Sometimes certain things happen in Victorian houses that are hard to understand. Llanada Villa is one of those places. I am convinced that there is another level of consciousness or activity of some kind that occupies my home. A juxtaposition between entities in physical bodies and those in astral form. When I first purchased the original eighteen room farmhouse, there was the most peculiar thing outside. A large barn, to the south side of the house, and a stone in front of it that looked not quite natural. Upon close inspection, I wondered whether perhaps it was not an Indian tombstone, or perhaps an Indian altar of sorts. It looked far too regular to be completely shaped by nature. The original owner had no idea how it got into the garden, nor did he know anything particular about the history of the barn. All he knew was that the barn was old. Inside there was a passageway, or cave, tunnel, call it what you will, leading from one of the stables out to another part of the estate. It was shored up by four-by-fours on the side, but with very thing boards on the top; and dirt and water was trickling down these broken boards at the top. The tunnel was about seven feet tall. It was quite tall. I heard some noises and was afraid to have anyone go in. After I purchased the property and started to expand my estate, I simply had the carpenters fill it in and raze the barn. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

It was now long after nightfall, my home with lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lamination nothing cast a shadow. A strange sensation began slowly to take possession of my body and mind. However, I felt rather conscious with a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence, while some supernatural malevolence swarmed about me.  A shallow pool on the floor reflected in the light, as from a spill, met my eye with a crimson gleam. I dipped my fingers into it. It stained them; it was blood! Blood, I then observed, was about me everywhere. Defiling the walls and were broad maculations of crimson, and blood dripped like dew from them. All of this I observed with terror. It seemed to me that it was all in expiation of some crime. To the menaces and mysteries of my surroundings the consciousness was an added horror. So frightful was the situation—the mysterious light burned with so silent and awful a menace. From overhead and all about came so audible and startling whispers and the sighs of creatures so obviously not of Earth—that I could endure it any longer, and with a great effort to break some malign spell that bound my faculties to silence and inaction, I screamed. My voice broke into echoes and fluttered away into the distant reaches of the labyrinth, then died into silence, and all was as before. This place becomes more queer at night. Often, I must persuade myself out of the notion that eyes are watching me. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

After that time, I often knew things before they really happened—such as who would be at the door before the butler answered it, or just before the telephone rang, who would be calling. From the very first night I moved into Llanada Villa, I felt right at home in it, as if I had always lived here. Even during expansion, if before me unknown horror or behind me, with heavy tread, something moved relentlessly upon me, driving me on and down; I found it easy to move along the stairs, and in the dark without the slightest accident or need to orient myself. It was almost as if the house, or someone in it, were guiding my steps. I was always acutely aware that the house was alive: There were strange noises and creaking boards, but there were also human footsteps, and there were those doors. The doors, in particular, puzzled me. The first time I noticed anything unusual about the doors in the house was when I was reading a book late one night. Suddenly, I heard footsteps on the ceiling above my bedroom. Then the door of the stairwell opened, steps reverberated on the stairs, then the door-to-nowhere opened, and a blast of cold air hit me. I looked up, and there was no one there. Annoyed, I rose and went to check the servant’s quarters. They were indeed fast asleep. Not satisfied and thinking that one of them must be playing tricks on me, I woke them one by one and questioned them. However, they had trouble waking up, and it was evident to me that I was on a fool’s errand; the servants had not been down those stairs. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

That was the beginning of a long succession of incidents involving the doors in the house. Occasionally, I would watch with fascination when a door opened quite by itself, without any logical cause, such as wind or draft; or to see a door for me just open as I was about to reach for the doorknob! At least, for now, whatever presence there was in the house was polite: It opened the door to a lady! However reassuring it was, it could also be frightening. One evening, I was reading in the library, and an intolerable discomfort overcame me. Through the thudding of my heart, I heard the stealthy footsteps of someone echoing in the distance. Then there was a sound behind one of the bookshelves that sounded like somebody suffering—making all kinds of noises. It hurled me into sufferings almost more than I could bared. I got up and started pulling books away from the shelves and that is when I discovered a panel. It was wide enough to be a passage, and the passageway itself was blocked with a piece of concrete; maybe thirty inches wide and forty inches long. Standing for a moment listening, I could hear a faint sound like a stumble from within. Although I was filled with curiosity to find out what was beyond the wall, it did not match the desire to tear the wall apart. I slipped noisily out of the library and flattened myself against the closed door. As the grandfather clock tick-tocked in a hollow monotone, I knew that somewhere in the thick darkness there was an apparition. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

