The skies were more greyer than gold. As I walked back along the hallway, I was aware of the vapor of my own breath. It must have been 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Closing the door behind me, I paused for a moment and listened. There were voices coming from somewhere. Hushed voices, little more than whispers. “Daisy?” I said softly. “Mr. Hansen?” Silence now. I went to other doors, looked in, searching. They were all empty. I climbed the stairs, taking the opposite direction to one of my favourite bedrooms when I reached the corridor. I stopped outside Daisy’s bedroom and knocked softly. There was no response. I called her name, but still no reply came. I went further along to mount a narrow set of stairs that twisted round to the floor above. In the distant past, the rooms up there had been occupied by my servants, but this was now where my aunt had her living quarters. There were several doors along the rough-boarded corridor, and I tapped on each one. Again, I received no answer. I stood there for a while, in that shadowy place, mystified. Apart from myself, the house appeared to be empty. When I returned to the ground floor, on the last step I came to a halt. I listened intently. One voice this time. A tune being hummed. I took the last step into the hall and walked to its center where I slowly turned a full circle in an attempt to get a bearing on the sound. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

The basement door was ajar. The voice drifted up from its depths. Although my footsteps were soft as I approached the open doorway, the faint humming stopped. I bent close to the gap, waiting, listening, a draft chilling my face. Nothing. I pushed the door further open and felt inside for the light switch I knew was at the top of the basement stairs. The light was poorer than before, casting even deeper shadows. I descended the cement steps. Once at the bottom, I took in the broad, bricked chamber with covered furniture and broken statues scattered here and there. “Daisy, are you down here?” My voice was controlled. It sounded hollow within the confines of the basement. Only silence greeted me. Somehow the silence was mocking. I shivered, feeling the bitter cold. Then I stiffened when I heard footsteps from. They grew louder, descending the steps. Darkness silvered the window and gave me nothing to look at but my own image, but it seemed appropriate to my line of thought. How many people were enemies of that face, of the eyes, of the nose, of the mouth that was soft in relaxation. How many enemies? I mused. A few I could name, others I could guess. Suddenly I was depressed. When I called out to whomever was in the room, I received no reply. Finally, I thought this was odd and went further into the basement, and there, in a hair, I found a man dead. His face appeared to be sinking into a nest of flesh. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

The account had given men a strange chill. It suddenly occurred to me how little I knew about my own home. However, the icy hush that had settled over me was broken when I let go of the chair and turned toward the stairs. Needless to say, I had no visitors from the flesh-and-blood World. The man that was dead in the basement was a carpenter. He came to Llanada Villa to do so building, and someone accidentally killed him and left him in the freezing cold basement. The next morning, my eyes red with exhaustion, I discussed this experience with my niece Daisy. Until now I had been reluctant to draw her into these matters, but the impression had been so overpowering that I just had to tell someone. To my surprise, Daisy was not very upset. Instead, she told me of an account she had. The night before, the figure of a lady in white had appeared to Daisy in a dream, telling her to pack, for she would seen be taking her away! When Daisy had concluded her report, I calmed her as best I could and reminded her that some dreams are merely expressions of unconscious fears. Later that evening, I noticed a bouncing light at the top of the stairs as I was about to go to bed. The light followed me to my room as if it had a mind of its own. When I entered my room the light left, but the room felt icy. I was disturbed by this, but nevertheless went to be and soon had forgotten all about it as sleep came to me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

Suddenly, in the middle of the night, I woke and sat up in bed. There were footsteps in the rafters over my bedroom. They came across the ceiling from one side of the room to the other. At the head of my bed, I saw a man who was “beige-coloured.” As I stared at the apparition it went away, again leaving the room very chilly. Some restless spirit, freed from the shackles of the body, finally enjoyed his unobstructed power to roam the house and do whatever he pleased. And perhaps he now even enjoyed the vicarious thrill of frightening me, and becoming the stronger party in the house. Without question we were faced with the remains of an unknown civilization older than any dreamed of before, and forming a basis for legends. As a psychic, I can tell you these apparitions are so ancient they frightened me. Discomfort and expectancy were oddly mingled in myself and the servants at lengthen as the days drew on. I felt I had entered the realm of utter desolation. A certain absolute terror grew on me—a terror of course abetted by the fact that my disturbing dreams and pseudo-memories still best me with unabated force. There was a distinct trace of evil—and my hands trembled as I recognize the diabolic scheme through years of tormenting nightmare and baffling research. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

