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The Body is the Sheath of the Soul
Upon thinking things over, I was pretty sure that the parlor maid, Elsa, was far too sensible and hard-boiled a young woman to risk tampering with poisons. She has a hard head and would take care of herself. Ersula, on the other hand was made of more dangerous stuff—unbalanced, carried away by impulse and definitely neurotic. The only reason she was even employed on my staff was because of my friendship with her mother. I had coffee on the terrace. I wish I could remember better how Ersula looked and acted. She did not seem excited in any way. Quiet and rather sad was my impression. What a devil that woman was! For it was a devilish thing to do—to poison a man in cold blood. If there had been a revolver about and she had caught it up and shot him—well, that might have been understandable. However, this was cold, deliberate, vindictive poisoning…and so clam and collected. She got up and said, in the most natural way possible, that she would take his coffee to him. And yet she knew—she must have known—that by now she would find him dead. Calder had only been employed for three weeks as a carpenter. Ersula had her eyes on him and believed that she had fixed him, but when she found out that he had eyes for Elsa, this threw her into a rage so terrible. I was just making an excuse to go after him when he came running up the stairs. His face was blue. He gasped out, “We must get a doctor—quick—Mrs. Winchester.” I sprang up. “Is he ill—dying?” We had forgotten Elsa for a minute. But she let out a sudden cry. It was like the wail of a banshee. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
She cried, “Dead? Dead…” And then she ran. I did not know anyone could move like that—like a deer, like a stricken thing, and like an avenging fury too. Ersula wanted desperately to talk to me. To talk to someone. And then again, there was a hostility I perceived in her, a rather generalized hostility, as if the woman were superhuman and bristled with something instinctively alien to other human beings. Oh, I know that sound farfetched. Of course, she is not superhuman. However, if we think of these psychic powers we possess, then we can begin to think of the supernatural as not so unreal. I felt her differentness, so to speak. The dying of Calder also apparently left something precious behind as well. His soul. A few nights after his death, I was awakened by the familiar chime of a clock. It surprised me because, although I kept a clock in the Daisy Bedroom, I had never heard it chime before. A week went by. Then, once again, in the middle of the night, the clock chimed. Confused as to why the clock did not chime during the day on the hour, I resolved to investigate the next morning. However, with several businesses to run, and an estate to care for, by the time I awoke, the matter had slipped my mind. One even, I was having supper. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, through the hall and into the dining room echoed the rhythmic, melodious tones: dingdongdingdong…dingdongdingdong. Just below the mantlepiece in the Daisy Bedroom upon which the clock rested was a crawl space under the floor. It was a harmless relic of architectural expedience, and with the uneven, packed earther floors, it was also an excellent concealer of buried secrets. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Some areas of the house could be very scary, and the crawl spaces between the floor was a place I never entered. Mr. Hansen went down into the crawl space underneath the Daisy Bedroom. I had not said anything to him, and he came up and said, “Mrs. Winchester, it is very cold down there. It’s a strange feeling. Very cold, and it’s a hot day.” I proceeded to say, “well, I think that is the old section of the house and something may have been there decades about.” He came up quite alarmed at what was going on down there. I never go in there. Another curious addition to the crawl space is a series of large, ancient, wooden shelves. It looks as if there were bunks, as if servant lay there. The bunks are curved as if to hold human bodies. I had no idea how hold the shelves were in the crawl space, or if it was actually a concealed floor of the mansion. Mr. Hansen said it looked as if the wood had been dug into or clawed at. The clock that rested on the mantle was made in the state of New York, and the last time I visited New York, I stopped by the manufacturer of the clock. I spoke to the owner of the company. He said he remembered me well for I had requested such a clock of admirable beauty. I asked him why the clock was chiming at unusual hours. He explained to me that they have no mechanism to make chiming clocks. And there is not a chiming mechanism if you look at the clock. There is nothing there! I began to keep track of when the chimes were heard. The clock chimed on April 18, 1898. The next time it chimed again was on April 18, 1899. At least four other people beside me heard it. When I was away, they still recorded on the calendar for me when it chimed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
However, it was not all at the same time. In fact, my niece Ms. Daisy heard it. Actually, she would not say anymore. I asked her how loud was the clock? Is it lough enough to hear in the entire house? “Oh, yes, Aunt Sarah. You can her it upstairs on the fourth floor.” “Could there have been a mistake as to where the chiming was coming from? Perhaps through the wall from a clock somewhere else in the house?” I asked. Her answer, “Oh yes. You can even hear it in the observation tower.” That evening, a cloud-like vapor took on human shape, clapped its hands in joy, and passed upward through the ceiling in the company of an angel. I was always aware that my mansion was a conduit-a vortex, if you will. There are horrors beyond horrors, and this was one of those nuclei of all our deepest, most awful nightmare, a place where they would suddenly become nightmares. My fortune, a blessing, it was, but was also accursed and unhappy. Death, like the unbidden and unwanted relative, often times outstayed his welcome everywhere on this estate. At night, ghosts are not always seen, but heard. On many occasions, the servants have heard what sounds like a man whispering. The whisper is not loud enough to make out the words, but there is no doubt that someone is speaking. The whispers seem to be drifting down the chimney, of course, but there is no one there. A woman’s laugh can also be heard coming from the chimneys. I awoke one night and saw a woman standing there—only about two feet away from my bed—and I knew it was her. It was just a feeling, I knew I was her. She had long dark hair; she was really thin and has a shawl over her shoulders. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
And a bright margin of light revealed that she was accompanied by a tall, dark-haired man, with deep-set eyes peering out at me from a very white face. He wore a robe of brown patterned silk, with the customary yellow bade on it. His high cheekbones appeared to be polished, so tight with his skin. After I gestured to get out of bed. The man and the woman vanished. It took me a moment but I slowly began to understand that those were not real human beings that confronted me, but rather inhabitants of the World as yet unknown to us. I had seen spirits before, and, for better or worse, was familiar with their shape, their demeanor, their “being.” I was not frightened. As I got out of bed, and was leaving my room, and descending down a brightly lit stairway, I suddenly froze. Standing in the bright illumination stood my husband William. I ran hurriedly down the stairs, brushing past the apparition and out of a door into the garden where I had become unconscious. When I came to and glanced up, I saw a white form advancing, a robed form. I was not able to see the robed figure’s face because it was turned away from me, but I was clearly able to observe its form, as the figure remained for a moment by me. Then it passed swiftly past the boxwood hedges, and glided toward me, but always turning his face in the opposite direction. Just before the passed through the wall and back int the mansion, it paused and left a gold coin on the porch. Then it dawned on me, it was our anniversary. This assurance made me aware that my beloved was with every moment, even in his death. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Emperor Lucifer, Master of all the revolted Spirits, I entreat thee to favor me in the adjuration which I address to thy minister, LUCIFUGE ROFOCALE, being desirous to make a pack with him. Via temporis, iam clamo ad te via spatti te ubio, aperire..Aperi! Via consurssus, tempos spatium admi ut imperior! I Do invocate, conjure, and command thee, O thou Spirit Marchosian and you 30 Legion of Spirits, to appear and to please show thyself visibly unto me before this Winchester Mansion in fair and comely shape, without any deformity or toutuosity; by the name and in the name IAH and VAU, which Adam heard and spake; and by the name of God, AGLA, which Lot heard and was saved with his family; and by the name IOTH, which Jacob heard from the angel wrestling with him, and was delivered from the hand of Esau his brother; and by the name ANAPHAEXTON which Aaron heard and spake and was made wise. I also beg thee, O Prince Beelzebuth to protect us in our undertaking. O Count Astarto! Be propitious to us, and grant that tonight the great LUCIFUGE may appears to us under a human form, and fresh as the ocean breeze, and that he may accord us, in virtue of the pact which we propose to enter into, all the riches which we need, O grand LUCIFUGE, I pray three to quit they dwelling, wheresoever it may be, and come hither to please speak to me, otherwise will I compel thee by the power of the strong living God, His beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please Obey promptly. By the powers of AGLON, TETRAGRAM, VAYCHEON, SIMULATION, EZPHARES, RETRAGRAMMATON, OLYARAM, IRION, ESYTION, EXISTION, ERYONA, ONERA, ORASYM, MOZM, MESSIAS, SOTER, EMMANUEL, SABOTH, ADONAY Via temporis, iam clamo ad te via spatti te ubio, aperire..Aperi! Via consurssus, tempos spatium admi ut imperior! I conjure thee, Evil and Accursed Serpent TETRAGRAMMATON to appear at my will and pleasure in this place and accomplish my will. Please bring ancient treasures and prosperity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
We all have odd feelings at times in certain circumstances; certainly no reason to move from a house after we have paid the rent or signed a contract. We are reasonable and logical human beings after all, even when confronted with the unknown, unseen and unexplainable…are we not? It must be simply a quirk that this one column of physical space that extends from the Heaven should remind us that each and every one of us will something ascend into our own oblivion. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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The Fear Was Terrible
In was December. The air was ripe with the promise of the new year. The estate was full of life and sound. After the years of supernatural violence and denunciation, it seemed the demons had set their sights elsewhere and, for a while, we were at peace. There were, of course, the usual shadows lurking about. As we walked about the gardens, a boy came running out of the orchards. He was in a state of shock, swallowing his words and talking too fast for me us to hear what he was saying. Ms. Daisy managed to calm him and, with great patience, coax out of the terrified child that there had been massacres. That villages lower down the road had been put to the torch. If old men, women, cut down where they stood. Children, too. I turned cold. “Oh, dear Heavens.” We had no ways of knowing if the report was true. True or false, his testimony would spread panic and alarm. Far better to wait until to verify the stories and then decide what action to take. When I arrived at dinner, everyone was in good spirits. Living as we did, to come together to celebrate, with food enough for everyone and in the warmth, my heart wept at the knowledge that in a matter of hours, all this might be lost. So I sat, knowing what I knew and yet having to conceal it. And all the time, I was watching the door, waiting for my niece, Ms. Daisy. Later I learned she had questioned the boy further and was satisfied that she was telling the truth without embellishment. I instructed the servants to be on alert. My head was spinning with so much information. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
I instituted a search of the house. I sighed as I sat down in my chair. It was a grueling day. It was the middle of winter and the wind howled down the chimneys. Shuddering, I pulled my chair a bit closer to the fireplace. Listening to the domestic sounds from the kitchen made me smile. I was home and warm for the night. Tomorrow’s problems were not yet to be faced, and the warmth of the fire slowly lulled me to sleep. The sound of knocking at my front door startled me awake. The sounds seemed a bit faint, but they were persistent. I hurried to the door, wondering who could be out on such a bitter evening and what emergency would I find on the other side. I flung open the door and at first thought that no one was there, but then I was shocked to see a thin little girl no more than nine or ten years old, standing just before me. She was woefully underdressed for the blustery night. She wore thin shoes, a tattered dress, and a blue shawl that she had pulled tightly around her tiny shoulders. I wondered how the child stayed upright against the wind that buffeted her. The little girl did not wait for me to speak. “Mrs. Winchester, you must come, my mother’s sick bad and she won’t make it through the night without your help. Hurry!” Something about the wispy child and the intensity of her pleas moved me to action. “Some in my child, come in at once,” I said and shut the door. I quickly gathered my coat and scarf, pulled on my gloves and hat, and grabbed up my bag. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
We moved swiftly to one of the Victorian cottages on my estate. She ushered me into her home. Her mother was one of the housemaids. She was normally a sassy lass, but now she was reduced to a skinny rack of bones. Her body was woefully undernourished and she was indeed extremely ill. Upon closer examination, she was gravely ill. Indeed, the lass would not last through the night without quick intervention—she was suffering from pneumonia. As I tended the fire, I talked to the woman. I told her that she would be all right and that and that my servants were coming with medicine. I also spoke to her about the brave little girl who had come to fetch me. I inquired as to the child’s whereabouts. The ill woman looked at me with honor. “My daughter died a month ago. Her shoes and shawl are there in the little cupboard.” The woman broke off with a sob. I felt compelled to look in the close. Inside hung the little blue shawl that I seen the little girl clutching earlier. Her shoes lay on the shelf. I reached out to feel them and they were dry. It would have been impossible for those articles to have been worn that same night. I tended to the woman for a bit longer. As soon as the servants arrived, I ordered the cottage searched for the child I had seen. No child was found. I was amazed at the power of human love and the lost child who reached beyond the grave to save her mother from death. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
I returned home. The evening was nearly over, when I noticed a dark shadow to my left. However, when I focused my eyes directly on the spot, I could see nothing. I decided that perhaps my eyes were undoubtedly becoming tired. It was, after all, nearly midnight. A few moments later, I saw the shadow again. This time it crossed directly in front of me, moving toward the sofa. However, once again, when I focused directly on the thing, I saw nothing but the shadows of the dark room. I shrugged, distracted from the heading to bed. “Are you a ghost?” I asked, speaking toward the area in front of the sofa where I had last seen the shadow. There was no response. I went upstairs to bed. By the morning I had forgotten the entire episode with the mysterious shadow. Several moments later, a peculiar sound caused me to raise from my slumber, and I was surprised to see the shadow again. It crossed in from of my bed, then sat on an arm chair. Sometime between two and four in the morning I was awakened by the sound of artillery firing from the fields. It sounded like cannons firing one-at-a-time. I could hear there reloading between the shots. The fire lasted about ten minutes, then faded out, back into some mysterious fold of Time. Frightened, I did not look outside. I work my niece Ms. Daisy in the middle of the night to ask if she heard it. Unfortunately, she had been sound asleep and did not. However, I did not believe the sounds were figments of my imagination. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
