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The Mystery Has Never Been Solved!
Much of the ceremonial rituals that took place in The Winchester Mansion goes back to the Knights Templar. The Order of the Knights Templar can be traced in part to the Templars. And yet, the Knights Templar are also the claimed ancestors of satanists, a fact which is decidedly hard to prove, though within an organization so large there may well have been diverse groups who followed their own calling. The knights, largely from France and England, joined the order over a period of many years. They had a system of leadership with a Grand Master, knights, chaplains, sergeants, craftsmen, seneschals and commanders. The order had its own clergy and its meetings were held in the strictest secrecy. Unmarried knights wore a white mantle with a red cross while others wore a black mantle with a red cross. Membership was mostly male, and established orders in virtually every Latin country, drawing people from all over Europe. It also became a great trading agency and though originally the Roman Catholic Church actually supported a number of secret societies who were Christian-based, the power of the Templars began to wield became the fear of successive popes and of European noblemen. Philip IV of France began a series of attacks against the Knights Templar and his campaign was given official blessing by the election of Pope Clement V (1305-1314) who renounced the Templars as immoral heretics. Many people know that Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester had a Famous Blue Séance Room where she carried on her rituals and had a series of colourful robes she wore. However, the mystery has never been solved as to why she built the strangest mansion in the World? #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Stories were already circulating that Mrs. Winchester, behind the closely guarded doors of her mansion, indulged in the most offensively blasphemous rituals said to be directed totally towards the reversal of Christianity itself. She was said to worship a goat-like idol, the Baphomet, anointing it with the fat of pigs, while the Knights used the fat of murdered children, roasting children and eating them, laying women across their altars for the most violent forms of indecencies to satisfy their lust for life-blood; they were said to have indulged in homosexual rites and other various claims alleged they stamped the Holy Cross under foot, spat and urinated upon it and used the Mass as the basis for their own worship—later to be known universally as the Black Mass. Actual proof of these events is largely contained in the confessions received under torture which followed the arrest of Mrs. Winchester’s butler Albert Pike. He and 140 of his brethren were imprisoned in Santa Clara Valley, tortured and then executed en masse. Algernon Blackwood, under extreme torture, confessed to speaking against Christianity but denied depravity. In 1890, he was brough out on to the nine-story tower of The Winchester Mansion and ordered to repeat his confession in front of the villagers and accept a sentence of life imprisonment. On the balcony of the tower, he burst into a rage of anger and protested innocence of all charges and thus signed his own death warrant. The order was given that he should be taken into the fruit orchard and burned at the stake. As the flames licked his body, he summoned Mrs. Winchester and, in his dying, breathe to meet him at the Bar of Heaven. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Diocesan priest, Father Peter Yorke, who was then editor of the Archiocesan newspaper, The Monitor, emerged sending orders to every village where the Templars operated, instructing that they should be arrested and charges of heresy and sorcery brought against them. He published a series of exposes, and hundreds of knights were brought to trail, tortured, and executed. The vast wealth of the Templars working at The Winchester Mansion were accused of devil worship. What remained to be handed down and revived, especially in the twenty-first century, were the rumors of ritual and dastardly happenings which many of today’s extremist followers of the Knights Templar seem prepared to believe and accept with some enthusiasm. One of the more important traditions handed down by Mrs. Winchester concerns an instruction for future secret societies. On the day the Knights planned to burn to death Father Yorke, a pact was made and communicated to all surviving Knights who had now gone to ground. The instruction was clear—that the Order of the Knight Templar should be continued in perpetuity. It is said that the surviving Templars should thereafter fight for the destruction of the papacy and prevent Mrs. Winchester from being stripped of her wealth and murdered. These orders, it was said, were handed on to descendants of the order and the Winchester family, who at various points in history have included satanists and a diverse calling of occultists. What remained of the Winchester family and the Knights went into the deepest secrecy, surfacing occasionally and surrounded constantly by rumour, but little discernible fact. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The Illuminati came to fortify The Winchester Mansion, which had reached seven-stories high, with 600 rooms, after the 1906 Earthquake. While it was true that Mrs. Winchester left her mansion, there are more reasons as to the why. The avowed spiritualist, Mrs. Winchester, had constructed a boathouse and erected a huge mountain of Earth upon which a new mansion she had planned to build would be erected. It was to overlook the bay, an immense seawall and costly cannel system, with proper floodgates, through which the Winchester private fleet of launches and yachts were to wend their way. It was said that Mrs. Winchester was being haunted by vicious spirits and that death would be her penalty for leaving her home. Her existence was mythical because only half a dozen people had seen her. A sheriff had been striving for the past three months to serve upon her a summons to appear in court in proceedings that a real estate dealer had brought upon her. Bloodhounds roamed the grounds of the mansion and polite Asian staff answered telephone calls. Mrs. Winchester was always alone save for a bodyguard. She was wealth as few women were and found her pleasure in superintending a half dozen workmen, who for seven years had gone from wing to wing of the mansion, constructing one month what they were called to destroy on the following month. Her mansion was considered the pride of the county and the basis for mysterious legends. The Illuminati came were concerned about a group of subversives who were discovered to be using occult practices and rituals to attack Mrs. Winchester and her mansion. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
E.W. McClellan of Burlingame, the contractor of 98 acres of land purchased by Mrs. Winchester, was holding it and refused to give it up because he believed she was the lead of a secret society working to “establish Satan’s kingdom on Earth,” an accusation which was a direct throw-back to the age of the Knights Templar; and that dictum still exists today. The Psychosophical Society stated that The Winchester Mansion had existed since the sixteenth century and comprised the World League of Illuminati. They wanted to prevent Mrs. Winchester from passing on her palatial estates in all their purity to the next generation. The hotbed of intrigue, rumour and gossip directed at The Winchester Mansion supposedly involved the death/assassination of some, the suicide/murder of others over the scandals invariably linked to Propaganda 2 (P2) Lodge and various Intelligence agencies like the KGB and the CIA with a scandal which is too immense to expound here, nor is it suitably for this part of the report. What can be said, however, is that occult groups working within the traditions of the Illuminati represent a definite consideration of these events. Mrs. Winchester’s husband, William Wirt Winchester, was a master of mathematics and the possessor of certain secret occult knowledge. He gathered seven disciples around him and went into the World of the brotherhood to perform good works. Staff have described that 120 years after his death, his perfectly preserved corpse was found in one of the many buildings of The Winchester Mansion. Because of the secrecy and the mystery that surround The Winchester Mansion, thousand want to know more and are desperate to visit it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Sometimes the hysteria surrounding The Winchester Mansion morphed into such hysterical proportions that the authorities have had to shut the mansion down for a day or ban people from entering, even though many do not believe that it actually exists. Fans of The Winchester Mansion have sprouted up all over the World. Some people still regard the story of The Winchester Mansion as a fable, but most know it does actually exist and possesses esoteric knowledge of mystery and mysticism. Some the people who were involved in the construction of The Winchester Mansion were magicians, writers, statesmen and novelist. This mansion has quit a following and has collected members through the ages, in positions of far greater power and influence than the Illuminati. Legend has it that descendants from the founding fathers of the Middle Ages are on the board of trustees. The official secret society in control of the estate have connections throughout Europe and the United States of America, whose membership is an indication of the current revival in the mystery religions and semi-secret societies. The mansion alone boasts of some 60,000 members and operates from its headquarters in San Jose, California with affiliated lodges in Britain, France, Germany, Australia and South Africa. The caretakers are preserving the traditional beliefs of the 19th century. A cipher manuscript was found in one of the libraries of The Winchester Mansion. The author of the manuscript was not identified but it was obviously someone with a very intense knowledge of the supernatural, alchemy, astrology and the magical theories of Eliphas Levi. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Mrs. Winchester’s mansion and gardens reflect her colourful and ornate rituals and its purpose was “to obtain control of the nature and power of my own being.” The might wings of the mansion outspread dove-like sitting brooding on the vast abyss. What is dark in Mrs. Winchester is to be illumined, what is lose raised and supported; the nine-story tower was constructed so that Heaven could hide nothing from Mrs. Winchester’s view, nor the deep tract of hell. Hell said to be a hideous flaming ruin and combustion in a bottomless perdition, there where Satan dwells in adamantine chains and penal fire. Nine times the space that measures day and night to mortal men, Satan and his horrid crew lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, confounded though immortal: but his doom reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought both of lost happiness and lasting pain torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes that witnessed huge affliction and dismay mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate: at once as far as angels ken he views the dismal situation waste and wild, a dungeon of horrible. Many leaders of the Church do not preach about Hell anymore because the Church has become a tax-free business and they do not want to hear about where they may go, nor do they want to scare their dirty money away from the Church. As a result of the loss of real churches who teach about Satan and demons, people are all wild and out of control and no longer fear anything and go around sinning like rain in Seattle. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
On a hot and dry Friday the 13th of June 1890, Mrs. Winchester drifted into an uneasy sleep, but not for long. Half an hour later she was wide awake again. Something was wrong; a change was coming over the bedroom. There was a sense of dread. Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, were peace and rest could not dwell entered. Her home started to feel like a place where hope could not come, and all that did come was torture without end. She sat up, fully alert, straining her ears for the slightest untoward sound, but all was silent except for the little trusted noises the home made during the evening. However, Mrs. Winchester noticed something odd: an unnatural coldness was stealing over the room. It had been a hot summer day. How could it be so cold? She shivered and ducked back under the covers, tugging them more snugly about her. It did not help; the cold kept increasing. She pulled the covers over her head, chiding herself for being silly and willing herself into sleep. However, the terrible dread kept gnawing at her. She tried to think pleasant thoughts, tried to ignore her thudding heart, and tried to pray. Her attempts brought little comfort; the fear continued to build. She sensed that something frightful was about to happen. She held her breath and waited, not knowing what to expect. Before too long, she heard a sound: the unmistakable creak of the doorknob. The spring bolt was sliding back with tiny clicks. Mrs. Winchester froze. Very slowly, the door began to open. Her fear quickened further as she heard the tread of heavy, booted feet approaching the bed. She wanted to call out for help, but was too afraid, as if some force was willing her to silence. Mrs. Winchester was helpless in the face of that power. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
When she tried to pray, a demon started to speak. “The force of hose dire arms has caused me to fall to a place with floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire. Fierce contention brought along innumerable force of Spirits armed with durst in a dubious battle of unconquerable will, revenge, immortal hate.” Mrs. Winchester was dying and she knew it. This demon had come to claim her soul. She was making gaps, with long spaces between. A perspective of stern and cruel memories stretching away, like its own grey avenues, into a blur of darkness. Certainly no house had ever more completely and finally broken with the present. Mrs. Winchester lit a candle. A little animal stood before her, forbidding, almost menacing: there was anger in his large brown eyes. He came no nearer. As she advanced, he gradually fell back, and she noticed another dog, a vague, rough, brindled thing. At the same moment a third dog, a long-haired white mongrel, slipped out of a doorway and joined the others. All three stood looking at Mrs. Winchester with grave eyes; but not a sound came from them. Zip, had seemed to be observing them with a deeper intentness. Mrs. Winchester endured many long years of the company of many different creatures. They would return again and again. As she was in her morning room, the coldness came back. Her mind was alert but her body seemed paralyzed. The entity seemed to have the power to immobilize her from a distance. She heard the dull footfalls crossing her mahogany floors. There was an evil lurking in her home. Something started pounding on the table. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The pounding was so fierce that her cup of tea bounced off the table and fell to the floor. Then it stopped. Mrs. Winchester thought maybe she was having delusions. But whatever it was did not want her to drink the tea. More odd things began to happen—occurrences no one could explain. A malignancy pervaded. Often, people would hear a horrible, mocking, evil laugh. Lights would slicker for no reasons; water taps would turn themselves on, then off. She would find her silverware mysteriously rearranged. On several occasions she discovered her solid gold dinner service hidden in a corner of the room. One night, she had a roaring fire in the fireplace of her bedroom, went to the bathroom, and returned the fireplace totally clean with nothing it in burning. The servants began to complain of hearing mice in the night, but Mrs. Winchester was certain there were no mice in the house. On several occasions, one could very clearly hear the floorboards creaking upstairs, as though somebody was walking about the house. The servants heard the creaking too but, as is often the case with servants, they got used to it, and to the other noises and unexplained presences. Mrs. Winchester urged them no to speak of those things outside of the house. It was bd enough that she was subjected to the disturbances and torment; the last thing she wanted was to attract undue attention to her home. People do not, as a rule, react compassionately to reports of supernatural infestations; many tend to suspect that the victim has somehow, whether by word or deed, “brought it on herself.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
At times, Mrs. Winchester felt that the entity was trying to crush the life out of her. She left her light burning all night. Through time, Mrs. Winchester was forced to accept her suffering. There was nothing else she could do. One winter night, one of the butlers was found dead at the head of a narrow flight of stairs leading down from his room. It was Mrs. Winchester who found him and gave the alarm, so distracted with fear and horror—for his blood was all over her—that at first roused household could not make out what she was saying, and thought she was waking from a nightmare. However, there, sure enough, at the top of the stairs lay the butler, stone dead, and head foremost, the blood from his wounds dripping down the steps below him. He had been dreadfully scratched and gashed about the face and throat, as if with curious pointed weapons; and one of his legs had a deep tear in it which had cut an artery, and probably caused his death. Bu how did he come there, and who had murdered him? Mrs. Winchester declared that she had been asleep in her bed, and hearing his cry had rushed out to find him lying on the stairs; but this was immediately questioned. A shadow was rearing up from the body. Mrs. Winchester described it as “a blob, like smoking black cloud, not the shape of a person—just a thing, but a terrible thing. The absolute evil that came from it was overwhelming. I was so gripped with terror, I could not move, and I knew that if it came toward me, I would be swallowed up…destroyed, and that would be the end of me. Imagine what it feels like to know that you are going to be killed, and the specter that is torturing you is deliberately making you suffer beforehand. That is how it was. I felt a level of fear that is beyond words. Then I heard a voice and screamed.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
The male voice was hoarse, stertorous, angry almost. “You have left us this our spirit and strength entire strongly to suffer our pains that we my so suffice his vengeful ire, or do him mightier services as his thralls by right of war, whatever his business be here in the heart of hell to work in fire, or do his errands in the gloomy deep; what can it then avail though yet we feel strength undiminished, or eternal being to undergo eternal punishment?” Mrs. Winchester instantly went to sleep—chilling testimony to the control the demon had over her. When she awoke, she was clean, in her sleeping gown, and in her bed. However, it was with the possibility, and the hope, that the end of her long ordeal might well be in sight. Little of the fast-fading sunlight entered the house through the windows, many of which were partly or entirely covered with drapes. However, it was bright enough for Mrs. Winchester to see that the French Provincial sofa’s upholstery was slashed. Shredded wool spilled onto the floor. A solid oak bookcase had been hammered to pieces against the wall, gouging holes in the lath and plaster walls, running the Lincrusta-Walton Wallcovering. Her silver tea service has been smashed, along with a floor lamp. Books had been taken off the shelves, torn apart, and scattered across the living room. Mrs. Winchester lit a candle. It did not shed much light, just enough to reveal more details of the rubble. Looks like somebody went through here with a wrecking ball and scissors, she thought. The house remained silent. Leaving the door open behind her, she took a couple of steps into the room, and the crumpled pages of the ruined books crunched crispy underfoot. She noticed the dark, rusty stains on some of the paper and on the bone-white foam wool stuffing, and suddenly she stopped, realizing the stains were blood. A moment later, Mrs. Winchester spotted the corpse. It was that of a big man, lying on his side on the floor near the sofa, half-covered by gore-smeared book pages, book boards, and dust jackets. Zip’s growling grew louder, meaner. Moving closer to the body, which was just a few feet from the dining-room archway. Mrs. Winchester remembered that John Hansen had lately been making repairs, including a leak faucet and a broken door lock. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
However, Mrs. Winchester thought because of the way the room looked, he had been killed weeks ago. Her house was so big that it would often take weeks, months, and sometimes years to get around it. Yet, on closer inspection, the corpse proved to be neither bloated with the gas of decomposition nor marked by any signs of decay, so it could not have been there for very long. Perhaps only a day or less. The body had been disemboweled. Zip’s low growling gave wat to ugly snarling punctuated with hard, sharp barks. With a nervous twitch and a sudden pounding of her heart, Mrs. Winchester turned from the corpse and saw that zip was facing into the nearby dining room. The shadows were deep in there because the drapes were drawn shut over all the windows, and only a thin gray light passed through from the kitchen beyond. “Go, get out, leave!” an evil voice told her. It was certainly not the voice of Mr. Hansen. Something in the dining room was moving. There was no doubt of its presence, because it rushed out onto the dining-room tables, and came straight at Mrs. Winchester, emitting a blood-freeze shriek. She saw lantern eyes in the gloom, and nearly a man-sized figure that—in spite of poor light—gave an impression of deformity. Then the demon was coming off the table, straight at her. I Do conjure thee, O Spirit Focalor and your legion of thirty spirits to manifest your spiritual weapon in this corporeal World through my will and might! Empower it so that it may serve me here upon the corporeal plane! May it serve as a key to the realms above and below unlocking power and wisdom for my glory and ascent! Fill this weapon with your powers of wrath and fury that it may seek out spiritual attacks made toward me rendering them useless and impotent! I DO conjure thee Spirit Vephar, pierce the Heavens and cause the seas to be right stormy to cleanse the Earth of sin. Spirit Vizaresh, I DO conjure thee to drag sinful souls into hell, noosing them with the power of their own sins. May the snare be the power of their own evil, words, thoughts, and deeds and let this be you will to drag unwilling souls into Hell. May this cord gain its power through one’s practical application of evil principles. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
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Mrs. Winchester never recovered from the 1906 earthquake. Staff said she grew weaker and weaker as the years went by, and that she was often heard talking to her dead husband. The house was already large, but it morphed to be as long as several city blocks and was taller than the tallest trees on the green lawn. I suppose, ultimately, it was the spirits who kept her in this estate by not allowing her to build another one of this magnitude. When Mrs. Winchester passed away in 1922, she left $5,000,000.00 to charity. The mansion is truly special and a national treasure.
