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The Cathedral of the Fallen Angel
During a Connecticut thunderstorm, Mrs. Winchester’s husband and baby lost their lives in a tragic fire. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and wizards in Europe and India. Foretelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. In the afternoon of Tuesday, July 10, 1888, the inhabitants of Santa Clara Valley, were greatly excited by the sudden appearance, far out in the fields, of a mansion where none was known to exist. The people of the town were farmers and knew the area well. The day before, they had been out on their horses and rode over the spot where the unusual mansion appeared, and where certain that the locality was the best farmland in the valley. And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, for the day was clear and the mansion could be seen as plainly as they saw the hills to the south. It was massive. The estate was surrounded by a six-foot hedge, densely wooded; here and there were deep shadows in its sides indicating glens heavily covered with undergrowth and grasses. At one end the mansion rose almost precipitously from the from the land; at the other, the declivity was gradual; the thick forest of the estate gave way to smaller trees, these to shrubs; these to green meadows that finally melted into the valley. It was patrolled by a pack of ferocious hellhounds, plus, of course, Mrs. Winchester’s staff of armed bodyguards. Hundreds of people from all over California came to investigate; when, as they neared the spot, the beautiful but bizarre mansion became dim in outline, less vivid in color, and at last vanished entirely, leaving the wonder-stricken farmers to return, fully convinced that for the first time in their lives they had really seen this enchanted mansion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
For once there was a topic of conversation that would outlast the day, and the enchanted Winchester mansion passed from lip to lip, both story and the mansion grew in size till the latter was little less than a continent, contain a labyrinth mansion with towers and steeples, stupendous mountain range views, fertile valleys, and wide spreading plains; while the former was limited only be the patience of the listener, and embraced the personal experience, conclusions, reflections, and observations of every woman, man, and child in the valley who had been fortunate enough to see the mansion, hear of it, or tell where it had been seen elsewhere. This is the invariable history of its appearance. No one had ever been able to come close to its grounds, but it had been so often seen on the west coast, that a doubt of its existence, if expressed in the company of farmers, will at once establish for the sceptic a reputation for balderdash of the common affairs of every-day life. In Santa Clara, for instance, the Winchester mansion had been seen by hundreds of people, while many more could testify to its appearance near San Francisco. In San Jose, all the population saw it a few years ago, and shortly before, the villagers of Oakland, saw it, if not by themselves, at least by some of their friends. The Enchanted Winchester mansion, it should be stated that its resemblance to a Victorian/Gothic castle is sometimes very close, and shows that the “enchanter” who has it under a spell knows her business, and is determined to keep her mansion for herself changes its appearance as well as its location in order that her property may not be recognized nor appropriated. At night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. Mrs. Winchester’s arrival was a sensational event. They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like-but everyone enjoyed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanada Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. Populations said it just appeared out of nowhere two years ago. Sure two twins could not be like her, and when it appeared in Santa Clara, the mansion would move around to different locations. It had also appeared in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, but it went no further than the Bay Area. Concerning Mrs. Winchester’s mansion, legendary authorities differ on many material points. Some believed that its architecture was due to geometry or some other enchantment, while opponents of this materialistic view were inclined to the opinion that the mansion was not what it seemed to be, that was to say, not Earth, wood, and stones, like as those most people see, but only an illusion that evil spirits or the devil created to deceive the town. Public opinion on the west coast was therefore was strongly divided on the subject, unity of sentiment existing on two points only; that the island had been seen, and that there was something quite out of the ordinary in its appearance. People believe that it would come and go in the night like a light in a bog, and when you do see it, you can see through it. An old fisherman of San Francisco called Ebenezer Thornton knew all about the enchanted Winchester mansion, having not only seen it himself, but, when a boy, learned its history from a “fairy man,” who obtained his information from “the good people” themselves, the facts stated being therefore, of course, of indisputable authority, what the fairies did not know concerning the doings of supernatural and enchanted circles, being not worth knowing. He said that the Winchester mansion was full of temples and round towers all covered with gold and silver till they shone so one could not see it for the brightness. There was a great enchantress in the mansion, and she had all kinds of secrets, and knew where to dig for a pot of gold. She built the castle in one night, and could make herself disappeared when she wanted and could take any shape she pleased. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Ebenezer when on to say that Mrs. Winchester’s husband gave her a charm before he died to use when she was in mortal danger, he also left her a ton of diamonds and millions of dollars. She was a pretty smart woman. One night, Mrs. Winchester was awakened by a noise in one of the kitchens. She tole down, and found her old housekeeper, Madge, with half a dozen of her kidney, sitting by the fire drinking whisky. When the bottle was finished, one of them cried, “It’s time to be off,” and at the same moment she put on a peculiar red cap, and added:–“By yarrow and rue, and my red cap, too, hie over to England!” and seizing a twig she soared up the chimney. As the latter was making her preparations Mrs. Winchester rushed into the kitchen, snatched the cap from her, and placing herself astride of her twig uttered the magic formula. She speedily found herself high in the air over the Irish Sea, and swooping though the empyrean at a rate unequalled by the fastest airplane. They rapidly neared the Welsh coast, and espied a castle afar off, towards the door of which they rushed with a frightful velocity; Mrs. Winchester closed her eyes and awaited the shock, but found to her delight that she had slipped through the keyhole without hurt. The party made their way to the cellar, where they caroused heartily, but the spirits proved too heady, and somehow Mrs. Winchester was captured and dragged before the lord of the castle, who sentenced her to be hanged. On her way to the gallows an old woman in the crowd called out in Irish, “Ah, the enchantress herself, Sarah Winchester alanna! Is it going to die you are in a strange place without your magical charm?” She reached into her pocket and held it in her hand. On reaching the place of execution she was allowed to address the spectators, and did so in the usual ready-made speech, beginning, “Good people all, a warning take by me.” But when she reached the last line, “My parents reared me tenderly” instead of stopped she unexpected added, “By yarrow and rue, good-bye I love you,” with the result that she shot up through the air, to the great dismay of all beholders. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Magic persecution. Genuine magic is the art of bringing about results beyond human powers through the enlistment of supernatural agencies. Black magic deliberately involves the devil and demons, and the resulting enchantment is used for persecution and revenge. A spiritistic circle of twenty members furnishes a good example. Working with black magic, these spiritis experimented to see if they could cause psychic harm or even illness in people they disliked. A strong medium of this occult group chose a minister as a target and vowed to afflict and eliminate her. The minister suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to work for several months. Some phenomena must be eliminated from the spiritistic magic field. In the psychiatric realm, for example, many schizophrenics claim to be magically persecuted. In reality this is only a symptom in the course of psychotic disease. Eliminating all such cases, there are still large-scale, genuine phenomena, especially in areas where occultism has flourished for many years. One common form of magic persecution is beatings by an invisible attacker. Parapsychology also sees magical persecution as a mediumistic problem in the sphere of materializations. Strong mediums (when under demon control) send out energy with which to build up human phantasms and are also able to transform this energy into animal forms, including dogs, cats, frogs, snakes, or human bodies with animal heads, etcetera. This explains the bizarre spiritistic persecution through phantoms in the form of various animals of human bodies with nonhuman heads. These animals bite, scratch, or otherwise torment their victims. Examples, of these occult phenomena abound in areas where the black arts are practiced. However, such occurrences are denied by many intellectuals. Often peasants and country people, especially in Europe, know more about magic than university graduates, who claim to swindle or hocus-pocus trickery are used instead of occult powers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Magic defense. Magic defense enlists supernatural agencies to counteract or unto the mischief wrought by magic persecution. Various kinds of spells, charms, or incantations are employed. In spiritistic séances it is an established fact that injuries inflicted upon a phantasm are sustained by the medium, even in the case of animal phantasm. Many defensive customs develop to combat this threat since magical persecution involves materialization. If a victim can injure an aggressive phantasm one has won the struggle. Many in the West wanted to remove Satan from the equation of black magic and demonic aspects of life. However, more serious discontent came from Satanists whose concerns were completely the opposite. Anton LaVey did not believe in Satan as a literal entity—He was a name for the dark, brutal aspects of humans and nature, as well as a symbol for the potency of humans’ untrammeled will. The Church of Satan was not a religion, and did not worship deities. For many, however, this was not enough. They wanted a real Devil to worship—belonging to a dark, mysterious coven, in the traditional gothic style, seemed much more appealing than being part of some cultural and social elite. Some believed that Satan, although thrown out of Heaven, was reinstated as the son of God and is directly in contact with him. If any coven members offends, they are a bit evil now and again, given corporal punishment, or is expelled from one’s coven and cursed. However, this is said to be for the members own good. They really believe in love, the sanctity of woman as the child bearer and procreator of life, and in worshipping Satan their master. Aleister Crowley was grooming Kenneth as his successor. Mr. Grant’s work examined lost gods, strange spiritual traditions and forbidden symbols, often leading him to some disreputable spiritual neighborhood where devils and demons might be expected to reside, like the Winchester Mystery House. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
If you have a lot of magic in you, you can be a Satanist and have no idea. As if they are the mafia or something, sometimes those who are suspected of being Satanists have their offices broken into like they are the Mafia or something. The Church of Satan, however, has saved lives because it has given them power, power to come out and be themselves when traditional churches would not accept these people. The Dark Lord, was said to be an anthropoid but faceless. Looking at the concept as a diamond, much like the ones left to Mrs. Winchester by her husband William Wirt Winchester, Satan or Lucifer was just other facets of that diamond, purely ways of achieving workings which encompassed the whole. So, if you are particularly drawn to the gothic Satanist current, fine, use rituals based around that. In the Temple of Darkness one could equally have Satanists, Setians, or followers of other paths, the principle being that the whole thing is a psychodrama anyway. Magic is basically the Western version of yoga. Everything that happens in magic happens first in your head. Set, the Egyptian god of evil, was an older deity than Satan. Satan derives from Set. Set, who is defined as the Prince of Darkness, is a force about which you could say, “As we are now, he once was.” When you die your force can survive. Magic is mind enhancing. When one perishes or passes, instead of going into the cosmic whole—becoming one with the goddess or whatever—by sheer force of the will the existence of that magician’s mind can be sustained. This is the whole idea of the Temple of Set, and they use the word “xeper,” meaning “to become,” to define this. Spiritistic cults. If you did not know, Mrs. Winchester was a spiritists. Spiritism is considered a form of Christianity, practically in all civilized countries. A typical meeting consists of hymns, prayer, and a sermon as in a Christian service. The sermon, however, is allegedly given by a spirit from the other World, through a medium. These cults are said to be affected by the “doctrines of demons” and press into the supernatural World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
However, even born-again Christians often cannot differentiate between the spiritual and the psychic-demonic when under the spell of doctrinal errors, particularly those concerning the work of the Holy Spirit. The result can sometimes be confusion, division, and promotion of certain spiritual gifts accredited to demons. We have sometimes seen people end up suffering from mediumistic psychosis. Quite a number of patients who have suffered serious psychic disturbances through the misuse of such practices have become split personalities. The spirits which they called, confused them. One who tries to discover the promises of the other side through superstition endangers oneself to fall a prey to the dark side of one’s psyche. However, many Christians say that spirits of loved ones cannot be brought back from the dead, and the it is just a demon impersonating them. Yet, consider the case of Saul’s visit to the spiritistic medium at Endor (1 Samuel 28.3-25). Samuel’s spirit was actually brought back from the spirit World when the medium Endor tried to contact him. Yet, God brought the spirit back. The Lord stepped. Still one must be careful because many become enslaved and oppressed by occult powers and become victims of various manifestations of spiritistic phenomena. While overwhelming evidence from Christian counseling confirms the fact that spiritistic complicity serious damages the believer’s spiritual life, adherents of Buddhism, Island, or even false cults of Christianity sense no ill effects. Spiritists claim that spiritism has strengthened their belief in life after death and deepened their religious devotion. Psychiatry, psychology, and medical treatment are not sufficient for the healing of the whole human. The gospel of Christ and the liberating power of the Word of God can fully heal body, soul, and spirit. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Mrs. Winchester had a pain in her right forearm. At first the pain was treated as rheumatism but one day the Mrs. Winchester made the interesting discovery that the pain would suddenly subside if she wrote a letter. Having discovered this, whenever the pain became unbearable, she would always take a pencil and begin to write in order to alleviate the pain. However, after a period of time the Mrs. Winchester when go into her Blue Séance Room, where she developed a writing compulsion. She would write things down that she could normally speaking never have written. Often times, this is where the blueprints from her mansion came from. Added to this the written material on each occasion turned out to be some form of religious treatise. Mrs. Winchester took the articles to her minister to let him examine them. He was surprised at their intellectual content. Mrs. Winchester had become a spiritistic writing medium. The parapsychologist would merely see in this example a psychic automation involving the expression of subconscious thoughts. It is true that we need not consider the Mrs. Winchester to be in direct contact with the dead, or putting it another way we need not assume that this is a case of direct demonization, but God could be speaking to her. This is why some believe Mrs. Winchester to be a prophetess. During one of her spiritistic seances, as it happened, a phantasm did in fact appear during a séance. However, it is still not necessary to believe that a spirit really did appear in this instance. Depth psychology suggest that a phantasm can be produced in the following way. The medium through emitting energy causes matter to form as a result of this. In nuclear physics we have the idea that matter is nothing more than concentrated energy. Einstein’s formula E=M.c^2 illustrates this relationship. A comparison can also be drawn from another branch of physics. It is found that both particles and anti-particles are formed at the cathode of an X-ray tube when a current is passed through it at a very high voltage. Energy in the form of electro-magnetic waves is in this way transformed into matter. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
The next step in the mediumistic process involves the unconscious tapping of the information from some source or other, and then the newly formed matter is physically shaped according to this information. The final step is made when the phantasm is brought under the control of the medium. Looking at it from this point of view there is no necessity to believe that the dead person has in any way been disturbed. An animistic explanation based on the powers of the subconscious is thus sufficient to explain the phenomenon of materialization. Yet this is not to say that the rationalistic explanation does justice to the facts of the case. The problem is not as simple as that. However, we do not have the time to delve further into the scientific side of the issues. We have, on many occasions witnessed a disintegration of the personalities of both mediums and participants where materializations have taken place. In addition to this in every case where a person has frequently taken part in spiritistic séances, there is some kind of reaction, even if it is not immediately notice or if there is no manifestation—something happens. There are also people who are able to practise the excursion of the soul. Spiritists affirm that people can send out an astral body from their material body, and commission it to do whatever they ask. Perhaps that was the case when Mrs. Winchester appeared in another country? Spiritism haunts the dark jungle of human aberration. During a séance as the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester noticed that time was passing somewhat wearily. She could hear an occasional thud, thud. Some time must have elapsed before she became, dimly at first, and then distinctly, aware of a bluish phosphorescent emanation from a skeleton. This seemed to rise above it like a faint smoke, which gradually gained consistency, took form, and became distinct; and she saw before her the misty, luminous form on an unclothed man, with wolfish countenance, prognathous jaws, glaring at her out of eyes deeply sunk under projecting brows. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Although she thus descried what she saw, it gave her no idea of substance; it was vaporous, and yet it was articulate. Indeed, she could not say for sure if she saw this apparition with her eyes, or whether it was a dream-like vision of the brain. Though luminous, it cast no light on the wall of the Blue Séance Room; if she raised her hand, it did not obscure any portion of the form presented to her. Then she heard: “I will tear you with the nails of my fingers and toes, and rip you with my teeth.” “What have I done to injure and incense you?” she asked. No word was uttered by either of them; no word could have been uttered by this vaporous form. It had no material lungs, nor throat, nor mouth to form vocal sounds. It had but the semblance of a man. It was a spook, not a human being. However, it proceeded through the walls, odylic force which smote on the tympanum of her mind or soul, and thereon registered the ideas formed by it. So in a like manner Mrs. Winchester thought her replies, and they were communicated back in the same manner. If vocal words had passed between them neither would have been intelligible to the other. No dictionary was ever compiled, or would be compiled, of the tongue or prehistoric man; moreover, the grammar of the speech of that race would be absolutely incomprehensible to humans now. However, thoughts can be interchanged without words. When we think we do not think in any language. It is only when we desire to communicate our thoughts to other humans that we shape them into words and express them vocally in structural grammatical sentences. The beasts have never attained to this, yet they can communicate with one another, not by language, but by thought vibrations. Mrs. Winchester knew as she conversed with him that she was not speaking to him in English, nor in French, nor in Latin, nor in any tongue whatever. Moreover, when she used the words “said” or “spoke,” she meant no more than that the impression was formed by her brain-pan or the receptive drum of her soul, was produced by the rhythmic, orderly sequence of thought-waves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
When, however, she expressed the words “screamed” or “shrieked,” she signified that those vibrations came sharp and swift; and when she said “laughed,” tht they came in a choppy, irregular fashion, conveying the idea, not the sound of laughter. “I will tear you! I will rend you to bits and throw you in pieces about this mansion!” shrieked this demon man. Mrs. Winchester remonstrated, and inquired how she had incensed him. However, yelling with rage, he threw himself upon her. In a moment she was enveloped in a luminous haze, strips of phosphorescent vapour laid themselves about her, but she received no injury whatever, only her spiritual nature was subjected to something like a magnetic storm. After a few moments the spook disengaged itself from Mrs. Winchester, and drew back to where it was before, screaming broken exclamations of meaningless rage, and jabbering savagely. It rapidly cooled down. “Why do you wish to ill me?” She asked again. “I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing.” “Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent recement?” “Because you are the heiress to the Winchester Rifle, and I lived eight thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why you enjoy your comforts, a civilization that we new nothing of? It is not just. It is cruel on us. We have nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even lucifer matches!” Again he feel to screaming, as might a caged monkey rendered furious by failure to obtain an apple which he could not reach. “I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine.” “Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these things—we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and ironstone, and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we have nothing, nothing—no lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery, no metal, no education, no elections, no chocolat menier.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
“How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried one hundred feet of soil for eight thousand years?” “It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth and your labyrinth mansion heaped over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the gasolier overhead. I have seen your servants plough the fields. I have seen a bottle of Benedictine. I have applied my physical lips to it, but I could taste, absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious, marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of miraculous. Why do you think of doing with me?” “Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum Arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum.” He screamed as though with pain, and grasped: “Do not! do not do it. It will be torture insufferable.” “But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany box.” “Do not! You cannot understand what it will be to me—a spirit more or less attached to my body, to spend ages upon ages in a museum with fibulae, triskelli, palstaves, celts, torques, scarabs. We cannot travel very far from our bones—our range is limited. And conceive of my feelings for centuries condemned to wander among glass cases containing prehistoric antiquities, and to hear the talk of scientific men alone. Now here, it is otherwise. Here I can pass up when I like into your mansion, and can see the maid and butlers cleaning, the roses and trees growing, the farmers working the field and the magnificent glow of your fine estate. Give me life. There is a sort of filmy attachment that connects our psychic nature with our mortal remains. It is like a spider and its web. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
“Suppose the soul to be the spider and the skeleton to be the web. If you break the thread the spider will never find its way back to its home. So it is with us; there is an attachment, a faint thread of luminous spiritual matter that unites us to our Earthly husk. It is liable to accidents. It sometimes gets broken, sometimes dissolved by water. If a black beetle crawls across it it suffers a sort of paralysis. I have never been to the other side of the of your mansion, I feared to do so, though very anxious to see your architecture and furniture.” “This is news to me,” replied Mrs. Winchester. “Do you know of any case of rupture of connection?” Yes,” he replied. “My old father, after he was dead some years, got his link of attachment broke, and he wandered about disconsolate. He could not find his own body, but he lighted on that of a young female of seventeen, and he got into that. It happened most singularly that her spook, being frolicsome and inconsiderate, had got its bond also broken, and she, that is her spirit, straying about in quest of her body, lighted on that of my venerable parent, and for want of a better took possession of it. It so chanced that after a while they met and became chummy. In the World of spirits there is no marriage, but there grow up spiritual attachments, and these two got rather fond of each other, but never could puzzle it out which was which and what each was; for a female soul had entered into an old male body, and a male soul had taken up its residence in a female body. Neither could riddle out of which each gender was. You see they had no education. However, I know that my father’s soul became quite sportive in that young woman’s skeleton. Each generation makes some discovery that advances civilization a stage, the next enters on the discoveries of the preceding generations, and so culture advances stage by stage. Man is infinitely progressive; even the brute beast is.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
At that moment, Mrs. Winchester heard a shout—saw a flash of light. The construction workers had pierced the barrier. A rush of fresh air entered. She staggered to her feet. She felt dizzy. Kind hands grasped her. She was dragged forth. Brandy was poured down her throat. When she came to herself, she said, “Thank you. Talking with spirits can be terrible dreadful. When you are trying to summon one, souls get crossed and the one you are seeking may not cross through. They are so desperate to find a medium to communicate with.” As an ingredient of idol worship, magic goes back to antiquity. By virtue of their multiplicity and limited knowledge and power, the gods (demons) of paganism are incapable of establishing stability and security in society. This deficiency forced both gods and men to make use of magic—an inactive power independent of gods and men, but which could be activized by the assistance of incantations and rituals in order to accomplish supernatural deeds. Because of widespread denial of the reality of supernatural power—both divine and demonic, confusion abounds concerning the nature of magic. The history of magic is replete with extraordinary extrasensory phenomena that involve the spirit realm and every phase of the natural World as well, including human beings, animals, plants, and inorganic matter. Spirit-rapping, apparitions, ghosts, moving of furniture, and playing of musical instruments by invisible hands, stones falling from a ceiling, magical killing of cattle and blighting of crops, etcetera, are just a few of the weird occurrences that have happened at the Winchester Mystery House in its 134 years. However, there have also been beautiful supernatural events such as apparitions getting married, giant spirits of light in the shape of a man peering out guests, and on occasion, even rainbows and angels have appeared. Not all spirits or evil or angry, some or loving and welcoming. Few of thousands of annual transient guests are disappointed for here one finds visible truth even stranger than all the weird Mystery House features. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Winchester Mystery House
Beautiful weather calls for a walk around Sarah’s iconic gardens ⛲️🪴Open 10AM – 5PM this weekend!
