In the late 19th century, the Santa Clara Valley presented sweeping vistas of rural open space. It was a serene setting for me to begin my building project, which I did with steadfast determination. I purchased an eighteen-room farm house, immediately hired carpenters to work in shifts around the clock, and within a few short years my farmhouse grew into a nine-story mansion! The estate eventually grew to 734 acres of farmland, which included orchards of apricots, plums, and walnut trees to supplement my income. I was at first happy in my residence, but soon became alarmed by the frequent opening and shutting of doors during the day and night. The house also seemed to echo a cry when it was sad or injured. However, usually by the next day, damages to the house would remarkable be repaired. I feared that there were “irregularities” on part of the servants, but having made the strictest enquiries I was disabused of that notion. Fearing that a stranger had obtained the keys of those house, I arranged for the key to the massive front door that was made of solid gold and the keys for the other 2,000 doors to be changed. However, the noise of closing, or slamming, door continued as before. There were other unusual events. I saw quite clearly for a moment a vision of a wide, dark expanse at night, with a fresh wind blowing, and in the midst lonely figure—how employed, I could not tell. Perhaps I would have seen more had not the picture been broken by the sudden surge of a gust of wind against my casement, so sudden that it made me look up, just in time to see the white glint of a seabird’s wing somewhere outside the dark panes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
“But what is this? Goodness! what force the wind can get up in a few minutes! What a tremendous gust! There! I knew that window-fastening was no use! Ah! I thought so—both candles out. It was enough to tear the room to pieces.” The first thing was to get that window shut. I was struggling with the small casement, and felt almost as if I were pushing back a sturdy burglar, so strong was the pressure. It slacked all at once, and the window banged to and latched itself. Now to relight the candles and see what damage, if any, had been done. No, nothing seemed amiss; no glass even was broken in the casement. The wind went on moaning and rushing past the house, at times rising to a cry so desolate that it might have made fanciful people feel quite uncomfortable; even the unimaginative, I thought after a quarter of an hour, might be happier without it. The light was obscure, conveying an impression of gathering storm, late winter evening, and slight cold rain. On this bleak stage at first no actor was visible. Then, in the distance, two guests reported seeing a bobbing black object appear; a moment more, and it was a man running and jumping, clambering over the floor, and every few seconds looking eagerly back. The nearer he came the more obvious it was that he was not only anxious, but even terribly frightened, though his face was not to be distinguished. He was, moreover, almost at the end of his strength. On he came; each successive obstacle seemed to cause him more difficulty than the last. “Will he get over this next one?” said one of the guests; “it seems a little higher than the others.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Yes; half climbing, half throwing himself, he did get over, and fell all in a heap on the other side (the side nearest to the spectators). There, as if really unable to get up again, he remained crouching under the t, table looking up in an attitude of painful anxiety. So far no cause whatever for the fear of the runner had been shown; but now there began to be see, in the hall, a little flicker of something light-coloured moving to and fro with great swiftness and irregularity. Rapidly growing larger, it, too, declared itself as a figure in a “snuff-coloured” coat; the figure had been glimpsed both inside and outside the house. In addition, the servants, assembled in the kitchen for a mean, observed a woman in a dark dress of silk rushing past them and going out into the yard. A handyman, coming through the door at the same time, had seen nothing. However, there was something about her motion which made the servants unwilling to see her close quarters. She would stop, raise arms, bow herself toward the floor, the float across the room and back again; and then, rising toward the ceiling, once more continue her course forward at a speed that was startling and terrifying. The moment came when the woman was hovering about from left to right only a few yards beyond the floor where the runner lay hiding. After two or three ineffectual castings hither and thither she came to a stop, stood on the floor, with arms raised high, and then started straight towards the ceiling. As the candles blew out, the servants went to relight them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The scrapping of match on the box and the glare of light must have startled something of the night. The guests and servants her claws scurry across the floor from with much rustling. When I tried to question them, they had a kind of obscure suspiciousness, as if there were something amiss with anyone too much interested in the specters. However, they hinted to me an undercurrent of persistent strangeness. Something about them seemed so odd and provocative that I could not put them out of my mind, and despite the relative lateness of the hour, I resolved to gather a brief explanation of the night’s disturbances. The descriptions of the events all hinted of remote secrets and unimaginable