I stumbled back against the hall table, sending a crystal vase of red roses crashing to the floor. Water and glass and torn petals all over the rug. The despair threatened to drown out my own thoughts. Softly, gently, Elsa reached out and covered my hand with hers. Her skin was cold, her touch insubstantial, so light, as if she were barely there. But I was overwhelmed by the understanding implicit in her gesture. Grateful for her care. “Mrs. Winchester, we have been seeing some pretty amazing things here in your fabulous mansion lately,” Elsa said, “some true signs from God. I’m talking angles. I’m talking miracles. I’m talking End of Times. Do you believe?” “That is just the point, my dear Elsa. In believing you, what do I have to lose?” I replied. “I’m here to tell you that everything can change for you. I’m here to take you to a place where you can begin to be the person you might have been…if certain things had not happened. I’m here to tell you…” She broke off. We had reached the library. “What, tell me what?” I said. We were eye to eye and Elsa seemed wrapped in a calm that my fear could not penetrate. The library was dark, lit only by a skylight, and the single open door through which we has passed. It was vast and shadowy filled with books and desks and lamps. It was an important place for me, a place that I surely always had a glorious time in. This sense of elation was familiar. It was like the way one feels after being sick for a spell and suddenly a clearheaded good feeling comes over you, and life seems worth living again. Else sat perfectly still beside me and I could see the light in her eyes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 4

“God loves you,” she said softly, almost dreamily. “I’m here to offer to offer you another way.” I went quiet. I saw all of these things suddenly, tumbling through my mind, and that is when the pounding began. The noise was not very loud at first; it sounded as if someone was knocking on the wall with one’s knuckles. I felt along the walls, but it was the strangest thing. The pounding did not really seem to be coming from the walls at all. I could not really tell where the sounds were originating. When the books and the chairs started to move, Elsa began to scream hysterically that she wanted to leave my home. She was in extreme distress. Her face was ashen, and she appeared about to faint. We watched the chair do a complete flip, then gently return to its upright position. “He’s fighting for you hard. He doesn’t want to let you go,” Elsa said. Unable to explain the source of the commotion and thus unable to provide a source of relief for the traumatized young lady, I suggested she show herself the way out. I could feel myself shaking again. I was not afraid. Every ten minutes or so, the entire mansion would seem to tremble, as if we were experiencing an earthquake. The beautiful decorative frescoes and artwork started to fall and crack. I saw a man standing at the back of the library and I approached him to see why he was trespassing. When I drew near to the fellow, he simply disappeared. The man seemed very real and I had not thought about ghosts until he vanished into thin air. As I opened the door to another room on the third-floor and pressed the button to turn on the light, I was astonished to see a strange young woman, standing before the full-length mirror, admiring herself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 4

Before I could ask her who she was or what she was doing, the stranger ran into the closet next to the mirror. I walked over to the closet to find out who this intruder was and what she wanted. I was breathing rapidly, my body carrying the weight of all this, but my mind felt wondrously clear. Opening the doors and sliding the dresses around on their hangers I found nothing. I felt the urge to cry, to dissolve into a state of weakness. Frantically, I shoved the clothes out of my way, even removing some of them and tossing them on the bed. However, there was no one there, and no visible escape route from the closet. “Why? Why have you come here for me?” I asked. My voice broke. I turned my back on the closet. I felt like I was walking into a wall of blackness. It had been a cold winter and a bone-cracking winter wind came sweeping through the room. Even with a fireplace in this room, I could feel the chill. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something at the window. As I turned on the light, I saw a child’s face, hovering outside the window, peering in at me. The strange thing was that the little boy’s face was blue—the odd, pinkish-blue cast taken on by human skin after it has been exposed too long to cold temperatures. Shocked and frightened at a face levitating in the window three stories off the ground, I ran from the room. In the hallway, the words “Help me,” were scrawled on the wall in blood. #RandolphHarris 3 of 4

It was this, I think, the not knowing, that preyed on my mind. Not knowing what happened to him, how he had died, when he had died. Was I scared? I should have been, certainly. In the hall above, women were screaming, and men were shouting, children were crying. The sound of rook splintering and the clatter of metal on metal. Then the door thudded shut at my back and I was plunged into silence. To where the damned have howled away their hearts. One can only imagine the spirits of the Winchester Mansion, ancient dead descending from their graves to my home, the floating along passageways, emerging in this ghost ship, passing through rock and concrete and wood as they are wont to do, and materializing at times of their own choosing. Rising up from the Earth like water that seems to help draw them. Then, as they appear and disappear, sinking back into the labyrinthine. Death, who washes away this worrisome World, has guided countless souls to my home. By the end of the day, the weather had grown threatening, and the wind became aggressive and unpredictable. Windows and doors have been left open to the cold air all afternoon, and after closing them up tight, I built a fire. Without warning, all the lights in the house went out. I became motionless. A dark entity grabbed me. It twisted me around and forced me toward the floor. Gripped by terror immediately I started to have trouble breathing. I was hyperventilating. And I was convinced that the entity would murder me. I struggled, then the entity suddenly vanished. The violence was disturbing. #RandolphHarris 4 of 4

The Winchester Mystery House

There are Worlds, access to which we are no longer allowed. Worlds just inches from us, as we stand in our own World. Invisible, they contain not only the present, but the past, and, some say, the future as well. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/