“Yes, there at first, and then…” I waved my hand nonchalantly around the room,” here, there…several placed, actually.” Mr. Hansen straightened up, “Has she ever spoken? Have you ever tried to speak to her, Mrs. Winchester?” I frowned. “My dear boy, I do not make a habit of conducting conversations with ghosts. I consider just seeing the wretched thing queer enough.” Twitching my shoulders in a shiver.  “I was sitting in the library in one of the big windows that had been opened to the night air. Suddenly my peaceful evening was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. I turned my head toward the door to see who was coming. However, no form was visible. The footsteps, however, came to the doors of the library, and ceased abruptly. Mystified, I waited for the someone to enter the room. Nothing happened. “Who’s there?” I asked. There was complete silence. Half-angry and half-puzzled, I got up to look around. There was no one in the dark hallway. I heard those footsteps plainly, but did not see a soul. Perhaps there was a secret entrance that I did not know about. There has to be some place where they can hide. These walls are deep enough to contain a secret passageway. When I returned to the library, I saw a girl in this room, although she was only a haze sort of form at first, not clear at all. Definitely a girl though, in her early twenties, I would say. I say her—it—again a few days—no, not days: nights—later, much clearer this time, almost as if her presence was growing in strength. I must admit, I felt quite weak at the sight of her.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

 “That sometimes happens,” Mr. Hansen replied. “Manifestations of this kind seem to draw off psychic energy from their witnesses, using it to sap energy from the atmosphere, too—that’s why the temperature of a room may suddenly drop. Their presence has even been known to affect electricity.” “Extraordinary. However, you really are speaking of ghosts, Mr. Hansen.” “No, I’m still talking about unexplained phenomena. Please go with what you were telling me.” I began to pace. “I felt there was something terribly sad about this ‘presence’… as though she were searching, or perhaps just lost…my housemaid Eleanor also had an encounter. Is that not right, my darling?” “Yes, Mrs. Winchester I most certainly did,” replied Eleanor. “I came face-to-face with the phantom lady in the library.” “I’d be interested to hear,” said Mr. Hansen as he smiled at the question, not in the least perturbed. “The library is cold and rather unpleasant,” responded. “A girl. I’ve seen her lurking or hovering or whatever these bloody things do on several occasions. That first time, I’d come down for a book and there she was, over there watching me.” She pointed and shuddered as if for emphasis. “The sight made my blood run cold, I can tell you.” “Does she look like anyone you know? Have known?” “Of course not. In fact, that’s the horrible part of this affair.” Her features contorted in disgust. “There was something wrong with her face, her figure…something awful. She appeared…I don’t know—malformed. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupilless, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth disclosed themselves slowly to my view. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

“The white ghastly spectrum of teeth. Not a speck on their surface—not a shade of their enamel—not an indenture in their edges—but what that brief period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth!—the teeth!—they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against it. I felt her possession and thought I could never be restored to peace, given back reason. And the evening closed in upon me thus—and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went—and the day again dawned—and the mists of a second night were now gathering around—and still I sat motionless in this solitary room—and I still I sat buried in meditation—and still the phantasma made its terrible ascendancy, as, with the most vivid and hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow and pain. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