My mansion served as the venue for a most remarkable connection between the dead and the living which seems to spanned the ages. I tried to sleep, but there was another odd noise that echoed across the fields of my estate. Faint at first, the sound was soon recognizable: drumbeats. I finally fell asleep, never understanding the source of the sound. Once again, I was awakened by bone chilling cold, so cold it sent me running from my room. There was an icy apprehension as I ran forward, as if I was running for my life. I came to a new pathway in my mansion and entered it. I felt the sharp coldness of the air, but I knew I had to keep going. The fear was terrible. As I came around a curve, blood ran through the corridor like water. A strange haze formed. The haze was a visage of a young man with brown hair and a moustache, sideburn in front of his left war, with his eyes gazing to the right. Then a woman walked through the streams of blood, she was moving at a fast walk. She had blonde hair and seemed in a hurry. As I moved down the pathway, she vanished, but there, hanging on the wall, was a shriveled, mummified, human arm. The hand was a contorted claw. I was also astonished to see, floating before my eyes, a white, glowing, disembodied arm pull back and vanish into darkness of the room. The pathway severed never-ending abyss of darkness and horrors than any human being could imagine. A strong hand grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me so violently that I passed out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
I forced my eyes open once more, and I saw a pair of wooden clogs. I was lying on the fell, which was covered in blood. I struggled to push myself into a sitting position, dragging my legs round from under me, then tried to stand. “Let me help you,” an apparition said. The ghost’s strong hand was under my elbow, guiding me back to a parlor on the second floor. “Here.” I slumped down and leaned forward, elbows on my knees, waiting for the spinning to stop. I looked around the room. Clearly, it was morning. Everything was bathed in a flat, white light. The fire had burned out, leaving a pyramid of soft, gray ash in the grate. “We were concerned when you did not come down to breakfast, Mrs. Winchester. Why are you covered in blood? Have you been injured,” the butler demanded. “No. I slipped and fell in a puddle of blood in the new pathway recently built,” I said. “But Mrs. Winchester, the entire estate is as clean as we left in yester evening.” I frowned, trying to get the sequence of events clear in my mind. I had taken a bath, come back to the room, and enjoyed a cup of tea. Then I heard a cat in the room. As I looked around the room, there was nothing there. Within a short while, the tea cups started dancing about the table. Extended across the table, just inches from me and draped with what looked like some lacy fabric, was a woman’s arm, from the elbow down, the pale fingers eerily entwined in the tea cups. I screamed. The butler came running and saw the phantom limb. “What is it, devil is it Mrs. Winchester?” “There are forces in this house. Such power does not come from the devil. Do you see those books around you? They are full of stories of such persons, called in one place sorcerer, and in another witch, but what has the devil to do with such things? If you have such powers, what can and can they not do?” #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
The butler’s eyes grew large but his face was hard. His hands tightened on the arms of the chair and he cocked his head to the left as he looked the room up and down. I saw the look of fear coming to his face. The housemaid whispered: “She is reading our thoughts, Morgan, she can hide her own thoughts from us.” “Morgan,” Mrs. Winchester said, “what you have witnessed is terrible. I can see spirits. I have powers.” Morgan’s face was transformed from cold suspicion to sudden contempt. “Ah, witch!” he cried. “Why did you not tell me? Your house is full of witches! You are an order of Satan. This house is expanding so quickly because you have the power to stop time.” And then as tears poured down his face, I sobbed. He wrapped his arms around me. “We are all damned,” he said, “and you hide here in this mansion where they can’t burn you! Oh, clever, clever witch in the devil’s house!” “Wicked am I? A witch am I? Stopper of time? I will not have you speak to me in that manner!” Mrs. Winchester moved into the very center of the room and looking up and out the window, it seemed to the blue sky, she cried: “Come now Caim and you 30 Legions of Spirits Infernal! I entreat thee to favor me in the adjuration which I address to thy might minister LUCIFUGE ROFOCALE! Come hither to speak with me.” And at once a great dark shadow appeared in the window, as if the spirit upon whom she had called condensed himself to become small and strong within the room. “Damn you into hell, witch. I shall not be your warlock,” Morgan cried, and as the books began to fall around he, he feld the mansion, and the door slammed front doors shut after him and no one could pry it open ever again, try as they might. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Phantom limbs hovering over us, or playfully touching, or roughly shoving us. What could it be that allows the many manifestations of an active, viable, yet impossible World, sometimes seen, more often unseen, that apparently exists right next to us? What aberration in Time or Physics or Mass or Energy reveals to us this other land, usually unheard and invisible, that seems the dwelling place of the dead? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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And Finally the Spirits Drew Blood
Life-changing, miraculous, beautiful—it has been the scene of serious studies by aspiring intellectuals, of raucous parties filled to the brim with youthful enthusiasm. It was also been the dwelling place of Death. There was a persistent malevolent visitor within the walls of the house, who had an agenda of pursuit and manipulation for evil all of his own. By the time they reached my estate, Hendrick had a fairly good understanding of what the Winchester Mansion was, and he had assured Mr. Hansen that he would keep confidential forever what he was about to read in the files. Henrick loved the idea of the Winchester Mansion, the flashing, sparkling panorama of Santa Clara Valley. However, he grew coldly and unexpectedly calm as he puzzled over the catacombs, and reviewed in his mind all the popular myths he had heard about the apparitions, and this brief interlude of excitement began to fade. “Mrs. Winchester, I have to go on leave,” Hendrick explained. “It’s unavoidable.” How calm his voice sounded as all the color drained out of his face. I insisted that we go at once to a small screened porch off the back of the second story, and there, overlooking a formal garden with miles of green grass and fountains, we could sit down to eat. However, Hendrick insisted that he had to leave at once. Mr. Hansen showed him to the door. The atmosphere began to change. I felt a whisper of fresh air on my face. The floor suddenly veered precipitously upward. Tiny drops of blood began to fall from the ceiling. Rappings shook the walls. Then a large butcher knife appeared and menacingly headed in our direction. When ran into the morning room, and all the chairs therein fell over and danced about noisily. “The spirits are angry,” said Mr. Hansen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
I felt light-headed, intoxicated by the danger. There were noises, a myriad of them and terror-filled cries of the wounded and dying echoing long and pitifully into the night; disembodied rumblings from artillery, and even more mysterious, unidentifiable rustling in the darkness just behind my shoulder. Several knives and a large glass paperweight were thrown at us by invisible intruders, narrowly missing our heads. “Do angels really lack knowledge of the heart?” I asked Mr. Hansen as I wept. There was the dark melee, horrifying screams in the night. Night was always a time of icy fear and apprehension. It must stem from our most primal subconscious. It can bring sudden death. And sleep, if it should come, steals consciousness, our last warning system and makes us more vulnerable to Earthly creatures who would do us harm. Or to other entities not of this Earth with perhaps the same ambition. Perhaps sleep was the main portal through which ghosts came into our lives. I felt Mr. Hansen’s brown eyes sweep across my face. He shook his head. There was something about the translucent moon that gave me the impression he was made of air or water, rather than blood and bone. I looked at him more closely, scared that he might have slipped away. But he was still there. “I feared you had…” “Not yet,” Mr. Hansen said, reading my mind. Around and around the room an unexplainable jingling went, pausing first in one corner, then at another wall, until the sound was right next to us. Then it became a plopping sound like water dripping. We were being troubled by entities that seemed set upon us by a curse of black magic. Suddenly, a hooded figure appeared and was moving about the house. It appeared to be the image of a man with thinning white hair on the sides, and bald at the top. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
There were secret passageways in the mansion, hidden from view. The tiniest opening in the mahogany walls lead to tunnels, hiding places, a labyrinthine sequence of passageways and caverns. As we entered a secret passageway to escape the ghost, I heard a whole bunch of voices whispering, but I could not understand them. They were all jumbled together. As we walked along the pathway, Mr. Hansen said my name right in my ear, and when I turned to look at him, he was gone. The voice was a demon voice: throaty, hoarse and very mean. It said to me, “Sarah, show yourself to me!” I could not actually pinpoint the exact location the voice had come from. But there was a black, floating swirling mass, about four feet high and three feet wide. It unnerved me so much that I feld the catacombs, and as I came out where the dining room was, something hit the wall with such a force that it knocked down several of the paintings. It looked like there had been an earthquake. And I was about to fall. However, something grabbed the collar of my collar of my shirt, and pulled me back to safety. No apparition could be seen, but the collar of my shirt had been pulled back. It was midnight when I went back to my room in the north wing. I rose early the next morning. Drawing back the curtain, then I saw a dark shadow of a woman entering my home. I could hear the dark figure ascending up their stairs and towards my room. The footsteps and voices got louder. The shadow of the woman appeared in the doorway to the room I was in. It disappeared as quickly as it manifested. I felt a cold wind pass by me, and the curtains closed and billowed as a shadowy figure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I decided to stay in my room until I fell asleep. Not only did I lock the door, but I put a chair against the door as an added safety measure from intruders. Late into the night, I was awakened by the loud rattling of the door and the chair. Frighteningly, the sound came from inside the room and not outside the door. It was as if someone was trying to get outside the room, not in. The room was dimly illuminated by a faint, green-glowing light. On the wall hangs a mirror, into which the light casts its luminescence. In a semi-awakened state, I gazed into the mirror and saw the reflected light begin to take the shape of a woman dressed in a beautiful dress. As I continued to stare at the apparition in the mirror, she was suddenly accompanied by a man dressed as a cavalry man, complete with high cavalry boots. How long I had been sitting in bed, I scarcely know; I had been half meditating, half dozing, mixing broken snatches of thought with brief glimpses of dreaming, when I was startled into wakefulness by a sound that was strange to me. As I opened my eyes, the sun risen. I inspected the chair and found that somehow it had been pulled out, away from the door about an inch. I stood transfixed. When suddenly my entire body flew back, and on to the floor. My eyes rolled into the back of my head. Mr. Hansen and Ersula overheard the commotion and burst into the room. “Mrs. Winchester, are you okay, where have you been?!” Ersula demanded as she and Mr. Hansen lifted me off the floor. “You are as pale as a ghost!” he said. “Never mind the sal volatile,” I said at last. “I am not ill; I have been startled, that is all.” Even now, I get the chills thinking about that night. I do believe there was something evil in the house. I have been quite reluctant to tell about the hauntings, for most people just do not want to know the truth about what is out there. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The spinning in my head slowed and then finally stopped altogether. As the last chime of the clock struck ten, I came downstair to the reception area. I felt my heart expand with the beauty of the same old World but seen through new eyes. Glancing out the skylight, a white winter sun hung low in the sky and it was bright but cold. A bird was singing. My plans for construction where castles in the air, dreams of sliver days. Places where I could spend countless dusks watching the sun sinking down into the Earth. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move. A flash of blue, perhaps. I could not tell. A shiver crept down my spine. For a moment, I stood motionless. Everyone looked very dead now, very empty. There was no odor yet, but they were dead. The rigidity of Ersula’s face absorbed me. The body of Hendrick on the floor was dry and wrinkled. Not even murmuring melodies to myself of the songs I most liked to play meant anything to me. In my ears, I heard a din as if the imps of Hell were making a horrid music to drive me out of my mind. I whispered to myself to silence it. Shortly after discovering the bodies, I heard muffled voices and noises on the second floor, followed by a sharp crash. I rushed up stairs to find a large painting in the hallway had been flung violently across the hall into a freshly painted wall. The wall had been damaged by the force of the crash. I was terrified to hear the wails of a baby coming from the wall. Petrified, I remained on the second floor with the terrible cries until carpenters began a search and found me. Nearly incoherent when I was taken to my chamber, I told the carpenters about hearing the baby cry. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Emperor Lucifer, Master and Prince of Rebellious Spirits, as the agent of the strong living God, of His beloved Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and by the power of the Great ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM, please appear instantly. I command thee to surrender me the nearest treasure, and I promise thee as a reward the first piece of gold or silver which I touch with my hands on the first day of every month. Such is my demand. Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, O Lord! And I shall be clean: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. I Do invocate and conure thee, O Prince of the Rebellious Spirits; and being with power armed from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALDACHIENSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachidae, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocating conjure thee. And being armed with power from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto whom all creatures be obedient. Also I, being made after the image of GOD, endued with power from GOD and created according unto HIS will, do exorcise thee by that most mighty and powerful name of God, EL, strong and wonderful; O thou Emperor Lucifer. And I command thee and Him who spake the Word and His Fiat was accomplished, and by the names of God. Also by the names of AFONAI, EL, ELOHIM, ELOHI, EHYEH, ASHER EHYEH, ZABOTH, ELION, IAH, TETRAGRAMMATON, SHADDAI, LORD GOD MOST HIGH. Come thou peaceably, visibly, and affably, now, and without delay, manifesting that which I shall desire. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Something awakens you from a fitful sleep. You roll over in your bed and there, right at the foot of it, is a misty shape resembling a human. However, its features are hazy, unclear. The dress it wears is recognizable, but from an era long past, and it is tattered, as if it had spent too much time hanging in a closet, or lying in the damp mustiness of a coffin. The figure is, at first, an object of curiosity, since you immediately assume you are dreaming. However, its tendril-like arms begin to wave, to move towards you—no, to beckon you—and the face twists into the mockery of a smile. Now you begin to panic as you realize-despite your hoping it is not true—that you are fully awake, that this is no dream and there is no explanation for the horrid sight before you, except that it is real, in all its dead splendor. It is well known that, possessions, apparitions, and other supernatural intrusions have occurred what is now known as The Winchester Mystery House.
