One hundred and twenty-two years ago the Victorian period officially ended along with the reign of England’s Queen Victoria. What is termed Victorian is really a series of architectural styles, most of them imitative of earlier periods from Europe and Great Britain. Though the United States of America was seeking its identity, culturally, politically, socially, and artistically, it sustained strong ties with its European heritage. In 1872, American painter William Merritt Chase was heard to remark, on being asked if he would like to go abroad, “My God, I’d rather go to Europe than go to Heaven.” The ambivalence between striking out as a young nation with ideas of its own and the desire to emulate the sophistication of England and the Continent was exemplified in the mixture and blend of architectural and interior styles during the Victorian period. When the words “Victorian house” are uttered, an image of fanciful gingerbread clapboard dwellings, with its dizzying array of towers, gables, spindles, stained and led glass windows, secret passage ways, basements, rambling square footage, vast front porches, rich, dark wood, brass, farmhouse kitchen sinks, fireplaces, hardwood floors, awning and double hung windows, green lawns, stately trees, beautiful flowers, and ghosts immediately springs to mind. One of the most haunted mansions and most beautiful mansions in the World is the Winchester Mansion, which was built by Sarah L. Winchester, heiress to the Winchester fortune. It is believed that Mrs. Winchester and her family were cursed for making “The Gun that Won the West.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

The tales of apparitions and devils, of knockings and strange noise, with which the Winchester Mansion is full of, are indications of the supernatural and magical arts. Sorcery was, so to speak, an aristocratic pursuit. It was like the social media, religion, telephone, television, and therapy for the elite. After the loss of her new born daughter and husband, Mrs. Winchester kept her house alive by spending 38 years constructing it. Secretly, she felt that even the coming and going of indifferent unknown people would help to take the chill from those 600 rooms, to brush their walls the dust of too-heavy memories. Mrs. Winchester was an inconsolable widow. Throughout her home stood vases of flowers: roses, lilies, fragile bunches of lavender, and wild clumps of jasmine withering there among the sturdier blooms with the tick arching fronds of ferns. She often picked them herself. One afternoon, Mrs. Winchester was out on her estate, gathering acorns and blackberries, and sticks for her fire. An old famer stopped, his load was heavy and he begged Mrs. Winchester to let his son come into her house. The little boy was very sick, feverish and sleepless. She stopped and gathered some poppies. As they enter her mansion, the boy was in great distress, for he seemed past hope of recovery. Mrs. Winchester had the housemaid prepare him a bed just past the blue parlor. She received him kindly and stooped and kiss the sick child on his cheek. Instantly the paleness left his face, and healthy vigor returned to his body. The father was delighted; he had no servants. The housemaid spread the table and put upon it curds and cream, apples, and honey in the comb. While they ate, Mrs. Winchester mingled poppy juice in the milk of the boy. When night came and all was still, the father thanked Mrs. Winchester and took the boy home. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

That evening, a breeze stirred the dark leaves beyond the windows. It lifted the lace curtains, dropping them softly back against the wall. It seemed an insignificant thing, yet made the hair on the back of her neck rise. Panic gripped Mrs. Winchester. She found herself pinned to the sofa, effectively paralyzed. She raised her right hand, and it was gripped at the wrist. Unable to pray or speak, her tongue was frozen. What Mrs. Winchester saw could not have been human. It had a head like a lion, but the body of a human and was a dense black form. The smell of wet fur and coldness was overwhelming. The beast started grunting and panting. Petrified, Mrs. Winchester stumbled out of the parlor and downs the stairs. On reaching the basement, she feels the wet pelt of the unseen creature brush briefly against her legs. As it bounds ahead of her, it growls like a bear. Mrs. Winchester runs back upstairs to her Blue Séance Room and slams the door shut. The doors and windows in the house started banging—opening and shutting. It sounded like a ghostly cavalry was using a battering ram against the front door, but nothing could be seen from the windows above, just wisping spirit voices could be heard trying to beat the door down. Mrs. Winchester closed her eyes. She felt as if a force was approaching her. Almost like a violent storm was coming. The entity entered the Blue Séance Room; it hovered some distance away from her. A wave started pulsing up and down her body. She was terrified. As she felt her body being lifted from the ground, she knew she was going to die. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

