I had another nightmare, the same nightmare, in fact, that had haunted me for weeks. And try as I might, I could not escape that bone chilling breath, or cacophony of illusions that always began in the Victorian gardens, then ended with a massive conflict involving weaponry too fantastic to believe. However, when I awoke, the soft breeze and soothing flower scents wafting up from the garden brought a new clarity. With a heavy sign, I turned to go back to bed, but as I was about to walk away from the balcony, there were cold and gruesome gusts, and a movement in the shadows caused me to jump. At night, a ghostly face peers from the windows and a voice asks irritably, in broken English, “Vhy tont dey come?” The deer used to come within sight of the drawing-room windows, and would browse quite close to the house. The observation tower had been producing apparition. One night, a servant who was in perfect health and spirits, and was singing and whistling up to the moment of the occurrence, was alarmed when near the dark staircase of the hall, where the sombre protraits of ancestor hung who, afflicted with a Family Cruse, step out their frames at the sound of the midnight bell. He thrust at them with his hammer, which struck the door. When on the morrow I saw the unfortunate carpenter in the main drawing room, he testified to having seen them stepping out of the painting, and being alert, and awake, and even had spoken to them. I saw the unfortunate man again on the following day, but changed beyond my recognition. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

In another day or two, the brave and steady carpenter, who usually have unshaken nerves, died—at the presence of a shadow. The carpenter was buried some days later. Whether or not the carpenter died from the effect of seeing genuine apparitions, was never known. During renovation of the tower, one of the mansions oldest sections, it was discovered that behind the painting of the ancient wall was hollow, and upon breaking the wall down, workmen were horrified to discover a room that contained the bones of a woman and a baby. The remains were quickly sent to the cemetery, but that did little to quell the restless spirits. That night we have a séance, and they woman’s ghost conveyed through the medium that they were bricked up and alive and left to die. The woman’s ghostly figure appeared. The apparition. She was holding her child as she moved around the séance room in a state of abject despair. She touched the hair of the nervous and made it bristle as she ran her phantasmal hands their locks. I perceived not how she entered; but, turning my eyes towards yonder corner of the room, I saw her standing in the same form and habit as life. I would have spoken, but had not the power of utterance. She took a little circuit round the séance room, seeming rather to swim than walk. Then suddenly, above the sound of rain and wind, there came to our ears a long low moan, which rose and fell. The medium stopped abruptly. We started to our feet. The moan was succeeded by another—louder, more prolonged, more agonizing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

It grew in intensity, rose to a hideous shriek, then gradually died away again to a low wailing groan. Shriek followed shriek, shrill and loud—human, horribly human, as a woman in torture, yet unearthly and gruesome. My blood ran cold. The sounds grew nearer and more awful. Then distinctly we heard footsteps, slow, uncertain, and shuffling. They approached. The shrieks sounded close at hand. A clanking jingling sound, like rattling chains, jarred on our ears at each footfall. We heard one of the doors in the séance room grate back upon its hinges, light in the doorway revealed a White Lady, as a grew more piercing, she came towards us walking slowly creating a cold chill in her spectral wake. The medium’s face grew darkly flushed. She was astonished to realize that she was trembling, that a sweat had broken out all over her, and that she was glaring at the apparition as if she meant to strike her. The medium was not one to strike. It seemed latent emotion had overcome her, something inimical to the round childlike face, the clear innocent blue eyes. The medium’s lips moved as if something were just dawning on her, and then she stopped. We had opened a portal to the otherworld through which entities entered into this World. We ran through the exit into my dressing room and what we saw defied logic. There, slowly emerging from the wall was a man—or at least what had the general form and appearance of a human—dressed in blue. He wore a cap, but had no face, no distinct features of a human being. And emanating from his “being” was bluish-gray tinge. And yet, another figure—that of a woman—slowly keeping alongside the man. The eerie could move directly toward the hallway, as they faded away in an eerie blue radiance. In 1885, when workmen were excavating in the cloister, on the other side of the Séance Room, two human skeletons were uncovered, about two feet into the wall. The remains were removed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