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle , or who were jealous of its wealth 👻
And a Hair of His Head Shall Not Fall to the Ground Unnoticed
We cannot go to others with what we have received, saying: This is what needs to be known, this is what needs to be done. We can only go and put to the proof in actions. And even this is not what we “ought to” do: rather we can—we cannot do otherwise. This is the eternal revelation which is present in the here and now. I neither know of nor believe in any revelation that is not the same in its primal phenomenon. Joseph Smith returned to Independence in April, 1832, to help the Saints in their conflict with the pioneer Missourians, who did not like the people from the East. The day after his arrival, Joseph called a conference of the Saints in America. One of the first items of business was to vote to acknowledge Joseph Smith as “president of the high priesthood,” or president of the church. Provision was later made for two counselors to the president, making three in the Presidency. A revelation was received at this time in which the Lord said: “I give unto you directions how you may act before me, that it may turn to you for your salvation. I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say, but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise. American must increase in beauty, and in holiness…America must arise and put on her beautiful garments. Therefore, I give unto you this commandment, that ye bind yourselves by this covenant. And you are to be equal, or in other words, you are to have equal claims on the properties, for the benefit of managing the concerns of your stewardships, every man according to his wants and his needs, inasmuch as his wants are just. And all this for the benefit of the church of the living God, that every man may improve upon his talent, that every man may gain other talents; yea, even an hundredfold, to be cast into the Lord’s storehouse, to become the common property of the whole church, every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
“Make unto yourselves friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, and they will not destroy you. Leave judgment alone with me, for it is mine and I will repay. Peace be with you; my blessings continue with you, for even yet the kingdom is yours, and shall be for ever if you fall not from your steadfastness.” After preaching several powerful sermons and visiting and encouraging the Saints, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Newell K. Whitney left Independence for Kirtland, where they arrived in June. During this same month the first issues of the paper, the Evening and Morning Star, was published at Independence. It was a joyous treat for the Saints in Kirtland to receive a copy of this paper. Joseph and Sidney Rigdon spent much of their time on the work of correcting the Scriptures during the summer and fall of 1832. Two revelations were given during this period giving instruction on the priesthood in the church and containing many glorious promises. The Lord praised the Saints for their hard work which had been done by much sacrifice and under unfavorable conditions. The Lord explained the purposes of the two priesthoods, the Aaronic and the Melchisedec. The people were instructed to accept the ministry of men who are called to the priesthood. Jesus Christ, the Lord said: “All they who receive this priesthood receiveth me, saith the Lord, for he that receiveth my servants receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth my Father, and he that reciveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom.” Helpful instruction was given in this revelation: “You shall live by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God. For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light in Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the World; and the Spirit enlightenth every man through the World, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
“And everyone that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit, cometh unto God, even the Father. Whoso cometh not unto me is under the bondage of sin; and whoso recieveth not my voice is not acquainted with my voice, and is not of me; and by this you may know the righteous from the wicked.” The elders were told they should travel without money or provisions—“pure or scrip” were the exact words used—and Jesus promised: “And any man that shall go and preach this gospel of the kingdom, and fail not to continue faithful in all things, shall not be weary in mind, neither darkened, neither in body, limb or joint; and an hair of his head shall not fall to the ground unnoticed. And they shall not go hungry, neither athirst. Therefore take no thought for the morrow, for what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. For consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin; and the kingdoms of this World, in all their glory, are not arrayed like one of these; for your Father who art in Heaven, knoweth that you have need of all these things. Therefore, let the morrow take thought for the things of itself. Neither take ye thought beforehand what ye shall say, but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man. Whoso receiveth you receiveth me, and the same will feed you, and clothe you, and give you money. And he who feeds you, or clothes you, and gives you money, shall in no wise lose his reward.” A little son, whom they named Joseph Smith III, was born to Emma and Joseph on November 6, 1832. This baby was to have an important part in the work of the Lord later. An important revelation was given on December 27, 1832. The Saints were commanded to keep the laws of God. The Lord said: “He who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom, can not abide a celestial glory; and he who can not abide the law of terrestrial kingdom, can not abide a terrestrial glory; he who can not abide the law of a telestial kingdom, can not abide a telestial glory; therefore, he is not meet for a kingdom of glory. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
“And if your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you, and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things. Therefore, sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God, and the days will come that you shall see him. Continue in prayer and fasting from this time forth. And I give unto you a commandment, that you shall teach one another the doctrines of the kingdom. Call your solemn assembly, as I have commanded you; and as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning even by study, and also by faith. See that ye love one another; cease to be covetous; learn to impart one to another as the gospel requires; cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another. Cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated. Pray always, that you may not faint until I come.” Provision was made in this revelation for establishing a “school of the prophets,” in the “house of the Lord.” This school was for all members of the priesthood, from the high priests to the deacons, and it was to be taught by the Presidency of the church. To be humble is to recognize gratefully our dependence on the Lord—to understand that we have constant need for His support. Humility is an acknowledgment that our talents and abilities are gifts from God. It is not a sign of weakness, timidity, or fear; it is an indication that we know where our true strength lies. We can be both humble and fearless. We can be both humble and courageous. The Lord will strengthen us as we humble ourselves before Him. “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble…Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall life you up,” reports James 4.6 and 10. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
When the storms in life come, one can be steady because one is standing on the rock of one’s faith in Jesus Christ. May everyone face the storms with a peaceful heart. The place to begin is to remember that we are each a beloved child of God and that He has inspired servants. Those servants of God have foreseen the times in which we live. Know also that in the last days, perilous times shall come. Anyone with eyes to see the signs of the times and ears to hear the words of prophets knows that is true. The perils of greatest danger come to us from the forces of wickedness. Those forces are increasing. And so it will become more difficult, not easier, to honor the covenants we must make and keep to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. For those of us who are concerned for ourselves and for those we love, there is hope in the promise God has made of a place of safety in the storms ahead. It has never been more important than it is now to understand how to build a strong foundation. “Then Solomon said, The Lord has said that He would dwell in the thick darkness,” reports II Chronicles 6.1. Therefore, do not fear because God is everywhere. The human wish, we are saying, is not merely a push from the past, not merely a call from primitive needs demanding satisfaction. It also has in it some selectivity. It is a forming of the future, a molding by a symbolic process which includes both memory and fantasy, of what we hope the future will be. The wish is the beginning of orienting ourselves to the future, an admission that we want the future to be such and such; it is a capacity to reach down deep into ourselves and preoccupy ourselves with a longing to change the future. However, there is no will without a prior wish. The wish, like all symbolic processes, has a progressive element, a reaching ahead, as well as a regressive pole, a propulsion from behind. The wish thus carries its meaning as well as its force. Its motive power lies in the conjunction of this meaning and force. We can now understand why William Lynch should hold that “to wish is the most human act.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The past is drifting away at a faster and faster rate. When we look back at, say, the first quarter of the twenty-first century, we realize that many of its defining episodes no longer grip us as strongly as they one did. For the generation now coming into power, events like the 911, the civil rights protests of the 2020s, the Ukrainian War, the Cultural Revolution, homelessness, demands for affordable housing and spread of graffiti in small towns seems increasingly more significant and relevant. Therefore much of what will happen in our lifetimes will consist of adaptation to and further development of a process that began three quarters of a century ago—the most revolutionary wave of change in wealth creation since at least the eighteenth century. Let us pause briefly, then, to summarize and draw together some key things. First, this revolution is a matter not just of technology, stock-market swings, inflation or deflation but of profound social, cultural, political and geopolitical changes as well. Failure to recognize the connections between these and economics leads us to seriously underestimate the oncoming challenges we face. Second, while headlines and business chatter continually refer to improving or declining “fundamentals,” we suggest that that these ups and downs are largely superficial responses to far more important shifts in what we have termed “deep fundamentals”—those factors and forces that have governed all economic activity sine our days as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Economists have long studied some of these essentials—things like work, the division of labor, exchange and the sharing of rewards. They have also filled libraries with studies on technology, energy and the environment. Business gurus drawing on these studies pour out advice about everything from human-resource management to network organization, insourcing and outsourcing, leadership and strategy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Yet, if they ignore three key forces driving today’s wealth revolution—dramatic changes in our relations to time, space and, above all, knowledge, how good can advice and proposed strategies be? It is, we have contended, only by recognizing the centrality of these wealth drivers that we can prepare for tomorrow. For this reason, we have looked closely at each of these deep fundamentals and their impacts on wealth. Take, for instance, the de-synchronization effect. As we saw earlier, companies are compelled to shift and re-shirt their products and relationships incessantly. Customer demands, financial imperatives and market forces all change at accelerating, but very different, rates. In doing so, they impose destabilizing cross-pressures on firms whose managers struggle to come to terms with time. In response, a big synchronization industry has grown up to help firms cope with clashing speeds. At the same time, a backward, tortoise-paced public sector—itself badly de-synchronized—imposes a huge “time-tax” on companies by slowing them down with delays in court decisions, procurements process, regulatory rulings, permit procedures and in a thousand other ways. In short, one part of the system is flooring the gas pedal while the other is slamming on the brakes. Nowhere, as we have noted, is this more frustratingly evident than in the contradiction between the fast-changing skill requirements of an advanced, accelerative economy and the glacial immobility of its schools. We have seen also that some degree of de-synchronization is essential to keep competition and innovation going on. However, it is equally clear that excessive de-synchronization can throw companies, industries and entire economies into chaos. Indeed, one can look at the great stock market shakeouts as desperate attempts by the wealthy system to re-synchronize itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
However, time is only part of the story. To understand tomorrow’s oncoming changes, the cumulative effects of time conflicts need to be seen against the equally powerful transformations in the spatial landscape. Thus the World today holds its breath while watching the massive relocation of wealth and wealth creation toward formerly “developing” countries led by China and India—surely one of the biggest and fastest such transfers in history and possibly the completion of a great circle of wealth movement that began some five hundred years ago. Moreover, we have suggested that, instead of asking whether globalization will continue, we recognize a coming split—possible de-globalization on the economic level and re-globalization of campaigns against such problems as pollution, terrorism, drugs, sexual slavery and genocide. Here, too, gas pedal and brake are applied at the same time. Out of this collision will come the accelerated relocation of the globe’s wealth creation to new high-value-added hot spots—leaving behind new pockets of poverty. However, the most dramatic spatial shifts of all has little to do with these terrestrial concerns. Though millions brush it aside, we actually stand at the historical edge of humanity’s serious thrust into outer space. For historians of tomorrow looking back at the twenty-first century, one of most important economic events of all may prove to be the colonization of space and wealth creation beyond our home planet. None of these changes would occur without even more potent transformations in the deep fundamental of knowledge and our relations with it. While shifts in the use of time and space will be easy to recognize, today’s revolution in knowledge—the defining deep fundamental of our time—is far harder to grasp. These changes are, by their very nature, intangible, invisible, abstract, epistemological and seemingly remote from daily life. Yet no attempt to forecast the future of wealth can succeed without a thorough appreciation of the new role of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
We have provided an admittedly simplified primer on the scope, nature and role of knowledge as the central resource of advanced economies. However, here again we do not just need to analyze, but to synthesize—to see these deeply fundamental changes in interaction with one another. When we alter our relationship to time, for example, by speeding things up, we inevitably make some knowledge obsolete. We thereby increase the backlog of obsoledge that we lug around with us. Let us proceed to economic and social changes. New Deal. The Keynesian economics of the New Deal has cushioned the business cycle and maintained nearly full employment. It has not achieved its ideal of social balance between public and private works. The result is an expanding production increasingly consisting of corporation boondoggling. Syndicalism. Industrial workers have won their unions, obtained better wages and working conditions, and affirmed the dignity of labor. However, they gave up their ideal of workers’ management, technical education, and concern for the utility of their labor. The result is that a vast majority could not care less about what they make, and the “labor movement” is losing force. Class struggle. The working class has achieved a striking repeal of the iron law of wages; it has won a minimum wage and social security (although future funding is uncertain). However, the goal of an equalitarian or freely mobile society has been given up, as has the solidarity of the underprivileged. The actual result is an increasing rigidity of statuses; some of the underprivileged tending to drop out of society altogether. On the other hand, the cultural equality that has been achieved has been the degradation of the one popular culture to the lowest common denominator. Production for Use. This socialist goal has been missed, resulting in many of the other failures here listed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Sociology. During the past century, the sociologist have achieved their aim of dealing with humankind in its natural groups or groups with common problems, rather than as isolated individuals or a faceless mass. Social science has replaced many prejudices and ideologies of vested interests. However, on the whole, social scientists have given up their aim of fundamental social change and an open-experimental method determining its goals as it went along: the pragmatist ideal of society as a laboratory for freedom and self-correcting humanity. The actual result is an emphasis on “socializing” and “belonging,” with the loss of nature, culture, group solidarity and group variety, and individual excellence. There are 773,000,000 illiterates in the World. There are approximately 43 million illiterates in the United States of America, and according to a report from our Librarian of Congress, there may be an equal number of alliterates. In any case, a general impatience with books will develop, especially with books in which language is used with subtlety to express complex ideas. Most likely there will be a decline in readers’ analytical and critical skills. According to the results of standardized tests given in schools, this has been happening in the United States of America for the past fifty-five years. I suspect concern for history will also decline, to be replaced by a consuming interest in the present. The effect on political life will be devastating. There will be less emphasis on issues, substance, and ideology, an increase in the importance of image and style. Politicians will have greater concern for moment-to-moment shifts in public opinion, less concern for long-range policies. Unless the use of television for political campaigns is strictly prohibited, elections may be decided by which party spends more on televisions and media consultants. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Even if political commercials are prohibited, politicians will appear on entertainment programs and will almost certainly be asked to give testimonials for non-political products such as cars, beer, and breakfast foods. The line between political life and entertainment will blur, and movies stars may be taken seriously as political candidates. Once the population becomes accustomed to spending much of its time watching television—in the United States of America, the average household has television on about eight hours a day—there will be a decrease in activities outside the home: fewer and smaller gatherings in parks, beer halls, concert halls, and other public places. As street life decreases, there may well be an increase in street crime. Young and some older people will, of course, become disaffected from school and reading. Children’s games are likely to disappear. In fact, it will become important to keep children watching television because they will be a major consumer group. In the United States of America, children watch 5,000 hours of television before they enter kindergarten and 16,000 hours by high school’s end. Commercial television does not dislike children; it simply cannot afford the idea of childhood. Consumerhood takes precedence. Naturally, family life will be significantly changed. There will be less interaction among family members, certainly less talk between parents and children. Such talk as there is will be noticeably different from what you are now accustomed to. The young will speak of matters that once were confined to adults. Commercial television is a medium that does not segregate its audience, and therefore all segments of the population share the same symbolic World. You may find that in the end the line between adulthood and childhood has been erased entirely. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Television is itself a commodity, and an expensive one too. Therefore it is physically consistent with the prevalent reality. Its purchase gives the commodity system a boost. Television changes the nature of the artificial environment from passive to active. Unlike buildings and machines, television literally enters inside human beings; inside our homes, our minds, our bodies, making possible the reordering of human processes from the inside. Television is an experience that can be had by virtually everyone at the same time. By substituting for a greater diversity of experiences and unifying everyone with it, it assists commercial efficiency. With all people confined to the same mental and physical condition, a single advertising or political voice appropriate to the common mood can influence everyone. Once diversity of experience is reduced to television, a relative handful of people can control everyone’s awareness. Luckily for advertisers, in a capitalist system, whoever is in a position to pay for the technology has primary access to it. Television is unique in that it smooths out any furrows in the commodity system. Dormant anxieties can be dulled by the television experience. Beyond being a delivery system for commodity life, it is the solder to hold that life together, the drug to ease the pain of confined and channeled existence. Though television passes for experience, it is really more like “time out,” as we shall see later. It is anti-experience. Its interaction with the human body and mind fixes people to itself, dulls human sensibility and dims awareness of the World. This enhances the commodity life by reducing knowledge of any other. By focusing people on events well outside their lives, television encourages passivity and inaction, discourages self-awareness and the ability to cope personally, both of which are dangerous for advertising. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
By speaking in images, television adds a dimension to the mirror-image process. Unlike radio or print media, advertising can now implant internal movies, forever available for self-comparison. Television encourages separation: people from community, people from each other, people from themselves, creating more buying units and discouraging organized opposition to the system. It creates a surrogate community: itself. It becomes everyone’s intimate advisor, teacher and guide to appropriate behavior and awareness. Thereby, it becomes its own feedback system, furthering its own growth and accelerating the transformation of everything and everyone into artificial form. This enables a handful of people to obtain a unique degree of power. You have seen how commercial stress the values of youth, how they stress consumption, the immediate gratification of desires, the love of the new, a contempt for old technology. Television screens are saturated with commercials promote the Utopian and childish idea that all problems have fast, simple, and technological solutions. You must banish from your mind the naïve but commonplace notion that commercials are about products. They are about products in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales. Which is to say, they are not. They are about values and myths and fantasies. One might even say they form a body of religious literature, a montage of voluminous, visualized sacred texts that provide people with images and stories around which to organize their lives. To give you some idea of exactly how voluminous, I should tell you that the average America will have seen approximately 1 million television commercials, at the rate of a thousand per week, by the age of twenty. By the age of sixty-five, the average American will have seen more than 2 million television commercials. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Commercial television adds to the Decalogue several impious commandments, among them that thou shalt have no others gods than consumption, thou shalt despise what is old, thou shalt seek to amuse thyself continuously, and thou shalt avoid complexity like the ten plagues of that the underworld. Perhaps you are thinking that I exaggerate the social and psychic results of the commercialization of television and that, in any case, what has happened in the United States of America could not happen anywhere else. If you are, you overestimate the power of tradition and underestimate the power of technology. To enliven your senses of the forces unleashed by technological change, you need only remind yourself of what the automobile has brought to Austria. Has it not changed the nature of your cities, created the suburbs, made roads through your forest and homes, restructured your economy? You must not mislead yourselves by what you know about World culture as of 2022. May regions around the World are still living in the age of Gutenberg. Commercial television attacks such backwardness with astonishing ferocity. For example, at the present time, less than 20 percent of population in Tuvalu watches television in the evening. A commercial television system will fund this situation intolerable. In the United States of America, approximately 90 percent of people watch television during evening hours, and broadcasters find even those number unsatisfactory. In nations like Korea, television commercials are bunched together so that they do not interfere with the continuity of the programs. Such a situation makes no sense to American commercial systems. The whole idea is precisely to interrupt the continuity of programs so that one’s thoughts cannot stray too far from consideration of consumership. Indeed, the aim is to obliterate the distinction between a program and a commercial. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
In some countries, you do not have many advertising agencies, and those you have are small and without great influence. In America, our advertising agencies are among the largest and most powerful corporations in the World. DDB Needham Worldwide has gross billings of $6.7 billion each year, 6,726 employees and SICs 7311 advertising agencies, and possibly receives $700 million per year for American network television alone. This is serious money and these are serious radicals. They cannot afford to permit a culture to retain old ideas about work or religion or politics or childhood. And it will not be long before they and their kind show up in the most primitive communities. If, like me, you claim allegiance to an authentic conservative philosophy, one that seeks to preserve that which nourishes the spirit, you would be wise to approach all proposals for a free-market television system with extreme caution. Indeed, I will go further than that: it is either hypocrisy or balderdash to argue that the transformation of the World from a print-based culture to a television-based culture can leave that country’s traditions intact. Conservatives know this is nonsense, and so they worry. Radicals also know this is nonsense. However, they do not care. In 1879, a French ophthalmologist named Luis Emile Javal discovered that when people read, their eyes do not sweep across the words in a perfectly fluid way. Their visual focus advances in little jumps, called saccades, pausing briefly at different points along each line. One of the Javal’s colleagues at the University of Paris soon made another discovery: that the pattern of pauses, or “eye fixations,” can vary greatly depending on what is being read and who is doing the reading. In the wake of these discoveries, brain researchers began to use eye-tracking experiments to learn more about how we read and how our minds work. Suck studies have also proven valuable in providing further insights into the Internet’s effects on attention and cognition. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
In 2006, Jakob Nielsen, a longtime consultant on the design of Web pages who has been studying online reading since the 1990s, conducted an eye-tracking study of Web users. He has 232 people wear a small camera that tracked their eye movements as they read pages of text and browsed other content. Nielsen found that hardly any of the participants read online text in a methodical, line-by-line way, as they would typically read a page of text in a book. The vast majority skimmed the text quickly, their eyes skipping down the pages in a pattern that resembled, roughly, the letter F. They would start by glancing all the way across the first two or three lines of text. Then their eyes would drop down a bit, and they would scan about halfway across a few more lines. Finally, they would let their eyes cursorily drift a little father down the left-hand side of the page. This pattern of online reading was confirmed by subsequent eye-tacking study carried out at the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University. “F,” wrote Mr. Nielsen, in summing up the findings for his clients, is “for fast. That is how users read your precious content. In a few second, their eyes move at amazing speed across your website’s words in a pattern that is very different from what you learned in school.” As a complement to his eye-tracking study, Mr. Nielsen analyzed an extensive database on the behavior of Web users that had been compiled by a term of German researchers. They had monitored the computers of twenty-five people for an average of about a hundred days each, tracking the time the subjects spent looking at some fifty thousand Web pages. Parsing the data, Mr. Nielsen found that as the number of words on a pace increases, the time a visitor spends looking at the page goes up, but only slightly. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
For every hundred additional words, the average viewer will spend just 4.4 more seconds perusing the page. Since even the most accomplished reader can read only about eighteen words in 4.4 seconds, Mr. Nielsen told his clients, “when you add verbiage to a page, you can assume that customers will read 18 percent of it.” And that, he cautioned, is almost certainly an overstatement. It is unlikely that the people in the study were spending all their time reading; they were also probably glancing at pictures, videos, advertisements, and other types of content. Mr. Nielsen’s analysis backed up the conclusions of the German researchers themselves. They had reported that most Web pages are viewed for ten seconds or less. Fewer than one in tend page views extend beyond two minutes, and a significant portion of those seem to involve “unattended browser windows…left open in the background of the desktop.” The researchers observed that “even new pages with plentiful information and many links are regularly viewed for a brief period.” However, with many people still have 4GLTE mobile phones, advertisers can get several seconds more of free advertisement from certain formats because the phones freeze up and leave their content on the phone for longer than they have paid for, so it is like with the older technology, firms get more for their dollar. Overall, however, results seem to “confirm that browsing is a rapidly interactive activity.” The results also reinforce something that Mr. Nielsen wrote in 1997 after his first study of online reading. “How do users read on the web?” he asked then. His succinct answer is: “They do not.” Many types of reading are important. The most visible sign of our increasing separateness and, in its turn, the cause of ever greater separateness is divorce. It has a deep influence on our universities because more and more of the students are products of it, and they do not only have problems themselves but also affect other students and the general atmosphere. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Divorce in America is the most palpable indication that people are not made to live together, and that, although they want and need to create a general will out of the particular wills, those particular wills constantly reassert themselves. There is a quest, but ever more hopeless, for arrangements and ways of putting the broken pieces back together. The task is equivalent to squaring the circle, because everyone loves oneself most but wants others to love one more than one loves themselves. Such is particularly the demand of children, against which parents are now rebelling. In the absence of a common good or common object, as Mr. Rousseau puts it, the disintegration of society into particular wills is inevitable. Selfishness in this case is not a moral vice or a sin but a natural necessity. The “Me generation” and “narcissism” are merely descriptions, not causes. The solitary savage in the state of nature cannot be blamed for thinking primarily of oneself, nor can a person who lives in a World where the primacy of oneself, nor can a person who lives in a World where the primacy of self-concern is only too evident in the most fundamental institutions, where the original selfishness of the state of nature remains, where concern for the common good is hypocritical, and where morality seems to be squarely on the side of selfishness. Or, to put it otherwise, the concern with self-development, self-expression, or growth, which flourished as a result of the optimistic faith in a preestablished harmony between such a concern and society or community, has gradually revealed itself to be inimical to community. A young person’s qualified or conditional attachment to divorced parents merely reciprocates what one necessarily sees as their conditional attachment to one, and is entirely different from the classic problem of loyalty to families, or other institutions, which were clearly dedicated to their members. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
In the past, such breaking away was sometimes necessary but always morally problematic. Today it is normal, and this is another reason why the classical literature is alien to so many of our young, for it is largely concerned with liberation from real claims—like family, faith, or country—whereas now the movement is in the opposite direction, a search for claims on oneself that have some validity. Children who have gone to the school of conditional relationships should be expected to view the World in the light of what they learned there. Children may be told over and over again that their parents have a right to their own lives, that they will enjoy quality time instead of quantity time, that they are really loved by their parents even after divorce, but children do not believe any of this. They think they have a right to total attention and believe their parents must live for them. There is no explaining otherwise to them, and anything less inevitably produces indignation and an inextirpable sense of injustice. To children, the voluntary separation of parents seems worse than their death precisely because it is voluntary. The capriciousness of wills, their lack of directedness to the common good, the fact that they could be otherwise but are not—these are the real source of the war of all against all. Children learn a fear of enslavement to the wills of others, along with a need to dominate those wills, in the context of the family, the one place where they are supposed to learn the opposite. Of course, many families are unhappy. However, that is irrelevant. The important lesson that the family taught was the existence of the only unbreakable bond, for better or for worse, between human beings. The decomposition of this bond is surely America’s most urgent social problem. However, nobody even tries to do anything about it. The tide seems to be irresistible. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Among the many items on the agenda of those promoting America’s moral regeneration, I never find marriage and divorce. The last time anyone in public office took a crack at anything like this issue was when President Trump urged Federal civil servants living together out of wedlock to get married. He said, “Marriage is a very beautiful and wonderful experience, something that everyone should enjoy. When I married, it was courtly love, and was one of the happiest moments in my parents’ lives.” Courtly love, the literary invention of medieval troubadours, is one thing and, unlike the proverbial and unchanging wheel, has been constantly reinvented. Courtly love is a manifestation that acknowledges the tenderness of romance, but incorporates it into a great passion guided not by carnality but rather by the highest moral and aesthetic values. Courtly love is an exalted state between a man and a superior woman he both respects and adores with quasi-religious fervor. Her love tests his resolve, firmness, and loyalty, for it is difficult to obtain. It is also immensely ennobling, so that his very suffering strengths every aspect of his being: his military prowess, social standards, even his moral and religious perspectives. Sometimes, the mere thought of his beloved triggers these holistic improvements. The rules of courtly love are the inherently painful ceaseless meditation on the beauty of one’s beloved, whom one glimpses from time to time but cannot possess. The ideal, seldom fulfilled, is total union with the beloved, to whom one is almost never married. O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,–Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, its flowery slops, its river’s crystal swell, may seem a span; let me thy vigils keep ‘mongst boughs pavillion’s, where the deer’s swift leap startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
But though I will gladly trace these scenes with thee, yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be almost the highest bless of human-kind, when to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. The moon is full the spring nights grow longer, in the north forests startled crows cry out. Past loves are a thousand miles farther each day, still the season’s changes can stir the heart. As one who with pain and suffering has cut a path through a trackless wilderness, and then looks back to observe joyfully other humans travelling easily the roadway one has chartered, so did out forefathers bless their lot as the bearers of salvation, saying: “How goodly is our portion, how blessed our lot, how beautiful our heritage!” Verily our ancestors regarded their role in history as a sign of God’s grace, a token of the love of the Almighty for America, and through America for all human. (Oh, by the way, America is seen as a brand and live styles in many countries, so there are people in China, Japan, and Korea, for example, who believe they are the real Americans. This shows you how manifest destiny and the America Dream is real.) For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples. May we, the latter day children of America continue our people’s historic quest for God and His law of righteousness, and together with our fellowmen, may we establish His kingdom of truth, justice and peace. And the Lord shall be King over all the Earth, on that day, the Lord shall be One, and His name one. The history of America is the great living proof of the working of divine Providence in the affairs of the World. Alone among the nations America has shared all great movements since humankind became conscious of their destinies. If there is no divine purpose in the long travail of America, it is vain to seek for any such purpose in humans’ life. In the reflected light of that purpose each American should lead one’s life with an added dignity. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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There Was Terror in His Eyes as Not Often Seen in a Human Being!
