The morning sun was shining full on the Victorian garden outside, making each archway of the cloister a picture of yellow light and fluttering leaves. The iron-rimmed wheels of the carriage hearse had trundled a few hours ago. But the weird apparition from this morning had left no physical evidence of its passing. Through the window, I could hear a melancholy charm which I could not duplicate. Sometimes with the nostalgia and grief and self-pity mingling so intensely in me, I wept at the recollection, of what I called a normal life. Sunlight warmed the room through the windows, as I sipped tea. A sensation ran through me like a strong and vibrant current. I heard music again. The notes were drifting upward from two floors below as Daisy played the piano. Daisy could really play the piano. It must be talent, pure and simple, I thought. As I listened to the music playing, the sun was setting, and I laid across my bed, falling quickly to sleep. I had a dream of something black coming round my bed, and I awoke in perfect horror, and I really thought, for some seconds, I saw a dark figure near the chimney piece, but I felt under my pillow for my charm, and the moment my finger touched it, the figure disappeared, and I felt quite certain, only that I had it by me, that something frightful would have made its appearance, and, perhaps, throttled me, as it did the poor servants. I have quickly learned an important lesson about humans and their willingness to be convinced that the World is a safe place. And this lesson about human peace of mind I never forgot. Even if a ghost is ripping a house to pieces, throwing plates and glasses all over, pouring water on pillows, making bells ring at all hours, humans will accept almost any “natural explanation” offered, no matter how absurd, rather than the obvious supernatural one, for what is going on. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Next night I passed as well. My sleep was delightful deep and dreamless. However, I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy, which, however, did not exceed a degree that was almost luxurious. I pinned the charm to the breast of my nightdress. It was too far away the night before. I m quite sure it was all fancy, except the dreams. I used to think that evil spirits made dreams, but Dr. Wayland told me it is no such thing. Only a fever passing by, or some other malady, as they often do, he said, knocks at the door, and not being able to get in, passes on, with that alarm. For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed woman. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it. Without knowing it, I was now in a pretty advanced stage of the strangest illness under which mortal ever suffered. There was an unaccountable fascination in its earlier symptoms that more than reconciled me to the incapacitating effect of that stage of the malady. This fascination increased for a time, until it reached a certain point, when gradually a sense of the horrible mingled itself with it, deepening, as you shall hear, until it discoloured and perverted the whole state of my life. The first change I experienced was rather agreeable. It was very near the turning point from which began the descent of Avernus. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Certain vague and strange sensations visited me in my sleep. The prevailing one was that of pleasant, peculiar cold thrill which we feel in bathing, when we move against the current of a river. This was soon accompanied by dreams that seemed interminable, and were so vague that I could never recollect their scenery and persons, or any one connected portion of their action. However, they left an awful impression, and a sense of exhaustion, as if I had passed through a long period of great mental exertion and danger. There was the old lime tree with its great trunk gnarled with the passing of nearly nine centuries, the deep well, and the Torture Tower. The Torture Tower is truly grim place. The dust of ages, and darkness and the horror seemed to have settled on it. I saw a half-human form falling to its death from the tower. After all these dreams there remained on waking a remembrance of having been in a place very nearly dark, and of having spoken to people whom I could not see; and especially of one clear voice, of a female’s, very deep, that spoke as if at a distance, slowly, and producing always the same sensation of indescribable solemnity and fear. Sometimes there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose into a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me, and I became unconscious. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
It was not three weeks since the commencement of this unaccountable state. My sufferings had, during the last week, told upon my appearance. I had grown pale, my eyes were dilated and darkened underneath, and the languor which I had long felt began to display itself in my countenance. One night, instead of the voice I was accustomed to hear in the dark, I heard one, sweet and tender, and at the same time terrible, which said, “You mother warns you to beware of the assassin.” The following day, There were bats circling the Observational Tower at dusk, but the sky above the treetops was a pale, almost cloudless blue, permeated with fine streaks and swirls of creamy vapour. Everything about the sky suggested an idyllic afternoon scene, but that was not the impression left by the house itself. The sunlight seemed only to accentuate the darkness of the encroaching fruit orchard, and to deepen the shadows within the window frames. My home was seemingly filled with incarnate darkness; even the hot sunlight streaming in through the door seemed to be lost in the vast thickness of the walls, and only showed the masonry rough as when the builder’s scaffolding had come down, but coated with dust and marked here and there with patches of dark stain which, if walls could speak, could have given their own dread memories of fear and pain. The housemaids had been rather neglectful. The wooden staircase was dusty. When I came up through the open trap in the corner of the chamber, there was certainly more light, but only just sufficient to realize the surrounding of the place. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
The spirits who designed the tower had evidently intended that only they who should gain the top should have any of the joy of light and prospect. There were ranges of windows, albeit of medieval smallness, but elsewhere in the tower were only a very few narrow slits such as were habitual in places of medieval defense. A light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw Trinity, the housemaid, stand near the stairs, in her white nightdress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, on one great stain of blood. My next recollection is that of standing on the lobby, crying for help. Hattie and Mr. Hansen came scurrying into the tower in alarm; a lamp burned always on the lobby, and seeing me, they soon learned the cause of my terror. I insisted on our knocking at Trinity’s door. Our knocking was unanswered. It soon became a pounding and uproar. We shrieked her name, but all was vain. We all grew frightened, for the door was locked. We hurried back, in panic, to my room. There we rang the bell long and furiously. Servant soon came running up the stairs. I ordered the men to force the lock on Trinity’s door. They did so, and we stood, holding our lights aloft, in the doorway, and so started into the room. We called her by name; but there was still no reply. We looked round the room. Everything was undisturbed. I stood on the boards looking at the gilded railings, the new chandelier that hung from the ceiling, and up at the arch overhead with its masks of comedy and tragedy like two faces stemming from the same neck. It was exactly in the state which I had left it on bidding her good night. However, Trinity was gone. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The room of the Witches Cap is said to have had a spiritual meaning for Mrs. Winchester. However, some have said that the room has a presence of evil—a bad aura around it. It seemed to have a cold presence. Psychics said that they felt weird around the Witches Cap and found that it had a living entity attached to it. The entity was inside of the wood of the room. It seemed to have a controlling effect on anyone who entered it. There is intelligence in the room, which sometimes projects frightening images of the past into the minds of people. Some have also experienced very vivid dreams. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Randolph Harris II International 