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You are Giving Away Your Soul—The Blood is Life!
This morning I saw a star twinkling just over the nine-story tower—the first since the beginning of May. My son, when he was examined, because he would not confess that he was guilt when he was innocent, they tied him neck and heels till the blood gushed out at his nose, and would have kept him so twenty-four hours if one more merciful than the rest had not taken pity on him and caused him to be unbound. These actions are very like the Popish cruelties. A man’s outer case generally gives some indication of the soul within. He has told me several times that the thought of death was a pleasant one to him, which is a sad thing for a young man to say; he cannot be much more than thirty. Some great sorrow must have taken him and blighted his whole life. Why of course, they were in effect saying, the Devil can impersonate the innocent, just as we have said all along. God might permit Satan to impersonate the virtuous. But surely, he would not permit discord in the Winchester mansion? I should have thought Mrs. Winchester’s staff would have been above such vulgar delusions. All this disquisition upon superstition leads me up to the fact that my son saw a ghost last night—or at least, says that he did, which of course is the same thing. Indeed the fellow is honestly frightened, and I had to give him some chloral and bromide of potassium this morning to stead him down. He has been hired as a ranch had to work at the estate. When grounds keepers found a mutilated cow, some of the other men thought he had been possessed by the devil, and torture him to confess. I was obliged to pacify him by keeping as grave a countenance as possible during his story, which he certainly narrated in a very straightforward and matter-of fact way. No one wanted Mrs. Winchester to believe the curse was real and the hauntings had started again. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
“I was on the balcony,” he said, “about four bells in the middle watch, just when the night was at its darkest. There was a bit of a moon, but the clouds were blowing across it so that you could not see far from the mansion. John Brunton, the foreman, came after from the tool shed and reported a strange noise on the estate. I came down and went forward and we both heard I, sometimes like a bairn crying and sometimes like a wench in pain. I have been seventeen years to the country and I never heard an animal, old or young, make a sound like that. As we were standing on the rear porch the moon came out from behind the cloud, and we both saw a sort of black figure moving across the farm in the same direction that we had heard the cries. We lost sight of it for a while, but it came back insight, and we could just make it out like a shadow amongst the trees. I sent a hand art for the rifles, and Brunton and I went down to the fruit orchard, thinking it might be a bear. When we got near the trees I lost sight of Brunton, but I pushed on in the direction where I could still hear the cries. I followed them for a mile or may more, and then running round a well I came right on to the top of it standing and waiting for me seemingly. I do not know what it was. It was not a bear any way. It was tall and black and straight. This black dog, or the devil in such a likeness, running all along down the body of the mansion with great swiftness, and incredible haste, he passed between two people, wrung the necks of them both. I made my way for the mansion as hard as I could run, and precious glad I was to find myself inside. I signed articles to do my duty by the estate, and on the estate I will say, but you will not catch me on the grounds after sundown.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
That is his story given as far as I can in his own words. I do not know what happened there. I fancy what he saw must in spite of his denial, have been a young bear erect upon its hind legs, and attitude which they often assume when alarmed. In the uncertain light this would bear a resemblance to a human figure, especially to a man whose nerves were already somewhat shaken. Whatever it may have been, the occurrence is unfortunate, for it has produced a most unpleasant effect upon the crew. Their looks are more sullen than before and their discontent more open. The double grievance made more dreadful when a barn of dead bodies was found on the edge of the estate. Written in blood, “Keep building,” and a huge bloody hand print was discovered on the wall. Some say it was the Devil’s handprint. In the old days in the New World, people used to say “I put my hand and seal” on a document when signing it. In the Old World this was literal in some cases. The emperor of Japan in ancient in ancient days “signed” important documents by dipping his hand in blood and putting a full bloody handprint on the page. In the history of pacts with the Devil, people were supposed to sign their names in blood. I have seen a couple of alleged pacts from earlier centuries. Blood undoubtedly stressed the seriousness of the signing. The Devil may sometimes have a permission to represent an innocent person as tormenting such as are under diabolical harassments, but that such things are rare and extraordinary. You were giving away your soul. The Blood is life. Afflicted persons were subject to diabolical torments; making evidence of such torments was accepting the word of the Devil; worse, accepting such evidence was holding commerce with the Devil, and therefore in itself a kind of witchcraft. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The afflicted persons do tell who are witches, of which, some they know and some they do not. Secondly, they tell who did torment such a person, though they know not the person. Thirdly, they are tormented themselves by he looks of the persons that are present, and recovered again by the touching of them, they recover, or do not fall into torment. Fifthly, they can tell when a person is coming before they see them, and what clothes they have [on], and some, what they have done for several years past, which nobody else ever accused them with nor do not yet think them guilty of. Sixthly, the dead out of their graves do appear unto them and tell them that they have been murdered, and require them to see them to be revenged on the murderers, which they name to them, some of which persons are well known to have died their natural deaths, and been publicly buried in the sight of all humans. Now if these things be so, I thus affirm: First, that whatsoever is done by them that is supernatural is either divine or diabolical. Secondly, that nothing is or can be divine but what has God’s stamp upon it, to which he refers for trial (Isaiah viii. 19,20): If they speak not according to these, there is no light in them. Thirdly, and by that rule none of these actions of theirs have any warrant in God’s Word, but are condemned wholly. First, it is utterly unlawful to inquire of the dead or to be informed by them (Isaiah viii. 19). It was an act of the Witch of Endor to raise the dead, and of a reprobate Saul to inquire of him (1 Samuel xxviii.8, 11-14; Deuteronomy viii. ii). Secondly, it is a like evil to seek to them that have familiar spirits (Leviticus xix.31). It was the sin of Saul in the forementioned place (1 Samuel xxviii.8) and of wicked Manasses (2 Kings xxi.6). #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Thirdly, no more is it likely that their racking and tormenting should be done by God or good angels, but by the Devil, whose manners has ever been to be so employed. Witness his dealing with the poor child (Mark v.2-5) besides what he did to Job (Jon ii.7) and all the lies he told against him to the very face of God. Fourthly, the same may be rationally said of all the rest. Who should tell them things that they do not see but the Devil, especially when some things that they tell are false and mistaken? May we believe the confessed witches that do accuse anyone? Can the fruit be better than the tree? If the root of all their knowledge be the Devil, what must their testimony be? Their testimony may be legal against themselves, because they know what themselves do. However, their words should not be taken against those who denied the charges and whose previous behaviour had been blameless. The fits to which the afflicted and of come of the confessors were subject to, they were the Devil’s way of force them to accuse the innocent. We see by woeful and undeniable experience, both in the afflicted persons and the confessors, some of them, that the Devil torments them at his pleasure to force them to accuse others. The accusations of the apparently innocent makes some people think that both the afflicted and the confessors are liars. However, perhaps the sufferings are pitiable and genuine. It is possible that the Devil is lying through them. And no matter who is lying, the effect of the lie is still the same. For if they counterfeit, the wickedness is the greater in them and the less in the Devil; but if they be compelled to it by the Devil against their wills, then the sin is the Devil’s and the suffering is theirs. However, if their testimonies be allowed of, to make persons guilty by, the lives of innocent persons are alike in danger by them, which is the solemn consideration that does disquiet the country. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The Devils have a natural power which makes them capable of exhibiting what shape they please I suppose nobody doubts, and I have no absolute promise of God that they shall not exhibit mine. It is the opinion generally of all Protestant writers that the Devil may thus abuse the innocent. My son told me of another experience he had while working at the Winchester mansion. “I dreamt that it was night and that I was lying in my bed. (My bed stood with its foot toward the window; in front of the window there was a row of old walnut trees. I know it was winter when I had the dream, and nighttime.) Suddenly the window opened of its own accord, and I was terrified to see that some black wolves were sitting on the big walnut tree in front of the window. There were six or seven of them. The wolves were quite black, and looked more like foxes or sheep dogs, for they had big tails like foxes and they had their ears pricked like dogs when they pay attention to something. In great terror, evidently of being eaten up by the wolves, I screamed and woke up. I swore there was something there. I could feel it, hovering over me. It is watching, it is waiting, I think it is even mocking me.” Apart from this absurd outbreak of superstition, things are looking rather more cheerful. Mrs. Winchester loved the new year; she loved the idea of a fresh start for everyone. She always made a resolution, one a year, and unlike most people, she kept hers. Every year she tried to talk her staff into making one, but some of them never saw the point. The estate was undergoing heavy construction. Some workers reported seeing a ghost woman in nineteenth-century dress. That is not what was strange. What was strange is the fact that it was there was a thunder storm, but no rain was falling on a section of the mansion were the roof was still being added to the nine-story tower. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Mrs. Winchester wanted the tower because she said that she could get visions of the spirit World more clearly there. I always got a wee bit creeped out in the tower because the crucifix on the wall would turn upside down when anyone went near it. The Devil is said to appear there twice a year, on the vernal equinox and Halloween. The tower marks the grace of one of his children, born of a human witch and dead after a few days. I am learning about the hauntings at the Winchester mansion. Everyone has heard about them, but they all have different stories. In the World of spirits there is always a very great number of them, but there is no fixed time for their stay on Earth; for some are translated to Heaven and others confined to Hell soon after their arrival; whilst some stay on Earth days, weeks, maybe even centuries. Gerald Pomper thinks that my son devoted himself to construction of the Winchester simply for the reason that it is the most dangerous occupation which he could select, and that he courts death in every possible manner. He mentioned several instances of this, one of which is rather curious, if true. It seems that on one occasion he did not put in an appearance on the estate, and a substitute had to be selected in his place. That was at the time the tower was near completion. When he turned up again next spring he had a puckered wound in the side of his neck which he used to endeavour to conceal with his cravat. Whether the mate’s inference is true or not, it was certainly a strange coincidence. Of course, Johann Weikhard von Valvasor recorded the first written documented on vampires. Jure Grando Alilovic (1579-1656) was a villager from the region of Istria (in modern-day Croatia) who may have been the first real person described as a vampire in historical records. He was referred to as a strigoi, a local word for something resembling a vampire and a warlock. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Jure Grando lived in Kringa, a small town in the interior of the Istrian peninsula near Tinjan. He died in 1656 due to illness but according to legend, returned from the grave at night as a vampire and terrorized his village until his decapitation in 1672. The legend tells that, for 16 years after his death, Jure would arise from his grave by night and terrorize the village. The village priest, Giorgio, who had buried Jure sixteen years previously discovered that at night somebody would knock on the doors around the village, and on whichever door he knocked, someone from that house would die. This is why Mrs. Winchester boarded up the East Wing of her mansion. During one of her seances, she said Jure communicated with her. No telling? When you contact the spirit World, there is no telling what will come through. Some of the spirit in the mansion may be hundred of years old. Mrs. Winchester owned an original copy of Die Ehre deB Herzogthuma Crain, which she kept locked away in a safe. Vampires are said to infest come parts of this country. These Vampires are supposed to be the bodies of deceased persons, animated by evil Spirits, which come out of the graves, in the night-time, suck the blood of many of the living, and thereby destroy them. Petar Blagojevic was also accused of being a Vampire, and was alleged to have killed several people after his death. When the body was exhumed, it was undecomposed, the hair and beard were grown, there was new skin and nail, and blood could be seen in the mouth. When people grew outraged and staked his body through the heart, a completely fresh amount of blood flowed through the ears and moth of the corpse. Finally, the body was burned. The wind is veering round the mansion in an easterly direction, but it is still very slight. As far as the eye can reach, there is a shadow. The butler was staring out up the stairs with an expression in which horror, surprise, something approaching to fear were contending for the mastery. In spite of the cold, great drops of perspiration were coursing down his forehead and he was evidently fearfully exited. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
His limbs twitched like those of a man upon the verge of an epileptic fit, and the lines about his mother were drawn hard. “Look!” he grasped, seizing me by the seizing me by the wrist, but still keeping eyes upon the window, and moving his head in a horizontal direction, as if following some object which was moving across the field of vision. “Look! There, man, there! Between the palm trees! Now coming out from behind the far one! You see her, you must see her! There still! Flying from me, by God, flying from me—and gone!” His face was so livid that I expected him to become unconscious, so lost no time leading him down the stairs, and stretching him out upon one of the sofas in the parlour. I then poured him out some brandy which I held to his lips, and which had a wonderful effect upon him, bringing the blood back into his white face and steading his poor shaking limbs. He raised himself up upon his elbow, and looking round to see that we were alone, be beckoned me to come and sit beside him. “You are it, did you not?” he asked, still in the same subdued awesome tone so foreign to the nature of the man. “No, I saw nothing.” They have made up their minds that there is a curse upon the mansion, and nothing will ever persuade them to the contrary. The next night, there was a glorious sunset, which made the great fields look like a lake of blood. I have never seen a finer and at the same time more ghastly effect. Wind is veering round. There was a cry, sharp and shrill, upon the silent air of the night, beginning, as it seemed to me, at a note as such a prima donna never reached, and mounting from that ever higher and higher until it culminated in a long wail of agony, which might have been the last cry of a lost soul. The ghastly scream is still ringing in my ears. Grief, unutterable grief, seemed to be expressed in it and a great longing, and yet through it all there was an occasional wild not of exultation. It seemed to come from close beside me, and yet as I glared into the darkness, I could make out nothing. I waited some little time, but without hearing any repetition of the sound, so I came below, more shaken that I have ever been in my life before. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Odd things have happened here. Four kids in three years, from 1887-1890, vanished without a trace. Other people see things. No one will talk about. The butler was certain that something had come up through the “door to nowhere” five years ago, and was about to again. Some kind of hellspawn. The Devil may impudently impose his communion upon some that care not for his company. However, if the communion on the person’s part be proved, then the business be done. Specter evidence may be grounds for investigation, and may strength other presumptions, but it is not evidence on which to convict. The mansion could be a dangerous place, even at its best—a treacherous, dangerous place. The butler was staring at something. By the sudden intensity of his attitude, I felt that he saw some. I crept up behind him. He certainly was looking at something with an eager questioning gaze, at what seemed to be a wreath of smoke. It was a dim nebulous body devoid of shape, sometimes more, sometimes less apparent, as the light fell on it. The moon was dimmed in its brilliancy at the moment by a canopy of thinnest cloud, like the coating of an anemone. He held out his hand as if to clasp it, and so ran into the darkness with outstretched arms. That came from somewhere. Was it a demon? It took the shape of a man, and eventually of the man of whom we were in search of. He was lying face downwards upon the floor, frozen. Many little crystals of ice and feathers of snow had drifted on to him as he lay, and sparkled upon his dark seaman’s jacket. As we came up some wandering puff of wind caught these tiny flakes in its vortex, and they whirled up into the air, partially descended again, and then, caught once more in the current, sped rapidly away in the direction of the east wing. To my eyes it seemed but a snow-drift, but the butler averred that it started up in the shape of a woman, stooped over the corpse and kissed it, and then hurried away across the floor. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
It was the former cook Bill Thompson, who has gone missing in 1886. Sure he had met with no painful end, for there was a bright smile upon his blue pinched features, and his hands were still outstretched as though grasping at the strange visitor which had summoned him away into the dim World that lies beyond the grave. Surely this same apparition would also lead the butler into the eternal darkness. The smoke went into his mouth and he started to jerk, and speaking in tongues. That awful hellspawn had possessed him, and with his body dying and something inside of him, the butler staggered over to the sulfur stinking wall, sat down and died. Then he faded away and was gone. There he shall lie, with his secret and his sorrows and his mysteries all still buried in his breast, until that great day when the Winchester Mansion shall give up its dead, and Clarence Earl Gideon, known as “the butler,” come out from among the shadows with a smile upon his face, and his stiffened arms outstretched in greeting. I pray that his lot may be a happier one in that life than it has been in this. As for my son, I have not seen him in several years. In 1904, at the palace late at night, men who were pure of spirit, had thought they say a strange demoniac form taking the place of my son, John Wesley Thompson Faulkner. One man said that Mrs. Winchester suddenly rose from her throne and walked about, and immediately John’s head vanished, while the rest of hos body seemed to ebb and flow: whereat the beholder stood aghast and fearful, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. However, he perceived the vanishing head filling out and joining the body again as strangely as it has left it. Another said he stood beside Mrs. Winchester as she sat, and all of the sudden the face changed into a shapeless mass of flesh, with neither eyebrows nor eyes in their proper places, nor any other distinguishing feature; and after a time the natural appearance of his countenance returned. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
I write these instances not as one who saw many of them myself, but heard them from people who were sure they had seen these strange occurrences at the time. They also say that the cook, Bill Thompson, very dear to God, at the instance of dinner time, went to beg forgiveness that some of the guess had been offended beyond endurance by a dish he made. And when he arrived at the dining room, he forthwith secured an audience with Mrs. Winchester; but just as he was about to enter his apartment, he stopped short as his feet were on the threshold, and suddenly stepped backward. Whereupon the maid who escorted him, and others who were present, importuned him to go ahead. However, he answered not a word; and like a man who has had a stroke staggered back to his lodging. And when some followed to ask why he acted thus, they say he distinctly declared he saw the King of the Devils sitting on the throne in the palace, and he did not care to meet or ask any favour of him. I shall not continue my journal. Our road home lies plain and clear before us, and the great Winchester palace will soon be but a remembrance of the past to me. It will be some time before I get over the shock produced by recent events. When I began this record of my visit, I little thought of how I should be compelled to finish it. I am writing these final words in the lonely chamber, still starting at times and fancying I hear the quick nervous step of the dead man upon the floor above me. I entered his chambers tonight as was my duty, to make a list of his effects in order that they might be entered in the official log. All was as it has been upon my previous visit, save that the picture which I have described as having hung at the end of his bed had been cut out of its frame, as with a knife, and was gone. With this last link in a strange chain of evidence I close my diary of the Winchester mansion. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Note by William Clark Falkner, Col. CSA: “I have read over the strange evens connected with the mystery, as narrated in the journal of my son. That everything occurred exactly as he describes it I have the fullest confidence, and, indeed, the most absolute certainty, for I know him to be a strong-nerved and unimaginative man, with the strictest regard for veracity. Still, the story is, on the face of it, so vague and so improbable, that I was long opposed to its publication. Within the last few days, however, I have had independent testimony upon the subject which throws a new light upon it. I had run down to Edinburgh to attend a meeting of the British Medical Association, when I came across Aleister Crowley, an old college chum of my son’s, now involved with the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennet. Aleister told me that he had been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who confirmed that that Witch Trials were started by people who wanted to break up convents and get their magic potions, spells, talismans, and secrets, while also getting the church in an uproar. Upon my telling him of this experience of my son’s, he declared to me that he was familiar with the man, and proceeded, to my no small surprise, to give me a description of him, which tallied remarkably well with that given in the journal, expect that he depicted him as a younger man. According to his account, the cook and butler and my son had all been in love with the same woman. However, the cook was engaged to the young lady of singular beauty residing upon Sierra. During their absence at the Winchester mansion, his betrothed had died under circumstances of peculiar horror. She became a Chenoo, a winter spirit with a heart of ice, created from a human, which wants to kill those it loves. In the period of transformation, the person who is becoming a Chenoo eats snow and refuses other food. One will be ill-tempered and angry. After the transformation, the Chenoo will attack and kill other members of the tribe.” There are many mysteries surrounding the Winchester Mansion. Have a visit and tell me a little story. Winchester Mystery House–a 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
In the 1800s, so many deer and cattle within the mansion’s proximity were found dead that staff members were accused of being werewolves. Today, staff and visitors have reported banging sounds, footprints, seeing white mists, and feeling someone breathe on them. They also report tormented ghosts wandering through the mansion at night. Even if you do not believe ghost stories, you might still get goosebumps passing by, do not chalk those taps on your shoulder and whispers in your ear as all up to imagination.
During mansion renovations in the early 1900s, workmen found a secret dungeon in the Bloody Tower with so many human skeletons, they filled three cartloads when hauled away. The basement was designed so that prisoners would fall through a trap door. These hallways won’t wander themselves 😳 Give you and your friends a fright this weekend on the Lost in The House Tour during All Hallows’ Eve at the Winchester Mystery House!
All Hallows’ Eve value night tickets are still available!
🎟️ Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Door to Nowhere—The Curse of Evil Has Come into His Body!