He Belongs to Me– I am Not Going!
It is a mistake to believe that evil spirits and demons do not exist at all, and equally so to see demons under every bed. At one time, in another century, the Devil was well defined as any adversary of flesh and blood. High on a throne of royal state Satan exalted sat…and princely counsel in his face yet shone, majestic, though in ruin. In Hell, there were burning lakes and caverns, teeming with vast hosts of demon armies, all under the command of a rigid hierarchy of generals, chief among whom was Satan himself. Few Christians living in the seventeenth century doubted the existence of hell and its rulers. There were many reminders in ecclesiastical art; paintings, sculpture, stained glass, the admonishments of the bestiary. Even the fearsome gargoyles set atop cathedrals were modeled on a fairly precise and generally prevailing picture of how demons actually looked; in the seventeenth century, all art was representational art. It was generally agreed that the Devil himself was a horned creature with a forked tail, who might sometimes appear as a serpent. Sorcerers were feared. And if sickness were not the wrath of God, it was the work of the Devil, his demons, and his earthbound disciples. In modern times, many people have rushed to embrace the new “science” of psychiatry, the medical men were eager to jettison belief in evil forces, demonic oppression and affliction, and to ascribe natural cases to all mental diseases of unknown etiology. It could be argued that they were, in effect, playing into the hands of the very Devil they wised to sideline. While some believe in the “unquiet dead,” others think that hearing voices, foot steps, objects moving across the room by themselves, doors slamming, strange voices are a symptom of schizophrenia. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
However, in authentic cases, the dead may become pawns in the struggle for the souls of the living, souls in transition, or “dislocated” souls, may become possessed by evil, so that they in their turn can possess the living, and so drive the living into despair, or worse. Evil symptoms and their inevitable fruit of despair, which leads to death by suicide bear the marks of the evil one battling with those who are sensitive to the uncommitted dead. This is dangerous territory, whether or not one holds with the existence of such entities. Ghosts are also sometimes known as the “restless dead.” It is important to establish that such entities are considered to be the “souls” or “spirits” of human beings. This is to distinguish them from nonhuman entities that have never drawn breath, those which are often referred to as demon. Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester, who was responsible for building the Winchester Mystery House, took precautions to enlist the assistance of the spirits when it came to the architecture of the Victorian mansion. The construction of the mansion was an effort to obtain deliverance from “unclean” spirits she felt that were out to take her life. She believed that she would be delivered back to God, and the transgenerational hold would be consequently broken. Never ceasing construction on this mansion would release the demonic footholds attached to the family’s fortune and also set her ancestors free. The Devil is a spirit that is powerful (it may be many places at the same time and manifest itself in a variety of distinctly paranormal ways). #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
Satan is capable of taking up a kind of residence within the mind, brain, soul, or body of susceptible and willing human beings—he is a spirit that has various names (among them Lucifer and Satan), that are real and do exit. Demonic oppression is far more common than possession, and that was certainly the case at the Winchester Estate. Malevolent spirits are always around to take advantage of our weaknesses. Spirits seem to have a channel to those who frequently suffer such attacks. Mrs. Winchester felt she was cursed because the sudden death of her new born daughter, and the death of her husband. The mansion she was building was supposed to seal up these demons. “There is a demon in this room,” John Hansen announced calmly to Mrs. Winchester as she sat in the morning room drinking her tea. The calmness was a mask. Inwardly, he was dismayed. He had not expected this. That is when he heard the low, menacing growl coming from the couch behind him. He turned. Minutes before the demure young housemaid, Mary Meriwether, had just greeted him. Now she was hideously transformed. Her neck had become impossibly elongated, the facial skin had tightened, and the lips were drawn back into a mocking smirk. The eyes that fixed him with blazing hatred were no longer those of Mary. Mrs. Winchester had been battling the supernatural force for more than two decades and she had come face-to-face with great evil many times. It often leaped out at her. He demons hawked up and down the mansion like the image of haunted criminals. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
This house contained so many abysmal mysteries, as John Hansen starred back into Mrs. Winchester’s anguished eyes, he could tell she had been tortured. “There is a demon in the room,” he said again. Foe all that, Mrs. Winchester was shocked, taken unawares. Now Mary was lunging at John. He looked terrified. With two quick, curt gestures, John Hansen motioned to Mrs. Winchester to exist the room so to remove herself from harm’s way. Mrs. Winchester retreated to the back of the room. John advanced on Mary. “You foul and evil spirit, in the name of Jesus Christ—” “You’ll never get rid of me!” The woman slithered off the couch, cackling and taunting. “She’s mine, mine, mine.” The voice was that of a very old woman. It seemed to issue, by turns, from the young woman’s mouth and from various points in the room. She was writhing on the floor, her body coiling and uncoiling itself, her tongue lolling obscenely and her eyes yellow as gold. John was left in no doubt: these were the words and actions of the demonic, the possessed. Not too long before this, he had confronted a young man in the Winchester Mansion who had likewise hissed and wriggled in much the same manner, but the demon won the battle. The chilling words that were issued from the young man’s mouth were from a voice greatly distorted. “He belongs to me. I am not going.” And with that the young man fled from the mansion. John Hansen tried to cast the evil spirit out of this woman. “I bind you, and I forbid you to speak or interfere with this woman.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
John could not believe that Mary could summon such energy. She was barely five feet, three inches tall and weighed only 110 pounds. However, her arms and fists seemed to belong to a strongly built man. She caught him in a body lock. Two servants sprang to John’s defense and tried to pull her off, but she shrugged the men away with the ease of a freestyle wrestler, knocking them to the floor. Another blow to the jaw nearly felled him. He struggled to retain his balance as the servants tried again to restrain her. “In the name of Jesus—stop!” John shouted. His words had an astonishing effect. Mary fell to the floor as if struck by a heavy object. She lay still as a stone, eyes wide and staring, all strength seemingly drained from her. John, recovered somewhat but still a little groggy from the blows he had sustained, bent over her. “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to release your name!” On hearing the words “Jesus Christ,” Mary went into a violent fit. The servants grasped her arms and legs. At the moment, she was as much a danger to herself as to others; she was flailing about, out of control. However, by and by the fit subsided. The assistants relaxed their grip and allowed Mary to sit up, very slowly. Mary seemed to slump down into herself; her posture became that of an old, decrepit being. The shoulders grew hunched; her chin sank low onto her chest. She began cackling. John, still in his position of safety, was aghast. Then she vanished like a sheet of paper. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
The flying horror-struck from the shrouded image of this inscrutable day occupied them, and the problems were perpetually bubbling up from the cloudy caldron of the spirits in the Winchester Mansion. Mrs. Winchesters consciousness gradually felt the same lowering of velocity. It swayed with the incessant oscillation of conjecture. There were even moments of weariness when, like the victim of some poison which leaves the brain clear, but holds the body motionless, she saw herself domesticated with the Horror, accepting its perpetual presence as one of the fixed conditions of life. Although Mary had vanished, the voice began to jabber, the words pouring out in a demented meter of their own, like a travesty of a children’s play song. “Before the filth met the filth she was ours! In the darkness womb she was ours. Always ours, always ours…ours!” The final words drawn out in a harsh, rasping hiss. The demon was playing for time. Another demon was making its presence felt; John was certain of it. There was a marked difference in one of the servant’s features. His face seemed to flatten; his mouth drooped. Then from the servants mouth a voice said, “We will never leave her.” This voice seemed to emerge from the floor itself. “We’ll kill her first!” Then the voice took on the cadence of a schoolyard bully’s—malicious, singing, mocking. “We tried before with William, his blades and pills, blades and pills, blades-and-pills.” “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ, release your name!” #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
These moments seemed to lengthened into hours and days for Mrs. Winchester, till she passed into a phase of stolid acquiescence. She had come to regard herself as part of the supernatural routine with incurious eyes. And this deepening apathy held her fast. The face of the possessed servant took on a haughty look. There was a sneer, and another personality, another consciousness, behind it. “I am Sir Francis Dashwood,” a masculine voice announced. “Lover of the little ones. Robber of the little souls. Killer of the Innocents.” The servant’s hands flew to his throat. They began to squeeze. He was choking; his face turning blue. John rushed to break the grip of those hands—and found he could not. The servant’s head began to weave from side to side again. “We take them in the dark…always in the dark…in the depths of the dark. We walk for the Master in the dark. Of the warm, of the warm…to do for the Master in the bodies of the blood of the warm. To kill with the hands of the bodies of the warm…to range in the sweat in the blood in the warm.” A dramatic change occurred, but it was invisible to all in the morning room. John reports a “dark” presence had departed. The servant had no recollection of what had just taken place. The ordeal was at an end for now. The ghosts of family evil had ceases to haunt the mansion for now. After that day, the servant disappeared. No one never knew what had become of him—no one ever would know. But the house knew; the library in which Mrs. Winchester spent her long lonely evenings knew. For the house was always watching. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
The floor she trod had felt his tread; the books on the shelves had seen his face; and there were moments when the intense consciousness of the old dusky walls seemed about to break out into some audible revelation of their secret. However, the revelation never came, and she knew it would never come. The Winchester Mansion was not one of the garrulous old mansions that betray the secrets entrusted to them. Its very legend proved that it had always been the mute accomplice, the incorruptible custodian, of the mysteries it had surprised. And Mrs. Winchester, sitting face to face with its silence, felt the futility of seeking to break it by any human means. The Winchester Family and Mansion are the source of a bizarre legend, and today is revered and idolized by followers around the World who strive to re-enact their ritual teachings. Even occultists praise the Winchester Family and their Mansion as the greatest marvel in the World. The Winchester mansion apparently means something deep and philosophical, that every person should find one’s own true will and exert it, just as Mrs. Winchester did making a home for the spirits. The construction of the 160-room mansion, that is approximately 70,000 square feet, helped Mrs. Winchester escape a World of overbearing darkness. According to one of the Winchester Mansion’s diarists, a handsome vampire, Marvellous Merchiston, was sent to seduce Mrs. Winchester and reduce her to inconsequence. He realized his before he could attack, and turned his magical current against himself—with the result that the man turned to ashes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Next, his fellow vampires attacked Mrs. Winchester’s bloodhounds, which triggered the summoning up of the great demon Paimon, a Great King, and 200 Legions of Spirits. The vampires fell to an army of Paimon’s demons. This was known as the “year of miracles,” and it decided the outcome of the bloodiest wars yet know on the Winchester Estate. This carried many fortune seekers to a watery grave, and the wilderness campaigns from 1888 to 1893 claimed thousands of lives. Many were wracking with fevers (which claimed more victims than Paimon and the Winchester Rifles), and battlefield medical treatment was too primitive to save many of the wounded. They expected to gain Mrs. Winchester’s rich, flourishing, powerful, enterprising estate, but instead became ruined and undone. In the meantime, Mrs. Winchester travelled frequently and was a great walker and mountaineer. She strolled across China, Spain, and the Sahara desert; she climbed cliffs at Beachy Head and rocks at Wastdale, mountains in Switzerland, Mexico, and the Himalayas. She was a prolific writer, dashing off verse, sonnets, plays, novels, macabre short stories, magic invocations, and many were dazzled by her multifaceted brilliance. She was a traveller in the physical and spiritual Worlds. The wide scope of occult power possessed by spiritists helps explain why people can accomplish extraordinary things, and why magic can also cause so much mischief. Through the phenomena of levitation, apports, telekinesis, and materializations, it is not difficult to see how a person endowed with strong mediumistic powers can do a great deal of harm, especially in the closely associated realm of magic. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
One common form of magic persecution is beatings by an invisible attacker. Parapsychology also sees magical persecution as a mediumistic problem in the sphere of materializations. Strong mediums (when under demon control) send out energy with which to build up human phantasms and are also able to transform this energy into animal forms, including dogs, cats, frogs, snakes, or human bodies with animal heads, et cetera. This explains the bizarre spiritistic persecution through phantoms in the form of various animals or human bodies with nonhuman heads. These animals bite, scratch, or otherwise torment their victims. Examples of these occult phenomena abound in areas where the black arts are practiced. However, such occurrences are denied by many intellectuals. Often peasants and country people, especially in Europe, know more about magic than university graduates, who claim, swindle, or hocus-pocus trickery are used instead of occult powers. Magic defense enlists supernatural agencies to counteract or undo the mischief wrought by magic persecution. Various kinds of spells, charms, or incantations are employed. In spiritistic séances it is an established fact that injuries inflicted upon a phantasm are sustained by the medium, even in the case of animal phantasms. Many defensive customs developed to combat this threat since magic persecution involves materialization. If a victim can injure an aggressive phantasm, one has won the struggle. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
I DO invocate and conjure thee, O Spirit Sarah L. Winchester; and being with power armed from the SUPREME MAJESTRY, I do strongly command thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALDACHINENSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Powerful Princess, Genii, Liachidae, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invoking conjure thee. And being armed with power from the SUPREME MAJESTRY, I do strongly command thee, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto whom all creatures be obedient. Also I, being made after the image of God, endued with power from GOD and created according unto His will, do command that you do not fall into the trap of expressing disgust with these people, or exhibiting spite or hatred. They serve as important examples of what not to be. Remember that they are not the target of your spite and hatred. It is the systematic construct of imposed limitation we despise. Not the people who are enslaved by the system. As the fallen spirits in this estate ascend, I ascend also by following the path of the celestials and infernals do tremble together, and around troubled and confounded. I usurp the power of worship to empower my blackened eternal soul. I shall take all power raised within this sanctuary as my own through this talisman of counter creation to strengthen my divine power and to Become a Living God. For thou art conjured by the name of the LIVING and TRUE GOD, HELIOREN, wherefore fulfill thou my commands, and persist thou therein unto the end, speaking unto me with a voice clear and intelligible without any ambiguity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Winchester Mystery House
There have been many different activities that have existed since the Estate opened for tours in 1923. Did you know the property once included a WMH Wax Museum? It was launched in the early 1960s. #100yearsofmystery
Stay tuned for any Centennial Celebration announcements on our social accounts of how The Winchester Mystery House will be celebrating 100 years of tours! https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Preparing to Call Out a Demon
Occultists draw on the past. Everything they do has some historical, sometimes religious, bond. Rumours, myths and superstitions surround almost every aspect of the secret societies of men and women who gather suspiciously—because of the secrecy—and perform their dark and dramatic rituals, formulated from old grimoires handed down and rewritten through the ages. Personalities, too, figure predominantly. However, there are very few forms of modern occultism that do not, at some time or other, rely upon the legacy of Aleister Crowley, the self-styled Great Beast 666. At the pinnacle of his career was renowned for a wild mix of magic, and today is revered by millions the World over who are rereading the legends of this man many believed to be another Shakespeare. Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester is also a mysterious historical figure who practiced the occult. The mansion she built, called the Winchester Mansion is classic Victorian architecture and unparalleled gardens that are so incredibly photogenic that the home has become one of the World’s most intriguing and mysterious places to see ghost. Mrs. Winchester’s resources were unlimited, and she spent enormous sums building the most incredible mansion. However, the Winchester fortune was cursed. It was in the thick December dusk, in the Hall of Fires, Mrs. Winchester had endured thirteen years in the soul-deadening mourning of her husband and her daughter. When servants would catch her off guard, she would still express a sadness. Her life had probably not been of the most vivid order: for a long period, but these country plains of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion, and Mrs. Winchester had felt from the first day the mysterious stir of intenser memories. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
The feeling had never been stronger than on this particular afternoon when, waiting in the library for the lamps to come, she rose from her seat and stood among the shadows of the hearth. Edith Bernard, a one-beautiful young woman was found dead, lying helplessly on the floor. A single bullet lay buried deep in her head. “Spare me, ye gods!” Mrs. Winchester cried. Four servants quickly rushed in the room to comfort Mrs. Winchesters. As two of the servants stood breast to breast, another bullet pierced them both. They uttered a cry together, together cast a parting look around them, and together breathed their last. Adora, another maid, seeing them fall, hastened to the spot to render assistance and fell stricken in the act of loving duty. Only one servant and Mrs. Winchester was left. Another gunshot was heard and it struck Valda, but no shooter was seen. Mrs. Winchester knelt over the lifeless bodies, and kissed, now one, now another of her dead servants. Raising her pallid arms to Heaven, “Spirits,” said she, “feed full your rage with my anguish! Satiate your hard heart, while I follow the grave of my four servants. Yet where is your triumph? Bereaved as I am, I am still richer than you, my conqueror.” Two others servants rushed into the library to assist Mrs. Winchester. One of them held her is her arms. The other was tending to the dead bodies. Scarce had Mrs. Winchester spoken, when the gun shot sounded and struck terror into all hearts. The servant mourning over the biers of their dead coworkers fell struck by a bullet, and died on the corpse she was bewailing. The maid attempting to console Mrs. Winchester, suddenly ceased to speak, and sank lifeless to the Earth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Six were now dead, and only Mrs. Winchester remained. “Spare me!” she begged. There was a torpid grief. The breeze moved not her hair, no color was on her cheek, her eyes glared fixed and immovable, there was no sign of life about her. Her very tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth, and her veins ceased to convey the tide of life. Her neck bent not, her arms made no gesture, her foot no step. She was changed to stone, within and without. Yet tears continued to flow. When other staff members stumbled upon the tragedy, “Could it be the house?” the Butler asked. The mansion itself was fully of secrets. They seemed to be piling themselves up, as evening fell, like the layers and layers of velvet shadow dropping from the low ceiling, the rows of books, the smoke-blurred sculpture of the hearth. “Why, of course—the house is haunted!” he reflected. The ghosts of those killed by the Winchester rifle. Mrs. Winchester has now become a permanent tenant of her haunted mansion. One of the elusive specters had apparently had the powers to crystallize about it. Immediately following the strange deaths and Mrs. Winchesters crystallization, mystery, scandal and rumor swirled around the tragedy. Mrs. Winchester had been the envy of her friends, now the pity of even her foes. She stood crystalized in her mansion for many months. A new sense of meaning—a sense gradually acquired through daily contact with her in the form created a scene of the lurking mystery. It was the house itself, of course, that posses the ghost-seeking faculty, that communed visually but secretly with its own past; if one could only get close enough communion with the house, one might surprise its secret, and acquire the ghost sight on one’s own. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
