My sea green Victorian mansion gleamed dazzingly in the early morning sunshine. Giant peach trees, bursting into bloom before it, hid the roof and cast blue shade on the ground. A fence at the back enclosed a poultry yard, and beyond that were hen houses, the horse stables, and a stall from which the black-and-white cows looked plaintively forth, several gazebos, a greenhouse, water tower, toolshed, a roofed well, a flower garden and vegetable garden. It was an infinitely pleasant-looking estate, and if death had struck there at all, there was no outward sign. All that beautiful wainscot mahogany, as good as the day it was put up, and garlands-like of foliage and fruit, and the lovely gilding work on the coat of arms and the organ pipes really spoke to my soul. However, the season was undoubtedly a very trying one. Many people in the neighbourhood had but little enjoyment of the exquisite sunny days and the calm nights of August and September. To several of the older people—the summer proved downright fatal, but even among the younger, few escaped either a sojourn in bed for a matter of weeks, or at the least, a brooding sense of oppression, accompanied by hateful nightmares. Gradually there formulated itself a suspicion—which grew into a conviction—that Llanada Villa had something to say in the matter. I was visited by dreams, which I retailed to my friends, of a shape that slipped out of the little door of the south transept as the dark fell in, and flitted—taking a fresh direction every night—disappearing for a while in the house, and finally emerging again when the night sky was paling. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
I could see nothing of it, but that it was a moving form: only I had an impression that when it returned to the mansion, as it seemed to do in the end of the dream, it turned its head: and then, I could not tell why, but I thought it had red eyes. The circumstances involve too much unreconciled grief, too tragic a loss, for me to be willing to fully engage others in the dream. The iron broom he uses to sweep leaves a trail of blood. When I awake, I am exhausted. In the small hours of the morning, I can barely remember the details of the journey I had in my slumber. All I can think of is what he looked like when he caught me in my attempted escape, cold and bedraggled, lost and looking for a servant so that I could make my escape. And after awaking, accompanied by the sounds of Indian drums, chants, whoops, and the cries of what seemed to be hundreds of voices, I was again possessed by the odd feeling of being watched. As vague outlines of people running back and forth in the darkness of the hallways. The high-pitched howls and screams were real. There were the shadows of fifteen people. In the unsure light of dying fire, there were tears in my eyes. I went outside, began to stroll aimlessly along the front of the house, then around the corner and around the side. The certainty had set in me that I would find something. It burned like a small fire in my belly as light from the sky along Winchester Row retreated and deepened the shadows softened, under the threat of advancing rain. With a rasping, grating sound, a section of brickwork like a low, narrow door swung outward; as I entered, a cloud of dust and grit rolled out into the gallery, and settled slowly around me. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
“Well, I said, coughing, “there’s certainly no one in here—no one living, at any rate.” I lit my lantern, and I saw through the floating dust a narrow stairway of brick, spiralling upward into darkness. I heard a noise from the direction of the library. I stood for a moment listening; the sound was not repeated. I strode to the connecting door. There was no one in the library, and no apparent cause for the sound until I saw that the pages of William’s manuscript, which I had left on the seat of a leather armchair, were now strewn upon the floor beneath, with my journals amongst them. “A draught, perhaps,” I thought. However, the air was completely still. And something else had changed. Outside, where the trees should have loomed a mere fifty yards away, there was nothing to be seen at all; nothing but dense, fleecy vapour, sliding across the glass. With a last worried look around the library, I walked back to the gallery. As I was about to step into the opening, I was seized by panic. With my lantern, I stepped over the threshold, into a cylindrical chamber no more than three feet wide. Dust and grit lay thick upon the stone floor. I shone the beam upward, but could see only the returning spiral of the staircase. Testing each stair as I went, I moved awkwardly upward, afraid of tripping over my shirt. Musty air stung my eyes; there were cobwebs draped about the walls, but they looked old and brittle, and nothing moved when I shone the lantern over them. This, I thought, was how an ancient tomb would smell, a tomb that had been sealed for hundreds of years, where even the spider had died of starvation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
I had completed at least two full spirals before the stairs ended at a low wooden door, set into the wall to form a ledge just wide enough to stand upon. My hair brushed against the stone roof of the chamber. I glanced back down the stairs and was seized with a fit of dizziness so that I had to grip the door handle to prevent myself from falling. The handle turned in my grasp; the door creaked open. It was a room I had not seen—or, rather, a cell—perhaps six by four feet, the roof only a few inches above my head. The door opened inward to the left, leaving just enough room for a straight-backed chair and a table placed against the opposite wall. Upon the dusty surface of the table were a decanter, a wineglass, two candlesticks, an inkstand containing half a dozen quill pens, also thickly covered in grime; and a glass-fronted case, two shelves high, containing what looked like thirty or forty identical volumes. There seemed to be no other furniture, but as I stood staring at the desk, I became aware that my lantern was not the only source of illumination. Along the wall to my right were half a dozen dim, narrow strips of light. I took a tentative step forward, felt an icy draught upon my face, and realized that the secret room and its stairwell had been built across the chimney, with slits for ventilation running through the outer wall. Three more steps brought me within reach of the bookcase. Through the dusty glass I saw that the volumes were indeed identical, and that there was no printing on the spines; they were leatherbound manuscript books, labelled only by year, and shelved in order from 1860 through 1866. I set the lantern upon the table, tugged at the right-hand door until it opened with a shriek of hinges, and drew out the last volume. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
It was a diary, written in a crabbed, shaky hand, but legible enough.