Some people do not believe in ghost. For that matter, some people do not believe in anything. There are persons who even affect incredulity concerning the “Door to Nowhere,” at the Winchester mansion. They said that it did not stand wide open—that it was not a gateway to the Spirit World and that they could have shut it; that the whole affair was a delusion; that they are sure it must have been a conspiracy; that they are doubtful whether there is such a place as the Winchester mansion on the face of the Earth; that the first time they are in California they will look it up. Perhaps, before going further, I ought to premise there was a time when I did not believe in ghosts either. If you had asked me one summer’s morning years ago when you met me on the Golden Gate Bridge if I held such appearances to be probable or possible, you would have received an empathic “No” for answer. However, at this rate, the story of the Door to Nowhere will never be told; so we will, with your permission, plunge into it immediately. I was interested in why this “Door to Nowhere” in the Winchester mansion would not keep shut? They say the place is haunted. What nonsense. There was one thing I can truly say about our office, we were never serious in it. I fancy that is the case in most offices nowadays; at all events, it was the case in ours. We were always chaffing each other, playing practical jokes, telling stupid stories, scamping our work, looking at the clock, counting the weeks to next Christmas, counting the hours to Saturday. For all that we were earnest in our desire to have our salaries raised, and unanimous in the opinion no fellows ever before received such wretched pay. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
I had $75,000 a year, which I was aware did not half provide for what I ate at home. My mother and sisters left me in no doubt on the point, and when new clothes were wanted I always hated to mention the fact to my poor worried father. We had been better off once, I believe, though I never remember the time. My father owned a small property in the country. I wanted money badly—I must say I never had sixpence in the World of my own—and I thought if I could earn two sovereigns I might buy some trifles I needed for myself, and present my father with a new Ultimate Driving Machine. Then I recalled the amount of the rent was being asked for the Winchester mansion; then I decided gladly this would be a great place to stay if only the ghost turned out of possession. I decided I should like to try to whether, I could not solve the mystery. I was accustomed to lonely houses, and I would not feel at all nervous; I did not believe in ghost, and as for burglars, I was not afraid of them. I was told to just try it out first. To stay in the house for a week; if as tht end of that time I could keep the door shut, locked, bolted, or nailed up, to telegraphy the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and they would actually pay me to stay there. To me, this sounded like a great bargain. If I lay the ghost, or find out the ghost, I think I ought to have enough money to buy a small house for myself. However, I could not have said what frightened me about this endeavour. A week after I moved into the Queen Anne mansion, Mr. van Buuren from the Winchester Repeating Arms Company came to visit me. He wanted to speak to me about the mansion. I heard a sound of irritation in his voice. “The Winchester Mansion!” he said; “and what have you got to say about the Winchester Mansion?” #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
“That is what I wanted to tell you, Mr. van Buuren,” I answered, and a dead hush seem to fall over the office as I spoke. The silence seemed to attract his attention, for he looked sternly at the clerks, who were not using a pen or moving a finger. “Come this way, then,” he said abruptly; and next minute I was in his private office. “Now, what is it?” he asked, flinging himself into a chair, and addressing me, who stood hat in hand beside the great table in the middle of the room. I began—I will say he was a patient listener—at the very beginning, and told my story straight through. I concealed nothing. I enlarged on nothing. A discharged clerk I stood before him, and in the capacity of a discharged clerk I said what I had to say. He heard me to the end, the he sat silent, thinking. At last he spoke. “You have heard a great deal of conversation about the Winchester, I suppose,” he remarked. “No, sir; I have heard nothing expect what I have told you.” “And why do you desire to strive to solve such a mystery?” “If there is any money to be made, I should like to make it, sir.” “How old are you?” “Two-and-twenty last January.” He laughed—he lay back in his chair and laughed—and I laughed myself, though ruefully. We went on talking for a long time after that; he asked me all about my father and my early life, and how we lived and the people we knew; and, in fact, put more questions than I can well remember. “It seems a crazy thing to do,” he said at las; “and yet I feel disposed to trust you. The house is standing perfectly empty. I cannot live it in, and I cannot get rid of it; all my own furniture I have removed, and there is nothing in the place except a few old-fashioned articles belonging to Mrs. Winchester. The place is a loss to me. It is of no use trying to let it, and thus, in fact, matters are at a deadlock. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
“You will not be able to find out anything, I know, because, of course, other have tried to solve the mystery ere now; still, if you like to try you may. I will make this bargain with you. If you like to go down, I will pay your reasonable expenses for a fortnight; and if you do any good for me, I will give you a $1,000,000 note for yourself. Of course I must be satisfied that what you have told me is true and that you are what your represent. Do you know anybody in the city who would speak for you?” I could think of no one but my uncle. I hinted to Mr. van Buuren he was no grand enough or rich enough, perhaps, but I knew nobody else to whom I could refer him. “What?!” he said, “Greg Ryan, of Lakeview Street. He does business with us. If he will go bail for your good behaviour I shan’t want any further guarantee. Come along.” And to my intense amazement, he rose, put on his hat, walked me across the outer office and along the pavements till we came to Lakeview Street. “Do you know this youth, Mr. Ryan?” he said, standing in front of my uncle’s desk, and laying a hand on my shoulder. “Of course I do, Mr. van Burren,” answered my uncle, a little apprehensively; for, as he told me afterwards, he could not imagine what mischief I have been up to. “He is my nephew.” “And what is your opinion of him—do you think he is a young fellow I may safely trust?” My uncle smiled, and answered, “That depends on what you wish to trust him with.” “A long column of addition, for instance.” “It would be safer to give that task to somebody else.” “Oh, uncle!” I remonstrated; for I had really striven to conquer my natural antipathy to figures—worked hard, and every bit of it against the collar. My uncle got off his stool, and said, standing with his back to the empty fire-grate: “Tell me what you wish the boy to do, Mr. van Buuren, and I will tell you whether he will suit your purpose of not. I know him, I believe, better than he knows himself.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
In an easy, affable way, for so rich a man, Mr. van Buuren took possession of the vacant stool, and nursing his right leg over his left knee, answered: “He wants to go and shut the “Door to Nowhere” at the Winchester Mansion for me. Do you think he can do that? My uncle looked steadily back at the speaker, and said, “I thought, Mr. van Buuren, I was quite settled no one could shut it?” Mr. van Buuren shifted a little uneasily on his seat, and replied: “I did not set your nephew the task he fancies he would like to undertake.” “Have nothing to do with it, Justin, advised my uncle, shortly. “You do not believe in ghost do you, Mr. Ryan?” asked Mr. van Burren, with a slight sneer. “Do you not, Mr. van Buuren?” retorted my uncle. There was a pause—an uncomfortable pause—during the course of which I felt the million dollar note, which in imagination, I had really spent, trembling in the scale. I was not afraid. For one million dollars, or half the money, I would have faced all the inhabitants of spirit land. I longed to tell them so; but something in the way those two men looked at each other stayed my tongue. “If you ask me the question here in the heart of the city, Mr. Ryan,” said Mr. van Buuren, at length, slowly and carefully, “I answer ‘No’; but if you were to put me on a dark night at the Winchester, I should beg time to consider. I do not believe in supernatural phenomena myself, and yet—the ‘Door to Nowhere’ at the Winchester is as much beyond my comprehension as the ebbing and flowing of the sea.” “And you cannot live at the Winchester?” remarked my uncle. “I cannot live at the Winchester, and what is more, I cannot get anyone else to live at the Winchester.” “And you want to get rid of your lease?” “I want so much to get rid of my lease that I told Tuck I would give him a handsome sum if he could induce anyone to solve the mystery. Is there any other information you desire, Mr. Ryan? Because if there is, you have only to ask and have. I feel I am not here in a prosaic office in the city of Santa Clara, but in the Palace of Truth.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
My uncle took no notice of the implied compliment. When company is good it needs nothing else. If a man is habitually honest in his speech and in his thoughts, he desires no recognition of the fact. “I do not think so,” he answered; “it is for the boy to say what he will do. If he be advised by me he will stick to his ordinary work in his employers’ office, and leave ghost-hunting and spirit-laying alone.” Mr. van Buuren shot a rapid glance in my direction, a glance which implying a secret understanding, might have influenced my uncle could I have stooped to deceive my uncle. “I cannot stick to my work there any longer,” I said. “I got my marching orders today.” “What had you been doing, Justin? Asked my uncle. “I wanted one million to go and lay the ghost!” I answered, so dejectedly, that both Mr. van Buuren and my uncle broke out laughing. “One Million dollars!” cried my uncle, almost between laughing and crying. “Why, Justin boy, I had rather, poor man though I am, have given thee one million dollars than thou should’st go ghost-hunting or ghost-laying.” When he was very much in earnest my uncle went back to thee and thou his native dialect. I liked the vulgarism, as my mother called it, and I knew my aunt loved to hear him use the caressing words to her. He had risen, not quite from the ranks it is true, but if ever a gentleman came ready born into the World it was Greg Ryan, upon whom at our home everyone seemed to look down. “What will you do, you man?” asked Mr. van Buuren; “you hear what your uncle says, “Give up the enterprise,” and what I say; I do not want either to bribe or force your inclinations.” “I will go, sir,” I answered quite steadily. “I am not afraid, and I should like to show you—” I stopped. I had been going to say, “I should like to show you I am not sure a fool as you all take me for,” but I felt such an address would be too familiar, and refrained. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
When I got to the Lodge, I showed Mr. van Buuren’s letter to the woman, and received the key. “You are not going to stop up at the Winchester alone, are you, sir? she asked. “Yes, I am,” I answered, uncompromisingly, so uncompromisingly that she said no more. The avenue led straight to the mansion; it was uphill all the way, and bordered by rows of the most magnificent limes I ever beheld. A light iron fence divided the avenue from the park, and between the trunks of the trees I could see the deer browsing and cattle grazing. Ever and anon there came likewise to my ear the sound of a sheep-bell. It was a long avenue, but at length I stood in front of the mansion—a square, solid-looking, Victorian mansion, four stories high, with several towers and a steeply pitched roof, beautiful stained-glass windows and statues, a basement; a flight of steps up to the principal entrance; several windows to the right of the door, several to the left of the door; the whole mansion flanked and backed with trees; all the curtains closed, a dead silence brooding over the place; the sun westering behind the great trees studding the park. I took all this in as I approached, and afterwards as I stood for a moment under then ample porch; then remembering he business which has brought me so far, I fitted the great key in the lock, turned the handle, and entered the Winchester Mansion. For a minute—stepping out of the bright sunlight—the place looked to me so dark that I could scarcely distinguish the objects by which I was surrounded; but my eyes soon grew accustomed to the comparative darkness, and I found I was in an immense hall, lighted from the roof; a magnificent old oak staircase conducted to the upper rooms. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The floor was of white marble. There were two fireplaces, fitted with dogs for burning wood; around the walls hung pictures, antlers, and horn, and in odd niches and corners stood groups of statues, and the figure of men in complete suits of armour. To look at the place outside, no one would have expected to find such a hall. I stood lost in amazement and admiration, and then I began to glance more particularly around. Mr. van Buuren has not given me any instructions by which to identify the ghostly chamber—which I concluded would most probably be found on the first floor. I knew nothing of the story connected with it—if there were a story. I was perfectly unencumbered of the mystery. I had not the faintest idea in which apartment it resided. Well, I should discover that, no doubt, for myself ere long. I looked around me—doors—doors—doors. I have never before seen so many doors together all at once. Two of them stood open—one wide, the other slightly ajar. “I will just shut them as a beginning,” I thought, “before I go upstairs.” The doors were of oak, heavy, well-fitting furnished with good locks and sound handles. After I had closed I tried them. Yes, they were quite secure. I ascended the great staircase feeling curiously like an intruder, paced the corridors, entered the many bed chambers—some quite bare of furniture, others containing articles of an ancient fashion, and no doubt of considerable value—chairs, antique dressing-tables, curious wardrobes, and such like. For the most part the doors were closed, and I shut those that stood open before making my way into the attics. I was greatly delighted with the attics. The window lighted them did not, as a rule, overlook the front of the Manion, but commanded wide views over wood, and valley, and meadow. Leaning out of one, I could see, that to the right of the mansion the ground, thickly planted, shelved down to a stream, which came out into the daylight a little distance beyond the plantation, and meandered through the deer part. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
At the back of the mansion the windows looked out on nothing save a dense wood and a portion of the stable-yard, whilst on the side nearest the point from whence I had come there were spreading gardens surrounded by thick yew hedges, and kitchen-gardens protected by high walls; and further on a farmyard, where I could perceive cows and oxen, and, further still, luxuriant meadows, and fields glad with waying and fruit orchards. “What a beautiful place!” I said. “van Buuren must have been a duffer to leave it.” And then I thought what a great ramshackle house it was for anyone to be in all alone. Getting heated with my long walk, I suppose, made me feel chilly, for I shivered as I drew my head in from the last dormer window, and prepared to go down stairs again. In the attics, as in the other parts of the house I had as yet explored, I closed the doors, when there were keys locking them; when there were not, trying them, and in all cases, leaving the securely fastened. When I reached the ground floor the evening was drawing on apace, and I felt that if I wanted to explore the whole house before dusk I must hurry my proceedings. “I will take the kitchens next,” I decided, and so made my way to a wilderness of domestic offices lying to the rear of the great hall. Stone passages, great kitchens, an immense servants’-hall, larders, pantries, coal-cellars, beer-cellars, laundries, brewhouses, housekeeper’s room—it was not of any use lingering over these details. The mystery that trouble Mr. van Buuren could scarcely lodge amongst cinders and empty bottles, and there did not seem much else left in this part of the building. I would go through the living-rooms, and then decide as to the apartments I should occupy myself. The evening shadows were drawing on apace, so I hurried back into the hall, feeling it was a weird position to be there all alone with those ghostly hollow figures of men in armour, and the statues on which the moon’s beams must fall so coldly. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
I would just look through the lower apartments and then kindle a fire. I had seen quantities of wood in a cupboard close at hand, and felt that beside a blazing hearth, and after a good cup of tea, I should not feel the solitary sensation which was oppressing me. The sun had sunk below the horizon by this time, for to reach the Winchester I had been obliged to travel by cross lines of railway, and wait besides for such trains as condescended to carry third-class passengers; but here was still light enough in the hall to see all object distinctly. With my own eyes I saw that one of the doors I had shut with my own hands was standing wide! I turned to the door on the other side of the hall. It was as I had left it—closed. This, then, was the room—this with the open door. For a second I stood appalled; I think I was fairly frighted. That did not last long, however. There lay the work I had desired to undertake, the foe I had offered to fight; so without mor ado I shut the door and tried it. “Now I will walk to the end of the hall and see what happens,” I considered. I did so. I walked to the foot of the grand staircase and back again, and looked. The door stood wide open. I went into the room, after just a spasm of irresolution—went in and pulled up the blinds: a good-sized room, twenty by twenty (I knew because I paced it afterwards), lighted by two long windows. The floor, of polished oak, was partially covered with a Turkey carpet. There were two recesses beside the fireplace, one fitted up as a bookcase, the other with an old and elaborately carved cabinet. I was astonished also to find a bedstead in an apartment so little retired from the traffic of the house; and there were also some chairs of an obsolete make, covered, so far as I could make out, with faded tapestry. Beside the bedstead, which stood against the wall opposite to the door I had as yet met with the interior of the house. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
It was a dreary, gloomy room: the dark panelled walls; the black, shining floor; the windows high from the ground; the antique furniture; the dull four-poster bedstead, with dingy velvet curtains; the gaping chimney; the silk counterpane that looked like a pall. “Any crime might have been committed in which a room,” I thought pettishly; and then I looked at the door critically. Someone had been at the trouble of fitting bolts upon it, for when I passed out I not merely shut the door securely, but bolted it as well. “I will go and get some wood, and then look at it again,” I soliloquized. When I came back it stood wide open once more. “Stay open, then!” I cried in a fury. “I will not trouble myself any more with you tonight!” Almost as I spoke the words, there came a ring at the front door. Echoing through the desolate house, the peal in the then states of my nerves startled me beyond expression. It was only the man who had agreed to bring over my traps. I bade him lay them down in the hall, and while looking out some small silver, asked where the nearest-post-office was to be found. Not far from the Winchester Estate’s Park gates, he said; if I wanted any letter sent, he would drop it in the box for me; the mail-cart picked up the bag at ten o’clock. I had nothing ready to post then, and told him so. Perhaps the money I gave was more than he expected, or perhaps the dreariness of my position impressed him as it had impressed me, for he paused with his hand on the lock, and asked: “Are you going to stop here all alone, master?” “All alone, I answered, with such cheerfulness as was possible under the circumstances.” “That is the room, you know,” he said, nodding in the direction of the open door, and dropping his voice to a whisper. “Yes, I know,” I replied. “What, you have been trying to shut it already, have you? Well, you are a game one!” And with this complimentary if not very respectful comment he hastened out of the house. Evidently he had no intention of proffering his services towards the solution of the mystery. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
I cast one glance at the door—it stood wide open. Through the windows I had left bare to the night, moonlight was beginning to stream cold and silvery. “Look here, Justin,” I said, all of a sudden; “life is not child’s play, as uncle truly remarks. That door is just the trouble you have now to face, and you must face it! However, for that door you would never have been here. I hope you are not going to turn coward the very first night. Courage!—that is your enemy—conquer it.” “I will try,” my other self answered back. “I can but try. I can but faith.” The moon’s beams were streaming down upon the mansion; I could see every statue, every square of marble, every piece of armour. For all the World it seemed to me like something in a dream; but I was tired and sleepy, and decided I would not trouble about fire or food, or the open door, till the next morning: I would go to sleep. However, I felt like an army of Devil’s was horribly broke in upon this place which is the center, and after a sort, the first-born of our Californian settlements. If a ghost was responsible for the hanging of nineteen people in this mansion, what was responsible for the burning of nine hundred people? What more likely time would the “Door to Nowhere” open up and let our arch-enemy, the Devil, choose a time for his attack? I spent the forenoon considering that door. I looked at it from within and from without. It was on the second floor and opened up to a two story drop outside of the house. What would possess someone to build a door like this, unless they had some knowledge of it being a portal? I eyed it critically. I tried whether there was any reason why it should fly open, and I found that so long as I remained on the threshold it remained closed; if I walked even so far away as the opposite side of the mansion, it swung wide. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Do what I would, it burst from latch and bolt. I could not lock it because there was no key. I was baffled. Then I stumbled upon a note which read: “One that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or consult, convenient with, entertain or employ, feed or reward any evil or wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman, or child, out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place, where the dead body resteth; or the skin, bone, or other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment; or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof: such offenders duly and lawfully convicted and attained, shall suffer death.” Then it dawned of me. Perhaps the mansion has been attraction people who are into the occult and they are the nearly 920 people who have been burned alive or hanged. And that is why the house cannot find renters, it consumes them all. Perhaps this is something like the Atonement of Christ. How God gave His one and only Son to pay the wages of sin man had created, this mansion is consuming souls of those who practise the occult to atone for the death of those killed by the Winchester rifle. The afflicted state of our poor neighbours that are now suffering by molestations from the invisible World, we apprehended so deplorable that we think their condition calls for the utmost help of all persons in their several capacities. We cannot but with all thankfulness acknowledge the success which the merciful God has given unto the sedulous and assiduous endeavours of our honorable rulers to detect the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country, humbly praying that the discovery of these mysterious and mischievous wickedness may be perfected. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
We judge that in the prosecution of these, and all such witchcrafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, leas by too much credulity for things received only upon the Devil’s authority there be a door opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us, for we should not be ignorant of his devices. After all, it was this mansion people could not live in—his door that would not keep shut; and it seemed to me these were facts he might dislike being forced upon the attention of the public. What had I seen? What did I think of the matter? Very honestly I did not know what to say. The door certainly would not remain shut, and there seemed no human agency to account for its persistent opening; but then, on the other hand, ghost generally did no tamper with fire arms, and my rifle, though not loaded, had been tampered with—I was sure of that. Mr. van Buuren later disclosed to me his theory that open door: “This is the room my uncle was murdered in, they say the door will never remain shut till the murderer is discovered.” “Murdered!” I did not like the word at all; it made me feel chill and uncomfortable. “Yes—he was murdered sitting in his chair, and the assassin has never been discovered. At first many persons inclined to the belief that I killed him; indeed, may are of that opinion still. “But you did not, sir—there is not a word of truth in that story, is there?” He laid his hand on my shoulder as he said: “No, my lad; not a word. I loved the old man tenderly. Even when he disinherited me for the sake of his young wife, I was worry, but not angry; and when he sent for me and assured me he had resolved to repair a wrong, I tried to induce him to leave the lady a handsome sum in addition to her jointure. “If you do not, people may think she has not been the source of happiness you expected,” I added. “Thank you, Reuban,” he said. “You are a goof fella; we will talk further about this tomorrow.” And then he bade me goodnight. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
“Before morning broke—it was in the about one hundred years ago—the household was arounds by a fearful scream. It was his death-cry. He had been stabbed from behind in the neck. He was seated in his chair writing—writing a letter in Latin. Part of it said, ‘Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursion adversarii, omne phanatasma, omnis leigo, in nominee Domini nostri Jesu Christi eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei.’ The rest of the letter was torn. His solicitor came forward and said he had signed a will leaving all his personalty to me—he was very rich—unconditionally, only three days previously.” Mr. van Buuren went away, and I stayed in the house. I never left it all day. I did not go into the garden, or the stable-yard, or the shrubbery, or anywhere; I devoted myself solely and exclusively to that door. If I shut it once, I shut it a hundred times, and always with the same result. Do what I would, it swung wide. Never, however, when I was looking at it. So long as I could endure to remain, it stayed shut—the instant I turned back, it stood open. Though feeling convinced that no human agency did or could keep the door open, I was certain that some living person had means of access to the house which I could not discover. This was made apparent in trifles which might well have escaped unnoticed had several or even two people occupied the mansion. In the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing of iron, was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sound like the rattling of chains, distant at first, but approaching nearer by degrees: immediately afterward a spectre appeared in the form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and squalid appearance, with a long beard and dischevelled hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands. The distressed occupants meanwhile passed their wakeful nights under the most dreadful terrors imaginable. This, as it broke their rest, ruined their health, and brought on distempers, their terrors grew upon them, and death ensued. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Even in the daytime, though the spirit did not appear, yet the impression remained so strong upon their imaginations that it still seemed before their eyes, and kept them in perpetual alarm. Consequently the mansion was at length deserted, as being deemed absolutely uninhabitable; so that it was now entirely abandoned to the ghost of the Winchester rifle. That night, I prepared to retire. However, I was open to the vain terrors of imaginary noises and spirits. The first part of the night passed in entire silence, as usual; at length a clanking of iron and rattling of chains was heard: however, I neither lifted up my eyes, nor got out of bed, but in order to keep calm, I pretended the sound was something else. The noise increased and advanced nearer, until it seemed at the door, and at last in my chamber. I looked up, saw, and recognized the ghost exactly as it has been described to me: it stood before me, beckoning with a finger, like a person calls another. I immediately arouse, and, candle in hand, followed it. The ghost slowly stalked along as if encumbered with its chains, and, turning into the area of the house where the “Door to Nowhere, was and suddenly vanished. What an idiot I have been! If I wanted to solve the mystery of the open door, or course I must keep watch in the room itself. The door would not stay wide unless there was a reason for it. When I walked into the room, it was deadly cold, and the scene was horrible. The door was wide open. A party of ghosts were assembled with, and were feasting on the flesh of corpses. I was astonished by this hideous banquet. As soon as I could safely escape, I stole back into my bed. I was rather crossed at being disturbed. The next day word on—the long, dreary day; evening approached—the night shadows closed over the Winchester mansion. The moon would not rise for a couple hours more. Everything was still as death. The house had never before seemed to me so silent and so deserted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
I took a candle, and went up to my accustomed room, moving about for a time as though preparing for bed; then I extinguished the candle, softly open the door, turned the key, and put it in my pocket, slipped softly downstairs, across the hall, through the open dor. Then I knew I had been afraid, for I felt a thrill of terror as in the dark I stepped over the threshold. I paused and listened—there was not a sound—the night was still and sultry, as though a storm were brewing. Not a leaf seemed moving. Noiselessly I made my way to the other side of the room. There was an old-fashioned easy-chair between the bookshelves and the bed; I sat down in it, shrouded by the heavy curtains. The hours passed—where ever hours so long? The moon rose, came and looked in at the windows, and then sailed away to the west; but not sound, no, not even the cry of a bird. I seemed to myself a mere collection of nerves. Every part of my body appeared twitching. It was agony to remain still; the desire to move became a form of torture. The locked door opened—so suddenly, so silently, that I barely had time to draw back behind the curtain, before I saw a woman in the room. A slight, lithe woman, not a lady, clad in all black—not a bit of white about her. What on Earth could she want? Then she fell on me with her nails and teeth, and tore at my throat, she was as strong as twenty devils. I felt something like a red-hot iron enter my neck. She opened a vein and sucked by blood, and I could but rush from the room before I fell senseless on the marble pavement of the hall. When the post man came that morning, finding no one stirring, he looked through one of the long windows that flanked the door; then he ran to the farmyard and called for help. “There is something wrong inside,” he cried. “That young gentleman is lying on the floor in a blood of blood.” To this day, the “Door to Nowhere” is still a mystery. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Winchester Mystery House
24 Hours till opening night of All Hallows’ Eve and our caretakers are working non stop to put the finishing touches on the show! Be here for the opening weekend! Tickets are still available. A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
All Hallows’ Eve:
🎟️ Link in bio. 🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
One Feels the Presence within One of the Mysterious Entity which is One’s Soul!
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most humans at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure. Emotional expressions, or outward signs of what a person is feeling, are another major element of emotion. For example, when you are intensely afraid, your hands tremble, your face contorts, and your posture becomes tense and defensive. Emotion is also revealed by marked shifts in voice tone or modulation. Such expressions are important because they communicate emotion from one person to another. Emotional feelings (a person’s private emotional experience) are a final major element of emotion. This is the part of emotion with which we are usually most familiar. Happiness—that delicious feeling of well-being and joy. What does it mean for our lives? How can we attain it? Have you noticed how your state of happiness or unhappiness colours everything else? Researchers have found that when we are in a happy mood, we see the World as friendly and nonthreatening. We make decisions easily. We recall the good times and forget the bad. Let our mood turn gloomy and soon enough we will find reasons for it: our relationships, our-self-image, and our prospects for the future suddenly seem depressing. What is more, happy people are helpful people. In experiments, those who have a mood-boosting experience become more generous and compassionate. If made to feel successful and intelligent, they are more likely to volunteer as a tutor. If they have just found some money in a phone booth, they are more likely to help someone pick up dropped papers. If they have just had a great day at work, they are more willing to loan someone money. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
So, being in a good mood triggers happy thoughts and memories and predisposes us to spread happiness to others. How, then, can we find happiness? Well, first of all, when faces with severe adversity or loss, being depressed is a normal and appropriate response. However, sometimes people react even to little problems by doubting and disparaging themselves. Their negative mood now triggers more negative thoughts: “I am no good,” “People do not like me,” “No one appreciates the work I do.” And the withdrawal and complaining that accompany such thoughts irritate others, which further worsens the unhappy person’s predicament. To break this vicious cycle of misery, psychologists often advise people to work at reversing their negative thinking. Keep a diary of daily successes, noting what you did to make them possible. Make negative self-talk more optimistic: not “I will never get this done,” but “One step at a time—I can handle it.” Or keep a gratitude journal. Those who pause each day to write down some optimistic aspects of their lives—perhaps their health, their friends, their family, their freedom, or even just their savouring the wonders of their senses—experience heightened well-being. Forcing ourselves also to act in more beneficial ways—offering a compliment, asserting ourselves—can help, too. When we act as if we are happy and confident, we may become more so. Silly as it may seem, even a smiling expression can sometimes break the cycle of misery. Try it. Make yourself smile. Can you feel the difference? The participants in dozens of recent experiments could feel the differences. When induced to make a frowning expression while electrodes were attached to their faces—“pull your brows together, please,” the researchers might instruct—the people reported feeling a little angry, and their heart rates and skin temperatures actually went up slightly (as if they really were “hot under the collar”). #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Those induced to smile felt happier and found cartoons more humorous. When we put on a happy face, our outlook seems to brighten. A famous author, on calculating the goods and evils of human life and comparing the two sums, has found that the latter greatly exceeded the former, and that, all things considered, life was a pretty poor present for humans. I am not surprised by his conclusion; he has drawn all of his arguments from the constitution of civil humans. Had he gone back as far as natural man, the judgement can be made that he would have found very different results, that he would have realized that man has scarcely any evils other than those he has given himself, and that nature would have been justified. It is not without trouble that we have managed to make ourselves so unhappy. When, on the one hand, one considers the immense labours of humans, so many sciences searched into, so many arts invented, and so many forces employed, abysses filled up, mountains razed, rocks broken, rivers made navigable, lands cleared, lakes dug, marshes drained, enormous buildings raised upon the Earth, the sea covered with ships and sailors; and when on the other hand, one searches with a little meditation for the true advantages that have resulted from all this for the happiness of the human species, one cannot help being struck by the astonishing disproportion that obtains between these things, and to deplore man’s blindness, which, to feed his foolish pride and who knows what vain sense of self-importance, makes one run ardently after all the miseries to which he is susceptible, and which beneficent nature has taken pains to keep from him. Men are wicked; a sad and continual experience dispenses us from having to prove it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Nevertheless, man is naturally good; I believe I have demonstrated it. What therefore can have depraved him to this degree, if not the changes that have befallen his constitution, the progress he has made, and the sorts of knowledge he has acquired? Let human society be admired as much as one wants; it will be no less true for it that necessarily brings humans to hate one another to the extent that their interests are at cross-purposes with one another, to render mutually to one another apparent services and in fact do every evil imaginable to one another. What is one to think of an interaction where the reason of each private individual dictates to one maxims directly contrary to those that public reason preaches to the body of society, and where each finds one’s profit in the misfortune of another? Perhaps there is not a wealth man whose death is not secretly hope for by greedy heirs and often by his own children; not a ship at sea whose wreck would not be good news for some merchant; not a firm that a debtor of bad faith would not wish to see burn with all the papers it contains; not a people that does not rejoice at the disasters of its neighbours. Thus it is that we find our advantage in the setbacks of our fellow-humans, and that one person’s loss almost always beings about another’s prosperity. However, what is even more dangerous is that public calamities are anticipated and hoped for by a multitude of private individuals. Sone want diseases, others death, others war, others famine. I have seen ghastly men weep with the sadness at the likely prospects of a fertile year. And the great and deadly fire of London, which cost the life or the goods of so many unfortunate people, made the fortunes of perhaps more than ten thousand people. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
I know that Montaigne bales the Athenian Demades for having had a worker punished, who, by selling coffins at a high price, made a great deal from the death of the citizens. However, since the reason Montaigne proposes is that everyone would have to be punished, it is evident that it confirms my own. Let us therefore penetrate, through our frivolous demonstration of good will, to what happens at the bottom of our hearts; and let us reflect on what the state of things must be where all humans are forced to caress and destroy one another, and where they are born enemies by duty and crooks by interest. If someone answers me by claiming that society is constituted in such a manner that each human gains by serving others, I will reply that this would be very well and good, provided one did not gain still more by harming them. There is no profit, however legitimate, that is not surpassed by one that can be made illegitimately, and wrong done to a neighbour is always more lucrative than services. It is therefore no longer a question of anything but finding the means of being assured of impunity. And this is what the powerful spend all their forces on, and the weak all their ruses. Savage man, when he has eaten, is at peace with all nature, and the friend of all his fellow-men. Is it sometimes a question of one’s disputing over one’s mean? One never comes to blows without having first compared the difficulty of winning with that of finding one’s sustenance elsewhere. And since pride is not involved in the fight, it is ended by a few swings of the first. The victor eats; the vanquished is on one’s way to seek one’s fortune, and everything is pacified. However, for humans in society, these are quite different affairs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
It is first of all a question of providing for the necessary and then for the superfluous; next come delights, and then immense riches, and then subjects, and then slaves. One has not a moment’s respite. What is more singular is that the less natural and pressing the needs, the more the passions increase and, what is worse, the power to satisfy them; so that after long periods of prosperity, after having swallowed up many treasures and ruined many humans, my hero will end by butchering everything until he is the sole master of the Universe. Such in brief is the moral portrait, if not of human life, then at least of the secret pretensions of the heart of every civilized human. Compare, without prejudices, that state of civilized humans with that of savage humans and seek, if you can, how many new doors to suffering and death (other than their wickedness, their needs and their miseries) the former has opened. If you consider the emotional turmoil that consumes us, the violent passions that exhaust and desolate us, the excessive cause the former to die of their needs, and the latter of their excesses; if you call to mind the monstrous combinations of food, their pernicious seasonings, the corrupted foodstuffs, tainted drugs, the knavery of those who sell them, the errors of those who administer them, the poison of the vessels in which they are prepared; if you pay attention to the epidemic diseases engendered by the bad air among the multitudes of humans gathered together, to the illnesses occasioned by the effeminacy of our lifestyle, by the coming and going from the inside of our houses to the open air, the use of garments put on or taken off with too little precaution, and all the cares that our excessive sensuality has turned into necessary habit, the neglect or privation of which then costs us our life or health. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Furthermore, if you take into account fires and earthquakes, which, in consuming or turning upside down whole cities, cause their inhabitants to die by the thousands; in a word, if you unite the dangers that all these causes continually gather over our heads, you will realize how dearly nature makes us pay for the scorn we have down for the scorn we have down for its lessons. I will not repeat here what I have said elsewhere about war, but I wish that informed humans would, for once, want or dare to give the public the detail of the horrors that are committed in armies by provisions and hospital suppliers. One would see that their not too secret maneuvers, on account of which the most brilliant armies by provisions and hospital suppliers. One would see that their not too secret maneuvers, on account of which the most brilliant armies dissolve into less than nothing, cause more soldiers to perish than are cut down by enemy swords. Moreover, no less surprising is the calculation of the number of humans swallowed up by the sea every years, either by hunger, or scurvy, or pirates, or fire, or shipwrecks. It is clear that we must also put to the account of established property, and consequently to that of society, the assassinations, the poisonings, the highway robberies, and even the puishments of these crimes, punishments necessary to prevent greater ills, but which, costing the lives of two or more for the murder of one man, do not fail really to double the loss to the human species. How many are the shameful ways to prevent the birth of humans or to fool nature: either by those brutal and depraved tastes which insult its most charming work, tastes that neither savages nor animals ever knew, and that have arisen in civilized counties only as the result of a corrpt imagination. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Or by those secret abortions, worthy fruits of debauchery and vicious honour; or by the exposure or the murder of a multitude of infants, victims of the misery of their parents or of the barbarous shame of their mothers; or, finally by the mutilation of those unfortunates, part of whose existence and all of the brutal jealousy of a few humans: a mutilation which, in that last case, doubly outrages nature, both by the treatment received by those who suffer it and by the use to which they are destined. [But are there not a thousand more frequent and even more dangerous cases where paternal rights overtly offend humanity? How many talents are buried and inclinations are forced by the imprudent constraint of fathers! How many men would have distinguished themselves in a suitable station who die unhappy and dishonoured in another station for which they have no taste! How many happy but unequal marriages have been broken or disturbed, and how many chaste wives dishonoured by the order of conditions always in contradiction with that of nature! How many other bizarre unions formed by interests and disavowed by love and by reason! How many even honest and virtuous couples cause themselves torment because they were ill-matched! How many young and unhappy victims of their parent’s greed plunge into vice or pass their sorrowful days in tears, and moan in indissoluble chains which the heart rejects and which gold alone has formed! Happy sometimes are those who courage and even virtue them for life before a barbarous violence force them into crime or despair. For give me, father and mother for deplorable. I regrettably worsen your sorrows; but may they serve as an eternal and terrible example to whoever dares, in the name of nature, to violate the most scared of its rights! #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