More and more under the spell of the crystallization of Mrs. Winchester, calling out to the remote corners of the house, servants found treasure after treasure, it revealed itself to them. When passing from the first rapturous flurry of exploration to a detailed inspection of the old house, the butler pressed a panel that opened on a flight of corkscrew stairs leading to the nine-story tower. The view was enchanting. His gaze flew to the long tossed horizon line of the downs, and then dropped contentedly back to trace the yew of hedges about the fish pond, and the shadow of cedar and palm trees on the lawn. Distinctly he recalled that he had seen, as he glanced, a shadow of anxiety, of perplexity, rather, fall across his face; and, following his eyes, had beheld the figure of a man—a man in loose black clothes, as it appear to him—who was sauntering down the lime avenue to the court with the doubtful gait of a stranger who seeks his way. “Wait!” he hastily shouted and ran down the stairs. But the man was gone. Suddenly, Mrs. Winchester let out a terrible cry…but could it be her? She had been in statue form for years. The old butler Augusts had some questions as to the connection of evil spirits with systems of idolatry and witchcraft. He was almost willing to swear that his eyes were playing tricks on him; for seeing Mrs. Winchester come back to life went beyond all human discernment. Of course, the young lady was stiff and needed help moving around. The Hall of Fires seemed to warm her blood and make moving easier. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against spiritual wickedness in high places. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Weary with her thoughts, Mrs. Winchester moved to the window. The Hall of Fires was quite dark now, and she was surprised to see how much faint light the outer World still held. As she peered out into it across the court, a figure shaped itself far down the perspective of bare limes: it looked like a mere blot of dark blackness in the grayness, and for an instant, as it moved toward her; her heart thumped to the thoughts “It’s a ghost!” She had time, in that long instant, to see the man gaining substance and character, showed itself even to her weak sight as her husband William Winchester; she turned to meet him, and he vanished into thin air. Mrs. Winchester’s spirit sunk. At once the air of the hall rand with a long, frightful chain of woeful howls. Above the bestial clamour, Mrs. Winchester could hear a spirit shouting, “I adjure thee, great Marchosias, the agent of the Emperor Lucifer and of his beloved son Lucifuge Rofocale by the power of the pact…” The noise rose higher and a green stream began to come off the brazier. However, there was silence. Again the spirit shouted, “I adjure thee, Marchosias, by the pact and by the names, appear instanter.” The room screamed…but still there was no apparition. Instantly the mansion rocked as though the Earth moved under it. The building shuddered again…then from the middle of the room, a low cloud of yellow fumes went up towards the ceiling, making Mrs. Winchester cough. As it spread and thinned she could see the shape forming under it…it was something like a she-wolf, grey and immense, with green glistening eyes. A wave of coldness was coming from it…the cloud continued to dissipate. The she-wolf glared at them, slowly spreading her griffin’s wings. Her serpent’s tail lashed gently, scalily. The existence and manifestation of demons and devils in the Winchester Mansion has been accepted without question. The thing that dominated the mansion was a group of spirits known as “Legion,” or “The Legion of Lucifer.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
There is magical art abundant in the mansion. This explains how it has become an abnormal plane of power to “charge” magical energy. It is thought that Mrs. Winchester used the powers of Osiris and was able to reconstitute her body to return to life. This is a fundamental of the higher form of necromancy. When the mansion was sold and items auctioned off, the walls were found to be covered with magical symbols and paintings. Also found were solid gold talismans and amulets. The mansion itself was protected by spells and curses. The Winchester Mansion is a receptacle for all the mystical and magical beliefs of the East and the West. The farmers on the Winchester Estate followed the long-established practice of cutting a girdle of bark off the trees, and then setting them on fire or leaving them to die in place while planting crops around the decaying hulks. Immense trees were stripped of their foliage, and half consumed by fire extending their sprawling limbs, many were bleached by weather. By this method the farmers on the estate could clear from 3 to 5 acres a year for cultivation. The relentless demand for wood generated by the construction of the mansion and for other Victorian houses on the estate and barns, fences and fuel, potash and turpentine—added to the demand. Native Americas, in return for furs that they had in abundance, secured goods such as blankets, guns, ironware that they highly valued from Mrs. Winchester’s estate. It was even rumored that Mrs. Winchester owned the Philosopher’s Stone which was believed to turn anything it touched into gold, cure all ills and kept its owner perpetually youthful. It was supposedly given to her as a gift. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
As the years pass by, many people who practice magic descend more deeply into the darker realm of magic, summoning demons and spirits almost at will. Some magicians become obsessed by their craft, their quest for knowledge and power and it can drag them into the black abyss. A fascinating story about the darker realm of the Winchester Mansion is one about Leonore. Leonore was lodging at the Winchester Mansion, she persuaded Augusta, the butler, to unlock the door to the Blue Séance Room. Leonore went inside and stood reading aloud from a book of spells that lay on the table; suddenly a demon appeared and demanded to know why he had been summoned. Leonore was so shocked that she could not answer and the demon grabbed her by the throat and strangled her. Mrs. Winchester returned to find Leonore lying dead on the floor of her Blue Séance Room, and realizing this could mean trouble, she summoned the demon to return and bring Leonore back to life long enough for her to be removed. This was done, and Leonore walked out of Mrs. Winchester’s Mansion into the marketplace where she immediately collapsed and died. As word of Mrs. Winchester’s success, great wealth, and powers spread, so did the story that she had made a pact with the devil, written as usual in her own blood, in return for magical powers. Once the magical power of the menses has been blessed by the Dark Goddess it has been consecrated as a direct conduit of the powers of destruction, death, and decay. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Angra Mainyu, come forth from the realms of eternal darkness. Angra Mainyu, I summon you to come forth and ignite this flesh as the very source of your power and might that it may emanate the ways of your Black Sun. May this body become the very fuel, the embers of this forbidden Blackened Fire that I may consume power to banish the limitation of creation and become the counter creator for the glory of Dragon Zohak! Empower me with this infernal blessing as a warrior of the Path of Smoke and Apostle of your teachings of liberation! Hear Mr:–Ieou: Pur: laot: Iaeo: Ioou: Abrasar: Sabriam: Do: Un: Adonaie: Ede: Edu: Angelos ton Theon: Aniaia Lai: Gaia: Ape: Diathanna Thorun. I am He! The Bornless Spirit! Having sight in the feet: Strong and the Immortal Fire! I am He! The Truth! I am He! Who hate that evil should be Wrought in the World! I am He, that lighteneth and thundereth. I am He, from Whom is the Shower of the life of Earth: I am He, Whose mouth ever flameth: I am He, the Begetter and Manifester unto the Light: I am He; the Grace of the World: “The Heart Gith with a Serpent” is My Name! Come Thou forth, and follow Me: and make all Spirits subject unto Me so that every Spirit of the Firmament, and of the Ether: upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry Land, or in the Water: of whirling Air or of rushing Fire: and every Spell and Scourge of God, may be obedient unto me! Iao: Sabao: Such are the Words! Magic is the Highest, most Absolute, and most Divine Knowledge of Natural Philosophy, advanced in its works and wonderful operations by a right understanding of the inward and occult virtue of things; so that true Agents being applied proper Patients, strange and admirable effects will thereby be produced. Whence magicians are profound and diligent searchers into Nature; they, because of their skill, know how to anticipate an effort, the which to the vulgar shall seem to be a miracle. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Winchester Mystery House
This Friday. Tune in on Friday, December 23rd 6pm pst/9pm est to watch the Destination Fear crew investigate The Winchester Mystery House on Travel Channel! The episode will be available for streaming on Discovery+ same day👻 Can’t wait!
@travelchannel @discoveryplus #DestinationFear #winchestermysteryhouse
Angels Which Kept Not Their First Estate
I hope by now that you agree with me that the tiresomeness of an over-peopled Heaven is a purely subjective and illusory notion, a sign of human incapacity, a remnant of the old narrow-hearted aristocratic creed. William Winchester loved boats and had thirteen-metres and even raced one in the America’s Cup trials once. He had a big yacht that he kept down in New Haven, Connecticut, even though he lived in Switzerland most of the time. My grandfather, Oliver Winchester, put a rear wing on the house he bought for William as a wedding gift, with a new kitchen and flower room my grandmother wanted when she married him. This house preceded the Winchester Mansion. And it was where my father, William Winchester, had an office. There had been a couple of times when I would have to take papers down to him. That office was bigger than most people’s living rooms. It had a fireplace and a window looking out on the West River, which flows into New Haven Harbor. Oliver Winchester was the Lieutenant governor of Connecticut. Not only was he founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, but he was on the board of directors of four charities, including the Winchester Foundation, which gave money for research into Tuberculosis and heart disease; he was on the board of New Haven Savings Bank, which the Winchesters pretty much owned; he was on the boards of a couple of other big companies. Running a rich family was like running a business. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
In fact, if you look at the Winchester Family treat, it is more of a “business family tree.” I guess money has always been the life source of the Winchester family. My father, William Winchester, said the family motto was “We own it, lock, stock, and barrel.” This family had a lot of power, and when you have power, you use it. The Winchester’s did not go out brawling like drunken sailors. We had the courts, the law, the police—and the Winchester Rifle if we needed it. We made sure that things around here went the way we wanted them to go. However, we did not go about it by brawling. If you did us wrong, we stayed clam, we spoke politely to everybody. However, we moved quietly. Sooner or later we would catch you between a rock and a hard place and then you would feel the almighty bad. If we did not go after them, those guys would have thought we were chicken. My father always said, “Son, do not worry what John Jacob Astor thinks of you. In your position it does not matter. You are going to be very rich and very powerful. These people will never like you. They will envy you, they will defer to you, and some of them will even admire you. But they will never like you. For that you must understand, what others think does not matter.” The original Winchester mansion was a house of these times, all right, though not to be considered new. I figured it to be at least three hundred years old. It was built of the local stone, and had three stories and a high-pitched roof, with mullioned windows—and it was vast. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Often times, there was no one about. Only the bleak winter vines stripped of their jasmine, running on for miles, and distant corpse of an ancient tree of immense size, and the cold rain, a rain worse to me than snow, falling over as if it were falling on the entre World, a near silent rain that felt like needles on the backs of my hands and on my face. The mosaic tiles were beautiful, and possibly ancient, dating all the way back to the Roman times. I walked back and forth over the, and tapped several times with the toe of my boot. I walked to the double doors that opened into the garden, and there I saw a great pile of wood. And there was a big head on the rock, it was the devil’s face that a saint put there. If men believed nothing, they did not understand it, it is a short cradle they would have. I had been put in the mood for ghost, that evening after an excellent dinner at my father’s home. Seen through the haze of Abner Doubleday’s cigars, and by the drowsy gleam of a coal fire, my father’s library, with its oak walls and dark old bindings, made a good setting for such evocations; and ghostly experiences at first hand beings. An absurd thought came to me, that being here with Abner, it had all felt natural and good, as if in spite of the topic of our conversation we were simply human beings and all the dark World did not exist. I was ashamed of this. Why did we have to be “like human beings”? I asked myself. Why could we not simply be warlocks together? He looked at me, at my shining eyes, and his congenial smile, and he took my hand and said he wanted to see the house. We remained together for several hours after that, during which we walked through many rooms and he not only admired the endless book collection in the Gothic library, filled with classics bound in black cloth and daguerreotypes of faded celebrities, but also many of the paintings, including a few Russian painters of the nineteenth century he had never seen before. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
For me, this was a wonderful time. We could have continued our conversation for a year. We walked about outside the house, through the gardens which were crowded with trees for privacy and vines that blossomed at night. These carefully guarded hours had been devoted to the cultivation of a fine intelligence and a few judiciously chosen habits; and none of the disturbances common to the human experience seemed to have crossed the sky. Mentally I was able to exercise a hospitality less seductive but no less stimulating than a play. Abner’s mind was like a forum, or some open meeting place for the exchange of ideas: somewhat cold and drafty, but light, spacious and orderly—a kind of academic grove from which all the leaves had fallen. In this privileged area, we were able to stretch our muscles and expand our lungs; and, as id to prolong as much as possible the tradition of what we felt to be vanishing institution, Abner tasted the lyric qualities in youth. He nipped the flowers of soul which he gathered from this tour, which forced a young idea to blossom. The man was really intelligent, and the soundness of his nature was like the pure paste under a fine glaze. Abner had been fished out of the dullness by the spirits of the Winchester mansion. Just at the evening was drawing to an end, he demanded, “And now you have to tell me about your ghosts!” “My ghost? Do you suppose I am fool enough to the expense of keeping my own ghosts, where there are so many charming ones in my friends’ closets?” I said. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The fact is that we found whole skeletons that were used in various forms of old black magic rituals. Undoubtedly, for many who pursue this darkest of experiments, necromancy is the touchstone of occultism, especially for warlocks. If, after careful preparation, they are able to carry through what they regard as a successful contact they have reached a certain pinnacle in black magic conjuration. It is fruitless discussing whether or not this feat is possible; belief by the practitioner is all that is needed for the ritual to proceed and some psychological or drug or spiritual trance may well convince the depts tht they have indeed succeeded. “Oh,” Abner said, “you would never be content to share if you met one you really liked. What is the use of denying it? You have seen everything, so of course you have seen a ghost! Or if you have not seen one, it is only because you have seen several!” “That is it,” I said. “I have seen a legion.” The words were so unexpected that they dropped down and down into a deep silence, while we continued to stare at each other. Abner learned forward with is listening smile. “You will wonder why I am enlarging on some of these incidents. It is because the evening on which this particular incident took place was the very evening on which I first saw the queer sights I have spoken of. Being at that time an ardent believer in a necessary sequence between cause and effect, I naturally tried to trace some kind of link between the lion and the lamb lying down together.” Ancient Druids lived on the estate and necromancy had a particular appeal to warlocks seeking confirmation, for example, of the mysteries of the afterlife but more often necromancy was pursued by the skilled masters of ritual magic. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
“We once wanted to raise a dead uncle,” I told Abner. “We went to the course of the giant tree, where we performed a ceremony. For a few moments, nothing happened. But moments later, there was a mysterious explosion. And afterwards, the road lay thick with cinders and debris. At first, my grandfather worried about the result. But he had a reassuring thought. Perhaps the explosion was caused by spontaneous combustion. ‘Oh my God…’ cried my father. ‘What happened?!’ he demanded. No one was sure. After that we walked back to the house in disbelief of the mess. Then I pointed and shouted out in horror. Before I could stop, my father fell to his knees before a hill of burned leaves and tree branches, under which he glimpsed a man’s head. It was his brother and he was looking for us. My grandfather put a hand to his mouth and stified the urge to vomit. My uncle’s eye sockets were empty, and his hair singed. ‘Brother, get up!’ he cried roughly. My father yanked his brother to his feet, frightened by the wide-eyed horror in his eyes and his awful nonstop screaming. He tried to pull out of his grasp, but he held my father tight until the screams subsided into sobs.” “Now listen,” my grandfather told my father. “You are a Winchester, so do not go making a liar out of me.” “But his brother’s tears burned my father’s skin.” “Your brother is dead,” said my grandfather. “We wondered if anything else came back to life. It was so eerily silent for this time of the morning. No cows mooing, no wood being chopped. No birds singing on the roof top. And the lawn was blackened.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“As we went into the house, it was full of strangers, burned, bleeding, sick people. As we precariously waded through the maze of bodies, the wind must have carried in a fog. While my grandfather dug a mass grave for these animated bodies, my father and I dragged them out of the house to burry them. It took days, there were literally hundreds of them. My arms were shaking. We were all near exhaustion, and we still have several bodies to bury. We worked for an entire week to remove all these bleeding strangers from our home. I went up to bed with rather a heavy heart, for I was bowed under the weight of the first ritual I had ever consciously committed; and young as I was, I saw the gravity of my situation. The situation of being William Wirt Winchester Jr. Do not imagine for this that I had hitherto been an instrument of destruction I had been a harmless young man, who had followed his bent and declined all collaboration with Providence. Now I had suddenly undertaken to promote the moral order of the World, and I felt a good deal like the trustful spectator who has given his gold watch to the conjurer, and does not know in what shape he will get it back when the trick is over…Still, a glow of self-righteousness tempered my fears, and I said to myself as I undressed that when I had got use to being good it probably would not make me as nervous as it did at the start. And by the time I was in bed, and had blown out my candle, I felt that I really was getting used to it, and that, as far as I had got, it was not unlike sinking down into one of the softest wool mattresses.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
“My room had grown cold, and intensely still. I was waked by the queer feeling we all know—the feeling that there was something in the room that had not been there when I fell asleep. I sat up and strained my eyes into the darkness. The room was pitch black, and at first I saw nothing; but gradually a vague glimmer at the foot of the bed turned into two eyes starting back at me. The eyes gave out a light of their own. They were the very worst eyes I have ever seen: my dead uncle’s eyes. And the room slowly filled with hundreds of these eyes, orbs of light. My father paid immense sums to the architects and workmen to entomb the heart of the house in hopes of locking their spirits inside. This mean enclosing one of its four towers left standing and living in only a few habitable rooms while the work went on. The mansion went on to be inhabited by a secret order of men and women who met to discuss philosophy and music and escape the modern World, and the public would never be invited here due to the deep mourning of my mother over the loss of my grandfather, father, and baby sister. Indeed it was most anguishing. Some of these people had devoted their entire careers to this one project, and there was nothing now to be done but to give them, but gold coins. My mother left this mansion to Yale, I went to Rome, she went to California and it was later demolished. And there were egregious lies to be told about the Winchester name. Gorgeous salons with silken-paneled walls and plaster curlicues and Savonnerie carpets on the floor all destroyed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