5th December 1860
Beloved, let us love so well, our hearts shall still be better for our love, and still our love be sweeter for our life, and both commended, for the sake of each, by all true kindred souls and true loves born. My heart so potently never spake romance, but when my eyes with thine thereon could dance. My own goddess is past all thing far, I saw far in the concave green of the sea. My nets are spread out, and I at rest. I was a lonely youth on desert shores. But the crown of all my life was utmost quietude: More did I love you than the brightest summer shine. I now dwell whole days in sheer astonishment from far off a crustal pool. When I awoke, ‘twas in a twilight bower; who could resist? Who in this universe?
Eternally yours,
William Wirt Winchester
#RandolphHarris 5 of 8
I read on through entry after entry of meticulously precious moments. There were several more volumes and I found that they were all the same: a tender daily record of magnificent life and love. I think I fainted. When I came to, I aw a bundle of old clothes lying behind the door. Only they were not just clothes, because there was something in them; something with shrivelled claws for hands and a shrunken head no larger than a child’s, to which a few tufts of scanty white hair still clung. The mouth and nostrils and eye socket were choked with cobwebs. I picked up the last volume of the diary and, averting my eyes from the ghastly object behind the door, ran down the shaky stairs and through to the comparative warmth of the library. The fog outside was impenetrable as before. As I made my way back to the main entrance, I thought, I should go mad with fear. Well, that same night I dropped off asleep as sound as a baby does, and all of the sudden Zip woke me up, coming into the bed, and thought I, now we’re going to get it sharp, for he seemed more frightened than usual. After about five minutes sure enough came this cry. I cannot give you no idea what it was like; and so near too—nearer than I had heard it—yet—and a funny thing, you know what this mansion is for an echo. Well, this crying never made no sign of an echo at all. However, as I said, it was dreadful near this night; and on the top of the start I got with hearing it, I got another fright; for I heard something rustling outside in the passage. Now to be sure I thought I was done; but I noticed Zip seemed to perk up a bit, and next there was someone whispered outside the door. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
I slipped out of bed across to my window, but Zip he bored right down to the bottom of the bed—and I looked out. First go off I could not see anything. Then right down in the shadow under a buttress I made out what I shall always say were two spots of red—a dull red it was—nothing like a lamp or a fire, but just so as you could pick them out of the black shadow. I had not but just sighted them when it seemed we were the only people that had been disturbed, because I saw a window in the left side of the house had become lit up, and the light moving. I just turned my head to make sure of it, and then looked back into the shadow for those two red orbs, and they were gone, and for all I peered about and stared, there was not a sign more of them. Then came my light fright that night—something came against my bare leg—but that was all right: that was my little dog Zip. He had come out of bed, and was prancing about making a great to-do, only holding his tongue, and I saw he was quite in spirits again, and took him back to bed and we slept the night out! The next morning there came the most fearful crash down at the west end of the mansion, as if a whole stack of big timber had fallen down a flight of stairs. There was terrible commotion. I heard the slab fall out, and the crowbar on the floor, and I heard Mr. Hansen say, “Good God!” #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
When I looked down again I saw Mr. Hansen tumbled over on the floor, the men were making off down the hall. Mr. Hansen was very crossed. “I wish to goodness you’d look where you’re coming to,” he said to the carpenters. “Why you should all take to your heels when a stick of wood tumbles down I cannot imagine”; and all Mr. Hansen could do, explaining he was right away on the other side of the staircase, would not satisfy him. Then the butler came back and reported there was nothing to account for this noise and nothing seemingly fallen down, and when Mr. Hansen finished feeling of himself they gather round—except someone lit up a candle and they looked into the hall. “Nothing there,” said Mr. Hansen, “what did I tell you? Stay! here’s something. What’s this? a bit of music paper, and a piece of torn stuff—part of a dress in looks like. Both quite modern—no interest whatever. Another time perhaps you’ll take the advice of an educated man”—or something of that nature, and he went, limping a bit, and out through the north door, only as he went he called back angry to the butler for leaving the door standing open. The butler called out “Very sorry, sir,” but he shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I fancy Mr. Hansen’s mistaken. I closed the door behind me, but he’s a little upset. I asked the butler if he had seen what knocked over Mr. Hansen. “Come, you must have seen it,” he says. “Didn’t you see? A thing like a man, all over hair, and two great eyes to it?” Well, that was all I could get out of him that time, and later on he seemed as if he was ashamed of being so frightened, and he used to put me off when I asked him about it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
A tour guide was making the night trip through The Winchester Mystery House. He had been dozing lightly as he secured the rooms when he was awakened by what he later described as a “damned uneasy feeling.” He could not put a figure on what was troubling his, he told a reporter for a Bay Area newspaper in the summer of 2003. There were no strange or unusual noises in the mansion. He could detect nothing that sounded wrong in the steady closing of the windows and doors. For some reason, he decided to lift one of the window shades. That is when he aw the apparition. Outside of the window, so close that is seemed as if he might be able to touch them if he lowered the glass, was a brightly painted Indian brave on his spirited mount. The warrior bent low over the flying black mane of his horse and looked neither to the right nor to the left. He seemed to be mouthing words of encouragement to the phantom mustang as they rapidly dashed off around the estate. “I’ve seen the me six or seven times after that, on different parts of the estate,” the tour guide said. “They seem to be solid flesh, but there’s kind of shimmer around them. It’s like watching a strip of really old movie film being protected onto the prairie.”
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Randolph Harris II International 