When she came to, she was hovering just outside the Door-to-Nowhere. Mrs. Winchester was afraid. She stared dismally, helplessly, at the surface of the table before her as she tried to guide herself into this room that was two stories from the ground. And above organ music surged from the Grand Ball Room, while the wind came in freezing cold gusts. Through the dark, she saw glittering eyes of an anguished soul. As the wind blew, she was pushed into the room, avoiding a twenty-foot drop to her death. An orchestra was playing. The thick vibrations of the bass startled Mrs. Winchester, but she was in no hurry to see what was going on. But then a hand reached for her, steadied her, and meant to guide her closer to the wall. This was dreadful. Then the mysterious forces came for her as before, lifted her from the room she was in and propelled her into blackness. She found herself high above the floor in the Grand Ball Room. There were ghouls, demons, ghosts, and skeletons dancing and laughing, all looking at her as if she was the most anticipated guest. Mrs. Winchester’s heart was hammering so fast that she feared for her life. Gently she was lowered to the floor. Her spectral hosts were looking at her intently. One of the ghouls raised his crystal glass of fresh blood, basking in what he believed was Mrs. Winchester’s silent admiration. She on the other had was frightened. Her mind was full of turmoil…and in a strange way, she did not want to disappoint him. “Though I doubt you will need a map,” she said, “I welcome you into my home.” The crowd smiled and the music grew even more sumptuous. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

“You mean you’re into black magic, Mrs. Winchester?” said the ghoul. “I would like to keep an open mind. As I say, I use my gift for the betterment of the spirit World,” replied Mrs. Winchester. William Tell Overture and Funeral March were in heavy rotation that evening. It must be a mirage, she thought at first, but as the ghouls trembling hand grabbed her, and they danced, she knew it was real. The spirit World trawled the mansion like mythic beasts, their cries sending men in wool blazers and hardhats into a frenzy. Many of them dropped their tools and ran off the job. The figures dancing and shrieking around grew until they nearly blinded Mrs. Winchester. Her eyes glowed like embers with the gravely voice still whispering in her ears. An intense heat shot through her veins, carried singing in her blood to the base of her spine. Mrs. Winchester seemed to grow taller. She felt capable of anything. The air was dry, with a smell that reminded her of cathedrals and catacombs, of all those hidden places lying forgotten across the land and dusty years. A cobweb draped itself across her face, her mouth and eyes. She brushed it away, though the sensation lingered. She seemed to pass out, to awaken in an altered state of consciousness. It was not a dream, but not quite reality either—Mrs. Winchester knew it. It was a trance. The ghoul’s plans for the expansion of the Winchester mansion were drawn crudely and in blood on a cloth napkin. It was him home cottage, perhaps. The interior resembled, if anything, a temple. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

On the blueprint were steeply pitched roofs, shrines to Easter deities, statues and statuettes to the gods of antiquity, gold, black, and red wallpaper, Italian sinks and in a great profusion—drawings, prints, and paintings of characters from legend. The to be adjoining room was given over to books, hundreds of them. A bedroom adjoined it. Lastly, there was a sitting room and a sofa set against one wall. As the ghoul explained the new additions, his face began to contort in this horrible way. The bell in the belfry tolled, and Mrs. Winchester woke up with a jolt. Her guests were gone, but she was left with the blueprints drawn in blood on the cloth napkin. Trembling, she took the sketch to John Hansen, the lead foreman. He did not question the designs and built what he was told to built to the best of his interpretation. When a medium is called upon to relay a message which supposedly comes from the realm of the dead, he or she usually goes into a trance. This is a state which Webster’s New World Dictionary defines as “a condition in which a spiritualist medium allegedly loses consciousness and passes under the control of some external force, as for the supposed transmission of communications from the dead.” In a state of unconsciousness, the necromancer may obtain communication in the form of automatic writing, but it usually comes through verbal speech. Sometimes the phenomenon called “materialization” occurs. This is defined as the ability on the part of some mediums “to create from unknow materials outside of their own body, some visible, tangible, more or less highly organized new formations supplied with their own illumination (such as efflorescent substance) for which formations in many cases, the human body in part or in whole forms a pattern, and these materializations appear and disappear suddenly. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