The modern marble bathrooms, replete with sunken tubs and spacious showers for every bedchamber. We wanted to make sure to give off no scent, absorb no precious oils, and did not want to take up the human scents. The great hall where my family and I had once dined, listened to the demands of the villagers and farmers, and hovered around the seventy-five fireplaces, twenty kitchens, four libraries, eighteen thousand windows, four towers, and three hundred and fifty rooms all gone like it never existed. At times, there may have been two thousand present in the ballroom. No one ever counted. This was the height of the Winchester fortune, my dear Abner. There were many departed here, though untouched by the rifle.” In its blackest form the art of necromancy has produced fairly evil recipes for success. Graveyards are indeed a common place, and it is possible our home had been constructed on a battle ground. This was a place where contact with the dead could be expressed, and was conducive to dark apparitions in suffocating rooms or beneath a mock swinging gibbet. The old grimoires are full of colourful descriptions, and since they were often written by clerical scholars when they took down the confessions of warlocks, one must be careful with the rite performed. One could magnify the spell. Even policemen were involved in occultism. As an example, the daughter of a police superintendent was initiated into the dark arts and the High Priest was another policeman. “Yes, I was the High Priest…I have been a white witch for eight years and I am not ashamed of what I do although some of my colleagues have reported me to the Witch Inspector General. I have helped to initiate at least seven witches and eight warlocks.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
There is much evidence in Scriptures that the spirits who appear at séances are rebel angels. Perhaps that is what we raised that night? Jude 6 speaks about “angels which kept not their first estate.” Many Christian Bible scholars interpret Ezekiel 28.17, “I will cast thee to the ground,” as indicating that the Earth is the realm of Satan’s powerful operations, with the help of his fallen colleagues, the demons. Satan is called the “god of this World,” in 2 Corinthians 4.4. And Christians are under attack by “rulers…powers…World forces of darkness” (Ephesians 6.12). God tell us that hell was “created for the devil and his angels (demons)” (Matthew 25.41). I, Randolph Harris, cite and conjure thee, Spirit of Schemhamforasch, by all the seventy-two holy names of God, that Thou appear before me and fulfil my desire, as truly in and through the name Emanuel, which thee three youths Sadrach, Mijach, and A hero sung in the fiery furnace from which they are released. I do conure thee, O thou Spirits William Wirt Winchester and Oliver Fischer Winchester, by all the most glorious and efficacious names of the MOST GREAT AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE LORD GOD OF HOSTS, that thou please comest quickly and without delay from all parts and places of the Earth and World wherever thou mayest be, to make rational answers unto my demands, and that visibly and affably, speaking with a voice intelligible unto mine understanding as aforesaid. I conjure and constrain thee, O thou Spirits William Wirt Winchester and Oliver Fischer Winchester, by all the names aforesaid; and in addition by these seven great names wherewith Solomon the Wise bound thee and thy companions in a Vessel of Brass, Adonai, Preyai or Prerai, Tetragrammaton, Anaphaxeton or Anepheneton, Inessenfatol or Inessenfatall, Pathtumon or Pathatumon, and Itemon; that thou appearest here before this Circle to fulfil my will in all things that seem good unto me. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
And if thou be still so disobedient, and refuest still to come, I will in the power and by the power of the name of the SUPREME AND EVERLASTING LONG GOD WHO created both thee and me and all the World in six days, and what is contained therein, Eie, Saraye and by the power of this name Primeumation which commandeth the whole host of Heaven, bless three, and grant thee of thine office, joy, and place, and bind thee in the depths of Heaven or the eternal to remain unto the Day of the Last Judgment. And I will bind thee in the Eternal Light, and into the Sky of Light and Harmony, therefore see my good wishes for you and please comest quickly and appearest here before this Circle to do my will. Therefore, come thou! In and by the holy names Adonai, Zabaoth, Adonia, Amioran, Come thou! For it is Adonai who commandest thee. If THOU hast come thus far, and yet he appeareth not, thou mayest be sure that he is sent unto some other place by this King, and may return any time; and if it be so, invocate the King as here followeth, to send him. However, if he does not come still, then thou mayest be sure that he is bound in the Heavens, and that he is found in the custody of his King. If so, and thou still hast a desire to call him even from thence, thou must rehearse the general curse which is called the Spirits’ Chain. O THOU great, powerful, and mighty KING AMAIMON, who bearest rule by the power of the SUPREME GOD EL over all spirits both superior and inferior of the Infernal Orders in the Dominion of the East; I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of GOD; and by that GOD that THOU Worshippest; and by the Seal of they creation; and by the most mighty and powerful name of GOD, IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATION who cast thee out of Heaven withal other infernal spirits. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
And by all the most powerful and great names of GOD who created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all things in them contained; and by their power and virtue; and by the name PRIMEUMATON who commandeth the whole host of Heaven; that thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel the Spirits of William Wirt Winchester and Oliver Winchester to come unto me here before this Circle in fair and comely shapes, without hard unto me or unto any other creature, to answer truly and faithfully unto all my requests; so that I may accomplish my will and desire in knowing and obtaining any matter or thing which by office thou knowest is proper for him to perform or accomplish, through the power of GOD, EL, Who created and doth dispose of all things both celestial, aerial, terrestrial, and infernal. I conjure you William Wirt Winchester and Oliver Fischer Winchester, by the Spirits Chain to appear in the Winchester Mansion, and if you two are bound in chains, by the Emancipation Proclamation, you have permission to break off from them and be at liberty. As this smoke ascends I ascend also by following the path of smoke and usurping power of worship to empower by blackened eternal soul. I take all the power raised within this sanctuary as my own through this talisman of counter creation to strengthen my divine power and to Become a Living God. Harness power through the cedar tree of life, disinfectant, expectorant, treatment of tuberculosis. Spirits of the Winchester Mansion, here me—Roubriao: Mariodam: Balbnabaoth: Assalonai: Aphniao: I: Thoteth: Abrasar: Aeoou: Ischure, Might and Bornless One! Legions of Spirits in the Winchester mansion, here me and arise. I invoke thee. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
I awaken the powers of darkness which dwell within you by the power of the blood of the three headed Dragon Zohak that you may serve to empower my great work! Through serving the greater cause of dark magik which break the shackles that bind the Blackened Fire of Spirit, may you be uplifted and liberated! Awaken and empower the forbidden rites of Angra Mainyu! Awaken to empower my great work of counter creation as an Apostle of the Lord of Darkness eternal and as a warrior of the Path of Smoke! Through the gateway of blood, smoke, and Blackened Fire receive life from the deepest depths of Arezura, in the name of Zohak, and by the power of Angra mainyu it is done! Hear Me:–Ieou: Pur: Iou: Iaot: Iaeo: Ioou: Abrasar: Sabriam: Do: Uu: Adonaie: Ede: Edu: Angelos ton Theon: Aniaia Lai: Gaia: Ape: Diathanna Thrown. I am He! the Bornless Spirit! having sight in the feet: Strong, and the Immortal Fire! I am He! the Truth! I am He! Who hate that evil should be wrought in the World! I am He, that lighteneth and thundereth. I am He, from Whom is the Shower of the Life of Earth: I am He, Whose mouth ever flameth: I am He, the begetter and Manifester unto the Light: I am He; the Grace of the World: “The Heart of Girt with a Serpent” is My Name! Come Thou forth, and follow Me: and make all Spirits subject unto Me so that every Spirit of the Firmament, and of the Ether: upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry Land, or in the Water: of whirling Air or of rushing Fire: and every Spell and Scourge of God, may be obedient unto me! Iao: Saboo: Such are the Words! This is the special secret of this Seal. This is also the special secret of this Throne. Carrying this Seal with you will cause you to be very agreeable and much beloved, and will also defeat your enemies. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
The castle is the ancestral seat of the former royal German dynasty known as the House of Winchester. The beautiful, Neo-Gothic/Victorian castle, now known as the Winchester Mystery House, sees hundreds of thousands of tourists a year. It once contained a sizeable art collection, a treasure trove of jewels that were stolen from the safe, along with a conjurer’s heart. But despite its magnificent features and Medieval history, the Winchester Mystery House has not been formally lived in for centuries.
As political power shifted, and taxes became law in 1909, the spirits decided they would discontinue construction, and shortly after called Mrs. Winchester home. The architecture of the Winchester Mansion and its gardens are the main attractions, and some come for the food, and/or to purchase items from the gift shop. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Mansion of Darkness
Most of the beauties who suffered at the hands of the inquisitors were tormented because they refused to succumb to the right people or were too quick to give in to the wrong ones. Many who lusted after such women become so guilt-ridden that they would denounce them out of fear that they would fall from grace in the eyes of God. Of course, the most successful witches were unusually sleeping with the inquisitors and were never even considered to be witches. Successfully as they might be, however, they could never openly take pride in their witcheries, for to do so would mean certain death. There are many who view the witch as a member of an old pagan religion, more concerned with her beliefs than with her powers. To be sure, the witch is a WOMAN. Men are called warlocks. The witch has made a pact with the Devil and through rituals dedicated to Him gains her power. One must worship the Luciferian element of pride within. One is often blessed with a family heritage of sorcery in one form or another. Everyone inherits something from their forebearers that can be applied as useful legacy. My mother had a genealogy of the Winchester family that showed all of our ancestors going way back to the 1400s. There were lots of famous people in our genealogy—a governor, two senators, a famous general in the Revolution, a lot of people who found in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and some others. However, my dad always said that most of the people in the genealogy were regular people—farmers and fishermen and storekeepers who worked hard all their lives and tried to do right by their families. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
The Winchester money went pretty far back. However, a majority of it came during the 1870s, from the 1873 Model called “The Gun that Won the West.” The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was started by Oliver Fisher Winchester. There was a portrait of him, big as a picture window, hanging up in the parlor in the Winchester Mansion. He had on a dark suit, black tie, white shirt, and he looked very dignified. It was one of those pictures where the eyes follow you around the room—no matter where you went, he always looked at you. After grandfather Oliver Winchester passed away, he left the company to my father, William Winchester, who passed away shortly after, alone with my baby sister, leaving the fortune and company to my mother, Sarah L. Winchester. That mansion used to scare the crap our of me when I was little. We would go up there for Thanksgiving or Christmas, when Mrs. Winchester had a big family dinner for all the family—fifty or sixty of us, probably six turkeys, plumb pudding from England, thousands of dollars worth of glassware and sliver gleaming so bright that the table sparkled. The towns people always blamed Mrs. Winchester for whatever happened to them. You have to remember, this was a time when people lived in houses without windows, no indoor plumbing, or houses with no glass in the windows. Common folks in those days would eat nothing but potatoes for dinner night after night, and they patched the holes in their shoes with cardboard because they could not afford to buy new one. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
My mother, whom I call Mrs. Winchester, said paying the bills, paying the servants, and keeping an eye on everything was like managing a large castle. The cobble stone driveway swung around behind the house here to get the stable, where we kept the riding horses, and the old carriage house, where the cars were garaged. According to legend, Mrs. Winchester enacted a nightly séance to help her with her building plans and for protection from “bad” spirits. The Satanic witch of old received her magic from The Dark Man. While the rest of the World, particularly the men-folk, slept in blissful innocence, she and her sisters would meet Him in secret groves. There He would advise, inveigle and disclose the knowledge that would empower them to work their spells and enchantments. His pearls of infernal wisdom empowered them. It was, they said, a sign of a coven moving towards black magic. In other words their selected deity, faded into the background of their working and the search for the manifestation of demonic forces within their circle became obsessive. However, magic is the power within oneself that is the key to what we do, and sometimes we can whip up a great deal of power. The magic we are capable of is almost indefinable. Our magic is the art of causing change to occur in conformity with will. We attempt to raise enough etheric energy between us, by our ritual, to use our paranormal powers to force a desired result by our will-power. It was one thing using the supernatural powers of the human mind to try to compel something to happen, but it was quite another matter summoning up the assistance of spirits and demons, whether benevolent, malevolent or neutral. Mistakes in the ritual or failure to observe the minute could lead to disaster. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
Mrs. Winchester recalls one night she invited a magician who parctised the darker arts to assist her. The magic went wrong and the room they were working in was virtually wrecked by lingering, unseen spirits. Mrs. Winchester was mysteriously injured with a stab wound in her shoulder, though no one saw the knife go in or where it came from. Many guides to higher ritual magic issues a health warning with their instructions: the practitioner must be confident he or she is totally in control of all the techniques and disciplines otherwise one faces physical, psychological and spiritual dangers of the most serious kind if any attempt to invoke spirits goes wrong. By and large, witchcraft—and certainly paganism—seemed not to be about chasing demons, though they do claim to make spiritual contact with the gods invoked during their worship. There was an abundance of evidence that Mrs. Winchester experienced paranormal events in her life: the feeling she had been in a certain place before when, in this life at least, it was her first visit; the uncanny foresight of her fortune-telling; the “proven” success of powers of autosuggestion; the out-of-body experiences that she was able to learn; the sixth sense of Zip, barking at the spot in the mansion where Maynard the butler had died years ago. The list goes on and on. The discussion about Mrs. Winchester will probably go on for centuries, but it will not be until the year 2030 that these discussions will be able to take place without being prosecuted or hanged. Mrs. Winchester wore robs during her séances because the human body holds within it a latent power which can be released by certain ritual exercises that witches perform. Some spiritualist healers and clairvoyant witches can actually see it, like a rainbow. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
Is it any surprise the Winchester Mansion is haunted? One night during a séance, two inner circles were painted on the floor. The circle is the center of all occult activity and was drawn to concentrate the occultists’ power and protected them from hostile spirits. Within the circle, the spiritual journey started and their efforts were directed to produce their Cone of Power. It was only within the circle that the gods and the spirits of the astral Would could be safely contacted. The process was much like clearing a dense forest so the physical bodies could meet their spiritual. As the group was opening their mind to journey to a higher plane, they were clearing their minds of Earthly problems and worries so that they could open their entire beings to the singular concentration of the work before them, by tapping into the energy of the centers of the body. Lighted candles were placed at strategic points on the circle, and there was a pentacle on the altar where the statuette of the Horned God of Pan stood. As Mrs. Winchester blessed the water and salt with her athame and the coven, she was able to visualize the bodily power of the priestess moving in the form of a blue light through her hand into the athame and as she consecrated the circle itself, starting at the north a magic was killed by a heavy door that came loose from its hinges and flew at him. The invocation of gods and goddesses or their attempts to attract angels and genii into circles involve long and complicated rituals which have their complexities. Afterwards, to all, things went on as usual for a week or two. Well, the things went on as usual; so they did with the rest of household; but as for Mrs. Winchester, she had never been the same since that night. Night after night, she used to lie awake, listening for the spirits, looking for blue lights, and for the door of the Blue Séance Room to be locked. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
However, all supernatural activity seemed to have ceased, and she heard no sounds coming from the room. At last, the silence began to be more and more dreadful to Mrs. Winchester than the activity of the spirits. She felt that someone was cowering there, behind the locked door, watching and listening as she watched and listened, and she could have almost cried out, “Whoever you are, come out and let me see you face to face, but do not lurk there and spy on me in the darkness!” Feeling as she did, you may wonder Mrs. Winchester did not give warning. Once she very nearly did so; but at the last moment something held her back. Whether it was compassion for the peace of her staff, who had grown more and more dependent on her, or unwillingness to try a new room, or some other feeling that she could not put a name to, Mrs. Winchester lingered on as if spellbound, though every night was dreadful to her, and the days but little better. The staff did not like Mrs. Winchester’s looks, she had not been the same since that night. They thought she would brighten up, but though she seemed easier in her mind, her spirits did not revive, nor her strength either. Mrs. Winchester had grown attached to her home, and there was nothing no one could do for her. In spite of Mrs. Winchester’s solemn looks, they had a very merry dinner that day in the hall. She started to look better, and seemed more cheerful in her manner. She had been for a walk in the morning, and after luncheon she lay down in her room, and read a book. As the rain fell, Mrs. Winchester looked out at the rain, and she picture how beautiful her Victorian gardens would look in the spring. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
It seemed to her that all the beautiful flowers, green lawns and plush trees would cover up the dreariness, indoors as well as out. The fancy had hardly crossed her mind when she heard a step at her side. She looked up, and there stood Maynard. Mrs. Winchester did not know how long he stood there. She only knew that she could not stir or take her eyes from him. Afterward she was terribly frightened, but t the same time it was not fear she felt, but something deeper and quitter. He looked at Mrs. Winchester long and hard, and his face was just one dumb prayer to her—but how in the World was Mrs. Winchester to help him? Suddenly she turned, and she heard him walk down the passage. This time Mrs. Winchester was not afraid to follow—she felt that she must know what Maynard wanted. Mrs. Winchester sprang up and ran out. He was at the other end of the passage, and Mrs. Winchester expected him to take the turn towards the door-to-nowhere; but instead, ran and pushed out the door to the 7-11 staircase that was built in the shape of a “Y”, which enabled servants to get to three different levels of the mansion. Mrs. Winchester followed him down the stairs. The kitchen and hall were empty at that hour, the servants being off duty, except for the footman, who was in the pantry. At the door Maynard stood still for a moment, with another look at Mrs. Winchester; then he turned the handle, and stepped out. For a minute Mrs. Winchester hesitated. What was Maynard leading her? #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
