Time is a real and constant motion, rolling us along. No one wants to look back on the years, and wonder where those years have gone. In the middle of the night, I started to wake. The cold took away my voice, and my power to walk. Looking toward my bedroom window, I saw a figure in black flowing shroud with two arms and hands extending from the edges, but they were not human appendages. Not normal, regular arms and hands, but cloven ones like those of a pig. The teeth and mouth seemed inhuman. Four fangs protruded where incisors should have been, and rough, thornlike projections were the closet semblance of human teeth. Its face had an almond shape and the skin was pitch-black. However, the eyes are what frightened me most, for they burned crimson. The creature had no hair, and the ears were pointed…there were no feet…the ghoul moved by floating. This being was definitely up to no good. It wanted to steal my soul and devour my human body. Not before long, the monster feld though the bedroom wall and disappeared into the night. The next morning, we were missing two dogs and two male servants. On and around the mansion were strown oddly and inexpertly dissected parts of one man and one dog. I shall spare the feelings of survivours by omitting mention of the man’s identity. We buried the human parts besides other seven men, and the canine parts with the other thirty-nine dogs. This formed the worst of Llanada Villa’s horror. Later that evening, at about nine or ten at night, all being in bed, except the maid, she, being in the kitchen and having raked up the fire, took a candle in one hand and Zip in the other am, turning about, saw one in a black gown walking through the room, and thence out of the door into the orchard. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

Upon this the maid, hasting up the stairs, having covered but two steps, cried out; on which I ran down, found the candle in her hand, she grasping the dog around the neck with the other arm: she told me the reason of her crying out. I saw suddenly the truth of her fear. I felt reflected tension in my own muscles. With my eyes shut, I turned my head away. She would not that night tarry in the house, but removed to another, one of the Victorian cottages on the estate, where she cried out all the night, from the terror she was in; and she could not be persuaded to go any more to the mansion, on any terms. The World took on cockeyed, dangerous tilt. She suffered two broke ribs, multiple contusions, a badly wrenched shoulder, and a deep cut on the scalp which Dr. Wayland thought accounted for the blood loss the woman suffered. In spite of all the prevailing horrors we were left with enough sheer mystery to wonder about the unknow realm. I suppose the spirits were trying to keep others from meddling with or prying too deeply beneath the surface that Llanada Villa’s forbidden secrets and unhuman immensurable evils. Nevertheless, we were acutely conscious of the rarefied air and intensified cold that emanated from the halls of Llanada Villa from the night on. I was dressed, of course, in my heaviest furs. As I drew near the forbidding peaks of the mansion, I noticed more and more the curiously formed shadows on the walls. How to account for such things in this place was frankly beyond me, and I felt queerly humbled. My sensations of tense expectancy as I prepared to round the hall and peer unto untrodden sections of the mansion can hardly be described on paper; even though I had no cause to think the regions beyond the range essentially different from those usually traversed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

The touch of evil mystery in the east wing of the mansion and in the Tower of Bable was a highly subtle and attenuated matter not to be explained in literal words. Rather it was an affair of vague psychological symbolism and aesthetic association—a thing mixed up with exotic poetry and paintings, and with archaic myths lurking in shunned and forbidden rooms. Even the wind’s burden held a peculiar strain of conscious malignity; and it even seem that this wing of the mansion included a bizarre musical whistling or piping over a wide range as the blast swept in and out of the omnipresent and resonate hallways. There was a mystical note of reminiscent repulsion in this sound, as complex and unplaceable as any of the other dark impression. Up here were only dark rooms, creaking floor boards, unusual staircases, and echoing hallways to add a portent of the unnatural, the fantastic, and the dream-like. Unable to speak except in shouts amidst the howling, piping wind that raced through the passages, I pondered the unsampled secrets of Llanada Villa. I continued to search all the rooms to see if anybody was hid there to impose upon me. At last I came a lumber room. I called for the apparition. I was ready to drop down with fear, and left the room and went down into the kitchen, where I sat up there the remaining part of the night, and had no matter of disturbance. Then I saw something walk along in a black gown, and place itself against a window, and there stood for some time, and then walked off. However, something black seemed to drop from the ceiling and run down the wall. It was exceedingly cold. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

As I was turning to look behind me, a little dark form appeared to rise out of the shadow behind the door and from it two arms enclosing a mass of blackness came before my face and covered my head and neck. My legs and arms were wildly flourished, but no sound came. Then, there was no more movement. I was alone. I had fallen back through the wall into another room. The room was a mixture of muddled colours, instead of the carefully blended pastel shades I had selected. The line of wall, floor and ceiling were strangely off proportion, zigzag, and unrelated. Then everything went back to normal. I was able to move again. For a moment the orderly universe was disarranged and the fabric of belief was ripped. However, the moment passed. I remembered once before awakening in this room in the middle of the night. How strange everything had looked! Chairs, table, all out of proportion, swollen in the dark. The be ceiling pressing down, as in a dream. I went three or four steps; and, it being a moonshine night, I saw an apparition move from the bedside, and clap up against the wall that divided the room. I went and stood directly against it, within my arm’s length of it, and asked it in the name of God what it was it that made it come disturb my home. I stood some time, expecting an answer, and, receiving none, thinking it might be some fellow hid in the room to fright me, I put out my arm to feel it, and my hand seemingly went through the body of it, and felt no manner of substance will it came to the wall; then I drew back my hand, and still it was in the same place. Through clearing eyes, I looked at the formality I had called my World. My flesh quivered. Stomach and intestine contracted in sympathetic fear. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