If I have spoken only of those ill-formed relationships that are the result of our civil order, is one to think that those where love and sympathy have presided are themselves exempt from drawbacks?] What would happen if I were to undertake to show the human species attacked in its very source, and even in the most holy of all bounds, where one no longer dares to listen to nature until after having consulted fortune, and where, with civil disorder confounding virtues and vices, continence becomes a criminal precaution, and the refusal to give life to one’s fellow-human an act of humanity? However, without tearing away the veil that overs so many horrors, let us content ourselves with point out the evil, for which others must supply the remedy. Let us add to all this that quantity of unwholesome trades which shorten lives or destroy one’s health, such as work in mines, various jobs involving the processing of metals, minerals, and especially lead, copper, mercury, cobalt, arsenic, realgar; those other perilous trades which everyday cost the lives of a number of workers, some of them roofers, others carpenters, others masons, other working in quarries; let us bring all of these objects together, I say, and we will be able to see in the establishment and the perfection of societies the reasons for the diminution of the species, observed by more than one philosopher. Luxury, impossible to prevent among humans who are greedy for their own conveniences and for the esteem of others, soon completes the evil that societies have begun; and on the pretext of keeping the poor alive (which it was not necessary to do), luxury impoverishes everyone else, and sooner or later depopulates the state. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Luxury is a remedy far worse than the evil it means to cure; or rather it is itself the worst of all evils in any state, however, large or small it may be, and which, in order to feed the hordes of lackeys and wretches it has produced, crushes, and ruins the labourer and the citizen—like those scorching south winds that, by covering grass and greenery with devouring insects, take sustenance away from useful animals, and bring scarcity and death to all the places where they make themselves felt. From society and the luxury it engenders, arise the liberal and mechanical arts, commerce, letters, and all those useless things that make industry flourish, enriching and running states. The reason for this decay is quite simple. It is easy to see that agriculture, by its nature, must be the least lucrative of all the arts, because, with its product being of the most indispensable use to all humans, its price must be proportion to their usefulness, and that the most necessary must finally become the most neglected. From this it is clear what must be thought of the true advantages of industry and of the real effect that results from its progress. Such are the discernible causes of all the miseries into which opulence finally brings down the most admired nations. To the degree that industry and the arts expand and flourish, the scorned farmer, burdened with taxes necessary to maintain luxury and condemned to spend one’s life between toil and hunger, abandons one’s fields to go to the cities in search of the bread one ought to be carrying there. The more the capital cities strike the stupid eyes of the people as wonderful, the more it will be necessary to groan at the sight of countrysides abandoned, fields fallow, and main roads jammed with unhappy citizens who have become beggars or thieves, destined to end their misery one day on the rack or on a dung-heap. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Thus it is that the state, enriching itself on the one hand, weakens and depopulates itself on the other; and that the most powerful monarchies, after much labour to become opulent and deserted, end by becoming the prey of poor nations which succumb to the deadly temptation to invade them, and which enrich and enfeeble themselves in their turn, until they are themselves invaded and destroyed by others. Let someone deign to explain to us for once what could have produced those hordes of barbarians which for so many centuries have overrun Europe, Asia, and Africa. Was it to the industry of their arts, the wisdom of their laws, the excellence of their civil order that they owed that prodigious population? Would our learned one be so kind as to tell us why, far from multiplying to that degree, those ferocious and brutal humans, without enlightenment, without restraint, without education, did not all kill one another at every moment to argue with one another over food or game? Let them explain to us how these wretches even had the gall to look right in the eye such capable people as we were, with such fine military discipline, such fine codes, and such wise laws, and why, finally, after society was perfected in the countries of the north, and so many pains were taken there to teach humans their mutual duties and the air of living together agreeably and peaceably, nothing more is seen to come from them like those multitudes of humans it produced formerly. I am very much afraid that something, namely the arts, sciences, and laws, have been very wisely invented by humans as a salutary plague to prevent the excessive multiplication of the species, out of fear that this World, which is destined for us, might finally become too small for its inhabitants. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
What then! Must we destroy societies, annihilate thine and mine, and return to live in the forests with bears?—a conclusion in the style of my adversaries, which I prefer to anticipate, rather than leave to them the shame of drawing it. Oh you, to whom the Heavenly voice has not made itself heard, and who recognize for your species no other destination except to end this brief life in peace; you who can leave in the midst of the cities your deadly acquisitions, your troubled minds, your corrupt hearts and your unbridled desires. Since it depends on you, retake your ancient and first innocence; go into the woods to lose sight and memory of the crimes of your contemporaries, and have no fear of cheapening your species in renouncing its enlightenment in order to renounce its vices. As for men like me, whose passions have forever destroyed their original simplicity, who can no longer feed on grasses and acorn[s], nor get by without laws and chiefs; those who were honoured in their first father with supernatural lessons; those who will see, in the intention of giving human actions from the beginning a morality they would not have acquired for a long time, the reason for a precept indifferent in itself and inexplicable in any other system; those, in a word, whoa re convinced that the divine voice called the entire human race to the enlightenment and the happiness of the celestial intelligences; all those latter ones will attempt, through the exercise of virtues they oblige themselves to practice while learning to know them, to merit the eternal reward that they ought to expect for them. They will respect the sacred bonds of the societies of which they are members; they will love their fellow-men and will serve them with all their power; they will scrupulously obey the laws and the men who are their authors and their ministers. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
They will honour above all the good and wise princes who will know how to prevent, cure or palliate that pack of abuses and evils always ready to overpower us; they will animate the zeal of these worthy chiefs by showing them without fear or flattery the greatness of their task and the rigour of their duty. However, they will despise no less for it a constitution that can be maintained only with the help of so many respectable people, who are desired more often than they are obtained, and from which, despite all their care, always arise more real calamities than apparent advantages. Nevertheless, powerful forces are converging to promote the electronic cottage. The most immediately apparent is the economic trade-off between transportation and telecommunication. Most high-technology nations are now experiencing a transportation crisis, with mass transit systems strained to the breaking point, roads and highways clogged, parking spaces rare, pollution a serious problem, strikes and breakdowns almost routine, and costs skyrocketing. The escalating costs of commuting are borne by the individual workers. However, they are, of course, indirectly passed on to the employer in the form of higher wage costs, and to the consumer in higher prices. Jack Nilles and a team sponsored by the National Science Foundation have worked out both dollar and the energy savings that would flow from any substantial shift of white-collar jobs out of centralized offices. Instead of assuming the jobs would go into the homes of employees, the Nilles group used what might be termed a halfway-house model, assuming only that jobs would be dispersed into neighbourhood work centers closer to employee homes. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The implications of their findings are startling. On average, Americans travel an average of 32 miles a day to and from work. The higher up the managerial scale, the longer the commute, with top executives averaging 44 miles. All told, these workers drove 12.4 million miles each year to get to work, using up nearly a half-century’s worth of hours to do so. At 2021 prices, this costs about sixty cents per mile, or a total of $15,117,610.34—an amount borne indirectly by the company and its customers. Indeed, it was found that the company was paying its downtown workers $2,879.54 a year more than the going rate in the dispersed locations—in effect, a subsidy of transportation costs. It was also providing parking spaces and other costly services made necessary by the centralized location. If we now assume a secretary was earning in the neighbourhood of $55,375.86 a year, the elimination of commuting costs could have permitted the company to hire nearly 300 additional employees or, alternatively, to add a substantial amount of profits. The key question is: When will the cos of installing and operating telecommunications equipment fall below the present cost of commuting? While gasoline and other transport costs (including the costs of mass-transit alternatives to the auto) are soaring everywhere, the price of telecommunications is shrining spectacularly. Satellites slash the cost of long-distance transmission, bringing it so near the zero mark per signal that engineers now speak of “distance-independent” communications. Computer power has multiplied exponentially and prices have dropped so dramatically that engineers and investors alike are left gasping. With fiber optics and other new breakthrough technologies in the wings, it is clear that still further cost reductions lie ahead—per unit of memory, per processing step, and per signal transmitted. At some point the curves must cross. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
However, these are not the only forces subtly moving us toward the geographical dispersal of production and, ultimately, the electronic cottage of the future. The Nilles team found that the average American urban commuter uses the gasoline equivalent of 64.6 kilowatts of energy to get back and forth to work each day. (The Los Angeles insurance employees burned 37.4 million kilowatts a year in commuting.) By contrast, it takes far less energy to move information. A typical computer terminal uses only 100 to 125 watts or less when it is in operation, and a phone line consumes only one watt or less while it is in use. Making certain assumptions about how much communications equipment would be needed, and how long it would operate, Nilles calculated that “the relative energy consumption advantage of telecommuting over commuting (id est, the ratio of commuting energy consumption to telecommuting consumption) is at least 29.1 when the private automobile is used; 11.1 when normally loaded mass transit is used; and 2.1 for 100 percent utilized mass transit systems.” Carried to their conclusion, these calculations showed that, even if as little as 12 o 14 percent of urban commuting is replaced by telecommuting, the United States of America would save approximately 75 million barrels of gasoline—and would thereby greatly reduce the need to import as much gasoline from abroad. The implications of that one fac for the U.S. balance of payments for Middle East politics might also be more than trivial. As gasoline prices and energy costs in general rise in the decades immediately ahead, both the dollar cost and energy cost of operating “smart” typewriters, telecopiers, the Internet, video calls, email, audio and video links, and computer desks will plummet, still further increasing the relative advantage of moving at least some production out of the large central workshop that dominated the Second Wave. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The dawning of the twentieth century saw a major social attack on the formality and excesses of the Victorian era. In architecture, this was reflected in the supplanting of the elaborate Victorian dwelling with the simpler rustic bungalow. The bungalow style stressed efficiency and simplicity. In spite of its name, the bungalow characteristically had a second floor housing a bathroom and all the bedrooms, and a full concrete-floored basement. Compared to the suburban homes of earlier decades, bungalows were generally smaller and constructed without formal features such as entrance halls or parlours. What they did have, however, was a high degree of comfort and convenience. Not unimportant for newlyweds, the bungalow was also a less expensive first home and thus had a particular appeal to young couples. From the standpoint of the housewife, suburban bungalows took far less time and energy to care for than the larger, but far less modern, homes of their mothers. The bungalows had all the technological advances of the day and included luxuries only available to the well-to-do a generation earlier. The homes were built with modern indoor, bathrooms, electric connections, gas connections for kitchen stoves, and central heating. For latter, you could have steam, hot-air, or hot-water systems. Individual wood- or coal-burning room heaters or stoves were no longer seen; they have been superseded by coal-fire central-heating systems. In some cases the furnaces were even automatic oil-fired units. The “fireplaces” in the 1920s bungalow living room was likely to be a faux fireplace with gas-fed logs. (During the 1990s gas-fired fireplaces again returned to favour.) New “scientific” labour-saving devices such as electric laundry machines, electric irons, electric vacuum cleaners, and even electric toasters all made middle-class women’s lives easier. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
No longer did you have to daily strain yourself to feed wood or coal into the kitchen stove or room heaters. No longer did you have to have a washerwoman—or yourself—do the backbreaking work of heating water on the stove and then washing the clothes by hand in huge vats. For hot water you turned on the faucet; to wash the clothes you turned on the washing machine, which was now located in the bungalow’s concrete-floored, electric-lighted, and centrally heated basement. It is all but impossible for us today to imagine jus how much time and heavy physical labour was an everyday part of housekeeping prior o the modern era. The new labour-saving electric appliances and more efficient kitchen designs of the smaller bungalow-style suburban homes of the 1920s did more than reduce heavy labour around the home. They also contributed to the ongoing social revolution in women’s equality by providing middle-class women much more free time. The comparative efficiency of the new electric appliances removed some of the time-consuming drudgery from housekeeping and promoted the possibility of leisure time. Woman’s magazines of the day noted how many modern young women living in such suburban homes now had the “free time” to devote to social activities, charity work, or others activities. They might even have a career. The idea that it was possible to have both a home and a career first came into vogue for the middle-class at this time. Having a job outside the home was not the norm, but it now, theoretically, became an option. Middle-class ideology began to change so that a suburban woman’s working at a career or job was not automatically assumed to be the consequence of the early death of the male breadwinner. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
“Modern” married middle-class women, even those with children, could have a career without automatically being considered negligent wives and mothers. This is not to suggest that the technology of the new housing determined family social and work patterns. Rather, it is to suggest that technological advances, by changing the nature of housework, made it easier for patterns of greater social equality between spouses to develop. A more recent development has been the assumption by adult family members of home repair and improvement activities that were previously done by hired male painters, plumbers, and carpenters. A “do-it-yourself” generation has grown up with the assumption that everything from kitchen cabinets to decks to new bathroom fixtures can be self-installed. TV ads show couples putting in a new ceiling fan or installing new countertops after viewing the hardware warehouse video on how to do it. On the beneficial side, there is a decreasing division between what appropriate men’s work and women’s work. On the negative side, home improvement activities decrease true leisure time. Nonetheless, labour costs all but necessitates that suburban couples who wish to upgrade their homes will do much of their own work. It is taken for granted that they themselves will do much of the work in building a rec room or adding a bedroom. In this respect, the contemporary family unit has a commonalty with early American families, who were expected to physically contribute to the construction and maintenance of their dwellings. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
One thing you should concentrate on is desire, in fact, your alarming number of desires. You should make them conform to My pleasure. That is to say, you should not prefer your own will to Mine, as the Great Matthew recorded in the Lord’s Prayer in his Gospel (6.10); you should fall all over yourself to put My will first in your life. Why? Desires, I have noticed, often rouse you to act before you think. That is nice, but I think you should consider whether you are acting for our mutually agreed upon alliance or just for your own dalliance. If, however, I am the over cause, you will be happy enough, no matter how much I bang you about. However, if you have some covert initiative, something you do not want to reveal to Me, watch your step. It will trip you up and weigh you down. A few things to beware of. First, do not lean too much on these subcutaneous, subterranean desires of yours. Consult Me first. If you do not, it will make you suffer a lot later. One hint. A desire may please you at first, but it does not satisfy for long. It can only lead you to another, seemingly better supposedly greater desire, which itself is just another one in an endless chain of self-devouring desires that can only lead you to spiritual ruin. Second, not every Friendly Affection has to be seized immediately. There can be an interval. Examine it closely. Use restraint. You do not want to distract your mind from your goodly and indeed Godly studies simply because a Friendly Affection suddenly presents itself. Third, not every Unfriendly Affection must be fled from right away. Again, let there be an interval. Instantaneous and negative reaction may result more in Vitus than Virtue. The last thing you want to do is engender scandal in those who look up to you. Worse, you will arouse those who look down upon you; they will whirl you about until your finally fly apart. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Fourth, sometimes you have to use strength, that is to say, to mount an assault against the Sensitive Appetite. The Flesh will make demands. Counter them; demand unconditional surrender—that was the way the pugnacious Paul handled the problem, or so he said in his First Letter to the Corinthians (9.27). Trouble erupts when the Flesh is unwilling to respond to the wishes of the Spirit. Alas, the Flesh has to be broken and bridled until it is willing to do everything that is required of it. That is to say, until it learns to be content with few things, delight in simple things, and overlook annoying things. My words are tied in one with the great mountains, with the great rocks, with the great trees, in one with my body and my heart. O Eternal, we beseech Thee, please save us now. Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance; nourish and sustain them forever. And may my words of supplication before the Lord be nigh unto the Lord our God, day and night, that He maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people America, as every day shall require; that all people of the Earth may know that the Lord is God; there is none else. Save us, we beseech Thee! For Thy sake, our God, do Thou save us. For Thy sake, our Creator, O save us. For Thy sake, our Redeemer, O save us. For Thy sake, O Thou who seekest us, save us, we beseech Thee. It is not merely feeing to which we give ourselves up, but being into which we settle. The conception alone of a peace which is out of this World is simply daring: its realization is utterly gorgeous in beauty and joyous in remembrance. Mostly as a result of prayer, but sometimes during an unexpected glimpse, a mystical experience of an unusual kind may develop. One feels transparent to the Overself; it light passes into and through one. One then finds that one’s ordinary condition was as if a thick wall surrounded one, devoid of windows and topped by a thick roof, a condition of imprisonment in limitation and ordinariness. However, now the walls turn to glass, their density is miraculously gone, one is not only open to the light streaming in but lets it pass on, irradiating the World around it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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In a Nightmare of Supernatural Terror—Afraid to Move Hand or Foot II!
Immediately after I sat down…and did see a black thing jump into the window. And it came and stood just before my face. The body of it looked like a monkey, only the feet were like a cock’s feet with claws, and the face somewhat more like a man’s than a monkey’s. And I being greatly affrighted, not being able to speak or help myself by reason of fear, I suppose, so the thing spoke to me and said, “I am a messenger sent to you. For I understand you are troubled in mind, and if you will be ruled by me you shall want for nothing in this World.” I would have cried out—would have shrieked, if every never had not been paralyzed. I could not doubt the evidence of my sense—if I could have done so the cold, unearthy horror which sicked my very soul would have borne its undeniable testimony that I had behold the impersonation of the hidden curse that rested on this dwelling. I stood there rigid and immovable, as if that blighting Medusa-glance had indeed changed me into stone. It may have been but a very few minutes—it seemed to me a cycle of painful ages, when the light of a brightly burning lamp shone before me, and I heard the cheerful sounds of the new nurse’s voice in my ears: “Come along, cook. Bless your heart, my dear! you need not be nervous; there is no occasion. Mrs. Winchester, ma’am, are you not well, ma’am? “No,” I said faintly, staggering to the woman’s outstretched hands. “Not down there—upstairs to the children.” She turned as I bade her, and supported me up the stairs and into the nursery, the cook following close at my skirts, muttering fervent prayers and chants. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
The sight of the peacefully sleeping little ones did far more to restore me than all the essences and chafing and unlacing which the two women busily administered. I had got suddenly ill when coming upstairs was the explanation I gave, which the cook, plainly perceived, most thoroughly doubted, at least without the cause she suspected being assigned, which, even in the midst of my terror-stricken condition, I refrained from giving, I did not speak to the nurse either of what had happened, but I felt that she knew as well as if she had been by my ide all the time. However, when William returned I told him. Distressed and alarmed on my account though he was, yet he did not, as before, refuse credence to my story. “We must leave the house, William. I should die here very soon,” I said. “Yes, Sarah; of course we must leave if you have anything to distress or terrify you in his manner, though it does seem absurd to be driven out of one’s house and home by a thing of this kind. Someone’s practical joke, or a trick prompted by malice against the owner of the property in order to lessen its value. I have heard of such things often.” “William, it is nothing of the kind,” I said earnestly; “you know it is not.” “No, I do not,” said William shortly and grimly, as he opened his case of revolvers, “and I wish I did.” The night passed away quietly, to our ears at least; but next morning when William had concluded the usual morning prayers, instead of the usual move of the servants, they remained clustered at the door, Jansen with an exceedingly elongated visage standing slightly in advance of the group as a spokesman. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
“Please, sir and ma’am, we cannot tell you what to do.” “Why, go and do your work,” retorted William, with a nervous tug at his moustache and an uneasy glance at me. Jansen shook his head slowly. “It cannot be done, sir—cannot be done, ma’am. Why, no living Christian, not to speak of humble, but respectable servants,” said Jansen with a flourish, quite unconscious of the nice distinction he had made, “could stand it any longer.” “What is the matter, pray?” said my husband. “Ghosts, sir—spirits—unclean spirits,” said Charles, in an awestruck whisper which was re-echoed in the cook’s “Lor” “a” mercy!” as she dodged back from the doorway with the housemaid holding fast to one of her ample sleeves, and the lady’s maid holding fast to the other. The New nurse, quietly dandling the baby in her arms, was alone unmoved. “What stories have you been listening to now?” said their master, what a slight laugh and a frown. “No stories, sir; but what we have seen with our eyes and understanded with our ears, and—and—comprehended with our hearts,” said Jansen, with an unsuccessful attempt at quoting Scripture. “What was it as walked the floors last night between one and two, sir? What was it as talked and shrieked and run and raced? What was it as frightened the mistress on the stairs last evening?” And the whole posse of them turned to me, triumphantly awaiting my testimony. I was feeling very ill, and looking so, I daresay, having struggled downstairs in order to prevent the servants having any additional confirmation of their surmises. “That is no affair of yours,” said William gravely; “your mistress is in delicate health, and was feeling unwell all day.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
“Will you allow me to speak, please, sir?” said the nurse, and, as her maser nodded assent, she turned to the frightened group with a pleasant smile. “You have no cause to be afraid, cook, or Mr. Jensen, or any of you,” said she, addressing the most important functionary first—“not in the least. I am only a servant like the rest, and here a shorter time than any one; but I think you are very foolish to unsettle yourself in a good situation and frighten yourselves. You need not think they will harm you. Fear God and do your duty, and you need not mind wandering, poor, lonely souls—-” “Lor” “a” mercy! ‘ow you talk, Mrs. Lewis!” said the coo indignantly. “I have seen them more times than one—many and many a time, Mrs. Cook; and they never harmed a hair of my head,” said the nurse, “nor they will ever harm your.” “Well, then,” said the cook, packing into the hall, followed by her satellites, “not to be made Cleopatra, nor the Virgin Mary neither, would I stay to be frighted out of my seven senses, and made into a lunatic creature like poor Linda was!” “Please to make better omelettes for luncheon, cook, than you did yesterday,” said William calmly, though he looked pale and angry enough, “and leave me to deal with the ghost—I will settle accounts with them!” The nurse turned quickly and looked earnestly at him: “I would not say that, sir—God forbid,” said she in an undertone, and the next moment was singing softly and blithely as she carried the children away to their morning bath. William and I looked at each other in silence. “I wish we have never come into this house, dear,” I said. “I wish from my heart that we never had, Sarah,” he responded; “but we must manage to stay the season out, at all events. It would be too absurd to run away like frightened hares, not to speak of the expense and trouble we have gone through expanding the mansion to four floors with a nine-story tower.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
“We can may get it taken off our hands with a substantial loss, perhaps,” I suggested. “See the house-agent, William.” “I have seen him, but we have one of the largest, and most expansive estates in the country. No one can afford it,” he replied. “He deeply regretted that we should have any occasion to find fault, especially after our huge investment in expanding the estate, and it is not even completed yet. The agent also said he was happy to do anything in the way of clearing up this little mystery, et cetera. Of course he was laughing at me in his sleeve.” Again, as after our previous alarms, says passed on and lengthened into weeks in undisturbed quietude. William had a good many business matters to arrange; the children looked as rosy and healthy as in their country home, from their constant walking and playing in the airy, pleasant parks. My own health was not every good; and Dr. Winchester, William’s cousin, was kindest and wisest of grave, gentlemanly doctors; so, all thing considered, we stay at the Winchester mansion we have build into a 600 room Queen Anne Victorian mansion from an 18-room farmhouse. Only on my husband’s account, I wished for any change. Something seemed to affect his health strangely, although he never complained of anything beyond the usual lassitude and want of a tone which a gay Santa Clara season might be expected to bequeath him. He was sleepless, frequently depressed, nervous, and irritable; and still he vehemently declared he was quite well, and seemed almost annoyed when I urged him to put his business aside for the present and leave town. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
He had been induced to enter into a large “Highly Finished Arms” promotion and sales of deluxe Winchesters, and had, besides, some heavy money matters to arrange, connected with his sister’s marriage settlements, which he expected would be required about Christmas. So, all things considered, he had some cause for feeling as haggard as he did. “It will be as well for William to leave Santa Clara, Mrs. Winchester, as soon as he can, said his cousin Dr. Winchester at the close of one of his pleasant “run-in” visits. “His nerves are shaky. We men get nervous nearly as often as the ladies, though we do not confess to the fact quite so openly. A little unstrung, you know—nothing more. A few weeks in sea or mountain air will quite brace him up again.” And as I dressed for dinner that evening, I determined that if wifely entreaties, and arguments, and authority, should not fail for the first time in our wedded life, William should have the sea or mountain air without another week’s delay; and, of course I determined, likewise, to back up entreaties, arguments, and authority with the prettiest dress I could put on. I cannot tell why wives, and young wives too, will neglect their personal appearance when “only one’s husband” is present. It is unpolitic, unbecoming, and unloving; and men and husbands do not like neglect—direct or implied, be sure of that, ladies—young, middle-aged, or old. “Your brown silk, ma’am?—it is rather cold this evening for that cream-coloured grenadine,” said Agnus, rustling at my wardrobe. “No, Agnus, I will not have that brown, I am tired of it,” I replied. If so happened that it was this dress which I had worn on the three occasions when I had been terrified by the strange occurrences in this house; and I had acquired a superstition aversion for this particular robe. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
So Agnus arrayed me in a particularly charming demi-toilette of pale yellow silk grenadine and white lace; and I felt myself to be a most amiable and affectionate little wife, as I went downstairs to await William’s return for dinner. I never sat in my pretty dressing-room alone. Truth to tell, I disliked the apartment secretly and intensely, and only for fear of troubling and displeasing George I would have shut it up from the first evening I spent in it. He was late for dinner, and I was quite shocked to see how thin and ill he looked by the gas-light; and, as soon as it was concluded, and that by the assistance of excellent coffee and a vast amount of petting, I had coaxed him into his usual smiles and good-humour, I began my petition—that he would leave town for his own sake. He listened to me in silence, and then said, “Very well, Sarah, we will go as soon as we can board up the east wing; I suppose you may come back here. “Oh! yes, I think so,” I replied, “maybe someone attracted these bad spirits and we need to let things cool off again. We shall spend Winter in New Haven, in our dear old house, William.” “Very well,” he said wearily, “though you must know, Sarah, I am not going on account of this one thing. I would hardly quit my house, indeed, because of ghostly or bodily sights or sounds.” He started up from the couch on which he was lying, flushed and excited as he always was when the subject was mentioned, his eyes gleaming as brightly as the flashing scabbard which hung on the wall before him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
“Certainly not, dearest,” I said soothingly. “I wish I could solve the mystery,” he pursued, more excitedly; “I would make somebody suffer for it! One’s peace destroyed, and people terrified, and servants driven away, as if one was living in the dark ages, with some cursed necromancer next door!” “Oh! well, it is some time ago now, and the servants have got over their fright. Pray, do not distress yourself about it, dear William.” “Ah, well—you do not—never mind,” he muttered; “but I mean to have tangible evidence before ever I leave this house—I have sworn it!” He was not easily roused, and I felt both surprise and alar to see him so now, and for so inadequate a cause. I had almost fancied he had forgotten the matter, as we, by tacit consent, never alluded to it. “Do not you allow yourself to be alarmed, Sarah, that is all I care about,” he went on, pacing the floor. “I have been half mad with anxiety on your account, for fear those idiotic servants should manage to startle you to death some dark evening-cowards, every one of them; but I mean to have someone to stay here and sit up—-” He paused suddenly, and listened, then stepped noiselessly to the door, and opening it, listened again intently. “William,” I whispered. He took no heed of me; but rapidly unlocking a cabinet drawer, he drew out a thirty-shooter, loaded and capped, and with his finger on the trigger stole softly to the door and into the hall, whither I followed him. Everything was silent, and the hall and stairs lamps were burning clear and high. I could hear the throbbing of my own heart as I stood there watching. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Suddenly we both heard heavy rapid footsteps, seemingly overhead; and then confused noises, as of struggling, and quarrelling, and sobbing, mingled in a swelling clamour which sounded now near, deafeningly near, and then far, far away; now overhead, now beside us, now beneath, undistinguishable, indescribable, and unearthly. Then the rushing footsteps came nearer and nearer. And, clenching his teeth, while his face grew rigid and white in desperate resolve, William sprang up the staircase with a bound like a tiger. It has all passed in less than half the time I have taken to relate it, and while I yet stood breathless and with straining eyes, William had nearly reached the last step when I saw him stagger backwards, the thirty-shooter raised in his hand. There was a struggle, a rushing, swooping sound, two shots fired in rapid succession, a floating cloud of white smoke, through which I saw the streaming yellow hair and steel-blue eyes flash downward, and then a shriek rang out—the dreadful cry of a man in mortal terror—a crashing fall, beneath which the house trembled to its foundations, and I saw my husband’s body stretched before the conservatory door, whither he had toppled backwards—whether dead or dying I knew not. I remember dimly hearing my own voice in agonized screams, and the terror-stricken servants hurrying from the kitchens below. I remember the kind of face of my new nurse as she bravely rushed down and dispatched someone for the doctor, and made others help her to carry the senseless figure, with blood slowly dripping from the parted lips and staining the snowy linen shirt-front in great gouts and splashes, up to the chamber, where they laid him on his bed, and I, a wretched frenzied woman, knelt beside him with the sole, ceaseless prayer that brain or lips could form—“God help me!” #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
I remember the physician’s arrival, and the grave face and low clear voice of Dr. Winchester, as he made his enquiries; and then another physician summoned, and the low frightened voices, and peering frightened faces, and the lighted candles guttering away in currents of air form opening and shutting doors, and the long hours of night, and the cold grey dawning, the heart-rendering suspense, and speechless, tearless, wordless agony, and the sun rose, gloriously cloudless, smiling in radiance, as if there was not the shadow of death over the weary World beneath his rays, and I hear the verdict—“there was scarcely a hope.” However, God was merciful to me and to him, and my darling did not die. With a fevered brain and a shattered limb he lay there for weeks—lay there with the dark portals half opened to receive him; lay there, when I could no longer watch beside him, but lay prostrate and suffering in another apartment, tended by kind relatives and friends; but at length, when the mellow sunshine, and the crisp clear air of the soft shadowy October days stole into the sick room. William was able to be dressed and sit up for an hour or two amongst the pillows of his easy-chair by the window. And there he was, longing to be gone away from London. “Sarah, darling, weak or strong I must go,” he said in his trembling uncertain voice, and with a restless longing in his faded eyes, “I shall never get better in this house.” And so a few days afterwards, accompanied by the doctor and two nurses, we went down in a pleasant swift railroad journey to our dear, beautiful, peaceful home in New Haven. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
William never spoke of that night of horror but once, when Dr. Winchester told of the story connected with the original 18-room farmhouse we purchased, which morphed into a labyrinth of endless room, twisting and winding tunnels, and catacombs. Thirty years before we bought the farmhouse, the man who was both proprietor and tenant of the estate died, leaving his two daughters all he possessed. He had been a bad man, led a bad wild life, and died in a fit brough on by drunkenness; and these two daughters, grown to womanhood, inherited with his ill-gotten fold his evil nature. They were only half-sisters, and were believed to have been illegitimate also. The elder, a tall, masculine, strongly built woman, with masses of coarse fair hair, and bright, glitter blue eyes; and the younger, a plump, dark-haired rather pretty girl, but as treacherous, vain, and bold, as her elder sister was fierce, passionate, and cruel. They lived in this house, with only their servants, for several years after their father’s death, a life of quarrelling and bickering, jealousy, witchcraft, and heart-burnings, on various accounts. The elder strobe to tyrannize over the younger, who repaid it by deceit and crafty selfishness and black magic. At length a lover came, who the elder sister favoured; whom she loved as fiercely and rashly as such wild untamed natures do; and by fiercely and rashly as such wild untamed natures do; and by falsehood and deep-laid treachery the younger sister cast a love spell on the man and won his fickle fancy from the great, harsh-featured, haughty, passionate elder one. The elder woman soon perceived it, and there were dreadful scenes between the two sisters, when the younger taunted the elder, and the elder cursed the younger. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
However, as fate would have it, one night and at length—there had been a fiercer encounter of words than usual, and the dark-haired girl maddened her sister by insults, and the sudden information that she intended leaving the house in the morning, to stay with a relative until her marriage, which was to take place in one week from that time—the wronged woman, demon-possessed from that moment, waited in her dressing-room, until her sister entered, and then she sprang on her and screaming and struggling, they both wrested until they reached the staircase, where the younger sister, escaping for an instant, rushed wildly down, followed by her murderess, who overpowered her in spite of her frantic struggles, and with her strong, cruel, bony hands deliberately strangled her, until she lay a disfigured palpitating corpse at her feet. She had several scars that seemed as if they had been long there, and they were done by witchcraft. The officers of justice arrested the murderess a few hours afterwards. The jailers put irons on her legs (having received such a command). [It was the curious theory that chaining the prisoner would prevent her specter from afflicting anyone.] The weight of them was about eight pounds. These irons and her other afflictions soon brought her into convulsion fits so they thought she would die that night. She died by poison self-administered on the second day of her imprisonment. What is now known as the Winchester Mansion had been shut up and silent for many a year afterwards, and when, at length, and when, at length, an enterprising landlord put it in habitable order, and found tenants for it again, he only found them to lose them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Year after year passes away, its evil fame darkening with its massive masonry, for none could be found to sanctify with the sacred name and pleasures of home that dwelling blighted by an abiding curse. “I never told you, Sarah,” William said, “although I told my cousin Dr. Winchester, that from the first evening I led a haunted life in that beautiful house, and the more I struggled to disbelieve the evidence of my senses, and to keep the knowledge from you, the more unbearable it became, until I felt myself going mad. I knew I was haunted, but will that last night I had never witnessed what I dreaded day and night to see. And then, Sarah, when I fired, and I saw the devilish murderess face, with its demon eyes blazing on me, and the tall unearthly figure hurrying down to meet me, dragging the other struggling, writhing figure, with her long sinewy fingers seemingly pressed around the convulsed face, then I knew it was all over with me. If there had been a flaming furnace beside me I think I should have leaped into it to escape that awful sight.” That was over a century ago. Sarah eventually returned to the Winchester all along and made several changes to it over 38 years. It is now a 4 story, 160-room mansion, with over 25,500 square feet, sitting on four acres. It was once up to 600 rooms, likely 95,625 square with as many as 737 acres. The strange thing about witchcraft and legends is many of them are based in truth, and sometimes there are unexplainable continuity errors. Take for example An hysterical fit, from J.M. Charcot, Lectures on the Disease of the Nervous System (London, 1877). Look at the extruded tongue, reported during the seventeenth century in witchcraft cases at Gordon, Boston, Salem, and elsewhere. Notice also the legs crossed in spasm; at one time Mary Warren’s legs could not be uncrossed without breaking them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
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In a Nightmare of Supernatural Terror–Afraid to Move Hand or Foot!