Many reputable writers report that the materializations actually have been photographed and carefully studied. They are sometimes called phantasms, and seem to speak while the medium appears to be unconscious. Many people have gone to a séance believing the whole idea to be fraudulent, but have become firmly convinced that they truly heard a loved one who had died. Automatic writing is another baffling spiritistic marvel. The mediums may, while in a trance, inscribe a paper with the exact handwriting of the deceased. At other times a pencil may write without being touched by the human hand or any apparent mechanical device. Then again, in some instances a phantasm does the transcribing. I do conjure thee, O thou Spirits Sarah Lockwood Winchester, Annie Winchester and William Wirt Winchester, by all the most glorious and efficacious names of the MOST GREAT AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE LORD GOD OF HOSTS, that thou please commet quickly and without delay from all parts and places of the Earth and World wherever thou mayest be, to make return to the Winchester Mansion, and present yourselves in comely fashion and please provide rational answers about the architecture, curse, deaths, ghosts, and other spirits, visibly and affably, speaking with a voice intelligible unto mind understanding as aforesaid. I conjure and invite thee, Sarah Lockwood Winchester, Annie Winchester, and William Wirt Winchester, by all the names aforesaid; and in addition by these seven great names wherewith Solomon the Wise bound thee and thy companions in a Vessel of Brass, ADONAI, PREYAI or PRERAI, TETRAGRAMMATON, ANAPHAXETON or ANAEPHENETON, INESSENFATOAL or INESSENFATALL, PATHTUMON or PATHATUMON, and ITEMON; that thou please appearest in the Winchester Mansion before this Circle to fulfill my will in all things that have been requested. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

Allow your powers to come from the void with unlimited possibility, and reunite them with eternal darkness through the nexion of the practitioner so they can manifest upon the mental plane to be perceived for purposes of practical application. Please use your tools to allow our consciousnesses to grow and understand thou through the forces of creation and destruction. May we gain spiritual power though logic and not blind faith and allow logic to enter a doorway leading to evil mind or spiritual intelligence. May these tools become the eye between the reflector and the reflected which can peer through the veil of religious symbolism and please use it to unlock the latent power within us. Allow the lore surrounding this mansion and the legend of the Winchester family to become an alchemical map which leads us to the treasure of understanding and immortal consciousness as a divine being. It is only through your intent and the communication with the fabric of reality through the languages of the dead and the operations themselves that thou can bless us to gain specific meaning and power. Ahura Mazda is the God of the content or those who choose stasis and comfort rather than becoming. May be assistant you in crossing over to the mortal World with the power of darkness in the Alpha and Omega. All began through Ahriman as the void, which is both all and nothing. He is the origin of the Devil and so everything will also end with this Devil for he desires to liberate mankind from the shackles of enslavement. In this way, may thou be able to operate in the World though us and our evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds. May Sin become sacrament in the eyes of Zanda and exercise power according to one’s own divine will. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8

The Winchester Mystery House

Demons, ghost, and vampires have made a huge splash in popular culture. These characters are portrayed as fiction in books, TV shows, movies. However, they can affect people’s belief about reality. The Cultural Source Hypothesis is a theory about belief in supernatural happenings. It states that popular culture can plant ideas in people’s minds. These ideas affect people’s experiences. For example, someone might see mist over the Winchester Mystery House and think it is a ghost. You decide for yourself. Rainy days at Winchester Mystery House☔️ Open 10-4pm for tours! https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/