After years of night-duty, of patrolling the estate, one of the guards became acquainted with a Force more supernatural than burglars. In all that while the guard’s ears were assaulted by nothing more awful than demon cries. While standing near the mansion, about midnight, he saw a group of figures coming towards him along one of the walks, and they were howling with great evil. When they had advance within thirteen yards of where he was standing, the entire party of ghouls vanished. “On this particular night,” he said, “I went on duty at the east front of the mansion at ten o’clock , and had to remain there until six o’clock next morning. I was quite alone, and was standing close to the main gates, looking toward the Cupid Fountain, when suddenly I became conscious of a group of figures moving towards me. It is a most unusual thing to see anyone in the garden at that time of night, but I thought it probable that some of the servants in the mansion had gone to a party and were returning on foot. There were howling sounds and what resembled the rustling of dresses. When they reached a point about a little more than a dozen yards from me, I turned round and opened the gates to let them in. The party, however, altered their course, and headed in the direction of the fruit orchards, to the north of the garden. At the same time there was a sudden movement amongst the group; they fell into processional order, two deep, with the gentlemen at the head. Then, to my utter amazement, the whole crowd of them vanished; melted, as it seemed to me, into the air. All this happened within seven yards of where I was standing. I rushed to the spot, looked up and down, but could see nothing or hear nothing to explain the mystery.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

Often, works of art can, in and of themselves, invite us to experience it in a temporal way. There is a rather scandalous tell about Saint Anthony. His picture hung in the gallery, titled The Meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul. At night, Saint Paul would descend from the painting at night, travel down the winding hallways of the mansion, and tap at the bedroom doors; When, if any one says “Come in,” in he comes. One of the servants, Linnaeus, suffered from severe gastric hemorrhages, a condition though to be incurable. However, because the unfortunate man endured continual hemorrhages, physicians decided to attempt an operation. Two surgeries were performed but they were unsuccessful, and when an incision on his abdomen opened, Linnaeus’s condition steadily worsened to the point where he collapsed. Desperate to attempt any new therapy, I allowed him to stay in the Crystal Bedroom, hoping that the change of air and locale might help him. However, after a week, the doctor came to check on him and said he was dying. Linnaeus recalled that had been all alone in the Crystal Bedroom when he suddenly heard a knock at the door. He said, “Come in.” He had been lying on his side when he felt someone place a hand on his abdomen. Summoning all his strength, he turned around to see who was in the room with him, and he saw Saint Paul standing beside his bed. Linnaeus recognized him easily. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

In a quiet yet authoritative voice, the ethereal image of Saint Paul, spoke words of great comfort: “Brother, you have called to me so many times, as have so many of the other servants of the Winchester, that you have torn out of my heart this miracle. But now do not fear. You are healed!” The spirit of Saint Paul then told Linnaeus to call his doctors in in the morning so that they could examine him. Just before he vanished, he told Linnaeus to go to his painting and pray. The moment the spirit of the saint disappeared, Linnaeus rose from the bed and was elated to realize he felt no pain. When he summoned the other servants and the doctors into the room, they were amazed to find that the scar on his abdomen, which had been opened and bleeding, was now completely healed. There was, in fact, no longer any scar or any other physical sign indicating that there had been a gaping wound on his abdomen just hours before. Linnaeus was not expected to survive the day, yet that evening he was up, eating supper with the other servants. The miracle healing of Linnaeus by the ghost of Saint Paul occurred in April 1890. Ever since, he has lived a healthy life. This is a phenomenon that can only be explained in a supernatural way. Although, such interventions by spiritual entities have occurred among conventional Christian, and the act is deemed a miracle; this similar phenomena was denounced as the work of the devil by orthodox clergy because I am a member of a spiritualist group. The transient materialization of benevolent spiritual beings is a universal phenomenon reported by members of all religious faith. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