Mrs. Winchester Might be the Next Victim
In reliving those years of despair, I weep for my beautiful angel as she was experiencing a most unfortunate horror. My heart filled with anguish as I remember the horrible ending to her life. Her lungs had filled beyond further help; her stomach could no longer function properly and she could not be fed orally any longer. She was only six weeks old. My husband and I consulted with her doctors about her condition and were advised that no further feedings be given. However, the final decision was ours. Our final decision to discontinue all further feedings took all our strength. Although we were aware it was the only human thing to do, we also knew that while we watched her take her last breaths, we too would be dying within ourselves. We loaded the carriage and drove her to the hospital for the last time. As I held Annie in my I arms, I knew that this memory would remain within my heart eternally. The memory of that trip and the finality that is possessed still feel so real to me. When we arrived at the hospital, I laid my baby girl gently in her bed, never to hold her in my arms again. Later, I tried to hold her again but she became extremely rigid in the process of lifting her. The doctor said she was dying from malnutrition. She has a curious disease known as Marasmus. My baby could not digest her food. She was so tiny. She did not have round waxen arms and legs like other babies, now puffy pink cheeks. My dear Annie was reduced to a skeleton. Her beautiful eyes were vacant. She barely had the energy to muster up a cry. #RandolphHarris 1 of 3
I knew then that she could no longer endure living with great pain she had known. She was ready to leave us. There was nothing more we could do for her but allow her to leave. Two days later, Annie died, along, unaware of another human being. She had been under heavy sedation and was unable to further communicate. Her days of torment and agony were over. It broke my heart that I brought a baby in the World who was slowly, agonizingly dying as we pondered the imponderable eternity for days, hours, until her life force abandoned us. But her precious memories will always remain alive and real in our hearts. She left the deepest feeling of compassion and love with Mr. Winchester and myself. Her tragic memories are embedded within our hearts. I shall find a way to dedicate meaning to her life so she will not have suffered in vain. In 1862, Sarah L. Winchester married William Wirt Winchester, son of Oliver Fisher Winchester, Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut and manufacturer of the famous Winchester repeating rifle. The couple’s life together was happy, and they moved in the best of New England society. However, in 1866, disaster struck when their infant daughter, Annie Winchester, died of the then curious childhood disease marasmus. Mrs. Winchester fell into a deep depression from which she never fully recovered. Fifteen years later, in March 1881, her husband’s premature death from tuberculosis added to Mrs. Winchester’s distress. A medium explained to Mrs. Winchester her family and her fortune were cursed and being haunted by spirits and that she would be the next victim. #RandolphHarris 2 of 3
However, the medium also claimed that there was an alternative. Mrs. Winchester was instructed to move West and appease the spirits by building a great house for them. As long as construction never ceased, Mrs. Winchester could rest assured that her life was not in danger. Building such a house was even supposed to being her eternal life. Innumerable spirits shuffled off their mortal coils embrace the Winchester Mansion as their home. They have surrendered their spirits to the miles of winding and twisting hallways in the Winchester Mansion. Humans beings that were mowed down in sheaves, bowled over by bounding shot, decapitated, disemboweled, dismembered, exterminated instantly all call this place home. Although bullets dropped many of them, they all did not die right away. They gagged their last words, hoping that God would hear them. They paid with their heart’s blood for defending this great nation. Countless others as well, unready, perhaps unwilling, have left their shadows behind to haunt this estate. It cannot be surprising then, that Mrs. Winchester and the caretakers, reluctantly admit they saw apparitions. Particularly on sultry moonlit summers nights, when the mists hang low in the garden, there can be seen, slowly trotting across the lawn, a long horseman, in the finery of a Civil War officer. Where medical doctors were scarce in the Civil War, witches provided cures for a variety of common ailment. They were said to worship Satan Himself during their infamous sabbats, gatherings at which the Devil was sometimes present in person, and can almost be seen lurking about the estate. #RandolphHarris 3 of 3
It is difficult to see in hindsight what Mrs. Winchester had to do with all this, but as time went on and the estate grew, wild accusations came to be leveled, chief among which was that of Mrs. Winchester having made a pact with Satan. How else but through diabolic abetment could a mere woman exercise such power? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Many People are Prepared to Dismiss the Occult World
There was no one downstairs, though the oil lamps were burning. A tall antique-case clock with a mahogany surround stood in the alcove beneath the sweep of the stairs. I looked up at the mottled ivory-colored face, at the slim Roman numerals and delicate black hands. There was a whirring of the mechanism inside the case, then a high-pitched carillon started to chime. I know I had taken my time, but even so, I was surprised that it was eight o’clock already. There was a deep nocturnal silence in the house, in which five caretakers were presumably coming and going about their work. It was certainly strange. I looked out the window, hoping to see someone crossing the court or coming alone the drive. However, no one was in sight, and the rain was still falling, with a business-like regularity, muffling the outer World in layers on layers of thick white liquid velvet, and intensifying the silence within. A noiseless World—were people so sure tht absence of noise was what they wanted? Let them first try a lonely December in a mansion this size! My heart began to hammer. Luckily there was a chair near the fireplace. I sat down to recover my strength—or was it my courage? Astrid the caretaker slept in the nearest wind. It occurred to me that by looking from the window of a neighbouring bathroom I could see the kitchen chimney. There ought to be smoke coming from it at this hour; and if there were, I would be less afraid to go on. I got as far as the front parlor and looking through the window I could see there was no smoke coming from the chimney. My sense of loneliness grew more acute. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Whatever had happened below stairs must have happened before the morning’s work had begun. The cook had not time to light the fire, the other caretakers had not yet begun their rounds. I was struggling against my fears. If I carried on my investigations, what next would I discover? I walked along the passage, and rested my hand on a radiator. It was stone-cold. Yet in my well-ordered house during the winter, the central heating was never allowed to go out, and by eight in the morning mellow warmth typically pervaded the rooms. The icy chill of the pipes startled me. No matter, I will just have the carpenters remove this fancy new technology and go back to using the 47 fireplaces. It was Mr. Hansen who looked after the heating—he was too involved in the mystery, whatever it was, as well as the house caretakers. At Astrid’s door, I paused and knocked. I expected no answer, and there was none. I opened the door and went in. The room was very dark and cold. But what frightened me was no so much its emptiness as its air of scrupulous and undisturbed order. There was no sign of anyone having lately dressed in it—or undressed the night before. And the bed had not been slept in. The woman was out, then; had gone out, no doubt, the night before, since the bed was unslept in, the dressing and washing appliances untouched. Astrid never set foot out of the house after dark. I could not believe she had deserted the house on a cold rainy night, while her mistress lay upstairs, suffering and helpless! #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Why had she gone, and where had she gone? When she was undressing me the night before, taking my orders, trying to make me comfortable, was she already planning this mysterious and dreadful occurred? I took a few deep breaths to steady my nerves. Held in a spell, filling my head with images, with emotions, that had long been absent my eyes filled with tears. My home had suddenly become the scene of virtually indescribable horrors and life-altering (and life-ending) event. Sadly, as I walked into the hallway, I saw wounded bodies laying desperately wounded. Wounded, shattered men and boys by the hundreds were strung about the mansion. The sounds of soft lead being driven into bone made a shattering sound, there were tiny bone fragments. Hundreds of torn bodies pouring into every in of my home. Blood covered doctors were sweating over several hundred filthy bodies with their guts torn open. Sticky gore flung in my sinks, and my morning room transformed into a mourning room, roped-offed for those who had been hit in the head. My former happy, joyous home had morphed into a hospital and cemetery. Suddenly, a choir singing. The reverberation of the plainsong in the upper echelons of the cathedral ceilings of the Grand Ball Room. As I made my way though the hall, time stopped many times. I noticed a lady who looked like Astrid and was on the point of waving when she vanished right before my eyes. A ghost of a man with a bright lantern appeared. He felt neighbourly and hovered in the hallway. He suddenly darted at me. I was absolutely frozen stiff until the light sailed out of sight. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
As I looked out the window, I could see human tibia, fibula, femur and radius, rings and cuff buttons were scattered on the emerald green lawns. My mansion was filled with groans and sighs and tremors. It was possibly more fearful than the 1906 Earthquake which woke me from my slumber. That was also a strange morning. In the cupola, figures of men—sentinels, paced back in forth, and hovered above the estate and the observational tower shortly after midnight. I always thought the Earthquake was caused by these sentry-spirits, now haunting my mansion, acting out the horrors of the war. In fact, for several night in a row, prior to the Earthquake, I saw a man on the cupola, frantically waving his arms. He was there three nights in a row. He stood, dressed in a blue coat and white pants, looking very pale, within the cupola, waving his hoary arms, back and forth. I called out to him, but he would not answer—just waving motion, back and forth, back and forth. Was he, rapped in more important duties, too busy to answer? Or what he trying to warn me? The thin veil between this life and the next one was sending me messages. And, one evening, there was witnessed an even more bizarre and unexplainable devotion to my estate. Astrid and I had just finished having tea on the 3rd floor. We entered the elevator to take us to the first floor. The lighted numerals in the elevator displayed their descent: “3…2…1…” and continued past the first floor. Absent-mindedly, I pushed the button for the first floor again, wondering why the elevator had not stopped, or perhaps, who in the basement had summoned the elevator. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
The elevator stopped at the basement level. The doors opened to reveal not the area once cleaned up for storage, but a scene out of time and reason, the blood-stained doctors and orderlies of nearly half a century before, again performing their abhorrent and hideous tasks of slicing sinew and sawing bone and suturing artery and vein and tying ligaments; of carrying armloads of severed limbs to grisly, blood-dampened corners and dumping them there unceremoniously. We have fallen into a ghastly frozen moment, being held captive witness to the scene. One of the harried doctors turned toward us and began to look beseechingly into our eyes for help with the never-ending work, or perhaps for help to find some way out of the subterranean scene where he himself would not be heled in forced incarceration for eternity. As he took a step towards us, finally, slowly, the doors began to close. This latest encounter was a continuation. My mansion echoed with the cries and moans of torn men and boys. All of this tension and blood shed because many leaders were heavily involved in companies that raced to establish claims to millions of acres of western land. The Emancipation Proclamation was but another example of the war’s surprising consequences. On July 3, General Lee sent three divisions, about 15,000 men in all, against the Union center. The assault, known as Pickett’s Charge, was as futile as it was gallant. At 700 yards, the Union artillery opened fire. Pickett’s division just seemed to melt away in the blue musketry smoke which now covered my estate. Ghosts of soldiers straggling to my home, all these years later. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
Tracing its origins back to 1849, Winchester was the World’s oldest maker of lever-action repeating firearms in the World. I believe Winchester Rifles had been in the Civil War. Thousands of men and horses, dying, stripped and saddle and bridle were killed during the battle of Antietam. That is a reason this estate is also haunted by demonic horses. The Civil War put more men in the field than any previous engagement. On the morning of April 12, 1906, at 5.13 a.m., trapped in the Daisy Bedroom, I gazed out my window and could see a steady stream of men covered with mud, soaked through with rain…pouring irregularly, without any semblance of order, up 13 Palm Drive toward my home. I perceived they belonged to different regiments…mingled pell-mell together…a pale young man who looked exhausted to death and who had lost his sword appeared in my room and rescued me. Then he said, “I know I’m going home. I’ve had enough of fighting to last my lifetime.” More and more the cold unanswering silence of the house weighed me down. I had never thought of it as a big house, even though it had 600 rooms and expanded more than 250,000 square feet, but now, in this devastating moment, it seemed immense, and full of ominous corners around which I dared not look. Every step that I took was increasingly painful; but after being freed from my room, I walked slowly the whole length of the passage, and went down the front stair. I did not know why I did this; but at the moment I was past reasoning, and had to obey my instinct. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
More than once I explored the ground floor alone in the small hours, in search of unwonted midnight noises; but now it was not the idea of the noises that frightened me, but that inexorable and hostile silence, the sense that my mansion had retained in full daylight its nocturnal mystery, and was watching me as I was watching it; in entering those empty orderly rooms, I might be disturbing some unseen confabulation on which beings of flesh-and-blood had better not intrude. The broad mahogany stairs were beautifully polished, and so slippery that I had to cling to the rail and let myself down tread by tread. And as I descended, the silence descended with me—heavier, denser, more absolute. I felt its just behind me, softly keeping time with mine. It has a quality that I had never been aware of in any other silence, as though it were not merely an absence of sound, a thin barrier between the ear and the surging murmur of life just beyond, but an impenetrable substance made out of the World-wide cessation of all life and all movement. Yest, that is what laid a chill on me: the feeling that there was no limit to the silence. I was lost in time. There was no outer margin, nothing beyond this day. I had reached the foot of the stairs and was limping across the hall to the drawing room. What I found there, I was sure, would be mute and lifeless; but what would it be? The bodies of my dead caretakers, mown down by some attack that shook my mansion for day and days? And, was it my turn next—what if it were waiting for me behind the heavy drapes of the room I was about to enter? #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Well, I must find out—I must face whatever lay in wait. Not impelled by bravery—the last drop of courage had oozed out of me—but because anything, anything was better than to remain shut up in this house amongst debris, though most of the room were undamaged. “I must find out, I must find out,” I repeated to myself in a sort of meaningless singsong. The cold outer light flooded the drawing room. The shutters had not been closed, nor the curtain drawn. I looked about me. The room was empty, and every chair in its usual place. My armchair was pushed up by the chimney, and the cold hearth was piled with the ashes of the fire at which I had warmed myself before start on my ill-fated walk. Even my empty tea cup stood on the table near the armchair. It was evident that the caretakers had not been in the room since the explosion. And suddenly, an orb materialized, moved about, split into twin spheres, and re-formed in front of me. I was astounded. Then, candlesticks roe in midair and fell to the floor. A lead ball struck me on the chest but it did not harm me. The sound of footsteps began to pad about the room, and my tea cup jumped off the table and shattered against the floor. A hat was floating teasingly in front of me. The hat led me on a merry chase before it finally dropped at my feet. I was so exhausted from what seemed like months of sleep deprivation. I found a bed to lay in and gets some rest. As I drifted into a deep sleep, I was rudely awakened by a large quantity of water being dumped in my face. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
May people are prepared to dismiss the occult World as insignificant and ignore the possibility that there could well be an element of truth in certain of the allegations. This “otherworld” has never been far beneath the surface in the Winchester Mansion. The gods are everywhere, not only in the garden, where they might take the forms of living creatures, but in the mansion as well. Communication with the otherworld was therefore relatively for Mrs. Winchester and her warps through time and space. The human mind has consciousness that occupies a position between two Worlds: the material and the spiritual. At any time, the spiritual might intrude; it could also be summoned at will, demons and all. The Winchester Mansion operated with many skirmishes with the estate’s sorcerers. The pagan demons were not prepared to go quietly. Some of them were heroes. In Mrs. Winchester’s day, surviving manuscripts suggest that she received extraordinary visions. Mrs. Winchester saw angels who battled demons for possession of her soul. Good triumphed, but not before the saint, Mrs. Winchester, had a vision of the fires of hell. On her return to consciousness, her caretakers observed that she had developed actual burn marks over much of her body—scars that shortly after disappeared. On her death 5 September 1923, her body lay unburied for thirty-eight days and was visited by thousands of pilgrims. Many of whom claimed that Mrs. Winchester showed no decay. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
A werewolf is typically seen as a noble and honorable warrior. They are of a royal class in their species. Legend had it that Mrs. Winchester had a pack of vicious werewolf guarding her estate. After the death of Mrs. Winchester, a Bloodline Blade with a birch handle and silver blade. The knife had been passed down for a millennium in her family, and was sold at auction. Too bad. It was a priceless artifact and carried withing it the soul of a divine wolf.