The deeper—and the farther north and east—we expanded my estate, the more apparitions we found; through we still failed to discover any trace of their source. Mr. Hasen was appalled at the measureless number of the spirits and how the caused the walls to curve and floors to slant. We also found traces of symbols which fitted darkly into certain medieval legends of infinite antiquity. They affected me queerly and disagreeably. They seemed, after a fashion, to dovetail horribly with something which I had dreamed or read, but which I could no longer remember. There was a terrible pseudo-familiarity about them—which somehow made me look furtively and apprehensively over the abominable, sterile terrain toward the north and northeast wings of the mansion. I developed an unaccountable set of mixed emotions about that general northeasterly region. There was horror, and there was curiosity—but more than that, there was a persistent and perplexing illusion of memory. I tried all sorts of psychological expedients to get these notions out of my head, but met with no success. Sleeplessness also gained upon me, but I almost welcomed this because of the resultant shortening of my dream-periods. I acquired the habit of taking long, lone walks through my labyrinth late at night—usually to the north or northeast, whither the sum of my strange new impulses seemed subtly to pull me. Sometimes, on these walks, I would stumble unto nearly hidden rooms of ancient masonry. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

Fog spread over throughout the air in a thick paste, casting a dank pallor over the sprawling hallways and legion of rooms. My home was terrorized by a mysterious society known as “The Goats.” These wretches met at night in a secret room, and partook in the most hideous festivities, which included paying of divine honours to Satan and other demons of the Sabbat, they donned masks fashioned to imitate goats’ heads, cloaked themselves with long disguise mantles, and sallied forth in bands. This is typically when the fog rolled in. Through the mansion, we would often see people wearing hideous black masks with huge horns which it is death for the uninitiated to see. The Devil started up himself in the Pulpit like a mickle black man, and calling the row, everyone answered here. The first thing he demanded was whether they had been good servants, and what they had done since the last time they convened. The witches adored Satan, or the Master of the Sabbat who presided in place of Satan. In solemn bows and seemly courtesies, the worshippers of the Demon approached him awkwardly, with mops and mows, sometimes straddling sideways, sometimes walking backwards. The witches who resorted to the Sabbat approach the throne with their backs turned, and worship him…and then, as a sign of their homage, they kissed his fundament. An indication of my poor nervous health was caused as a response to these odd discoveries which I made on my nocturnal rambles. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

Often times, I would run for safety at top speed. It was a wholly unconscious and irrational flight, and only when I felt I was close a healing room did I fully realize why I had run. Then it came to me. The queer dark ceremonies were something which I had dreamed and read about, and which was linked with the uttermost horror of the aeon-old legendary. Things festered in Llanada Villa’s nether abysses and against whose wind-like, invisible forces the trapdoors were sealed. I remained awake all that night, but by dawn I realized how silly I had been to let the shadow of a Sabbat upset me. One night, after a windy day, I retired early but could not sleep. Rising shortly before midnight and afflicted as usual with that strange feeling regarding the northeastward wing of the mansion, I set out on one of my typical nocturnal walks. The moon, slightly past full, shone through the skylights and drenched the hallways with a radiance which seemed to me somehow infinitely evil. There was no longer any wind. “Tonight,” whispered an apparition, “all the evil in the World will be let loose. You will be at the mercy of forces you never dreamed existed.” I screamed in terror. “Mrs. Winchester,” she said, “for the sake of your soul always continue building this fortress.” “I will,” I said in a quiet voice. Although I shivered, I told myself that such fears were merely absurd superstitions. At about 3.30 A.M., a violent wind blew, waking everyone in the mansion. The sky was unclouded, and the fireplaces still blazed. And yet, everyone seemed to feel something sinister in the air. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

The Winchester Mystery House

A family ghost, built up through generations of psychic reconstruction, can almost become an independent mental mechanism. Whether the ghost actually whispered, or Mrs. Winchester’s heightened psychic sensitivity allowed her to feel the presence of the ghost prior to its actual materialization makes for interesting speculation.

Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

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