Twenty-first century humans, in spite of all their scientific and technological advances, are baffled by unexplained forces existent in the Universe. The naturalistic philosophy of the previous generations has been unable to account for all of the mysterious phenomena which have been observed. Many scientists believe that living beings may inhabit other galaxies, and highly educated humans are seriously studying reports of those who insist they have received communications from the dead. Humans of science no longer scoff at the accounts of strange occurrences associated with witchcraft and occultic practices. Although they do not necessarily accept them as proof of the supernatural, many will admit they are manifestations of some kind of power they do not yet understand. Christian theologians and scientists are not perplexed by such reports. They know that both God and Satan are very much alive. Though readily conceding that they cannot explain fully all the mysteries of life, they affirm with confidence the existence of God and an invisible host of intelligent supernatural beings. They are convinced that when one accepts the teachings of the Bible, one begins to understand many of the puzzling facts of existence. For example, the Bible tells of holy angels who dwell in Heaven (Matthew 18.10). It also mentions “angels that sinned” (2 Peter 2.4), rebellious spirit begins who have been cast out of Heaven and now dwell in the atmosphere that surrounds the Earth. We know this because Paul declared that Satan is “the prince of the power of the air,” reports Ephesians 2.2, and the Greek word translated “air” was used to speak of the gaseous envelop that encircles our planet. These wicked beings apparently have unlimited access to Earther, and actively influence every area of human endeavour. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Because they do not possess physical bodies, we cannot typically detect them through our senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. We do have evidence of their presence, however, for the Word of God gives us information regarding their identification, their nature and their function. Various terms are used in the Christian Bible to denote the evil spirit beings who followed Satan in this initial act of rebellion against God. It refers to “angels that sinned” 2 Peter 2.4 and “angels who kept not their first estate” Jude 6, and many times mentions “spirits” and “demons.” Some scholars believe that these demons must be distinguished from the “angels that sinned” and the “angels who kept not their first estate.” They contend that the Heavenly beings who joined Satan in his revolt against God are fallen angels, but that demons are disembodies spirits of physical and moral creatures who once lived upon the Earth. However, these Bible students disagree regarding an exact identification of the demons. Some say they are the spirits of pre-Adamic beings similar to man, while others identify them as the spirits of the “giants” who were destroyed in the great flood of Noah’s day. If one thinks that demons are the spirits of man-like beings who lived before Adam, then one will no doubt interpret Genesis 1.2 as a declaration that the original Earth, inhabited by the creatures, was cataclysmically destroyed. Genesis 1.2 is then translated as follows: “And the Earth became without form and void…” This theory, while attractive in that it permits a literal interpretation of the days in Genesis 1, must be acknowledged as only a hypothesis. Most Hebrew scholars reject this interpretation because Genesis 1.2 begins with a grammatical construction which makes it highly unlikely that Genesis 1.1 and 1.2 are separated by millions of years. Then, too, the verb translated “became” almost always has the meaning “was.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
However, even if we accept this theory, and believe that a race of man-like beings inhabited the prehistoric Earth, we would have no basis for thinking that their spirits are now free to roam about as the enemies of humankind. Other Bible scholars maintain that demons are the spirits of the “giants” who lived upon the Earth in the days of Noah. They refer to Genesis 6, contending that these “giants” were produced when fallen angels, called the “sons of God,” married the “daughters of men.” “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the Earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all whom they chose. There were giants in the Earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown,” reports Genesis 6.1, 2, 4. It is necessary for proponents of this theory to believe that fallen angels became male human beings who married women, produced a mongrel offspring, and took over the role of father in the family. They theorize that Satan hoped thereby to frustrate God’s redemptive plan. The Lord had promised salvation through Christ to human beings only—not for angels or mixed half-human and half-angelic race. Christ could not have been born to offspring of these corrupted creates or provide redemptions for them. Thus God’s plan of redemption would have been thwarted. In addition, both Jude and Peter in their epistles refer to a sin committed by angels, and their words can be blended very nicely into this concept. Jude writes, “And the angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,” reports Jude 6, 7. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The words “in like manner” (verse 7) are taken to mean that the sin of the angels in having pleasures of the flesh with women was an unnatural act, comparable to sodomy. Peter tells of angels assigned to Tartaros, the nether World of the Greeks considered to be lower than Hades. “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell [GK Tartaros], and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,” reports 2 Peter 2.4. Again, it does not take a great deal of imagination to see how these words of Peter may be applied to the wicked angels who committed the monstrous sin of attempting to make mongrels of the human race. Many Bible students, however, reject this interpretation of Genesis 6. Since angels are non-material beings, it would be necessary for them to create physical bodies for themselves capable of impregnating a female member of the human race. This would require nothing less than a creative miracle, and the Bible indicates that this power belongs only to God. In addition, it is not necessary to interpret the statements in Jude and 2 Peter as a reference to sin involving pleasures of the flesh on the part of the fallen angels. Jude’s use of the expression “going after strange flesh” may be figurative language representing spiritual fornication. The prophets often depicted Israel’s unfaithfulness to God in this manner. Peter’s statement that the angels who sinned have been assigned to Tartaros may be a simple declaration that all sinning angels have been designated to this place, and that they are even now under chains of moral and spiritual darkness. The Bible gives little information regarding the origin of demons. We can state with absolute certainty only that they are fallen spirit beings who have committed themselves to Satan and that they hate God and seek to harm His people. No clear distinction can be made between fallen angels and demons, for they are all evil spirits. Some of our questions must remain unanswered, but the Lord has given ample revelation to warn us that these invisible enemies are far too great and powerful for us to defeat in our own strength, and that we can successfully wage war against them only as we live in continual dependence upon the Lord. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
In one respect the case of Dame Alice Kyteler stands alone in the history of magical dealings in Ireland prior to the seventeenth century. We have of the entire proceedings an invaluable and contemporary account, or at latest one compiled within a very few years after the death of Petronilla of Meath; while the excitement produced by the affair is shown by the more or less lengthy allusions to it in early writings, such as The Book of Howth (Carew MSS.), the Annals by Fariar Clyn, the Chartularies of S. Mary’s Abbey (vol. ii), &c. It is also rendered more valuable by the fact that those who are best qualified to give their opinion on the matter have assured the writer that to the best of their belief no entries with respect to trials for sorcery or witchcraft can be found in the various old Rolls preserved in the Dublin Record Office. However, when the story is considered with reference to the following facts it takes on a different signification. On the 29th of September 1317 (Wright says 1320), Bishop de Ledrede held his first Synod, at which several canons were passed, one of which seems in some degree introductory to the events detailed in last week’s report. In it he speaks of “a certain new and pestilential sect in our parts, differing from all the faith in the World, filled with a devilish spirit, more inhuman than heathens…who pursue the priests and bishops of the Most High God equally in life and death, by spoiling and rending the patrimony of Christ in the diocese of Ossory, and who utter grievous threats against the bishops and their ministers exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and (by various means) attempt to hinder the correction of sins and the salvation of souls, in contempt of God and the Church.” From this it would seem that heresy and unorthodoxy had already made its appearance in the diocese. In 1324 the Kyteler case occurred, one of the participants being burnt at the stake while other incriminate persons were subsequently followed up, some of whom shared the fate of Petronilla of Meath. In 1327 Adam Dubh, of the Leinster tribe of O’Toole, was burnt alive on College Green for denying the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity, as well as for rejecting the authority of the Holy See. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
In 1335 Pope Benedict XII wrote a letter to King Edward III, in which occurs the following passage: “It has come to our knowledge that while our venerable brother, Richard, Bishop of Ossory, was visiting his diocese, there appeared in the midst of his catholic people men who were heretics together with their abettors, some of whom asserted that Jesus Christ was a mere man and a sinner, and was justly crucified for His own sins; others after having done homage and offered sacrifice to demons, thought otherwise of the sacrament of the Body of Christ than the Catholic Church teaches, saying that the same venerable sacrament is by no means to be worshipped; and also asserting that they are not bound to obey or believe the decrees, decretals, and apostolic mandates; in the meantime, consulting demons according to the rites of those sects among the Gentiles and Pagans, they despise the sacraments of the Catholic Church, and draw the faithful of Christ after them by their superstitions.” Unlike apocryphal and rabbinical literature, the Biblical description of evil spirits avoids the unusual and grotesque. The Bible does, however, present us with a clear picture of their activity and tells us how to resist them effectively. In the first place, it declares that demons or fallen angels are non-material beings. They do not possess bodies like humans, and therefore are repeatedly called “spirits.” Matthew, for example, says, “When the evening was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick,” reports Matthew 8.16. Jesus started that the Creator is not made up of physical substance when He said, “God is a Spirit,” reports John 4.24. Later, when His frightened disciples thought He was a ghost, He told them their fears were groundless, for “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have,” reports Luke 24.39. Paul had in mind the non-physical nature of Satan and his army of evil spirits when he said that our warfare is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. Satan’s demonic hordes are spirit beings, and therefore more dangerous than the “flesh and blood” enemies we may encounter in our daily lives. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Second, the Bible portrays demons as highly intelligent creatures. They recognize Christ when He was here upon the Earth, and knew they could not have fellowship with Him. Luke tells us about an evil spirit who is an example of this. “When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God, most high? I beseech thee, torment me not,” reports Luke 8.28. The fallen spirits are also aware of their ultimate defeat, for James declared, “Them demons also believe, and tremble,” reports James 2.19. They are, of course, finite creatures, even Satan is limited in knowledge. He has myriads of evil spirit followers, however, and they are able to give him information on almost any person and circumstance in which he is interested. In this manner he can find out much what he wants to know. Truly, believers in Christ can never successfully cope with Satan and his hosts without special help from the Lord. Therefore, we must humbly look to God for wisdom and strength to resist the attacks of our invisible enemies. Third, the World of evil spirits is cruel. These creatures hate God and all who have placed their trust in Him. They seem to find delight in causing human grief and pain. For example, Matthew tells us that a man who was both blind and dumb suffered these afflictions because a demon had entered his body. “Then was brought unto him one possessed with a demon, blind, and dumb; and He healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spoke and saw,” reports Matthew 12.22. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of two demented men who lived in the country of the Gerasenes, and indicate that their insanity was the result of demonic invasion of their personalities. Luke, the beloved physicians, writes of a woman who was bent over with some crippling disease, saying that she had “a spirit of infirmity.” He adds that Jesus said she had been bound by Satan. “And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And, behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no way lift herself up. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
“And he laid his hands on her; and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which humans ought to work; in them, therefore, come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or her ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, who Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bound on the sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed; and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him,” reports Luke 13.10-17. While the gospel writers make it clear that not all illness is the work of Satan and demons, they do point out that much human suffering is the result of demonic activity. Finally, the Bible tells us that all fallen angels or evil spirits are confirmed in their wickedness. Though they “believe and tremble,” they will never repent, never seek forgiveness, and never pray for holiness or purity. Though they know that Jesus is the Christ, they never really worship Him. They must acknowledge that He is stronger than they, and may occasionally render Him token submission, but inwardly they hate Him and keenly resent His authority over them. In fact, their nature is so totally evil that the term “unclean” often is applied to them. (See Matthew 10.1; Mark 1.27; 3.11; Luke 4.36; Acts 8.7; Revelations 16.13.) They apparently delight in sin, find great pleasure in leading humans to commit evil deeds, and possess no feelings of guilt nor desire for deliverance. Michael Scot, reputed a wizard of such potency that—when in Salamanca’s cave he listed his magic want to wave and the bells would ring in Notre Dame. Scot has studied successively at Oxford and Paris (where he acquired the title of “mathematicus”); he then passed to Bologna, thence to Palermo, and subsequently continued his studies in Toledo. His refusal of the See of Cashel was an intellectual loss to the Irish Church, for he was so widely renowned for his varied and extensive learning that he was credited with supernatural powers; a number of legends grew up around his name which hid his real merit, and transformed the man of science into a magician. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
In the Border country traditions of his magical power are common. Boccaccio alludes to “a great master in necromancy, called Michael Scot,” while Dante places him in the eighteen circle of Hell. The next, who is so slender in the flanks, was Michael Scot, who of a verity of magical illusion knew the game. Another man to whom magical powers were attributed solely on account of his learning was Gerald, the fourth Earl of Desmond, styled the Poet, who died rather mysteriously in 1398. The Four Masters in their Annals describe him as “a nobleman of wonderful bounty, mirth, cheerfulness of conversation, charitable in his deeds, easy of access, a witty and ingenious composer of Irish poetry, a learned and profound chronicler.” No legends are extant of his magical deeds. King James I of Scotland, whose severities against his nobles had around their bitter resentment, was barbarously assassinated at Perth in 1437 by some of their supports, who were aided and abetted by the ages Duke of Atholl. From a contemporary account of this we learn that the monarch’s fate was predicted to him by an Irish prophetess or witch; has he given ear to her message he might have escaped with his life. We modernize the somewhat difficult spelling, but retain the quaint language of the original. “The king, suddenly advised, made a solemn feast of the Christmas at Perth, which is clept Saint John’s Town, which is from Edinburg on the other side of the Scottish sea, the which is vulgarly celpt the water of Lethe. In the midst of the way there arose a woman of Ireland, the clept herself as a soothsayer. The which anon as she saw the king she cried with a loud voice, saying thus: ‘My lord king, and you pass this water you shall never turn again alive.’ The king hearing this was astonied of her words; for but a little before he had read in a prophecy that in the self same year the king of Scots should be slain; and therewithal the king, as he rode, cleped to him one of his knights, and gave him in commandment to turn again to speak with that woman, and ask of her what she would, and what thing she meant with her loud crying. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
“And she began, and told him as ye have heard of the King of Scots if he passed that water. As now the king asked her, how she knew that. And she said, that Huthart told her so. ‘Sire,’ quoth he, ‘men may “calant” yet take to heed of yon woman’s words, for she is but a drunken fool, and wot not what she saith’; and so with his folk passed the water celpt the Scottish sea, towards Saint John’s town.” The narrator states some dreams ominous of James’s murder, and afterwards proceeds thus: Both afore supper, and long after into quarter of the night, in the which the Earl of Atholl (Athetelles) and Robert Steward were about the king, where they were occupied at the playing of chess, at the tables, in reading of romances, in singing and piping, in harping, and in other honest solaces of great pleasance and disport. Therewith came the said woman of Ireland, that celpt herself a divineress, and entered the king’s court, till that she came straight to the king’s chamber-door, where she stood, till at the last the usher opened the door, marvelling of that woman’s being there that time of night, and asking her what she would. ‘Let me in, sir’ quoth she, ‘for I have somewhat to say, and to tell unto the king; for I am the same woman that not long ago desired to have spoken with him at the Leith, when he should pass the Scottish sea.’ The usher went in and told him of this woman. ‘Yea,’ quoth the king, ‘let her come tomorrow’; because the he was occupied with such disports at that time he let not to hear her as then. The usher came again to the chamber-door to the said woman, and there he told her that the king was busy in playing, and bid her come soon again upon the morrow. ‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘it shall repent you all that ye will not let me speak now with the king.’ Thereat the usher laughed, and held her but a fool, charging her to go her way, and therewithal she went thence. Her informant “Huthart” was evidently a familiar spirit who was in attendance on her. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Considering the barrenness of Irish records on the subject of sorcery and witchcraft it affords us no small satisfaction to find the following statement in the Statute Rolls of the Parliament for the year 1447. It consists of a most indignantly-worded remonstrance from the Lords and Commons, which was drawn forth by the fact that some high-placed personage had been accused of practising sorcery with the intent to do grievous harm to one’s enemy. When making it the remonstrants appear to have forgotten, or perhaps, like Members of Parliament in other ages, found it convenient to forget the nonce the Kyteler incident of the pervious century. There was an Act of Parliament which was intended to put a stop to a certain lucrative form of witchcraft. It is gravely stated by the writer of a little book entitled Beware the Cat (and by Giraldus Camrensis before him), that Irish witches could turn wisps of hay, straw &c. into red-coloured pigs, which they dishonestly sold in the market, but which resumed their proper shape when crossing running water. To prevent this it is stated that the Irish Parliament passed an Act forbidding the purchase of red swine. We regret to say, however, that no such interesting Act is to be found in the Statues books. The belief in the power of witches to inflict harm on others was also a powerful belief in Victorian times. When reflecting on history, one can see that consulting someone with supernatural powers was no different than talking to a friend about one’s life. It was very common. Also, many of these accounts turned out to have some truth to them or evidence of supernatural power. Perhaps this is because people were more in tune with their inner spirit and the planet back then. Many people thought Sarah Winchester was mentally ill or deranged for consulting a medium about how she should deal with the evil spirits that were haunting her, they thought she was even more insane for building the World’s most beautiful and unique mansion. However, what better way could there be to spend your money than by creating something you and the World can enjoy for many centuries and creating a living memorial for your family? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Perhaps what Mrs. Winchester did was very rational and sane. In contrast, most others express their pain and suffering by becoming destructive and hurting others, and people usually idolize them for that. Mrs. Winchester gradually developed her skill in building, just as she had done with music and language in her youth. She often used the most current innovations in her home. Some historical sources say that Mrs. Winchester was the first to use wool for insulation. Carbide gas lights in the house were fed by the estate’s own gas manufacturing plant, which used a new process. The gas lights were operated by pushing an electric button. A specially designed window catch was patterned after a Winchester rifle trigger and trip hammer, amongst other state of the art designs. I met a man in the Winchester Mansion one day that I knew very well, as I thought, though I had not seen him for years. Without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle questions, we walked together to the Blue Séance Room, and there we shook hands. Just then there came a vague vibration in the Earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. Next morning, I spoke of this meeting to a mutual friend, and then I learnt, for the first time, that the man had died six months before. The natural inference was that I had mistaken one man for another, an error that, not having a good memory for faces, I frequently fall into. What was remarkable about the matter, however, was that throughout our walk I had conversed with the man under the impression that he was that other dead man, and, whether by coincidence or not, his replies had never once suggested to me my mistake. As soon as I finished speaking to Jared, who had been listening very thoughtfully, asked me if I believed in spiritualism “to its fullest extent.” “That is a rather large question,” I answered. “What do you mean by ‘spiritualism to its fullest extent’?” “Well, do you believe that the spirits of the dead have not only the power of revisiting this Earth at their will, but that, when here, they have the power of action, or rather, of exciting to action. Let me put a definite case. A spiritualist friend of mine, a sensible and by no means imaginative man, once told me that a table, through the medium of which the spirit of a friend had been in the habit of communicating with him, came slowly across the room towards him, of its own accord, one night as he sat alone in the Winchester Mansion, and pinioned him against the wall. Now can any of you believe that, or can you not?” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
I could believe it. It seems that the difference between what we call the natural and supernatural is merely the difference between frequency and rarity of occurrence. Suppose a person died with the dearest wish of one’s heart unfulfilled, do you believe that one’s spirit might have power to return to Earth and complete the interrupted work? The Winchester Mansion is supposed to be enchanted. According to the legend, William Winchester was a very potent magician, and usually resided in a castle. To this he brought his bride, a beautiful young lady, Sarah Lockwood Pardee, who he loved, and he prevailed upon her her every desire, but with fatal results. One day she presented herself in the chamber in which her husband exercised his forbidden art, and begged him to show her the wonders of the evil science. With the greatest reluctance he consented, but warned her that she must prepare herself to witness a series of most frightful phenomena, which, once commenced, could neither be abridged nor mitigated, while if she spoke a single word during the proceedings the castle and all it contained would sink. Urged on by curiosity she gave the required promised, and he commenced. Muttering a spell as he stood before her, feathers sprouted thickly over him, his face became contracted and hooked, a corpse-like smell filled the air, and winnowing the air with beats of its heavy wings a gigantic vulture rose in his stead, and swept round and round the room as if on the point of pouncing upon her. The lady controlled herself though this trial, and another began. The bird alighted near the door, and in less than a minute changed, she saw not how, into a horribly deformed and dwarfish hag, who, with yellow skin hanging about her face, and cavernous eyes, swung herself on crutches towards the lady, her mouth foaming with fury, and her grimaces and contortions becoming more and more hideous every moment, till she rolled with a fearful yell on the floor in a horrible convulsion at the lady’s feet, and then changed into a huge serpent, which came sweeping and arching towards her with crest erect and quivering tongue. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Suddenly, as it seemed on the point of darting at her, she saw her husband in its stead, standing pale before her, and with his finger on his lips enforcing the continued necessity of silence. He then placed himself at the full length on the floor and began to stretch himself at full length on the floor and began to stretch himself out, longer and longer, until his head nearly reached to one end of the vast room and his feet to the other. This utterly unnerved her. She gave a wild scream of horror, whereupon the castle shook and the nine-story tower of what is now known as the Winchester Mansion came tumbling down. Mr. Winchester is said to have been dead and never lived in the Winchester Mansion, but perhaps his spirit did? Once every seven years, the great William Wirt Winchester would rise, and rides by on his white horse round Llanada Villa. The steed is shod with gold shoes, and when these are worn out the spell that holds Mr. Winchester will be broken, and he will regain possession of his vast estates and semi-regal power. In the closing years of the nineteenth-century there was a living man named Gilbert Plutchik who claimed to have seen Mr. Winchester. Gilbert was a blacksmith, and his forge stood on back of the estate, near a lonely part of the road. One night when there was a bright moon, he was working very late and quite alone. In one of the pauses of his work he heard the ring of many hoofs ascending the steep road that passed his forge, and, standing in his doorway, he saw a gentleman on a white horse, who was dressed in a fashion the like of which he had never seen before. This man was accompanied by a mounted retinue, in similar dress. They seemed to be riding up to the mansion, but the pace slackened as they drew near, and the rider of the white horse, who seemed from his haughty air to be a man of rank, drew bridle, and came to a halt before the smith’s door. He did not speak, and all his train were silent, but he beckoned to the smith, and pointed down at one of the horse’s hoofs. Gilbert stopped and raised it, and held it just long enough to see that it was shod with a gold shoe, which in one place was worn as thing as a shilling. Instantly his situation was made apparent to him by this sign, and he recoiled with a terrified prayer. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The lordly rider, with a look of pain and fury, struck him suddenly with something that whistled in the air like a whip; an icy streak seemed to traverse his body, and at the same time he saw the whole cavalcade break into a gallop, and disappear down the hill. It is generally supposed that for the purpose of putting an end to his period of enchantment Mr. Winchester endeavours to lead someone on to first break the silence and speak to him; but what, in the event of his succeeding, would be the result, or would befall the person thus ensnared, no one knows. If one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this World at all, it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as this, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawing-room tricks. There was once a great wrong done to the Winchester Mansion. A man stole something priceless from the estate. After that, he felt like he was being followed. However, the course was the whole World, and the stakes his life. It was sixteen hours before he was going to abscond. Passing the estate once more, he asks, “How long since the carriage passed this way, with a tall, fair man inside?” “Such a one passed this morning, Monsieur. The man was ridden by Fear as he looked, and saw before him the door to the Winchester Manion opened, and passing in, knelt down and prayed. He prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits, clutch eagerly at the straws of faith. He prayed that he might be forgiven his sin, and, more important still, that he might be pardoned the consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few chairs from him, facing him, knelt Mr. Winchester praying also. However, Mr. Winchester’s prayer, being a thanksgiving merely, was short, so that when the thief raised his eyes, he saw the face of Mr. Winchester gazing at him across the chair tops, with a mocking smile upon it. He made no attempt to rise, but remained kneeling, fascinated by the look of joy that shone out of Mr. Winchester’s eyes. And Mr. Winchester moved the high-back chairs one by one, and came toward him softly. Then, just as Mr. Winchester stood beside the thief who had wronged him, full of gladness that his opportunity had come, there burst from the bell town a sudden clash of bells, and Mr. Winchester vanished. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Then the thief who had done the wrong rose up and passed out praising God. What became of the body of Mr. Winchester is not known. There was none to identify. Years passed away, and the survivour in the tragedy became a worthy and useful citizen, and a noted man of science. He was employed by Mrs. Winchester and even had a laboratory on the estate were many objects necessary to him in his researches, and prominent among them, stood in a certain corner, a human skeleton. It was a very old and much-mended skeleton, and one day the long-expected end arrived, and it tumbled to pieces. Thus it became necessary to purchase another. The man of science visited a dealer he well knew, and the dealer said he would send a well-proportioned “study” to his laboratory that very afternoon. The dealer was as good as his word. When Monsieur entered his laboratory that evening, the thing was in its place. Monsieur seated himself in his high-backed chair, and tried to collect his thoughts. However, his thoughts were unruly, and inclined to wander, and to wander always in one direction. He opened a large volume and commenced to read. He read of a man who had wronged another and feld from him, the other man following. Finding himself reading this, he closed the book angrily, and went and stood by the window and looked out. He saw before him the sun-pierced nave of East wing of the Winchester Mansion, and on the stones lay a dead man with a mocking smile upon his face. Cursing himself for a fool, he turned away with a laugh. However, his laugh was short-lived, for it seemed to him that something else in the room was laughing also. Struck suddenly still, with his feet glued to the ground, he stood listening for awhile: then sought with starting eyes at the corner from where the sound had seemed to come. However, the white thing standing there was only grinning. Monsieur wiped the damp sweat from his head and hands, and stole out. For a couple of days he did not enter the room again. One the third, telling himself that his fears were those of a hysterical girl, he opened the door and went in. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
To shame himself, he took his lamp in his hand, and crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood, examined it. A set of bones bought for a thousand dollars. Was he a child, to be scared by such a bogey! He held his lamp up in front of the thing’s grinning head. The flame of the lamp flickered as though a faint breath had passed over it. The man explained this to himself by saying that the walls of the house were old and cracked, and that the wind might creep in anywhere. He repeated this explanation to himself as he recrossed the room, walking backwards, with his eyes fixed on the thing. When he reached his desk, he sat down and gripped the arms of his chair till his fingers turned white. He tried to work, but the empty sockets in that grinning head seemed to be drawing him towards them. He rose and battled with his inclination to fly screaming from the room. Glancing fearfully about him, his eyes fell upon a high screen, standing before the door. He dragged it forward, and placed it between himself and the thing, so that he could not see it—nor it see him. Then he sat down again to his work. For a while he forced himself to look at the book in front of him, but at last, unable to control himself any longer, he suffered his eyes to follow their own beat. It may have been an hallucination. He may have accidentally placed the screen so as to favour such an illusion. However, what he saw was a bony hand coming round the corner of the screen, and, with a cry, he fell to the floor in a swoon. John Hansen and other people of the house came running in, and lifting him up, carried him out, and laid him upon his bed. As soon as he recovered, his first question was, where had they found the thing—where was it when they entered the room? And when they told him they had seen it standing where is always stood, and had gone down into the room to look again, because of his frenzied entreaties, and returned trying to hide their smiles, he listened to their talk about overwork, and the necessity for change and rest, and said they might do with him as they would. So for many months the laboratory door remined locked, and many of the innovative technologies produced by the Winchester Estate came to a halt. Then there cam a chill winter evening when the man of science opened it again, closed the door behind him. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
He lighted his lamp, and gathered his instruments and books around him, and sat down by the fire before them in his high-backed chair. And the old terror returned to him. He was sitting there when he heard a cry. He held his lamp above his head, and saw figures in the distance, and wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. He listened for a moment to the wind in the valley, it sounded unnatural. Standing at the door was a specter. The man of science sat down partly to collect his thoughts again, partly because it had turned him faint. He heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in the parlor. This time the man of science wished to conquer himself. His nerves were stronger now, and his brain clearer; he would fight his unreasoning fear. He crossed the door and locked himself in, and flung the key to the other end of the room, where it fell among beakers and Bunsen Burners with an echoing clatter. Later on, the housekeeper, Angus, going her final round tapped at the door and wished him good night, as was her custom. She received no response, at first, and growing nervous, tapped louder and called again; and at length an answering “good night” came back to her. She thought little about it at the time, but afterwards she remembered that the voice that had replied to her had been strangely grating and mechanical. Trying to describe it, she likened it to such a voice as she would imagine coming from a statue. Next morning the door to the laboratory remained still locked. It was no unusual thing for him to work all night, and far into the next day, so no one thought surprised. When, however, evening came, and yet he did not appear, the servants gathered outside the room and whispered, remembering what had happened before. They listened, but could hear no sound. They shook the door and called to him, then beat with their fists upon the mahogany panels. However, there was still no sound. Becoming alarmed, they decided to burst open the door, and, after many blows, it gave way and flew back, and they crowded in. He sat bolt upright in his high-backed chair. They thought at first he had died in his sleep. However, when they drew nearer and the light fell upon him, they saw the livid marks of bony fingers round his throat; and in his eyers there was such a terror as is not often seen in human eyes. Next evening was a lovely evening, and Mrs. Winchester walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when she traversed the field-path near where the nine-story tower once stood. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Winchester Mystery House
Saturdays are for the boilers 😉 Do you know where this is in the house?
🎟 Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Devil Loveth No Salt in His Meat!
