I was feeling extraordinary confusion and pain. It was not because of anything that could be seen or heard or handled, but because of something imagined. The place is not good for the imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. I thought I had awakened to a room full of darkness and moonlight and moving shadows, for the nearer moon was racing through the sky and everything in the mansion endued with a restless life in the dark. And something…some nameless, unthinkable thing…was coiled about my throat…something like a soft snake, wet and warm. It lay loose and light about my neck…and it was moving gently, very gently, with a soft, caressive pressure that sent little thrills of delight through every nerve and fiber of me, a perilous delight—beyond physical pleasure, deeper than joy of the mind. That warm softness was caressing the very roots of my soul with a terrible intimacy. The ecstasy of it left me weak, and yet I knew—in a flash of knowledge born of this impossible dream—that the soul should not be handled…And with that knowledge a horror broke upon me, turning the pleasure into a rapture of revulsion, hateful, horrible—but still most foully sweet. I tried to lift my hands and tear the dream-monstrosity from my throat—tried but half-heartedly; for though my soul was revolted to its very deeps, yet the delight of my body was so great that my hands all but refused the attempt. However, when at last I tried to life my arms a cold shock went over me and I found that I could not stir…my body lay stony as marble beneath the blankets, a living marble that shuddered with a dreadful delight through every ridig vein. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

  The revulsion grew strong upon me as I struggled against the paralyzing dream—a struggle of soul against sluggish body—titanically, until the moving dark was streaked with blankness that clouded and closed about me at last and I sank back into the oblivion from which I had awakened. Next morning, when the bright sunlight shinning through the daisy stained-glass windows awakened me. I could feel the welcoming warmth of the sun, which reminded me of the bench by the cherry tree and the smell of its forgotten blossom. I lay for a while trying to remember. The dream had been more vivid than reality, but I could not now quite recall…only that it had been more sweet and horrible than anything else in life. I lay puzzling for a while, until a soft sound from the corner aroused me from my thoughts and I sat up to see the chambermaid entering my room. “Morning,” I said. “I have just had the devil of a dream…” I stretched and yawned, dismissing the nightmare temporarily from my mind. “What am I going to do with you, Mrs. Winchester?” she replied. “I am leaving here in a day or two and I will miss you dearly.” “Child, do not worry yourself about me,” I cried. “You have enough of your own business.” The memory of last night’s extraordinary dream was slipping from me, as such memories do, any by the time I reached the morning room, all of yesterday’s happenings were blotted out by the sharp necessities of the present. Again the intricate business of the day claimed my attention. I must have spent two hours at least idling over blueprints, watching with sleepy, colourless eyes, the towers and gables that were to be built. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6  

 I made my rounds around the mansion, consuming many cups of tea in the course of the day and engaging in conversations with carpenters. I passed the day quite profitably, and it was not until late evening, when I returned to my office.  I found myself alone when I reached the door. No matter. It was too late now to retreat or prevarication. I pushed on but, on this occasion, I found the door firmly locked. The disappointment melted away. And I felt I was floating on air. I turned away and then stood at the window, looking out over the moonlit landscape. Walking to the Venetian Dining Room, I cast a puzzled glance on the roast beef. It had been a while since I had a hot meal. However, a tiny, creeping fear was arising. From deeps of sound sleep I awoke much later. I awoke suddenly and completely, and with that inner excitement that presages something momentous. I awoke to brilliant moonlight, turning the room so bright that I could see the daisies from the window reflecting on the wall. And some warning instinct crawled coldly up my spine. There was a presentiment of something horrible stirring in my brain, inexplicably. I felt as thought soon the World would be consumed by floods, or split in two. That Planet Earth would be obliterated. That stars would collide, and parts of their bodies would fall to Earth, setting off a chain reaction to destroy the World. Traces of old ones can still be found amidst my estate, and some of them doubtless linger. The dark woods of the fruit orchards and the secrets of the strange days are one with the deep’s secrets; one with the hidden lore of Llanada Villa, and the mystery of primal Earth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

When the nine story Observational Tower was complete and I went to survey it, they told me this place was evil. They told me this because this town was full of witch legends. I thought the evil must be something which grandmas had whispered to children through centuries. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew thickly, and their trunks were big. And still there was beauty in it—an awful, shuddering beauty. The Winchester Mansion was insidious, promising, caressing, alluring, sweeter than honey; and the Observational Tower was clear and like the depths of a jewel—all beauty and terror, all horror and delight, in the infinite darkness upon which its windows opened, paned with emerald glass. It blended indistinguishably with the silence of the plush landscape—very softly, very passionately. It was then that I heard the story, and as the rambling voice scraped and whispered on I shivered again and again despite the summer day. When the spirits were done, the stars came out above me in the open. There had been no wild legends at all since the witch trials, but some believed this tower was where the devil held court beside a curious stone altar older than the Indians. There were not always haunted woods. And the sprawling ranch where I built my home was amid some of the valley’s most fertile gardens and orchards. However, something was creeping and creeping inside and waiting to be seen and felt and heard. Some of the rooms were deadly cold and during the summer guest would visibly shiver. As I climbed the winding staircase to the attic, it was very close and noisome up there, and no sound could be heard from any direction. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