The warning came too late to change that course of event. There has been time when many admitted some doubt of the validity of spectral evidence. This story I will tell to you now, as I have promised to do so, and yet I can hardly make you believe in the reluctance with which I even allow my thoughts go back to the times which I spent in my house—my first town residence after I was married. I loved so much my lovely mansion, I suppose. The wide emerald green lawns and quiet, glassy ponds and streams, bordered by luscious, blooming rhododendrons; of silent, mossy avenues, glorious with the flickering light that stole through pale green beech leaves; of rose gardens with grassy paths, jewel-sprinkled with shell-like petals of white, crimson, pink, and cream-like hues; of old-fashioned rooms with narrow, mullioned windows embowered in scarlet japonica and fragrant, starry jessamine. I supposed I possessed a deep love of them all. This was the first house we were sown in the Santa Clara, California. It was certainly a very fine house, both as o exterior and interior appearances. Large, massively built, agreeably darkened in woodwork and masonry by Time’s shading brush, in excellent repair, and the locality all that could be desire. Wide, lofty apartments, staircases, and landings; a handsome dining-room panelled in velvety dark-green “flock” and gold; a handsome drawing-room panelled in pale cream-colour and gold; airy bed-chambers and dressing-rooms—one, in particular, attached to what seemed the principal bedroom, with a vast mirror occupying the whole side of the apartment which was opposite to the door leading into the bed-chamber. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
“What a nice dressing-room! This house is perfect and expansion will be a joy.” I exclaimed, having a weakness, I confess, for large, handsome mirrors in the rooms I inhabit—William says impertinent things about my “wishing to see as much of myself as I can.” I know I am not all, in fact, rather what he should call petite, if he wished to be polite—but that is not my reason for liking a large mirror. As I spoke the words I looked about mechanically for the house—agent’s clerk who had been sent with us—a nervous-looking little man, with a pasty complexion, and orange-colored hair meekly plastered down at each side of his face. He had been untiringly trotting up and down stairs, unlocking doors, answering questions, and keeping up a harmless soliloquy of chatter about the beauties and excellencies of the “mansiond,” as he called it, ever since he entered its doors, but now he was nowhere to be seen. “What door have you open?” I said, speaking aloud to him, for suddenly a cold blast of air swept up the wide staircase and into the dressing-room door, but not entering. His face looked wither than before, and in his accents there was an almost terrified earnestness that puzzled me. The shadows of the afternoon seemed to deepen. The aspect of the suites of rooms and long silent corridors, with their doors ajar, as if unseen inhabitants were stealthily crouching behind them, drearily impressed me with a sense of dull desolation; and it was with a sudden sensation of childish fear and loneliness that I rushed after my husband, and took his arm as he hastily descended the stairs. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
“A spacious, handsome staircase, William” I remarked. “Yes; and a spacious, handsome price, you may be sure,” William responded. However, in this particular, he was exceedingly, and I agreeably, astonished. To our surprise, the house was rather affordable. William figured there must be a screw loose somewhere. He mentioned his opinion to the clerk in a more business-like expression, to the effect that the price seemed low, and that he trusted there was no—peculiar—eh? “Drains, gas, water, all right, sir—right as—a—a trivet, sir. However, the 18-room farmhouse is incomplete,” sad the clerk, looking over his shoulder oddly, as he spoke. “But chimneys, ventilators, roof, tiles—everything in the perfect repair and order, sir!” However, wonderful or not, the house seemed all that we could desire; the lowness of the price made it a decided bargain. I planned to expand the house, and make it even more lofty, and handsome; and in three weeks, huge furniture vanes, and a clever upholstered, had carpeted, curtained, and furnished our town mansion from garret to basement, and William and I, our two babies, a nurse, two maids, a cook, and a butler, were installed in what would become the Winchester Mansion. Dear William had been very generous—nay, almost extravagant—in his provisions for the comfort and pleasure of his wife and children; and my dressing-room and their nursery were fitted up so luxuriously and tastefully, that my feeling at the first inspection of them was that of self-gratulation on being such a fortunate woman, in having such a home, such babies, and such a husband. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
I arrayed myself for dinner that evening quite gleefully; standing before my splendid mirror amid the bule drapery, cushions, and couches of my charming dressing-room. I put on William’s favourite dress—a bronze-brown lustrous silk, with sparkling gold ornaments: he invariably kissed me when he saw it on, stroked my brown curls and face, and called me “Mrs. Winchester”—and was still standing before the glass smiling at myself, like the happy, foolish little woman I was, when I perceived to my discomfiture that William was standing in the doorway watching my doings, and grinning very visibly under his moustache. “Do not mind me, my dear, I beg! do not me the least. However, when you have done admiring Mrs. Winchester, perhaps you will be kind enough to let me know”—then, suddenly changing his tone, he exclaimed, “Have you the window open, Sarah, this chilly evening?” “No William,” I replied, glancing at it to make sure of the fact. “Change in the weather, then,” my husband said. “Come, Sarah, there is no use in making yourself any prettier!” He had just uttered the last words when I saw him spring aside suddenly, and look around. “What is the matter?” I said—“William, dear, what is the matter?” For his face had grown quite white, and with his back against the wall, he was staring about him wildly. “I do not know—Sarah—something”—he explained in a low tone; then recovering himself, with a laugh, he cried—“I struck myself against the door, I suppose! I declare one would think I was composed of old china, or wax, or sugar candy, I hurt and stunned me so! Come, dearest.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
He had not struck himself, for I had been watching him going out on the lobby, and I felt an uneasy conviction that he knew he had not done so, and only spoke as he did in order to deceive or satisfy me. why? Why did I think so? As I live I cannot tell why I thought so then—I know now. We had the “babies”—as William always called them—in the dessert, after the time-honoured fashion of making olives as well as olive branches of them; and then, when the lite ones had gone to bed, we sat side by side in he summer twilight, I lazily fanning myself, William bending over me the lover-husband he was. Then came the lamps, and I played for him, and we sang duet and spent as happy an evening in our new home as a married pair could wish to spend. I cannot tell why I felt so disinclined to go upstairs that night, tired as I was, too—for we had had a long journey up from the country. However as eleven struck, I routed William out of the easy chair where he had been indulging in a preliminary doze, and, ringing for my maid went up to my dressing-room. I like gas in my dressing-room, though not in my bedroom, and the globes at either side the great mirror were a blaze of light. As I entered I caught the reflection of a woman’s figure in the depths of the glass, no my maid’s. The glimpse I had was of a tall woman, strongly built, and broad-shouldered, a quantity of light hair hanging in a disordered manner on her neck, and the profile of a white, hard, masculine face, with the keen glittering eye turned watchfully towards the door. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
This may seem an elaborately detailed description for the momentary glance I obtained, but it is well known with what lightning rapidity the organs of vision will, in moments of terror and amazement, convey impressions to the startled brain, impression accurate and indelible. I had taken but one step on entering, the next step the figure had vanished, and the mirror reflected by my own terrified face, and the homely, cheerful one of my maid Agnus, as she stooped over the dressing-table opening a jewel case. I dropped down on the nearest chair, and, in answer to the girl’s alarmed questions, replied that I did not feel very well. I was sick and shuddering from head to foot. Suddenly it flashed across me that it was from a similar cause I had seen my husband’s face grow ghastly, and that strange, terrified look come into his eyes,–he, who had been a soldier and unflinchingly had fought amidst the dead and dying on bloody Indian battlefields, almost boy as he was then! What was it? What had he seen? Nonsense! was I going to believe I had seen a ghost? Nonsense, a thousand times over! I heard my husband’s cheery voice as he ascended the stairs, and, quite angry with myself for giving way to such folly, I threw on my dressing gown, and, snatching up the brush from Agnus, I pulled my hair down and brushed it quite savagely, until my head ached well—for punishment. If the bright morning light disperses sweet illusions formed overnight, as people say it does, it disperses gloomy ones as well. With the warmth and brightness of the unclouded summer’s sun streaming in through softly coloured blinds, brining out the velvety green of soft new carpets and lounges, the rainbow tints of glittering chandeliers, vases, and ornaments, the gilding on bright fresh wallpaper and the spotless folds of snowy window drapery, it was impossible for an instant to connect anything dark or dismal with the Winchester House. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Why, my dressing-room even where I had been so silly last evening, was like a woodland bower, with its deep purple-blue hangings and rose painted china flower-vases filled with bouquets from our country home. Clustering fragrant honeysuckle half-opened moss roses, drooping emerald-green fern, and masses of delicious jessamine dropping its over-blown blossoms on the white toilet cover, lace-flounced and tied with blue ribbons, as Agnus delighted to have it. “I think this such a charming room and such a charming house altogether, William!” I said; “and you have been such a dear, thoughtful old darling!” For I had perceived that the dear fellow had had his own half-length portrait hung over my writing-table. Quite a pleasant surprise for me, for I thought he intended it to be hung in the dining-room, and I delighted in having the dear pleasant brown eyes looking for a me when I was busy writing or sewing. “I am so glad you like everything, Sarah,” said he. “Why, William, do you not?” However, William had walked off whistling, and presently I heard uproarious baby-laughter, and baby-chatter, and thumping, trotting of small fat feet, as William put the tiny nursery into dire confusion by his morning game of romps with his son and heir, and red-cheeked baby-daughter. And it did seem as if I must have been dreaming or delirious, when this day and many a succeeding one passed away swiftly and pleasantly, without the slightest recurring event to remind me of my strange alarm on the night of our arrival. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
We had been in the Winchester House about a fortnight, when one morning I received a visit from Mrs. Ellen Kenna. A very pretty, lady-like person she was, and as we had some common acquaintances we chattered away very freely and pleasantly for half-an-hour or so. As she rose to go she asked suddenly if we like the house. I replied in the affirmative rather warmly. She was opposite the light, and I saw an involuntary elevation of her eye-brows and compression of her lips that puzzled me. I fancied it was because I had spoken so enthusiastically. Yet her own manner was anything but languidly fashionable, being very cordial and decided. “Yes; it is a very nice house, roomy and well-built,” she said, after a moment’s pause; “I am so glad you like it—I live down the road in Oakland.” We took the carriage to have dinner at Bertha Hass’s mansion that for the following evening, and when we returned about three days later, in spite of a yawning remonstrate from William, I tipped off softly to have a peep at my darlings, before I went to bed. The nursey was a large, pleasant room at the end of the long corridor leading from our own apartments, and, gently turning the handle and gathering my rustling silk dress around me, I opened the door and went in. There was a night-lamp burning clearly, shining softly on the tiny cribs with the sweet flushed infant faces, the long golden-brown lashes lying in dimpled apple-bloom cheeks, the waxen hands and little rounded arms thrown above the tossed golden curls, and the Heavenly calm of the little sleeping forms and pure, peaceful breathing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
I wondered would any mother, no matter how cold and careless, have neglected doing what I did, as I bent over my treasures, and prayed God that His angels might keep watch over each cherub head on its little, soft, white pillow? I had looed at and kissed them, and turned to go, when I glanced toward the nurse’s bed. “Are you not well, Linda? What is the matter?” I said in an anxious whisper. She was a very respectable and trustworthy servant, as well as being, a kind, gentle creature with the little ones, and consequently highly valued by me, but her health was never very good, and she was subject to severe attacks of nervous headache and sleeplessness. She was sitting up in bed, her hands grasping the bedclothes, her face and lips ashy white, and her as big as saucers and staring wildly, as if they would start from their sockets. “Linda! Good Heavens! what is the matter?” I gasped. “Ma’am! Oh, ma’am—oh, mistress, I am dying!” We summoned a doctor and administered restoratives, and chafed the half-senseless girl’s damp, cold hands. I could imagine no cause for her sudden illness, and the others servants were very voluble in exclamations and laments. However, when the physician—a pale, kindly, grave-looking man arrived—after a moment’s examination, he demanded if she had been frightened? I replied in the negative, and was proceeding to describe to him the state in which I had found her, when I heard the housemaid and Agnus whispering energetically together. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The doctor was paying tribute to the dramatic affliction of the girl, when he said, “This strikes hard upon me, that you are at this very present charged with unfamiliar spirits. This is your bodily person they speak to. They say now they see these unfamiliar sprits some to your bodily person. Now what do you say to that?” Agnus said that she saw a specter leaving Linda’s body, as she was going into hideous convulsions. The fit was far too violent to be acting. This was terribly “real” and convincing. “What is it? Speak out at once my god girl!” said the doctor sternly to the housemaid; “you know something of this.” Both servants looked apprehensively at me and at William. “Speak up at once, Bethany; the girl’s life may depend on it! Tell the truth, my girl, and do not be afraid,” said her master kindly, but firmly. “I do not know nothing, sir—indeed, no ma’am, said Angus confusedly; “but—I think, ma’am—she seen the ghost, sir!” “That what!” cried William angrily. “She have, sir!” persisted Agnus eagerly, now that her confession was made. “We are all afraid, sir; but she has been worser nor the rest of us. And she says to me only this morning, ‘Agnus,’ she says, ‘if I see it, I will die!’” “What ghost, you fool?” cried William more angrily. “A pretty set you are!—great, grown men and women, afraid of some bogie story you have heard when you were gossiping with the servants on the balcony, I suppose!” “No, indeed, sir,” said Agnus; “I was not gossippin’, sir; but the parlour-maid over the way, sir Mrs. Kenna’s parlour-maid, ma’am—she told me that there was the Devil–” #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
“I thought so!” interrupted William. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves not to have an ounce of brains among you.” “But, sir! Agnus burst out again, unheeding her master’s rather uncomplimentary phrenological verdict, “we did not mind, sir, though we was a bit frightened, until we see it, sir! The butler see it, and he ran, and cook ran.” “And you ran after them?” said William, with an indignant laugh. “I did, sir, for I saw it too—a big woman with fair hair all over her shoulders,” said Agnus, in an awestruck whisper to Harriet, who nodded her head. The doctor looked up, gravely and without a smile. The servants clustered together near the door, and muttered in undertones. William looked at me with a forced smile, which died away in an instant: “You are not so foolish as to credit any of this nonsense, Sarah?” he said. The servants all turned eagerly to hear their mistress’s opinion. I am afraid it was written in my pallid face. Was it true? Was it what I had seen? Could there be any reality in this, that here, in our pleasant, happy home, beneath the roof with out helpless little one, was a dreadful, unblessed presence—a shadowy horror; that that thing with the watchful, cruel eyes had not been a mere vision of imagination, the mere offspring of an active brain, and the unstrung nerves of an overtired frame? Is there conclusive proof that the person represented had been trafficking with the Devil? “Oh! they imagined something from the stories they heard, I dare say,” I faltered. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
The butler shook his head solemnly: “I could swear to it, ma’am.” “And so could I ma’am!” chorused the cook and housemaid. “Hush!” said the doctor, as the nurse, roused, at length, from her stupor, lay quietly, with closed eyes, from which the tears streamed down her face. “Some one must sit up with her now,” said the doctor, looking around. “I will, sir, if my mistress allows me, said Bethany. Certainly, Bethany,” she said at once. He communicated his instructions to her and took his leave, promising to call in the morning. “Did you ever hear anything like this folly, doctor,” said William, as he shook hands with him at the head of the stairs. “Oh! yes, sir, I often hear such stories,” said the doctor quietly, as he bade us both goodnight.” William! what has frightened the girl? What has she seen?” I whispered, clasping my husband’s arm. “Sarah, go to bed, and do not be a goose,” was William’s reply. “William—I saw that thing—that woman, in my dressing-room,” I said, trembling, “and oh! think if the children were to see I and be frightened like poor Mary!” “Well, Sarah,” said my husband sharply, “if you are going to listen to ignorant servants’ superstitions and run out of your house, just as we are comfortably settled in it, on account of a foolish sickly woman fainting from hearing a ghost story—I say—it is a pity you ever came into it.” He spoke very decidedly and sternly, and yet I felt in my inmost heart that the uttered what he wished me to believe, not what he believed himself. I said no more, but went to my bedroom—not into the dreaded dressing-room—and lay awake listening and fevered with nervous anxiety until the next morning dawned. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
The nurse was better and able to speak the next day, though extremely weak and unnerved yet. The doctor forbade much questioning, and all that could be got from her at intervals was that something had come up the staircase and ran through the corridor, that she heard struggling and scuffling outside, and then the nursey door opened and she saw a woman’s face peering in, the eyes gleaming wickedly at her, and it had the yellow hair that “belong to the ghost.” “The woman has had a bad fit of nightmare—that is all, Sarah,” said William, rattling his paper unconcernedly, when I repeated to him the story I had just heard from poor Linda’s trembling lips. It might be so; but why were they all agreed as to what they had seen? Why did they all speak of the tangled fair hair, and the wicked gleaming eyes? Was our house haunted? Was this the mysterious cause of the exceedingly moderate price of the house and land and the house-agent’s profuse civility? The nurse did not recover strength, and being worse than useless in her present weak, hysterical condition, I sent her down to her country home for change of air, and hired another temporarily in her place. The newcomer was a stout, small, cheerful woman of about forty. I liked her face the moment I saw her; for, besides its smiling, honest expression, there was a good deal of decided character in the large firm features. “You appear to be a sensible person,” I said, when giving her her first instructions in the nursey, “and I think I can rely on you. You know my nurse is leaving because of illness, and that illness was caused by her being frightened by—a ghost-story.” I paused; but the woman remained unmoved, listening to me in respectful silence. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
“The servants downstairs have got some nonsense of the kind into their head,” I went on; “they will try to frighten you, too, and tell you they have seen—-” I could not go on. For my life I could not calmly giver her the description of that shadowy image of fear. “They cannot frighten me, ma’am, said my new nurse quietly. “I am not afraid of spirits.” I thought she spoke in jest, and smiled. “I am not indeed, ma’am,” she repeated. “I have lived where there were such things seen but they never harmed me.” “You do not mean to say you believe such nonsense?” said I, hypocritically trying to speak carelessly. “Oh yes, ma’am, I do! I could not disbelieve it,” said the nurse, opening her eyes with earnestness, “I know the story of this house, ma’am.” What story” I cried. The woman coloured and looked confused. “I beg your pardon, ma’am—I mean what people say is seen here.” “What do they say? Do not frighten me,” I said, and my voice quivered in spite of me; “I have heard nothing but what the servant said.” The nurse looked deeply concerned. “I am very stupid, ma’am; I beg your pardon for repeating such stores to you—I daresay it is only idle people’s gossip.” She went about her duties, and I went—not into my dressing-room—but down into the drawing-room, where I say by the window looking out until my husband returned. Two or three weeks more passed away. I lay down on my pet chintz-covered couch, near the window, to look at the sky and the starts. Dead silence—and the “ting, ting” of the French clock on the mantelpiece marked the half-hour after eight. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Dear me, how dark it was growing! this brooding storm I supposed, which had been making me feel so languid and restless. I wish it would come down and cool the air—not tonight, though. Dear me, how lonely it is. I wish William were home. Those women are talking very loudly—I wonder nurse would—here I got drowsy, and my eyes ached looking for the stars that had not come. In a few minutes I roused again, my maternal anxiety changing into indignation as I heard the women’s voices growing louder and shriller, and some doors opened and shut violently. What can nurse be thinking of? They will wake the children most certainly, and William was so long in falling asleep—quite fevers my own boy! I shall really reprover her very plainly. I never needed to do so before. What could she be thinking of? Dead silence again. Well, this was lonely; I was inclined to ring for lights, and turn on all the burners in the chandeliers by way of company. Then I remembered there were some wax matches in one of the drawers of a writing-tray just at hand, and thought I would light the gas myself instead of brining the servants down—yes—but I wanted company. It was so dark and dreary, and—and—I was afraid. Afraid to stir—afraid to look at the door! a numbing, chilling tide of icy fear ebbing through every vein—afraid to draw a breath—afraid to move hand or foot, in a nightmare of supernatural terror. At last, by a violent effort, I sprang at the bell-handle, and pulled it frantically, and as soon as I had done so, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, I felt thoroughly ashamed of my childish cowardice, although I could not have helped it, and it had overcome me as suddenly as unexpectedly. How William would have laughed at me! #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
There were those servants talking again, tramping about and banging the doors as before. Really, this was unbearable; cook must be in one of her fits of temper, and certainly had forgotten herself strangely. And, as the quarrelsome tones grew louder and louder—evidently in bitter recrimination, although I could not catch a word—my own anger rose proportionately, and, forgetting loneliness and darkness in my indignant anxiety lest my children should be waked by this most unseemly behaviour of the servants, I ran hastily out of the room and up the wide staircase. The dime light from the clouded evening sky, still further subdued by the gold and purple-stained glass of the conservatory door, streamed faintly down the steps from the first landing, and by it, just as I had ascended half way, I discovered the short, thick-sett figure of the nurse rushing down—of course, in answer to my ring, I supposed. Involuntarily I stepped aside to avoid coming in violent contact with her as she feld past. No, it was not the nurse; and the woman following her in headlong haste, sweeping by me so that the current of air from their floating dresses struck icily cold on my brow where the clammy dew of perspiration had started in great drops, was—was—-Merciful Heavens! What was that tall figure, with the coarse, disordered, yellow hair, the white face, and glittering, steel-blue eyes, that glinted fiendishly on me for one dreadful instant, and then vanished? Vanished as the pursed and pursuing figures had disappeared in the shadows of the wide, lofty hall, without sound of voice or footstep? #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
If you had a chance to explore areas never before seen within Sarah’s house, would you take it?
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A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
And Some Would Sell their Souls to Marry a Millionaire!