The door had closed softly after him, and Mrs. Winchester opened it and looked out, half-expecting to find that Maynard had disappeared. However, she saw him a few yards off hurrying across the courtyard to the path through the woods. His figure looked black and lonely in the snow, and for a second Mrs. Winchester’s heart failed her and she thought of turning back. But, all the while Maynard was drawing her after him; and Mrs. Winchester ran out into the open. Maynard was in the cobble stone path now. He walked on steadily, and Mrs. Winchester followed at the same pace, till they passed out of the gates and reached the highroad. Then he struck the across the open fields to the village. By this time the ground was white, and as he climbed the slope of a muddy hill ahead of her Mrs. Winchester noticed that Maynard left no footprint behind him. At sight of that her heart shriveled up within her, and her keens were water. Somehow, it was worse than indoors. He made the whole countryside seem lonely as the grave, with none but the two of them in it, and no help in the wide World. Once Mrs. Winchester tried to go back; but Maynard turned and looked at her, and it was as if he dragged her with chains. After that Mrs. Winchester followed him like a lamb. They came to the village and he led her through it, past the church and the blacksmith’s shop, and down the lane, and the ghost of Maynard disappeared. A sense of helplessness came over Mrs. Winchester and she had not been able to guess what he wanted. His last look at her pierced Mrs. Winchester to the marrow; and yet it had not told her! #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
All at once Mrs. Winchester felt more desolate than when Maynard had stood there watching her. It seemed as if he left Mrs. Winchester all alone to carry the weight of the secret she could not guess. The rain went around in great circles, and the ground fell away from her. A spot of tea was brought to Mrs. Winchester and she was driven by carriage to her mansion. Upon arrival at home, the maid asked Mrs. Winchester what she wanted for dinner. “I have a headache, and will not require dinner this evening,” she said. It was a fact that Mrs. Winchester could scarcely keep her feet; yet she had no fancy to spend a solitary evening in her room. She sat down in the morning room, as long as she could hold her head up; but by eight she walked up the zig zag stairs, too weary to care what happened if she could but get her head on a pillow. The rest of the household went to bed soon afterward; they kept early hours. Once in bed, Mrs. Winchester felt easier, and lay quiet, listening to the strange noises that came out of the house after dark. Once she thought she heard a door open and close again below: it might have been the glass door that led to the gardens. She got up and peered out of the window; but it was in the dark of the moon, and nothing visible outside but the streaking of rain against the panes. Mrs. Winchester went back to bed and must have dozed off, for she jumped awake by the sound of shattered glasses. Before her heard was clear she sprung out of bed, and was dragging on her clothes. She unlocked and opened her door and peered down the passage. As far as her candle flame carried, she could see nothing unusual ahead of her. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
Mrs. Winchester hurried on, breathless; but as she pushed open the door leading to the main hall her heart stood still, for there at the head of the stairs was Maynard, peering dreadfully down into the darkness. For a second she could not sir; but her hand slipped from the door, and as it swung shut the figure vanished. At the same instant there came another sound from below stairs—a stealthy mysterious sound, as of a latchkey turning in the house door. At that moment, the door tore open. On the threshold stood Maynard. All was dark behind him, but Mrs. Winchester saw him plainly. A death flutter passed over her face. Hours passed and there seemed to be no change in her. Just when the evil spirit left, Mrs. Winchester did not, but you could imagine the great joy that filled her heart to be set free from that awful, wicked, noisy spirit. Mrs. Winchester was so happy. If a Demonic element is allowed to express itself, through a non-human vehicle, such as poetry, music, art—great works can be accomplished. Maynard was a Satanist who had worked evil magic more than a hundred times. There are bloodcurdling accounts of those who had flirted with the devil and brought to public attention by those who worked at the Winchester Mansion. Mrs. Winchester knew she had powers when she was a child; she could will things to happen and often they did. She thought it was natural. She owned parchments from old grimoires from rituals that had been performed by witches who were hanged or burned. There were even books with spells in curses from the sixteenth century. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
Mrs. Winchester owned magic spells that were older than the country—magic to ensure opulence; to incite hatred or vengeance; and, for men, to secure the love of a virgin; to open every kind of lock without a key; to cause a dead body to rise—all that kind of stuff. She studied the old rituals for bewitchment, the type that got a lot of women hanged. There were these spells rather like voodoo where she made wax effigies. Mrs. Winchester vegan to study necromancy, which deals with bringing the dead back to life. The method she did was one where she drew her magic in a circle in her house. This was supposed to attract the spirit back. The performed the rites which lasted about thirty minutes. Nothing happened the first time or the second time, but the third time the room went cold and she could feel the presence. Suddenly ornaments crashed off the sideboard and pictures fell from the walls…she had made contact but whoever it was was obviously unhappy about it so she had to give up. Mrs. Winchester did not give up experimenting thought. The art of necromancy often causes occasional outbreaks of attacks on graveyards where misguided occult dabblers believe they have been compelled to make contact with the dead no matter how long they have been departed, though in truth a graveyard is probably the least place the spirit might wish to join callers for an evening. In June of 1889, the Oak Hill Memorial Park was the scene of bizarre rituals that puzzled even the most experienced occultists. More than twenty graves were ransacked; old-fashion lead-lined coffins had been “ripped open like a tin of beans” and the bodies or remains were carried away. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
No one can become involved in spiritism without serious repercussions. The poltergeist phenomena may be real. I call upon the powers of death and decay through the mouth of Arezura. Powers of baneful darkness I summon you to this unholy temple. I conjure you mighty Fly Goddess Dryj Nasu to enter this lamp of death which will guide the lives of my enemies into utter destruction, for death levels them all according to my will, whether they die as Kings upon a throne or poor men lying upon dirt! Druj Nasu fill this lamp of death with your power and essence and I offer my essence upon this gateway of the black Earth so it is done! This Druj Nasu runs from the northern directions in the form of a fly. To him blow the wind from the northerly direction from the more northern sides, stinking, more stinking than other winds. I offer my enemy as a sacrifice unto the Druj Nasu. Claim your prize how, by the power of Ahriman and the Blackened Fire of Zohak, and in the name of my own divine power it is done! Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, O Lord! and I shall be clean: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. THE ADORATION AT THE INDUING OF THE VESTMENT. By the figurative mystery of these holy vestures (or this holy vestment) I will clothe me with the armour of salvation in the strength of the Most High, ANCHOR; AMACOR; AMIDES; THEODINIAS; ANITOR; that my desire end may be effected through Thy strength, O ADONAI! Unto Whom the praise and glory will for ever and ever belong! Amen! #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
Winchester Mystery House
Master magician and acclaimed apparitionist Aiden Sinclair returns to Winchester Mystery House with Aiden Sinclair’s Ghost of Christmas Passed, an interactive evening of paranormal illusions. Once upon a time, Christmas was more than a celebration of giving.
It was a time that families gathered and when the night grew darkest, chilling tales were told. Aiden Sinclair rekindles the tradition of Dickens in a haunting presentation that brings the Christmas Ghost Stories of long ago back to haunt the living! Will you dare join and see what dark gifts he has in store? Two nights ONLY – tickets going fast!
🎟 link in bio. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Why Don’t You Come and Try to Save Me?
Perplexity is leavened by the extravagant Victorian Winchester Mansion. The mansion that Mrs. Winchester spent 38 years constructing is a glittering vast rotunda with the ancient masters of all the arts wrought into a vision of glory and beauty with sculptured marbles and incrusted gems and costly gold-work and sunset splendors of color. Its miles of twisting hallways and secret passageways in the walls and floors make it a fine sight to see. The Arctic skies look so beautiful when the light floods through the stained-glass doors and windows, some set with jewel stones; concave-convex Belgium optical cut-glass panels furnished by Tiffany. The trembling waves of blue, yellow, and green light flame, and through this shifting and changing dream of rich colors the flash of innumerable jewels go chasing and turning, gleaming and expiring like trains of sparks through burnt paper. This mansion is a beautiful spectacle and it is surrounded by its own Garden of Eden. However, the Rifle that Won the West, whose First Blood’s presences long ago filled that mansion with malice and hate and envy. Because of the imprisonment of legions of souls that have departed, so many intimate strangers, produced as yet a dread, produced certainly a strain, beyond the liveliest was likely to feel. They feel with Mrs. Sarah Winchester into categories, they fairly became familiar, the signs for her own perception, of the alarm of their presence and their vigilance created; though leaving her always to remark, portentously, on her probably having formed a relation, she probably enjoyed the consciousness, unique in the experience of humans. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
You see, solidifying Mr. Oliver Winchester’s (Sarah’s Father-in-law) business stature was an arrangement which by modern standards would be illegal, but in those days was quite acceptable: by the 1870 the Union Metallic Cartridge Company was the largest cartridge company in the World, and by 1873 Winchester had become much more active and competitive in the ammunition business. The two firms found areas of difference with patent rights on cartridge design and manufacture, and in 1873 they entered into an agreement in which the claims “for the use of patents in manufacture of metallic cartridges…against each other up to this date are hereby cancelled, and set off one against the other.” Further, “in the future [each party shall be] entitled to use the patents of the other so far as they may elect to use the patents of the other so far as they may elect to do so. The royalty or compensation to be paid by each party to the other shall be fixed and determined by a Board of Arbitration.” Agreement was also reached in payment of legal fees should there be any suits brought against the firms on patents. The final significant point of this joint arrangement was limiting the deal “only to patent rights now in general use in the manufacture of cartridges, and…not…to any radically new mode of depositing metal by galvanic process.” The agreement would remain in force for ten years, during which time both companies developed even closer ties. One of the most remarkable developments in the history of gunmaking took place in 1888. The Remington Arms Company had suffered severe financial setbacks, mainly as a result of overexpansion, and by 1886 the firm was in receivership. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Marcellus Hartley, who had built the Union Metallic Cartridge Company and shared with Winchester the bulk of the U.S. ammunition market, made a proposal. Quoting from the minutes of the January 24th 1888, Winchester Board of Directors’ meeting: “Messrs. Hartley and Graham [major gun dealers as well as owners of U.M.C.]…asked if our Company would consider entering a syndicate…for the purchase of 3/5 or controlling interest in the Remington business and property which would probably require as our share $75,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $2,339,021.05….On motion it was voted that the executive officers of the Company be authorized to go into the Remington transactions to the extent of $75,000 if it was thought advisable.” On March 7, Hartley and Graham purchased Remington, and Winchester assumed half of the $200,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $6,237, 289.47 cost. Remington was jointly run by U.M.C. and Winchester until 1896, at which time Winchester sold its shares to Marcellus Hartley. The deal gave Winchester a significant share in a key competitor, and also prevented Remington from ever becoming a manufacturer of lever-action firearms. In an attempt to develop World markets—both commercial and military—Winchester relied heavily on Thomas Emmet Addis, who was appointed international salesman. Addis had considerable authority, and ranged so far and wide that he referred to himself as “World Traveller.” Some fascinating comments based on his letters to New Haven were collected in a book of foreign contracts. Excerpts from 1887 and 1888 follow: “Japan: there is very little demand for sporting arms of any sort in Japan. Bangkok, Siam: Siam would be a grand market for our goods were free importation permitted but the regulations are practically prohibitive as a permit must be obtained from the King himself who will only grant a permit where he is satisfied the arms will not be used against him. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
“A good many of our guns were imported before these regulations went into effect, and they are much liked. The King’s Body Guard were at one time armed with them, but now use Martini-Henrys make…there is very little prospect of the Government purchasing our single short muskets with bayonets and scabbards….Western Australia: T.E.A. does not think it advisable to visit there—no town of 5,000 inhabitants, and would require months of time to make the trip.” Addis went on to note, “Sent an order for very finely finished carbines and shot guns intended for the King and Princess occupying high places.” At this time the major U.S. competitors to Winchester were the rifles by Colt and Marlin. And it appears that export sales in the 1880s and 1890s represented about 10 to 15 percent of total Winchester sales. While the government sales of firearms were not what O.F. Winchester and other management would have hoped, ammunition proved to be increasingly profitable. A decisive factor in the profitability of ammunition sales was a little-known organization put together in 1883: the Ammunition Manufacturers’ Association (AMA). The origin of the group was candidly explained by onetime Winchester executive Arthur Earle: “There has been a very serious competition among the larger ammunition manufacturers…they thought it would be much better for all hands to get together and make sone money rather than spend their time and money and energy cutting each other’s throats.” Not at all illegal at the time it was formed, the association included Winchester, the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, the Phoenix Metallic Cartridge Company, and the U.S. Cartridge Company. Winchester and U.M.C held equal shares and owned nearly 75 percent of the stock. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The main goals of the AMA were stated in incorporation documents: “to buy and sell ammunition of all kinds and act as agent for others in the purchase and sale thereof; to make contracts with Manufacturers and Dealers in Ammunition for the purpose of producing and securing uniformity and certainty in their customs and usages and preventing serious competition between them; to settle differences between those engaged in the manufacture of or in dealing in ammunition, and to devise and take measurements to foster and protect their trade in business.” The members no longer were competing in terms of price, but continued to compete in quality, brand names, the preferences of dealers and jobbers, and related matters. It has been estimated that the association had control of as much as 50 percent of the total sales of the ammunition industry. An idea of the importance of ammunition is evident by sales figures showing that Winchester’s net sales from January 1, 1884, to December 31, 1888, were $9,500,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $296,276,000). The firm’s net profit from this total was $2,200,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $68,611,284.21). Approximately half of these sales and half of the ammunition was intended for military use is unknown, but the variety of cartridges in the firm’s line as of 1884 totaled approximately one hundred, plus primers, paper and brass empty shotshells, and felt gun wads. Based largely on its substantial commercial sales of firearms and the large market for ammunition, Winchester’s share of the arms and ammunition industry as a U.S.A. manufacturer went from 12 percent of the market (c.1889) to 27 percent (c.1899). In the same period the number of company employees more than doubled, from over 1,200 to nearly 2,800. Clearly W.R.A Co. was an industry leader, not only domestically, but also as an international force. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
As of February 1890, Thomas Gray Bennet, son-in-law of Oliver Winchester and an experienced and educated gun man, because president of the firm. For the ten pervious years, control had been under the able guidance of William W. Converse, a brother-in-law of William W. Winchester. (Though groomed to succeed his father, W.W. died of tuberculosis in March 1881.) As Oliver Winchester had groomed his successors, so had Converse. The most qualified successor (who might even have taken over on O.F. Winchester’s death in 1880, except for his youthful thirty-seven years) was T.G. Bennett. T.G. Bennett would remain president for the next twenty-one years. He assumed control at a time of great company prosperity, with the firm in solid financial condition, well prepared to enter a new era characterized by the change from black powder to smokeless—a change that affected the design of both ammunition and the firearms themselves. Under Bennett’s presidency, W.R.A. Co. grew from approximately 1,430 employees to twice that by 1900, and twice again by 1914 (somewhat more than half of these workmen made firearms; the balance produced ammunition). At the time of Bennett’s beginnings, with Winchester (1870), sales totaled about 25,000 guns. When he retired as president in 1910, the annual production was about 300,000 guns. In November of 1914, two officials of the British government visited New Haven, and shortly thereafter an order was received for 50 million .22 Long Rifle cartridges (for training); negotiations had also begun for a rifle-making contract. Ammunition orders for the Belgian and British governments were also written with Winchester, on a subcontract basis from Remington-U.M.C. Further, the Baldwin Locomotive Works placed an order on behalf of the Russian government for 100,000 Model 1895 muskets, and the British government placed an order for 200,000 British Enfield bolt-actions rifles. Amazingly, by the end of November, the total value of military orders was in excess of $16,700,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $494,780,920) and $47,500,000 2022 (inflation adjusted $1,393,377,227.72). #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Oliver Winchester had an impassioned dedication to garnering military acceptance of his repeating firearms, and, as president of the firm, he lent much of his prestige and energy toward equipping U.S. forces with modern firearms. Winchester’s championing of small-arms modernization was eloquently expressed in a appeal for the adoption of a breech-loading repeater for U.S. troops: What would be the value of any army of one hundred thousand infantry and cavalry, thus mounted and armed with a due proportion of artillery, each artilleryman with a repeating carbine slung to his back? Certainly the introduction of repeating guns into the army will involve a change in the Manual of Arms. Probably it will modify the art of war; possibly it may revolutionize the whole science of war. Where is the military genius that is to grasp this whole subject, and so modify the science of war as to best develop the capacities of this terrible engine—the exclusive control of which would enable any government (with resources sufficient to keep half a million of men in the field) to rule the World?” Oliver Winchester never realized his ambitions to “modify the art of war” through Winchester repeaters. It would commonly believed that these repeating arms would unleash a beat, an invoke a curse on the family because of the masses of carnage they would create. In 1887m Congress voted funding for a military test of new firearms. For these trials, which commenced in April 1878. The guns were made in Army and Navy orders—carbines, rifles, and muskets for the Army, and rifles for the Navy. Oliver Winchester died in 1880 without realizing his goal of successful U.S. military sales. And, in retrospect, it can be said that the commercial success of Winchester could have been even greater than it was, had not the president of the firms devoted so much time and energy to going after government contract sales. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In 1910, the annual produced of Winchester guns was about 300,000. Clients and engravers today still call upon the “Highly Finished Arms” for beautiful guns. The demand was substantial, partly because of the tradition in the arms field that decorated sporting firearms, of quality manufacturing, were an expected part of the line. In the late 1890s, Winchester states its pride in making beautiful guns: “The Winchester Repeating Arms Co. have unsurpassed facilities for producing fancy finished guns of all prices and descriptions. Inlaying in gold, silver, or platinum, gold, or silverplating, engraving, carving or fancy checking, is done in the most artistic manner by the company’s own employees. Stocks of fancy woods can be supplied, if desired.” There were Winchester’s with Tiffany-designed embellishments. Tiffany’s, New York, advertised in its Blue Book catalogue “Revolvers of the most improved types, mounted in silver, carved ivory, gold, etc. with rich and elaborate decorations….Cases, boxes, belts and holsters made in appropriate styles for presentations.” The arms of Tiffany rank among the most striking, beautiful, and fascinating objects in the history of firearms. John Wayne, President Harry S. Truman, President Eisenhower, Ernest Hemingway, President Roosevelt and many other prominent people all owned Winchester rifles. Teddy Roosevelt and son Kermit had three powerful Winchester caliber 405s and one .30-40 along on their African safari they practiced for the great adventure on the White Hose lawn and relied on Winchester to handle many of the firearms-related details of the trip. In Africa Game Trails, Roosevelt clearly stated his esteem for these Winchesters, with such affectionate allusions as “my medicine gun for lion,” “the beloved Winchester,” and “the faithful Winchester. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The Winchester public relations and advertising staff could not have been happier: endorsements from not only the former President of the United States of America, but a recognized authority on guns and shooting and the World’s leading conservationist. Sarah Winchester and William Wirt Winchester were married. William Winchester was the son of Oliver Winchester. When Oliver died, William Winchester took his place as the President of the Winchester Repeating Arms company. At his death in 1880, Oliver Fisher Winchester had left 4,000 shares of company stock in trust to his widow (who already owned 475 shares). Their daughter, Mrs. T.G. Bennett, then owned 406 shares, and Mrs. William Winchester had 777 shares. When Mrs. Oliver Fisher Winchester died in 1897, the trust was evenly divided between Mrs. William Wirt Winchester and Mrs. T.G. Bennett. Thus, as of 1904, the family held the following stock: Mrs. T.G. Bennett—2,875 shares, Mrs. W.W. Winchester—2,777 shares, T.G. Bennett—32 shares, Winchester Bennett—6 shares. Total: 5,690. The two Winchester/Bennett women had the vast majority of stock, and since shares in the company totaled 10,000 common stock, the family retained control. In order to prevent a “hostile takeover” (it had been rumored that some New York investors were interested in doing so), in May 1905, the family formed the Winchester Purchasing Company, which was the holding company designed to prevent the family from losing controlling interest. They would retain control until the 1920s. Now, so many people focus on the $20,000,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $580,933,333.33) is a vast sum of money, but the 2,777 shares Mrs. Winchester own/inherited for also worth a lot of money. She was probably equivalent to a billionaire, and she also ran a farm and produced hardware, and sporting good, as well as athletic equipment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