  In that first moment, as the door opened, I sensed something very wrong. The room was darkened, and for a while I could see nothing, and the deep stirrings of ancestral memory awoke within me—ancient memories from ancestors far away. In a graven instant—a tangled flash of conflicting sensation before oblivion closed over me. For I remembered the dream—and knew it for nightmare reality now. The very roots of my soul were tickled with unnatural delight. So I stood, rigid as marble as helplessly stony as any of Medusa’s victims in ancient legends were. And it was truly dreadful. A weakness was flooding that grew deepened, as something in my soul sank wholly into a blazing darkness that was oblivion to all else but the devouring rapture. The apparition that appeared in the room was slim, fair and sleek, and like William, he had the look of cherubic innocence on his face, but it was wholly deceptive. He had the face of a fallen angel, without Lucifer’s majesty to redeem it. I slammed the door and set my back against it, pearl handled gun in my hand, although my flesh crawled—for I knew…. commending my descent of the stairs, I heard a thud below me. I even thought a scream had been suddenly chocked off, and recalled nervously the clammy vapour which had brushed by me in that frightful room above. What presence had my cry and entry started up? Halted by some vague fear, I heard still further sounds below. Indubitably there was a sort of heavy dragging, and a most detestable sticky noise as of some fiendish unclear species of suction. With an associative sense goaded to feverish heights, I thought unaccountably of what I had seen upstairs. Good god! What devil World is this into which I had blundered? I dared move neither backward nor forward, but stood there trembling at the staircase. Every trifle of the scene burned into my brain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

The sounds, the sense of dread expectancy, the darkness, the steepness of the narrow steps—and merciful Heaven!…the faint but unmistakable luminosity of all the woodwork in sight; steps, sides exposed laths, and beams alike!  A feeble scratching on the floor downstairs now sounded distinctly. Slowly nerving myself, I finished my descent and walked boldly toward the parlor. However, I did not complete the walk, because what I sought was no longer there. It had come to meet me, and it was still alive after a fashion. Whether it had crawled or whether it had been dragged by any external force, I could not say; but the death had been at it. Everything had happened in the last half-hour had caused my face to become deathly pale. I retreated to my room like a child in disgrace, and lay awake for hours, staring into the dark, until I gave up and lit my candle and paced about the floor in a torment of spirit worse than anything I had endured in my life. My mind was so clouded with fatigue and misery. Archly, languorously, my blood pounded hot. The room wheeled and whirled about me, and forces unimaginable flickered through me. Battling the World, enslaved and yet possessor of all. There was a moment of blind fumbling in emptiness. I felt something loop gently about my ankle and a shock of repulsive pleasure went through me, and then another coil, and another, wound about my feet…that caressive pressure on my legs was all I could feel, and the voice in my brain drowned out all other sounds, and my body obeyed me reluctantly—but somehow I gave one heave of tremendous effort and swung, stumbling, out of that nest of horror. It was evening. The crooked bending skyline drank the buoyance of the sun, dragged it down, sucking greedily. And then I lay down on the clean floor, and wept. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6

The Winchester Mystery House

Lights go on and off. Voices are heard, as well as footsteps. One of the tour guides enjoyed the animated conversations with the guest. However, he could hardly wait until everyone had left so that he could be begin taking notes from the old books in the library. The evening of stimulating and delightful companionship had left him feeling exhilarated, and he felt as though he could work through the night. “Of the thirteen doors in sight, only one was locked, and on this I tried various keys. The Thirteenth key proved the right one, and after some fumbling, I threw open the mahogany door.  I screamed, I thought a momentary cloud eclipsed the window, and a second later I felt myself brushed as if by some hateful current of vapour. Strange colours danced before my eyes. The room contained hundreds of sleeping knights with their horses. There was a sparkling casket in which a beautiful maiden lay sleeping. However, on each side of the maiden were serpents, one holding a sword or the horn as only one of them could awaken her. Fatefully, I chose the horn and blew it.

“Suddenly, the sleeping knights came to life and attacked me. As they did, the room began to swirl and I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness. As I did, the figure in white appeared taunting me with a voice that echoed inside my head, ‘Now shame on him who sounded a horn, and the knight who sheathed a sword.’ When I regained consciousness, I was lying in the Daisy Bedroom and from that day on I was determined to find the sleeping maiden again. I spent years searching he mansion for the room in which she had lain. It became an obsession as I searched every corner of the mansion. And yet, for all my determination I never again found the room in which she lay. Visitors and other staff alike have reported seeing her tragic figure although her presence is felt more often than not. Interestingly, the maiden is said to float above the zig zag stair case and their level has changed over the years.” Caretakers have had valid experiences of some kind or other and some express the opinion that they would not go out of their way to spend the night at The Winchester Mystery House because it is so “beautiful but bizarre.”

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