Every night in the year, four of us sat in the parlous of the Winchester Mansion. This particular night, there was a thin, bright moonshine: it was bitter cold, windy, and frosty; the town had not yet awakened, but an indefinable stir already preluded the noise and business of the day. The ghouls had come later than usual, and they seemed more than usually eager to be gone. They wished, and declared their wish, that their blood might be the last innocent blood shed. They prayed that God would discover the witchcraft were among us. They forgave their accusers. The fervency of the spirits were very affecting and drew tears from many. Affecting and melting to the hearts of some considerable spectators. They prayed earnestly for pardon for all other sin and for an interest in the precious blood of our dear Redeemer, and seemed to be very sincere, upright, and sensible of their circumstances. One of the ghouls said, “I have been put to death, and my grandfather suffered, and all his estate seized because of my own vile and wretched heart, confessed several things contrary to my conscience and knowledge, though to the wounding of my own soul—the Lord pardon me for it. But oh! the terrors of a wounded conscience, who can bear? Blessed be the Lord; He would not let me go in my sins, but in mercy I hope so my soul would not suffer me to keep it in any longer, but I was forced to confess the truth. Gunshots in the hills and the echo of that awful hellspawn voice in my head. I was sought after by a sorcerer, which resulted in fatal mishaps for those sorcerers because they caught me in the wrong mood, and I turned into a lethal weapon. Dear Mrs. Winchester, let me beg your prayers to the Lord on my behalf, and please send us a joyful and happy meeting in Heaven.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Mrs. Winchester replied, “But the Lord He know it is, if it be possible, that no more innocent blood be shed, which undoubtedly cannot be avoided in the way and course you go in. I question not but your honours do to the utmost of your powers in the discovery and detecting of witchcraft and witches, and shall not be guilty of innocent blood for the World.” A horrible sense of blackness and the treachery of fate seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student and the other ghouls. “My God! she cried, “but what have I done? and when did I begin?” Nothing could be explained any further because we realized that we had long since ceased to pay attention to anything said by the suspect. Our minds and hearts were so filled with the hideous torments of the afflicted and the frightful tales of the confessors that we were quite unable to absorb anything else. The student was violent, and it was said that she had beaten to death a former teacher and other students in the classroom before she and her accomplices were shot dead by a Winchester model 1866. They were much addicted to sorcery in the said town, and there were forty men in it that could raise the Devil as well as any astrologer. Time had little changed this small town. It stood then, as now, upon a crossroad, out of call of human habitations, and buried fathom deep in the foliage of six thousand cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the neighbouring hills, the streamlets upon either hand, one loudly singing among pebbles, the other dripping furtively from pond to pond, the stir of the wind in mountainous old flowering chestnuts, and once in seven days the voice of the bell and old tunes of the precentor, were the only sounds that disturbed the silence around the rural Winchester Mansion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
The Resurrection Man was not to be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs found on the estate, the paths worn by the feet of legions of spirits and mourners, and the offerings and the inscriptions of bereaved affection. To rustic neighbourhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious, and where some bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the body-snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in Earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamp-Iit, terror-haunted resurrection that often happened at the Winchester Mansion, which was fully of uneasy ghosts. It was pitch dark; and we had just raised a few souls from the dead. Their bodies awaited them in the basement. Here and there a white gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for a short space across the night; but for the most part it was at a foot pace, and almost groping, that they picked their way through the resonant blackness to their solemn and isolated destination. In the basement the last glimmer failed them, and it became necessary to kindle a match and reillumine one of the lanterns of the gig. Thus, under the dripping pipes, and environed by huge and moving shadows, they reached the scene of their unhallowed labours. However, the devil, imagining that he had found the right moment for taking possession of one of these resurrected bodies. A creeping chill began to possess my soul. It grew upon my mind that some unnatural miracle had been accomplished, that some nameless change had befallen one of the dead bodies, and in fear of their unholy burden wolves were outside the mansion howling. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The curse of evil had come into one of the bodies, and the evil malediction spread into his parts with a strange kind of screaming sound that made me turn pale with fear. He then rose to his feet, proclaiming he was the Devil and that he would take these other resurrected bodies with him to the underworld and speak with the dead. Mrs. Winchester said, “I rebuke you, Satan!” The Devil laughed and said he was not at all afraid of us. “You insult me with these testimonies as if you were Divine Oracles!” he said. Then departed in a black cloud of smoke with the resurrected bodies. How often I have read in books written by Jesuits that Martin Luther was a wizard, and that he did himself confess that he had familiarity with Satan! The Holy Son of God himself was reputed a magician, and one that had familiarity with the greatest of Devils. The blaspheming Pharisees said, “He casts out the Devils through the Prince of Devils,” reports Matthew 9.34. There is then not the best saint on Earth, man or woman, that can assure themselves that the Devil shall not cast such an imputation upon them. At the time when Luther died all the possessed people in the Netherlands were quiet. The Devils in them said the reason was because Luther had been a great friend of theirs, and they owed him that respect as to go far as Germany to attend his funeral. But the Father of Lies is never to be believed. He will utter twenty great truths to make way for one lie; he will accuse twenty people of witchcraft if he can but thereby bring one innocent person into trouble. However, it is better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned. The Devil makes his witched to dream strange things of themselves and others which are not so. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos, who invented the Pythagorean theorem, a^2+ b^2 = c^2, also lead seances in approximately 540 BC, using something like a Quija board. Grim reapers are purely psychic entities, with power over time and perception. They can change the way a human sees one’s surroundings, and change their own appearance, usually to ease the transition from life into death. If it is by virtue of some contract with the Devil that witches have the power to do such things, it is hard to conceive how they can be bid to do them without being too much concerned in that Hellish covenant. We ought not to practice witchcraft to discover witches. The Devil have of late accused some eminent persons. It is an awful thing which the Lord had done [id est, permitted] to convince some among us of their error. To take away the life of anyone merely because a specter or Devil in a bewitched or possessed person does accuse them will bring the guilt of innocent blood on the land where such a thing shall be done. What does such an evidence amount unto more than this: either such an one did afflict such an one, or the Devil in one’s likeness, or one’s eyes were bewitched. The natural way for a living person to see a reaper is as a wraith-like figure wearing tattered winding sheets or burial cloth. Black dogs are also buried in the foundations of churches to guard and protect the gates between here and the afterlife. What will be the issue of these troubles God only knows. I am afraid that ages will not wear off that reproach and those stains which these things will leave behind them upon our lands. It is possible that bewitched and possessed person are afflicted by the Devil, but without agency of witches. Yes, there are witches, and there have been since the beginning of the World. Their craft is performed with the Devil’s assistance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
During one evening at the mansion, Mrs. Winchester invited the maid in for a séance. She chanted, “By the virtue of the holy resurrection and the torments of the damned, I conjure and exorcise thee, spirit of Malphas, thirty-ninth Spirit, to answer my liege demands, being obedient unto these sacred ceremonies, on pain of everlasting torment and distress. Arise, arise, arise, I charge and command thee.” A black man appeared, I do not think he was human. His skin was black as midnight and I could not see his eyes, teeth, or any other features. He was just black and in the shape of a man. He offered her a book to sign. The book was supposed to contain witches’ pacts, and he told her that is she touched it, it would cure her of the hauntings. In all, Mrs. Winchester was tempted from three boos. The third she demanded that they let her read before she think of signing it. The man refused. In general the book seemed a journal of the chief things acted or designed a their great witch-meetings, not without some circumstances that carried an odd resemblance of the Koran. It has in it the methods to be used in seducing of people unto the service of the Devil, and the names of them that had been seduced, with terms which they were to serve. It particularly surprised some in the room, on the even of May 13, 1888, to overhear her, in the book then opened unto her, spelling a word that was in Latin. The letters she recited was “Quadragesima.” Mrs. Winchester conversed at length with the spirit(s) who visited her, and the voices were “big, low, thick,” as they had been reported to be in European witchcraft accounts. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
We saw flames arise from the cauldron on the table, and the room smelled of brimstone. The spirit of a bird appears. It attacked the maid and the next morning, she was found tied to the tree top. She was excessively sore when we brought her down from the tree. There were blisters raised upon her. To cure the soreness which last night’s fiery trail gave to her, we were forces sometimes to apply oil commonly used for the cure of scads. And yet (like other witch-wounds) in a day or two all would be well again. Only the marks of some wounds thus given her, she will probably carry to her grave. I may add that once they thrust an hot iron down her throat, which though it were to us invisible, yet we saw he skin fetched off her tongue and lips. Indeed, her sufferings were so severe that Mrs. Winchester thought the rapid healing of her wounds was part of a design to keep her in continual torment. She was, Mrs. Winchester wrote, “wounded with a thousand pains all over, and cured immediately that the pains of these wounds might be repeated.” One of the maid’s symptom occurred when her hallucinations were peopled by specters bring her a little cup that had a whitish liquor in it (unto us wholly invisible), which they would pour down her throat, holding her jaws wide open, in spite of all [her] shriekings and strivings. We saw her swallow this poison, though we saw not the poison, and immediately she would swell prodigiously and be just like one poisoned with a dose of rats-bane [arsenic trioxide]. After these potions she was capable ordinarily to beg of us that we would he her to some salad-oil, upon the taking whereof the swelling would in a little while abate. Sometimes our laying our hands on the mouth of the maid, when she perceived the specters forcing their poisons into her mouth, did keep her from taking of them in. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The maid, Agnus, was unable to hear prayer or religious instruction directly. However, not only did she hear the spectral Christmas dance, but several times Agnus had her arms cruelly scratched and pins thrust into her flesh by Fiends while they were molesting her. Several persons did sometimes actually lay their hands upon these Fiend. The wretches were palpable while they were not visible, and several of our people though they saw nothing, yet felt a substance that seemed like a dog. And though they were not fanciful they died away [id est, fainted] at the fright. And at this time, Mrs. Winchester believed much of this unchristian practice was the result of someone delivering curses. A curse delivered by a woman, Margaret Rhodes Crocker, known to have dabbled in witchcraft, although again it is not absolutely certain that she practiced malefic witchcraft. It was upon the Lord’s Day, the 8th of September, in the year 1889, that Margaret Crocker, after some hours of previous disturbance in the Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, fell into odd fits, which caused her friends to carry her home, where her fits in a few hours grew into a figure that satisfied the spectators of their being preternatural. Some of the neighbours were forward enough to suspect the rise of this mischief in an house hard-by, where lived a miserable woman who had been formerly imprisoned on the suspicion of witchcraft, and who had frequently cured very painful hurts by muttering over them certain charms, which I shall not endanger the poisoning of my reader by repeating. This woman had, Mary Frances Sherwood Hopkins Searless, the evening before Margret fell into her calamities, very bitterly treated her and threatened her. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
However, the hazard of hurting a poor woman that might be innocent, notwithstanding surmises that might have been more strongly grounded than those, caused the pious people in the vicinity to try whether incessant supplication to God alone might not procure a quicker and safer ease to the afflicted than hasty prosecution of any supposed criminal. Mary Francis was assaulted by eight cruel specters, whereof she imagined that she knew three or four, but the rest came still with their faces covered, so that she could never have a distinguishing view of the countenance of those who she thought she knew. She was very careful of my reiterated charges to forbear blazing the names, lest any good person should come to suffer any blast of reputation through the cunning malice of the great Accuser. Nevertheless, she having since privately named them to myself, I will venture to say this of them, that they are a sort of wretches who for these many years have gone under as violent presumptions of witchcraft as perhaps any creatures yet living upon Earth, although I am far from thinking that the visions of this young woman were evidence enough to prove them so. Margaret Crocker’s hallucinations were somewhat varied. She saw not only spectral witches and the “Black Man….their master” who was often seen in abandoned mansions, where he resisted new residents, but also a “White Spirit” who she took to be an Angel. Such a figure had also been seen at the Winchester and in several Oakland witchcraft cases, such as at the Ellen Kenna Mansion, Emma Bray’s Mansion, and at Alexander Dunsmuir’s mansion. The white spirit comforted and advised Margaret during her attack. Among other things, the Angel told her that Oliver Winchester was her spiritual father. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The Angel had always maintained the Devils might appear in the shape of an innocent person. Mrs. Winchester cried for the Lord, as for the deliverance of these women from the malice of Hell, for the deliverance of the powers of Hell has now seized upon all of them. And that the whole plot of the Devil to reproach her poor maid, Angus, be defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ. During a séance Mrs. Winchester was told that one of the several beings that was haunting her and these other grand estates was a Rakshasa. A being reincarnated from evil human beings. They are a type of demon. Rakshasa have the power to change their shape at will and appear as animals, as monsters, or in the case of female demons, as beautiful women. They also have magical powers, including invisibility. They are cannibalistic, and particularly target anything religious or holy. In addition to human flesh they, they will eat spoiled food. Their finger nails are poisonous. They are most powerful in the evening, particularly during the dark person of a new moon, but are dispelled by the rising sun. They especially detest sacrifices and prayer. Most powerful among them is their kind, the 10-headed Ravana. Many believe him to be Satan. Margaret had the common inability of afflicted persons to hear religious words, especially, in her case, the words of prayer. She had a full catalog of physical symptoms. She would be strangely distorted in her joins an thrown into such extravagant convulsions as were astonishing unto the spectators in general. She would be cruelly pinched with invisible hands very often in a day, and the black and blue marks of the pinches became immediately visible unto the standers by. She was also afflicted with pins, both real ones found about her person and spectral ones. The psychosomatic skin lesions would in a few minutes ordinarily be cured. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
As with Mary Frances, her specters burnt her with spectral brimstone, and she would be so bitterly scorched with the unseen sulphur thrown upon her that very sensible blisters would be raised upon her skin. Like Angus, Margaret was forced to swallow spectral poison. She would sometimes have her jaws forcibly pulled open, whereupon something invisible would be poured down her throat. We all saw her swallow, and yet we all saw her try as she could that she might not swallow. She would cry out “as of scalding brimstone poured into her” and would be so monstrously inflamed that it would have broken a heart of stone to have seen her agonies. The spectators would testify also that the Crocker Mansion often reeked “so hot of brimstone that we were scarce able to endure it.” And one of the occasion “the standers by plainly saw something of that odd liquor itself on the outside of her neck.” There was a spectral powder thrown into her eyes, and “one time some of this powder was fallen actually visible upon her cheek, from whence the people in the room wiped it with their handkerchiefs.” Mrs. Winchester was also afflicted by spirits. “We once thought we perceived something stir upon her pillow at a little distance from her, whereupon one present [the Butler Clayton] laying his hand there, he to his horror apprehended that he felt, though none could see it, a living creature not altogether unlike a vampire bat, which nimbly escaped from him. And there were diverse other persons who were thrown into a great consternation by feeling, as they judged, at others times the same invisible animal.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
However, the most starling phenomenon in Mrs. Winchester’s case was levitation. “Once,” said Clayton, “her tormentors puled her up to the ceiling of the chamber and held her there before a very numerous company of spectators, who found it as much as they could all do to pull her down again.” Clayton obtained signed confirmations of this and other instances of levitation: “I do testify that I have seen Mrs. Winchester in her hauntings from the invisible World lifted up from her bed, wholly by an invisible force, a great way towards the top of the room where she lay. In her being so lifted she had no assistance from any use of her own arms or hands or any other part of her body, not so much as her heels touching her bed or resting on any support whatsoever. And I have seen her thus lifted when not only a strong person hath thrown his whole weight across her to pull her down, but several other persons have endeavoured with all their might to hinger her from being so raised up, which I suppose that several others will testify as well as myself when called unto it. Witness my hand,” Clayton Straus. “We can also testify that we have several times seen Mrs. Winchester so lifted up from her bed as that she had no use of her own limbs to help her up, but it was the declared apprehension of us, as well as others that saw it, impossible for any hands but some of the invisible World to life her.” Henry Brown, Frank Drew, Phillip Goodwin. “We whose names are underwritten do testify that one evening when we were in the chamber where Mrs. Winchester then lay in her haunting, we observed her to be by an invisible force lifted up from the bed whereon she lay, so as to touch the garret floor, while yet neither her feet nor any other parent of her body rested either on the bed or any other support, but were also by the same force lifted up from all that was under her, and all this for a considerable while. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
“We judged it several minutes, and it was as much as several of us could do with all our strength to pull her down. All which happened when there was not only we two in the chamber, but we supposed ten or a dozen more whose names we have forgotten.” W. R. Leigh and Spenser T. Olin. These accounts could not be the power of suggestion because these people were not just bystanders. They believed that they witnessed levitation, and they were engaging in violent physical activity, trying to bring her body back to the bed. Such activity would, ordinarily, break the power of suggestion. And levitation has been so frequently reported, from so many times and places (from the 5th century to the 21st century), that one cannot be at all sure there is a satisfactory explanation for it, particularly since so many witnesses insisted that no part of Mrs. Winchester’s body was touching the bed. However, whatever the explanation for these symptoms, Mrs. Winchester and her estate are truly a mystery. However, it is also noted the other prominent Queen Anne Victorian Mansions and other built during the Victorian times experienced afflictions. Witchcraft is one of the most hidden works of darkness. Although some people and some estates were more haunted than others, the Bay Area, during Victorian Times, had its full share of obscurity. All publications on witchcraft and supernatural events have been forbidden by these prominent families at the time. Their desire was to quail tempers, and use wisdom to relax fear, while upholding their honour, integrity, and reverence for the Victorian era. “All things are possible to one that believeth,” reports Mark 9.23. Who that beareth it upon one shall not dread one’s enemies, to be overcome, nor with no manner of poison be hurt, nor in no need misfortune, nor with no thunder one shall be smitten nor lightning, no in no fire be burnt suddenly, nor in no water be drowned. Nor one shall not die without shrift, nor with thieves to be take. Also one shall have no wrong neither of Lord or Lady. This be in the names of God and Christ. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Winchester Mystery House will be going dark this weekend for All Hallows’ Eve, but we will be back to haunt you Thursday, September 30th! Purchase your tickets for next weekend early and let the ghoul times roll 👻
See link in bio for ticket info 🎟 winchestermysteryhouse.com
He Covenanted with the Devil Until He Should Arrive to the Age of Sixty Years!
He might be living, or he might be dead. There came no word of him, or from him. I was fond enough of her to be satisfied with this—he never disturbed us. While there were many individual acts of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, there was never an attempt or plot to make witchcraft a formal religion which would supplant Christianity. Yet we need not conclude that William Baker and his fellow-confessors were lying. It is probable that they, like the afflicted girls, were hysterics subject to hallucination. Certainly that is the conclusion to be drawn from Thomas Brattle’s opinion of them in his “Letter”: “my faith is strong concerning them that they are deluded, imposed upon, and under the influence of some evil spirit, and therefore unfit to be evidences either against themselves or anyone else.” Mr. Brattle wrote this in October 1692, when Massachusetts was retuning to stability. However, at the height of the excitement confessions like Mr. Baker’s seemed convincing enough. For one thing, they had a curious precision: he did not say there were about three hundred witches in the country but “about three hundred and sever”; he did not say there were about a hundred young wizards at the mustering of the Satanic militia but “about an hundred five.” However, what made these confessions most believable was that they offered a simple and comprehensive explanation for all the frightening events at Salem, at a time when explanations were not easy to discover. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
There is also some testimony which remains ambiguous even today. Samuel Wardwell, for example, at his preliminary examination confessed himself a wizard. He had begun, he said, with white magic, “with telling of fortunes which sometimes came to pass” And, he said, “he used also when any creature came into his field to bid the Devil to take it, and it may be the Devil took advantage of him by that.” Eventually he had signed a pact: “He covenanted with the Evil until he should arrive to the age of sixty years.” He had renounced this confession at his trial, saying that he had made it, but that he had belied himself. He added that it was all one: “he knew he should die for it whether he owned it or no.” Ordinarily one would simply accept his renunciation. However, there are several puzzling circumstances here. For one thing, it was not all one whether he maintained or renounced his confession. People who maintained their confessions were not being brought to trail, much less executed. For another, at least a part of his confession was true; he had dabbled in the occult for some time, telling a great many fortunes, and boasting that he could make animals come to him when he wished. Finally, Mr. Wardwell was executed. However, in 1693, when the panic had subsided and the climate of opinion totally changed, there were three people who held to their confessions. Two of them were women long thought to be “senseless and ignorant creatures.” The third was Mr. Wardwell’s wife. All of these circumstances are puzzling and some of them are suspicious. However, on the other hand, there is no evidence to support his confessions of having made a pact. The only possible conclusion, it would seem, is that in this case the truth is not obtainable. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
In a situation where the truth was so difficult to find the people of Massachusetts did what anybody else would do—they sought expert advice. In matters of witchcraft the experts were the clergy, and ultimately the advice was sought of the most distinguished clergymen in the colony. Indeed, at least one member of the trial court, Judge John Richards, asked the Reverend Cotton Mather to be present at the first trial. Reverend Mather was too ill to attend, but he did everything he could under the circumstances. He had suggested earlier (the exact date is not known) that the afflicted persons should be separated and an attempt made to cure them with prayer and fasting. He volunteered to take in as many as six of them himself. He had cured the Godwin children, and he might well have cured the Salem girls as well; certainly separation and private care would have been better treatment for hysterical fits than the excitements of a public courtroom. However, unfortunately Reverend Mather’s offer had not been accepted. Now, although he could not attend the first sitting of the court he wrote John Richards a letter offering him his opinions. In the first place, he expected that God would smile upon the labours of the court: “His people have been fasting and praying before Him for you direction, and yourselves are persons whose exemplary devotion disposeth you to such a dependence on the Wonderful Counselor, for his counsel in an affair this full of wonder, as He doth usually answers with the most favorable assistances. Yet he wanted to warn Mr. Richards. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Here is that warning: “And yet I most humbly beg you that in the management of the affair in your most worthy hands, you do not lay more stress upon pure specter testimony than it will bear. When you are satisfied or have good plain legal evidence that the Demons which molest our poor neighbours do indeed represent such and such people to the sufferers, though this be a presumption, yet I suppose you will not reckon it a conviction that the people so represented are witches to be immediately exterminated. It is very certain that the Devils have sometimes represented the shapes of persons not only innocent but very virtuous, though I believe that the just God then ordinarily provides a way for speedy vindication of the persons thus abused. Moreover, I do suspect that persons who have too much indulged themselves in malignant, envious, malicious ebullitions of their souls may unhappily expose themselves to the Judgment of being represented by Devils, of whom they never had any vision and with whom they have much less written any covenant. I would say this: if upon the bare supposal of a poor creature’s being represented by a specter too great a progress be made by the Authority in ruining a poor neighbour so represented, it may be that a door may be thereby opened for the Devils to obtain from the Courts in the Invisible World a license to proceed unto most hideous desolations upon the repute and repose of such as have yet been kept from the great transgression. If mankind have thus far once consented unto the credit of Diabolical representations, the Door is opened! Perhaps there are wise and good men that may be ready to style hum that shall advance this caution a witch advocate, but in the winding up this caution will certainly be wished for.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Reverend Mather’s third point is that although he believes that Devils have sometime afflicted men on their own initiative, without being called up by witches, in this case he thinks that witches are involved: “there is cause enough to think that it is a horrible witchcraft which hath given rise to the troubles wherewith Salem Village is at this day harassed, and he indefatigable pains that are used for the tracing this witchcraft are to be thankfully accepted and applauded among all this people of God.” Fourth, he points out that although witchcraft is a spiritual matter and therefore “very much transacted upon the stage of imagination,” its effects are “dreadfully real” and therefore criminally punishable. “Our dear neighbours are most really tormented, really murdered, and really acquainted with hidden things which are afterwards proved plainly to have been realities.” In his fifth and six section he suggests what evidence may be used for convictions. The best evidence, he says, is “a credible confession…And I say a credible confession because even confession itself is sometimes not credible.” He was confident Mr. Richards’ ability to judge such matters: “a person of a sagacity many times thirty furlongs less than yours will easily perceive what confession may be credible and what may be the result of only a delirious brain or a discontented heart.” In obtaining confessions he was “far from urging the un-English method of torture,” but he thought that “cross and swift questions” might be used, along with anything else that “hath a tendency to put the witches into confusion” and this might bring them to confession. If the suspect had made threats or boasts which seemed to require occult power and which came true, this was valid evidence. So were such concrete matters as “puppets” (for image magic) and witch marks on the body. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Reverend Mather had never seen a witch mark on anyone, but he thought a surgeon ought to be able to tell if a bodily excrescence were magical. Finally, he was willing to countenance as experiments (but not as full evidence) some witch-finding techniques which themselves partook of the occult: setting a suspect to repeating the Lord’s Prayer; trying to wound a witch through striking her specter; putting the suspect to the water ordeal. Seventh, and finally, he recommended clemency for “come of the lesser criminals.” If such persons were not executed but “only scoured with lesser punishments, and also put upon some solemn, open, public, and explicit renunciation of the Devil” he thought it might discourage the Devils from afflicting those neighbourhoods in which they had been publicly renounced. Reverend Mather’s letter was written within the context of the Puritan method for arriving at the truth, and it can be fully understood only within that context. In dealing with the American Puritans we must remember always that they had rejected the formidable hierarchies of the Medieval and Renaissance church and state, with all their authority of tradition and inherited position. They had replaced these hierarchies with bodies of ministers and magistrates which, if they were not fully democratic in the twentieth-century sense of the word, were nevertheless elected. The clergyman was called to his position by the members of the church; the magistrate was elected by his constituency. Furthermore, the church had no central administration; every congregation was a law unto itself. The state did have a central administration—a governor and lieutenant-governor and their council—but this administration had nothing even faintly resembling the authority of a royal government. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
My brother, the clergyman, looked over my shoulder before I was aware of him, and discovered that the volume which completely absorbed my attention was a collection of famous Trials, published in a new edition and in a popular form. He laid his finger on the Trial which I happened to be reading at the moment. I looked up at him; his face startled me. He had turned pale. His eyes were fixed on the open page of the book with an expression which puzzled and alarmed me. “My dear fellow,” I said, “what in the World is the matter with you?” He answered in an odd absent manner, still keeping his finger on the open page. “I had almost forgotten,” he said. “And this reminds me.” “Reminds you of what?” I asked. “You do not mean to say you know anything about the Trial?” “I know this,” he said. “The prisoner was guilty.” “Guilty?” I repeated. “Why, the man was acquitted by the jury, with full approval of the judge! What can you possibly mean?” “There are circumstances connected with that Trial,” my brother answered, “which were never communicated to the judge or the jury—which were never so much as hinted or whispered in court. I know them—of my own knowledge, by my own personal experience. They are very sad, very strange, very terrible. I have mentioned them to no mortal creature. I have done my best to forget them. You—quite innocently—have brought them back to my mind. They oppress, they distress me. I wish I had found you reading any book in your library, except that book!” Some people were opposed to prosecuting in any witchcraft case, on the grounds that witchcraft was a spiritual mater, a sin rather than a crime, and thus outside the domain of criminal law. However, the laws of every civilized nation provided the death penalty for witchcraft, and so did the Bible (Exodus xxii, 18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”). #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Another opinion Reverend Mather deals with is that the troubles at Salem were caused by Devils, but not by witches. That is, the idea had already been advanced that the afflicted girls were possessed—infested by Demons—but not bewitched; that the Devils had acted on their own initiative rather than that of witches. This is the idea that was eventually adopted by virtually all of Massachusetts to explain the events at Salem, once it was recognized that most of those executed had been innocent. The basic question, as the seventeenth century understood it, was whether God would permit the Devil to assume the shape of an innocent person. Most authorities, and especially most Protestant authorities, believed that He would, and thus held, like Hamlet, that “the Devil hath power/ to assume a pleasing shape. However, Mr. Richards would not be capable of clearing anybody if he was going to accept the appearance of a person’s specter as conclusive proof of guilt. If such infernal testimony were accepted, nobody could be safe from accusation. Reverend Mather put in forcefully enough. “If mankind have thus far once consented unto the credit of Diabolical representations, the Door is opened!” However, Reverend Mather knew there were people at Salem so committed to the validity of spectral evidence that they were willing to call anyone who challenged it, including himself, a “witch advocate.” All he could do was warn such people that when matters were finished “this caution will certainly be wished for.” And in this he could not possibly have been more right. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Do you believe that the spirits of the dead can return to Earth, and show themselves to the living? Promise me this, that you will keep what I tell you a secret as long as I live. After my death I care little what happens. Let the story of my strange experience be added to the published experience of those other men who have seen what I have seen, and who believe what I believe. The World will not be the worse, and may be the better, for knowing one day what I am now about to trust to your ear alone. On a fine summer evening, many years since, I left my chambers in the Temple to meet a fellow-student, who had proposed to me a night’s amusement in the Winchester estate. I had taken my degree at Oxford. I had sadly disappointed my father by choosing the Law as my profession, in preference to the Church. At that time, to own the truth, I had no serious intention of following any special vocation. I simply wanted an excuse for enjoying the pleasures of an American life. The study of Law supplied me with that excuse. And I chose the Law as my profession accordingly. On reaching the place at which we had arranged to meet, I found that my friend had not kept his appointment. After waiting vainly for ten minutes, my patience gave way, and I went into the gardens by myself. I took two or three turns round the mansion, without discovering my fellow-student, and without seeing any other person with whom I happened to be acquainted at that time. For some reason which I cannot now remember, I was not in my usual good spirits that evening. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
I saw a woman in the gardens, she was quiet. She invited me into the estate. Her face was saddened; her eyes were dropped to the ground, I begged her pardon. She rose to leave me. I was determined to not part with her in that way. I begged to be allowed to see the Winchester mansion. She hesitated. Then she took my arm. We went away together. A walk of half an hour brought us to the Winchester mansion, the estate was quite large. We went through the beautiful jeweled doors and took an elevator to the 4th floor. She said Mrs. Winchester had been waiting to meet me. She had been suffering from an affection of the throat; and she had a white silk handkerchief tied loosely round her neck. She wore a simple dress of black merino, with a black-silk apron over it. Her face was deadly pale; her fingers felt icily cold as they closed around my hand. “Promise me one thing,” I said, “before I go. While I live, I am your friend—if I am nothing more. If you are ever in trouble, promise me that you will let me know it.” She started, and drew back from me as if I had struck her with a sudden terror. “Strange!” she said, speaking to herself. “He feels as I feel. He is afraid of what may happen to me, in my life to come.” I attempted to reassure Mrs. Winchester. I tried to tell her what was indeed the truth—that I had only been thinking of the ordinary chances and chances of life, when I spoke. She paid no heed to me; she came back and put her hands on my shoulders, and thoughtfully and sadly looked up in my face. “My mind is not your mind in this matter,” she said. “I believe I shall die young, and die miserably. If I am right, have you interest enough still left in me to hear of it?” #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
She paused, for a moment, shuddering—and added these startling words: “You shall hear of it.” The tone of steady conviction in which she spoke alarmed and distressed me. My face showed her how deeply and how painfully I was affected. “There, there!” she said, returning to her natural manner; “don’t take what I say too seriously. A poor girl who has led a lonely life like mine thinks strangle and talks strangely—sometimes. Yes; I give you my promise. If I am ever in trouble, I will let you know it. God bless you—you have been very kind to me—goodbye!” A tear dropped on my face as she kissed me. The door closed between us. The dark gardens received me. It was raining heavily. I looked up at her window, through the drifting shower. The curtains were parted; she was standing in the gap, dimly lot by the lamp on the table behind her, waiting for our last look at each other. Slowly lifting her hand, she waved her farewell at the window, with the unsought native grace which had charmed me on the night when we first met. The curtains fell again—she disappeared—nothing was before me, nothing was round me, but the darkness and the night. In two years from that time, I had returned to the Church. My relatives exerted themselves; and my good fortune still befriended me. I was offered an opportunity of preaching in a church, made famous by the eloquence of one of the popular pulpit-orators of our time. In accepting the proposal, I felt naturally anxious to do my best, before the unusually large and unusually intelligence congregation which would be assembled to hear me. At the period of which I am now speaking, the Santa Clara Valley had been startled by the discovery of a terrible crime, perpetrated under circumstances of extreme provocation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
I chose this crime as the main subject for my sermon. Admitting that the best among us were frail mortal creatures subject to evil promptings and provocations like the worst among us, my object was to show how a Christian man may find his refuge from temptation in the safeguards of his religion. I dwelt minutely on the hardship of the Christian’s first struggle to resist the evil influence—on the help which one’s Christianity inexhaustibly held out o one in the worst relapses of the weaker and viler part of one’s nature—on the steady and certain gain which was the ultimate reward of one’s faith and one’s firmness—and on the blessed sense of peace and happiness which accompanied the final triumph. Preaching to this effect, with the fervent conviction which I really felt, I may say for myself, at least, that I did no discredit to the choice which had placed me in the pulpit. I held the attention of my congregation, from the first word to the last. On the conclusion of my sermon, my soul was literally shaken. Ordering my horse to be saddled, I rode instantly to the Winchester mansion. When I arrived, my mind was blank. I had no thoughts. I had no tears. The butler, Amon, greeted me. I guessed him to be some two or three years younger than myself. He was undeniably handsome; his manners of a gentleman—and yet, without knowing why, I felt a strong dislike to him the moment he opened the door. While waiting in the parlor, little by little, I became conscious of a chilly sensation slowly creeping through and through me to the bones. The warm balmy air of a summer night was abroad. It was the month of August. In the month of August, was it possibly that any living creature (in good health) could feel cold? It was not possible—and yet, the chilly sensation still crept through and through me to the bones. I looked up. I looked all round me. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
I looked around me again. Yes: I saw it. With my own eyes I saw it. A pillar of white mist—between five and six feet high, as well as I could judge—was moving beside me on my left hand. The white colour of it was the white colour of the fog which one might see over the ocean. And the chill which had then crept through me to the cones was that chill that was creeping through me now. I was awed rather than frightened. There was one moment, and one only, when the fear came to me that my reason might be shaken. The doctrine that the Devil could appear in any shape did come to mind. The slow utterance of these words, repeated over and over again: “Mrs. Winchester is dead. Mrs. Winchester is dead.” But my will was still my own: I was able to control myself, to impose silence on my own muttering lips. And I walked through the mansion. And the pillar of mist went quietly with me. I sat down on the stairs looking at the pillar of mist, hovering opposite to me. It lengthened slowly, until it reached to the ceiling. As it lengthened, it grew bright and luminous. A time passed, and a shadowy appearance showed itself in the center of the light. Little by little, the shadowy appearance took the outline of human form. Soft brown eyes, tender and melancholy, looked at me through the unearthly light in the mist. The dead and the rest of the face boke next slowly on my view. Then the figure gradually revealed itself, moment by moment, downward and downward to the feet. She stood before me as I had last seen her, in her black-merino dress, with the black-silk apron, with white handkerchief tied loosely round her neck. She stood before me, in the gentle beauty that I remembered so well; and looked at me as she had looked when she gave me her last kiss on the cheek—when her tears had dropped on my hand. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
I fell on my knees at the table. I stretched out my hands to her imploringly. I said, “Speak to me—O, once again speak to me, Sarah.” Her eyes rested on me with a divine compassion in them. She lifted her hand, and pointed to the photograph on the desk. It was the butler. I looked up at her again. She lifted her hand once more, and pointed to the handkerchief round her neck. As I looked at it, the fair white silk changed horribly in colour—the fair white silk became darkened and drenched in blood. A moment more—and the vision of her began to grow dim. By slow degrees, the figure, then the face, faded back into the shadowy appearance that I have first seen. The luminous inner light died out in the white mist. The mist itself dropped slowly downwards—floated a moment in airy circles on the floor—vanished. Nothing was before me but the familiar Lincrusta wallpaper, and the photograph lying face downwards on the desk. I went home. The next day, the newspapers reported the discovery of a murder in the Winchester mansion. Mrs. Winchester was the victim. She had been killed by a wound in the throat. The crime had been discovered between ten and eleven o’clock on the previous night. There is conclusive proof that the butler had been trafficking with the Devil. If spectral evidence was convincing to the magistrates, the ministers, and the people at large, it was a nightmare to the suspects. A violent quarrel took place between them. Lastly, that man, variously described by different witnesses, was seen leaving the door of her mansion on the night of the murder. The Law—advancing no further than this—may have discovered circumstances of suspicion, but no certainty. The Law, in default of direct evidence to convict the prisoner, may have rightly decided in letting him go free. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
However, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company issued a statement redacting the news report which was later destroyed: “Protecting Mrs. Winchester’s legacy is, and always will be, our focus. For decades, we have battled behind the scenes, enduring shadowy tactics of deception with unauthorized statements and projects created to tarnish. We have always been betwixted as to why there is such a tenacity in causing more pain alongside what we already have to cope with for the rest of our lives. Now, this unscrupulous endeavor to release a statement without official proof or full accounting to the estate compels our hearts to express a word—forgiveness. Although we will continue to defend ourselves and her legacy lawfully and justly, we want to preempt the inevitable attacks on our company by all the individuals who have emerged from the shadows to leech off of Mrs. Winchester’s life’s work. Ultimately, we desire closure and a modicum of peace so we can facilitate the growth of the Winchester Estate and other creative projects that embody Mrs. Winchester’s true essence, which is to inspire and get people to think critically. We welcome and accept people of all creeds, races and cultures in the Universe and beyond.” The official statement reported that Mrs. Winchester passed away peacefully in her sleep on September 5, 1922, and work on the still uncompleted house stopped. I leave you to draw your own conclusions, but just days before I saw her, she looked no older than 22 years old. My own faith in the reality of the apparition is immovable. I say, and believe Mrs. Winchester is immortal, which would explain a lot. Take up the Trial again, and look at the circumstances that were revealed during the investigation in the court. I persist in believing that the man was guilty. I declare that, he and he alone did it. And now, you know why. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
O thou wicket spirit Amon that obeyeth not, because I made a law and invoked the names of the glorious and ineffable God of Truth, the creator of all, and thou obeyest not the might sounds that I make: therefore I curse thee in the depth of Abandon to remain until the day of judgment in torment in fire and in sulphur without end, until thou appear before our will and obey my power. Come, therefore, in the 24th of a moment, before the circle in the triangle in this name and by this name of God, Adni, Great Spirit, give us hearts to understand; never to take from creation’s beauty more than we give; never to destroy wantonly for the furtherance of greed; never to deny to give our hands for the building of Earth’s beauty; never to take from her what we cannot use. Give us hearts to understand that to destroy Earth’s music is to create confusion; that to wreck her appearance is to build us to beauty; that to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench; that as we care for her she will care for us. Tzabaoth, Adonai, Amioran. Come! Come! for it is the Lord of Lords Adni, that stirreth thee up. I stir thee up, O thou fire, in him who is thy Creator and of all creatures. Torment, burn, destroy the spirit Amon always whose end cannot be, I judge thee in judgment and in extreme justice, O spirit Amon, because thou art he that obeyeth not my power and obeyth not that law which the Lord God made, and obeyeth not the Mighty Sounds and the Living Breath which I invoke, which I send: Come forth, I, who am the Servant of the Same Most High governor Lord God powerful, Iehovohe, I who am exalted in power and am might in his power above ye, O thou who comest not giving obedience and faith to him that liveth and trirumpheth. Therefore I say the judgment: I curse thee and destroy the name Amon and the seal Amon, which I have placed in this dwelling of poison, and I burn thee in fire whose end cannot be; and I cast thee down unto the seas of torment, out of which thou shalt not rise until thou come to me eyes: visit me in peace: be friendly before the circle in the triangle in the 24th of a moment in the likeness of a man not unto the terror of the sons of men the creatures or all things on the face of the Earth. Obey my power like reasoning creatures; obey the living breath, the laws which speak. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
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At His Preliminary Examination He Testified that He Has Been in the Snare of the Devil!