Most of us are more concerned with esteem, love, or security. Perhaps this is because incentives and rewards in our society are slanted to encourage conformity, uniformity, and security in schools, jobs, and relationships. However, it is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed. Does money bring happiness? No, most of us would say. Ah, but would a little more money make us a little happier? Many of us smirk and nod. There is, we believe, some connection between fiscal fitness and feeling fantastic. Most of us tell Gallup that, yes, we would like to be rich. Three in four entering American collegians now consider it “very important” or “essential” that they become “very well off financially.” Money matters. It is the classic American dream: life, liberty, and the purchase of happiness. “Of course money buys happiness,” writes Andrew Tobias. Would not anyone be happier with the indulgences promised by the magazine sweepstakes: a forty-foot yacht, deluxe motor home, private housekeeper? Anyone who watched Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous knows as much. “Whoever said many can’t buy happiness isn’t spending it right,” proclaimed a Lexus ad. No wonder many people hunger to know the secrets of “the millionaire mind” and some would sell their souls to marry a millionaire. Well, are rich people happier? Researchers have found that in poor countries, such as Bangladesh, being relatively well off does make for greater well-being. We need food, rest, shelter, social contact. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
However, a curious fact of life is that in countries where nearly everyone can afford life’s necessities, increasing affluence matters little beyond the short run. The correlation between income and happiness is “surprisingly weak,” observed the University of Michigan researcher Ronald Inglehart in one sixteen-nation study of 170,000 people. Once people are comfortable, more money provides diminishing returns. (Then why do they just not give it away to the poor or pay their employees better?) The second piece of pie, or the second $100,000, never tastes as good as the first, but with money comes status and power, so it is an inelastic good. Yet, even lottery winners, after adapting to their new wealth, and the Forbes’s 100 wealthiest Americas (when surveyed by the University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener) have expressed only slightly greater happiness than the average American. Making it big brings temporary joy. However, in the long run wealth is like health: its utter absence can breed misery, but having it does not guarantee happiness. Happiness seems less a matter of getting what we want than of wanting what we have. Has our happiness, however, floated upward with the rising economic tide? Are we happier today than in 1940, when two out of five homes lacked a shower or tub? When heat often meant feeding wood or coal into a furnace? When 35 percent of homes had no toilet? Or consider that in 1957, when the economist John Galbraith was about to describe the United States of America as “the affluent society.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Compared to 1957, we are now “the doubly affluent society”—with double what money buys. We now have twice as many cares per person. We eat out two and a half times as often. In the late 1950s, few Americans had dishwashers, clothes dryers, or air conditioning; today, most do. So, believing that a little more money would make us a little happier and that it is very important to be very well off are we indeed now—after nearly seven decades of fluctuating affluence–happier? Are we happier now—with espresso, caller ID, suitcases on wheels, and vaccines—than before? We are not. Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are “very happy” has declined from 35 to 32 percent. Meanwhile, the divorce and teen suicide rates have doubled, the violent-crime rate have tripled (even after the recent decline), there is an immigration crisis, and more people than ever (especially teens and young adults) are depressed. This soaring wealth and shrinking spirit forms “the American paradox.” More than ever, Americans have big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, apartments and no money for rent, cars and no gas money or insurance, unsecured rights and diminished civility, news and not much truth to it. We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose. We cherish our freedoms but long for connection. In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger. The radical individualism and materialism that marked the late twentieth-century America—what Garrison Keillor called our “elephantine vanity and greed,” or what Jesse O’Neill calls our “affluenza”—has afflicted other countries somewhat less. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Yet the paradox is not exclusively American. In Britain, for example, sharp increases in the percent of households with cars, central heating, and telephones have not been accompanied by increased happiness. These facts of life explode a bombshell underneath our society’s materialism: economic growth has provided no long-term boost to human morale. Moreover, individuals who strive most for wealth tend to experience less of a sense of well-being—a finding that “comes through very strongly in every culture I’ve looked at,” reports the University of Rochester psychologist Richard Ryan. His collaborator, Tim Kasser, concludes from their studies that those who instead strive for “intimacy, personal growth, and contribution to the community” experience a higher quality of life. Ryan and Kasser’s research echoes an earlier finding by H. W. Perkins. Among eight hundred college alumni surveyed, those with “Yuppie values”—those who preferred a high income and occupational success and prestige to having very close friends and a close marriage—were twice as likely and their former classmates to describe themselves as “fairly” or “very” unhappy. We know it, sort of. The Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow report that 89 percent of people say “our society is much too materialistic.” Other people are too materialist, that is. For 84 percent also wished they had more money, and 78 percent said it was “very or fairly important” to have “a beautiful home, a new care and other nice things.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Two principles drive this psychology of consumption. The first is our human capacity for adaptation. Once we become adapted to a new level of affluence, it takes a higher high to rejoice the joy. I can recall the thrill of watching my family’s first Planar TVF Complete UHD4K 219 LED video wall solution. Now, if I misplace the remote control, I feel deprived. Having adapted upward, I perceive as negative what I once experienced as beneficial. Adaptation helps explain why, after a period of adaptation, lottery winners and paralyzed persons report roughly similar levels of happiness. It also explains why material wants can be insatiable—why many a child “needs” just one more feature on the BMW M3, they are satisfied with the Ultimate Driving, but also want it to come with the competition package which brings the grand total of the car up to $73,795 up from $70,895. Or why Imelda Marcos, surrounded by poverty while living in splendor as wife of the Philippines’ president, bought 1,060 pairs of shoes. When the victor belongs to the spoils and the possessor is possessed by possessions, adaptation level has run amok. (The phenomenon is, however, bidirectional: if forced to simplify our lives, we would eventually adapt and recover our normal mix of emotions. If another energy crisis curbs our “need” for gas-slurping sport utility vehicles, we would, after temporary feelings of deprivation, again adapt to more efficient cars.) The second principle is our penchant for social comparison. We are always comparing ourselves with others. And whether we feel good or bad depends on who those others are. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Only when others are smart or agile are we are slow-witted or clumsy. When one baseball player signs for $10 million a year, his $7-million-a-year teammate may now feel dissatisfied. Further feeding this “luxury fever” is our tendency to compare upward: as we climb the ladder of success or affluence we mostly compare ourselves with those who are at or above our current level. Upward comparison is not inevitable. Jus as comparing ourselves with those who are better off creates envy and consumerism, so comparing ourselves with those less well off boosts our contentment. (However, the danger with that is when something goes wrong, it is a real let down and one feels like their bad luck is a result of being prideful, boastful, and not humble.) In one study, even just imagining and then writing about various personal tragedies, such as being burned and disfigured, led the participants to express greater satisfaction with their own lives. “I cried because I had no shoes,” states a teen in Oakland, California; until I met a man who had no feet.” Moreover, one has to wonder, What is the point of luxury fever? “Why,” wondered the prophet Isaiah, “do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?” What is the point of accumulating stacks of basketball shoes you will never wear, closets full of seldom-worn Gucci dresses, garages with Ultimate Diving Machines—all purchased in a vain quest for an elusive joy? And what is the point of leaving significant inherited wealth to one’s heirs, as if it could buy them happiness, when that wealth could do so much in a hurting World? (However, what is the point of feeding the World and leaving your own in a state of lack and limitations when they are your legacy?) #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
As social consciousness increases, more people are beginning to veer off the well-traveled road of materialism and individualism. A new American dream is taking shape, one that encourages initiative and restrains exploitation, thus building a more compassionate market economy that shrinks the underclass; welcomes children into families with parents who love them, and into an environment that nurtures families: protects both basic liberties and communal well-being, enabling diverse people to advance their common good in healthy surroundings; encourages close relationships within extended families and with supportive neighbours and caring friends—people who celebrate when you are born, care about you as you live, and miss you when you are gone; develops children’s capacities for empathy, self-discipline, and honesty; provides media that offers social scripts of kindness, civility, attachment, and faithful love; regards relationships as covenants and sexuality not as mere recreation but as life uniting and love renewing; takes care of the soul by developing a deeper spiritual awareness of a reality greater than self and of life’s resulting meaning, purpose, and hope. Harbingers of this renewal are already emerging, like crocuses blooming at winter’s end. People are beginning to understand the costs as well as the benefits of the unbridled pursuit of the classic American dream—individually achieved wealth. In increasing numbers, neigbourhoods are organizing, foundations are taking initiatives, youth are volunteering, scholars are discerning, faith-based institutions are tackling local problems, and civic-renewal organizations are emerging. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Government and corporate decision-makers are becoming more agreeable to family-supportive tax and benefit policies. The nonpartisan National Marriage Project aims to strengthen that state of our unions. And a new “positive psychology” movement aims to advance human happiness, strengthen character, and promote civic health. These various initiatives reflect a renewed appreciation for the importance of our human bonds. A new communitarian movement offers a “third way”—an alternative to the individualistic civil libertarianism of the left and the economic libertarianism of the right. It implores us, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “to choose between chaos and community,” to balance our needs for independence and attachment, liberty and civility, me-thinking and we-thinking. Fulfilling the new American dream need not return us to the impoverished past or destroy the incentives of a market economy. However, it will require our seasoning prosperity with purpose, capital with compassion, and enterprise with equity. Is it conceivable that there could occur such a transformation in consciousness—from materialism to postmaterialism and from radical individualism to more communal thinking? It has happened before (recall the civil rights, environmental, and women’s movements). And it could happen again. Hidden inside our advance to a new production system is a potential for social change so breathtaking in scope that few among us have been willing to face its meaning. To begin with, the shift from Second Wave manufacturing to the new, more advanced Third Wave manufacturing reduces, the number of workers who actually have to manipulate physical goods. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
With less workers being needed to manipulate physical goods, this means that even in the manufacturing sector an increasing amount of work is being done that—given the right configuration of telecommunications and other equipment—could be accomplished anywhere, including one’s own living room. Nor is this just a science fiction fantasy. When Western Electric shifted from producing electromechanical switching equipment for the phone company to making electronic switching gear, the work force at its advanced manufacturing facility in northern Illinois was transformed. Before the changeover, production workers outnumbered white-collar and technical workers three to one. Today the ratio is one to one. This means that fully half of the 250,000 workers now handle information instead of things, and much of their work can be done at home. Dom Cuomo, former director of engineering at the Northern Illinois facility put it flatly: “If you include engineers, ten to twenty-five percent of what is done here could be done at homes with existing technology.” All told, in any industry, fully 35 to 50 percent of the entire work force in advanced manufacturing could even now could do most, if not all, their work at home, providing one chose to organize production that way. Third Wave manufacturing, Marx notwithstanding, does not require 100 percent of the work force to be concentrated in the workshop. Nor are such estimates found in electronic industries alone or in giant enterprises. The question now is not “How many can be permitted to work at home?” but rather, “How many have to work in the office or factory?” #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
In many industries, if provided the necessary communications technology, it has been discovered that fully 75 percent of employees would work at home. Clearly, what applies to electronics and pharmaceuticals also applies to other advanced industries. If significant numbers of employees in the manufacturing sector could be shifted to the home even now, then it is safe to say that a considerable slice of what the white-collar sector-where there are no materials to handle—could also make that transition. Indeed, an unmeasured but appreciable amount of work is already being done at home by people at several corporations because of the pandemic, from doctors and state workers, secretaries and even congress, designers and architects by phone visits, video calls, and only occasionally touching base at the office. Others include a burgeoning pool of specialized consultants in many industries; by large numbers of human-service workers like therapists or psychologist; by music teachers and language instructors; by art dealers, investment counselors, insurance agents, lawyers, and academic researchers; and by several other categories of white-collar, technical, and professional people. These are, moreover, among the most rapidly expanding work classification, and when we suddenly make available technologies that can place a low-cost “work station” in any home, providing it with a “smart” typewriter, mobile phone, Internet access, along with a facsimile machine and teleconferencing equipment, the possibilities for home work are radically extended. Given such equipment, who might be the first to make the transition from centralized work to the “electronic cottage”? #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Whole it would be a mistake to underestimate the need for direct face-to-face contact in business, and all the subliminal and nonverbal communication that accompanies that contact, it is also true that certain tasks do not require much outside contact at all—or need it only intermittently. Thus “low-abstraction” office workers for the most part perform tasks—entering data, typing, retrieving, totaling columns of figures, preparing invoices, and the like—that require few, if any, direct face-to-face transactions. They could perhaps be most easily shifted into the electronic cottage. Many of the “ultrahigh-abstraction” workers-researchers, for example, and economists, policy formulators, organizational designers—require both high-density contact with peers and colleagues and times to work along. There are times when even deal-makers need to back off and do their “homework.” Future technology will increase the amount of “homework” significantly. Indeed, many companies are already relaxing their insistence that work be done in the office. When Weyerhaeuser, the great timer-products company, needed a new brochure on employee conduct not long ago, Vice-President R. L. Siegel and three of his staff members met at his home for almost a week until they had hammered out a draft. “We felt we needed to get out [of the office], to avoid the distractions,” says Siegel. “Working at home is consistent with our shift toward flexible hours,” he adds. “The important thing is getting your job done. It is incidental to us where you do it.” Weyerhaeuser is not alone. Even before the pandemic, many other companies were allowing their employees work at home. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Among one of the corporations letting its employees work at home, is United Airlines, whose director of public relations, at the time, allowed his staff people to write at home as much as 20 days a year. Even McDonald’s, whose lower-rung employees are needed to staff the hamburger grills, encourages home work among some top executive. Do you really need an office at all? Two-way communications capability has enhanced sufficiently to encourage a widespread practice of working at home. As information jobs proliferate and communications facilities improve, the number of people who may work at home or at local work centers will also increase. These corporate parks in suburban communities can be used for people from various corporations to meet in a central location and work on their assignments without comminuting to the congested central city. People will be more able to work at home, meeting their boss only periodically to talk over problems, and, of course to attend office parties. This may also allow the way suburban communities were built in the past to revert. When the model was the communities were built around corporations. And given the tools necessary, many of the present duties of the secretary could be done from home as well as in the office. Such a system would increase the labour pool by allowing married secretaries caring for small children at home to continue o work. There may be no overriding reason why a secretary could not just as well, in many instances, take dictation at home and type and text on a home terminal which produces a clean text at the author’s home or office. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Many of the tasks performed by engineers, drafters and other white-collar employees might be done from homes as readily as, or sometimes more readily than, from the office. Many part-time computer programmers already work in their own homes. As the Third Wave sweeps across society, we find more and more companies that can be described, in the words of one researcher, as nothing but “people huddled around a computer.” Put the computer in people’s homes, and they no longer need to huddle. Third Wave white-collar work, like Third Wave manufacturing, will not require 100 percent of the work force to be concentrated in the workshop. One should not underestimate the difficulties entailed in transferring work from its Second Wave locations in factory and office to its Third Wave location in the home. Problems of motivation and management, of corporate and social reorganization will make the shift both prolonged and, perhaps, painful. Nor can all communication be handled vicariously. Some jobs—especially those involving creative deal making, where each decision is nonroutine—require much face-to-face contact. We all need to be within a thousand feet of one another. The beginning of the twentieth century saw the earlier Victorian ideology of separate male and female spheres well on the way to being replaced by a newer Progressive household ideology. This ideology was not one of separateness, but one of shared domesticity. For those in the rising middle-class professions, the family, no just the mother and children, was now seen as the basic domestic unit. In practical terms this meant that husbands, as well as wives and children, were expected o share common time and space. This sharing was also encouraged by physical changes in the middle-class home. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Older Victorian homes had been divided by walls and doors into separate male rooms (the study) and female rooms (drawing and morning rooms). Drawing rooms, for example, were the rooms to which the women withdrew after dinner so men could have their port, cigars, and male conversation. (If the home were an elaborate one, the men might withdraw to smoking room or a billiard room.) Design of the rooms was to reflect their usage. Smoking rooms were to be heavy and masculine, while furniture in the drawing room was to be light, elegant, and “ladylike.” Regardless of its usage, each rom was heated by its own fireplace or stove, which encouraged designing a house with small rooms that could be closed off from unheated areas. Even central heating contributed to the success of the ideology of sharing space and activity. Central heating not only brought a new level of comfort, it helped change family patterns. Central heating and the removal of compartmentalizing walls meant that family members could now purse individual activities in common familial space. Here was an implicit acceptance that within the home, there was an interconnection between physical space and the moral environment. The social rationale was that open spaces promoted familial togetherness and communal activities. The larger family living room, in which all family members could gather, came to replace the parlour and reception rooms. Housing was being designed to be less gender-specific and to reduce gender segregation. More modern designed houses would produce more space for cohesive families to bond as a unit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The modern suburban home, by encouraging familial activity, thus could ennoble those who inhabited it. Floor plans specifically were designed to strengthen family togetherness. In the middle-class house of a century and a quarter ago, father, mother, and children might still be doing separate activities, but they should all be gathered around the family hearth, not in separate partitioned rooms. Particularly in the evening, the family was expected to congregate informally in the living room. This image of living room family domesticity was widely portrayed in the homes advertisements as well as the women’s magazines of the day. It is also the picture of the “ideal” family publicized in the famous Dick and Jane elementary school readers. These readers, with their picture of father in his chair smoking his pipe, mother in her chair doing the sewing, and Dick and Jane playing on the rug with the cat, were still commonly in use until the 1960s. They provide the “official” middle-class view of proper family life. This image was echoed in the family-based TV shows of the 1950s and 1960s. (It might also be noted that following World War II, suburban homes underwent another physical metamorphosis. The living room grew smaller and took on more formal aspects of the earlier parlour. Everyday family activity and living now took place in a new, more informal, and specifically named, “family room.”). By the turn of the twentieth century, the new open floor plans and the idea of shared domesticity had achieved widespread acceptance. The living room, according to the early twentieth-century home magazines was the symbolic representation of family togetherness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Frank Lloyd Wright would later claim the sole honour of removing the partitions and doors from first floors, but other architects were moving in the dame direction. Mr. Wright, however, did move further than others in removing segregated small spaces by making the whole first floor excepting the kitchen into essentially one large one. Family togetherness thus was not something invented after World War II and only found in postwar suburban housing developments. Over a century ago, shared domesticity or togetherness had already found suburban acceptance. By the beginning of the century, it already had been accepted by suburban men that males had a role in the home and men even had limited domestic duties and responsibilities for children, such as reading them bedtime stories. A suburban man’s place most evenings was at homes with his family rather than out with his clubmen or colleagues. There was, however, a limited sharing of domestic duties, rather than supporting early feminism, tended to blunt the power of feminist demands. It also should be noted that while the ideology of shared domesticity developed strong middle-class suburban roots, this ideology was not equally shared either by the very wealthy or by the working class. Both the rich and the urban working class continued to maintain sharper gender-defined roles both within their lives and within their homes. Upper-class men had their male club, and working-class men had the male-dominated saloon. By the 1920s the suburban ideal of the domestic family unit of father, mother, and children had become a mass-produced commodity. Home ownership had become part of the American middle-class ideology. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Having your own home, preferably in convenient suburb, meant that you had arrived and were part of the American Dream. Popular magazines such as Good Housekeeping and Ladies Home Journal constantly stressed the advantages of suburban environments for the proper rearing of children. The suburban home, not the city apartment, was touted as the place where small children would find a “normal” and “healthy” environment. Thus suburbs were where mothers could safely let children outside to play. One now moved to the suburbs “for the children’s sake.” Post-World War II versions of suburban domesticity as portrayed in TV shows such as Father Knows Best strongly reinforced traditional family patterns and values. In all this Christian Science teaching it is essential to note that the healer can utter these healing formulae, think these healing truths, either out of one’s intellect or out of one’s insight. In the first case one words and thoughts are merely like the map of a country. In the second case they are like an actual visit to the country. The first healer makes an unwarranted claim, does no see that one’s statements could be truly made only if one attained the stature and purity of Jesus. It is not enough that the patient should have faith; the healer oneself must have the requisite higher consciousness. For the divine power which actually effects the healing will not come from one’s ordinary self but out this higher one. Since other cults holding contradictory theories are also able to claim cures, and since there is a natural healing force in the body itself, the Christian Scientists should be cautious and realize that their own theory may be only partially and not wholly correct. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Whereas Christian Science denies the reality of the body and hence of the body’s ills, most other spiritual healing schools admit it. Whereas Christian Science nowhere speaks of man struggling upward through constant reincarnations on Earth to realize one’s highest possibilities, its most powerful rival—the Unity school of Christianity—proclaims this doctrine. Rudolf Steiner opposed psychic healing because, he said, it did not cure but merely drove the disease deeper inside, to reappear later in some other parts of the body. If the patient recovers, the system of healing—whether it be orthodox or unorthodox—gets the credit; but if he fails to recover, the system does not get the debit. The Vedantist and Christian Scientist who are determined to exclude the idea of the World-existence from their view, are nevertheless forced to yield and re-admit the exile when a simple toothache instructed them to the contrary. A cautious attitude to these cures may well find them to be the result of natural healing processes; they would have happened anyway. From bondage grim Thy power brought forth the pure, Thou, Gracious One, didst all their grief endure. So save Thou us! They passed between the deep divided sea; and with them for their guide, the light from Thee. So save Thou us! “He saved”: Thy stock with joyful singing told; then saved was He, who gave them birth of old. So save Thou us! “And I will bring you out,” the mandate said: “And I went out with you,” the mystics read. So save Thou us! Thy sons with circling step, (their guardian Thou!) Around Thine altar bore the will bough. So save Thou us! Thine Ark was won by marvels from the foe, Philistia, sinful, by Thy wrath laid low. So save Thou us! And with Thy banished throngs to Babylon journeyed in love Thy presence, Gracious One! So save Thou us! Helper of Jacob’s captive tribes of yore, return, and Jacobs exiled tents restore, and save Thou us! #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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He Covenanted with the Devil Until He Should Arrive to the Age of Sixty Years!