 For a time, which seemed so long that the World grew gray with age and sin, and my haunted mansion, having fulfilled its purpose in this monstrous culmination of its terrors, vanished out of my consciousness with all its sighs and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding me with the mindless malevolence of a wild brute; then thrust its hands forward and sprang upon me with appalling ferocity! The manifestation released my physical energies without unfettering my will; my mind was spellbound, but my body powerful and limbs agile. For an instant, I saw this unnatural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator—such fancies are in dreams; then I regained my identity almost as if by a leap forward into my body, and the straining automaton had a directing will as alert and fierce as that of its hideous antagonist. However, what moral can cope with a demon? Despite my strength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, I felt the cold fingers close upon my throat. Borne backward against the floor, I saw above me the dead and drawn face within a hand’s breadth of my own, and then all was black. Dazed with agony, I opened my eyes. The silence was stifling. And out of that unbroken silence crept slowly to my significance sharper than any outcry, the clock had stopped ticking. In my mind’s eye I could see the key in the clock door, and then slowly, soundlessly, I began to drift toward the clock. Six paces from it I caught the dim glint of a key in the clock—my eyes were now accustomed to the darkness—and then beneath my foot a board treacherously cried out in the stillness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

 I stood there, holding my breath and as I stood, I saw the clock door slowly open, and two fingers slid round the edge of it! Lunging, I flung myself on the door. There was a strangled animal cry from within the case, the fingers jerked and vanished, and I banged the door tight and turned the key in the lock. I heard pounding on the stout mahogany door of the case as I ran to the wall switch and flooded the room with light. Blinking, I started at the tray of trinkets untouched in the window. Then appeared a gentleman, walking alone in the hallway. Thinking he was a servant, I was just about to have a word with him, when he vanished. Suddenly, a coffee cup rose from a side-table, nobody being nigh, and flew to the other side of the room, breaking itself against the wall; for my further confirmation, that it was neither the tricks of the wags nor the fancy of a servant, but the mad frolics of witches and demons. The front of the house was so haunted in all the room, that they stood empty for a long time. In the latter part of the autumn of 1887, after retiring to my bedroom about eleven o’clock, I thought I heard a peculiar moaning sound, and someone sobbing as if in great distress of mind. I listened very attentively, and still it continued; so I raised the gas in my bedroom, and then went to the window on the landing, drew the curtain aside, and there on the grass was a very beautiful young girl in a kneeling posture, before a soldier in a general’s uniform, sobbing and clasping her hands together, entreating for a pardon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

However, alas, he only waved her away. So much did I feel for the girl that I ran down the stairway that wound down into blackness to the door opening upon the lawn, and begged her to come in and tell me her sorrow. The figures then disappeared gradually, as in a dissolving view. Not in the least nervous did I feel then; went again into my bedroom, took a sheet of writing paper, and wrote down what I had seen. The following evening, a few steps from the living room to the rear section, which was the original portion of the house, a man suddenly appeared, striding towards me, and going in a direction opposite to mine. When first seen he was standing exactly in front of the fireplace which dominated the room. Young and ghastly pale, he was dressed in evening clothes, evidently made by a foreign tailor. Tall and slim, he walked with long measured strides noiselessly. A tall white had covered thickly with black crepe, and an eyeglass, completed the costume of this strange form. The moonbeams from the skylight falling on the corpse-like features revealed a face well known to me, that of a former butler. A housemaid was in the room with me. She stopped abruptly, as if spellbound, then rushing towards the man, she gazed intently and with horror unmistakable on his face, which was now upturned to the Heavens. She indulged in her strange contemplation but for a very few seconds, then with extraordinary and unexpected she ran away with a terrific shriek and tell. However, this woman never have I seen or heard of since, and I could not explain her presence, nor the man’s. A week after this event, I was in my bedroom reading my letters, and it was very, very late. News of the butler’s death reached me. Then suddenly, the door opened, and the butler stood there looking at me reproachfully. But, he had been dead for more than a week. I screamed and went under the covers. A housemaid rushed upstairs to see what was the matter. When she arrived, the door was wide open! #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

The Winchester Mystery House

It is possible that events in The Winchester Mystery House can be charged with such powerful emotion that their traces linger in the setting where they occurred. That may at least be the explanation for the ubiquitous sighting of figures in the Grand Ballroom or gibbets upon which they have been hanged—unless of course popular superstition has attracted presumed ghosts to these localities.

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