I conjure thee, Spirits of the Winchester Mansion, by the great living God, the Sovereign Creator of all things, to please appear under comely human forms, without noise and without terror, to answer truly all questions we shall ask three. Hereunto I conjure thee by the virtue of these Holy and Sacred Names, O SURMY, DELMUSAN, ATALSLOYM, CHURUSIHOA, MELANY, OMOT, and VERMIAS. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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There is No One Who Could Help Now?
I turned away astonished to see that in the few moments we had been talking, dusk had stolen the remnants of the day. Time always did seem to pass differently in my home. As we clattered down the corridor, I glanced into the rooms where the doors stood open. All were empty. There were no sounds of conversation, of caretakers going about their duties. Mr. Hansen stopped in front of a high wooden desk at the foot of the stairs. I caught the smell of beeswax polish, a sharp reminder of the back stairs leading up to the attic of the witches cap. We walked on the staircase, until I stopped in front of a paneled door and unlocked it. “I will have the fire made up,” Mr. Hansen said. The room was bone chillingly cold, though it was clean. I lit the oil lamps from the candle, and looked around. A small writing table and chip and dale arm chair sat adjacent to the door. Straight ahead, two tall windows, floor to ceiling, filled one side of the room. On the opposite side of the room was a heavy chest of gold, covered by a lace runner. When Mr. Hansen returned, I said, “Dearest Jim, will you please open that chest, there is something inside of it for you and your family.” Mr. Hansen eagerly walk over to the chest, and his eyes lit up like a new born baby having his first birthday cake. “Go ahead, Mr. Hansen, it is for you.” “No, Mrs. Winchester; I can well believe it. But this is a treasure I can live on for years. Only you must tell me how I can repay you…In a hundred years I could never do enough for you,” he said. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Well, that word went to my heart; but for a minute I did not know how to answer. For it was true I had risked my soul, and that was something he could not pay me for; but then maybe I had saved his, in getting him away from those foul people, so the whole business was more of a puzzle to me than ever. However, then I had thought that made me easier. Mr. Hansen went on to explain to me, “Well, Mrs. Winchester, the day before yesterday, I was with my young son; the poor young man, without health or hope, lying sick in a mean rooming house. Until now, I had no way to know how I would care for him.” Mrs. Winchester sat up in bed in a flutter of pity. “Oh, Mrs. Hansen, how dreadful! Why did you never tell me? You must hire a better room for him at once. Has he a doctor? Has he a nurse? Quick—give me my checkbook!” “Thank you, Mrs. Winchester. But you have already given me a king’s ransom.” When I got back to my room after a long, hot soak in the bath, a fire was burning in the grate, releasing an aroma of pine resin into the room. The smell snapped at my heartstrings, taking me back to New Haven winters when William was home from work. I gazed into the fire awhile longer, happy in my own company. I sometimes wondered if some of those grizzled old souls were able to make the journey from New Haven to Santa Clara. My home seemed to add so much to the ambience of the area. However, unlike the Earth, this huge estate seemed to need people within it to survive. That is one of many reasons my construction project went on so long. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Have you ever noticed how houses, as long as they have someone occupying them, no matter how little maintenance is done, always hold up better than houses that are abandoned? Houses, like a body which the soul has abandoned, deteriorate more rapidly when on one resides within. One evening in the cooling fall of the year, Mr. Hansen and his wife left the caretaker’s house on the estate for a social function. The son of Mr. Hansen was home alone. He was in the basement which was used as a recreation room. It was getting late and her was expecting his parents any minute. Sure enough, he heard footsteps on the floor above his head. They traveled across the living room and into the dining room and back again. He thought it unusual that his father and mother would be in the house walking around for nearly a minute and not call him. He walked to the stairs that led from the basement to the first floor and called out, “Daddy?” The only answer was the sound of footsteps crossing the room and beginning to ascend the stairs to the second floor. “Daddy?” he called again. With still no answer, he began to slowly climb the stairs from the basement to the first floor. He could hear what he was convinced was an intruder walking through the bedrooms just above his head, apparently looking for something valuable. The footsteps crossed the second floor just above his head and began approaching the stairs and descend to the first floor. He rushed into the basement again. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Wanting to run but not wanting to run into whoever it was who prowled above his head, he could only wait in icy apprehension for his parents. As he waited, the intruder stalked the floor above him, apparently not interested in valuables, seeking something known only to him. His wanderings became more aimless. First to the kitchen, then back to the living room, then the dining room—pacing…pacing—to perhaps peer out a window at the fruit orchard. The ancient floorboards that once soaked up blood of those killed by the Winchester rifle, groaned with the wandering footfall of an apparently lost intruder. Slowly the footsteps approached the cellar steps…he swore he heard him put a foot on the top step. Ghosts supposedly went out of fashion when electric light came in. What nonsense! The supernatural were always around on my estate. My very mansion was patrolled by headless victims with clanking chains, and even though it was a comfortable house with an ice box and 47 fireplaces where you feel, as soon as you are in it, that there is something wrong, it sends chills down your spine! It is certainly a lovely, airy, high-ceilinged house with electricity, but I knew we were dealing with something that was invisible and could not be seen—something that was very malevolent. I often saw a boy with glowing eyes near the 7-11 staircase. But here I belonged and here I would stay. There morning had been bitter, with a driving sleet—though it was only the last day of October—but after lunch a watery sun showed for a while through banked-up wooly cloud and tempted me out. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
I was an energetic walker, and given, at that season, to walking about the beautiful grounds. I made my usual round, and was following the path back to the mansion when I overtook a plainly-dressed woman walking in the same direction. When I caught up with the intruder, I was surprised to find she was a stranger. It was almost dark, and the woman’s face was hardly visible, but this woman was middle-aged, plain and rather pale. I greeted her, and then added: “You are going to my house?” “Yes, ma’am,” the woman answered, in a voice that the Connecticut Valley in the old days would have called “foreign.” I could not say where she came from. What struck me as queer was that I did not know her. I asked the woman, politely, what she wanted, and the woman answered: “Only to see Annie.” The answer was natural enough, but there was no one by that name on my estate. I turned off from the drive to the lower part of the gardens, so that I saw no more of the visitor then or afterward. And, in fact, half hour later something happened which put the stranger entirely out of my mind. I approached my house, slipped on a froze puddle, turned my ankle and lay suddenly helpless. Elroy, the butler, and Ersula the housemaid, knew exactly what to do. In no had me stretched out on a lounge, and Dr. Parker had been notified. When he arrived, he ordered me to bed, and did the necessary examining and bandaging, and shook his head over my ankle, which he feared was fractured. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Concerned about how I would get around my estate, as I was laying in bed, the spirit gave me an idea of building mini stairs that rose only two inches, so I could make it around, until I healed without being bound in plaster. From that night on, there was an appearance of ghost, who would manifest in front yard, walk up to the house and enter it, and interact with me. My home brought me deeper and deeper into a mysterious territory whose boundaries I had never before dream of transgressing. Ghosts often took shape right before my eyes. They would start off as tendrils and grow into glowing, mistlike things. Turning into orbs, the figures would grow larger and denser and began to assume a humanlike form. One evening, I extended my hand into the mist, and could feel its cold interior. Such a bold act may have been considered very rude by the entity, as the glowing image suddenly vanished. There were plenty of vibrations in my mansion to tune into. The place was drenched with psychic vibrations. In my Blue Séance Room is where the glowing lights and ethereal broadcast were received well enough that caretakers were aware of their presence. They would morph into columns of light about the height of a man and make their trek out of the room. One night Ersula reported seeing ghostly face looking through the window at her one night. The ghost then chased her hands away from the cows during an evening milking. The following morning, it was about nine o’clock before I admitted to myself that something uncommonly strange must have happened in the house. Mysterious things—dreadful things—were associated with darkness; and the wholesome prosaic daylight had not come to banish there. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
I conjure thee, O Spirit Pheynix, and your 20 Legions of Spirits, by all the most glorious and efficacious Names of the Great and Incomparable Lord the God of Hosts, come quickly and without delay, from whatsoever part of the World thou art in; make rational answers to our demands; please come visibly, speak affably, speak intelligibly to our understanding. We conjure and constrain thee, O Spirit Pheynix and your 20 Legions of Spirits, as also by these seven other Names wherewith Solomon bound thee and thy fellows in the brazen vessel, to wit, ADONAI, PRERAI, TETRAGRAMMATON, ANEX-HEXETON, INESSENSATOAL, PATHUMATON, and ITEMON; do thou manifest in the Winchester Mansion, fully our will in all things that they may seem good to us. Come, therefore, in the Holy Names ADONAI, ZEBAOTH, AMIORAM, come, ADONAI commands thee. Please grants us your powers and virtues by the powers and virtues, and by the name PRIMEMATUM, which commands the whose host of Heaven. Do thou force and compel the Spirit of Sarah L. Winchester here before to return to her mansion, in a fair and comely shape, without injury to herself or any creature, that she many continue to expand and make her estate thrive, so that she accomplished her desired end, whatsoever it be, provided that it is proper to her office, by the power of God, EL, who hath created and doth dispose of all things, celestial, aerial, terrestrial, and infernal. Please appear and make the sweet perfumes, give good entertainment. May all the Company of Heaven, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Light of Hosts of Heaven guide you back to your estate by the power of TETRAGRAMMATON, ANEXHEXETON, PRIMEMATUM. So bless it be. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
If such peculiar manifestations as orbs and ghosts should be as intelligent as their actions often indicate, just what are they and what is their purpose? We have folklore that is at least 2,000 years old that equates these mysterious globes of light with spirits of the dead and with those beings we label nature spirits—the Devas, the elves, and the fairies. The manipulation of glowing balls of light as a means of transportation may even be employed by angelic beings and spirit guides. Indeed, these benevolent beings may take form as ghosts of light before fully materializing in our dimension. These orbs seen in the Winchester Mansion are intelligent and may be able to manifest a physical appearance that is most compatible with the level of understanding of each individual witness.