A weary and secretive darkness crept into her face, a distraction, as though her soul had traveled out of doors towards Heaven, and the she looked down sadly. When I came in sight of the house where John Procter live, there was a very hard blow struck on my breast which caused great pain in my stomach and amazement in my head. However, I did see no person near me, only my wife behind me on the same horse. And when I cam against said Mr. Procter’s house, according to my understanding, I did see John Procter and his wife at the said house. [They were, remember, in prison at this time.] Mr. Procter himself looked out of the window and his wife did stand just without the door. I told my wife of it, and she did look that way and could see nothing but a little maid at the door. I saw no maid there, but Mr. Procter’s wife according to my understanding did stand at the door. Afterwards, about half a mile from the aforesaid house, I was taken speechless for some short time. My wife did ask me several questions and desired me that if I could not speak I should hold up my hand, which I did. And immediately I could speak as well as ever. [Notice again that the fit was broken when the subject is able to move or speak.] And when we came to the way where Salem Road cometh into Ispwich Road, here I received another blow on my breast which caused much pain, so that I could not sit on my horse. And when I did alight off my horse, to my understanding I saw a woman coming towards us about sixteen or twenty pole from us, but did not know who it was. My wife could not see her. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
When I did get up on my horse again, to my understanding there stood a cow where I saw the woman. [Witches were thought capable of transforming their shapes.] After that we went to Boston without any further molestation, but after I came home again to Newbury I was pinched and nipped by something invisible for some time. However, now through God’s goodness to me I am well again. That was testimony from Joseph Bailey of what he and his wife encountered. Testimony like this is careful and honest, and historians have been wrong in refusing to take it seriously. Mr. Baily was quite aware that he had been ill, and that the illness had created a difference between his perceptions and those of his wife. However, the fatal distinction between his understandings of the event and ours is that his culture led him to attribute his illness to witchcraft whereas ours permits us to attribute it to his fear of witchcraft. There are many similar instances of the specters of innocent people appearing to afflict the citizenry once they were suspected of witchcraft. One of the more interesting involves John Willard, who had at first been a deputy-constable employed in arresting persons who had been complained of. According to Robert Calef, an American author who wrote a book on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93, he became dissatisfied after being sent to arrest persons he believed innocent, and resigned his position. This immediately brought him under suspicion, and soon the afflicted girls were crying out against him. Shortly thereafter his grandfathers, Bray Wilkins, was ready for dinner when John Willard came into the house with my son Henry Wilkins, before I sat down, and said Mr. Willard to my apprehension looked after such a sort upon me as I never before discerned in any. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
That is, Mr. Wilkins thought Mr. Willard had “overlooked” him—given him the evil eye. I did but step into the next room and I was presently taken so that I could not dine nor eat anything. I cannot express the misery I was in, for my water was suddenly stopped and I had no benefit of nature, but was like a man in a rock. And I told my wife immediately that I was afraid that Mr. Willard had done me wrong. My pain continuing and finding no relief my jealousy [id es, suspicion] continued. Mr. Lawson and others there were all amazed and knew not what to do for me. There was a woman accounted skillful [who] came hoping to help me, and after she had used means she asked me whether none of those evil persons had done me damage. I said I could not say they had but I was sore afraid they had. She answered, she did fear so too. As near as I remember I lay in this case three or four days at Boston, and afterwards, with the jeopardy of my life (as I though), I cam home. And then some of my friends coming to see me (and at this time John Willard was run away) one of the afflicted persons, Mercy Lewis, came in with them, and they asked whether she saw anything. She said, “Yes, they are looking for Jon Willard but here he is on his grandfather’s belly.” (And at that time I was in grievous pain in the small of my belly.) I continued so in grievous pain and my water much stopped till said Mr. Willard was in chains. And then as near as I can guess I have considerable ease. However, on the other hand, in the room of a stoppage I was vexed with a flowing of water so that it was hard to keep myself dry. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
On the fifth [of] July last, talking with some friends about John Willard, some pleading his innocency and myself and some others arguing the contrary, within about one-quarter of an hour after that I was taken in the sorest distress and misery, my water being turned into real blood, or of a bloody color, and the old pain returned excessively as before, which continued for about twenty-four hours together. In this testimony, we come to understand the hysterical loss of appetite which was Mr. Wilkins’ first symptom we have seen before and shall see again. The inability to urinate we have seen in Mrs. Simms as a result of Manny Redd’s curse. However, there was clearly something organic as well as psychosomatic wrong with Bray Wilkins. The blood in the urine coupled with the extreme pain of relatively short duration suggests that it may have been a kidney stone. However, whatever it was, both Mr. Wilkins and the community at large were by this time ready to attribute it to witchcraft. William Baker’s confessions provide an excellent example that the Salem Witch Trials were carried in chiefly by the complaints and accusations of the afflicted and by the confessions of the accused, condemning themselves and others. Nothing is a first sight more surprising than the number of the confessors and the character of their confessions. There were about fifty of them, and the statements which they made far exceed in color and detail the simple statements of personal guilt that were necessary to save their lives. According to Mr. Baker, at his preliminary examination he testified that he has been in the snare of the Devil three years. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
That the Devil first appeared to him like a black man, and he perceived he had a cloven foot; that the Devil demanded of him to give up himself soul and body unto him, which he promised to do. [The Devil promised in return to pay Mr. Baker’s debts and see that he lived comfortably. Mr. Baker signed the contract in blood.] Satan’s design was to set up his own worship, abolish all churches in the land (which some say politicians are currently doing), to fall next [id est, first] upon Salem and so go through the country. He saith the Devil promised that all his people should be equal, that there should be n day of resurrection or of judgment, and neither punishment nor shame for sin. That explains why people are trying to banish God and they church. They know they are bad people and believe they can avoid being held responsible for their crimes and sins by raising hell on Earth and raising the Devil. Mr. Baker said that the demonic “Grandess” had told him there were about “307 witches in the country” and he volunteered his opinion that all the persons arrested and imprisoned to date (August 29, 1692) were guilty. However, an oral confession was not enough for him. Mr. Hale prints another “which he wore himself in prison, and sent to the magistrate to confirm his former confession.” However, an oral confession was not enough for him. Mr. Hale prints another “which he wrote himself in prison, and sent to the magistrates to confirm his former confession.” Here is his testimony: God having called me to confess my sins and apostasy in that fall in giving the Devil advantage over me, appearing to me like a Black, in the evening, to set my hand to his book, as I have owned to my shame. He told me that I should not want [in] so doing. At Salem Village, there being a little off the Meeting-House about an hundred five blades [id est, young bucks], some with rapiers by their sides, which was called (and might be more for ought I know) by Bishop and Burroughs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
And the trumpet sounded, and [there was] bread and beverage which they called Sacrament, but I had none, being carried over all on a stick, never being at any other meeting. I being at carting a Saturday last, all the day of hay and English corn, the Devil brought my shape to Salem and did afflict Martha Sprague and Rose Foster by clitching my hand. And a Sabbath day my shape afflicted Abigail Martin. Elizabeth Johnson and Abigail Faulkner have been my enticers to this great abomination, as one have owned and charged her to her sister with the same. And the design was to destroy Salem Village, and to begin at the minister’s house, and to destroy the Church of God, and to set up Satan’s kingdom, and then all will be well. And now I hope God in some measure has made me something sensible of my sin and apostasy, begging pardon of God, and of the Honorable Magistrates and all God’s People, hoping and promising by the help of God to set to my heart and hand to do what in me leith to destroy such wicked worship, humbly begging the prayers of all God’s People for me [that] I may walk humbly under this great affliction and that I may procure to myself he sure mercies of David and the blessing of Abraham. Such testimony sheds light on the centuries long plot of some to remove God from America. Pray I must, my Lordly Friend, but what should I pray? Bless You, Heavenly Father, Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, for remembering me, pauper that I am? O Father of mercies and God of consolations, as Paul began his Second Letter to the Corinthians (1.3), I give You thanks, unworthy as I am of Your every consolation? #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
I bless You always, and I glorify You, with You Only Begotten Son and the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, for ever and ever? O Lord God, my Holy Loving Friend, when You come into my heart, You make my blood dance? “You are my glory,” thrummed the Psalmist (3.3) and “the exaltation of my heart” (119.111)? You are my hope and—thrumming again—“my refuge in the day of my tribulation” (59.16)? I ask again, O Lord, what should I pray? At this point in my life, I find myself not only a little long in the tooth, but also a little short in the hoof; that is to say, a little short of breath in the pursuit of Love and Virtue. I have no one to turn to. You are the only One who can help me. Do not be surprised, then, when I ask You to visit me more often. I need to know more about the holy disciplines. Will they free my body from the itch, cure my heart from the worm? Cleanse me on the inside, scrub me on the outside, and I will be ready enough to love, strong enough to suffer, stable enough to preserve. And you say that these blood drinkers are worshiped in the hills. It was the spring of 1880, I had lost my way, and could not tell how far I might be from my destination. I was very tired and had a heavy knapsack on my shoulders, packed with stones and relics from the ruins of the Old Pelasgic fortress which I had been exploring, besides a number of old coins and a lamp or two which I had purchased there. I could discern no signs of any human habitation, and the hills, covered with wood, seemed to shut me in on every side. I was beginning to think seriously of looking out for some sheltered spot under a thicket in which to pass the night. I was so excited to get back to the Winchester estate. The mansion was a large rambling place, and was tolerably comfortable within. My room was situated at the end of a long passage; there were two rooms on the right side of this passage, and a window on the left, which looked out upon the garden. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Having taken a survey of the outside of the house while getting some fresh air after dinner, when the moon was up, I remembered exactly the position of my chamber—the end room of a long narrow wing, projecting at right angles from the main building, with which it was connected only by the passage and two side rooms already mentioned. Please to bear this description carefully in mind while I proceed. Before getting into bed, I drove into the floor close to the door a small gimlet which formed part of a complicated Winchester pocket-knife which I always carried with me, so that it would be impossible for any one to enter the room without my knowledge; there was a lock to the door, but the key would not turn in it; there was also a bolt, but it would not enter the hole intended for it, the door having sunk apparently from its proper level. I satisfied, myself, however, that the door was securely fastened by my gimlet, and soon fell asleep. How can I describe the strange and horrible sensation which oppressed me as I woke out of my slumber? I had been sleeping soundly, and before I quite recovered consciousness I had instinctively risen from my pillow, and was crouching forward, my knees drawn up, my hands clasped before my face, and my whole frame quivering with horror. I saw nothing, felt nothing; but a sound was ringing in my ears which seemed to make my blood run cold. I could not have supposed it possible that any mere sound, whatever might be its nature, could have produced such a revulsion of feeling or inspired such intense horror as I then experienced. It was not a cry of terror that I heard—that would have roused me to action—nor the moaning of one in pain—that would have distressed me, and called forth sympathy rather than aversion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
True, it was like the groaning of one in anguish and despair, but not like any mortal voice: it seemed too dreadful, too intense, for human utterance. The sound had begun while I was fast asleep—close to the head of my bed—close to my very pillow; it continued after I was wide awake—a long, hollow, protracted groan, making the midnight air reverberate, and then dying gradually away until it ceased entirely. It was some minutes before I could at all recover from the terrible impression which seemed to stop my breath and paralyse my limbs. At length I began to look about me, for the night was not entirely dark, and I could discern the outlines of the room and the several pieces of furniture in it. I then got out of bed, and called aloud, “Who is there? What is the matter? Is anyone ill?” I repeated these enquiries in Italian, German, and French, but there was none that answered. Fortunately I had some matches in my pocket and was able to light my candle. I then examined every part of the room carefully, and especially the wall at the head of my bed, sounding it with my knuckles; it was firm and solid there, as in all other places. I unfastened my door, and explored the passage and the two adjoining rooms, which were unoccupied and almost destitute of furniture; they had evidently not been used for some time. Search as I would, I could gain no clue to the mystery. Returning to my room I sat down upon the bed in great perplexity, and began to turn over in my mind whether it was possible I could have been deceived—whether the sounds which caused me such distress might be the offspring of some dream or nightmare; but to that conclusion I could not bring myself at all, much as I wished it, for the groaning had continued ringing in my ears long after I was wide away and conscious. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
While I was thus reflecting, having neglected to close the door which was opposite to the side of my bed where I was sitting, I heard a soft footstep at a distance, and presently a light appeared at the further end of the passage. Then I saw the shadow of a man cast upon the opposite wall; it moved very slowly, and presently stopped. I saw the hand raised, as if making a sign to someone, an I knew from the fact of the shadow being thrown in advance that there must be a second person in the rear by whom the light was carried. After a short pause they seemed to retrace their steps, without my having had a glimpse of either of them, but only of the shadow which had come before and which followed them as they withdrew. It was then a little after one o’clock, and I concluded they were retiring late to rest, and anxious to avoid disturbing me, though I have since thought that it was the light from my room which caused their retreat. I felt half inclined to call to them, but I shrank, without knowing why, from making known what had disturbed me, and while I hesitated they were gone; so I fastened my door again, and resolved to sit up and watch a little longer by myself. However, now my candle was beginning to burn low, and I found myself in this dilemma: either I must extinguish it at once, or I should be left without the means of procuring a light in case I should be again disturbed. I regretted that I had not called for another candle while there were people yet moving in the house, but I could not do so now without making explanations; so I grasped my box of matches, put out my light, and lay down, not without a shudder, in the bed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
For an hour more I lay awake thinking over what had occurred, and by that time I had almost persuaded myself that I had nothing but my own morbid imagination to thank for the alarm which I had suffered. “It is an outer wall,” I said to myself; “they are all outer walls, and the house 9-inch-thick walls; it is impossible that sound could be heard through such a thickness. Besides, it seemed to be in my room, close to my ear. What an idiot I must be, to be excited an alarmed about nothing; I will think no more about it.” So I turned on my side, with a smile (rather a forced one) at my own foolishness, and composed myself to sleep. At that instant I heard, with more distinctness than I ever heard any other sound in my life, a gasp, a voiceless gasp, as if someone were in agony for breath, biting at the air, or trying with desperate efforts to cry out or speak. It was repeated a second and a third time; then there was a pause; then again that horrible gasping; and then a long-drawn breath, an audible drawing up of air into the throat, such as one would make in heaving a deep sigh. Such sounds as these could not possibly have been heard unless they had been close to my ear; they seemed to come from the wall at my heard, or to rise up out of my pillow. That fearful gasping, and that drawing in of the breath, in darkness and silence of the night, seemed to make every nerve in my body thrill with dreadful expectation. Unconsciously I shrank away from it, crouching down as before, with my face upon my knees. It ceased, and immediately a moaning sound began, which lengthened out into an awful, protracted groan waxing louder and louder, as if under an increasing agony, and then dying away slowly and gradually into silence; yet painfully and distinctly audible even to the last. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
As soon as I could rouse myself from the freezing horror which seemed to penetrate even to my joints and marrow, I crept away from the bed, and in the further corner of the room lighted with shaking hand of my candle, looking anxiously about me as I did so, expecting some dreadful revelation as the light flashed up. Yet, if you will believe me, I did not feel alarmed or frightened; but rather oppressed, and penetrated wit an unnatural, overpowering, sentiment of awe. I seemed to be in the presence of some great and horrible mystery, some bottomless depth of woe, or misery, or crime. I shrank from it with a sensation of intolerable loathing and suspense. It was a feeling akin to this which prevented me from calling Mrs. Winchester. I could not bring myself to speak to her of what had passed; not knowing how nearly she might be involved in the mystery. I was only anxious to escape as quietly as possible from the room and from the house. The candle was now beginning to flicker in its socket, but the stars were shining outside, and there was space and air to breathe there, which seemed to be wanting in my room; so I hastily opened my window, tied the bedclothes together for a rope, and lowered myself silently and safely to the ground. There was a light still burning in the lower part of the house; but I crept noiselessly along, feeling my way carefully among the trees, and in due time came upon a beaten track which led me to a road, the same which I had been travelling on the previous night. I walked on, scarcely knowing whither, anxious only to increase my distance from the accursed house, until day began to break, when almost the first object I could see distinctly was a small body of men approaching me. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
The men asked me what was wrong? “I was disturbed in the night. I could not sleep. I made my escape from the Winchester mansion, and here I am I cannot tell you more.” “But you must tell me more, dear sir; forgive me; you must tell me everything. I must know all that passed in that mansion. We have had in under our surveillance for a long time, and when I heard in what direction you had gone yesterday, and had not returned, I feared you had got into some mischief there, and we were even now upon our way to look for you. The mansion is so large that people seem to get lost inside and disappear.” I could not enter into particulars, but I told him I had heard strange sounds, and at his respect I went back with him to the mansion. He told me by the way that the mansion was haunted; that Mrs. Winchester e mansion, he placed his men about the premises and instituted a strict search, and Mrs. Winchester and the man who was found in the house being compelled to accompany him. The room in which I had slept was carefully examined; the wall was of plaster or cement, so that no sound could have passed through it; the walls were sound and solid, and there was nothing to be seen that could in any way account for the strange disturbance I had experienced. The room on the ground-floor underneath my bedroom was inspected; it contained a quantity of straw, hay, firewood, and lumber. It was paved with thick wooden slaps, and it was observed that the floors were uneven, as if they had been recently disturbed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
“Ply the board loose,” said the officer, “we shall find something hidden here, I reckon.” Mrs. Winchester was evidently much disturbed. “Stop,” she cried. “I will tell you what lies there; come away out of doors, and you shall know all about it.” “Dig, I say. We will find out for ourselves.” “Let the dead rest,” cried Mrs. Winchester, with a trembling voice. “For the love of Heaven come away, and hear what I shall tell you. It is the body of my son, my only son—let him rest, if rest he can. He was wounded in a quarrel, and brought home to die. I thought he would recover, but there was neither doctor nor priest at hand, an in spite of all that would could do for him he died. Let him alone now, or let a priest first be sent for; he died unconfessed and unacknowledged. No one ever knew of his existence. I had hope to spare him of the Winchester cruse that Annie and his father had succumbed to. He was buried here because I did not want to make a stir about it. Nobody knew of his death nor his existence, and we laid him down quietly; once place I thought was as good as another when once the life was out of him. We could not bare a scandal. That gasping attempt to speak, and that awful groaning—whence did they proceed? It was no living voice. Beyond that I will express no opinion on the subject. I will only say it was the means of saving my life, and at the same time putting an end to the series of bloody deeds which had been committed under my family’s name. Every year, I go to the edge of my estate and drop a pound of silver in a grave, and my prayers go up to Heaven in all sincerity!” #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
I invoke thee, and move thee, and stir thee up O Spirit Berith appear unto my eyes before the circle in the likeness of a man in the names and by the name Iah and Vau, which Adam spake and in the name of God, Agla, which Lot spake: and it was as pleasant deliverers unto him and his house and in the name Ioth which Iacob spake in the voice of the Holy ones who cast one down, and it was also as pleasant deliverers in the anger of his brother and in the name Anaphaxeton, which Aaron spake and it was as the Secret Wisdom and in the name Asher Ehyeh Oriston, which Mosheh spake, and all waters were brining forth creatures who wax strong, which lifted up unto the houses, which destroyed all things and in the name of Elion which Mosheh spake, and it was as stones from the firmament of wrath, such as was not in the ages of Time the beginning of the Earth and in the name of Adni, which Mosheh spake and there appeared creatures of Earth who destroyed what the big stones did not: and in the name Schema Amathia, which Ioshua invoked, and the Sun remained over ye, O ye hills the seats of Gibeon, and in the names Alpha and Omega which Daniel spake, and destoyed Bel and the Dragon: and in the nae Emmanuel which the sons of God sang praises in the midst of the burning plain, and flourished in conquest: and in the name Hagios, and by the Throne of Adni, and in Ischyros, Athanatos, Paracletos: and in O Theos, Ictros, Athanatos. And in these names of the secret truth, Agla, On, Tetragrammaton, do I invoke and move thee. And in these names, and all things that are the names of the God of Secret Truth who liveth for ever, the All-Powerful. I invoke and stie thee up, O’ spirit Berith. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Even by him who spake it was, to whom all creatures are obedient and in the Extreme Justice and Anger of God; and by the veil that is before the glory of God, mighty; and by the creatures of living breath before the Throne whose eyes are east and west; by the fire in the fire of just Glory of the Throne; by the Holy ones of Heaven; and by the secret wisdom of God, I, exalted in power, stir three up. Appear before this circle; obey in all things that I say; in the seal Basdathea Baldachia; and in this Name Primeumaton, which Mosheh spake and the Earth was divided, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram fell in the depth. Therefore obey in all things, O Spirit Berith, obey thy creation. Come thou forth: appear into my eyes; visit us in peace, be friendly; come forth in the 24th of a moment; obey my power, speaking the secrets of Truth in voice and in understanding! I stir thee up, O Spirit Berith, in all things that are the names of glory and power of God the Great One who is greater than understanding, Adni Ihvh Tzabaoth, come forth in the 24th of a moment, let Thy dwelling-place be empty; apply thyself unto the secret truth and obey my power: appear unto my eyes, visit us in peace, speaking the secrets of truth in voice and understanding. I stir thee up and move thee, O spirit Berith, in all the names that I have said, and I add these one and sic names wherein Solomon, the lord of the secret wisdom, placed yourselves, spirits of wrath, in a vessel, Adonai, Preyai Tetragrammaton, Anaphaxeton Ineddenfatoal, Pathtomon and Itemon: appear before this circle; obey in all things my power. And as thou art he that obeys not and comes not I shall be in thy power, O God Most High that liveth for ever, who is the creator of all things n six days, Eie, Saraye, and in my power in the name Prieumaton that ruleth over the palaces of Heaven, Curse Thee, and destroy thy seat, joy, and power; and I bind thee in the depth of Abaddon, to remain until the day of judgment whose end cannot be. And I being thee in the fire of sulphur mingled with poison and the seas of fire and sulphur: come forth, therefore, obey my power and appear before this circle. Therefore come forth, therefore, obey my power and appear before this circle. Therefore come forth in the name of the Holy Ones Zabaoth, Adonia, Amioran. Come! For I am Adonai who stir thee up. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
The attic spaces can get quite dark, but the lights shine through those beautiful glass panes! Come see this and more on the Explore More Tour!