There is no denying the fact that the Winchesters were brilliant. They gave us guns to protect ourselves and built several mansions that are architectural gems on of the most famous being the Winchester Mystery House. It turns out that curse tablets themselves are nothing new. Lead tablet engraved with curses have been found in a lot of tombs, and one is located somewhere inside of the Winchester Mansion. Mrs. Winchester knew she was cursed because her six-week-old daughter died, and a few years later, so did her husband. She was so grieved that she moved to Santa Clara Valley, where she built her mansion. However, she soon found it was full of ghost and she kept building to appease the angry spirits in hopes of breaking the curse of being haunted by dangerous ghost, demons, and spirits. Mrs. Winchester found that she had not only been given money, but also the gift of understanding the divine. However, this gift turned ugly. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Winchester remained celibate. She turned a powerful man down, and he was enraged by her rejection, so he added another part to her curse and gift of prophecy: a curse that no one would ever believe what she said. Although the Valley was thrilled by the dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Santa Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building activity that mushroomed a farmhouse into a sprawling mansion within mother. Here was fair game for all! They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like—but everyone enjoyed. Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanada Villa. The rumors grew to established legend. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The tongue of the town’s people went like a steam engine, capin’ so far ahead of her that Mrs. Winchester locked herself up in her house. She gained to an extraordinary degree the power to penetrate the dusk of distances and the darkness of corners, to resolve back into their innocence the treacheries of uncertain light, the evil-looking forms taken in the gloom by mere shadows, by accidents of the air, by shifting effects of perspective; putting down her dim luminary she could wander on without it, pass into other rooms and, only knowing it was there behind her in case of need, see her way about, visually project for her purpose a comparative clearness. It made her feel, this acquired faculty, like some monstrous stealthy cat; she wondered if she would have glared at these moments with large shining yellow eyes, and what it might verily be, for the poor hard-pressed alter ego, to be confronted with such a type. She liked however the shutters opened, and above all the sense of the hard silver of the autumn stars through the window-paned, and scarcely less the flare of the garden lamps, the white electric luster which it would have taken to keep out. This was human actual social; this was of the World she had lived in, and she was more at her ease certainly for the countenance, coldly general and impersonal, that all the while and in spite of her detachment it seemed to give her. She had support of course mostly in the rooms at the wide front and the prolonged side; it failed her considerably in the central shades and the parts of the back. However, if she sometimes, on her rounds, was glad of her optical reach, so none the less often the rear of the house affected her as the very jungle of her pray. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The mansion was there more subdivided; a large “extension” in particular, where small rooms for servants and family members had been multiplied, abound in nooks and corners, in closets and passages, in the ramification especially of an ample back staircase over which she leaned, many a time, to look far down—not deterred from her gravity even while aware that she might have figure some solemn simpleton playing at hide-and-seek. Outside in fact she might make herself make that ironic rapprochement; but within the walls, and in spite of the clear windows, her consistency was proof against the cynical light of Santa Clara Valley. There in her home—the acuteness of uncertainty plagued her, sometimes she would break into a sweet that she consented to attribute to fear as she would have dared immediately to act upon it for enterprise. She had been dodging, retreating, hiding from the terror. It bristled there—somewhere near and at hand, however unseen still—as the haunting thing left the feeling that the drop of its danger was, on the spot. With another rare shift of the same subtlety Mrs. Winchester was already trying to measure by how much more she herself might now be in peril of fear. She was astounded that another form could actively inspire fear, and simultaneously quake for the form in which she might passively known it. The apprehension of knowing it must after a little have grown in her, and the strangest moment of her adventure perhaps, the most memorable or really most interesting, afterwards, of her crisis, was the lapse of certain instants of concentrated conscious combat, the sense of a need to hold on to something, even after the manner of one slipping and slipping on some awful incline; the vivid impulse, above all, to move, to act, to charge, somehow and upon something—to show herself, in a word, that she was not afraid. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The state of “holding-on” was thus the state to which she was momentarily reduced; if there had been anything, in the great vacancy, to seize, she would presently have been aware of having clutched it as she might under a shock at home have clutched the nearest chair-back. She had been surprised at any rate—of this she was aware—into something unprecedented since her original appropriation of the place; she had closed her eyes, held them tight, for a long minute, as with that instinct of dismay and that terror of vision. When she opened them the room, the other contiguous rooms, extraordinarily, seemed lighter—so light, almost, that at first she took the change for the say. She stood firm, however that might be, just where she had paused; her resistance had helped her—it was as if there were something had tided over. Mrs. Winchester knew after a little what this was—it had been in the imminent danger of flight. She has stiffened her will against going: without this she would have made for the 7-11 stairs, and it seemed to her that, still with her eyes closed, she would have descended them, would have known how, straight and swiftly, to the bottom. Well, as she had held out, here she was—still at the top, among the more intricate upper rooms and with the gauntlet of the others, of all the rest of the house, still to run when it should be her time to go. She would go at her time—only at her time; did not she go every night very much at the same time—only at her time; did she not go every night very much at the same hour? Mrs. Winchester took out her watch—there was light for that; it was scarcely a quarter past one, and she had never withdrawn so soon. She reached her Blue Séance Room for the most part at two—with her walk through her mansion taking a quarter of an hour. She waited for the for the last quarter—she would not stir till then; and she kept her watch there with her eyes on it, reflecting while she held it that this deliberate wait, a wait with an effort which she recognized, would serve perfectly for the attestation she desired to make. It would prove by her budging at last from her place. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
What Mrs. Winchester felt now was that, since she had not originally scuttled, she and her dignities—which had never in her life seemed to many—all to preserve and to carry aloft. This was before her in truth as a physical image, an image almost worthy of an age of greater romance. That remark indeed glimmered for her only to glow. Mrs. Winchester stared with all her eyes at the sonder of the fact, arrested again where she stood and again holding her breath while she sounded its sense. She took it full in the face that something had happened. At that moment she had undergone an agitation so extraordinary that it startled her. Then the door to the Blue Séance Room slammed. She tried to convince herself that she might perhaps then have gone into the room and, inadvertently, automatically, on coming out had drawn the door after her. The difficult was that this exactly was what she never did; it was against her whole policy to have three entrances to the room and one secret exit, besides the doom that opened to a 9-foot drop to the kitchen sink. However, she was well aware, quite on the brain: the strange apparition was a dominating demon. Here are also demons which do not exist just in the imagination of frightened people. They can also work miracles. Mrs. Winchester talked for at least ten minutes with the apparition. The World in which she lived was full of demons and demon-energized healers and magic workers. Pagans who worked on her farm and in her house were remarkably healed. He mansion became famous in the community in a night’s sleep hundred were healed. Other visions followed and people began to flock to the mansion in a ferment of superstitious frenzy, and miracles of healing and other wonders were claimed. At the Winchester Mansion, a young woman named Jennifer Kierkegaad, a servant of Mrs. Winchester’s had appeared and spoken to her. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The walls in the mansion would sometimes crack and blood flowed every Friday. Jennifer gave many evidences of clairvoyance and telepathy, and allegedly healed a few people by taking their diseases on herself. Mrs. Winchester looked at her hear and saw who our eyes cannot see. Cures wrought by spiritistic mediums who operate through the séance and fortune-telling belong to the realm of white magic because it overlaps other demonic phenomena. Mrs. Winchester said, “My child, Satan knows how gullible we all may be. He is willing and able to perform diabolic miracles to deceive humans. Satanic healings, as we have seen, merely shift the physical disorder into the psychic plane by bringing the “healed” person into some type of occult bondage. No one can become involved in spiritism without serious psychic repercussions. Often the healing conjurer is an adept spiritistic medium as well. Be careful. I have counseled with several people who became psychically vexed by dabbling in magic healings and spiritistic séances. Another servant woman became tormented by poltergeist phenomena (hearing voices and noises) after sneaking into my Blue Séance Room and calling on the spirits. The resulting psychic bondage is frequently worse than the physical malady which is supposedly ‘cured.’ Christians camouflage and employ deceptive religious dress, while the other openly subscribes to Satan and demons. Evidently the healer (magic conjurer) who wants to force a cure, whether by appealing to God or the devil, is using supernatural powers to further his or her own ends. Heed my warning, my Child. I have been tormented by demons. Some are kind, others are dangerous.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Black-magic conjuration openly uses the name of Satan and demonic powers. It does not have the deceptive veneer of Christian respectability that white magic adopts. People who are adept in the black arts and workers of diabolic miracles are the type of occultists who were popular in the courts of the ancient pagan kings. They not only advised the heads of government but performed supernatural feats, including magical charming of the sick. The ability of such magicians is conditioned on the human plane by their inherent psychic power, and on the supernatural plant by their degree of abandonment to demonic domination. The effectiveness of a Christian, too, is subject to one’s own native endowments and one’s willingness to respond to the Holy Spirit and become dynamically useful to the glory of God. Black magicians, like spiritistic mediums, differ in strength and psychic ability to perform magical feats (satanic miracles). Strong magicians usually owe their success to innate psychic powers. Very frequently they come from a family where the occult arts have flourished for generates. Their innate and inherited occult powers are frequently cultivated and enhanced by the study of magical literature. To enlist the help of Satan and demons, a pact is often made with the powers of evil, which is a satanic counterpart of dedication to God’s will. The subject consciously and willingly gives oneself over to Satan and demonic agencies who will help one perform healing conjurations and other supernatural feats. Ordinarily the body is cut and the compact with the devil is written and gained in one’s own blood. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The woman Jennifer we spoke of early, who worked at the Winchester Mansion in the early 1900s was physically and mentally quite healthy, but she began to have an ever-increasing number of strange experiences at night. She did not heed Mrs. Winchester’s advice. Although there was no one in her room with her, she would have the feeling as if she were being beaten. In the morning, Mrs. Winchester would notice that this woman had bruises all over her body. This experience would repeat itself about twice a week and she could think of no way of explaining the puzzling events. At first she was rather ashamed to talk about these nightly attacks but in the end she was forced to go to her local minister for advice. He himself could not help her, and even when the woman consulted another minister, still no solution could be found. Since in all other areas of her life she was completely normal no explanation was forthcoming. One day however, Mrs. Winchester sat down to talk to Jennifer, she could see it was not a case of mental or emotional disturbance. Mrs. Winchester asked her if she was still having contact with the occult field. It was then that the following story came to light. As a young girl, Jennifer had been courted by a young man, but she had finally broken off their relationship because she had been unhappy with the man’s attitude. After this he had threated her and said that he would plague her because she had refused to marry him. The woman had thought little of the threat at first and it was only after the nightly attacks had begun that she was reminded of the man’s words and Mrs. Winchester’s warning. However, Jennifer found it impossible to believe that there was any connection between the two events. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Before we go one with this story, when a person is faced with a case such as this, the first thing to do is to see if a doctor can see if there are any medical or psychological causes behind the experience. If it turns out to be psychological, the patient should be sent to a believing Christian psychiatrist. Since many puzzling occurrences can now be explained and understood by the recent findings of depth psychology, one must exercise extreme caution when seeking to diagnoses troubles of this nature. A wrong diagnosis can have disastrous effects. However, if one is sure that it is not a medical case, one can then turn to the findings of parapsychology and occultism to see if there is any connection to be found there. There is still much that remains unrecognized by our doctors, psychologists and theologians who rely solely on their university education for their knowledge. Occultism still pays a part in our World today. Concerning Jennifer, the woman of whom we were speaking Mrs. Winchester sent her to Reverend N.P. Wallgren, at the Swedish Evangelical Mission Church of San Jose. He prayed with Jennifer and encouraged her to put her faith in Christ to find complete deliverance. It was during this time of counselling that the man who had threatened Jennifer had hanged himself. The woman was at once freed from the attacks and the experiences never recurred. There is a controversial field of mental suggestion, which just cannot be explained away by saying that it is all nonsense. There is also a sceptism of ignorance. There are still many things between Heaven and Earth of which the World has never dreamed, as Shakespeare aptly said. Mental suggestion is not just a cause of popular superstition. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Even if with Jennifer the nightly disturbances had been the symptoms of hysteria, the sudden and lasting healing would still be quite extraordinary. Every doctor knows how difficult it is to heal such illnesses. However, here we had in fact a magic influence rather than an illness. The Christian is well aware of the fact that we are all surrounded by the hosts of wickedness. The powers of darkness are a present reality. It is not that some people set out to blaspheme, it is just that the images some have created tend to be potentially blasphemous. Sometimes people are a bit of a kid with a chemistry set—they pinch and plunder different aspects and mix them all together and every now and then it might turn into something supernatural. Not everyone has formal religious education or religious training. The Black Priest, was actually known as Dr. Lavey. There are people on this Earth that are fascinated by all kinds of things, but the thing all their interests have in common is a Satanic undercurrent, philosophically. Some have always been attracted to the mystical things in life. Classic country and western is incredibly Satanic, it is so bombastic and sentimental. Its goal is to grab you by the heart, and that is pretty much the definition of Satanic music. Part of the reason interest in the Church of Satan has revived is because high-profile people like Marilyn Manson talked about it. However, there are generations of people born into the Satanic Age. There are a lot more people today living their lives outside the expectations of society. While some people can never get past the shock value of being a Satanist, that is not the reason a lot of people are interested in the Church of Satan. It is just an outgrowth of who they are and it is not something they need to do to attract attention to themselves. It is just their philosophy, and it reflects the way they desire to live. The Devil does not have to be an object of menace or evil, people just need to take responsibility for their conduct disorder and psychopathology. The personification of the Devil is just a guy inviting you to experience for yourself the things you have been told are bad or wrong or evil, and make your own decision about them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The Devil does not have to be seen as some drooling monster with fangs leaping out of the pits of Hell to rip your head off. There are a lot of people in Hollywood who, if they are not card-carrying members of the Church of Satan, they are certainly fellow travellers. In the entertainment industry, there is practically no one who is offended or horrified by someone who belongs to the Church of Satan. The only things that affect people’s lives are symbols. The Winchester mansion is a symbol of so many things, but overall, it is a symbol of Mrs. Winchester’s life, and of course the occult and supernatural. Many wonder about the color of the mansion, but if you look at it, it should be obvious. The conservators painted it to be symbolic of her favorite flower the daisy. Yellow, with a green stem. The people who have the most power in our society today are the people who can best wield symbols. An understanding of Satanic magic is useful not only for changing things yourself, but also for seeing how other people are trying to manipulate you. The Circle of Counter Creation become directly connected to the powers which flow through the altar. It is through the various seals found upon the mandala that more specific powers can be extracted from the altar urn for the sake of communication and personal empowerment. O Thou great, powerful, and mighty King Amaimon, who bearest rule by the power of the Supreme God El over all the spirits both superior and inferior of the Infernal Orders in the Dominion of the East; I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of God; and by that God that Thou Worshippest; and by the Seal of that creation; and by the most might and powerful name of God, IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATON who cast out of Heaven with all other infernal spirits; and by all the most powerful and great names of God who created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all things in them. You are now aware of this place of eternal darkness. This is possible because you have a light within which cannot be dimmed. A light which is unlike any light perceived by those of lower consciousness. This light is the power of your own spirit, developed by your own intellect, spoken words, and chosen deeds with the realm of limitation. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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It Was Worse than the Thing that Crept into the Shadows