These were Mrs. Winchester’s carpenters on the estate. One of these gentleman has been spotted inside the house by both guests and tour guides for decades! He is usually seen fixing the fireplaces and rolling around his wheelbarrow in the basement. Can you guess which one he is? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/ 👻
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The Psychic Storm that Had Swirled
It was dark, the path to my home was so precipitous that I was forced to brace my knees and steady myself on the overhanging branches so as not to lose my footing. The extravagant roots of ancient trees crisscrossed the path. Stones, uneven Earth, and fallen fossilized branches—everything was familiar, but somehow distorted. For almost two hours, guns were rumbling. The atmosphere grew more claustrophobic as horsemen crossed my route. I felt trapped, as though the forest on my estate was closing in on me. There was something very grotesque about the strength of the enemy as they launched their grand assault on my estate. I summoned a column of horses several hundred yards wife and half-mile deep to ram through the line of cavalry attacking my mansion. They advanced across the fruit orchard, still my body of men endured the artillery fire, the finally the canter and charge. The Spanish army was not quite as large, but travelling directly at my soldiers. I watched as suddenly the two opposing forced collided, the Winchester soldiers knocking the sending the Spanish horsemen somersaulting backward, their riders were being crushed by squirming horseflesh, as they crashed together. I had finally made it to my observation tower, and from this point I saw that the Winchester soldiers do incredible damage to the Spanish column. The few strangling men sabered left and right until they collapsed in defeat. I could feel my nerves starting to get the better of me. Even though the Winchester soldiers were triumphant, increasingly I imagined peculiar shapes, outlines, behind every tree, eyes in the dark of my mansion watching me, an unwelcome and persistent voice in my ear asking if it was more than just invasion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
In the deepest corners of my home, the light had all but disappeared. A red mist was slinking through the halls, slipping in and out of hundreds of rooms like an animal hunting its prey. There was an absolute and impenetrable stillness. Then I heard a glass shattering. I stopped dead in my tracks, straining to listen. Another sound…something was moving through the walls. As if I could take on any kind of beast, I looked for an object to defend myself. Should I have the misfortune to encounter a demonic enemy force lurking in my home, my only resort was to stay absolutely still and pray it did not pick up my scent. If it did, there would be nothing to do but run for my life. The caretakers were nowhere to be found. Another breaking glass, something inching closer and closer. I looked around to see if there was anywhere I could hide. There was a secret passageway about 50 feet from my location. If I stayed low to the ground, I could make it. Moments after I started to crawl to the escape, two indistinct figures emerged from the mist on the floor. They had no eyes, no face. Not even a nose was visible. The dim figures moved behind the doors, through the long shadows of the twisting hallways. A bearded man dressed in high boots and blue coat, helped me as we disappeared through the apartment of rooms. We ventured up to the attic where I could hear the sounds of boots dragging across the floor below. As we opened the door, we caught sight of a wispy something retreating to a darkened comer of the storage area. It was an ectoplasmic spirit leaving a trail of cobweb mucus behind. Next, the peripatetic figure who roamed my mansion to save me from the intruders disappeared after helping me to safety. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
As I walked through my home, occasional objects suddenly became airborne without any apparent physical cause for their levitation. The house seemed lighter to me, and there was just a hit of the faintest red mist, as a twist of smoke wreathing up into the air arose from the floor. Invisible helping hands started setting the rooms in order, right down to the last doyly and rug in place. Windows magically healed themselves from their fractures, the crystal chandeliers came back together and levitated back to their place in the ceiling. There were sounds of furniture being dragged across the floor to their proper location. The spirits were not going to let me be driven from my home. There was great pride in the veteran transmigration of souls I called the Winchester Soldiers. When there was not a war going on, the center of the hauntings seemed to take place in the basement and in one of the 9 kitchens known to the caretakers as the Devil’s Kitchen. In the Devil’s Kitchen, the hauntings primarily consisted of knocking, thumpings, and the sound of footsteps running down the caretaker’s stairs and shuffling across the floor. Many often heard the thin tolling of the church bell, the mournful single note carried on the air. Entering the Devil’s Kitchen in the morning, many of the caretakers were often surprised to find themselves walking out of it at night, but feeling like so little time had passed, as the bell died away. Before leaving the estate to go home, they would hesitate a moment, confused, looking over their shoulder in the direction they had come. There was some kind of cloud, some sadness, hanging over that kitchen. They knew something was not quite right, misaligned, like a picture askew on a wall. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Certainly, the most dramatic manifestation of the haunting was the materialization of 13 skeletons in the basement. After appearing in startling blood red color, the skeletal figures would slowly manifest themselves into what appeared to be solid, three-dimensional representations of 7 men, 4 women, and a little boy and little girl. The images appeared to be wealthy and appeared to adorn in vogue fashions. Once the entities had fully materialized, a bizarre ethereal drama would unfold before any witness who might be present to observe the phenomenon. As the ghost of a lovely, raven haired girl with long hair sat playing idly with her dolls, one of the men in the spectral reenactment strangled one of the women while the little boy cried in the corner and the others stood by with pleased expressions of immense satisfaction. We always suspected that the ghastly reenactment was the tragic playing out of the eternal witch trials. The shocked witnesses, who had seen the grimly performance, felt this was a scene from a Salem courtroom. A judge strangling a suspected witch to please the family of the bewitched. Some cursory historical research and an examination of local folklore revealed a scandal regarding a lady of the house who had disappeared without a trace and a husband who had remarried after an extremely brief period of grieving. Local Salem stories had it that the wife of an enslaved man was accused of fortune telling and had been murdered in court by Judge Samuel Sewall. The judge apparently strangled the woman because he believed she was a witch and said that “Black Africans could not live peacefully among White New Englanders.” Nevertheless, he allowed the man to marry a White woman. Why had the controversy of this wedlock been taking stage in my home? #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
I do not believe I ever did such hard thinking as I did that night. It was not so easy, neither. I figured it out. You see, dearie, when I was laying in my bed last night something came to me from the spirit World. I knew at once it was from the enslaved woman who had been strangled in court. I had to wait, she was crying so hard. She asked me to look at the paintings in my hall gallery. There was a particular titled “Examination of a Witch” produced in 1853 by Tompkins Harrison Matteson that William’s mother had given me as a wedding gift. In this picture was Judge Samuel Sewall, and upon observation, it was revealed that Mary Fisher was sized upon by a Black African, and was shamefully stripped for the purpose of ascertaining whether she had the Devil’s mark upon her. The woman being subdued by her hair and the man lying on the floor were Black Africans involved in a vile and bloodthirst cult for breeding babies with White women for ritual purposes. They were abusing children in similar numbers and were putting young men and women through terrifying ordeals of sexual torture and sometimes death. They hysteria is what is depicted in that work of art, which was originally titled, The Making of a Satanic Myth. The judged is asking the simple question: Where is the evidence? As the investigations had produced no bodies, no bones…no bloodstains. Nothing. These tales of satanic slavery had reached incredible proportions and it was believed an occult alliance stretching from the local group level to higher international orders, with its tentacles established far and wide through society, into the judiciary, politics and law enforcement. It was claimed to be basically occult, a largely satanical exchange network where the 27 children produced in these unions were goaled. The accused were carried two days’ journey into the woods, and left to the tender mercies of Indians and wolves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The psychic storm that had swirled throughout the household was finally diminished. “Thus twice before, and just at this dead hour, with marital stalk hath he gone by our watch,” Hamlet, Act I, Scene I was very appropriate for this re-enactment. They were so blinded by the beauty of these exotic babies—so much so that they could not figure out what they were. Tan skin, blonde hair, blue eyes. White, curly hair, dark eyes, full lips. They had to keep them concealed. In my hoe, I saw an occasional shadow move in and out of the slivers of light that slipped out between the partially open curtains, but no one out and about. Often, I still heard footsteps behind me, but when I would look asunder, there would be no one behind me. I was so sorry for the woman in the painting. So I went back my gallery the next evening; as I climbed the stairs I felt one of those sudden warnings that sometime used to take me by the throat. “It is as cold as ice on these stairs,” I thought, “and I will wager there is no one made up the fire in this room since this morning.” But it was not really the cold I was afraid of; I could tell there was worse than that waiting for me. I pushed open the door and went in. “Well,” says I, as cheerful as I could while looking at the painting, “Only lying awake all night and turning thing over, I got so miserable,” Turning away my head away from the painting so she would not see the tears running down my cheeks, and I felt that the cold came from her, and not from the empty fireplace. As I walked out of the gallery, I fell on my knees. “You shall not go without a prayer, you poor dear,” I whispered to her. But though my heart was full of mourning I did not pray for long. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Mrs. Winchester was doing battle with entities, some terrible, and some against her. The dark pagan gods were not about to yield this green land without a fight. They converged in the mansions and attempted to thwart Mrs. Winchester in her mission, while other supernarural beins assisted her.
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Angels and Demons, Gargoyles and Ghostly Apparitions
Except for William, the idea of love to me always seemed a question of submission. Of giving in to some powerful emotion, of losing control. Poor souls. However, with my beloved William, love seemed a natural thing, something one did not even need to remark upon, like breathing or raising one’s face to the sun on a summer’s day. It is no matter now, for he passed away years ago, and all I ask is to be left alone in my chair. Money has been an armor, you see; and there are few cracks in it. But William had a loving nature, if only others had show him love. He was a delicate boy when he was little, so his mother could curl him up, and put him into black velvet pants, like that boy in the book—little Lord Something. However, when his legs grew out of the pants, and they sent him to school, she said he was not her own little cuddly baby any more; and it riles a growing boy to hear himself talked about like that. It was like being pushed out of an illuminated ballroom, all flowers and chandeliers, into the winter night and snow. Yet, Mr. Winchester grew up into a fine man and that is why I married him. He used to go over and see his mother now and again; or she would come home for the holidays. And he used to take her out for lunch, or to dance at those cabaret places; and when the headwaiters adore his mother’s beauty and charm, he would talk about it for a week. For a time she used to get some comfort out of telling me about her early triumphs; and I used to listen to her patiently, taking notes on how to be a good wife and mother. You must not think of her as an unkind woman. She was friendly to her husband, and friendly to her children, but she knew she had to raise William to be tough and strong. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
There were always people prowling about in the background that she did not like the look of; people, you understand, who live on weak people. There is nothing more I can say. Reflecting of these memories was nice. It allowed me to sleep all day and into the evening. Or, rather, I drifted in and out of twilight state. I was aware of the housemaids and the parlor maids coming and going, shapes, blurred faces, the sound of kindlin and a striking match, the maid laying a fire. I work fully only twice. First, when Ersula placed a bowl of soup and bread beside the bed and waited until I had eaten it all. The second time, when she returned to administer a second draft of the bitter white medicine, a sleeping draft or some kind of traditional remedy, I never knew and hardly cared. My skin was alternatively burning and clammy with sweat. I tossed and turned in bed, like a ship on a storm-wracked sea, plagued by dreams and delusions. Angels and demons, gargoyles and ghostly apparitions, long-since deserted friends waltzed in and out of my head. For hours, so Ersula later told me, things hung in the balance as my temperature climbed as high as the nine-story observational tower. Certainly, I oscillated between beauty and horror. A skeletal hand pushing up from beneath freshly turned Earth, blossoms dying on the bough. The back of Annie’s heads, impassive and deaf to my consoling up her upset tummy. William smiling at me, in the orchard and by the stream, but then stepping just out of reach and turning away when I called out to him. Barbed wire and mud and blood, chlorine gas, a World of unimaginable pain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Nearly 175,000 men—jamming the streets and roads and field of my estate, attempting to tear each other apart, and in doing so, leaving anywhere from 44,000 to 51,000 casualties behind, to be cared for immediately after the battle by a handful of doctors, orderlies, and the servants of my estate, and my mansion metamorphosing into one vast charnel-house. To day the least, my tidy rooms, barns, and farmhouses, and Victorian gardens were overflowing with men who were seriously hurt and badly needed shelter from the elements. These horrors seemed to last for weeks. The fever broke at about three o’clock in the morning. My temperature dropped. I stopped shaking and my skin, sticky with fever, returned to normal. For the first time in hours, I was able to get out of bed. In the still and sleeping house, I could hear the whirring and chiming of the grandfather clock in the hall downstairs. A ribbon of moonlight made its way between the shutters and painted a line across the floor. I watched the moonbeams dance, slowly shifting, as the hours passed and the World continued to turn. I walked through the hallway, looking through a couple of doorways and back into the original section of the house when I noticed a fresh-countenanced young man standing and watching the goings-on with a peculiar look on his face. The more I watched him, the more I saw it was a look of wanting to come out of the Grand Ball Room. Catching his eye, I motioned for the young man to come join me for a cup of tea. He just stood there and stared, the expression on his face becoming even more painted. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Then it dawned on me that he was a ghost, and he was stuck in the old part of the house and could not leave the Grand Ball Room. With an understanding shrug, he turned away from the door and walked further into the room to join the other apparitions. I stood back with my eyes closed, and a quiet smile on my face. By this time, the sky was a mass of teal and fuchsia. At first it looked like a kite-flying contest, the could over my mansion obstructed by swooping streaks of color that danced on the air currents, trailing multi-hued streamers behind them. Then I heard the chirping cacophonous twittering like an orchestra of xylophones. As I looked further through the skylights, I realized that the kites’ long tails were really feathers, and they were not tethered to the ground by strings. A flock of birds, what seemed like hundreds of them, painted the air with wings the color of the rainbow, dipping and soaring on air currents visible only to them. I could barely take my eyes off the flock. I wished the birds would stay forever: They were like an elaborately painted scene on a China teacup, and their chirping filled me with the kind of inexplicable joy that I had felt as a child, climbing onto my mother’s lap and smelling the faint scent of her jasmine perfume after a long day of play. The birds, as if acting on an invisible signal from above, formed two loose lines and soared higher, heading towards Heaven. I wished I could fly with them, borne along on whatever invisible breeze they had ridden in on. The birds had stirred something powerful in me, mysterious symphony of joy and emotion. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