“I arose from my seat, and throwing open one of the doors of the library, fell to the floor. I’m usually able to see through the outward layer of ugliness that so many things have, and perceive the beauty within, but it was impossible. I’ve had to clean up blood in the kitchen. I was told not to ask questions because it was safer I didn’t know anything. So I didn’t ask.” Mr. Hansen looked up from the typewriter with his reading glasses balanced precariously on the end of his nose. His face was anxious. His hand suddenly shook as with ague, as with terror. Her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart, staringly changes were wrought in my mind. During the brightest days of unparalleled beauty, there were no towers in the land more time-honoured than those of Llanada Villa. Our line had been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars—in the character of the family mansion—in the frescos of the chief saloon—in the tapestries of the dormitories—in the chiseling of some buttresses in the armory—but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings—in the fashion of the library chamber—and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library’s contents—there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief. I did not fail to ponder, frequently and bitterly, upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. And now—now I shudder in her presence, and grew pale at her recital. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and, sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. After some time, I found myself alone in the library. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware, that my home was replete with horror—horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record of my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, intelligent recollections. And like the spirit of a departed soul, a shrill and piercing female voice seemed to be ringing in my ear among the whispering echoes of the chamber. I knew this was not in the physical dimension and I had to learn how past events served as a blueprint for the psychic atmosphere that made such phenomena possible. The following day, I was winding up an important meeting. Mr. Hansen walked in the room. “Mrs. Winchester,” he said excitedly. “Do you care if I break a window?” “Where?” I demanded. “What for?” There’s a window painted black down in the basement at the back of the house. I’ve finally found about a thirteen-foot discrepancy in my measurements between the outside and the inside of the basement. I’ll have to break the window to see what’s behind it. I’ll pay for putting the glass back.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

“Wait for me!” I ordered. “I will be out in a few moments.” We went down into the basement where Mr. Hansen showed me a sketch he had made to scale and pointed to the stained-glass window with a cobweb pattern and thirteen colourful orbs. From the basement floor it could only be reached by ladder, but it was only a little above ground level from the outside of the house. “I’ve got to see what’s behind it!” “What is so interesting about that? Can you not just remove it from the outside?” “I don’t want to,” he replied impatiently. “The outside wall of the house runs in a straight line but down here the basement is all cut up into these rooms. There’s about a thirteen-foot space from that window to the outside wall or my figures are off—and they can’t be!” He pulled a ladder up to the window and climbed up with a hammer in hand. I stepped out of range of falling glass as he smashed one of my most precious designs, then, working with gloves, removed the remaining pieces from the frame. He turned his lantern into the aperture and gave a sharp whistle. “Hey!” he yelled. “You’ve got to see this! You won’t believe it!” He scrambled down the ladder and handed me the lantern. Then he waited in obvious excitement for me to climb up.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

“Do you see that room?” he shouted. “Look across at that other window!” I saw it. The room looked like a vaulted crypt. It was small and unfurnished although what looked like an old altar cloth and books in the corner. Just opposite the window Mr. Hansen had broken was an identical one and this is what we had noticed from the outside of the house. It was, likewise, a stained-glass window with a spider web pattern and thirteen colourful orbs, and was a twin in its dimension of the one in the basement wall. This was the most careful job of camouflaging a secret room that one could imagine. Mr. Hansen’s excitement was contagious. Minutes later we both climbed down into the secret room. Care examination proved that there were no other windows and no other way of getting into the room. If there had been a door, it was certainly sealed over with concrete. The entire room was brick lined. There must have been a trap door in the kitchen floor above to the hiding place. However, a new floor had been laid, sealing it off completely. We left the room the way we found it. Eleanor had been loitering in the kitchen even thought it was now getting dark. “You got a new room, Mrs. Winchester. What good did it do?” Mr. Hansen and I looked at each other with perfect understanding. “No good at all, Eleanor,” I answered.  “The room is useless to me. Tomorrow I will have Mr. Hasen seal it back up.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

The Winchester Mystery House

After opening the secret room, Mrs. Winchester reported that she moved bodily among unknown entities, reading terrible books. There were horrible annals of other Worlds and other Universes, and of stirrings of formless life inside the mansion. There were records and chronicles of strange orders of beings which had people the World and frightful grotesque-bodied intelligence which people the World billions of years before the first human being. Many mornings afterward, she awakened in a fever and shivering at the mysteries her home concealed; trembling at the menaces the future would bring forth. She wrote endlessly of the hauntings that took place in Llanada Villa. However, these records, written on great sheets of a curiously tenacious cellulose fabric, were bound in leather, and sold at auction with all her belongings. Now, her history is store in vaults of someone’s private collection.

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