Love, peace, comfort, measureless contentment—that was life on the Winchester Estate in 1888. It was a joy to be alive. Pain there was none, nor infirmity, nor any physical signs to mark the flight of time; disease, care, sorrow—one might feel these outside the pale, but not on Mrs. Winchester’s Estate. There they had no place, there they never came. All days were alike, and all a dream of delight. The big country mansion was so large it could shelter an army. Guests lounging around the house for the big Christmas party. The laughter and music was only broken by the whisper of the wind in the cedar branches, and the scraping of their harsh fingers against the window panes. It had pricked us to such luxurious confidence in our surroundings of bright chintz and candle-flame and fire-light, that we had dared to talk of ghost—in which, we all said, we did not believe one bit. We had told the story of the phantom coach and the wedding that had taken place at the Winchester mansion, and the horrible strange bed, and the farmer’s wife, and the Victorian cottage on the estate. We none of us believed in ghosts, but my heart, at least, seemed to leap to my throat and choke me there, when a tap came to Mrs. Winchester’s door…a tap faint, not to be mistaken. Almost at once, Mrs. Winchester’s housekeeper Miss Eden opened the door and said, “Come in,” but she stood there. She was, at all normal hours, the most silent women I have ever known. She stood and looked at us, and shivered a little. So did we—for in those days corridors were not warmed by hot-water pipes, and the air from the door was keen. “I saw your light,” she said at last, “and I thought it was late for you to be up—after all this gaiety. I thought perhaps—” her glance turned towards the door of the dressing-room. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
“No,” I said, “Mrs. Winchester is fast asleep.” I should have added a goodnight, but the youngest of us forestalled my speech. She did not know Mrs. Winchester as we others did; did not know how her persistent silence built a wall round her—a wall that no one dared to break down with the commonplaces of talk, or the littlenesses of mere human relationship. Mrs. Winchester was the heiress of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. In the morning, she came downs stairs in her unsuitably rich silk lace-trimmed dressing-gown falling back from her thin collarbones, and ran to the door and put an arm around her guest Miss McAnally. The vivid light of pleasure in Miss McAnally’s pale blue eyes went through Mrs. Winchester’s heart like a knife. If she wanted an arm there, it would have been so easy to put one around her neck. “Now,” Mrs. Winchester said, “you shall have the very biggest, nicest chair, and the coffee-pot is here on the hob as hot as hot and my other guest have been telling ghost stories all light. When you get warm you ought to tell one too.” “You’re sure I’m not in your way,” Miss McAnally said, stretching her hands to a blaze. “Not a bit”—Mrs. Winchester said. Mrs. Winchester put her fleecy Maderia shawl round her shoulders. She could not think of anything else to do for her, and she found herself wishing desperately to do something. The smiles Miss. McAnally gave were very quite pretty. People can smile prettily at forty or fifty, or even later, though most young women do not realize this. “As I said before,” Mrs. Winchester confessed, “Everyone has been telling ghost stories all night. I retired early for bed. All of the ghost stories are so beautifully rounded off—a murder committed on the spot—or a hidden treasure, or a warning…I think that makes them harder to believe. The most horrid ghost-story I ever heard was one that was quite silly.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
“Tell it,” Miss McAnally begged. “I cannot—it does not sound anything to tell,” replied Mrs. Winchester. “The only thing that I ever knew of was—was hearsay,” Mrs. Winchester said, slowly, “till just the end. I daresay it would bore you, but it cannot do any hard. You all do not believe in ghosts, and it was not exactly a ghost either.” There was a breathing time of hush and expectancy. The fire crackled and the gas suddenly flared higher because the billiard lights had been put out. We heard the steps and voices of the men going along the corridors. “It is really hardly worth telling,” Mrs. Winchester said doubtfully, shading her faded face from the fire with her thin hand. Everyone said, “Go on—oh, go on—do!” ‘Well,” she said, “twenty years ago—and more than that—I had two friends, and I loved them more than anything in the World. And they married each other. After they were married, I did not see much of them for a year or two; and then he wrote me and asked me to come and stay, because his wife was ill, and I should cheer her up, and cheer him up as well; for it was a gloomy house, and he himself was growing gloomy too.” I knew as she spoke that she had every line of that letter by heart. “Well, I went. The address was in Oakland, near Berkeley; in those says there were streets and streets of new villa-houses growing up round old brick mansions standing in their own grounds, with red walls round, you know, and a sort of flavour of coaching days, and post chaises, and Blackheath highwaymen about them. He had said the house was gloomy, and it was called ‘The Haunted House,’ and I imagined my carriage going through a dark, winding shrubbery, and drawing up in from of one of these sedate, old, square houses. Instead, we drew up in front of a large, smart villa, with iron railings, gay encaustic tiles leading from the iron gate to the stained-glass-panelled door, and for shrubbery only a few stunted cypresses and aucubas in the tiny front garden. But inside it was all warm and welcoming. He met me at the door. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
“He met me at the door,” she said again, “and thanked me for coming, and asked me to forgive the past. They were very glad to see me, and I was very glad to be there. Margaret was not exactly ill, only weak and excitable. I thought he seemed more ill than she did. She went to bed early and before she went, she asked me to keep him company through his last pipe, so we went into the dining-room and sat in the two armchairs on each side of the fireplace. They were covered with green leather I remember. There were bronze groups of horses and a black marble clock on the mantlepiece—all wedding-presents. He poured out some whisky for himself, but he hardly touched it. He sat looking into the fire. At last I said: What’s wrong? Margaret looks as well as you could expect.” “Yes,” he said, “but I don’t know from one day to another that she won’t begin to notice something wrong. That’s why I wanted you to come. You were always so sensible and strong-minded, and Margaret’s like a little bird on a flower.” Mrs. Winchester said, “Yes, of course,” and waited for him to go on. Presently he said: “Sarah, this is a very peculiar house. It is new: that’s just it. We’re the first people who’ve ever lived in it. If it were an old house, Sarah, I should think it was haunted.” Mrs. Winchester asked, “Have you ever seen anything?” “No,” he said. “That is just it. I have not heard nor seen anything, but there’s a sort of feeling: I can’t describe it—I’ve seen nothing and I’ve heard nothing, but I’ve been so near to seeing and hearing, just near, that’s all. And something follows me about—only when I turned round, there’s never anything, only my shadow. And I always feel that I shall see the thing next minute—but I never do—not quite—it’s always just not visible.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Mrs. Winchester had been working very hard—and tried to cheer him up by making light of all this. “It is just nerves,” she said. He replied, “Mrs. Winchester, I thought you could help me, and I do not think I wronged anyone for them to lay a curse on me. I don’t believe in cruses. The only person I could have wronged forgave me freely.” Mrs. Winchester came up with a suggestion, “I think you ought to take Margaret away from the house and have a complete change.” But he said, “No; Margaret has got everything in order, and I could never manage to get her away just now without explaining everything—and, above and beyond all that, she mustn’t guess there’s anything wrong. I daresay I shan’t feel quite such a lunatic now you’re here.” So they said goodnight.” Whenever Mrs. Winchester was alone with him, he used to tell her the same thing over and over again, and at first when he began to notice things, he tried to think tht it was his talk that had upset her nerves. The odd thing was that it was not only at night—but in broad daylight—and particularly on the stairs and passages. On the staircase the feeling used to be so awful that Mrs. Winchester had to bite her lips till they bled to keep herself from running upstairs at full speed. Only she knew if she would not go mad at the top. There was always something behind her—exactly as he said—something that one could just not see. And a sound that one could just not heat. There was a long corridor at the top of the house. Mrs. Winchester sometimes almost saw something—you know how one see things without looking—but if she turned around, it seemed as if the thing drooped and melted into her shadow. There was a little window at the end of the corridor. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
Downstairs there was another corridor, something like it, with a cupboard at one end and the kitchen at the other. One night Mrs. Winchester went down into the kitchen to heat some milk for Margaret. The servants had gone to bed. As she stood by the fire, waiting for the milk to boil, she glanced through the open door and along the passage. Mrs. Winchester never could keep her eyes on what she was doing in that house. The cupboard door was partly open; they used to keep empty boxes and things in it. And as she looked, she knew that now it was not going to be “almost” anymore. Yet she said, “Margaret” not because she thought it could be Margaret who was crouching down there, half in and half out of the cupboard. The thing was great at first, and then it was black. And when Mrs. Winchester whispered, “Margaret,” it seemed to sink down till it lay like a pool of ink on the floor, and then its edges drew in, and it seemed to flow, like ink when you tilt up the paper you have split it on; and it flowed into the cupboard till it was all gathered into the shadow there. Mrs. Winchester saw it go quite plainly. The gas was full on in the kitchen. She screamed aloud, but then, she was thankful to say, she had enough sense to upset the boiling milk, so that when he came downs three steps at a time, Mrs. Winchester had the excuse for her scream of a scalded hand. The explanation satisfied Margaret, but the next night he said: “Why didn’t you tell me? It was that cupboard. All the horror of the house comes out of that. Tell me—have you seen anything yet? Or is it only the nearly seeing and nearly hearing still?” Mrs. Winchester said, “You must tell me first what you have seen.” He told her, and his eyes wandered, as he spoke, to the shadows by the curtains, and Mrs. Winchester turned up all three gas lights, and lit the candles on the mantelpiece. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
Then they looked at each other and said they were both mad, and thanked God that Margaret at least was sane. For what he had seen was what Mrs. Winchester had seen. After that she hated to be alone with a shadow, because at any moment she might see something that would crouch, and sink, and lie like a black pool, and then slowly draw itself into the shadow that was nearest. Often that shadow was her own. The thing came first at night, but afterwards there was no hour safe from it. She saw it at dawn and at noon, in the fireplace, and always it crouched and sank, and was a pool that flowed into some shadow and became part of it. And always she saw it with a straining of the eyes—a pricking and aching. It seemed as though she could only just see it, as if her sight, to see it, had to be strained to the uttermost. And still the sound was in the house—the sound that she could just not hear. At last, one morning early, Mrs. Winchester did hear it. It was close behind her, and it was only a sign. It was worse than the thing that crept into the shadows. She did not know how she bore it. If she had not been so fond of her friends, she could not have tolerated it. However, she knew in her heart that, if he had no one to whom he could speak openly, he would go mad, or tell Margaret. His was not a very strong character; very sweet, and kind, and gentle, but not strong. He was always easily led. So Mrs. Winchester stayed on and bore up, and they were very cheerful, and made little jokes, and tried to be amusing when Margaret was with them. However, when they were alone, they did not try to be amusing. And sometimes a day or two would go by without their seeing or hearing anything. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
They perhaps should have fancied that they had fancied what they had seen and heard—only there was always the feeling of their being something about that house, that one could just not hear and not see. Sometimes they used to try not to talk about it, but generally they talked of nothing else at all. And the weeks went by, and Margaret’s baby was born. The nurse and the doctor said that both mother and child were doing well. He and Mrs. Winchester sat late in the dining-room that night. They had neither seen nor heard anything for three days; their anxiety about Margaret was lessened. They talked of the future—it seemed then so much brighter than the past. They arranged that, the moment she was fit to be moved, he should take her away to the sea, and Mrs. Winchester should superintend the moving of their furniture into the new house he had already chosen. He was gayer than Mrs. Winchester had seen him since his marriage—almost like his old self. When she said goodnight to him, he said a lot of things about her having been a comfort to them both. She had not done anything much, of course, but still she was glad he said them. Then Mrs. Winchester went upstairs, almost for the first time without that feeling of something following her. She listened at Margaret’s door. Everything was quiet. Mrs. Winchester went on toward her own room, and in an instant, she felt that there was something behind her. She turned. It was crouching there; it sank, and the black fluidness of it seemed to be sucked under the door of Margaret’s room. She went back. She opened the door a listening inch. All was still. And then she heard a sigh close behind her. Mrs. Winchester opened the door and went in. The nurse and the baby were asleep. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
Margaret was asleep too—she looked so pretty—like a tired child—the baby was cuddled up into one of her arms with its tiny heard against her side. Mrs. Winchester prayed then that Margaret might never know the terrors that they are hidden from her. That those little ears might never hear any but pretty sounds, those clear eyes never see any but pretty sights. She did not dare to pray for a long time after that. Because her prayer was answered. She never saw, never heard anything more in this World. And now Mrs. Winchester could do nothing for him or her. When they had put her in her coffin, Mrs. Winchester lighted wax candles round her, and laid the horrible white flowers that people will send near her, and then she saw he had followed her. She took his hand to lead him away. At the door they both turned. It seemed to them that they heard a sign. He would have sprung to her side in glad hope. However, at that instant they both saw it. Between them and the coffin, first grey, then black, it crouched an instant, then sank and liquified—and was gathered together and drawn till it ran into the nearest shadow. And the nearest shadow was the shadow of Margaret’s coffin. Mrs. Winchester left the next day. His mother came. She never liked Mrs. Winchester. The something black that crouched then between him and Mrs. Winchester was only his second wife crying beside the coffin. Mrs. Winchester never told anyone the story because it seemed senseless. After hearing the story, Miss McAnally stood at her gaunt height, her hands clenched, eyes straining. She was looking at something that no one could see, and she knew what the man in the Bible meant when he said: “The hair of my flesh stood up.” What they saw seemed not quite to reach the height of the dressing-room door handle. Her eyes followed it down, down—widening and widening. Mrs. Winchester’s eyes followed them—all the nerves of them seemed strained to the uttermost—and she almost saw it—or did she quite see? She could not be certain. However, they all heard the long-drawn, quivering sign. And to each of them it seemed to be breathed just behind them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
It was Mrs. Winchester who caught up the candle—it dripped all over her trembling hand—and was dragged by Miss McAnally to the girl who had fainted during the second extra. However, it was a servant girl whose lean arms were round the housekeeper when they turned away, and that have been around her many a time since, in the Winchester mansion where she keeps house. The doctor who came in the morning said that Margaret’s daughter had died of heart disease—which she had inherited from her mother. But Mrs. Winchester wondered had she had not inherited something else from her father? It was the daughter’s ghost that had followed Mrs. Winchester into her own mansion and now haunts it. The invoking or summoning of spirits by means of hymns, prayers, and acts of worship in spiritistic séances, finds a counterpart in demon possession. Often the demon speaking through its victim in the demonized state will demand the burning of incense as well as worship service. In return it often promises alleviation from torment and powers of physical healing or clairvoyant and prognostic gifs assuring financial income and material prosperity to the enslaved person. Paganism is replete with fear of demons who must be appeased by worshipping and servile obedience. Those who accept magical powers of healing and clairvoyance at the hand of demonic powers may escape the grosser torments of vile spirits only to fall under more terrible bondage and become Satan’s tool to enslave others. In 1892, people in Santa Clara Valley gossiped about Mrs. Winchester. They told stories of how she was involved in the diabolic rites of Freemasonry, arguing that she and the Freemasons were in reality devout Satanists, carrying out blasphemous and hideous rituals beneath the sinister clock of secrecy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
The headquarters of the movement, under the leadership Sarah Winchester, Albert Pike, Gallatin Mackey, and others, located in Santa Clara, California at the Winchester mansion, with celebrants of their Black Masses spread all over the World. Their rites supposedly involved séances. Some went as far to say that the Winchester mansion had an infernal telephone hooked up to Hell, through which the leaders spoke to Lucifer. The stories recounted by the villagers were backed up by Thomas Vaughan, an alchemist. However, if that were true, it would mean the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester, and William Winchester are far older than we believe them to be. The town spread rumors that Black Masses were taking place at the Winchester Mansion under the guise of Freemasonry. It was said that the Winchester mansion was a life and magical order. The emphasis on the former, of living according to one’s real nature. Freemasonry is a nonsectarian fraternity claiming to teach a system of morality veiled in the allegory and symbols passed down from the caste of stonemasons who built the original Temple of Solomon. It allegedly binds its members by an oath of secrecy that imposes death on the betrayer, uses secret passwords and signs, and performs rituals purporting to relate to the history of its origins. It organization is hierophantic, the members receiving the “secrets” of the order, and they pass through the higher degrees. Its antiquity can be documented no further back than the latter part of the seventeenth century. The movement really seems to have gotten its start with the establishment of the Grand Lodge in England, in 1717. From there, it spread to France and Germany, and it did not take long for serious-minded students of the occult, attracted by its ritualistic and secretive trappings, to find their way into its ranks. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