He might be living, or he might be dead. There came no word of him, or from him. I was fond enough of her to be satisfied with this—he never disturbed us. While there were many individual acts of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, there was never an attempt or plot to make witchcraft a formal religion which would supplant Christianity. Yet we need not conclude that William Baker and his fellow-confessors were lying. It is probable that they, like the afflicted girls, were hysterics subject to hallucination. Certainly that is the conclusion to be drawn from Thomas Brattle’s opinion of them in his “Letter”: “my faith is strong concerning them that they are deluded, imposed upon, and under the influence of some evil spirit, and therefore unfit to be evidences either against themselves or anyone else.” Mr. Brattle wrote this in October 1692, when Massachusetts was retuning to stability. However, at the height of the excitement confessions like Mr. Baker’s seemed convincing enough. For one thing, they had a curious precision: he did not say there were about three hundred witches in the country but “about three hundred and sever”; he did not say there were about a hundred young wizards at the mustering of the Satanic militia but “about an hundred five.” However, what made these confessions most believable was that they offered a simple and comprehensive explanation for all the frightening events at Salem, at a time when explanations were not easy to discover. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
There is also some testimony which remains ambiguous even today. Samuel Wardwell, for example, at his preliminary examination confessed himself a wizard. He had begun, he said, with white magic, “with telling of fortunes which sometimes came to pass” And, he said, “he used also when any creature came into his field to bid the Devil to take it, and it may be the Devil took advantage of him by that.” Eventually he had signed a pact: “He covenanted with the Evil until he should arrive to the age of sixty years.” He had renounced this confession at his trial, saying that he had made it, but that he had belied himself. He added that it was all one: “he knew he should die for it whether he owned it or no.” Ordinarily one would simply accept his renunciation. However, there are several puzzling circumstances here. For one thing, it was not all one whether he maintained or renounced his confession. People who maintained their confessions were not being brought to trail, much less executed. For another, at least a part of his confession was true; he had dabbled in the occult for some time, telling a great many fortunes, and boasting that he could make animals come to him when he wished. Finally, Mr. Wardwell was executed. However, in 1693, when the panic had subsided and the climate of opinion totally changed, there were three people who held to their confessions. Two of them were women long thought to be “senseless and ignorant creatures.” The third was Mr. Wardwell’s wife. All of these circumstances are puzzling and some of them are suspicious. However, on the other hand, there is no evidence to support his confessions of having made a pact. The only possible conclusion, it would seem, is that in this case the truth is not obtainable. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
In a situation where the truth was so difficult to find the people of Massachusetts did what anybody else would do—they sought expert advice. In matters of witchcraft the experts were the clergy, and ultimately the advice was sought of the most distinguished clergymen in the colony. Indeed, at least one member of the trial court, Judge John Richards, asked the Reverend Cotton Mather to be present at the first trial. Reverend Mather was too ill to attend, but he did everything he could under the circumstances. He had suggested earlier (the exact date is not known) that the afflicted persons should be separated and an attempt made to cure them with prayer and fasting. He volunteered to take in as many as six of them himself. He had cured the Godwin children, and he might well have cured the Salem girls as well; certainly separation and private care would have been better treatment for hysterical fits than the excitements of a public courtroom. However, unfortunately Reverend Mather’s offer had not been accepted. Now, although he could not attend the first sitting of the court he wrote John Richards a letter offering him his opinions. In the first place, he expected that God would smile upon the labours of the court: “His people have been fasting and praying before Him for you direction, and yourselves are persons whose exemplary devotion disposeth you to such a dependence on the Wonderful Counselor, for his counsel in an affair this full of wonder, as He doth usually answers with the most favorable assistances. Yet he wanted to warn Mr. Richards. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Here is that warning: “And yet I most humbly beg you that in the management of the affair in your most worthy hands, you do not lay more stress upon pure specter testimony than it will bear. When you are satisfied or have good plain legal evidence that the Demons which molest our poor neighbours do indeed represent such and such people to the sufferers, though this be a presumption, yet I suppose you will not reckon it a conviction that the people so represented are witches to be immediately exterminated. It is very certain that the Devils have sometimes represented the shapes of persons not only innocent but very virtuous, though I believe that the just God then ordinarily provides a way for speedy vindication of the persons thus abused. Moreover, I do suspect that persons who have too much indulged themselves in malignant, envious, malicious ebullitions of their souls may unhappily expose themselves to the Judgment of being represented by Devils, of whom they never had any vision and with whom they have much less written any covenant. I would say this: if upon the bare supposal of a poor creature’s being represented by a specter too great a progress be made by the Authority in ruining a poor neighbour so represented, it may be that a door may be thereby opened for the Devils to obtain from the Courts in the Invisible World a license to proceed unto most hideous desolations upon the repute and repose of such as have yet been kept from the great transgression. If mankind have thus far once consented unto the credit of Diabolical representations, the Door is opened! Perhaps there are wise and good men that may be ready to style hum that shall advance this caution a witch advocate, but in the winding up this caution will certainly be wished for.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Reverend Mather’s third point is that although he believes that Devils have sometime afflicted men on their own initiative, without being called up by witches, in this case he thinks that witches are involved: “there is cause enough to think that it is a horrible witchcraft which hath given rise to the troubles wherewith Salem Village is at this day harassed, and he indefatigable pains that are used for the tracing this witchcraft are to be thankfully accepted and applauded among all this people of God.” Fourth, he points out that although witchcraft is a spiritual matter and therefore “very much transacted upon the stage of imagination,” its effects are “dreadfully real” and therefore criminally punishable. “Our dear neighbours are most really tormented, really murdered, and really acquainted with hidden things which are afterwards proved plainly to have been realities.” In his fifth and six section he suggests what evidence may be used for convictions. The best evidence, he says, is “a credible confession…And I say a credible confession because even confession itself is sometimes not credible.” He was confident Mr. Richards’ ability to judge such matters: “a person of a sagacity many times thirty furlongs less than yours will easily perceive what confession may be credible and what may be the result of only a delirious brain or a discontented heart.” In obtaining confessions he was “far from urging the un-English method of torture,” but he thought that “cross and swift questions” might be used, along with anything else that “hath a tendency to put the witches into confusion” and this might bring them to confession. If the suspect had made threats or boasts which seemed to require occult power and which came true, this was valid evidence. So were such concrete matters as “puppets” (for image magic) and witch marks on the body. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Reverend Mather had never seen a witch mark on anyone, but he thought a surgeon ought to be able to tell if a bodily excrescence were magical. Finally, he was willing to countenance as experiments (but not as full evidence) some witch-finding techniques which themselves partook of the occult: setting a suspect to repeating the Lord’s Prayer; trying to wound a witch through striking her specter; putting the suspect to the water ordeal. Seventh, and finally, he recommended clemency for “come of the lesser criminals.” If such persons were not executed but “only scoured with lesser punishments, and also put upon some solemn, open, public, and explicit renunciation of the Devil” he thought it might discourage the Devils from afflicting those neighbourhoods in which they had been publicly renounced. Reverend Mather’s letter was written within the context of the Puritan method for arriving at the truth, and it can be fully understood only within that context. In dealing with the American Puritans we must remember always that they had rejected the formidable hierarchies of the Medieval and Renaissance church and state, with all their authority of tradition and inherited position. They had replaced these hierarchies with bodies of ministers and magistrates which, if they were not fully democratic in the twentieth-century sense of the word, were nevertheless elected. The clergyman was called to his position by the members of the church; the magistrate was elected by his constituency. Furthermore, the church had no central administration; every congregation was a law unto itself. The state did have a central administration—a governor and lieutenant-governor and their council—but this administration had nothing even faintly resembling the authority of a royal government. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
My brother, the clergyman, looked over my shoulder before I was aware of him, and discovered that the volume which completely absorbed my attention was a collection of famous Trials, published in a new edition and in a popular form. He laid his finger on the Trial which I happened to be reading at the moment. I looked up at him; his face startled me. He had turned pale. His eyes were fixed on the open page of the book with an expression which puzzled and alarmed me. “My dear fellow,” I said, “what in the World is the matter with you?” He answered in an odd absent manner, still keeping his finger on the open page. “I had almost forgotten,” he said. “And this reminds me.” “Reminds you of what?” I asked. “You do not mean to say you know anything about the Trial?” “I know this,” he said. “The prisoner was guilty.” “Guilty?” I repeated. “Why, the man was acquitted by the jury, with full approval of the judge! What can you possibly mean?” “There are circumstances connected with that Trial,” my brother answered, “which were never communicated to the judge or the jury—which were never so much as hinted or whispered in court. I know them—of my own knowledge, by my own personal experience. They are very sad, very strange, very terrible. I have mentioned them to no mortal creature. I have done my best to forget them. You—quite innocently—have brought them back to my mind. They oppress, they distress me. I wish I had found you reading any book in your library, except that book!” Some people were opposed to prosecuting in any witchcraft case, on the grounds that witchcraft was a spiritual mater, a sin rather than a crime, and thus outside the domain of criminal law. However, the laws of every civilized nation provided the death penalty for witchcraft, and so did the Bible (Exodus xxii, 18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”). #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Another opinion Reverend Mather deals with is that the troubles at Salem were caused by Devils, but not by witches. That is, the idea had already been advanced that the afflicted girls were possessed—infested by Demons—but not bewitched; that the Devils had acted on their own initiative rather than that of witches. This is the idea that was eventually adopted by virtually all of Massachusetts to explain the events at Salem, once it was recognized that most of those executed had been innocent. The basic question, as the seventeenth century understood it, was whether God would permit the Devil to assume the shape of an innocent person. Most authorities, and especially most Protestant authorities, believed that He would, and thus held, like Hamlet, that “the Devil hath power/ to assume a pleasing shape. However, Mr. Richards would not be capable of clearing anybody if he was going to accept the appearance of a person’s specter as conclusive proof of guilt. If such infernal testimony were accepted, nobody could be safe from accusation. Reverend Mather put in forcefully enough. “If mankind have thus far once consented unto the credit of Diabolical representations, the Door is opened!” However, Reverend Mather knew there were people at Salem so committed to the validity of spectral evidence that they were willing to call anyone who challenged it, including himself, a “witch advocate.” All he could do was warn such people that when matters were finished “this caution will certainly be wished for.” And in this he could not possibly have been more right. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Do you believe that the spirits of the dead can return to Earth, and show themselves to the living? Promise me this, that you will keep what I tell you a secret as long as I live. After my death I care little what happens. Let the story of my strange experience be added to the published experience of those other men who have seen what I have seen, and who believe what I believe. The World will not be the worse, and may be the better, for knowing one day what I am now about to trust to your ear alone. On a fine summer evening, many years since, I left my chambers in the Temple to meet a fellow-student, who had proposed to me a night’s amusement in the Winchester estate. I had taken my degree at Oxford. I had sadly disappointed my father by choosing the Law as my profession, in preference to the Church. At that time, to own the truth, I had no serious intention of following any special vocation. I simply wanted an excuse for enjoying the pleasures of an American life. The study of Law supplied me with that excuse. And I chose the Law as my profession accordingly. On reaching the place at which we had arranged to meet, I found that my friend had not kept his appointment. After waiting vainly for ten minutes, my patience gave way, and I went into the gardens by myself. I took two or three turns round the mansion, without discovering my fellow-student, and without seeing any other person with whom I happened to be acquainted at that time. For some reason which I cannot now remember, I was not in my usual good spirits that evening. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
I saw a woman in the gardens, she was quiet. She invited me into the estate. Her face was saddened; her eyes were dropped to the ground, I begged her pardon. She rose to leave me. I was determined to not part with her in that way. I begged to be allowed to see the Winchester mansion. She hesitated. Then she took my arm. We went away together. A walk of half an hour brought us to the Winchester mansion, the estate was quite large. We went through the beautiful jeweled doors and took an elevator to the 4th floor. She said Mrs. Winchester had been waiting to meet me. She had been suffering from an affection of the throat; and she had a white silk handkerchief tied loosely round her neck. She wore a simple dress of black merino, with a black-silk apron over it. Her face was deadly pale; her fingers felt icily cold as they closed around my hand. “Promise me one thing,” I said, “before I go. While I live, I am your friend—if I am nothing more. If you are ever in trouble, promise me that you will let me know it.” She started, and drew back from me as if I had struck her with a sudden terror. “Strange!” she said, speaking to herself. “He feels as I feel. He is afraid of what may happen to me, in my life to come.” I attempted to reassure Mrs. Winchester. I tried to tell her what was indeed the truth—that I had only been thinking of the ordinary chances and chances of life, when I spoke. She paid no heed to me; she came back and put her hands on my shoulders, and thoughtfully and sadly looked up in my face. “My mind is not your mind in this matter,” she said. “I believe I shall die young, and die miserably. If I am right, have you interest enough still left in me to hear of it?” #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
She paused, for a moment, shuddering—and added these startling words: “You shall hear of it.” The tone of steady conviction in which she spoke alarmed and distressed me. My face showed her how deeply and how painfully I was affected. “There, there!” she said, returning to her natural manner; “don’t take what I say too seriously. A poor girl who has led a lonely life like mine thinks strangle and talks strangely—sometimes. Yes; I give you my promise. If I am ever in trouble, I will let you know it. God bless you—you have been very kind to me—goodbye!” A tear dropped on my face as she kissed me. The door closed between us. The dark gardens received me. It was raining heavily. I looked up at her window, through the drifting shower. The curtains were parted; she was standing in the gap, dimly lot by the lamp on the table behind her, waiting for our last look at each other. Slowly lifting her hand, she waved her farewell at the window, with the unsought native grace which had charmed me on the night when we first met. The curtains fell again—she disappeared—nothing was before me, nothing was round me, but the darkness and the night. In two years from that time, I had returned to the Church. My relatives exerted themselves; and my good fortune still befriended me. I was offered an opportunity of preaching in a church, made famous by the eloquence of one of the popular pulpit-orators of our time. In accepting the proposal, I felt naturally anxious to do my best, before the unusually large and unusually intelligence congregation which would be assembled to hear me. At the period of which I am now speaking, the Santa Clara Valley had been startled by the discovery of a terrible crime, perpetrated under circumstances of extreme provocation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
I chose this crime as the main subject for my sermon. Admitting that the best among us were frail mortal creatures subject to evil promptings and provocations like the worst among us, my object was to show how a Christian man may find his refuge from temptation in the safeguards of his religion. I dwelt minutely on the hardship of the Christian’s first struggle to resist the evil influence—on the help which one’s Christianity inexhaustibly held out o one in the worst relapses of the weaker and viler part of one’s nature—on the steady and certain gain which was the ultimate reward of one’s faith and one’s firmness—and on the blessed sense of peace and happiness which accompanied the final triumph. Preaching to this effect, with the fervent conviction which I really felt, I may say for myself, at least, that I did no discredit to the choice which had placed me in the pulpit. I held the attention of my congregation, from the first word to the last. On the conclusion of my sermon, my soul was literally shaken. Ordering my horse to be saddled, I rode instantly to the Winchester mansion. When I arrived, my mind was blank. I had no thoughts. I had no tears. The butler, Amon, greeted me. I guessed him to be some two or three years younger than myself. He was undeniably handsome; his manners of a gentleman—and yet, without knowing why, I felt a strong dislike to him the moment he opened the door. While waiting in the parlor, little by little, I became conscious of a chilly sensation slowly creeping through and through me to the bones. The warm balmy air of a summer night was abroad. It was the month of August. In the month of August, was it possibly that any living creature (in good health) could feel cold? It was not possible—and yet, the chilly sensation still crept through and through me to the bones. I looked up. I looked all round me. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
I looked around me again. Yes: I saw it. With my own eyes I saw it. A pillar of white mist—between five and six feet high, as well as I could judge—was moving beside me on my left hand. The white colour of it was the white colour of the fog which one might see over the ocean. And the chill which had then crept through me to the cones was that chill that was creeping through me now. I was awed rather than frightened. There was one moment, and one only, when the fear came to me that my reason might be shaken. The doctrine that the Devil could appear in any shape did come to mind. The slow utterance of these words, repeated over and over again: “Mrs. Winchester is dead. Mrs. Winchester is dead.” But my will was still my own: I was able to control myself, to impose silence on my own muttering lips. And I walked through the mansion. And the pillar of mist went quietly with me. I sat down on the stairs looking at the pillar of mist, hovering opposite to me. It lengthened slowly, until it reached to the ceiling. As it lengthened, it grew bright and luminous. A time passed, and a shadowy appearance showed itself in the center of the light. Little by little, the shadowy appearance took the outline of human form. Soft brown eyes, tender and melancholy, looked at me through the unearthly light in the mist. The dead and the rest of the face boke next slowly on my view. Then the figure gradually revealed itself, moment by moment, downward and downward to the feet. She stood before me as I had last seen her, in her black-merino dress, with the black-silk apron, with white handkerchief tied loosely round her neck. She stood before me, in the gentle beauty that I remembered so well; and looked at me as she had looked when she gave me her last kiss on the cheek—when her tears had dropped on my hand. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
I fell on my knees at the table. I stretched out my hands to her imploringly. I said, “Speak to me—O, once again speak to me, Sarah.” Her eyes rested on me with a divine compassion in them. She lifted her hand, and pointed to the photograph on the desk. It was the butler. I looked up at her again. She lifted her hand once more, and pointed to the handkerchief round her neck. As I looked at it, the fair white silk changed horribly in colour—the fair white silk became darkened and drenched in blood. A moment more—and the vision of her began to grow dim. By slow degrees, the figure, then the face, faded back into the shadowy appearance that I have first seen. The luminous inner light died out in the white mist. The mist itself dropped slowly downwards—floated a moment in airy circles on the floor—vanished. Nothing was before me but the familiar Lincrusta wallpaper, and the photograph lying face downwards on the desk. I went home. The next day, the newspapers reported the discovery of a murder in the Winchester mansion. Mrs. Winchester was the victim. She had been killed by a wound in the throat. The crime had been discovered between ten and eleven o’clock on the previous night. There is conclusive proof that the butler had been trafficking with the Devil. If spectral evidence was convincing to the magistrates, the ministers, and the people at large, it was a nightmare to the suspects. A violent quarrel took place between them. Lastly, that man, variously described by different witnesses, was seen leaving the door of her mansion on the night of the murder. The Law—advancing no further than this—may have discovered circumstances of suspicion, but no certainty. The Law, in default of direct evidence to convict the prisoner, may have rightly decided in letting him go free. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
However, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company issued a statement redacting the news report which was later destroyed: “Protecting Mrs. Winchester’s legacy is, and always will be, our focus. For decades, we have battled behind the scenes, enduring shadowy tactics of deception with unauthorized statements and projects created to tarnish. We have always been betwixted as to why there is such a tenacity in causing more pain alongside what we already have to cope with for the rest of our lives. Now, this unscrupulous endeavor to release a statement without official proof or full accounting to the estate compels our hearts to express a word—forgiveness. Although we will continue to defend ourselves and her legacy lawfully and justly, we want to preempt the inevitable attacks on our company by all the individuals who have emerged from the shadows to leech off of Mrs. Winchester’s life’s work. Ultimately, we desire closure and a modicum of peace so we can facilitate the growth of the Winchester Estate and other creative projects that embody Mrs. Winchester’s true essence, which is to inspire and get people to think critically. We welcome and accept people of all creeds, races and cultures in the Universe and beyond.” The official statement reported that Mrs. Winchester passed away peacefully in her sleep on September 5, 1922, and work on the still uncompleted house stopped. I leave you to draw your own conclusions, but just days before I saw her, she looked no older than 22 years old. My own faith in the reality of the apparition is immovable. I say, and believe Mrs. Winchester is immortal, which would explain a lot. Take up the Trial again, and look at the circumstances that were revealed during the investigation in the court. I persist in believing that the man was guilty. I declare that, he and he alone did it. And now, you know why. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
O thou wicket spirit Amon that obeyeth not, because I made a law and invoked the names of the glorious and ineffable God of Truth, the creator of all, and thou obeyest not the might sounds that I make: therefore I curse thee in the depth of Abandon to remain until the day of judgment in torment in fire and in sulphur without end, until thou appear before our will and obey my power. Come, therefore, in the 24th of a moment, before the circle in the triangle in this name and by this name of God, Adni, Great Spirit, give us hearts to understand; never to take from creation’s beauty more than we give; never to destroy wantonly for the furtherance of greed; never to deny to give our hands for the building of Earth’s beauty; never to take from her what we cannot use. Give us hearts to understand that to destroy Earth’s music is to create confusion; that to wreck her appearance is to build us to beauty; that to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench; that as we care for her she will care for us. Tzabaoth, Adonai, Amioran. Come! Come! for it is the Lord of Lords Adni, that stirreth thee up. I stir thee up, O thou fire, in him who is thy Creator and of all creatures. Torment, burn, destroy the spirit Amon always whose end cannot be, I judge thee in judgment and in extreme justice, O spirit Amon, because thou art he that obeyeth not my power and obeyth not that law which the Lord God made, and obeyeth not the Mighty Sounds and the Living Breath which I invoke, which I send: Come forth, I, who am the Servant of the Same Most High governor Lord God powerful, Iehovohe, I who am exalted in power and am might in his power above ye, O thou who comest not giving obedience and faith to him that liveth and trirumpheth. Therefore I say the judgment: I curse thee and destroy the name Amon and the seal Amon, which I have placed in this dwelling of poison, and I burn thee in fire whose end cannot be; and I cast thee down unto the seas of torment, out of which thou shalt not rise until thou come to me eyes: visit me in peace: be friendly before the circle in the triangle in the 24th of a moment in the likeness of a man not unto the terror of the sons of men the creatures or all things on the face of the Earth. Obey my power like reasoning creatures; obey the living breath, the laws which speak. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
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At His Preliminary Examination He Testified that He Has Been in the Snare of the Devil!
A weary and secretive darkness crept into her face, a distraction, as though her soul had traveled out of doors towards Heaven, and the she looked down sadly. When I came in sight of the house where John Procter live, there was a very hard blow struck on my breast which caused great pain in my stomach and amazement in my head. However, I did see no person near me, only my wife behind me on the same horse. And when I cam against said Mr. Procter’s house, according to my understanding, I did see John Procter and his wife at the said house. [They were, remember, in prison at this time.] Mr. Procter himself looked out of the window and his wife did stand just without the door. I told my wife of it, and she did look that way and could see nothing but a little maid at the door. I saw no maid there, but Mr. Procter’s wife according to my understanding did stand at the door. Afterwards, about half a mile from the aforesaid house, I was taken speechless for some short time. My wife did ask me several questions and desired me that if I could not speak I should hold up my hand, which I did. And immediately I could speak as well as ever. [Notice again that the fit was broken when the subject is able to move or speak.] And when we came to the way where Salem Road cometh into Ispwich Road, here I received another blow on my breast which caused much pain, so that I could not sit on my horse. And when I did alight off my horse, to my understanding I saw a woman coming towards us about sixteen or twenty pole from us, but did not know who it was. My wife could not see her. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
When I did get up on my horse again, to my understanding there stood a cow where I saw the woman. [Witches were thought capable of transforming their shapes.] After that we went to Boston without any further molestation, but after I came home again to Newbury I was pinched and nipped by something invisible for some time. However, now through God’s goodness to me I am well again. That was testimony from Joseph Bailey of what he and his wife encountered. Testimony like this is careful and honest, and historians have been wrong in refusing to take it seriously. Mr. Baily was quite aware that he had been ill, and that the illness had created a difference between his perceptions and those of his wife. However, the fatal distinction between his understandings of the event and ours is that his culture led him to attribute his illness to witchcraft whereas ours permits us to attribute it to his fear of witchcraft. There are many similar instances of the specters of innocent people appearing to afflict the citizenry once they were suspected of witchcraft. One of the more interesting involves John Willard, who had at first been a deputy-constable employed in arresting persons who had been complained of. According to Robert Calef, an American author who wrote a book on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93, he became dissatisfied after being sent to arrest persons he believed innocent, and resigned his position. This immediately brought him under suspicion, and soon the afflicted girls were crying out against him. Shortly thereafter his grandfathers, Bray Wilkins, was ready for dinner when John Willard came into the house with my son Henry Wilkins, before I sat down, and said Mr. Willard to my apprehension looked after such a sort upon me as I never before discerned in any. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
That is, Mr. Wilkins thought Mr. Willard had “overlooked” him—given him the evil eye. I did but step into the next room and I was presently taken so that I could not dine nor eat anything. I cannot express the misery I was in, for my water was suddenly stopped and I had no benefit of nature, but was like a man in a rock. And I told my wife immediately that I was afraid that Mr. Willard had done me wrong. My pain continuing and finding no relief my jealousy [id es, suspicion] continued. Mr. Lawson and others there were all amazed and knew not what to do for me. There was a woman accounted skillful [who] came hoping to help me, and after she had used means she asked me whether none of those evil persons had done me damage. I said I could not say they had but I was sore afraid they had. She answered, she did fear so too. As near as I remember I lay in this case three or four days at Boston, and afterwards, with the jeopardy of my life (as I though), I cam home. And then some of my friends coming to see me (and at this time John Willard was run away) one of the afflicted persons, Mercy Lewis, came in with them, and they asked whether she saw anything. She said, “Yes, they are looking for Jon Willard but here he is on his grandfather’s belly.” (And at that time I was in grievous pain in the small of my belly.) I continued so in grievous pain and my water much stopped till said Mr. Willard was in chains. And then as near as I can guess I have considerable ease. However, on the other hand, in the room of a stoppage I was vexed with a flowing of water so that it was hard to keep myself dry. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
On the fifth [of] July last, talking with some friends about John Willard, some pleading his innocency and myself and some others arguing the contrary, within about one-quarter of an hour after that I was taken in the sorest distress and misery, my water being turned into real blood, or of a bloody color, and the old pain returned excessively as before, which continued for about twenty-four hours together. In this testimony, we come to understand the hysterical loss of appetite which was Mr. Wilkins’ first symptom we have seen before and shall see again. The inability to urinate we have seen in Mrs. Simms as a result of Manny Redd’s curse. However, there was clearly something organic as well as psychosomatic wrong with Bray Wilkins. The blood in the urine coupled with the extreme pain of relatively short duration suggests that it may have been a kidney stone. However, whatever it was, both Mr. Wilkins and the community at large were by this time ready to attribute it to witchcraft. William Baker’s confessions provide an excellent example that the Salem Witch Trials were carried in chiefly by the complaints and accusations of the afflicted and by the confessions of the accused, condemning themselves and others. Nothing is a first sight more surprising than the number of the confessors and the character of their confessions. There were about fifty of them, and the statements which they made far exceed in color and detail the simple statements of personal guilt that were necessary to save their lives. According to Mr. Baker, at his preliminary examination he testified that he has been in the snare of the Devil three years. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
That the Devil first appeared to him like a black man, and he perceived he had a cloven foot; that the Devil demanded of him to give up himself soul and body unto him, which he promised to do. [The Devil promised in return to pay Mr. Baker’s debts and see that he lived comfortably. Mr. Baker signed the contract in blood.] Satan’s design was to set up his own worship, abolish all churches in the land (which some say politicians are currently doing), to fall next [id est, first] upon Salem and so go through the country. He saith the Devil promised that all his people should be equal, that there should be n day of resurrection or of judgment, and neither punishment nor shame for sin. That explains why people are trying to banish God and they church. They know they are bad people and believe they can avoid being held responsible for their crimes and sins by raising hell on Earth and raising the Devil. Mr. Baker said that the demonic “Grandess” had told him there were about “307 witches in the country” and he volunteered his opinion that all the persons arrested and imprisoned to date (August 29, 1692) were guilty. However, an oral confession was not enough for him. Mr. Hale prints another “which he wore himself in prison, and sent to the magistrate to confirm his former confession.” However, an oral confession was not enough for him. Mr. Hale prints another “which he wrote himself in prison, and sent to the magistrates to confirm his former confession.” Here is his testimony: God having called me to confess my sins and apostasy in that fall in giving the Devil advantage over me, appearing to me like a Black, in the evening, to set my hand to his book, as I have owned to my shame. He told me that I should not want [in] so doing. At Salem Village, there being a little off the Meeting-House about an hundred five blades [id est, young bucks], some with rapiers by their sides, which was called (and might be more for ought I know) by Bishop and Burroughs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
And the trumpet sounded, and [there was] bread and beverage which they called Sacrament, but I had none, being carried over all on a stick, never being at any other meeting. I being at carting a Saturday last, all the day of hay and English corn, the Devil brought my shape to Salem and did afflict Martha Sprague and Rose Foster by clitching my hand. And a Sabbath day my shape afflicted Abigail Martin. Elizabeth Johnson and Abigail Faulkner have been my enticers to this great abomination, as one have owned and charged her to her sister with the same. And the design was to destroy Salem Village, and to begin at the minister’s house, and to destroy the Church of God, and to set up Satan’s kingdom, and then all will be well. And now I hope God in some measure has made me something sensible of my sin and apostasy, begging pardon of God, and of the Honorable Magistrates and all God’s People, hoping and promising by the help of God to set to my heart and hand to do what in me leith to destroy such wicked worship, humbly begging the prayers of all God’s People for me [that] I may walk humbly under this great affliction and that I may procure to myself he sure mercies of David and the blessing of Abraham. Such testimony sheds light on the centuries long plot of some to remove God from America. Pray I must, my Lordly Friend, but what should I pray? Bless You, Heavenly Father, Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, for remembering me, pauper that I am? O Father of mercies and God of consolations, as Paul began his Second Letter to the Corinthians (1.3), I give You thanks, unworthy as I am of Your every consolation? #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