abysses in Llanada Villa. I, then, knew that the rumours of devil-worship where partly justified by a peculiar secret cult which had gained force here and engulfed the servants and several of the orthodox churches. Waldemar Eberling, the cook, was numb, unable to walk or even talk. Everything that happened around him was impossible, the stuff of nightmares. The guests and other servants looked like Musselmanner, the walking dead. For days, they shuffled around, already dead in spirit, until they starved themselves to death. I lived with the pain. I imagined that a tiny fire was burning in my abdomen, slowly consuming me. I stared at the paining of a wheat field. Although the sky looked ominously dark, the wheat was brightly rendered in great broad strokes. A path cut through the fields and crows flew overheard. “I like Van Gogh,” I thought to myself, as I tried to detect a rhythm in the surges of abdominal pain. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
I liked the painting because it was so bright that it was almost frightening. And the road going through the field did not go anywhere. It ends in the field. And the crows are flying around like vultures. This painting, Wheatfields with Blackbirds was metaphorical. It held a special meaning for me. It is thirteen o’ clock and the mansion is death quiet. The sharp shadows seem to the hardest objects in the room. The gasoliers burn steadily in the hall outside. I looked out into the hallway, but I could only see the far green wall. Across the hall, someone begins to scream, and there is a shuffle of servants. The screaming turns into begging and whining. The parlormaid finally comes into the drawing room, says, “Mrs. Winchester, would you like a cup of tea?” “Why does the man across the hall scream so?” I ask, but the parlormaid is already edging out of the room. “It’s just the wind, Mrs. Winchester.” The incessant whining disgusted me. However, the screams of the “wind” recede as I hurtle through the dark corridors of my labyrinth. The huge mansion is cold and dark. Suddenly, I see two entrances before me. As the World melts behind me, I step into the coal-black doorway. In the darkness I hear an alarm, a bone-jarring clangour. A shadow crossed the moon. I reflected upon how so many people said my home was “interesting.” Shaking my head. I recalled how interesting is often another word for dangerous. There is an old Chinese curse to that effect. I stopped walking when I felt something nudge at my shoulder. I glared, but there was nothing there. “You do not know what it is like,” I said to myself darkly. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
While laying in the Crystal Bedroom, I plainly heard the footsteps of a man, with plodding step, walking towards the foot of my bed. I sprang out of the bed, thoroughly alarmed by the sound, and took refuge in the Daisy Bedroom; I returned to the Crystal Bedroom with a chambermaid, and a light, but nothing could be seen. The sound of plodding footsteps was subsequently heard in my room on more than one occasion; my maid’s room was similarly affected. Another abnormal sound also seemed to emanate from within the house. A hollow murmuring that seemed to possess the whole house; it was independent of wind, being equally heard on the calmest night. On a subsequent nigh I heard the front door being slammed with such a force that the walls of my bedroom—above the hall—shook perceptibly. On investigation, the front door was locked and bolted as usual. The unusual episodes increased in strength and frequency. The sounds began before I went to bed, and with intermissions were heard till after broad day in the morning. The noise now included that of human voices. A shrill female voice would begin, and then two others with deeper and manlike tones seemed to join in the discourse. I was laying on the bed one night, when I heard the most loud, deep, tremendous noise, which seemed to rush and fall with infinite velocity on the lobby floor. This was followed by a shrill and dreadful shriek and repeated three or four times. Still, I harboured doubts about any supernatural agency. For several nights the servants stayed up nights with their revolvers. They stationed themselves in different rooms, and waited. The noises, of shrieks and footsteps, began as before. Both men rushed out of their rooms, pistols at the ready, but nothing was visible. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Llanada Villa is a haunted mansion which is over 140 years old. Ghost here may be seen as a bridge of light between the past and the present, or between the living and the dead. They represent continuity, albeit of a spectral kind. These ghosts are uncanny. They move through walls, and cannot be touched by sword or spear. These ghosts in Llanada Villa are deemed to be the souls immured in purgatory, pleading for prayers to absolve them from punishment, or to protect the mansion. Some of these ghosts are the spirit of saints sent from God with news of a paradise. They can, in certain circumstances, be the machinations of the Devil. Devils many times appeare to humans and affright them out of their wits sometimes walking at noon day, sometimes at nights, counterfeiting dead men’s ghost. In any event, whatever their origin, they are part of the machinery of theology and of the supernatural; they are emanations from the eternal World of bliss and pain beyond the grave. They are an integral part of the communion of the living and the dead that The Winchester Mystery House represents.
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Randolph Harris II International 