It must have been some kind of European sorcery and magic. And, there seemed to be something else in the atmosphere. Around 5.45 a.m., I heard what sounded like for all the World, a small child. It came from further down the hallway, and I walked curiously down towards where the sound seemed to be coming from, the sound moved into the living room. I followed, and it kept moving and cooing at a distance of what I estimated was about six feet in front of me. As I got to the living room, the cooing baby moved on into the next room, the kitchen. I stood in the living room and rationalized for a moment. The lights from outside the mansion were spilling into the room, and it slowly occurred to me that if the baby had been playing, I would surely have seen her cross the room between the hall and the kitchen. I listened to the cute baby sounds in the next room, and a chill went down my spine. I now had no idea what I was dealing with. The cooing faded within the next moment, and I backed down the hall, ducking into the Alice in Wonderland room and, of course, there was no one in the room, but the tiny rocking chair was swaying back and forth. A few nights later, I was up in the middle of the night. I was in complete darkness. No windows in the room, no light, just darkness. Suddenly, from the area to my left, which would have been the bathtub, I heard very clearly—sharp and loud enough to make me jump—a voice shout, “Belly Ache!” The voice was that of a little girl, but there was something sweet and warm about the voice, like the voice of an angel. I pushed the button to turn on the light. Nothing. Not that I found the matter unfathomable. Quite frequently, I saw the figure of a little girl moving up and down the hall past my bedroom door during the night. She has a soft, blue glow. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
For week, I lie awake at night, thinking this could be my beloved Annie. I waited and waited, night after night to see her again and perhaps talk with her, but she did not return. However, the bathtub faucet leaked and dripped fairly on occasion. I lay in bed, listening to the drip. It had developed a steady rhythm, as drips will. Suddenly, the rhythm changed. The drip sound changed in pitch, and it literally played a tune. It was the Highland Fairy Lullaby. The temperature in the room dropped, and I could clearly hear the sound of a little girl playing with her doll. She was singing a tuneless little song, the kind of melodic chat that was common among young children, especially little girls at play. From time to time, she would interrupt the humming of her sing-song to speak lovingly to her doll, and then she would call rather loudly to her mother that she had a tummy ache. However, there was no response from the mother, and she would return to playing with her doll and singing. I could almost see the little girl dressing her doll, combing its beautiful hair. From that night on, I would awake in the middle of the night or in the morning and hear the little girl calling for her mother. Once I had thoroughly searched the house and determined that it must be the sound of some lost and confused spirit-child, eternally singing and occasionally calling for her mother, or perhaps it was some kind of ethereal phonograph, eternally reproducing the sounds of a little girl. For some, this haunting might be considered a nightmare, but for me, it reminded me of the death of my six-week-old daughter, and it gave me hope that she was still near me, in my house growing and aging, even if she were only a spirit. I took these as signs from the spirit World and had a bird aviary constructed with exotic birds from all over the World, and invited my niece Daisy to live with me. Someone I could be a mother to. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
I invoke, conjure, and command thee, Spirit Botis, and your 60 Legions of Spirits to bring with you power armed from the Supreme Majesty, I do strongly command thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALDACHINENSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachide, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocating conjure thee. Magic forces, black and white, reaching out through space and light, be he far or be he near, brings us the demon Balthazar here. Ancient powers, we summon thee, we the power of three and seek your help in finding the demons who are in the Winchester Mansion. Come thou peaceably, visibly, and affably, now, and without delay, manifesting that magic running through this estate, help us see with clarity, power that we have summoned here, protect us and we will have no fear. Throne having eyes before and behind, by the fire which is about the Throne, by Holy Angels of Heaven, by the Mighty Wisdom of God; by the Seal of Basdathea, by this name PRIMEMATUM, which Moses named, and the Earth opened and swallowed Corah, Dathan, and Abiram; do thou make faithful answers unto all our demands and perform all our desires, so far as thine office shall permit. Come therefore peaceably and affably; come visibly and without delay; manifest that which we desire; speak with a clear and intelligible voice, that we may understand. TETRAGRAMMATON IEHOVAH, do I command three, at which being heard the elements are overthrown, the air is shaken, the sea runneth back, the fire is quenched, the Earth trembleth, and all the hosts of the celestials, terrestrials, and infernals do tremble together, and are troubled and confounded. Wherefore come thou, O Spirits Sarah, William, and Annie Winchester, forthwith, and without delay, from any or all parts of the World wherever thou mayest be, and make rational answers unto all things that we shall demand. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
A thin door indeed it is between life and death: one moment young and full of future, the next lying wounded in some stranger’s house in a small farm-town, the following instant forever lost and wandering in eternity. Could it be the vital spark, the spirit of not only souls killed by the Winchester rifle, but also members of the Winchester family that still search for the youth they lost, roaming the miles of hallways in the Winchester Mansion for all of eternity? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Good-by; You’ll Never Know What This Has Cost Me
Mr. Hansen had never been able to understand why there was any harm in giving people a little encouragement when they needed it. Sitting back in my comfortable armchair by the fire, I thought to myself, “You would be surprised to find how discouraged the grand people get, in these big houses with all the help, and silver dinner plates, and a bell always handy if the fire wants poking, or the pet dog asks for a drink.” It was then that I first became aware of a disturbance in the air. A kind of restlessness. I looked sharply around the front parlor, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The room was deserted. No one had come along for some time. Yet there was a suggestion of movement nonetheless, a shifting of the light from the chandelier. The drapes loomed more menacingly and the fire appeared even closer, as I glanced out of window, my yard looked like an ancient forest of evergreen. What secrets did they contain within their shadows? My heart skipped a beat. I opened the window. The silence surged around me. Again, nothing. And inside—no telltale footsteps or voices. Only later, did it occur to me that the silence was peculiar. I should have been able to hear something. The roar of the furnaces, or the belching chimneys. The sound of the carpenters hammering. The servants washing dishes in one of the kitchens. However, I was only aware of the silence. Silence, as if I were the only one left alive on my estate. Then I heard it. No, not heard. I sensed it. A whispering, almost like a singing. The others have slipped away into darkness. I caught my breath. “Who’s there?” #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
I heard the ghost of Mr. Winchester’s voice inside my head, though it was growing fainter with the passing years. However, this was different, a lighter sound, gentle and exquisite, carried on the cold air. A reverberation, and echo of words once spoken in this place? And what of the crimson mist on arising from the floor? On these cold winter nights, it was not unusual to hear the clanking like a bucket, and the shuffling of feet. When I looked over toward the kitchen, there was a man—or something—dressed in a long white coat, all bent over like he was tired or something, slowly walking toward the door-to-nowhere. He was filling up the buckets using the exterior water faucets on the second floor that were used to water my flower boxes. He seemed to walk right out the door and to the front of the house, but there was nothing supporting him. Then he watered the flowers and walked slowly back into the house, real tired- like. And almost suddenly vanished. There were spirits caught forever in the never-ending labor to keep this estate operating. Perhaps these were visions out of time making their journey into the eternal flame as well as into Eternity itself. However, every July 2, officers could be frequently seen in the dim moonlight, in the Victorian garden, dressed in their gray tunics and gold stars and wreath, gathering around the fountains, mixing fine bourbon with the clear water, and toasting to the next day’s victory or death. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Summer nights always tended to be a little eerie. In the dark, the estate at best, is an uncomfortable place to be. The tragic memories and sorrows of a nation’s struggle defending the hour of the country with their Winchester Rifle’s hanged heavily and seemed magnified in the night. There is always something moving in the fruit orchards or the grass just off the unlighted portions of the estate. It all makes the Other World all that much closer. Sometimes one could even hear the strange military noises emanating from the 740 acres of land I own, and the fallen faces of the slaughtered. Desperate orders shouted…steel rammers ringing in muskets…the clicking of hammers cocked…the hoarse trill of a bugle…the clacking of artillery chains…a roar…shrieks…men gagging, crying, screaming, moaning, moaning, moaning….and there is often heard the funeral call, mounrful apologies of a heartsick, dying warrior to a lost friend bemoaning a fateful decision to be regretted down the ages. Although we had transitioned into summer, there was just an endless expanse of cold on these nights. Memories would seep into my mind. My Daisy Bedroom. Candles burned out. Me crying in the dark, jolted awake by bad dreams and calling out for my infant daughter who passed away long too soon. Then Mr. Winchester, sitting at the end of my bed, opening the curtains to let the silver moon in, saying there was nothing to be afraid of. How nothing could hard me. Not even a curse. How I was a Winchester, invincible and courageous. Nothing could get me as long as I kept building. And with William by my side, I believed it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
So I talked to myself to keep my spirit up. I was in no actual physical danger, I said. It was just a matter holding on to my nerved. Still, fragments of life flashed into my mind and out. Broken images of my husband and daughter, photographs of our happy days. Memories of Mr. Winchester. And I wondered if he had seen death, like a shadow coming to meet him. Had he recognized the moment for what it was? Whispering, I could hear whispering, voices slipping between the walls. “She is the last, the last, the heiress.” Heard howling from the walls. Sometimes far away, sometimes closer, so close I imagined I could feel breath upon my cheek. “The others have slipped away into darkness.” Then the sound of sobbing, a desperate scratching on the floors, and a terrible weeping. I worked hard to turn this mansion into something beautiful. Having evergreen trees planted and a variety of flowers. I even remodeled a room with attractive redwood walls, and another with floor to ceiling glass panels that provided a 180-degree view of the estate. I smiled when I saw the perennials that I had planted. However, a number of other peculiar incidents began to convince me that I was being visited by discarnate entities. I always knew I was being haunted. But now I was catching fleeting glimpses of fast-moving shadows from time to time when I would least expect to see such a thing. There would often be smells of delicate perfume. Mr. Hansen thought it was closer to a man’s cologne. Sometimes we encountered the scent together, but in every instance it came and drifted away after only a few minutes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Once, when I was outside tending the flowers growing under the front windows, and I was suddenly enveloped in an invisible puff of strong cigar smoke. Then I was choking, coughing. I could feel the pump and hiss of my heart beneath my ribs, rattling like a snare drum. I swallowed hard. When I put my hand up to brush the smoke away from my cheek, I saw that the tips of my gloves were red. And when I looked down, I saw the daisies with drops of blood on them, glittering and yet dull at the same time. I propelled myself into a standing position, and walked towards the front doors. The wind boxed my ears so hard that I struggled to keep my balance, but I managed finally to get those doors shut. When I looked in the mirror, I was not injured at all. That night while I was falling asleep, I sensed a large, dark presence in the bedroom. It glided over me and seemed to hover just over my head, and I was the recipient of a telepathic command: “I want to know your thoughts!” After I fell asleep, I experienced horrific nightmares. I was awakened by the sounds of terrific crashes, as though something huge had fallen over somewhere in the house, causing terrible damage. Thanks to the stocks I owned and the ones I bought in Con Edison, I was able to keep building rooms to evade the ghosts. Do you know how it is, sometimes when you are doing a bit of fine darning, sitting by the window in the afternoon; and one minute it is full daylight, and your needle seems to find the way of itself; and the next minute you say: “Is it my eyes? because the work seems blurred; and presently you see it is the daylight going, stealing away, softlike, from your corner, though there is plenty left overheard. Well—it is the way it is with these ghosts around.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Most nights, screaks could be heard emanating from within the walls. Then everything would be stripped of color, an absence and shade. Fog hovered motionless from the ceiling. And it would come again, over the whistling of the wind, the same indistinct whispering. “The others have slipped away into darkness.” “Who are you?” I cried. “What do you want from me?” But the fog, the apparition, had vanished. After the Spanish-America War, all the fine ladies took to running to the mediums and the clairvoyants, or whatever the stylish folk call them. The women had to have news of their men; and they were maid to pay high enough for it…Oh, the stories I used to hear—and the price paid was not only money, either! There was a fair lot of swindlers and blackmailers in the business, there was. I always had a way of seeing things; from the cradle, even. I do not mean reading the tea leaves, or dealing the cards. No, no; I mean, feeling there are things about you, behind you, whispering over your shoulder. I felt more and more sorry for those women that the soothsaying swindlers were dragging the money out of for a pack of lies; and one day I could not stand it any longer, and though I knew the Church was against it, when I saw one lady nearly crazy, because for months she had no news of her boy at the front, I said to her: “If you will come over to my place tomorrow, I might have a word for you.” And the wonder of it was that I had! For that night I dreamt a message came saying there was good news for her, and the next day, sure enough, she had a telegram telling her her son was coming home. And that August, the war ended. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
One is confronted finally with the metaphysics of time: is it merely linear; are we moving along it like riding a train on a track and all that happens, once it occurs, is forever gone? Or can that time be bent, as some prominent theoretical physicists of the late 19th and 20th centuries have said, so that we may run into it again? Or, can an event go out in more directions than just backward, carried on time like ripples from a stone throw in a pond, occasionally under very special circumstances in very special places, returning like a faint echo? Is it possible that the bigger the event the larger the ripples and the more likely they are to return? Or perhaps is it possible, if time can be bent, or the ripples move slowly enough, to catch up with events again, and again, and again? Come tour the Winchester Mystery House and perhaps you will find some hidden clues. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And be sure to check out the Online Gift Store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
I Woke Up and Called this Morning, the Tone of Your Voice Was a Warning