I bless You always, and I glorify You, with You Only Begotten Son and the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, for ever and ever? O Lord God, my Holy Loving Friend, when You come into my heart, You make my blood dance? “You are my glory,” thrummed the Psalmist (3.3) and “the exaltation of my heart” (119.111)? You are my hope and—thrumming again—“my refuge in the day of my tribulation” (59.16)? I ask again, O Lord, what should I pray? At this point in my life, I find myself not only a little long in the tooth, but also a little short in the hoof; that is to say, a little short of breath in the pursuit of Love and Virtue. I have no one to turn to. You are the only One who can help me. Do not be surprised, then, when I ask You to visit me more often. I need to know more about the holy disciplines. Will they free my body from the itch, cure my heart from the worm? Cleanse me on the inside, scrub me on the outside, and I will be ready enough to love, strong enough to suffer, stable enough to preserve. And you say that these blood drinkers are worshiped in the hills. It was the spring of 1880, I had lost my way, and could not tell how far I might be from my destination. I was very tired and had a heavy knapsack on my shoulders, packed with stones and relics from the ruins of the Old Pelasgic fortress which I had been exploring, besides a number of old coins and a lamp or two which I had purchased there. I could discern no signs of any human habitation, and the hills, covered with wood, seemed to shut me in on every side. I was beginning to think seriously of looking out for some sheltered spot under a thicket in which to pass the night. I was so excited to get back to the Winchester estate. The mansion was a large rambling place, and was tolerably comfortable within. My room was situated at the end of a long passage; there were two rooms on the right side of this passage, and a window on the left, which looked out upon the garden. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Having taken a survey of the outside of the house while getting some fresh air after dinner, when the moon was up, I remembered exactly the position of my chamber—the end room of a long narrow wing, projecting at right angles from the main building, with which it was connected only by the passage and two side rooms already mentioned. Please to bear this description carefully in mind while I proceed. Before getting into bed, I drove into the floor close to the door a small gimlet which formed part of a complicated Winchester pocket-knife which I always carried with me, so that it would be impossible for any one to enter the room without my knowledge; there was a lock to the door, but the key would not turn in it; there was also a bolt, but it would not enter the hole intended for it, the door having sunk apparently from its proper level. I satisfied, myself, however, that the door was securely fastened by my gimlet, and soon fell asleep. How can I describe the strange and horrible sensation which oppressed me as I woke out of my slumber? I had been sleeping soundly, and before I quite recovered consciousness I had instinctively risen from my pillow, and was crouching forward, my knees drawn up, my hands clasped before my face, and my whole frame quivering with horror. I saw nothing, felt nothing; but a sound was ringing in my ears which seemed to make my blood run cold. I could not have supposed it possible that any mere sound, whatever might be its nature, could have produced such a revulsion of feeling or inspired such intense horror as I then experienced. It was not a cry of terror that I heard—that would have roused me to action—nor the moaning of one in pain—that would have distressed me, and called forth sympathy rather than aversion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
True, it was like the groaning of one in anguish and despair, but not like any mortal voice: it seemed too dreadful, too intense, for human utterance. The sound had begun while I was fast asleep—close to the head of my bed—close to my very pillow; it continued after I was wide awake—a long, hollow, protracted groan, making the midnight air reverberate, and then dying gradually away until it ceased entirely. It was some minutes before I could at all recover from the terrible impression which seemed to stop my breath and paralyse my limbs. At length I began to look about me, for the night was not entirely dark, and I could discern the outlines of the room and the several pieces of furniture in it. I then got out of bed, and called aloud, “Who is there? What is the matter? Is anyone ill?” I repeated these enquiries in Italian, German, and French, but there was none that answered. Fortunately I had some matches in my pocket and was able to light my candle. I then examined every part of the room carefully, and especially the wall at the head of my bed, sounding it with my knuckles; it was firm and solid there, as in all other places. I unfastened my door, and explored the passage and the two adjoining rooms, which were unoccupied and almost destitute of furniture; they had evidently not been used for some time. Search as I would, I could gain no clue to the mystery. Returning to my room I sat down upon the bed in great perplexity, and began to turn over in my mind whether it was possible I could have been deceived—whether the sounds which caused me such distress might be the offspring of some dream or nightmare; but to that conclusion I could not bring myself at all, much as I wished it, for the groaning had continued ringing in my ears long after I was wide away and conscious. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
While I was thus reflecting, having neglected to close the door which was opposite to the side of my bed where I was sitting, I heard a soft footstep at a distance, and presently a light appeared at the further end of the passage. Then I saw the shadow of a man cast upon the opposite wall; it moved very slowly, and presently stopped. I saw the hand raised, as if making a sign to someone, an I knew from the fact of the shadow being thrown in advance that there must be a second person in the rear by whom the light was carried. After a short pause they seemed to retrace their steps, without my having had a glimpse of either of them, but only of the shadow which had come before and which followed them as they withdrew. It was then a little after one o’clock, and I concluded they were retiring late to rest, and anxious to avoid disturbing me, though I have since thought that it was the light from my room which caused their retreat. I felt half inclined to call to them, but I shrank, without knowing why, from making known what had disturbed me, and while I hesitated they were gone; so I fastened my door again, and resolved to sit up and watch a little longer by myself. However, now my candle was beginning to burn low, and I found myself in this dilemma: either I must extinguish it at once, or I should be left without the means of procuring a light in case I should be again disturbed. I regretted that I had not called for another candle while there were people yet moving in the house, but I could not do so now without making explanations; so I grasped my box of matches, put out my light, and lay down, not without a shudder, in the bed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
For an hour more I lay awake thinking over what had occurred, and by that time I had almost persuaded myself that I had nothing but my own morbid imagination to thank for the alarm which I had suffered. “It is an outer wall,” I said to myself; “they are all outer walls, and the house 9-inch-thick walls; it is impossible that sound could be heard through such a thickness. Besides, it seemed to be in my room, close to my ear. What an idiot I must be, to be excited an alarmed about nothing; I will think no more about it.” So I turned on my side, with a smile (rather a forced one) at my own foolishness, and composed myself to sleep. At that instant I heard, with more distinctness than I ever heard any other sound in my life, a gasp, a voiceless gasp, as if someone were in agony for breath, biting at the air, or trying with desperate efforts to cry out or speak. It was repeated a second and a third time; then there was a pause; then again that horrible gasping; and then a long-drawn breath, an audible drawing up of air into the throat, such as one would make in heaving a deep sigh. Such sounds as these could not possibly have been heard unless they had been close to my ear; they seemed to come from the wall at my heard, or to rise up out of my pillow. That fearful gasping, and that drawing in of the breath, in darkness and silence of the night, seemed to make every nerve in my body thrill with dreadful expectation. Unconsciously I shrank away from it, crouching down as before, with my face upon my knees. It ceased, and immediately a moaning sound began, which lengthened out into an awful, protracted groan waxing louder and louder, as if under an increasing agony, and then dying away slowly and gradually into silence; yet painfully and distinctly audible even to the last. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
As soon as I could rouse myself from the freezing horror which seemed to penetrate even to my joints and marrow, I crept away from the bed, and in the further corner of the room lighted with shaking hand of my candle, looking anxiously about me as I did so, expecting some dreadful revelation as the light flashed up. Yet, if you will believe me, I did not feel alarmed or frightened; but rather oppressed, and penetrated wit an unnatural, overpowering, sentiment of awe. I seemed to be in the presence of some great and horrible mystery, some bottomless depth of woe, or misery, or crime. I shrank from it with a sensation of intolerable loathing and suspense. It was a feeling akin to this which prevented me from calling Mrs. Winchester. I could not bring myself to speak to her of what had passed; not knowing how nearly she might be involved in the mystery. I was only anxious to escape as quietly as possible from the room and from the house. The candle was now beginning to flicker in its socket, but the stars were shining outside, and there was space and air to breathe there, which seemed to be wanting in my room; so I hastily opened my window, tied the bedclothes together for a rope, and lowered myself silently and safely to the ground. There was a light still burning in the lower part of the house; but I crept noiselessly along, feeling my way carefully among the trees, and in due time came upon a beaten track which led me to a road, the same which I had been travelling on the previous night. I walked on, scarcely knowing whither, anxious only to increase my distance from the accursed house, until day began to break, when almost the first object I could see distinctly was a small body of men approaching me. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
The men asked me what was wrong? “I was disturbed in the night. I could not sleep. I made my escape from the Winchester mansion, and here I am I cannot tell you more.” “But you must tell me more, dear sir; forgive me; you must tell me everything. I must know all that passed in that mansion. We have had in under our surveillance for a long time, and when I heard in what direction you had gone yesterday, and had not returned, I feared you had got into some mischief there, and we were even now upon our way to look for you. The mansion is so large that people seem to get lost inside and disappear.” I could not enter into particulars, but I told him I had heard strange sounds, and at his respect I went back with him to the mansion. He told me by the way that the mansion was haunted; that Mrs. Winchester e mansion, he placed his men about the premises and instituted a strict search, and Mrs. Winchester and the man who was found in the house being compelled to accompany him. The room in which I had slept was carefully examined; the wall was of plaster or cement, so that no sound could have passed through it; the walls were sound and solid, and there was nothing to be seen that could in any way account for the strange disturbance I had experienced. The room on the ground-floor underneath my bedroom was inspected; it contained a quantity of straw, hay, firewood, and lumber. It was paved with thick wooden slaps, and it was observed that the floors were uneven, as if they had been recently disturbed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
“Ply the board loose,” said the officer, “we shall find something hidden here, I reckon.” Mrs. Winchester was evidently much disturbed. “Stop,” she cried. “I will tell you what lies there; come away out of doors, and you shall know all about it.” “Dig, I say. We will find out for ourselves.” “Let the dead rest,” cried Mrs. Winchester, with a trembling voice. “For the love of Heaven come away, and hear what I shall tell you. It is the body of my son, my only son—let him rest, if rest he can. He was wounded in a quarrel, and brought home to die. I thought he would recover, but there was neither doctor nor priest at hand, an in spite of all that would could do for him he died. Let him alone now, or let a priest first be sent for; he died unconfessed and unacknowledged. No one ever knew of his existence. I had hope to spare him of the Winchester cruse that Annie and his father had succumbed to. He was buried here because I did not want to make a stir about it. Nobody knew of his death nor his existence, and we laid him down quietly; once place I thought was as good as another when once the life was out of him. We could not bare a scandal. That gasping attempt to speak, and that awful groaning—whence did they proceed? It was no living voice. Beyond that I will express no opinion on the subject. I will only say it was the means of saving my life, and at the same time putting an end to the series of bloody deeds which had been committed under my family’s name. Every year, I go to the edge of my estate and drop a pound of silver in a grave, and my prayers go up to Heaven in all sincerity!” #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
I invoke thee, and move thee, and stir thee up O Spirit Berith appear unto my eyes before the circle in the likeness of a man in the names and by the name Iah and Vau, which Adam spake and in the name of God, Agla, which Lot spake: and it was as pleasant deliverers unto him and his house and in the name Ioth which Iacob spake in the voice of the Holy ones who cast one down, and it was also as pleasant deliverers in the anger of his brother and in the name Anaphaxeton, which Aaron spake and it was as the Secret Wisdom and in the name Asher Ehyeh Oriston, which Mosheh spake, and all waters were brining forth creatures who wax strong, which lifted up unto the houses, which destroyed all things and in the name of Elion which Mosheh spake, and it was as stones from the firmament of wrath, such as was not in the ages of Time the beginning of the Earth and in the name of Adni, which Mosheh spake and there appeared creatures of Earth who destroyed what the big stones did not: and in the name Schema Amathia, which Ioshua invoked, and the Sun remained over ye, O ye hills the seats of Gibeon, and in the names Alpha and Omega which Daniel spake, and destoyed Bel and the Dragon: and in the nae Emmanuel which the sons of God sang praises in the midst of the burning plain, and flourished in conquest: and in the name Hagios, and by the Throne of Adni, and in Ischyros, Athanatos, Paracletos: and in O Theos, Ictros, Athanatos. And in these names of the secret truth, Agla, On, Tetragrammaton, do I invoke and move thee. And in these names, and all things that are the names of the God of Secret Truth who liveth for ever, the All-Powerful. I invoke and stie thee up, O’ spirit Berith. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Even by him who spake it was, to whom all creatures are obedient and in the Extreme Justice and Anger of God; and by the veil that is before the glory of God, mighty; and by the creatures of living breath before the Throne whose eyes are east and west; by the fire in the fire of just Glory of the Throne; by the Holy ones of Heaven; and by the secret wisdom of God, I, exalted in power, stir three up. Appear before this circle; obey in all things that I say; in the seal Basdathea Baldachia; and in this Name Primeumaton, which Mosheh spake and the Earth was divided, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram fell in the depth. Therefore obey in all things, O Spirit Berith, obey thy creation. Come thou forth: appear into my eyes; visit us in peace, be friendly; come forth in the 24th of a moment; obey my power, speaking the secrets of Truth in voice and in understanding! I stir thee up, O Spirit Berith, in all things that are the names of glory and power of God the Great One who is greater than understanding, Adni Ihvh Tzabaoth, come forth in the 24th of a moment, let Thy dwelling-place be empty; apply thyself unto the secret truth and obey my power: appear unto my eyes, visit us in peace, speaking the secrets of truth in voice and understanding. I stir thee up and move thee, O spirit Berith, in all the names that I have said, and I add these one and sic names wherein Solomon, the lord of the secret wisdom, placed yourselves, spirits of wrath, in a vessel, Adonai, Preyai Tetragrammaton, Anaphaxeton Ineddenfatoal, Pathtomon and Itemon: appear before this circle; obey in all things my power. And as thou art he that obeys not and comes not I shall be in thy power, O God Most High that liveth for ever, who is the creator of all things n six days, Eie, Saraye, and in my power in the name Prieumaton that ruleth over the palaces of Heaven, Curse Thee, and destroy thy seat, joy, and power; and I bind thee in the depth of Abaddon, to remain until the day of judgment whose end cannot be. And I being thee in the fire of sulphur mingled with poison and the seas of fire and sulphur: come forth, therefore, obey my power and appear before this circle. Therefore come forth, therefore, obey my power and appear before this circle. Therefore come forth in the name of the Holy Ones Zabaoth, Adonia, Amioran. Come! For I am Adonai who stir thee up. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
The attic spaces can get quite dark, but the lights shine through those beautiful glass panes! Come see this and more on the Explore More Tour!
Explore More Tour:
🗝️ Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
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A Smarter Environment Might Make Smarter People!
Diversity is important, and we must keep that in mind and even respect and welcome groups who may not be oppressed. Equality is not for one, it is for all! One of the dangers facing the World is the deterioration of the home and family. The family is one of the greatest institutions of civilization. Subversion of this great institution can do nothing less than bring destruction upon the World. The plan of life and salvation teaches that marriage is for time and eternity. They very purpose of life is that we might take upon ourselves morality, that we might prove ourselves to see if we will do the things that the Lord has commanded up. This is a glorious World in which we live. It was created by God through his only Begotten Son, with its Heavenly bodies and their functions. The Earth with its abundance of flowers, its adornment of beautiful tress and shrubs; the majestic mountains; the mighty blue oceans; the sun and its great functions; the starts and the amazing planets in the Heaven and Victorian architecture—yes, they are all the handiwork of God. All these things bid us have joy. Humans, however, are the greatest of all God’s creations. The Lord God told Moses: “This is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of humans,” reports Moses 1.39. The question, “Do miracles occur?” and the question, “Is the course of Nature absolutely uniform?” are the same question asked in two different ways. Hume, by sleight of hand, treats them as two different questions. He first answers “Yes,” to the question whether Nature is absolutely uniform: and then uses this “Yes” as a ground for answering, “No,” to the question, “Do miracles occur?” The single real question which he set out to answer is never discussed at all. He gets the answer to one form of the question by assuming the answer to one form of the same question. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Probabilities of the kind that Hume is concerned with hold inside the framework of an assumed Uniformity of Nature. When the question of miracles is raised, we are asking about the validity or perfection of the frame itself. No study of probabilities inside a given frame itself tells us how probable it is that the frame itself can be violated. Granted a school time-table with French on Tuesday morning at ten o’clock, it is really probable that Jones, who always skimps his French preparation, will be in trouble next Tuesday, and that he was in trouble on any previous Tuesday. However, what does this tell us about the probability of the time-table’s being altered? To find that out one must eavesdrop in the masters’ common-room. It is no use studying the time table. If we stick to Hume’s method, far from getting what he hoped (namely, the conclusions that all miracles are infinitely improbable) we get a complete deadlock. The only kind of probability he allows holds exclusively within the frame of uniformity. When uniformity is itself in question (and it is in question the moment we ask whether miracles occur) this kind of probability is suspended. And Hume knows no other. By his method, therefore, we cannot say that uniformity is either probable or improbable. We have impounded both uniformity and miracles in a sort of limbo where probability and improbability can never come. This result is equally disastrous for the scientist and the theologian; but along Hume’s lines there is nothing whatever to be done about it. Our only hope, then, will be to cast about for some quite different kind of probability. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Let us for the moment cease to ask what right we have to believe in the Uniformity of Nature, and ask why in fac humans do believe in it. I think the belief has three causes, two of which are irrational. In the first place we are creatures of habit. We expect new situations to resemble old ones. It is a tendency which we share with other terrestrial beings; one can see it working, often to very comic results, in our dogs and cats. In the second place, when we plan our actions, we have to leave out of account the theoretical possibility that Nature might not behave as usual to-morrow, because we can do nothing about it. It is not worth bothering about because no action can be taken to meet it. And what we habitually put out of our minds we soon forget. The picture of uniformity thus comes to dominate our minds without rival and we believe it. Both these causes are irrational and would be just as effective in building up a false belief as in building up a tree. However, I am convinced that there is a third cause. “In science,” said the late Sir Arthur Eddington, “we sometimes have convictions which we cherish but cannot justify; we are influenced by some innate sense of the fitness of things.” This may sound a perilously subjective and aesthetic criterion; but can one doubt that it is a principal source of our belief in Uniformity? A Universe in which unprecedented and unpredictable events were at every moment flung into Nature would not merely be inconvenient to us: it would be profoundly repugnant. We will not accept such a Universe on any terms whatever. It is utterly detestable to us. It shocks our “sense of the fitness of things.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
In advance of experience, in the teeth of many experiences, we are already enlisted on the side of uniformity. For of course science actually proceeds by concentrating not on the regularities of Nature but on her apparent irregularities. It is the apparent irregularity that prompts each new hypothesis. It does do because we refuse to acquiesce in irregularities: we never rest till we have formed and verified a hypothesis which enables us to say that they were not really irregularities at all. Nature as it comes to us looks at first like a mass of irregularities. The stove which lit all right yesterday will not light to-day; the water which was wholesome last year is poisonous this year. The whole mass of seemingly irregular experience could never have been turned into scientific knowledge at all unless from the very start we had brought to it a faith in uniformity which almost no number of disappointments can shake. This faith—the preference—is it a thing we can trust? Or is it only the way our minds happen to work? It is useless to say that it has hitherto always been confirmed by the event. That is no good unless you (at least silently) add, “And therefore always will be”: and you cannot add that unless you know already that our faith in uniformity is well grounded. And that is just what we are now asking. Does this sense of fitness of our correspond to anything in external reality? The answer depends on the Metaphysic one holds. If all that exists is Nature, the great mindless interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely the by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that out sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tells us anything about a reality external to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Our convictions are simply a fact about us—like that colour of our hair. If Naturalism is true, we have no reason to trust our conviction that Nature is uniform. Only if quite a different Metaphysic is true, can it be trusted. If the deepest things in reality, the Fact which is the source of all other facthood, is a thing in some degree like ourselves—if it is a Rational Spirit and we derive our rational spirituality from It—then indeed our conviction can be trusted. Our repugnance to disorder is derived from Nature’s Creator and ours. The disorderly World which we cannot endure to believe in is the disorderly World He would not have endured to create. Our conviction that the time-table will not be perpetually or meaninglessly altered is sound because we have (in a sense) eavesdropped in the Masters’ common-room. The sciences logically require a metaphysic of this sort. Our greatest natural philosopher thinks it is also the metaphysic out of which they originally grew. Professor Whitehead points out that centuries of belief in a God who combined “the personal energy of God” with “the rationality of a Greek philosopher” first produced that firm expectation of systemic order which rendered possible the birther of modern science. Humans became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it. Two significant developments have already appeared—the hypothesis of a lawless sub-nature, and the surrender of the claim that science is true. We may be living nearer than we supposed to the end of the Scientific Age. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
However, if we admit God, must we admit Miracle? Indeed, indeed, you have no security against it. That is the bargain. Theology says to you in effect, “Admit God and with Him the risk of a few miracles, and I in return will ratify your faith in uniformity as regards the overwhelming majority of events.” The philosophy which forbids you to make uniformity absolute is also the philosophy which offers you solid grounds for believing it to be general, to be almost absolute. The Being who threatens Nature’s claim to omnipotence confirms her in her lawful occasions. Give us this ha’porth of tar and we will save the ship. The alternative is really much worse. Try to make Nature absolute and you find that her uniformity is not even probable. By claiming too much, you get nothing. You get the deadlock, as in Hume. Theology offers you a working arrangement, which leaves the scientist free to continue one’s experiments and the Christian to continue one’s prayers. We have also, I suggest, found what we were looking for—a criterion whereby to judge the intrinsic probability of an alleged miracle. We must judge it by our “innate sense of fitness of things,” that same sense of fitness which led us to anticipate that the Universe would be orderly. I do not mean, of course, that we are to use this sense in deciding whether miracles in general are possible: we know that they are on philosophical grounds. Nor do I mean that a sense of fitness will do instead of close inquiry into the historical evidence. As I have repeatedly pointed out, the historical evidence cannot be estimated unless we have first estimated the intrinsic probability of the recorded event. It is in making that estimate as regards each story of the miraculous that our sense of fitness comes into play. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
If in giving such weight to the sense of fitness I were doing anything new, I should feel rather nervous. In reality I am merely giving formal acknowledgement to a principle which is always used. Whatever humans may say, no one really thinks that the Christian doctrine of Resurrection is exactly on the same level with some pious title-tattle about how Mother Egaree Louise miraculously found her second best thimble by the assistance of St. Anthony. The religious and the irreligious are really quite agreed on the point. The whoop of delight with which the sceptic would unearth the story of the thimble, and the “rosy pudency” with which the Christian would keep it in the background, both tell the same tale. Even those who think all stories of miracles absurd think some very much more absurd than others: even those who believe them all (if anyone does) think that some require a specially robust faith. The criterion which both parties are actually using is that of fitness. More than half the disbelief in miracles that exists is based on a sense of their unfitness: a conviction (due, as I have argued, to false philosophy) that they are unsuitable to the dignity of God or Nature or else to the indignity and insignificance of humans. Although God can do all things, He cannot make a think that is corrupt not to have been corrupted. There does not fall under the scope of God’s omnipotence anything that implies a contradiction. Now that the past should not have been implies a contradiction. For as it implies a contradiction to say that Socrates is sitting, and not sitting, so does it to say that he sat, and did not sit. However, to say the he did sit is to say that it happened in the past. To say that he did not sit, is to say that it did not happen. Whence, that the past should not have been, does not come under the scope of divine power. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
This is what Augustine means when he says (Contra Faust. xxix, 5): “Whosoever says, If God is almighty, let Him make what is done as if it were not done, does not see that this is to say: If God is almighty let Hum effect that what is true, by they very fact that it is true, be false.” And the Philosopher says (Ethic. vi, 2): “Of this one thing alone is God deprived—namely, to make undone the things that have been done. Although it is impossible accidentally for the past not to have been, if one considers the past thing itself, as, for instance, the running of Socrates; nevertheless, if the pas thing is considered as past, that it should not have been is impossible, not only in itself, but absolutely since it implies a contradiction. Thus, it is more impossible than the raising of the dead; in which there is nothing contradictory, because this is reckoned impossible in reference to some power, that is to say, some natural power; for such impossible thing do some beneath the scope of divine power. As God, in accordance with the perfection of the divine power, can do all things, and yet some things are not subject to His power, because they fall short of being possible; so, also, if we regard the immutability of the divine power, whatever God could do, He can do now. Some things, however, at one time were in the nature of possibility, whilst they were yet to be done, which now fall short of the nature of possibility, when they have been done. So is God said not to be able to do them, because they themselves cannot be done. God can remove all corruption of the mind and body from a woman who has fallen; but the fact she has been corrupt cannot be removed from her; as also is it impossible that the fact of having sinned or having lost charity thereby removed from the sinner. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
In altering the info-sphere so profoundly, we are destined to transform our own minds as well—the way we think about our problems, the way we synthesize information, the way we anticipate the consequences of our own actions. We are likely to change the role of literacy in our lives. We may even alter our own brain chemistry. Hald’s comment about the ability of computers and chip-studded appliance to converse with us is not as blue-sky as it might seem. “Voice data entry” terminals in existence today almost feel at home with natural language, even thought they are not yet able to detect emotion or context, but forecasts for when this might happen range upwards of twenty years down to a mere five years, and the implications of this development—on both the economy and the culture—could be tremendous. Today millions of people are excluded from the job market because they are functionally illiterate. Even the simplest jobs demand people capable of reading forms, on-off buttons, paychecks, job instructions, and the like. In the Second Wave World the ability to read was the most element skill required by the hiring office. Pretty soon people will have to know how to write computer programs and repair computers to enhance their employment opportunities. It only makes sense. Learning a second or third language does give over a competitive advantage over the next applicant, but if one could also learn the language of computer programming and repair, that would be a huge advantage in the age of information. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Still, illiteracy is not the same as stupidity. We know that illiterate people the World over are capable of mastering highly sophisticated kills in activities as diverse as agriculture, construction, hunting, and music. Many illiterates have prodigious memories and can speak several languages fluently—something most university-educated Americans cannot do. In Second Wave societies, however, illiterates were economically doomed. Literacy, of course, is more than a job skill. It is the doorway to a fantastic Universe of imagination and pleasure. Yet in an intelligent environment, when machines, appliances, and even walls are programmed to speak, literacy could turn out to be less paycheck-linked than it has been for the past three hundred years. Airline reservation clerks, stock-room personnel, machine operators, and repair people may be able to function quite adequately on the job by listening rather than reading, as a voice from the machine tell them, step by step, what to do next or how to replace a broken par. Computers are not superhuman. They need repair and rest. They make errors—sometimes dangerous ones. There is nothing magical about them, and they are assuredly not “spirits” or “souls” in our environment. Yet with all these qualifications, they remain among the most amazing and unsettling of human achievements, for they enhance our mind-power as Second Wave technology enhanced our muscle-power, and we do not know where our own minds will ultimately lead us. As we grow more familiar with the intelligent environment, and learn to converse with it from the time we leave the cradle, we will begin to use computers with a grace and naturalness that is hard for us to imagine today. And they will help all of us—not just a few “super-technocrats”—to think more deeply about ourselves and the World. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Today, when a problem arises, we immediately seek to discover its causes. However, until now even the most profound thinkers have usually attempted to explain things in terms of a relative handful of causal forces. For even the best human mind finds it difficult to entertain, let alone manipulate, more than a few variables at a time. (While we may deal with many factors simultaneously on a subconscious or intuitive level, systematic, conscious thinking about a great many variables is damnably difficult, as anyone who has tried it knows.) In consequence, when faced with a truly complicated problem—like why a child is delinquent, or why inflation ravages an economy, or how urbanization affects the ecology of a nearby river—we tend to focus on two or three factors and to ignore many others that may, singly or collectively, be far more important. Worse yet, each group of experts typically insists on the primal importance of “its own” causes, to the exclusion of others. Faced with the staggering problems of urban decay, the Housing Expert traces it to congestion and a declining housing stock; the Transportation Expert points to the lack of mass transit; the Welfare Expert shows the inadequacy of budgets for day-care centers or social work; the Crime Expert points a finger at the infrequency of police patrols; the Economic Expert shows that high taxes are discouraging business investment; and so on. Everyone high-mindedly agrees that all these problems are somehow interconnected—that they form a self-reinforcing system. However, no one can keep the many complexities in mind while trying to think through a solution to the problem. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Urban decay is only one of a larger number of what Peter Ritner, in The Society of Space, once felicitously termed “weave problems.” He warned that we would increasingly face crises that were “not susceptible to ‘cause and effect analysis” but would require ‘mutual dependence analysis’; not composed of easily detachable elements but of hundreds of cooperating influences from dozens of independent, overlapping sources.” Because it can remember and interrelate large numbers of causal forces, the computer can help us cope with such problems at a deeper than customary level. It can sift vast masses of data to find subtle patterns. It can help assemble “blips” into larger, more meaningful wholes. Given a set of assumptions or a model, it can trace out the consequences of alternative decisions, and do it more systematically and completely than any individual normally could. It can even suggest imaginative solutions to certain problems by identifying novel or hitherto unnoticed relationships among people and resources. Human intelligence, imagination, and intuition will continue in the foreseeable decades to be far more important than the machine. Nevertheless, computers can be expected to deepen the entire culture’s view of causality, heightening our understanding of the interrelatedness of things, and helping us to synthesize meaningful “wholes” out of he disconnected data whirling around us. The computer is one antidote to blip culture. At the same time, the intelligent environment may eventually begin to change not merely the way we analyze problems and integrate information, but even the chemistry of our brains. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Experiments by David Krech, Marian Diamond, Mark Rosenzweig, and Edward Bennett, among others, have down that animals exposed to an “enriched” environment have larger cerebral cortices, more glial cells, bigger neurons, more active neurotransmitters, and larger blood supplies to the brain than animals in a control group. Can it be that, as we complexify the environment and make it more intelligent, we shall make ourselves more intelligent as well? Dr. Donald F. Klein, Director of Research at New York Psychiatric Institute, one of the World’s leading neuropsychiatrists, speculates: “Krech’s work suggests that among the variable affecting intelligence is the richness and responsiveness of the early environment—understimulating, poor, unresponsive—coon learn not to take chances. There is little margin for error, and it actually pays off to be cautious, conservative, uninquisitive or downright passive, none of which works wonders for the brain. On the other hand, kids raised in a smart, responsive environment, which is complex and stimulating, may develop a different set of skills. If kids can call on the environment to do things for them, they become less dependent on parents at a younger age. They may gain a sense of mastery or competence. And they can afford to be inquisitive, exploratory, imaginative, and to adopt a problem-solving approach to life. All of which may promote changes in the brain itself. At this point, all we can do is guess. However, it is not impossible that an intelligent environment could lead us to develop new synapses and a larger cortex. A smarter environment might make smarter people.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
All this, however, only begins to hint at the larger significance of the changes the new info-sphere brings with it. For the de-massification of the media and the concomitant rise of the computer together change our social memory. Self-imagery holds us together by a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. We confirm that we are as we imagine ourselves to be, by acting in a way which confirms it. In this, we may be guided by realistic self-imagery: “This-is-what-I-am,” or we may be guided by more idealized imagery: “This-is-how-I-would-wish-to-be.” There may not always be a lot of difference between these two: fortunate people are guided by ideas about themselves which please them, not crippled by aspects of themselves which shame or hurt them. How do we come to value our selves? More to the point, how do we come to value the ideas about ourselves which we do value? Surely our sense of worth comes initially from (m)others, though of course that is not how the infant part of us experiences it. The infant has right to feel grand. However, in fact our sense of worth depends on a good mirroring facilitating environment. If a mother accepts the faecal gift of proudly—or if she rejects it or is uninterested in it—she is not only responsive to a drive. She is also responding to the child’s forming self. Her attitude, in other words, influences a set of inner experiences that play a crucial role in the child’s future development. She responds—accepting, rejecting, disregarding—to a self that, in giving and offering, seeks confirmation by the mirroring self-object. The child therefore experiences the joyful prideful parental attitude, or the parent’s lack of interest…as the acceptance or rejection of one’s tentatively established, yet still vulnerable, creative-productive-active self. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