The guardians and benefactors from the spirit World, often materialized to offer guidance and healing. Entities frequently move through space and time. Considerable poltergeist activity has been reported in my home with voices and footsteps regularly heard and furniture being moved substantial distances. Some have reported the unpleasant sensation of being grabbed by unseen hands while others have reported growling noises. My mansion has a thrillful reputation. It rejoices in secret passages and hiding-corners, and has a peculiarly devilish contrivance in the shape of  passage that leads directly, without warning, deep into the fields. In a stately room of my mysterious mansion was an equally mysterious masked lady. A tall, slender gentleman, with lowering and ferocious aspect, having upon him a gun, entered the room with some others, and, taking the newly-born child from her arms, without a word threw it upon a blazing fire in an ante-room and crushed it with his boot-heel into the flaming logs, so that it was entirely consumed. Soon after, he was haunted through the mansion and on the farm and roads by the apparition of a burning babe, which startled his horse so that he was flung to the ground and his neck broken. He is now, in old country lore, an apparition himself, and haunts this mansion indefinitely. The servants believe my home is also haunted by a ghost in a full suit of armor who has been witnessed at night, the light of the moon glinting off his armor, while in the maid’s room, the sound of a crying baby is often heard. Interestingly, during recent renovations to the room, the corpse of a baby wrapped in linen fell from the ceiling, its bones were charred and fractured, which led some to suspect that the baby was the source of the crying. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

The Winchester Mystery House

The era of haunted houses has long been on the wane, lost to an age which thinks it knows so much more than was known two centuries ago, therefore presumes that it has arrived at a complete knowledge of all there is to know in Heaven, Hell, and Earth. Talk of spirits has become known as “foolishness.” In times such as these, when the traditional Angel topper on the Christmas tree has been banished, and the time-honored, hair-raising stories of ghosts, told by the flicker fire before the lights are lit, no longer a delightfully appetizing prelude to the Christmas dinner; nor, later, send the guests to bed with raw nerves that jump at every shadow. It is a little unfortunate that much of the appropriate setting of ghost stories has been destroyed. There are many blood-curdling legends, but their native homes have largely been demolished, and in some cases rebuilt; and ghosts do not very appropriately haunt houses less than a hundred years old. You require, for the instillation of a ghost, a manor-house, with wine-cellars, a butler, old family portraits (not necessarily those of your own family), and if you can manage mahogany paneling and tapestry hangings so much the better. In the ideal haunted house, the guest, primed with ancestral horror, went to bed with apprehension, leaving the warm dining-room for some vast woebegone chamber, with a like a catafalque and hangings of a bygone age; with mysterious cupboards, and secret passageways, in which a dozen family skeletons might reside, and with a floor whose every board had a separate and distinctive squeak.

Manor-houses we have still with us, but their number, as compared with the myriads of newly built “villas” in the suburbs, is woefully small. You cannot hope to find the ghost of  kitchen maid who fell to her death while carrying a tray of food, nor her ghostly piercing screams. The strange foot steps around the staircase area attributed to the ghostly head cook Maude are absent. In the keep of these new villas the ghost of an unknown woman cannot be heard humming, and there will never been an occasion to witness an apparition standing at the bottom of the stairs. This is very sad, for a family ghost is a possession that in these times, when antiquities are prized, would be greatly welcomed by many estimable folk. The Uncanny and the Inexplicable, seated invisible (but yet making their presence felt) by the hearthstone, would themselves get a cachet of respectability, or, at least, of long descent, to a domestic circle; and so long as they did not play their ghostly parts so earnestly as to send the servants into hysterics and render the house uninhabitable, would thus be prized possession. There would be nothing, for example, to fear from the gentle spook or spooks who, on the impeccable authority of Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester, used to share residence of The Winchester Mansion, and only make its, or their presence known by stertorous breathings, rustlings, and scratchings, and by stroking the heads of servants who at last grew quite familiar with, and unafraid of, it and used to call it pet names! Ghost of this kind are the low comedians of the spirit World. Omnipotens sempiterne deus adesto magna pietatis tue misteriis, adesto piss invocationibus nostris ut speculum istud quod in tuo nominee bene dicere facto. Desu qui hooc speculum ex materia fragili. Discendat in hoc speculum virtus spiritus sancti. Discendat in hoc speculum ut supra.

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