Half our mistakes in life arise from feeling when we ought to think, and thinking when we ought to feel. Many people are content to allow authority figures to call the shots. If someone with an impressive array of credentials or degrees or a well-known name speaks out on a matter, of if a social institution or a book makes a statement on a matter, or if a social institution or a book makes a statement, the matter is “settled.” However, authority figures are subject to error, just as any of us are. If I do not keep my mind open to this possibility, then I may ignore my own feelings on a subject. Rationalization is a way of coping with a situation in which, for either practical or emotional reasons, or both, a battered woman is stuck. For some women, the situation and the beliefs that rationalize it, may continue for a lifetime. For others, changes may occur within the relationship, within individuals, or in available resources which serve as catalysts for redefining the violence. When battered women reject prior rationalizations and begin to view themselves as true victims of abuse, the victimization process begins. There are a variety of catalysts for redefining abuse; we discuss six: (1) a change in the level of violence; (2) a change in the resources; (3) a change in the relationship; (4) despair; (5) a change in the visibility of violence; and (6) external definitions of the relationship. The traditional ideal of many societies is to hold back strong or unpleasant emotions for the sake of others. However, feelings held in are likely to come out in some way—often an inappropriate one. So we are really not doing the other person much of a favor by trying to cover up feelings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
A change in the level of violence: the severity of abuse is an important factor in women’s decisions to leave violent situations. There is no significant correlation between the number of years spent cohabiting with an abuser and the severity of abuse. On the contrary: the longer women lived with an abuser, the more severe the violence they endured, since violence increased in severity over time. What doe seem to serve as a catalyst is a sudden change in the relative level of violence. Women who suddenly realize that battering may be fatal may reject rationalizations in order to save their lives. One woman who had been severely beaten by an alcoholic husband for many years explained her decision to leave on the basis of a direct threat to her life: “It was like a pendulum. He’s swing to the extremes both ways. He’d get drunk and beat me up, then he’d get sober and treat me like a queen. One day he put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. It wasn’t loaded. But that’s when I decided I’d had it. I sued for separation of property. I knew what was coming again, so I got out. I didn’t want to. I still loved the guy, but I knew I had to for my own sanity.” A change in resources: Although some women rationalize cohabiting with an abuser by claiming they have no options, others begin reinterpreting violence when the resources necessary for escape become available. The emergence of safe homes or shelters since 1970 has produced a new resource for battered women, but they are not always safe places. While not completely adequate or satisfactory, the mere existence of a place to go alters the situation in which battering is experienced. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Public support of shelters is a statement to battered women that abuse need not be tolerated. Conversely, political trends which limit resources available to women, such as cutbacks in government funding to social programs, increase fears that life outside a violent marriage is economically impossible. One 25-year-old woman discussed this catalyst: “I stayed with him because I didn’t want my kids to have the same life I did. My parents were divorced, and I was always so ashamed of that. Yes, they’re all on their own now, so there’s no reason left to stay.” A change in the relationship: In the stages of a battering relationship, violent incidents are usually followed by periods of remorse and solicitude. Such phases deepen the emotional bonds, and make rejection of an abuser more difficult. However, as battering progresses, periods of remorse may shorten, or disappear, eliminating the basis for maintaining a positive outlook on the marriage. After a number of episodes of violence, a man may realize that this victim will not retaliate or escape, and thus feel no need to express remorse. Extended periods devoid of kindness or love may alter a woman’s feelings toward her partner so much so that she eventually begins to define herself as a victim of abuse. One woman recalled: “At first, you know, we used to have so much fun together. He was kind’ve, you know, a magnetic personality; he can be really charming. But it isn’t fun anymore. Since the baby came, it’s changed completely. He just wants me to stay home, while he goes out with his friends. He doesn’t even talk to me, most of the time….No, I don’t really love him anymore, not like I did. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Despair: Changes in the relationship may result in a loss of hope that “things will get better.” When hope is destroyed and replaced by despair, rationalizations of violence may give way to the recognition of victimization. Feelings of hopelessness or despair are the basis for some efforts to assist battered women, such as Al-Anon. The director of an Al-Anon organized shelter explained the concept of “hitting bottom”: Before the Al-Anon program can really be of benefit, a woman has to hit bottom. When you hit bottom, you realize that all of your own efforts to control the situation have failed; you feel helpless and lost and worthless and completely disenchanted with the World. Women cannot really be helped unless they are ready for it and want it. Some women come here when things get bad, but they are not really ready to be committed to Al-Anon. Things have not gotten bad enough for them, and they go right back. We see this all the time. A change in the visibility of violence: Creating a web of rationalizations to overlook violence is accomplished more easily if no intruders are present to question their validity. Since most violence between couples occurs in private, there are seldom conflicting interpretations of the event from outsiders. Only 7 percent of the respondents in our study who discussed spatial location of violence indicted events which took place outside the home, but all reported incidents within the home. Other report similar findings. If violence does occur in the presence of others, it may trigger a reinterpretation process. Battering in private is degrading, but battering in public is humiliating, for it is a statement of subordination and powerlessness. Having others witness abuse may create intolerable feeling of shame which undermine prior rationalizations. (And the thing about self-defense, the person who throws the first blow is usually the offender, but how do you prove it?) #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
“He never hit me in public before—it was always at home. But the Saturday I got back [returned to husband from shelter], we went Christmas shopping and he slapped me in the store because of some stupid joke I made. People saw it, I know, I felt so stupid, like, they must all think what a jerk I am, what a sick couple, and I thought, ‘God, I must be crazy to let him do this.’ Then one time at a party on a yacht, he jumped on me and my dad just watched and let him beat me. Then another time, he beat me and dragged me down the hallway by my hair, saying he was going to pull my wig off, but it was my real hair in a ponytail. I was screaming for help, but no one came. I thought he was going to pull all of my hair out.” External definitions of the relationship: A change in visibility is usually accomplished by the interjection of external definitions of abuse. External definitions vary depending on their source and the situation; they either reinforce or undermine rationalizations. Battered women who request help frequently find others—and especially officials—do not believe their story or are unsympathetic. Experimental research supports these reports. Observers usually fail to respond when a woman is attacked by a man, and justify nonintervention on the grounds that they assume the victim and offender were married. One young woman discussed how lack of support from her family left her without hope: “It wouldn’t be so bad if my own family gave a damn about me…Yeah, they know I’m here, and they don’t care. They didn’t care about me when I was a kid, so why should they care now? I got raped and beat as a kid, and now I get beat as an adult. Life is a big joke.” Clearly, such responses from family members contribute to the belief among battered women that there are no alternatives and that they just tolerate the abuse. However, when outsiders respond with unqualified support of the victim and condemnation of violent men, their definitions can be potent catalyst toward victimization. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Friends and relatives who show genuine concern for a woman’s well-being may initiate an awareness of danger which contradicts previous rationalizations. “My mother-in-law knew what was going on, but she wouldn’t it…I said, ‘Mom, what do you think these bruises are?’ and she said ‘Well, some people just bruise easy. I do it al the time, bumping into things.’ …And he just denied it, pretended like nothing happened, and if I’d said I wanted to talk about it, he’d say, ‘life goes on, you can’t just dwell on things.’…But this time, my neighbor knew what happened, she saw it, and when he denied it, she said, ‘I can’t believe it! You know that’s not true!’ …and I was so happy that finally, somebody else saw what was goin’ on, and I just told him then tht this time I wasn’t gonna’ come home! You can call the police, file police reports and go to the doctor with obvious signs of abuse, and sometimes the abuser never leaves. Even when the police say that they have handled the situation, he would just be quietly waiting in another room to beat me again for reporting him. One time him and one of the girls he was cheating with jumped me and he slammed my head into the wall and busted my lip. They bragged about. One night, he was hanging out with my dad and I would not come pick him up because he was drunk and I did not want him to beat me, and he my dad let him drive his car to my mother’s house, and when I opened the door, he started beating me and ripped my new silk blouse. My baby brother and his friend had to pull him off of me and he left. Victim’s f domestic violence should qualify as disabled because we truly are. ” The song Never No More by Aaliyah was meant to be a theme song for women not to put up with domestic violence anymore. Unfortunately, she was killed in a plane crash before they got a chance to launch the campaign. Shelters for battered women serve not only as material resources, but as source of external definitions which contribute to the victimization process. They offer refuge from a violent situation in which a woman may contemplate her circumstances and what she wants to do bout them. Within a shelter, women meet counselors and other battered women who are familiar with rationalizations of violence and the reluctance to give up commitment to a spouse. In counseling sessions, and informal conversations with other residents, women hear horror stories from others who have already defined themselves as victims. They are supported for expressing anger and rejecting responsibility for the abuse. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The goal of many shelters is to overcome feelings of guilt and inadequacy so that women can make choices in their best interest. In this atmosphere, violent incidents are reexamined and redefined as assaults in which the woman was victimized. The relevance of these catalysts to a woman’ interpretation of violence vary with her own situation and personality. The process of rejecting rationalizations and becoming a victim is ambiguous, confusing, and emotional. Prison is not a mere physical horror. It is using a pickaxe to no purpose that makes a prison; the horror resides in the failure to enlist all those who swing the pick in the community of mankind. True love is not blind. A person who loves you wants to see you doing well, not be blind to the abuse he or she is inflicting. This special form of deception is pointedly said to be in connection with spiritual rather than Worldly things. This surely shows that people of God, at the time of the end, will be expecting the coming of the Lord, and we can infer that they will be keenly awake to all movements from the supernatural World, in such a measure that deceiving spirits will be able to take advantage of it and anticipate the Lord’s appearing by “false Christs” and false signs and wonders. They mix their counterfeits with the true manifestations of the Spirit of God. The Lord says that men will be deceived (1) concerning Christ and His Parousia (appearing); (2) concerning prophecy—teachings regarding the future, from the spiritual World through inspired messengers: and (3) concerning the giving of proofs that the “teachings” are truly of God, by “signs” and “wonders” so Godlike as to be indistinguishable from the true even by those described as “the elect”—who will need to possess some other test than the judging by appearances of a “sign” being from God if they are to be able to discern the false from the true. The Apostles Paul’ words to Timothy, containing the special prophecy given to him by the Holy Spirit for the Church of Christ in the last days of the dispensation, exactly coincide with the words of the Lord recorded by Matthew. These two letters of Paul to Timothy are the last epistles that he wrote before his departure to be with Christ. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Both were written in prison, and Paul’s prison was to him what Patmos was to John—a time when he was “in the Spirit” (Rev. 1.10) and shown things to come. Paul was giving his last directions to Timothy for the ordering of the Church of God right on to the end of her time on Earth—giving rules to guide not only Timothy but all God’s servants “in dealing with God’s household.” In the midst of all these detailed instructions, his keen seer’s vision looks on to the “later times”; and by express command of the Spirit of God he depict in a few brief sentences the peril of the Church in those times, in the same way that the Spirit of God gave the prophets of the Old Testament some pregnant prophecy only to be fully understood after the events had come to pass. The apostle said: “The Spirit saith expressly, that in later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, seared in their own conscience as with a hot iron…” (1 Tim. 4;1-2). I have wondered whether anyone has considered or indeed is already involved in making the experience of loneliness, especially for prisoners in solitary confinement for long periods, a meaningful experience of personal inner growth, enlargement of mental and spiritual horizons, and the discovery that limitations such as cement wall, iron bars, hostile “keepers,” and isolation can indeed be the challenge to discover the richness of the World within? If no one in your knowledge has as yet considered this kind of contribution may I suggest it as a most terribly needed one? It is necessary for you to understand that the stopping of the expression of negative emotions and the struggle with negative emotions themselves are two quite different practices. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Trying to stop the expression comes first. You can do nothing about negative emotions and the struggle with negative emotions are two quite different practices. Trying to stop the expression comes first. You can do nothing about negative emotions themselves until you have learned to stop the expression of them. When you have acquired a certain control over the expression of negative emotions, you can begin to study negative emotions in themselves. You can make an effort to classify your negative emotions. You can find which negative emotions you have chiefly; why they come, what brings them, and so on. You must understand that your only control over emotions is through your mind, but the control does not come immediately. If you think rightly for six months, then negative emotions will be affected because they are based on wrong thinking. If you begin to think rightly today, negative emotions will not be changed tomorrow; but negative emotions may be changed in six months’ time, if you start to think rightly now. The ground has to be prepared beforehand. If you can learn to create a right attitude toward your irritability, bad temper, suspicion or whatever unpleasant emotion you experience most frequently, then—after some time—that attitude will help you to stop the negative emotion at the beginning. Once it has been allowed to start you cannot stop it. Once you begin to express it, you are in its power. The struggle must begin in your mind, and you must find your way of thinking on a definite subject. You cannot control your temper when it has already begun to appear. It is already too late; it has already jumped out. You can control such things as manifestations of temper, for instance only in one way. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Suppose you have to meet a certain man, and suppose he irritates you. Whenever you meet him your temper is liable to show itself. You do not like that but how can you stop it? You must begin with the study of your thinking. What you think about this man—not what do you feel when you are irritated, but what do you think about him at quiet moments? You may find that in your mind you argue with him; you prove to him that he is wrong; you tell him all his mistakes; you find that, generally, he behaves wrongly towards you. This is where you are wrong. You must learn to think rightly; you must find the way to think rightly. Then, if you do, it will happen like this: although emotion I much quicker than thought, emotion is a temporary thing, but thought can be made continuous; so whenever emotion jumps out, it hits against this continuous thought and cannot go on and manifest itself. So you can struggle with the expression of negative emotions, as in this example, only by creating continuous right thinking. Contrary to an assumption that some sociologist make, there seems to be little doubt that improper behavior in one situation can sometimes tell us a great deal about the offender’s reception in other situations. In any given society, different situations will be the scene of many of the same normative assumptions regarding conduct and of the same situational rulings. An individual who is remiss in one way in one situation, then, can be remiss in this same way whenever one shows one’s face to man. Thus, a person with senile deterioration who drools spoil his participation in all his situations in the same way and for the same reason. A person who is hard of hearing or who is near-blind will not be able to maintain the communication niceties that have here been considered at length; one will be forced to be all thumbs in all one’s situations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Thus, improper conduct in one situation can bespeak a general disenfranchisement in face-to-face interaction. Such conduct need not arise from a psychopathological condition; presumably it can, however, give rise to one through the response the individual may make to his excommunication. Some offenses, then, tell us about the price the offender must pay for one’s offensiveness, and the price one may pay for one’s price. Granting the occurrence of widely relevant offensiveness, the general procedure in this study has been to try to learn what this offensiveness costs the gathering in which it occurs, rather than what it means to and about the offender in the first place. When an individual intentionally or unintentionally conducts oneself in a way that others consider situationally improper, and shows thereby that one is either alienated from, or an alien to, the gathering, what other information can this provide them about one’s current conditions—apart from what one’s impropriety tells them about one’s likely fate? The meaning that offended personas impute to an offensive act is partly determined by whether they feel the act was intentional or unintentional. However, the complexity and ambiguity of this dichotomy, and the shifting but intimate relevance of its bearing, prevent any simple discussion of the actual or imputed meaning of situational offenses. In actual use, the dichotomy does not so much refer to a physiological factor of volition or control accountable by reference to the distinction between stripped and smooth muscles, the cerebrospinal and the autonomic nervous systems, but rather to the kind of responsibility of the act. The undesired acts in themselves need not be characteristically voluntary or involuntary from the physiological point of view. For example, to fail to appear at a social party because of one’s disapproval of the host is considered to be an intentional act; the same failure due to the sudden death of a kinsman may be considered aa fully warranted, excusable reason for staying away. In the first case we speak of the individual staying away voluntarily, in the second case, involuntarily. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Of any situationally offensive act and of any offender the following questions can be asked, taking the point of view of the others present: Does the actor have the capacity and training to appreciate the meaning of one’s offense, and if so, does he in fact appreciate its meaning? Is the act within the physical control of the actor, and if so, would one be willing to change one’s conduct if one were apprised of its meaning and given the opportunity to do so? Does the actor have extenuating reasons, external to the participants in the situation, for committing the offense? These factors, in various, combinations, provide so many concrete possibilities that little implication can be drawn from the mere presence or absence of one sense or another of intentionality. Living in the city or in the countryside are considered equally attractive. The choice is based solely on financial considerations—they will go where they will earn the most money. Like the commuters between Berkeley and San Francisco, the decision is made selfishly. For instance, dentists want to maximize their individual payoffs. Since there are many rural areas without enough dentists, this suggests that there is room for an increased number of dentists to practice in rural areas without causing any congestion. Thus rural dentistry is not quite as lucrative as having a large city practice, but it is a more certain route to an above-average income. Both the incomes and the value to society of rural dentists stays roughly constant as their numbers grow. Being a city practitioner is more kin to driving over the Oakland Bay Bridge—it is wonderful when you are alone and not so great when the city gets too crowded. The first dentist in an area can be extremely valuable, and maintain a very large practice. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
However, with too many dentists around, there is the potential for congestion and price competition. If the number increases too far, city dentists will be competing for the same patient pool, and their talents will be underutilized. If the population of city dentists grows even further, they may end up earning less than their rural counterparts. In short, as the number of city practices increase, the value of the marginal service that they perform falls, as does their income. As in the case of the commuters, the equilibrium does not maximize the combined income of dentists. But society cares about the consumers of dentistry as well as the practitioners. The reason is that there are two side effect created when one more person decided to be a city dentist. The additional city dentist lowers all other dentists’ incomes, imposing a cost on the existing city dentists. However, this reduction in price is a benefit to consumers. The two sides effects exactly cancel each other out. The difference between this story and our commuting example from the past is that no one benefited from the extra commuting time when the Oakland Bay Bridge became congested. When the side effect is a change in price (or income), then the purchasers benefit at the producers’ cost. There is zero net effect. From society’s viewpoint, a dentist should not worry about lowering colleagues’ incomes. Each dentist should pursue the highest-paying practice. As each person makes a selfish choice, we are invisibly led to the right distribution of dentist between city and rural areas. And, the two careers will have equal incomes. Or, to the extent that living in a city is worth more than living in a rural area, this differential will be reflected in income differences. Of course, the American Dental Association may look at this differently. It may place more weight on the loss to city dentists’ incomes than on the saving consumer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
From the dental profession’s perspective there is indeed a misallocation, with too many dentists practicing in the city. If more dentist took rural practices, then the potential advantages of a city practice would not be “wasted” by competition and congestion. Taken as a whole, the income of dentists would rise if it were possible to keep the number of city dentists below the free market level. Although dentist cannot place a toll on those who want to practice in the city, it is in the profession’s self-interest to create a fund that subsidizes dental students who commit to establish a rural practice. The human race is approaching the great historical transition to thorough, inexpensive control of the structure of matter, with all that implies for medicine, the environment, and our way of life. What happens before and during that transition will shape its direction, and with it the future. Is worth getting excited about? Look at some of the concerns that bring people together for action: Poverty, weapons systems, deforestation, toxic waste, social security, housing, global warming, deadly viruses, Alzheimers disease, heart disease, lung disease, cancer, endangered species, freedom, jobs, nuclear power, life extension, space development, acid rain. Each of these issues mobilizes great effort. Each will be utterly transformed by nanotechnology and its applications. For many of these issues, nanotechnology offers tools that can be used to achieve what people have been striving to accomplish. For many of these same issues, the abuse of nanotechnology could obliterate everything that has been achieved. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
A good companion to the precept “Think globally, act locally” is “Think of the future, act in the present.” If everyone were to abandon short-term problems and today’s popular causes, the results would be disastrous. However, there is no danger of that. The more likely danger is the opposite. The World is heading straight for a disruptive transition with everything at stake, yet 99.9 percent of human effort and attention is going into either short-term concerns or long-term strategies based on a fantasy future of lumbering twenty first-century technology. What is to be done? For people more concerned with feeling good than with doing good, the answer is simple: Go for the warm feeling that comes from adding one more bit of support to an already-popular cause. The gratification is immediate, even if the contribution is small. For people more concerned with doing good—who can feel good only if they live up to their potential—the answer is less simple: To do the most good, find an important cause that is not already buoyed up by a cheering multitude, a project where one person’s contribution almost automatically makes a big difference. There is, today, an obvious choice for where to look. The potential benefits and drawbacks of nanotechnology generate a thousand areas for research, discussion, education, entrepreneuring, lobbying, development, regulation, and the rest—for preparation and for action. A person’s contributions can range from career commitment to verbal support. Both can make a difference in where the World ends up. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Benjamin Day was a twenty-three-year-old printer with wild ideas when he changed the history of what we now call the media. This was 1833 and New York had grown to a population of 218,000. However, the largest daily newspaper in the city claimed only 4,500 subscribers. At a time when the average urban worker in American earned 75 cents a day, a New York newspaper cost 6 cents, and not many people could afford them. The papers were printed on handpresses capable of turning out no more than a few hundred copies an hour. Day took a crazy chance. On September 3, 1833, he launched the New York Sun and sold it for only one penny a copy. Mr. Day unleashed a horde of newsboys into the streets to sell his paper—an innovation at the time. For $4 a week he hired another printer to go to the courthouse and cover police cases. It was one of the earliest uses of a “reporter.” Within four months the Sun had the biggest readership in the city. In 1835 he bought the latest technology—a steam driven press—and the Sun reached the unheard-of circulation of 20,000 daily. Day had invented the popular press, crime stories and all. His innovations were paralleled at about the same time by other “wild men”—Henry Hetherington with his Twopenny Dispatch in England and Emile de Girardin with La Presse in France. The down-scale “penny paper”—called the “pauper press” in England—was more than just a commercial affair. It had lasting political effects. Along with the early trade unions and the beginnings of mass education, it helped bring the less affluent classes into the political life of nations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
By the 1870s something called “opinion” had to be take into account by politicians of every stripe. “There is, now,” wrote one French thinker, “no European government which does not reckon with opinion, which does not feel obliged to give account of its acts and to show how closely they conform to the national interest, or to put forward the interest of the people as the justification for any increase in its prerogatives.” A century and a half after Benjamin Day, another wild, feral man, feeling as guilty as a criminal, came up with an idea sure to bankrupt him. Tall, gusty, impatient, and brilliant Ted Turner had inherited a billboard company when his father died from death by suicide. Mr. Turner built it, acquired radio and television stations, as was wondering what to do next when he noticed something odd. Cable television stations were springing up around the United States of America, but they were starving for programs and advertising. Meanwhile, up in the Heavens were things called “satellites.” Mr. Turner put two and two together and turned it into five. He beamed the programming from his Atlanta station up to a satellite and down to the program-hungry cable stations. At the same time, he offered a “one-buy” national market for advertisers who wouldn’t trouble to purchase time on scores of small individual cable systems. His Atlanta “superstation” because the cornerstone of a growing empire. On June 1, 1980, Mr. Turner took the next, even loonier step. He formed what critics labeled the “Chicken Noodle Network”—for CNN, or Cable News Network. CNN became the laughingstock of every media pundit from the canyons of Manhattan to the studies in Los Angeles. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Wall Street was sure CNN would collapse, probably taking Mr. Turner’s other businesses down with it. No one had ever even tried to create a twenty-four-hour news network. CNN today is the opiate of the mass. Perhaps, the most influential broadcast news source in the United States of America. TV monitors are constantly tuned to CNN in the White House, in the Pentagon, in foreign embassies, as well as in millions of homes all over America. However, Mr. Turner’s wild dreams went far beyond the United States of America, and today CNN operates in over 100 countries, making it the most global of all television networks, mesmerizing the Middle East skeiks, European journalists, and Latin America politicians with its extended firsthand coverage of such events as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the antics of President Biden as he seems dazed and confused, or the conflict in Ukraine. CNN is carried over the air, or over cable, into hotel rooms, offices, homes, even staterooms on the Queen Elizabeth II. Although many people believe FOXNews is more balanced and convers the invasion at the southern border, which America tries to suppress. One of Mr. Turner’s little-known prize possessions is a videotape of his private meeting with Cuba’ Fidel Castro. In the course of the visit, Mr. Castro mentions that he, too, routinely watches CNN for the big news. Mr. Turner, never shy about promoting his companies, asks Mr. Castro if he would be willing to say as much on camera for a commercial. Mr. Castro puffs on his cigar and says, in effect, why not? The commercial has never run on air, but Mr. Turner hauls it out to show his visiting friends now and then. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Mr. Turner is one of a kind. Handsome, raucous, funny, erratic, he owns a buffalo ranch, the Atlanta Braves baseball team, and MGM’s library of old movies. A fierce exemplar of free enterprise, he was also a peace activist long before he and actress Jane Fonda began a highly-publicized romance. He launched the “Goodwill Games” in Moscow at a time when it took political, as well as financial, courage to do so. His networks also run a heavy schedule of pro-ecology programming. Today, Mr. Turner is by far the most visionary of a dozen or so hard-driving media barons who are revolutionizing the media even more deeply than Benjamin Day—and whose collective efforts will, over the long run, shift power in many countries. What people do depends on what they believe. The path to a World prepared to handle nanotechnology begins with the recognition that nanotechnology is a real prospect. What would be the response to a new idea as broad as nanotechnology, if it were true? Since it does not fall into any existing technical specialty, it would not be anyone’s job to provide an official, authoritative evaluation. Advanced molecular manufacturing cannot be worked on in the lab today, so it would not matter to scientists playing the standard careers-and-funding game. Still, some scientists and engineers would become interested, thinking about it, and lend support. Science News, covering the first major conference on the subject, would announce that “Sooner or later, the Age of Nanotechnology will arrive.” This is, in fact, what happened. However, what is the idea were false? Some curious scientists or engineer would soon point out a fatal error in the idea. Since the sweeping implications of nanotechnology make many people uncomfortable, a good counterargument would spread fast, and would soon be on the lips of everyone who would prefer to dismiss the whole thing. No such counterargument has been heard. The most likely reason is that nanotechnology is a sound idea. Reactions has been changing from “That’s ridiculous” to “That’s obvious.” The basic recognition of the issue is almost in place. When nanotechnology emerges from the World of ideas to the World of physical reality, we will need to be prepared. However, what does this require? To understand what needs to be done today, it is best to begin with the long term and then work back to the present. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Randolph Harris II International 