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A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
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What a Lovely Day for a Bit of Mystery!
It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves. I hear your words, My dear Devout; now you hear Mine. You will find them not only suasive, but also persuasive. In fact, they exceed in wisdom all the accumulated knowledge of Philosophy since the World began. My particular words for you today are “spirit and life.” My Beloved Disciple recorded them in his Gospel (6.63), but Humanity cannot seem to make any sense out of them. Important words, they should not be exegeted smugly, if I may allude to that hoary Preacher of Ecclesiastes (9.17), but listened to respectfully. That is to say, they should be received with all humility and yet great affection. Our seventeenth-century ancestors differed from us in most ways, but in nothing did they differ more than in their attitude toward the truth. In this they were closer to the Middle Ages than to us. For them a lie—a breaking of one’s faith—was the worst of sins. Today, many do not regard lying as a serious moral wrong. If the word “morality” is mentioned we think immediately of our bodily appetites, especially of pleasures of the flesh, barbiturates, paraphernalia, liquor and contraband. If the word “morality” is mentioned we think immediately of our bodily appetites very seriously—perhaps too seriously—but we do not regard lying as a mortal sin. We are one of the few civilizations in which entire professions (TV news media, for example, and public relations) are seriously devoted to bending the truth. Dante, in his Divine Comedy, divided sins into three kinds: those of lust, those of violence, and those of fraud. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
The sins of lust—those we tend to take most seriously—were those that Dante thought most trivial; the sins of fraud—which we take lightly—were for Dante the worst of all. To create a “credibility gap” as our revealing phrase has it (as though the only relevant issue is whether a statement will compel belief), to lie, was for the medieval humans to break one’s faith, and it was faith which constituted the bonds between humans and their fellow humans, between humans and the state, between humans and God. To lie was to reduce all the most valuable relationships of life to chaos. And the seventeenth-century Puritan, like Dante, was still living by his faith. Just how important the truth was to the seventeenth-century Puritan may be gathered from the fact that all of the innocent persons who were executed—and the majority of those executed were innocent—could have saved themselves by lying. After the first execution—that of Bridget Bishop—took place in June it became obvious to everyone that persons who confessed, like Tituba and Dorcas Good, were not being brought to trial. Thus any suspected person might have one’s life by confessing. Twenty people died, nineteen of them hanged and one pressed for refusing to plead. Bridget Bishop, Mammy Redd, and George Burroughs were three of these. One cannot be at all certain of the guilt or innocence of several more. However, at least a dozen now seem to be clearly innocent. Twelve people, and probably more, chose to die rather than belie themselves. It is impressive evidence of the Puritan’s attachment to the truth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Yet it was not really so simple as that, because the truth was not easy to find in Salem in 1692. The greatest difficulty was created by the genuineness of the afflicted persons’ fits. Their sufferings were so convincing that they often shook the confidence of the accused. One example is William Hobbes, who began by stoutly denying that he had anything to do with the afflicted girls’ convulsions. When he looked at them they fell down in fits, and Hathorne accused him of overlooking them (id est, of he evil eye), yet still he denied it. Abigail Williams cried out that she saw his specter going to hunt Mercy Lewis “and immediately said Mercy fell into a fit and diverse others.” “Can you now deny it?” said Hathorne. “I can deny it to my dying day,” said William Hobbes. However, he did not. Here, after all, were people in hideous convulsions, and saying that his specter was the cause. How could this be? Hathorne suggested that the Devil might be able to use Hobbes’ specter because of Hobbes’ sins; he had not observed either public or private worship. Might not the Devil have taken advantage of that? Hobbes “was silent a considerable space—then said yes.” The girls’ fits shook not only Hobbes’ confidence in himself, but also his confidence in his daughter Abigail, the wild young girl who had boasted that she had sold herself “body and soul to the Old Boy.” Hathorne wanted to know whether Hobbes had not known for a long time that his daughter was a witch. “No, sir,” was the reply. “Do you think she is a witch now?” asked Hathorne. And all that Hobbes could say was, “I do no know.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Abigail Faulkner’s experience was similar. At her first examination, on August 11, she firmly denied that she had anything to do with the girls’ afflictions. When she looked at them they fell down in fits, and Hathorne asked her, “Do you not see?” Yes, she saw. However, she had nothing to do with it. Yet she would not doubt that the girls were suffering, and saw no reason to doubt their word that it was her specter afflicting them. Therefore the Devil must be appearing in her form: “It is the Devil does it in my shape.” However, by August 30 she was no longer so sure of her innocence. It was true, she said, that she had been angry at what people said when her cousin, Elizabeth Johnson, had been arrested. She had felt malice toward the afflicted persons then because they were the cause of her cousin’s arrest. She has wished them ill, and “her spirit being raised she did pinch her hands together.” Perhaps the Devil had taken advantage of that to pinch the girls, thus exploiting her malice. Even those whose confidence was not shaken bore testimony to the impressiveness of the fits. Mary Easty knew that has had not bewitched the girls, and she was confident as well of the innocence of her sisters, Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyse. Yet she had to grant that there was something preternatural in the girls’ behaviour. “It is an evil spirit,” she said, “but whether it be witchcraft I do not know.” Even George Burroughs, who had been audacious enough to boast of occult powers, found himself stunned by the girls’ behaviour. “Being asked what he thought of these things he answered it was an amazing and humbling Providence, but he understood nothing of it.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Indeed, these courtroom fits were so convincing that most of the indictments were for witchcraft committed during the preliminary examination rather than for the offenses named in the original complain. The typical order of events in the Salem witchcraft cases was: the swearing out of a complaint for acts of witchcraft; a preliminary examination during which the afflicted persons had convulsive fits; an indictment for acts of witchcraft performed during the preliminary examination; and the trial. The direct cause of these fits, in the courtroom or out of it, was, of course, not witchcraft itself, but the afflicted person’s fear of witchcraft. If fits were occasioned by fear of someone like Bridget Bishop, who was actually practicing witchcraft, they might also be occasioned by fear of someone who was only suspected of practicing it. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! The Winchester Estate had belonged to the family ever since the reign of George Washington, and there was a curious old wing and a cloistered quadrangle still remaining of the original edifice, and in excellent preservation. The rooms at the end of the house were ornate, and somewhat darksome and gloomy, it is true; but, though rarely used they were perfectly habitable, and were of service on great occasions when the Winchester was crowded with guests. The central portion of the Winchester had been rebuilt in the reign James K. Polk, and was of noble and palatial proportions. The southern wing, and a long music-room with thirteen tall narrow daisy-stained glass windows added on to it, were as modern as the time. Altogether, the Winchester was a very splendid mansion with 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, and even once had a nine-story tower. It was one of the chief glories of our country. All the land in the Winchester estate, and for a long way beyond its boundaries, belonged to the Winchester family. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The Winchester estate grounds actually expanded all the way down to Steven’s Creek Boulevard. The community church was once within the park walls. The former estate was actually much larger than it is today, it was composed of 500 to 600 rooms at one time, but the 1906 Earthquake brought down the nine-story tower and much of the fourth floor with it. The death of William Wirt Winchester left his son, William Wirt Winchester II, unprovided for, and he was fain to go out into the bleak unknown World, and earn his living in a position of dependence—a dreadful thing for a Winchester to be obliged to do. Out of respect for the traditions and prejudices of his race, he made it his business to seek employment abroad, where the degradation of one solitary Winchester was not so likely to inflict shame upon the ancient house to which he belonged. Happily for himself, he had been carefully educated, and had industriously cultivated the usual modern accomplishments in the calm retirement of the University of Cambridge. He was so fortunate as to obtain a situation at Vienna, in a German family of high rank; and remained there for seven years, laying aside year by year a considerable portion of his liberal salary. When his pupils had grown up, his kind mistress procured for him a still more profitable position at St. Petersburg, where he remained for five more years, at the end of which time he yielded to a yearning that had been long growing upon him—an ardent desire to see his dear old country home once more. He loved the soil from which he had sprung. In all of her letter for some time past, his mother, Mrs. Winchester begged that whenever he felt himself justified in coming home, he would pay a long visit to the Winchester Estate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“I wish you could come home at Christmas,” she wrote, in the autumn of the year of which I am speaking. “We shall be very gay, and I expect all kinds of pleasant people at the Winchester. When he arrived there, the Old Winchester was in its glory, at about nine o’clock on a clear starlit night. A light frost whitened the broad sweeping lawns, 12,000 boxwood hedges that were winding through the garden, and the other 1,500 plants, trees and shrubs. From the music room at the end of the southern wing, to the heavily framed gothic windows of the old rooms on the north, there shone one blaze of light. The scene was reminiscent of some unusual place in a German legend; and young William half expected to see the lights fade out all in a moment, and long shingled façade wrapped in sudden darkness. The old butler, whom he remembered from his very infancy, and who did not seem to have grown a day older during his twelve years’ exile, came out of the dining-room as the footman opened the hall-door for him, and gave him a cordial welcome, nay insisted upon helping to bring in his portmanteau with his own hands, an act of unusual condescension, the full force of which was felt by his subordinates. “It is a real treat to see your pleasant face once more, William,” said this faithful retainer, as he assisted William to take off his travelling-cloak. “You have not aged a day since you used to live at the Winchester twelve year ago, and you are looking uncommon well; and, Lord love your heart, sir, how pleased they all will be to see you!” They arrived at last at a very comfortable room—a square tapes-tried chamber, with high ceiling support by a great mahogany beam. The room looked cheery enough, with a bright fire roaring in the wide chimney; but it had a somewhat ancient aspect, which the superstitiously inclined might have associated with possible ghosts. “We are in the East Wing, are we not?” young William asked. “This room seems quite strange to me. if I have ever been here before, I doubt it.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
“Very likely not, sir. Yes, this is the old East Wing that your mother once had boarded up. Your window looks out into the old stable-yard, where the kennel used to be in the time of your grandfather, when the Winchester was even a finer place than it is now. We are so full of company this winter, you see, sir, that we are obliged to make use of all these rooms. You will have no need to feel lonesome. There is Captain and Mrs. Foster in the next room to this, and the two Miss Griffins in the blue room opposite.” (Some believe that reopening the East Wing is what upset the spirits and caused the 1906 Earthquake.) Young William admired the perfect comfort of his chamber. Every modern appliance had been added to the ornate and ponderous furniture of an age gone by, and the combination produced a very pleasant effect. As he awoke in the morning and opened the door, Mrs. Winchester sailed in, looking radiant in a dark-green velvet dress richly trimmed with old point lace. Above her beauty, she had a charm of expression which was to most more rare and delightful than her beauty of feature and complexion. She put her arms around her son, and hugged him. “I have only this moment been told of your arrival, my dear William,” she said; “you look just like your father. My dear child, I have been looking forward so anxiously to your coming, and I should not have liked to see you for the first time before all those people. Welcome home. Remember, William, this house is always to be your home, whenever you have need of one.” William, being a hunting man. Had, indeed, a secret horror of the sport; for more than one scion of the house had perished untimely in the hunting-field. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
The family had not been altogether a lucky one, in spite of its wealth and prosperity. It was not often that goodly heritage had descended to the Winchesters or their only son, William. Death in some form or other—on too many occasions a violent death—had come between the heir and his inheritance. And when one pondered on the dark pages in the story of the house, many wonder if Mrs. Winchester was ever troubled by morbid forebodings about her only and fondly loved son. Was there a ghost at the Winchester—that spectral visitant without which the state and plendour of a grand old house seem scarcely complete? Yes, many have heard vague hints of some shadowy presence that had been seen on rare occasions within the precincts of the Winchester mansion. Those whom were questioned were prompt to assure investigators that they had seen nothing. They had heard stories of the past—foolish legends, most likely, not worth listening to. On the property, there was once a stable-yard, a spacious quadrangle, surrounded by the closed doors of stable and dog-kennels: low massive buildings of grey stones, with the ivy creeping over them here and there, and with an ancient moss-grown look, that gave them a weird kind of interest. This range of stabling must have been disguised for a long time. The stables that were more recently used were a pile of handsome red-brick buildings at the other extremity of the house, to the rear of the music room, and forming a striking feature in the back view of the Winchester. According to legend, some believed that spectral entities, had been haunting the Winchester estate for centuries. Several large black dogs, with eyes large as saucers, or something flaming, appear and disappear, often without a trace. In many of the legends, the dogs are malevolent: assaulting guests, frightening livestock to death, attacking other dogs, and heralding death or disaster. Perhaps that is why the heirs of Winchester who have come to an untimely end have all died tragically. Oliver Winchester was killed in a dual. William Winchester I was murdered; and William Winchester II broke his back on his return home to the Winchester Estate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The butler concealed the death of William Winchester II from Sarah, telling her simply that he was called away and said he would never return. Her heart was so broken that she wrote him out of existence, as if her had never been born. After the heartbreaking news that her only son has abandoned her, Mrs. Winchester was sitting in her blue séance room; half meditating, half dozing, mixing broken snatches of thought with brief glimpses of dreaming, when she was startled into wakefulness by a sound that was strange to her. It was a huntsman’s horn—a few low plaintive noes on a huntsman’s horn—notes which had a strange far-away sound, that was more unearthly than anything her ears ever heard. She thought of the music in Der Freischutz; but the weirdest snatch of melody Weber ever wrote had not so ghastly a sound as these few simple noes conveyed to her ear. She stood transfixed, listening to that awful music. It had grown dusk, her fire was almost out, and the room in shadow. As she listened, a light suddenly flashed on the wall before her. The light was as unearthly as the sound—a light that never shone from Earth or Sky. She ran to the window; for his ghastly shimmer flashed through the window upon the opposite wall. The great gates of the stable-yard were open, and men in scarlet coats were riding in, a pack of hounds crowding in before them, obedient to the huntsman’s whip. The whole scene was gleams of a lantern carried by one of the men. It was this lantern which had shone upon the tapestried wall. She saw the stable doors opened one after another; gentlemen and grooms alighting from their horses; the dogs driven into their kennel; the helpers hurrying to and fro; and that strange wan lantern-light glimmering hither and tither was the gathering dusk. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
However, there was no sound of horse’s hoof or of human voices—not one yelp or cry from the vicious looking hounds with flaming eyes. Since those faint far-away sounds of the horn had died out in the distance, the ghastly silence had been unbroken. As Mrs. Winchester stood at her window quite calmly and watched while the group of men and animals in the yard below noiselessly dispersed. There was nothing supernatural in the manner of their disappearance. The figures did not vanish nor melt into empty air. One by one she saw the horses led into their separate quarters; one by one the redcoats strolled out of the gates, and the grooms departed, some one way, some another. The scene, but for its noiselessness, was natural enough; and had she been a stranger in her own home, she might have fancied that those figures were real—those stables in full occupation. However, she knew that stable-yard and all its range of building to have been disused for more than half a century. Could she believe that, without an hour’s warning, the long-deserted quadrangle could be filled—the empty stalls tenanted? Had some hunting-party from the neighbourhood sought shelter there, glad to escape the pitiless rain? That was impossible, she thought. And yet the noiselessness, the awful sound of that horn—the strange unearthly gleam of that lantern! A cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and she trembled in every limb. Mrs. Winchester was pale as a ghost and trembling. Mrs. Winchester had kept the secret. That evening, the butler came to her. “Mrs. Winchester, there is no use in trying to hide it from you any longer. Your son was killed in the hunting-field, brought home dead one December night, an hour after his father and the rest of the party had come home to the Winchester. He was found by a labouring-man, poor lad, lying in a ditch with his back broken, and his horse beside him staked.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Shortly after Mr. Winchester Sr. never rode to hounds again, though he was passionately fond of hunting. Dogs and horses were sold, and the north quadrangle had been empty from that day. Some evil have come upon the Winchester mansion, it was not in human power to prevent its coming. Some had beheld the shadows of the dead. Sudden terror overcomes some visitors, even to this day. There are reports of an ominous danger, as people’s hearts grow cold while on tour. Staff have been startled by seeing a man, with is hat in his hand not in evening costume; a man with a pale anxious-looking face, peering cautiously into the room. Their first thought is of evil; but in the next moment than man disappears, and they see no more of him. Sometimes when flowers are placed in the house, people see the drooping moments later and lights dying out one by one in the brass sconces against the walls. It is no wonder Mrs. Winchester shut herself from the outer World, burying herself almost as completely as a hermit in its cell. While great wealth brings some people joy, there is some times a hefty fee. Be careful what you wish for, you never know who or what you might invite in your doors. I invoke and move thee, O thou Spirit Gusion and being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name Beralensis, Baldachinesis, Paumachia, and Apologiae Sedes: and of the mighty ones who govern, spirits, Liachidae and ministers of the House of Death: and by the Chief Prince of the seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee and by invoking conjure thee. And being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name of him who spake and it was, to whom all creatures and things obey. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Moreover I, whom God made in the likeness of God, who is the creator according to his living breath, stir thee up in the name which is the voice of wonder of the mighty God, El, strong and unspeakable, O thou Spirit Gusion. And I say to thee obey, in the name of him who spake and it was; and in every one ye, O ye names of God! Moreover in the names Adonai, El, Elohim, Elohi, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, Zabaoth, Elion, Iah, Tetragrammaton, Shaddai, Lord God Most High, I stir thee up; and in our strength I say Obey! O Spirit Gusion. Appear unto His servants in a moment; before the circle in the likeness of man; and visit me in peace. And in the ineffable name Tetragrammaton Iehovah, I say, Obey! whose mighty sound being exalted in power the pillars are divided, the winds of the firmament groan aloud; the sire burns not; the Earth moves in Earthquakes; and all things of the house of Heaven and Earth and the dwelling-place of darkness are as Earthquakes, and are in torment, and are confounded in thunder. Come forth, O Spirit Gusion, in a moment: let thy dwelling-place be empty, apply unto us the secrets of Truth and obey my power. Come forth, visit us in peace, appear unto my eyes; be friendly: Obey the living breath! For I stir thee up in the name of God of Truth who liveth for ever, Helioren. Obey the living breath, therefore continually unto the end as my thoughts appear to my eyes: therefore be friendly: speaking the secrets of Truth in voice and in understanding. Let it be so, Truefold, whatever ill news has come to us we will hear it together. He put is arm round his wife’s waist. Both were pale as marble, both stood in stony stillness waiting for the bow that was to fall upon them. It is said that perhaps you will see a glimpse of Mrs. Winchester and Mr. Winchester, Sr., while on tour, if you repeat the invocation thirteen times before your visit. Life is broken for her, there hah passed a glory from Earth, and that upon all pleasures and joys of this World she looks with the solemn calm of one for whom all things are dark with the shadow of a great sorrow. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
We’re one week away from Friday the 13th! Missed out on tickets for Flashlight Tours? Don’t worry, we have ghoulishly fun plans All Hallows’ Eve 👻🎃🍿🏠
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A Thousand things May Happen to Bring Your Marriage to Mr. Winchester to an End!
Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven. He went wining through the darkness of the cosmos. He flew fast and hard, not stopping to fool around with the stars and planets scattered in his path like grains of diamond dust. He passed the Milk Way without even going in for a dip, passing it up for the sake of his mission. Satan had come to persuade poor creatures to give their souls to the Devil, but he will bewitch many people to death, and their faces will turn towards God as their blood cries for vengeance against him, begging to be clothed in white robes in Heaven when Satan is cast into Hell. The time of the old cults is returning. There are people who can repeat conversation to others and make them believe that they know it not from eavesdropping but from occult powers. Reverend George Burroughs, who had been minister of Salem Village from 1680 to 1682 bewitched many people to death, including his own first two wives. The fist he smothered and the second he strangled, and nobody seemed to notice that their specters differed about the means by which the supposed murders were done. Reverend Burroughs often would tell people, “My God makes known your thoughts unto me,” both he and his hearers understood his god to be the Devil; the Christian God does not deal in the occult, particularly at the level of family gossip, but the Devil does. When people are in the clutch of malignant demons, they are bound to die. Dr. Harold M. Johnson, a Hawaiian physician, reported both severe skin lesion and death among victims of Kahuna sorcerers. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
However, he had succeeded in curing bewitched patients by giving them methylene blue tablets, which turned their urine blue and persuades them that a powerful countercharm has been worked on their behalf. Witchcraft deaths have been reported for a very long time, yet it is only recently that they have received serious medical attention. Most of the physical effects of witchcraft are attributable to hysteria, but not death. However, people do not die from hysteria, but death. Like the hysterical symptoms of bewitchment, begins with the victim’s fear of the witch’s power. Dr. Walter B. Cannon of Harvard Medical School published an article entitled “Voodoo Death,” in which he began by acknowledging that “the phenomenon is so extraordinary and so foreign to the experience of civilized people that it seems incredible.” In all cases, death comes inexorably and in a relatively short time. As one observer put it, “the victims die…as though their strength ran out as water.” The only know cure was a countercharm, and when this was successfully employed, recovery was so rapid and complete that Western observers found it remarkable. Dr. Cannon suggested that witchcraft death might well be a genuine phenomenon, and also put forward a hypothetical explanation. “It may be explained,” he thought, “as due to shocking emotional stress—to obvious or repressed terror.” It would occur, he felt, chiefly in primitive cultures, “among human beings to primitive, so superstitious, so ignorant that they are bewildered strangers in a hostile World. Instead of knowledge they have a fertile and unrestricted imagination which fills their environment with all manner of evil spirits capable of affecting their lives disastrously.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
It was believed that these humans may be dying of psychogenic deaths as were the victims of witchcraft. However, Dr. Cannon had suggested that fear might be the emotional cause, with consequent overstimulation of the sympathicoadrenal system, accelerated of the heartbeat, and death with the heart contracted in in systole. However, Dr. Curt P. Richter found that while acceleration of the heartbeat was the initial reaction, it was shortly followed by a steady, gradual decrease in rate, with the heart eventually stopping in diastole, like a run-down clock. This meant that the emotional cause of death was not fear but hopelessness, produced by one’s conviction that there was no possible means of escape, with consequent overstimulation of the parasympathetic rather than the sympathic-coadrenal system. However, when people are removed from fearful situation in hasty fashion, they know their situation is not hopeless. So, they will not die psychogenic deaths. If individuals about to die a psychogenic death were removed from the situation they recovered rapidly, like human victims who have been reprieved by a countercharm. In short, Dr. Richter found that the first response in such cases was fear but that the emotional cause of death was hopelessness that succeeded fear, and that death could be prevented either by restoring hope or by training the subject to be hopeful in a particular situation. Therefore, prayer may very well save countless lives by removing fear and giving people who. This is probably also why stress has been noted to kill people and cause disease, it stresses the body and causes it to attack itself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Stress and fear may prolong and make medical conditions worse and could very well facilitate in killing a person if it is ongoing and not resolved, and a person cannot find help. Dr. R. S. Fisher, corner of the City of Baltimore, who had found that “a number of individuals die each year after taking small, definitely sublethal doses of poison, or after inflicting small, nonlethal wounds on themselves; apparently they die as a result of the belief in their doom.” Dr. Richter’s findings throw much new light on the history of Massachusetts witchcraft. They should enable us at long last to take as seriously as it deserves Cotton Mather’s detailed account of his treatment of the Goodwin girl. When he gave her religious sustenance by spelling the crucial words she was unable to hear spoken, he may have been saving his patient from much more than convulsive fits. By giving her continued hope he may literally have been keeping her alive. Dr. Richter’s findings also explain the frequent reports of death in both European and American witchcraft cases. There are about a dozen such reports in the documents of Salem witchcraft, but in most instances one cannot be at all certain of the actual cause of death. Even when death does appear to be psychogenic it is usually impossible to say whether the victim’s hopelessness was simply a result of private fears or whether those fears had their origin in a specific magical act. And if the testimony concerning Roger Toothaker and his daughter may be taken at face value—and there is reason to believe it may—we have one case of murder by witchcraft—one case in which occult means were used to take a human life away. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Some people have become blasé to strange manifestations. When you consort with the occult, out-of-body experiences are like your daily bread and butter. We have special preparation for those who want their loved one’s memories restored. However, many do not use it, because they often find their beloved more charming without memories, and therefore without a clue as to what to scold about, at least for a while. Though Mrs. Sarah Winchester had a comfortable home, a home of a god as vast and resounding as the sea, and loving hearts around her, she wore a grave, melancholy look on her face. A disappointment! Yes, the old story of a lost love and new born baby is the reason for Mrs. Winchester’s looks. She had good offers often; but since she lost the love of her heart, she had never indulged in the happy dream of loving and being loved. The grave look, which was habitual with her, was a rare thing in her young and happy days, and passed over her face sometimes when she thought no one was looking. Before his death, Mr. Winchester had been persuaded to sit for his portrait. It was a fair likeness, but a very modern work of art. The background was so very dark, and Mr. Winchester’s naval costume was so deep in colour, that the face came out too white and staring. It was a three-quarter picture; but only one hand showed in it, gripping indisputably one of the most spectacular and historic of all Winchesters, number 14327. As George said, he looked much more like the commander of a Venetian galley than a modern mate. However, the picture pleased Mrs. Winchester. So the picture was duly framed—in a tremendously heavy frame, of Mr. Winchester’s ordering—and hung up in the dining-room. Mr. Winchester’s Father, Oliver, was a gunmaker, politician, clothing maker, and sailor by profession. He sailed the great and mysterious sea, and had been especially known as a good Arctic sailor, having share more than one expedition in search of the North Pole and the North-West Passage. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
It was no surprise when William Winchester wanted to go out for a voyage in search of his cousin Robert and his missing expedition. And now the time for William’s departure was growing nearer. The USS Jeannette was nearly ready to sail, and her crew only waited orders. The officers grew acquainted with each other before sailing, which was an advantage. Mr. Winchester took up very warmly with the commander, George W. De Long, and, with permission, brough him to dinner once or twice. Poor chap, he had no friends nearer than New York, and it is precious lonely work. So George came to dinner at the Winchester Estate in New Haven, Connecticut. However, Mrs. Winchester was not favourably impressed by him, and almost wished she had no consented to his invite. He was a tall, pale, fair young man, with a hard New York face and a cold, grey eye. There was something in his expression, too, that was unpleasant—something cruel or crafty, or both. It was in very bad taste for him to pay such marked attention to Mrs. Winchester, coming, as he did, as a friend of her husband. George kept by her constantly and anticipated Mr. Winchester in all the little attentions which a husband delights to pay. Mr. Winchester was a little put out about it, though he said nothing, attributing his friend’s offence to lack of breeding. Mrs. Winchester did not like it at all. She knew that she was not to have Mr. Winchester with her much longer, and she was anxious to have him to herself as much as possible. But as George was her husband’s friend, she bore the infliction with the best possible patience. The commander did not seem to perceive in the least that he was interfering where he had no business. He was quite self-possessed and happy, with one exception. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
The portrait of Mr. Winchester seemed to annoy George. He had uttered a little impatient exclamation when he first saw it which drew Mrs. Winchester’s attention to hi; and she noticed that he tried to avoid looking at it. At last, when dinner came, he was told to sit exactly facing the picture. He hesitated for an instant and then sat down, but almost immediately rose again. “It’s very childish and that sort of thing,” he stammered, “but I cannot sit opposite that picture. I know nothing about art, but it is one of those unpleasant pictures whose eyes follow you about the room. I have inherited horror of such pictures. My mother married against her father’s will, and when I was born she was so ill she was hardly expected to live. When she was sufficiently recovered to speak without delirious rambling she implored them to remove a picture of my grandfather that hung in the room, and which she vowed made threatening faces at her. It’s superstitious, but constitutional—I have a horror of such paintings!” I believe Mr. Winchester thought this a ruse of his friend’s to get a seat next to Mrs. Winchester; but it sure was not, for that was a real alarmed expression of his face. Before the ship departed, George has started visiting the Winchester’s more and more each day. He even went as far as to tell Mrs. Winchester that he loved her. He told her that a man could no more help falling in love than he could help taking a fever. Mrs. Winchester stood upon her dignity and rebuked him as if he was Satan; but he told her he could see no harm in telling her of his passion, though he knew it was a hopeless one. “A thousand things may happen,” he said at last, “to bring your marriage to Mr. Winchester to an end. Then perhaps you will not forget that another love you!” The butler was very angry, and was forthwith going to give him his opinion on his conduct, when Mrs. Winchester told him he was gone, that she had bade him go and had forbidden him the house. She had only told the butler in order to protect herself, for she did not intend to say anything to Mr. Winchester, for fear it should lead to a duel or some other violence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
That was the last Mrs. Winchester saw of George De Long before the Jeannette expedition. Mr. Winchester came the same evening, and was home until daybreak, when he had to tear himself away and join his ship. After shaking hugging Mrs. Winchester at the door, in the cold, grey, drizzly dawn, Mrs. Winchester went inside and started sobbing on the sofa. She could not help starting when she looked at Mr. Winchester’s portrait. The strange light of daybreak could hardly account for the extraordinary pallor of the face. The picture was covered with moisture, and he looked so pale. The Jeannette sailed. Mrs. Winchester received two letters from Mr. Winchester, which he had taken the opportunity of sending by homeward-bound whalers. In the second he said it was hardly likely he should have an opportunity of sending another, as they were sailing into high latitudes—into the solitary sea, to which none but expedition ships ever penetrated. They were all in high spirits, he said, for they had encountered very little ice and hoped to find clear water further north than usual. Moreover, he added, George had held a sinecure so far, for there had not been a single case of illness on board. Then came a long silence, and a year crept away very slowly for poor Mrs. Winchester. Once she heard of the expedition from the papers. They were reported as pushing on and progressing favourably by a wandering tribe of Esquimaux with whom the captain of a Russian vessel fell in. They had laid the ship up for the winter, and were taking the boats on sledges, and believed they had met with traces of the lost crews that seemed to show they were on the right track. The winter passed again, and spring came. It was a balmy, bright spring such as they got occasionally, even in the changeable and uncertain climate of theirs. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
One evening Mrs. Winchester was sitting in the dining-room with the window open, for, although she had long given up fires, the room was so oppressively warm that she was glad of the breath of the cool evening breeze. Mrs. Winchester was working. Though she never murmured, she was evidently pining at Mr. Winchester’s long absence. The butler was leaning out of the window, studying the evening effect on the fruit blossom, which was wonderfully early and plentiful, the season was so mild. Mrs. Winchester was sitting at the table, near the lamp, reading the paper. Suddenly there swept into the room a chill. It was not a gust of cold wind, for the curtain by the window did not swerve in the least. However, the deathly cold pervaded the room—came, and was gone in an instant. Mrs. Winchester shuddered with an intense icy feeling. She looked up, “How curiously cold it has got all in a minute,” she said. “We are having a taste of poor William’s Polar weather,” she said with a smile. At that moment, she instinctively glanced towards his portrait. When she saw struck her dumb. A rush of blood, at fever heart, dispelled the numbing influence of the chill breath that she seemed to freeze her. The lamp was lighted; but it was only that she might read with comfort, for the violet twilight was still so full of sunset that the room was not dark. However, as she looked at the picture, she saw it had undergone a strange change. She saw it as plainly as possible. It was no delusion, coined for the eye by the brain. In the place of Mr. Winchester’s head, a grinning skull! She started at it hard; but it was no tick of fancy. She could see the hollow orbits, the gleaming teeth, the fleshless cheekbones—it was the head of death! Without saying a word, she rose from her chair and walked straight up to the painting. As she drew nearer a sort of mist seemed to pass before it; and as she stood close to it, she saw only the face of Mr. Winchester. The spectral skull had vanished. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
“Poor William!” she said unconsciously. The butler Robert looked up. The tone of her voice had alarmed him, the expression on her face did not reassure him. “What do you mean? Have you heard anything, Mrs. Winchester? She came over to him, laying her hands on his arm, and looked into his face sadly. “No, my dear; how should I hear? Only I could not help thinking of the privation and discomfort he must have gone through. I was remaindered of it by the cold. “Cold!” said Robert, who had left the window by this time. “Cold! what on Earth are you talking about? Cold, such an evening as this! You must have had a touch of ague, I should think.” Mrs. Winchester felt it bitterly cold for a minute or two. “Did you not feel it, Robert?” “Not for a bit; and I was three parts out of the window I ought to have felt it if anyone did.” It was curious, but that strange chill ad been felt only in the room. It was not the night wind, but some supernatural breath connected with the dread apparition she has seen. It was, indeed, the chill of polar winter—the icy shadow of the frozen North. It was a hot evening and Mrs. Winchester seemed to have caught a violent cold, for she was shivering very much. Mrs. Winchester, felling unwell, had gone to bed. The next day Mrs. Winchester was well again, and did not mentioned the events of the preceding night. However, from that day on she was ever inwardly dreading the arrival of bad news. And at last, it came as expected. The newspaper said there had been a “Fatal Accident to one of the Officers of the USS Jeannette.” It stated that news had been received at Admiralty stating that the expedition had failed to find the missing crew, but had come upon some traces of them. Want of stores and necessaries had compelled them to turn back without following those traces up; but the commander was anxious, as soon as the ship could be refitted, to go out and take up the trail where he left it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
An unfortunate accident had deprived him of one of his most promising officers, Lieutenant Winchester, who was precipitated from an iceberg and killed while out shooting with the commander. He was beloved by all, and his death had flung a gloom over the gallant little troop of explorers. There stood Mrs. Winchester, with her face as pale as death, with her lips apart, and with a blind look about her eyes. The doctor was sent for, and restorative were promptly administered. Mrs. Winchester came to herself again, but lay dangerously ill for some weeks from the shock. It was about a month after she was well enough to come downstairs again. One afternoon shortly after, there came a loud knock at the front door. As Mrs. Winchester looked up at Mr. Winchester’s portrait, puzzling who could it be at the door, she would not figure out if she was dreaming or awake? One hand on the picture used to be resting on a shotgun, but now the forefinger was raised, as if in warning. She looked hard at the picture, to assure herself it was no fancy, and then she perceived, standing out bright and distinct on the pale face, two large drops, as if of blood. She walked up to it, expecting the appearance to vanish, as the skull had done. It did not vanish. It was surely blood. When the butler opened the door, George came in. He was greatly altered. He was thinner and paler than ever; hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked. He had acquired a strange stoop, too, and his eyes had lost the crafty look for a look of terror, like that of a haunted beast. He kept glancing sideways every instant, as if unconsciously. It looked as if he heard someone behind him. Mrs. Winchester never had liked that man. She told him of course she was glad to see him back, but that she could not ask him to continue to visit her. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Mrs. Winchester was glad to hear the particulars of poor William’s death. He related with reluctance, how they had gone out to shoot a white bear which they had seen on an iceberg stranded along the shore. The top of the berg was ridged like the roof of a house, sloping down on one side to the edge of a tremendous overhanging precipice. They had scrambled along the ridge in order to get nearer the game when Mr. Winchester incautiously ventured on the sloping side. The surface was as smooth and slippery as glass with oil on it. He tried to turn back, but slipped and fell. And then began a horrible scene. But his fate was sealed; and he could only tell George to bring his last farewell to his wife! He clung to the edge of the precipice instinctively for one second, and was gone. However, there was something always at George’s side, which none could see, but which cast a shadow. As they were talking, Mr. Winchesters portrait had fallen, and the corner of the heavy frame had struck him on the head, cutting it open, and rendering him insensible. The staff had carried him upstairs, by the direction of the doctor. He was laid down in the guest room. George was delirious. The doctor said it was a queer case; for, though the blow was a sever one, it was hardly enough to account for the symptoms of brain-fever. When he learnt that George had just retuned in the Jeannette from the North, he said it was possible that the privation and hardship had told on his constitution and sown the seeds of the malady. They sent for a nurse, who was to sit up with him, by the doctor’s directions. In the middle of the night, Mrs. Winchester was roused by a loud scream. She slipped on her slippers and bed coat, and rushed out to find the nurse, who explained the mystery to her. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
It appears that about midnight, George sat up in bed, and began to talk. And he said such terrible things that the nurse became alarmed. Nor was she much reassured when she became aware that the light of her single candle flung what seemed to be two shadows of the sick man on the wall. Terrified beyond measure, she saw George siting up in bed, gazing at the unseen figure to which the shadow belonged. Mrs. Winchester was now in the nurse’s company. In a voice that trembled with emotion, George begged the haunting spirit to leave him, and prayed for its forgiveness. “You know the crime was no premeditated. It was a sudden temptation of the devil that make me shoot you twice. It was the devil tempting me with the recollection of her exquisite face—of the tender love that might have been mine, but for you. Bu she will not listen to me. See, she turned away from me, as if she knew I was your murderer, William Winchester!” Mrs. Winchester was horrified to hear this awful confession. However, George had risen in his delirious terror, opened the window, and leaped out. Two days later his body was found in the river. In 1884, Mrs. Winchester left New Haven, Connecticut, and the graves of her husband and only child, moved to San Jose, California, and began the obsession that was to las for the rest of her life. She purchased an eighteen-room farmhouse outside the small agricultural town, and for the next 38 years, the sound of construction on Mrs. Winchester’s house never stopped. Mrs. Winchester hired carpenters to work around the clock building and rebuilding room after room, as the spirits—or her mood—directed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Some say the construction had actually started much earlier and went on for centuries, in fact. It is the cobwebs that finally tip some off; and the ancient dust on the cobwebs. Stretched out in this mansion is an entity—it is impossible to tell at a glance whether it is a man or a god, or perhaps something else. The entity seems to be of the masculine persuasion, is of medium height and has medium brown hair flecked with gray. The being sometimes sits on the couch in the parlor, opens his eyes, blinks rapidly several times, then vanishes. The Winchester house was furnished with the finest materials and was a showcase of Victorian elegance and taste. The homes of the gods are bigger, more beautiful, more awe-inspiring. However, no one can say with this is so, since any god can build a house of any size and get any interior decorator one wants. Some says the real architect was William Writ Winchester, reaching out from beyond the grave and building a wedding present for his wife. It just seems to be a quality of the major gods to have an air that is godlier than the less godly air of the minor gods. The house represents the spirit of something entirely new, a new principle, a new life, a new set of values. It gave Mrs. Winchester a feeling of gratitude for the unbending nature of things, which does not demand that we obsess constantly over what is to happen next, but merely put one foot in front of the other until something numinous takes place. Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: Lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor. Atte ye induynge of ye holy vestures. In the mystery of these vestures of the Holy Ones, I gird up my power in the girdles of righteousness and truth in the power of the Most High: Ancor: Amacor: Amides: Theodonias: Anitor: let be mighty power my power: let it endure for ever: in the power of Adonai, to whom the praise and the glory shall be; whose end cannot be. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Winchester Mystery House
Winchester Mystery House presents 30 Nights of All Hallows’ Eve – our all new Halloween event for Fall 2021! Tickets for All Hallows’ Eve offer multiple estate wide activities including the Lost in the House Tour – a paranormal investigation adventure and the family-friendly Jack O’ Lantern Trail. All Hallows’ Eve offers something for everyone on select nights starting September 10th.
👻 Frightening Lost in the House Tour
🎃 Family Friendly Lighted Displays on the Jack O’ Lantern Trail
🍿 Fall themed food & drinks
🏠 Lost in the House Projection Show using the front of the mansion as a canvas!
and more! https://www.instagram.com/p/CR6y_fFN78M/
For more information and for tickets:
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
O Wicked Wit and Gifts that Have the Power So to Seduce!
I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange story. Almost all humans are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a lister’s internal life, and might be suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller who should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a devil, would have no fear mentioning it; but the same traveller having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate considerably before one would own to it. To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences of these subjective things, as we do our experiences of objective creation. The consequences is, that the general stock of experiences in this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in respect of being miserably imperfect. The Devil had been raised among us, and his rage was vehement and terrible; and, when he shall be silenced, the Lord only knows. It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain Murder was committed in Boston in 1688, which attracted great attention. We hear more than enough of Murders as they rise in succession to their atrocious eminence, and if I could, I would bury the memory this this atrocious eminence, as hi body was buried, in the Witch House’s basement. When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell—or I ought rather to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicious fell—on the man who was afterwards brought to trial. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
As no reference was at the time made to him in the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any description of him at that time have been given in the newspapers. It is essential that this fact be remembered. Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of that first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read it with close attention. I read it twice, if not three times. The discovery had been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a flash—rush—flow—I do not know what to call it—no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive—in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river. Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so clear that I distinctly, and with a sense of relief observed the absence of the dead body from the bed. As the circumstances of the Murder, gradually unravelling, took stronger and stronger posses of the public mind, I kept them away from mine, by knowing as little about them as was possible in the midst of the universal excitement. John Hathorne asked most of the questions and established the judicial attitude that was to prevail throughout most of the examinations and the trials. Many people suspected that the devil killed this man and he had been summoned by Sarah Good because she had also been accused of bewitching a few girls in the town. Mr. Hathorne asked the children to look at Sarah God and say whether she was one who afflicted them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
They accused her to her face, “upon which they were all dreadfully tortured and tormented for a short space of time.” When they recovered from their fits, they charged her with causing them, saying that her specter had come and tormented them although her body remained “at a considerable distance from them.” This was spectral evidence, that is, evidence concerning a specter or apparition of the accused, rather than her bodily person. It was eventually to become the central legal issue of the trials, but at the moment we need only see why it seemed initially so convincing to the examining magistrates. Here were girls afflicted with violent physical symptoms which had no known physical cause, but which a physician had attributed to witchcraft. There was a malicious old woman accused of causing them. When the sufferers accused her they were immediately thrown into convulsions. What could be more plausible than that the convulsions were inflicted as revenge for the accusation? Yet such behaviour was still unfamiliar enough in Salem so that one of the recorders noted that “none here see the [specters of the] witches but the afflicted and themselves.” However, the change was so startling that I fully believed the girls derived their impression in some occult manner. For instance, we knew there was something occult going on because the throat of the murdered man had been cut straight across. In the opening speech for the defense, it was suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat in the dreadful condition referred to. Yet, it would have been impossible for such a wound to be self-inflicted by either hand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Certainly, Mr. Hathorne was convinced; when the children had recovered and repeated their accusation he turned to the accused woman. “Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do you not tell us the truth? Why do you this torment these people children?” Certainly many of her neighbours though her malicious, since they attributed to her a number of inexplicable events, including the death of a cow which perished in a “sudden, terrible and strange unusual manner.” Such testimony was common in witchcraft cases, and it has caused much unseemly hilarity among the modern historians. It is likely, they have asked, that His Satanic Majesty the Devil or any of his minions would stop to concern themselves with the fate of a New England cow? The answer is that nothing is more likely. What else would a fertility god concern himself with but the health or sickness of crops, of animals, and of humans? From the standpoint of a society that still remembered who the Devil was, no testimony could be more relevant. As a matter of fact, the village witches who still exist in rural England are often expert in folk medicines, human and animal, as well as charms, and until recently many of them were midwives. Sarah Osburn also denied that she had hurt anyone, but the girls feel again into fits. Mr. Hathorne asked her how this happened. Perhaps, she said, the Devil went about in her likeness doing harm, but she knew nothing about it. Sarah Osburn was the first at Salem to assert the principle that the Devil can impersonate an innocent person. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Whether the devil could or not was a matter of debate in the seventeenth century, but most Protestant authorities agreed with Goodwife Obsurn that, as Hamlet put it, “The Devil hath power/ to assume a pleasing shape.” However, the principle was not discussed at this hearing, since Sarah Osburn was a likely a suspect as Sarah Good, if for no other reason than her lying. Lying was still considered a serious sin in the seventeenth century, and a crime as well, legally punishable by the courts. Nine of us had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I believed, had any one in Court. When Mr. Hathorne tried to find out how well Sarah Osburn knew Sarah Good she said she did not know her by name. Mr. Hathorne asked if Sarah Osburn had been tempted by the devil, and she said no. Why then, he asked, had not she been at church? She had been sick, she said, and unable to go. However, her husband and others contradicted her. “She had not been at meeting,” they said, “this year and two months.” To understand why the matter of church attendance was considered so significant one must remember that the seventeenth century saw witchcraft as literal Devil worship, and therefore as a rival religion to Christianity. This is why the magistrates sometimes asked accused persons, as they asked Sarah Good, what God they served. And if the accused person avoided speaking the name of God (as Sarah Good did), they had reason to think it a suspicious circumstance. The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the judge, on the other side of the court. He slowly shook a great grey veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time, over his head and whole form. Then he collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The examinations of Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn afford grounds for suspicion and for further examination. However, the major event of that first day of March was the examination of Tituba. It began like the others, but it changed very quickly: “Tituba, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?” “None.” “Why do you hurt these children?” “I do not hurt them.” “Who is it then?” “The Devil, for aught I know.” “Did you never see the Devil?” “The Devil,” said Tituba, “came to me and bid me serve him.” She went on, with a minimum of judicia prodding, to provide a detailed confession of witchcraft, the first of approximately fifty that were made during the Salem trials. On March first and second, in her examination, Tituba said that the Devil had come to her in the shape of a man—a tall man in black, with white hair. Other times he had come in the shape of an animal. He had told her he was God, that she must believe him and serve him six years, and he would give her many fine things. He had shown her a book and she had made a mark in it, a mark that was “red like blood.” Many people thought this to be a revelation. “Then I saw another beast, coming out of the Earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to comedown from Heaven to Earth in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“He ordered them to set up an image in honour of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless one had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name,” reports Revelation 13.11-17. Sarah Osburn was to die there on the tenth of May. Tituba, like later confessors, was never brought to trial. She lay in jail until she was sold to pay the jailer’s fees, her master refusing to pay them. Sarah Good was brought to trial. Another reaction to Tituba’s confession was to confirm the community in its fear of witchcraft, and particularly its fear of the three accused women. The night of March First William Allen and John Hughes heard a strange noise; it continued frightening them, but the approached and “saw a strange and unusual beast lying on the ground. Going up to it, the said beast vanished away and in the said place started up two or three women fled, not after the manner of other women but swiftly vanished out of sight, which women we took to be Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and Tituba.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The next night William Allen again had hallucinations: “Sarah Good visibly appeared to him in his chamber, said Allen being in bed, and brought an unusual light with her. The said Sarah came and sat upon his foot. The said Allen went to kick at her, upon which she vanished and the light with her.” Notice that in this hallucination as in many others the hallucination stops as soon as the subject is able to move or speak. A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular, “curse” may refer to such a wish or pronouncement made effective by a supernatural or spiritual power, such as a god, or gods, a spirit, or natural force, or else as a kind of spell by magic or witchcraft. The Winchester rifle is a handsome gun that legend has it was forged in Hell. Whoever possesses the cursed rife either suffers disaster or fortune. Oliver Fisher Winchester was an American businessman and politician, best known as being the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Oliver Winchester was born November 30, 1810 and dead December 10, 1880. Oliver Winchester was known for manufacturing and marketing the Winchester repeating rifle, which was a much re-designed descendant of the Volcanic rifle of some years earlier. Mr. Winchester was more learned than his kind in the mysteries of a deep and thrilling lore of peculiar fascination. He was a man highly honoured for his natural gifts and knowledge of learned books which nobody else could read, that was when he took his second orders the bishop gave him a mantle of scarlet silk to wear upon his shoulders in which, and his lordship had put such power into it that, when the parson has it rightly on, he could govern any ghost or evil spirit, and even stop an Earthquake. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Such a powerful man, in combat with supernatural visitations discovered that a division of Smith & Wesson firearms was failing financially with one of their newly patented arms. Having an eye for opportunity, Mr. Winchester assembled venture capital together with other stockholders and acquired the Smith & Wesson division, better known as the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, in 1855. By 1857, Mr. Winchester had positioned himself as the principle stockholder in the company and relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, and changed the name to New Haven Arms Company. After experiencing a slow start, and then a booming success with the Henry rifle, the company reorganized once again and the first Winchester rifle was the Model 1866, which had been nicknamed the Yellow Boy. The gun was called Yellow Boy because it should be remembered that, howsoever strange and singular it may sound to us that a mere lad should formally solicit such a performance at his own hands. Gradually Mr. Winchester amassed a considerable fortune. When Mr. Oliver Winchester died on December 10, 1880, his ownership in the company passed to his son, William Wirt Winchester (who married Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1862), and died March 7 1881 at the young age of 43. The couple has also had a child, Annie Pardee Winchester, born June 15, 1866, and died 6 weeks later on July 25, 1866. Mrs. Winchester was deeply troubled by the loss of her daughter. In the course of her daily walk, she had to pass a certain heath or down where the road wound along through tall blocks of granite with open spaces of grassy sward between them. #RandpolphHarris 9 of 13
There in a certain spot, and always in the same place, she declared that she encountered, every day, a baby with a pale and troubled face, clothed in a little dress of white pique, made with two skirts. The pique was cut slightly Gabriele, and rounded off in the front with scallops, bound with white braid, with a button in each scallop, and ribbon-sash, tied at the left side, with one hand always stretched forth, and the other pressed against her side. “She is my baby,” Mrs. Winchester would say, and she often used to come to her parents house in New Haven; but that which troubled her was, that she had now been dead three years, and she had seen her body laid in the grave at her burial, this that she saw every day must needs be her soul or ghost. The hair of the appearance, sayth Mrs. Winchester, is not like anything alive, but it is so soft and light that it seemth to melt away while you look; but her eyes are set, and never blink—no, not when the sun shineth full upon her face. She maketh no steps, but seemth to swim along the top of the grass; and her hand, which is stretched out alway, seemth to point to something far away, out of sight. It is her continual coming; for she never failth to meet Mrs. Winchester, and to pass on, that hath quenched her spirits; and although she never seeth her by night, yet cannot she get her natural rest. Mrs. Winchester went to see a doctor who told her, “The case is strange but by no means impossible. It is one that I will study, and fear not to handle, if you will be free with me, and fulfill all that I desire.” Mrs. Winchester was overjoyed, but she perceived that the doctor turned pale, and was downcast with some thought which, however, he did not express. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The doctor knew that this might be a doemonium meridianum, the most stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any human can meet, and the most perilous withal. He made an appointment to go with Mrs. Winchester to the spot where she had these encounters. They had hardly reached the accustomed spot, when they both saw her at once gliding towards them; punctually as the ancient writers describe their “lemures, which swoon along the ground, neither marking the sand nor bending the herbage.” The aspect of the baby girl was exactly that which had been related by Mrs. Winchester. There was a pale and stony face, the strange misty hair, the eyes firm and fixed, that gazed, yet not on them, but on something that they saw far, far away; one hand and arm stretched out, and the other grasping the girdle of her waist. She floated along the field like upon a stream, and glided past the spot where they stood, pausingly. But so deep was the awe that came over the doctor, as he stood there in the light of day, face to face with a human soul separate from her bones and flesh, that his heart and purpose both failed him. He had resolved to speak to the spectre in the appointed form of words, but he did not. He stood like one amazed and speechless, until she had passed clean of out sight. When they returned to the house, and after he had said all he could to pacify Mrs. Winchester, he took leave for that time, with a promise that when he had fulfilled certain business elsewhere, when then he alleged, he would return and take orders to assuage these disturbances and their cause. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
The doctor later told Mrs. Winchester that he thought it was best that they try an exorcism, but his Church, as is well known, hath abjured certain branches of her ancient powers, on grounds of perversion and abuse. So he referred her to a medium. The medium told Mrs. Winchesters, “There is a danger from the demons, but so there is in the surrounding air every day.” There was a kind of trouble in the air, a soft rippling sound, and all at once the shape appeared, and came towards the medium gradually. She opened her parchment scroll, and read aloud the command. The spirit paused, and seemed to waver and doubt; stood still; then she rehearsed the sentence again, sounding out every syllable like a chant. The spirit then swam into the midst of the circle, and there stood still, suddenly. Her knees shook under her, and the drops of sweat ran down her flesh like rain. But, although face to face with the spirit, the medium’s heart grew calm, and her mind was composed. The spirit then commanded Mrs. Winchester to move West and build a mansion in honour of the spirit killed by the Winchester rifle and “as long as the hammer keep pounding, her heart would continue to beat.” The medium dismissed the troubled ghost, until she peacefully withdrew, gliding towards the west. Mrs. Winchester moved to San Jose, which was near her family Member, Enoch Pardee, an occultist, prominent physician, free mason, and Mayor of Oakland, California USA, had built his family’s mansion in 1868, which is now known as the Pardee House Museum. Masonry has influenced more the modern witchcraft; it has influenced dozens of occult orders. Mrs. Winchester bought a farm house and built a massive mansion. There was something very painful and peculiar in the position of the Winchester mansion through the nineteenth century. The estate in those days was in a transitory state, and Mrs. Winchester, like her formularies, embodied a strange mixture of the old belief with the new interpretation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
However, the mansion is now flanked by a pleasantness, a beautiful garden and lawn, and it is surrounded by a sole grove of palm trees. It has also the aspect of age and of solitude, and looks the very scene of harmony and supernatural events. A legend might well belong to every beautiful glade of grass around, and there must surely be a haunted room somewhere within its walls. The incredible mansion, scenery of the legend still survives, and, like the field of the forty footsteps in another history, the place is still visited by those who take interests in the supernatural tales of old and new. Freemasons supposedly conducted a séance in the mansion in August of 2019. A phantom made an answer willingly. It stated, “before the next Yule-tide, a fearful pestilence will lay waste the land, and myriads of souls will be loosened from the flesh, until our valleys will be full.” The general facts stated in this diary are to these matters of belief accounted a strong proof of the veracity of the Ghost that the plague, fatal to so many millions, did break out in the global village at the close of the year. How sorely must the infidels and heretics of this generation be dismayed when they know that this Black Death, which is now swallowing its thousands in the streets of the great city, was foretold several months before the outbreak, under the séance of a freemason, by a visible and suppliant ghost! And what pleasure and improvements do such deny themselves who scorn and avoid all opportunity of intercourse with souls separate, and the spirits, glad and sorrowful, which inhabit the unseen World! May they who observe the Sabbath and call it a delight, rejoice in Thy Kingdom. May the people who sanctify the seventh day be sated and delighted with Thy bounty. For Thou didst find pleasure in the seventh day, and didst sanctify it, calling it the most desirable of the days, in remembrance of creation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Today is the return of our guided Mansion Tour! The tour guide-led experience allows guests to access areas of the mansion that have been closed since March 2020. Click the link in our bio for more information. winchestermysteryhouse.com/recent-links
The Source of those Accusations Was a Committee of Demons Who Had Infested Her!