If the mother rejects this self just as it begins to assert itself as a center of creative-productive initiative (especially of course if her rejection or lack of interest is only one link in a long chain of rebuffs and disappointments emanating from her pathogenically unemphatic personality) or if her inability to respond to her child’s total self leads her to a fragmentation—producing preoccupation with its faeces—to the detriment of the cohesion-establishing involvement with her total child, her faeces-producing, learning, controlling, maturing, total child—then the child’s self will be depleted and it will abandon the attempt to obtain the joys of self-assertion. It will, for reassurance, turn to the pleasures it can derive from the fragments of its body self. This search for good feelings then no only fails to consolidate a valued self-image, but also leads to further fragmentation. In order to escape from depression, the child runs from the unemphatic or absent self-object to oral, anal and phallic sensation, which it experiences with great intensity. Disintegration—de-differentiation—is the fear at the heart of the narcissistically injured, that is of those whose self-imagery is a source of frequent misery to them. They lack that which gives more fortunate people a constant sense of their own well-being and worthwhileness. While the satisfaction of its needs gives the child a sense of well-bring and strength, what eventually gives it its integration and its identity is being treated as a whole person when it is not as yet feeling whole. For this to happen, people must relate to the baby as a person, and not as a series of chores or achievements. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
When the baby is treated as a collection of “part-objects,” there is likely to be less integration and less integrity. Very different consequences awaits the child whose oral, anal, and phallic sensations are welcomed as valid expressions of that child’s whole self (even before the child has a whole self). The empathic, mirroring, reflecting function of the adult then ensures pride in these functions without giving any of them eminence above the child as a living and loving human being—the whole person is validated. For people to value themselves, so that they can run their lives according to what they value, they have first to have been valued as persons. And they must have been loved for being, not for doing this or that—it is this which gives them the sense that they are valuable people rather than a jumble of bits. Initially, other people give the fortunate infant this identity by showing love and respect. In due course, this sense of value, given by (m)others, becomes self-respect, and becomes capable of acting as an integrating and guiding principle. This process is called “personalizing,” because it is the opposite of “depersonalizing.” By the late 1970s the postwar pattern seemed set. European Americans, for a variety of racial, educational, life-style, and tax reason, would continue to out-migrate to the suburbs. Non-European Americans, on the other hand, with few exceptions would become ever-more concentrated in the cities. The assumption that this is the inevitable future continues to be “popular wisdom” today, in spite of a quarter of a century of European American inner-city revitalization and gentrification and African American, Latino, and Asian suburbanization. During the 1970s it became increasingly apparent that in spite of the fact that both scholarly and popular attention were focused elsewhere, there were major changes in non-European American suburbanization. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
The fair housing legislation of 1968 legally opened the suburbs to middle-class non-European Americans. While racial steering still occurred, the housing legislation meant that African American, Latino, and Asian suburbanization was no longer de facto restricted to predominately Non-European American suburbs. The result was the beginning of African American and others experiencing a middle-class exodus to the suburbs. Not only did the non-dominant culture of America’s population grow faster than that in the cities; nationally, the rate of African American suburbanization was twice as fast as the previous decade. During the 1950s and 1960s, the percentage of African Americans who lived in suburbs barely changed. The 1970s marked a real turning point, with the African American population living outside cities growing faster than that within. In contrast to earlier decades, the 1970s showed the African American suburban population increasing three times as rapidly as the European American population. Washing, D. C., for example, saw its African decline 17 percent during the decade. By contrast, suburban Fairfax, in Virginia, saw a 119 percent increase in its African American residents, while the percentage increases for suburban Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland were 136 and 170 percent. By 1980 the latter county had 248,000 African American residents. Moderate- and middle-income non-European Americans were leaving the city for the suburbs. For upwardly mobile African Americans, as for European Americans, owning a home in the suburbs because a symbol of success in climbing the economic ladder. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
However, while the legal restriction of middle-class African Americans to urban high-risk neighbourhoods was no more, housing discrimination remained. De jure housing discrimination on the basis of race was no longer operative but de facto discrimination, particularly on the individual level, remained a fact of life. Nonetheless, in spite of de facto discrimination, there was an opportunity for middle-class families who could afford to do so left the cities and moved into suburban neighbourhoods. The leavers sought better housing and better educational opportunities for themselves and their children. As a consequence, middle-class African American rates of suburbanization accelerated at the same time as European American suburban growth rates were declining. According to the Bureau of the Census figures, the European American suburban population increased 13.1 percent during the decade of the 1970s, while the African American population increased 42.7 percent. The European American suburban increase was exactly half the 26.1 percent figure of the 1960 to 1970 period and only a fraction of the rapid growth of European American suburbanites in the 1950s. African American suburban growth during the 1970s was not just a regional phenomenon; it too place in all areas of the country. A pattern seemed to be developing in which African American population shifts trailed European American changes by a decade or so but followed the same general patterns. One example of this African American population shift was that several of the cities having the largest African American populations, such as Philadelphia, Washington, Cleveland, and St. Louis, saw their African American populations actually decline. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
During the 1970–1980-decade, African Americans departed from Washington, D.C., at twice the rate of European Americans. Moreover, those departing were disproportionately people in their twenties and thirties with young children. One consequence of the upswing in African American suburbanization was that by 1980, African Americans numbered 12 percent the national population and represented 6.1 percent of the suburban population. By 1990, the African American figure had increased to 6.6 percent. As of 2021, the population of African Americans in the suburbs is 27 percent. Overall, suburbs are 35 percent non-European American. Some argue that non-European Americans are still underrepresented in the suburbs. However, in general, many people like to buy homes in middle-class and upper-middle class communities that have a high number of college educated, professional European Americans because they tend to keep to themselves, are peaceful, quiet, and keep their properties in outstanding condition. So, it is not only because they tend to have higher property values, but also because they are busy working and tend to care about their reputations in the community. Nonetheless, the underrepresentation of African Americans in the suburbs is not just because of income or educational differences. African Americans of every income level are highly segregated from European Americans at the same economic level. Political distinctions necessarily lend themselves to civil distinctions. The growing inequality between the people and its leaders soon makes itself felt among private individuals, and is modified by them in a thousand ways according to passions, talents and events. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
The magistrate cannot usurp illegitimate power without producing proteges for oneself to whom one is forced to yield some part of it. Moreover, citizens allow themselves to be oppressed only insofar as they are driven by blind ambition; and looking more below than above them, domination becomes more dear to the than independence, and they consent to wear chains in order to be able to give them in turn to others. It is very difficult to reduce to obedience someone who does not seek to command; and the most adroit politician would never succeed in subjecting humans who wanted merely to be free. However, inequality spreads easily among ambitious and cowardly souls always ready to run the risks of fortune and, almost indifferently, to dominate or serve, according to whether it becomes favourable unfavourable to them. Thus it is that there must have come a time when the eyes of people ere beguiled to such an extent that its leaders merely had to say to the humblest of humans, “Be great, you and all your progeny,” and one immediately appeared great to everyone as well as in one’s own eyes, and one’s descendants were elevated even more in proportion as they were at some remove from one. The more remote and uncertain the cause, the more the effect increased; the more loafers one could count in a family, the more illustrious it became. If this were the place to go into detail, I would easily explain how [even without government involvement] the inequality of prestige and authority becomes inevitable among private individuals, as soon as they are united in one single society and are focused to make comparisons among themselves and to take into account the differences they discover in the continual use they have to make of one another. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
These differences are of several sorts, but in general, since wealth, nobility or rank, power and personal meri are the principal distinctions by which someone is measured in society, I would prove that the agreement or conflict of these various forces is the surest indication of a well- or ill-constituted state. I would make it apparent that among these four types of inequality, since personal qualities are the origin of all the others, wealth is the last to which they are ultimately reduced, because it readily serves to buy all the rest, since it is the most immediately useful to well-being and the easiest to communicate. This observation enables one to judge rather precisely the extent to which each people is removed from its primitive institution, and of the progress it has made toward the final stage of corruption. I would note how much that universal desire for reputation, honours, and preferences, which devours us all, trains and compares our talents and strengths; how much it excites and multiplies the passions; and, making all humans competitors, rivals, or rather enemies, how many setbacks, successes and catastrophes of every sort it causes every day, by making so many contenders run the same course. I would show that it is to this ardor for making oneself the topic of conversation, to this furor to distinguish oneself which nearly always keeps us outside ourselves, that we own what is best and worst among humans, our virtues and vices, our sciences and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers, that is to say, a multitude of bad things against a small number of good ones. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Finally, I would prove that is one sees a handful of powerful and rich humans at the height of greatness and fortune while the mob grovels in obscurity and misery, it is because the former prize the things they enjoy only to the extent that the others are deprived of them; and because, without changing their position, they would cease to be happy, if the people ceased to be miserable. However, these details alone would be the subject of a large work in which one would weigh the advantages and the disadvantages of every government relative to rights of the state of nature, and where one would examine all the different faces under which inequality has appeared until now and many appear in [future] ages, according to the nature of these governments and the upheavals that time will necessarily bring in its wake. We would see the multitude oppressed from within as a consequence of the very precautions it had taken against what menaced it from without. We would see oppression continually increase, without the oppressed ever being able to know where it would end or what legitimate means would be left for them to stop it. We would see the rights of citizens and national liberties gradually die out, and the protests of the weak treated like seditious murmurs. We would see politics restrict the honour of defending the common cause to a mercenary portion of the people. We would see arising from this the necessity for taxes, the discouraged farmer leaving one’s field, even during peacetime, and leaving his plow in order to gird oneself with a sword. We would see the rise of fatal and bizarre rules in the code of honour. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
We would see the defenders of the homeland sooner or later become its enemies, constantly holding a dagger over their fellow citizens, and there would come a time when we would hear the say to the oppressor of their country: “If you order me to plunge my sword into my brother’s breast or my father’s throat, and into my pregnant wife’s entrails, and steal the gold coins from my uncle’s purse, I will do so, even though my right hand is unwilling.” When despair for the World grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not takes their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the World, and am free. Flee, my Beloved, till our love shall please Thee, then turn in pity. Base kings would sweep us hence;–shall their despoiling not appease Thee? O tear their roots up from our ruined heap! Then raise our rampart; let our songful children call, “Behold, He standeth now behind our wall.” Flee, my Beloved, till the day be breaking beyond the end of vision—then arise and chase these shadows,–him Thou wast forsaking, despised, shall be exalted, high and wise, sprinkling the nations.—Bare Thine art, Lord, when we cry, “The voice of my Beloved soundeth nigh.” Flee, my Beloved,–like a roe be flying till Thou reveal the end of mine account. Despoiled, and for my crown of beauty sighing, contemned, but longing for the glorious mount,–so with no leader and no prophet leave me, with yet no Tishbite to renew my fame; but plead my cause at last; the bonds that grieve me break; and my foe shall turn away in shame when these that do reproach me and deceive me I answer with sweet words that speak Thy name: “Lo, this is my Beloved, my Redeemer, Lover, Friend, my father’s God, my God until the end.” For the fathers’ sake Thou wilt save the children, yea, and bring redemption unto their children’s children. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hast redeemed America. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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What a Lovely Day for a Bit of Mystery!
It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves. I hear your words, My dear Devout; now you hear Mine. You will find them not only suasive, but also persuasive. In fact, they exceed in wisdom all the accumulated knowledge of Philosophy since the World began. My particular words for you today are “spirit and life.” My Beloved Disciple recorded them in his Gospel (6.63), but Humanity cannot seem to make any sense out of them. Important words, they should not be exegeted smugly, if I may allude to that hoary Preacher of Ecclesiastes (9.17), but listened to respectfully. That is to say, they should be received with all humility and yet great affection. Our seventeenth-century ancestors differed from us in most ways, but in nothing did they differ more than in their attitude toward the truth. In this they were closer to the Middle Ages than to us. For them a lie—a breaking of one’s faith—was the worst of sins. Today, many do not regard lying as a serious moral wrong. If the word “morality” is mentioned we think immediately of our bodily appetites, especially of pleasures of the flesh, barbiturates, paraphernalia, liquor and contraband. If the word “morality” is mentioned we think immediately of our bodily appetites very seriously—perhaps too seriously—but we do not regard lying as a mortal sin. We are one of the few civilizations in which entire professions (TV news media, for example, and public relations) are seriously devoted to bending the truth. Dante, in his Divine Comedy, divided sins into three kinds: those of lust, those of violence, and those of fraud. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
The sins of lust—those we tend to take most seriously—were those that Dante thought most trivial; the sins of fraud—which we take lightly—were for Dante the worst of all. To create a “credibility gap” as our revealing phrase has it (as though the only relevant issue is whether a statement will compel belief), to lie, was for the medieval humans to break one’s faith, and it was faith which constituted the bonds between humans and their fellow humans, between humans and the state, between humans and God. To lie was to reduce all the most valuable relationships of life to chaos. And the seventeenth-century Puritan, like Dante, was still living by his faith. Just how important the truth was to the seventeenth-century Puritan may be gathered from the fact that all of the innocent persons who were executed—and the majority of those executed were innocent—could have saved themselves by lying. After the first execution—that of Bridget Bishop—took place in June it became obvious to everyone that persons who confessed, like Tituba and Dorcas Good, were not being brought to trial. Thus any suspected person might have one’s life by confessing. Twenty people died, nineteen of them hanged and one pressed for refusing to plead. Bridget Bishop, Mammy Redd, and George Burroughs were three of these. One cannot be at all certain of the guilt or innocence of several more. However, at least a dozen now seem to be clearly innocent. Twelve people, and probably more, chose to die rather than belie themselves. It is impressive evidence of the Puritan’s attachment to the truth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Yet it was not really so simple as that, because the truth was not easy to find in Salem in 1692. The greatest difficulty was created by the genuineness of the afflicted persons’ fits. Their sufferings were so convincing that they often shook the confidence of the accused. One example is William Hobbes, who began by stoutly denying that he had anything to do with the afflicted girls’ convulsions. When he looked at them they fell down in fits, and Hathorne accused him of overlooking them (id est, of he evil eye), yet still he denied it. Abigail Williams cried out that she saw his specter going to hunt Mercy Lewis “and immediately said Mercy fell into a fit and diverse others.” “Can you now deny it?” said Hathorne. “I can deny it to my dying day,” said William Hobbes. However, he did not. Here, after all, were people in hideous convulsions, and saying that his specter was the cause. How could this be? Hathorne suggested that the Devil might be able to use Hobbes’ specter because of Hobbes’ sins; he had not observed either public or private worship. Might not the Devil have taken advantage of that? Hobbes “was silent a considerable space—then said yes.” The girls’ fits shook not only Hobbes’ confidence in himself, but also his confidence in his daughter Abigail, the wild young girl who had boasted that she had sold herself “body and soul to the Old Boy.” Hathorne wanted to know whether Hobbes had not known for a long time that his daughter was a witch. “No, sir,” was the reply. “Do you think she is a witch now?” asked Hathorne. And all that Hobbes could say was, “I do no know.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Abigail Faulkner’s experience was similar. At her first examination, on August 11, she firmly denied that she had anything to do with the girls’ afflictions. When she looked at them they fell down in fits, and Hathorne asked her, “Do you not see?” Yes, she saw. However, she had nothing to do with it. Yet she would not doubt that the girls were suffering, and saw no reason to doubt their word that it was her specter afflicting them. Therefore the Devil must be appearing in her form: “It is the Devil does it in my shape.” However, by August 30 she was no longer so sure of her innocence. It was true, she said, that she had been angry at what people said when her cousin, Elizabeth Johnson, had been arrested. She had felt malice toward the afflicted persons then because they were the cause of her cousin’s arrest. She has wished them ill, and “her spirit being raised she did pinch her hands together.” Perhaps the Devil had taken advantage of that to pinch the girls, thus exploiting her malice. Even those whose confidence was not shaken bore testimony to the impressiveness of the fits. Mary Easty knew that has had not bewitched the girls, and she was confident as well of the innocence of her sisters, Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyse. Yet she had to grant that there was something preternatural in the girls’ behaviour. “It is an evil spirit,” she said, “but whether it be witchcraft I do not know.” Even George Burroughs, who had been audacious enough to boast of occult powers, found himself stunned by the girls’ behaviour. “Being asked what he thought of these things he answered it was an amazing and humbling Providence, but he understood nothing of it.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Indeed, these courtroom fits were so convincing that most of the indictments were for witchcraft committed during the preliminary examination rather than for the offenses named in the original complain. The typical order of events in the Salem witchcraft cases was: the swearing out of a complaint for acts of witchcraft; a preliminary examination during which the afflicted persons had convulsive fits; an indictment for acts of witchcraft performed during the preliminary examination; and the trial. The direct cause of these fits, in the courtroom or out of it, was, of course, not witchcraft itself, but the afflicted person’s fear of witchcraft. If fits were occasioned by fear of someone like Bridget Bishop, who was actually practicing witchcraft, they might also be occasioned by fear of someone who was only suspected of practicing it. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! The Winchester Estate had belonged to the family ever since the reign of George Washington, and there was a curious old wing and a cloistered quadrangle still remaining of the original edifice, and in excellent preservation. The rooms at the end of the house were ornate, and somewhat darksome and gloomy, it is true; but, though rarely used they were perfectly habitable, and were of service on great occasions when the Winchester was crowded with guests. The central portion of the Winchester had been rebuilt in the reign James K. Polk, and was of noble and palatial proportions. The southern wing, and a long music-room with thirteen tall narrow daisy-stained glass windows added on to it, were as modern as the time. Altogether, the Winchester was a very splendid mansion with 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, and even once had a nine-story tower. It was one of the chief glories of our country. All the land in the Winchester estate, and for a long way beyond its boundaries, belonged to the Winchester family. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The Winchester estate grounds actually expanded all the way down to Steven’s Creek Boulevard. The community church was once within the park walls. The former estate was actually much larger than it is today, it was composed of 500 to 600 rooms at one time, but the 1906 Earthquake brought down the nine-story tower and much of the fourth floor with it. The death of William Wirt Winchester left his son, William Wirt Winchester II, unprovided for, and he was fain to go out into the bleak unknown World, and earn his living in a position of dependence—a dreadful thing for a Winchester to be obliged to do. Out of respect for the traditions and prejudices of his race, he made it his business to seek employment abroad, where the degradation of one solitary Winchester was not so likely to inflict shame upon the ancient house to which he belonged. Happily for himself, he had been carefully educated, and had industriously cultivated the usual modern accomplishments in the calm retirement of the University of Cambridge. He was so fortunate as to obtain a situation at Vienna, in a German family of high rank; and remained there for seven years, laying aside year by year a considerable portion of his liberal salary. When his pupils had grown up, his kind mistress procured for him a still more profitable position at St. Petersburg, where he remained for five more years, at the end of which time he yielded to a yearning that had been long growing upon him—an ardent desire to see his dear old country home once more. He loved the soil from which he had sprung. In all of her letter for some time past, his mother, Mrs. Winchester begged that whenever he felt himself justified in coming home, he would pay a long visit to the Winchester Estate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“I wish you could come home at Christmas,” she wrote, in the autumn of the year of which I am speaking. “We shall be very gay, and I expect all kinds of pleasant people at the Winchester. When he arrived there, the Old Winchester was in its glory, at about nine o’clock on a clear starlit night. A light frost whitened the broad sweeping lawns, 12,000 boxwood hedges that were winding through the garden, and the other 1,500 plants, trees and shrubs. From the music room at the end of the southern wing, to the heavily framed gothic windows of the old rooms on the north, there shone one blaze of light. The scene was reminiscent of some unusual place in a German legend; and young William half expected to see the lights fade out all in a moment, and long shingled façade wrapped in sudden darkness. The old butler, whom he remembered from his very infancy, and who did not seem to have grown a day older during his twelve years’ exile, came out of the dining-room as the footman opened the hall-door for him, and gave him a cordial welcome, nay insisted upon helping to bring in his portmanteau with his own hands, an act of unusual condescension, the full force of which was felt by his subordinates. “It is a real treat to see your pleasant face once more, William,” said this faithful retainer, as he assisted William to take off his travelling-cloak. “You have not aged a day since you used to live at the Winchester twelve year ago, and you are looking uncommon well; and, Lord love your heart, sir, how pleased they all will be to see you!” They arrived at last at a very comfortable room—a square tapes-tried chamber, with high ceiling support by a great mahogany beam. The room looked cheery enough, with a bright fire roaring in the wide chimney; but it had a somewhat ancient aspect, which the superstitiously inclined might have associated with possible ghosts. “We are in the East Wing, are we not?” young William asked. “This room seems quite strange to me. if I have ever been here before, I doubt it.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
“Very likely not, sir. Yes, this is the old East Wing that your mother once had boarded up. Your window looks out into the old stable-yard, where the kennel used to be in the time of your grandfather, when the Winchester was even a finer place than it is now. We are so full of company this winter, you see, sir, that we are obliged to make use of all these rooms. You will have no need to feel lonesome. There is Captain and Mrs. Foster in the next room to this, and the two Miss Griffins in the blue room opposite.” (Some believe that reopening the East Wing is what upset the spirits and caused the 1906 Earthquake.) Young William admired the perfect comfort of his chamber. Every modern appliance had been added to the ornate and ponderous furniture of an age gone by, and the combination produced a very pleasant effect. As he awoke in the morning and opened the door, Mrs. Winchester sailed in, looking radiant in a dark-green velvet dress richly trimmed with old point lace. Above her beauty, she had a charm of expression which was to most more rare and delightful than her beauty of feature and complexion. She put her arms around her son, and hugged him. “I have only this moment been told of your arrival, my dear William,” she said; “you look just like your father. My dear child, I have been looking forward so anxiously to your coming, and I should not have liked to see you for the first time before all those people. Welcome home. Remember, William, this house is always to be your home, whenever you have need of one.” William, being a hunting man. Had, indeed, a secret horror of the sport; for more than one scion of the house had perished untimely in the hunting-field. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
The family had not been altogether a lucky one, in spite of its wealth and prosperity. It was not often that goodly heritage had descended to the Winchesters or their only son, William. Death in some form or other—on too many occasions a violent death—had come between the heir and his inheritance. And when one pondered on the dark pages in the story of the house, many wonder if Mrs. Winchester was ever troubled by morbid forebodings about her only and fondly loved son. Was there a ghost at the Winchester—that spectral visitant without which the state and plendour of a grand old house seem scarcely complete? Yes, many have heard vague hints of some shadowy presence that had been seen on rare occasions within the precincts of the Winchester mansion. Those whom were questioned were prompt to assure investigators that they had seen nothing. They had heard stories of the past—foolish legends, most likely, not worth listening to. On the property, there was once a stable-yard, a spacious quadrangle, surrounded by the closed doors of stable and dog-kennels: low massive buildings of grey stones, with the ivy creeping over them here and there, and with an ancient moss-grown look, that gave them a weird kind of interest. This range of stabling must have been disguised for a long time. The stables that were more recently used were a pile of handsome red-brick buildings at the other extremity of the house, to the rear of the music room, and forming a striking feature in the back view of the Winchester. According to legend, some believed that spectral entities, had been haunting the Winchester estate for centuries. Several large black dogs, with eyes large as saucers, or something flaming, appear and disappear, often without a trace. In many of the legends, the dogs are malevolent: assaulting guests, frightening livestock to death, attacking other dogs, and heralding death or disaster. Perhaps that is why the heirs of Winchester who have come to an untimely end have all died tragically. Oliver Winchester was killed in a dual. William Winchester I was murdered; and William Winchester II broke his back on his return home to the Winchester Estate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The butler concealed the death of William Winchester II from Sarah, telling her simply that he was called away and said he would never return. Her heart was so broken that she wrote him out of existence, as if her had never been born. After the heartbreaking news that her only son has abandoned her, Mrs. Winchester was sitting in her blue séance room; half meditating, half dozing, mixing broken snatches of thought with brief glimpses of dreaming, when she was startled into wakefulness by a sound that was strange to her. It was a huntsman’s horn—a few low plaintive noes on a huntsman’s horn—notes which had a strange far-away sound, that was more unearthly than anything her ears ever heard. She thought of the music in Der Freischutz; but the weirdest snatch of melody Weber ever wrote had not so ghastly a sound as these few simple noes conveyed to her ear. She stood transfixed, listening to that awful music. It had grown dusk, her fire was almost out, and the room in shadow. As she listened, a light suddenly flashed on the wall before her. The light was as unearthly as the sound—a light that never shone from Earth or Sky. She ran to the window; for his ghastly shimmer flashed through the window upon the opposite wall. The great gates of the stable-yard were open, and men in scarlet coats were riding in, a pack of hounds crowding in before them, obedient to the huntsman’s whip. The whole scene was gleams of a lantern carried by one of the men. It was this lantern which had shone upon the tapestried wall. She saw the stable doors opened one after another; gentlemen and grooms alighting from their horses; the dogs driven into their kennel; the helpers hurrying to and fro; and that strange wan lantern-light glimmering hither and tither was the gathering dusk. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
However, there was no sound of horse’s hoof or of human voices—not one yelp or cry from the vicious looking hounds with flaming eyes. Since those faint far-away sounds of the horn had died out in the distance, the ghastly silence had been unbroken. As Mrs. Winchester stood at her window quite calmly and watched while the group of men and animals in the yard below noiselessly dispersed. There was nothing supernatural in the manner of their disappearance. The figures did not vanish nor melt into empty air. One by one she saw the horses led into their separate quarters; one by one the redcoats strolled out of the gates, and the grooms departed, some one way, some another. The scene, but for its noiselessness, was natural enough; and had she been a stranger in her own home, she might have fancied that those figures were real—those stables in full occupation. However, she knew that stable-yard and all its range of building to have been disused for more than half a century. Could she believe that, without an hour’s warning, the long-deserted quadrangle could be filled—the empty stalls tenanted? Had some hunting-party from the neighbourhood sought shelter there, glad to escape the pitiless rain? That was impossible, she thought. And yet the noiselessness, the awful sound of that horn—the strange unearthly gleam of that lantern! A cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and she trembled in every limb. Mrs. Winchester was pale as a ghost and trembling. Mrs. Winchester had kept the secret. That evening, the butler came to her. “Mrs. Winchester, there is no use in trying to hide it from you any longer. Your son was killed in the hunting-field, brought home dead one December night, an hour after his father and the rest of the party had come home to the Winchester. He was found by a labouring-man, poor lad, lying in a ditch with his back broken, and his horse beside him staked.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Shortly after Mr. Winchester Sr. never rode to hounds again, though he was passionately fond of hunting. Dogs and horses were sold, and the north quadrangle had been empty from that day. Some evil have come upon the Winchester mansion, it was not in human power to prevent its coming. Some had beheld the shadows of the dead. Sudden terror overcomes some visitors, even to this day. There are reports of an ominous danger, as people’s hearts grow cold while on tour. Staff have been startled by seeing a man, with is hat in his hand not in evening costume; a man with a pale anxious-looking face, peering cautiously into the room. Their first thought is of evil; but in the next moment than man disappears, and they see no more of him. Sometimes when flowers are placed in the house, people see the drooping moments later and lights dying out one by one in the brass sconces against the walls. It is no wonder Mrs. Winchester shut herself from the outer World, burying herself almost as completely as a hermit in its cell. While great wealth brings some people joy, there is some times a hefty fee. Be careful what you wish for, you never know who or what you might invite in your doors. I invoke and move thee, O thou Spirit Gusion and being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name Beralensis, Baldachinesis, Paumachia, and Apologiae Sedes: and of the mighty ones who govern, spirits, Liachidae and ministers of the House of Death: and by the Chief Prince of the seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee and by invoking conjure thee. And being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name of him who spake and it was, to whom all creatures and things obey. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Moreover I, whom God made in the likeness of God, who is the creator according to his living breath, stir thee up in the name which is the voice of wonder of the mighty God, El, strong and unspeakable, O thou Spirit Gusion. And I say to thee obey, in the name of him who spake and it was; and in every one ye, O ye names of God! Moreover in the names Adonai, El, Elohim, Elohi, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, Zabaoth, Elion, Iah, Tetragrammaton, Shaddai, Lord God Most High, I stir thee up; and in our strength I say Obey! O Spirit Gusion. Appear unto His servants in a moment; before the circle in the likeness of man; and visit me in peace. And in the ineffable name Tetragrammaton Iehovah, I say, Obey! whose mighty sound being exalted in power the pillars are divided, the winds of the firmament groan aloud; the sire burns not; the Earth moves in Earthquakes; and all things of the house of Heaven and Earth and the dwelling-place of darkness are as Earthquakes, and are in torment, and are confounded in thunder. Come forth, O Spirit Gusion, in a moment: let thy dwelling-place be empty, apply unto us the secrets of Truth and obey my power. Come forth, visit us in peace, appear unto my eyes; be friendly: Obey the living breath! For I stir thee up in the name of God of Truth who liveth for ever, Helioren. Obey the living breath, therefore continually unto the end as my thoughts appear to my eyes: therefore be friendly: speaking the secrets of Truth in voice and in understanding. Let it be so, Truefold, whatever ill news has come to us we will hear it together. He put is arm round his wife’s waist. Both were pale as marble, both stood in stony stillness waiting for the bow that was to fall upon them. It is said that perhaps you will see a glimpse of Mrs. Winchester and Mr. Winchester, Sr., while on tour, if you repeat the invocation thirteen times before your visit. Life is broken for her, there hah passed a glory from Earth, and that upon all pleasures and joys of this World she looks with the solemn calm of one for whom all things are dark with the shadow of a great sorrow. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
We’re one week away from Friday the 13th! Missed out on tickets for Flashlight Tours? Don’t worry, we have ghoulishly fun plans All Hallows’ Eve 👻🎃🍿🏠
All Hallows’ Eve:
👉 link in bio. 🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
Randolph Harris II International Institute 