway to one of the back parlors. She was stopped abruptly, pulled up short by a most incongruous sight. There was a lady in the room. She was bent over the coffee table, wearing a maid’s uniform, and arranging the coffee cups and saucers. Mrs. Venison was transfixed. Not through her fear, it must be said, but because of “something” that held her in the doorway, something that was urging her to take a careful account of every detail of what she was witnessing. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
For Mrs. Venison was in no doubt that the lady was not like other women. She knew of the existence of ghosts in the Winchester mansion—or perhaps more accurately the possibility of their existence. What person who knew of the Winchester mansion did not? Mrs. Venison sensed that she was seeing one that evening, at night, in Mrs. Winchester’s home. However, the lady herself was not quite as clear as a normal human being. She was a little fuzzy. Mrs. Venison could not see her face very well. She was tall and slender. Most bizarrely, the woman appeared to have no feet. The hem of her dress seemed to hover three or four inches above the ground. She was so intent on arranging the cups and saucers that she did not register the that Mrs. Venison was in the parlor and wanted her attention. She hurried back to the Venetian dining room to inform Mrs. Winchester. “There’s a ghost in the back parlor!” she shouted. “A what?” said Mrs. Winchester. “A ghost.” “Oh, dear Heavens.” Mrs. Winchester came out of her vision and asked, “Are you sure?” “Yes, madam. Quick, come see.” Mrs. Venison grasped Mrs. Winchester by the arm and propelled her toward the back parlor. “She might still be there.” But when they got to the back parlor, the found the door shut. “It was open only a moment ago!” Mrs. Venison whispered desperately. “She still must be in there.” She put her ear to the door; she could her the sound of coffee cups being placed on saucers. “I can still hear her lifting the cups and saucers. Listen.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Mrs. Winchester put her ear to the door; she could hear the sounds of dishes. “I can them also.” Mrs. Venison. Mrs. Winchester felt a shiver of unease. “Very well, Mrs. Venison,” she said, “we will have a look. If she is there, we will have a word with her.” With that in mind, Mrs. Winchester unlocked the door and opened it—but the storm played the deuce with the wires. The lights would not turn on. However, it was clear that something changed in Mrs. Winchester’s expression. She fixed her eyes upon the spot they feared. The figure was still standing, more distinctly with eyes of a deadly menace. Mrs. Venison, with what felt like an actual wrench of the muscles, dragged her own eyes to scan the figure and the other countenances about the table; but not one revealed the least consciousness of what she saw, and a sense of mortal isolation sank upon her. Mrs. Winchester then said, “When we have had coffee last week, I wanted to show you this.” Mrs. Venison’s glance was politely bent on her, but with a loosening of the strain about her heart, she saw that the figure kept its gaze on Mrs. Winchester. “It was…a mistake…a confusion of memory, but you can see her, too.” Mrs. Venison nodded sympathetically and drew back. The darkness was deep, and the cold had become so intense that for an instant it stopped her breathing. A man with a black, hooded cloak appeared. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Mrs. Winchester listened with mounting dread. What on Earth was happening? Ghosts appearing in broad daylight, at night, inside and outside the house. She wanted desperately to discount the whole affair, and she did. Two weeks had gone by without anything happening. However, deep down inside she knew it was too good to be true. She just knew these strange figures were still in the house. She would sometimes see the hooded man on the stairs and the woman on the balcony. One morning Mrs. Winchester noticed that her bed had been made the way the dead housemaid used to make it. The pillows had been placed beneath the comforter. Mrs. Winchester shook her head in mild bemusement, left the room by and by, and thought no more about. Until it happened again—and again. She was seeing it every day. The archeologist stopped by and later told Mrs. Winchester that the body they found could not be that of her housemaid. It dated back to 4000 BC along with the tablets they had found, and that the man she had been seeing in the black hooded cloak was a preacher of the Doctrine of Demons. Genuine magic is the art of brining about results beyond man’s power through the enlistment of supernatural agencies. Black magic deliberately involves the devil and demons, and the resulting enchantment is sued for persecution and revenge. The demon must have cursed the woman for disobedience. There are still genuine phenomena, especially in areas where occultism has flourished for many years. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The soul continues to permeate between the material World and the divine World. The very atmosphere of the Winchester mansion provides hair-raising possibilities: sometimes the rooms are dim and murky, with a chill air, and one may even see men in black robes moving like shadows, silhouetted against the flickering light of a single bluish flame. No face, no form, just darkness. Their eyes may not be visible under the hood, but the gaze will come piercing through regardless. One may even catch an eerie, ghostly reflection in the mirror. Through ritual, skilled magicians are capable of giving these entities a life form, either through The Receiver or by a total manifestation. One night there were eighteen or more people moving down a dark corridor to the ritual room, a black-painted chapel with a blue ceiling, and the door banged shut behind them, and two hooded guards stood to attention; no one could enter, no one could leave. It was pitch black and there was an uneasy silence. Suddenly their ears were alerted by the sound of curious organ music which was a preamble to a loud cacophony of instruments and sound effects that shattered the consciousness. The music stopped and somewhere a gong was struck thirteen times, and the room was lite by black candles giving sufficient glow to reveal the black-robed beast. And his eyes peering, scowling own at them. Off to the side of him was another startling figure, a coffin standing upright and lined with black silk. Buttery windows broke open above them and then they lingered to serenade some dim figure. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
The walls rising before them shut out the sky. And below, circling the torches and lanterns along the path, there was a mist curling, rising. It was like something alive. The group felt trapped in this labyrinth place and eager for open air. But there was a voice, a voice that seemed to be rising with the mist and it was causing them pain. They could not identify this voice. Was this man, woman, or child? It was possible to make out the image of Baphomet, of the same design that was supposedly used by the fourteenth-century Knights Templar, that of a goat’s head inside an inverted pentagram and surrounded by five Hebrew letters. Below this, in the darkness and gloom and the half-light of the candles, a woman came to view. She moved slightly like and was not dead. She was also wearing the Sigil of the Baphomet. She was covered in a black velvet robe but with her long golden hair flowing over the lowered hood; she was holding her arms outstretched, clasping a sword pointed down in front of her. The organ played again, a Hymn to Satan and over the alter they spoke these words, “In nomine Dei nostril Satanas Luciferi excelsi….” The ritual began. “Through the gateway of vital force, smoke, and Blackened Fire receive life from the deepest depths of Arezura, in the name of Zohak, and by the power of Angra Mainyu it is done!” Become familiar with the change in vibration that occurs within the items, materials, and people brought back to sentient consciousness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Winchester Mystery House
Randolph Harris II International 