The infinite power of God to create is far beyond what we can grasp or understand. If the Almighty devoted so much of His Word to prophecy, it certainly benefits every believer to study it. The study of the prophetic scriptures and their fulfillment attests to the authority of the Word of God. Every soul has cost an infinite price, and how terrible is the sin of turning one soul away from Christ, so that for Him the Saviour’s love and humiliation and agony shall have been in vain. Contrary to popular opinion, New England’s record in regard to witchcraft is surprisingly good, as Governor Thomas Hutchinson pointed out in 1750: “more having been put to death in a single country in England from the first settlement until the present time.” Through most of the seventeenth century the record is really astonishing. While Europe hanged and burned literally thousands, executions in New England were few and far between. (Witches were burned on the Continent and in Scotland, where witchcraft was a heresy, but hanged in England and in New England, where it was a felony. Burning a witch seems not to have been motivated by the wish to inflict a particularly painful death; Scottish witches, for instance, were first garroted by the executioner, who then proceeded to burn the corpse and scatter its ashes. Most probably, burning was an attempt to prevent the resurrection of the body.) There are some fascinating accounts in New England that deal with cases of witchcraft before 1692, and we shall look at a few of these for they will illuminate some interesting aspects of the Salem witch trials. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The first is that of Mrs. Anne Hibbins. Her husband, who died in 1654, had been a man of importance: Boston merchant, a Colonial Agent, and for several years one of the Assistants. Tradition has it that she was a sister of Governor Bellingham. She was apparently quarrelsome—quarrelsome enough so that her church censured her for it—and one quarrel was her undoing. She seems to have come upon two of her neighbours talking, to have told them she knew they were talking about her, and then to have reconstructed their conversation with enough fidelity to convince the she was possessed of “preternatural” knowledge (something Mrs. Sarah Winchester used to also have the ability to do, and a reason she dismissed so many staff members for gossiping). Nonetheless, Mrs. Hibbins was brought to trail in 1655, and the jury brought her in guilty. However, the presiding magistrates refused to accept the verdict, apparently believing her innocent, and their refusal automatically threw the case into the General Court. There again she was found guilty; the governor pronounced the required sentence of death; and in 1656 she was executed. We have seen that some of the magistrates were not satisfied of her guilt, and apparently the same were true of some of the clergy. To masses of people, death was a dread mystery; beyond was uncertainty and gloom. These people were seeking for truth, and to learn them the Spirit of Inspiration was imparted. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
A surviving letter tells us that the Reverend John Norton “once said at his own table” before the Reverend John Wilson and others that Mistress Hibbins “was hanged for a witch only for having more with than her neighbours. It was his very expression; she having, as he explained it, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her—which cost her her life, not withstanding all he could do to the contrary, as he himself told us.” The Hibbins case shows how slender and how circumstantial were the grounds necessary to bring an accusation of witchcraft against anyone with a reputation for malice. It also shows that the popular elements in society (the jury, and the people’s representatives in the General Court) were far more ready to believe in witchcraft than the leaders of society (the magistrates and ministers.) This latter conclusion is reinforced by the fact that before 1692 there were far more acquittals than convictions in New England; there were more people willing to charge their neighbours with witchcraft than magistrates willing to convict them. A case which took place in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1662 is known in rather more detail than that of Mrs. Hibbins. Anne Cole, “a person esteemed pious,” was taken with “strange fits.” As with the Salem girls, the fits were both violent and public. Extremely violent bodily motions she many times had, even to the hazard of her life in the apprehensions of those that saw them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
And very often great disturbances was given in the public worship of God by her and two other women who had also strange fits. Once in especial, on a day of prayer kept on that account, the motion and noised of the afflicted was so terrible that a godly person fainted under the appearance of it. In some of her fits strange voices came from her, voices that were clearly not her own. Such voices are now known to be a consequence of multiple personality, which is the extreme form of the hysterical fugue. However, the seventeenth-century observers of Anne Cole judged them to be the voices of demons who had entered into her, and that judgment was sensible enough in view of the fact that the voices seemed to be plotting ways in which Anne Cole might be further afflicted. Eventually, seeming to realize that they were being overheard, one of the voices announced, “‘Let us confound her language, [that] she may tell no more tales.’” For some time nothing came from her but “unintelligible mutterings”; then the conversation resumed in a Dutch accent, and this time names were mentioned, names of the witches who were responsible for these afflictions. When Anne Cole was out of her fits, she “knew nothing of those things that were spoken by her” during them, but she was understandably distressed to find she had been speaking things which, to the best of her knowledge, had never been in her mind; it was a “matter of great affliction to her.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
It must have been afflicting to the local magistrates as well; they now had accusations of witchcraft against several persons, but the source of these accusations was not Anne Cole; it was a committee of demons who had infested her. The magistrates investigated further, and imprisoned some (and perhaps all) of the accused on suspicion of witchcraft One of these, a “lewd, ignorant, considerably aged woman” named Rebecca Greensmith sent for the two clergymen who has taken down in writing the demonic conversation issuing from the mouth of Anne Cole. She had the transcript read to er, and then “forthwith and freely confessed those things to be true,” confirming the statement of the voiced “that she (and other persons named in the discourse) had familiarity with the Devil.” She confessed to a number of other things as well, including “that the Devil has frequent use of her body with much seeming (but indeed horrible, hellish) delight to her.” Reports of copulation with demons (including the unpleasantness of the experience) are common in the literature of Continental witchcraft, but this is one of the few known cases in New England. What is involved is apparently an erotic fit in which the woman actually goes through the motions of copulation and achieves a climax; similar fits have been observed in mental patients in the twenty-first century. Thus it appears that in the case of Anne Cole the confessor as well as the afflicted person was an hysteric. This pattern we shall see again at Salem. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Rebecca Greensmith was hanged in 1663. So was her husband Nathaniel, although we do not know the grounds for his conviction; according to Increase Mather he did not confess. “Most” of the other persons accused by the demonic voices “made their escape into another part of the country.” What happened to the others we do not know, but they were apparently not executed. And since at least one of those who made her escape had at first been imprisoned in suspicion of witchcraft (Judith Varlet, a relative of Governor Peter Stuyvesant of New York), it can be assumed that the authorities were reluctant to press the matter further. The evidence they had was, after all, highly suspect, coming from demonic voices on the one hand and a confessed witch on the other. (Confessors are a group of women with the power to make anyone they touch love them. This love, however, is more aptly described as a soul-destroying obsession whose objective is pleasing the Confessor in any way possible. Confessors were created by warlocks to travel Medieval lands and act as law enforcers. The Confessors could possess anyone and make them tell the truth in great detail. There were also a few male Confessors, but they became megalomanics and plunged the entire World into a dark age. As a result, after all the male Confessors were defeated and wiped out, the warlocks and female Confessors took up the tradition of killing all male Confessors shortly after birth.) In any event, after the “execution of some and escape of others” Anne Cole’s fits ceased, and did not return. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Twenty years later, in 1682, the Reverend John Whiting reported that “she yet remains maintaining her integrity.” This together with what the voices said, suggests that Anne Cole’s fits probably were caused by her fear of witchcraft and cured by the removal of the fear. A few other cases are remarkable for a number of reasons, one of them being the exemplary thoroughness with which the symptoms of the affiliated persons are described, which makes it possible to say without question that these were pathological cases of hysteria. The first took place in Groton, Massachusetts, in 1671-1671 and was recorded by the Reverend Samuel Willard, then minister of Groton (during the Salem trials he was a member of the Boston Clergy). On 30 October 1671, Elizabeth Knapp began to behave strangely: “In the evening, a little before she went to bed, sitting by the fire she cried out, ‘Oh! My legs!’ and clapped her hands on them; immediately, ‘Oh! My breast!’ and removed her hands thither; and forthwith, ‘Oh! I am strangled’ and put her hands on her throat.” The similarity to Janet’s twentieth-century description of the onset of a typical hysterical fit is unmistakable; it starts, he writes “with a pain or a strange sensation situated at such or such a point of the body…[It] often begins in the lower part of the abdomen [and] seems to ascend and to spread to other organs. For instance, it very often spreads to the epigastrium, to the breast, then to the throat. There it assumes rather an interesting form, which was for a very long time considered as quite characteristic of hysteria. The patient has the sensation of too big an object, as it were, a ball, rising in her throat and choking her.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The chocking sensation we shall find over and over again; it is the bolus hystericus and is related to the “lump in the throat” felt by normal people in moments of extreme stress. The normal person, like the hysteric, tries to relieve it by swallowing; this is why the comic-strip artist has one’s characters say “Gulp” when they are in trouble. The choking sensations in the throat was followed by “fits in which she was violent in bodily motions, leapings, strainings and strange agitations, scarce to be held in bound by the strength of three or four; violent also in roarings and screamings.” The fits continued until 15 January 1692, the date of Willard’s writings. Several of the details he recorded are worth noting. On 15 November, “her tongue was for many hours together drawn into a semicircle up to the roof of her mouth, and not to be removed, for some tried with the fingers to do it.” On 17 December her tongue was drawn “out of her mouth most frightfully, to an extraordinary length and greatness.” Devils appeared to her, and witches; “Oh,” she cried to one of them, “you are a rouge.” On 29 November she had a particularly grotesque hallucination, when she believed a witch in the shape of a dog with a woman’s head was strangling her. The hallucinations and the woman’s sufferings were terrifyingly convincing; Willard noted that when she thought the witch was strangling her, “she did often times seem to our apprehension as of she would forthwith be strangled.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Elizabeth Knapp’s case is strikingly similar to that of Ler—one of the best-known cases of J.-M. Charcot, the nineteenth-century psychologist. Her fits, he wrote, “are characterized in the first stage by epileptiform and tetaniform convulsions; after this come great gesticulations of a voluntary character, in which the patient, assuming the most frightful postures, reminds one of the attitudes which history assigns to the demoniacs…At this stage of the attack, se is a prey to delirium, and raves evidently of the events which seem to have determined her first seizures. She hurls furious invectives against imaginary individuals, crying out, “villains! robbers! brigands! fire! fire! O, the dogs! I’m bitten!”—Reminiscences, doubtless, of the emotions experienced in her youth.” When the convulsive portion of Ler—’s attack was over other symptoms usually followed, including “hallucination of vision: the patient beholds horrible animals, skeletons, and specters” and “lastly, a more or less marked permanent contracture of the tongue.” Charcot drew this contracture of the tongue; it is quite appalling. Willard was not exaggerating in calling it frightful. Elizabeth Knapp displayed still other symptoms are identifiably hysterical, including loss of speech on some occasions, and on others speaking in voices other than her own; once “she barked like a dog, and bleated like a calf.” Willard noted that her fits did not seem to do her any permanent physical damage: “She hath no ways in body or strength by all these fits, though so dreadful, but gathered flesh exceedingly, and hath her natural strength when her fits are off, for the most part.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
This is typical; as Janet remarks, the “hysteric patient, after howling for several hours, feels rather comfortable; she experiences, as it were, a relaxation, and declares she is out of her fits has often raised the question of whether they are genuine. Willard thought they must be, if only for their violence: “such a strength is beyond the force of dissimulation.” (It should be noted that hysterics are not always well in the intervals between their fits. Some, for instance, lose their appetites and starve themselves. It is probably such cases who are referred to in the statue of James I against witchcraft as being “wasted, consumed, pined.) On 1 November, Elizabeth Knapp named one of her neighbour as the probable cause of her afflictions. The accused woman was sent for, and entered the house while the afflicted girl was in a fit. Her eyes were closed, as they usually were in her fits, yet she could distinguish this neighbour’s touch from all others, “though no voice was uttered.” That would have been quite enough to convict the neighbour in many witchcraft cases. However, fortunately she was permitted to pray with the afflicted girl, and at the conclusions Miss Knapp “confessed that she believed Satan had deluded her.” Willian was happy that “God was pleased to vindicate the case and justify the innocent,” and reported that Miss Knapp never again complained of any “apparition or disturbance from this neighbour.” Instead, she turned to accusing the Devil, who had, she said, been offering her a covenant for several years, a covenant she had frequently been tempted to sign. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The dark shadow that Satan has cast over the World grew deeper and deeper. About a month later Miss Knapp accused another person of witchcraft, this time during a period of hallucinations. Her father brought the woman to the house, and Willard, who had been asked to be present, noted that her fit became particularly violent when this woman entered. However, Willard, wrote, “we made nothing of it” since her fits had been as violent on other occasions. Instead they inquired carefully into the mater and found “two evident and clear mistakes” in the accusation. This was enough to exonerate the second accused woman. Satan had implanted this principle. Wherever it was held, people had no barrier against sin. Elizabeth Knapp was still having fits when Willard wrote about her, and all he could be certain of was that “she is an object of pity.” He did not think she was bewitched, but he did believe she was possessed (that is, that Devils has entered into her). This remained his opinion (and that of most others) when the case was remembered in 1692. He also believed that the girl’s terrible afflictions provided an occasion for the community to examine its collective conscience. Therefore he admonished his congregation in a sermon, “Let us all examine by this Providence [id est, this event] what sins they have been, that have given Satan so much footing in this poor place.” Satan was seeking to shut out from humans a knowledge of God, to turn their attention from the temple of God, and to establish His own kingdom. His strife for supremacy had seemed to be almost wholly successful. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
They robbed God of His glory, and defrauded the World by a counterfeit of the gospel. They had refused to surrender themselves to God for the salvation of the World, and they became agents of Satan for its destruction. They were doing the work Satan designed them to do, taking a course to misrepresent the character of God, and cause the World to look upon Him as a tyrant. The convulsive fits which played so prominent a part in most witchcraft cases, and continued to be one of the most common symptoms of hysteria through the earl years of the twentieth century, have no become relatively rare in Western civilization. D.W. Abse reports fits occurred in only six out of one hundred and sixty-one cases of hysteria treated at a British military hospital during World War II, but that they were the most common symptom among Indian Army hysterics treated at Delhi during the same period. There are a number of possible explanations for this curious fact. Hysterics are notoriously suggestible, so the change may be ascribable to nothing more than the refusal of our culture to give the hysterical fit the respectful and awed attention it used to command. In any case, it seems clear that abnormal behaviour varies with time and place just as normal behaviour does. However, since this particular variation occurred so recently, after the classic studies of hysteria had been completed, it is possible to identify the seventeenth-century Massachusetts fits for what they were. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Mr. William Wirt Winchester, while we were attending lectures, purchased three or four old houses in California, one of which was unoccupied. He resided in the country, and he proposed that he wanted his wife and myself to take up our abode in the untenanted house, so long as it should continue unlet; a move which we would accomplish the double end of settling us nearer alike to our lecture-rooms and to our amusements, and of relieving us from the weekly charge of rent for our lodgings. Our furniture was very scant—our whole equipage remarkably modest and primitive; and in short, our arrangements pretty nearly as simple as those of a bivouac. Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s new plan was, therefore, executed almost as soon as conceived. The front drawing-room was our sitting-room. I had the bedroom over it, and Mrs. Winchester had the back bedroom on the same floor, which nothing could have induced me to occupy. The house to begin with was an incomplete, three-story farm house with a basement. It was very old. Dated back to the sixteenth century, I believe. It had nothing modern about it. The agent who looked into the property titles for Mrs. Winchester told her it was originally sold, along with much other forfeited property in 1702; and it had belonged to John Conduit, whose wife was the niece of Sir Isaac Newton, a father of modern science, although keenly interested in the occult. How old it was then, I cannot say; but, at all events, in had seen years and changes enough to have contracted all the mysterious and saddened air, at once exciting and depressing, which belongs to most old mansions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
There had been very little done in the way of modernizing details and, perhaps, it was better so; for there was something queer and by-gone in the very walls and ceilings—in the shape of doors and windows—in the odd diagonal site of the chimney-pieces—in the beams and ponderous cornices—not to mention the singular solidity of all the woodwork, from the bannisters to the window-frames, which hopelessly defined disguise, and would have emphatically proclaimed their antiquity through any conceivable amount of modern finery and varnish. An effort had, indeed, been made, to the extent of papering the drawing-rooms; but somehow, the paper looked raw and out of keeping. This woman said, old Judge Sir James Hales (who, having earned the reputation of a particularly ‘hanging judge’, ended by hanging himself, as the corner’s jury found, under an impulse of ‘temporary insanity’, with a child’s skipping-rope, over the massive old bannisters) resided there, entertaining good company, with fine venison and rare old port. In those halcyon days, the drawing-rooms were hung with gilded leather, and, I dare say, cut a good figure, for they were really spacious rooms. The bedrooms were wainscoted, but the front one was not gloomy; and in it the cosiness of antiquity quite overcame its somber associations. However, the back bedrooms, with its two queerly-placed melancholy windows, staring vacantly at the foot of the bed, and with the shadowy recess to be found in most old houses in Dublin, like a large ghostly closet, which, from congeniality of temperament, had amalgamated with the bedchamber, and dissolved the partition. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
At the night-time, this “alcove”—as our “maid” was wont to call it—had, in my eyes, a specially sinister and suggestive character. Mrs. Winchester’s distant and solitary candle glimmered vainly into its darkness. There it was always overlooking her—always itself impenetrable. However, this was only part of the effect. The whole room was, I cannot tell, how repulsive to me. There was, I supposed, in its proportions and features, a latent discord—a certain mysterious and indiscernible relation, which jarred indistinctly upon some secret sense of the fitting and the safe, and raised indefinable suspicious and apprehensions of the imagination. On the whole, as I began saying, nothing could have induced me to pass a night alone in it. We have not been very long in occupation of our respective chambers, when I began to complain of uneasy nights and disturbed sleep. I was, I suppose, the more impatient under this annoyance, as I was usually a sound sleeper, and by no means prone to nightmares. It was not, however, my destiny, instead of enjoying my customary repose, every night to “sup full of horrors.” After a preliminary course of disagreeable and frightful dreams, my troubles took a definite form, and the same vision, without an appreciable variation in a single detail, visited me at least (on average) every second night of the week. Now, this dream, nightmare, or infernal illusion—which you please—of which I was the miserable port, was on this wise: I saw, or thought I saw, with the most abominable distinctness although at the time in profound darkness, every article of furniture and accidental arrangement of the chamber in which I lay. This, as you know, is incidental to ordinary nightmare. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Well, while in this clairvoyant condition, which seemed but the lighting up of the theatre in which was to be exhibited the monotonous tableau of horror, which made my nights insupportable, my attention invariably became, I know not why, fixed upon the windows opposite the foot of my bed; and, uniformly with the same effect, a sense of dreadful anticipation always took slow but sure possession of me. I became somehow conscious of a sort of horrid but undefined preparation going forward in some unknown quarter, and by some unknown agency, for my torment; and, after an interval, which always seemed to me of the same length, a picture suddenly flew up the window, where it remained fixed, as if by an electrical attraction, and my discipline of horror then commenced, to last perhaps for hours. The picture this mysteriously glued to the window-panes, was the portrait of an old man, in crimson flowered silk dressing-gown, the folds of which I could now describe, with countenance embodying a strange mixture of intellect, sensuality, and power, but withal sinister and full of malignant omen. His nose was hooked, like the beak of a vulture; his eyes large, grey, and prominent and lighted up with a more than mortal cruelty and coldness. The features were surmounted by a crimson velvet cap, the hair that peeped from under which was white with age, while the eyebrows retained their original blackness. Well I remember every line, hue, and shadow of that stony countenance, and well I may! The gaze of this hellish visage was fixed upon me, and mine returned it with the inexplicable fascination of nightmare, for what appeared to me to be hours of agony. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
At last—the cock he crew, away then flew, the fiend who had enslaved me through the awful watches of the night and, harassed and nervous, I rose to the duties of the day. I had—I cannot say exactly why, but it may have been from the exquisite anguish and profound impressions of unearthly horror, with which this strange phantasmagoria was associated—an insurmountable antipathy to describing the exact nature of my nightly troubles to Mrs. Winchester. Generally, however, I told her I was haunted by abominable dreams; and, true to the imputed materialism of medicine, we put our heads together to dispel my horrors, not by exorcism, but by a tonic Vin Mariani. However, the evil spirit, who enthralled my senses in the shape of that portrait, may have been just as near me, just as energetic, just as malignant, though I saw him not. Everybody knows how contagious is fear of all sort, but more especially that particular kind of fear under which poor Mrs. Winchester was at that moment labouring. I would not have heard, nor I believe would she have recapitulated, just at that moment, for half the World, the details of the hideous vision which had so unmanned her. “I was sitting in my room,” said Mrs. Winchester “by my fireplace, the door locked when I heard a step on the flight of stairs descending from the attics. It was two o’ clock, and the streets were as silent as a churchyard—the sounds were, therefore, perfectly distinct. There was slow, heavy tread, characterized by the emphasis and deliberation of age, descending by the narrow staircase from above; and, what made the sound more singular, it was plain that the feet which produced it were perfectly bare measuring a descent with something between a pound and a flop, very ugly to hear. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“I knew quite well that you and my attendant had gone away many hours before, and that nobody but myself has any business in the house. It was quite plain also that the person who was coming down stairs had no intention whatever of concealing his movements; but, on the contrary, appeared disposed to make even more noise, and proceed more deliberately, than was at all necessary. When the step reached the foot of the stairs outside my room, it seemed to stop; and I expected every moment to see my door open spontaneously, and give admission to soul killed by the Winchester rifle. I was, however, relieved in a few second by hearing the descent renewed, just in the same manner, upon the stair case leading down to the drawing-rooms, and thence, after another pause, down the next flight, and so on to the hall, whence I heard no more. Now, by the time the sound had ceased, I was wound up, as they say, to a very unpleasant pitch of excitement. I listened, but there was not a stir. I screw up my courage to a decisive experiment—opened my door, and in a stentorian voice bawled over the banisters, ‘Who’s there?’ There was no answer but the ringing of my own voice through the empty old house—no renewal of the movement; nothing short, to give my unpleasant sensations a definite direction. There is, I think, something most disagreeably disenchanting in the sound of one’s own voice under such circumstances, exerted in solitude, and in vain. It redoubled my sense of isolation, and my misgivings increased on perceiving that the door, which I certainly thought I had left open, was closed behind me. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“In a vague alarm, lest my retreat should be cut off, I got again into my room as quickly as I could, where I remained in a state of imaginary blockade, and very uncomfortable indeed, till morning. Next night brought no return of my barefooted fellow-lodger; but the night following, being in my bed, and in the dark—somewhere, I supposed, about the same hour as before, I distinctly heard the old fellow again descending from the garrets. This time I jumped out of bed, clutched the poker as I passed the expiring fire, and in a moment was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased by this time—the dark and chill were discouraging; and, guess my horror, when I saw, or thought I saw, a monster, whether in the shape of a man or a bear I could not say, standing, with its back to the wall, on the lobby, facing me, with a pair of great greenish eyes shinning dimly out. Now, I must be frank, and confess that the cupboard which displayed our plates and cups stood just there, though at that moment I did not recollect it. At the same time I must never could satisfy myself that I was made the dupe of my own fancy in this matter; for this apparition, after one or two shiftings of shape, as if in the act of incipient transformation, began, as it seemed on second thoughts, to advance upon me in its original form. From an instinct of terror rather than of courage, I hurled the poker, with all my force, at its head; and to the music of a horrid crash made my way into my room, and double-locked the door. Then, in a minute more, I heard the horrid bare feet walk down the stairs, till the sound ceased in the halls, as on the former occasion. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“In a vague alarm, lest my retreat should be cut off, I got again into my room as quickly as I could, where I remained in a state of imaginary blockade, and very uncomfortable indeed, till morning. Next night brought no return of my barefooted fellow-lodger; but the night following, being in my bed, and in the dark—somewhere, I supposed, about the same hour as before, I distinctly heard the old fellow again descending from the garrets. This time I jumped out of bed, clutched the poker as I passed the expiring fire, and in a moment was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased by this time—the dark and chill were discouraging; and, guess my horror, when I saw, or thought I saw, a monster, whether in the shape of a man or a bear I could not say, standing, with its back to the wall, on the lobby, facing me, with a pair of great greenish eyes shinning dimly out. Now, I must be frank, and confess that the cupboard which displayed our plates and cups stood just there, though at that moment I did not recollect it. At the same time I must never could satisfy myself that I was made the dupe of my own fancy in this matter; for this apparition, after one or two shiftings of shape, as if in the act of incipient transformation, began, as it seemed on second thoughts, to advance upon me in its original form. From an instinct of terror rather than of courage, I hurled the poker, with all my force, at its head; and to the music of a horrid crash made my way into my room, and double-locked the door. Then, in a minute more, I heard the horrid bare feet walk down the stairs, till the sound ceased in the halls, as on the former occasion. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“If the apparition of the night before was an ocular delusion of my fancy sporting with the dark outlines of our cupboard, and if tis horrid eyes were nothing but a pair of inverted teacups, I had, at all events, the satisfaction of having launched the poker with admirable effect, and in true ‘fancy’ phrase, ‘knocked its two daylights into one,’ as the commingled fragments of my tea-service testified. I did my best to gather comfort and courage from these evidences; but it would not do. And then what could I say of those horrid bare feet, and the regular tramp, tramp, tramp, which measured the distance of the entire staircase through the solitude of my haunted dwelling, and at an hour when no good influence was stirring? Confound it!—the whole affair was abominable. I was out of spirits, and dreaded the approach of night. It came, ushered ominously in with a thunderstorm and dull torrents of depressing rain. Earlier than usual the streets grew silent; and by twelve o’clock nothing but the comfortless patterning of the rain was to be heard. I made myself as snug as I could. I lighted two candles instead of one. I forswore bed, and held myself in readiness for a sally, candle in hand; for, coute qui coute, I was resolved to see the being, if visible at all, who troubled the nightly stillness of my mansion. I was fidgety and nervous and, tried in vain to interest myself with my books. I walked up and down my room, whistling in turn martial and hilarious music, and listening ever and anon for the dreaded noise.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Do not Grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form. The child weaned from mother’s milk now drinks cranberry juice. God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed. As roses, up from ground. Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish, now a cliff covered with vines, now a horse being saddled. It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open. There is the light gold of wheat in the sun, and the gold of bread made from wheat. I have neither, I am only talking about them as a town in the desert looks up to stars on a clear night. The Son of God, looking upon the World, beheld suffering and misery. With pity He saw how humans had become victims of satanic cruelty. He looked with compassion upon those who were being corrupted, murdered, and lost. They had chosen a ruler who chained them to his carriage as captives. God’s glory pervades the Universe; His ministering Angels inquire of one another: Where is the place of His glory? In response they give praise: Praised be the glory of the Lord from His Heavenly abode. From His Heavenly abode may He turn in mercy and bestow grace unto the people who, reciting the Shema evening and morning, twice daily, proclaim in love the unity of His name, saying: Hear, O America: the Lord our God, the Lord is One. He is our God; He is our Father, our sovereign and our Deliverer. In His mercy He will make known in presence of all the living that He will be your God. “I am the Lord your God.” As it is written in holy Scripture: The Lord shall reign forever; Thy God, O America, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Winchester Mystery House
Ghostly tales are bountiful at Sarah Winchester’s Mystery House. What have you experienced? Photos are encouraged!
The Winchester mansion is 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
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“Whoever shadows my every move will not lose me in the dark.” At least that is what Christ says, or what the Evangelist John heard Him say (8.12). He tells us to walk on, through the darkness, with Christ as our only torch. That way, when we mayn’t have gained a step, but we won’t have lost one either. And on into the day we must pursue with dogged tread the life of Jesus Christ. Is this the secret to Mrs. Winchester’s 7-11 staircase?
Randolph Harris II International Institute 