I adjured the apparition to tell me what it was: when I had said those words it, keeping its back against the wall, moved gently along towards the door; I followed it, and it, going out at the door, turned its back towards me; it went a little along the gallery, and it disappeared where there was no corner for it to turn, and before it came to the end of the gallery where were the stairs. Then I found myself very cold from my feet as high as my middle, though I was not in great fear: I went into the bed betwixt. The apparition reappeared. I stretched out my hand toward it. The apparition seemed to have a morning gown of a darkish colour, no hat nor cap, eyes half shut, the arms hanging down, the hands visible beneath the sleeve. I cried out in mixed awe, wonder, terror, and disbelief in my own senses. I could not believe what fell back upon my eyes in this limitless, almost endless labyrinth I had built. The effect of the beautiful but bizarre sight was indescribable, for some fiendish violation of known natural law seemed certain at the outset. I had previously dismissed, so far as serious thought was concerned, any theory that I had opened a gateway into another World. Yet, not the sway of reason seemed irrefutably shake for this mansion of squared, curved, angled blocks had features which cut off all-natural origin. Of course the phantom had been twisted. Llanada Villa was an incredible, unhuman massiveness of these vast wooden towers and rambling floors. All sorts of fanatic phrases sprang to the lips of servants and guests as they looked dizzily at my unbelievable spectacle.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

Myths had so persistently haunted me in this demonic plateau. For boundless miles in every direction this labyrinth stretched off with very little thinning; indeed, as eyes followed it to the right and left along the base of the low, to the peaks of its towers, one could see they had come upon something of incalculable extent. The walls seem to range from 10 to 150 feet in height, and of a thickness varying from one to five feet. There were innumerable honeycomb arrangements of enormous extent as well as smaller separate structures. The general shape of the mansion tended to be conical, pyramidal, or terraced; though there were many perfect cylinders, perfect cubes, clusters of cubes, and other rectangular forms, and a peculiar sprinkle of edifices. The builders had made constant and expert use of the principle of the arch, and domes. However, the darkness cannot understand the light, and it will never leave humans in peace, for as long as there shall be struggle, dispute, confusion, and fear. Evil wants to win at any cost. It will scare, deceive, and play unfairly. A shadowy figure often emerged from the Tower of Babel, looking like a monster from another World. Every time I saw a ghoul, it shook me to my core. My skin burned where the claw had touched it. The shape of the monster was covered by swaths of fog. The bizarre clouds of mist formed an eerie dance around it. These ghouls had probably spent centuries in Santa Clara Valley. Hese ghosts and ghouls that materialize before humans in dark and lonely places or in creepy castles and moldering mansions are a reality. They have deep baritone and gentle, melodic voices. These spirit entities have the ability to influence the human mind telepathically in order to project what may appear to be three-dimensional images. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

Emperor Lucifer, Master and Prince of Rebellious Spirits, I invoke and command thee by the particular nature of this Universe, by the Seal of creation, and by all the Infernal Spirits of Hell, of all contained therein, by their powers of virtues, to come before this circle, in a fair and comely shape. Open the seal of Dush-huvarsht, the place of evil deeds through the five hell realms. Consume sentient consciousness and short circuit the subtle energy bodies causing insanity and disease. Cause the infernal vortex to rise and bring the powers of hell to the corporeal plane, the power to take our finite and limited consciousness to the realms of Hell for the dark alchemical expansion of that consciousness, as well as the ability to employ the unseen powers of darkness within this corporeal plane to destroy its limitations through sorcery for the sake of merging the corporeal and spiritual planes experientially. Expand our perceptual awareness beyond the five senses to destroy the limits of the human being. Allow us to shine the light of wisdom of the throne of Angra Mainyu to lead us to the source of unlimited possibility found within. Looses the spirits upon the limits of the corporeal plane for the sake of destroying them and transmuting them according to will, making the limitations limitless. Allow the limits of reality to act as mere focal points which show us what changes need to be made within the World. As limits cease to exist, all that will remain is an artistic medium to be sculpted and the life of experience will then become art. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

Winchester Mystery House

Noises are often the first inklings of a haunting. Knockings and tappings are frequent. The sound of footsteps is common. There are many reports of unseen visitors scraping the floor, as if they were covered with branches, or apparently dragging someone or something. The jingling of money is common. A person seems to be dragging furniture about the rooms, although the house is empty. Calls and cries have been heard. There has even been the sound of laughter, of a newspaper rustling, of dogs growling. On the wall of the Winchester Mystery House, there was once a sign inscribed upon a wall—“This is where a caretaker was buried alive in this wall. His cries can be heard sometime at midnight. 1924.” There is also a chamber from which issued the sound of an old spinning wheel. It is only one of a number of cases in which the sounds of ancient occupations can clearly be heard still echoing. Caretakers have been sure that they heard the noises of small hammers in parts of the mansion where there was no activity. The phantoms are known as “knockers” or “buccas.” When the sounds are heard, there is to be no more whistling or swearing; nothing is to be marked with a cross. There are also voices. A young lady was in the bath when she heard a voice saying “Open the door” four times. She did so, and thereupon fainted. There was no one there. But many spectres cannot speak. It is commonly reported that ghosts are on the point of saying something, but uncomfortably cannot. Some among them seem to be physically prevented from talking. Characteristically they gasp or emit a loud and garbled sound.

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