It was also said that Mrs. Winchester was an alchemist and a mystic, and she created her own brand of Victorian Masonry, and taught others how to make gold, heal the sick, and raise the dead. These secret rights had been handed down to her by the Knights of Templar. She was under the tutelage of “Unknown Superiors,” a race of godlike spiritual guides. Many of the people in the town gossiped about Mrs. Winchester so viciously, not only because of her wealth and the mansion larger than anyone had ever seen, but also because of suspicions that her estate was a cover for political conspiracy. The Devil, being a rebel against Heaven, has always been portrayed by the powers-that-be as the chief insurrectionist against the existing political and religious order. The enemy cannot be God, for God is on the side of the ruler. Therefore, the enemy of the ruler must be Satan. It is true that the Winchester mansion is supranational in outlook. There was a secret society that met there dedicated to the scientific and political enlightenment of mankind. To achieve this goal, the group intended secretly to work toward the abolition of all monarchies and the establishment of a One-World government, to be run by those few presently Enlightened, or Illuminati. Since professing such republican ideas could be dangerous, the group was wrapped in a cloak of occultism. Mrs. Winchester adopted the grades of Freemasonry and promised initiates that the magical secrets of the Universe could be revealed to them only when they reached the upper levels. Many believed that William Winchester and Annie Winchester had not died, but gone underground and survived in a network of secret societies, two of which were the Freemasons and the Illuminati, to escape the Assassins. The Assassins were a political group who carried out assassinations while crazed on hashish. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
Legend has it that Mrs. Winchester was not only running from the souls of those killed by the Winchester rifle, but to also escape the Assassins. Not only spiritual, but Masonic teachings exerted an influence over the construction of the Winchester mansion. Certain mystical thinkers and practitioners of ceremonial magic believed that Mrs. Winchester practiced a complex system of magic that was a synthesis of Eastern and Western mystical traditions. There is a secret cave inside the Winchester mansion that can be entered only by stooping, but inside a room nearly seven feet high about twelve feet square presents itself. On each side of the entrance a Latin cross is deeply carved in the rock, while within, at the further side, and opposite the door, a block of stone four feet high was left for an altar. Above it, a shrine is hollowed out of the stone wall, and over the cavity is another cross. It is said to be the cave of a saint. Some say it is Saint Michael himself, but no one can be quite certain. And there is a big head inside that craved in the shape of the Devil’s face that the saint put there. For Mrs. Winchester, there were two types of magic. What she called evocation and invocation. Evocation was a calling forth, while invocation was a calling in. In such rituals, the magician summoned the demon or deity while standing within the protection of a magical circle drawn on the floor, the object of the sorcerer being to control and direct the entity to do one’s bidding. She sought to achieve total identification with the godhead, to invoke the god so that it actually took possession of her consciousness. The resulting state experienced by the magician was a type of samadhi, or temporary loss of ego. Mrs. Winchester’s estate possesses the KEY which opens up all Masonic and Hermetic secrets of Freemasonry and all systems of religion. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
It did not take long for rumors to begin to circulate around the town of nightly procession of hooded, candle-bearing figures around the grounds of the Winchester mansion. The reason Mrs. Winchester and the husband of her friend kept seeing demons is because allegedly someone did a ritual on her estate—one of the greatest magical feats ever—the attempt to bring the “Whore of Babalon” down from the Astral Plane and incarnate it in the womb of a living women. Upon hearing of the ritual, someone wrote to the Luciferian Light Group, “Apparently Mrs. Winchester or one of her friends is producing a Moonchild. I am pledged that the work of the Beast 666 shall be fulfilled, and the way for the coming of BABALON be made open and I shall not cease until these things are accomplished.” Mrs. Winchester did not know, but after she left her friend’s house, he managed to blow himself to smithereens while conducting a strange chemical experiment in his basement workshop. Hours later, the scientist’s mother, who lived on the estate, committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping tablets and the baby died from dehydration and starvation, but the baby who is supposed to be the Whore of Babalon still haunts the Winchester till this very day. No matter what people say or believe about Mrs. Winchester, she and her architecture were able to break through the walls of stagnation and bring before the World its first vision of the new Aeon. Once, a tourguide reported while closing the house, he felt something following him, he was alone. He went out onto the fourth floor balcony and prayed into the Heavens one night, “O Thou wicked and disobedient spirit Vinea, because thou hast rebelled, and has not obeyed nor regarded my words which I have rehearsed; I curse thee into the depth of the Bottomless Abyss, there to remain unto the Day of Doom in chains, and in fire and brimstone unquenchable, unless thou forthwith appear here before this Circle, in this triangle to my will.” And he saw Lucifer as a star fall from Heaven, and from Him came to the tour guide light of true salvation. And he was made whole by His infernal wisdom. “My chains lifted off, I was made free,” he said. At night when some drive by, they claim to hear the Devil’s orchestra at that famous time 1.13am. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Winchester Mystery House
Happy Saturday from The Winchester Mystery House ☀️ What are your weekend plans? Hopefully they include walking around these beautiful gardens 😉 https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Never, Never, Never Invest More than You are Willing to Lose!
Deep changes in the money system cannot occur without threatening entrenched institutions that have, until now, enjoyed positions of extraordinary power. At one level the substitution of electronic money for paper money is a direct threat, for example, to the very existence of banks as we know them. Banking will not retain its position as the primary operator of payment systems. Banks have had a government-protected monopoly in checking-clearing services. Electronic money threatens to supplant this system. In self-defense, some banks have entered into the credit card business themselves. More important, they have extended their reach without automatic teller machines (ATMs). If banks issue debit cards and put ATMs at millions of retail locations, they may repel the attack of the credit card companies. Since debit cards make it possible for the shopkeeper to receive payment instantly, instead of waiting for Diner’s Club or American Express or Visa to remit payment, store owners may not wish to continue paying them a percentage of each sale. Also, something is going on where so major banks have blocked credit unions from linking to their customer’s accounts. Therefore, they cannot use debit cards to transfer money instantly between institution, and this is causing consumers to have to wait days, or weeks for money to reach the accounts of their credit union. So, some people may eventually stop doing business with credit unions, while others stay out of loyalty. There must be some kind of quiet financial storm brewing inside of the credit unions. On another front, banks face attack from a wide variety of nonbanks. In Japan, for example, the Ministry of Finance has qualms about the idea that private companies like NTT can issue value-bearing plastic “notes”—a kind of currency—and operate outside the banking system and its rules. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
If a company can take in money for a prepaid card, it is accepting a “deposit,” exactly like a bank. When the user spends, he or she is making the equivalent of a “withdrawal.” And when the card company pays the vendor, it is operating a “payment system.” These are functions that once only banks could perform. Moreover, if card companies can issue credit to users, as they and the cardholders see fit, unconstrained by the kind of limits and reserves that govern banks, central banks risk losing their grip on monetary policy. In South Korea, plastic money has expanded so rapidly that the government fears it is feeding inflation. In brief, the rise of electronic money in the World economy threatens to shake up many long-entrenched power relationships. At the vortex of this power struggle is knowledge embedded in technology. It is a battle that will redefine money itself. Many governments have made it understood that they do not care for cryptocurrencies. They hype around the high returns from cryptocurrencies has led to more fraudulent “get-rich-quick” schemes lurking in the dark corners of the market. Many countries do not have law to back up investors. Which means, if a large group of investors lose their money—they will be left with no recourse within the current legal framework of the system. Several mutual funds have been told to hold off on sending any new fund offerings based on crypto assets. Cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin in this case, were created as a way to take the power of monetary control away from centralized authorities—like the government and the central bank. So, it is no surprise that the central bank takes issue with not being in control. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Cryptocurrencies have led to an increase in assets that can transfer funds with increased anonymity. There are virtual assets that focus on privacy. If and when things go wrong, decentralized platforms pose the problem of having no single entity to go after. Privacy wallets and other new financial instruments allow for reduced transparency, which, in turn, obscures the flow of finance. There is also a national security angle over here now, there are individuals from intelligence who are involved. As things stand, anyone can launch a new cryptocurrency. There is no national framework defining what a cryptocurrency is, or the minimum requirements for it to be a legitimate investment option. This means that anyone can create a virtual asset, get others to invest in it to hike the price, and then cash out their stake without having to explain why. This is normally what is called a “rug-pull.” After the “founders” or “influencers’ pull out their money, other investors are left holding less than what they originally started with. However, that is not much different than what happened with the stock market during 9/11. Many young and/or unsuspecting investors lost huge amounts of money they worked for, which was never returned. The crypto market s speculative and during the COVID-19 pandemic it saw value surge to new all-time-highs. And, while the worst sees to be behind, there is a risk of sharp corrections that still remains. Just as Bitcoin was recently able to hit $70,000, it is possible that it could sink lower than $45,000. In fact, as of June 16, 2022, 5.10 P.M. EST BTC is down to $20,282.52. Many countries that are subject to capital control, are especially vulnerable to destabilizing effects of cryptocurrencies. Free accessibility of crypto assets to residents can undermine their [emerging market economies] capital regulation framework. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Non-bank actors—meaning crypto exchanges and other blockchain companies offering financial services—are adding to the dollar funding stress by using loopholes in the traditional policy approach to foreign exchange markets. At this stage, it is important to better understand non-bank investors’ role in creating or propagating systemic risk so that policy actions can be taken to smooth out financial risk-taking over time. This cryptocurrency in actions, a new generation of internet-based currencies which have grown in popularity over the last few years. You cannot not touch it or physically hand it over in any way, but you can use it to trade online. In the way, it is very different from the traditional view of banking, where cash, coins and possibly gold might be stacked in a vault just waiting to be withdrawn, but do these new cryptocurrencies represent a threat to those traditional banks? Thus far, the value of many of these cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed. If you had bought $1000 worth of Bitcoin in 2010, that investment would be worth $20 million today. There are even ATMs around for Bitcoin—put your regular currency in alone with your phone number, then get a receipt back for the purchase of Bitcoin. A check of the digital wallet on your phone should reveal your purchase there in the balance. That is causing a major shift in how people can do business and make transactions. Suddenly, the value is able to be exchanged outside of the traditional banks in the flash of a mobile phone. People who could not access trade and finance ten years ago can do so today. This will lift many out of poverty. The major factor is—if they need financing, people no longer have to go to a traditional bank for financing. (I bet a lot of people wish they knew this before they made car repairs.) #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Peer-to-peer networks, including those based in cryptocurrencies, are becoming more common and those who might be turned away by traditional banks now have another way around financing. You can often times use an app on your phone to get a loan, and then take it to a car dealership, already knowing what you can afford, and pick the car of your dreams. Some people even get mortgage loans this way. That is why many traditional banks are feeling threatened by these new cryptocurrencies. However, you can also use these same apps on your mobile phone to get approved for cash loans. Many supports of digital currency and technology believe it should be seen as an invention like the printing press because it has the steam to transform the World of finance and beyond. If banks ignore new consumer behaviours and preferences when it comes to how they transact and transfer money, cryptocurrencies definitely represent a threat to traditional banks. Bitcoin users can handle many of their daily payments needs themselves, without the need for interaction with banks, and avoiding the need to incur bank fees. In the same way, the value stored in PayPal accounts moves outside of the bank’s payment systems, depriving banks of valuable payments revenue. There are a few issues cited with these cryptocurrencies, such as their perceived “haven” status for possible perpetrators of illegal activities, a relatively low market cap (Bitcoin’s is somewhere around $3.4 billion) and a sense of volatility with the value of the currency. That is why it is important to never, never, never invest more than you are willing to lose because it could go to nothing. That piece of advice is something even traditional financial advisors are not willing to disclose to investors. And sometimes after several losses, you need to cut and run before you start to become insane by beating the same horse and expecting something in return. #RandolpHarris 5 of 22
There are many people who absolutely could not wait to find a way around being beholden in some way to a big bank and these people are taking up new options with enthusiasm. Traditional banks and credit unions have often been guilty of customer-unfriendly account manipulations, such as applying debits before credits then charging fees for insufficient funds. (Citi Bank is one traditional banks I recommend, they do not charge overdraft fees. If your funds are insufficient, the check will just be returned unpaid.) However, the other big banks will not be able to get away with financial manipulation much longer because in the digital age, customers can actually see this happening by glancing at their mobile phones. Of course, money, whether in the form of metal, digital, or paper (or paper backed by metal), is unlikely to vanish completely. However, barring nuclear holocaust or technological cataclysm, electronic money will proliferate and drive out most alternatives, precisely because it combines exchange with real-time record-keeping, thus eliminating many of the costly inefficiencies that came with the traditional money system. If we put this all together now, a rather striking pattern becomes plain. Capital—by which we mean wealth put to work to increase production—changes in parallel with money, and both take on new forms each time society undergoes a major transformation. As they do so, their knowledge content changes. Thus agricultural-era money, consisting of metal (or some other commodity), had a knowledge content close to zero. Indeed, this First Wave money was not only tangible and durable, it was also pre-literate—in the sense that its value depended on its weight, not on the words imprinted on it. Today’s Second Wave money consists of printed paper with or without commodity backing. What is printed on the paper matters. The money is symbolic but still tangible. This form of money comes along with mass literacy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Third Wave money increasingly consists of electronic pulses. It is evanescent…instantaneously transferred…monitored on the video screen. It is, in fact, virtually a video phenomenon itself. Blinking, flashing, whizzing across the planet, Third Wave money is information—the basis of knowledge. Increasingly detached from material embodiments, capital and money alike change through history, moving by stages from totally tangible to symbolic and ultimately today to its “super-symbolic” form. This vast sequence of transformations is accompanied by a deep shift of belief, almost a religious conversion—from a trust in permanent, tangible things like gold or paper to a belief that even the most tangible, ephemeral electronic blips can be swapped for goods or services. Our wealth is a wealth of symbols. And so also to a startling degree, is the power based on it. Elsewhere, we find imaginative efforts to compensate for the failures of the mass society’s mass educational system. When mass education was widely introduced, teachers were usually the most literate and educated people in the neighbourhood. Today parents are sometimes far better educated than the teachers to whom they entrust their children to. Recognizing the role that parents can play in promoting literacy by reading to their children, it is a good idea to buy your child a short book to read every month, until they develop an appetite for reading books. Meanwhile, more and more disaffected parents in the United States of America are pulling their children out of school and teaching them at home. They are supported by a growing variety of up-to-date online services and tools. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
One objection to keeping kids home is that they will not learn to get along with other children. However, as public schools decay, and in many places become drug, alcohol and vape-infested and dangerous, parents wonder if the socialization the schools provide is healthy. If parents keep their children at home, they can develop socialization skills by encouraging their kids to play soccer, or, when a bit older, do volunteer work at an NGO where they can meet other young people engaged in community service. Here, once more, we find a pre-industrial practice—most children were educated at home before the industrial era—being transformed to meet post-industrial needs. Charter schools are an attempt to innovate within the system. These are public schools granted a limited degree of freedom to experiment. In the United States of America they still enroll less than 2 percent of American students, and their results are, no doubt, uneven. However, among them we also find many potentially useful innovations. At the Center for Advance Research and Technology (CART) in Clovis, California, twelve hundred high school students, on a 75,000 square foot CART facility, use information technology in a high-performance business atmosphere to help solve real-World community problems. The school focuses on Professional Sciences, Engineering, Advanced Communications, and Global Dynamics. Mentors include local business leaders. Students are encouraged to take part-time jobs and carry out research projects working with adults in business, industry, trade or other services. Within each four clusters of the education, students complete industry-based projects and receive academic credit for advanced English, science, social science and technology. A key mission of the center is to demonstrate to young people the relevance of academic subjects to practical problems, and help them meet expectations and work behaviour for a global job market. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Students thus are invited to invent marketable new products that help solve real World problems. CART students have invented an ultrasonic cane for the visually impaired and other devices for the physically impaired. However, the school’s main output consists of smart young people prepared for twenty-first century realities. Institutional invention and experimentation are growing in other fields as well. Entrepreneurs who make vaccines are rapidly multiplying. Today, more than thirty U.S. business schools, including Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Duke, offer courses in pro-social entrepreneurship. Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley has created a Global Social Benefit Incubator to help innovators apply technology to urgent social needs and to assist them in scaling up their efforts. And, in what many regard as the ideological workshop of contemporary capitalism—the annual World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland—NGO leaders and social entrepreneurs seek to improve the work of existing nonprofits and NGOs by applying businesslike methods to them. Others start new organizations to deal with social problems as they emerge. Both typically rely on volunteers. To that degree, at least, they form part of the non-money or prosumer economy that, as we have seen, creates the social capital and “free lunch” on which the money system depends. The remarkable growth of social entrepreneurship reflects cuts in government-provided, one-size-fits-all safety nets designed for fast-fading industrial conditions. It reflects the incapacity of smokestack institutions to generate imaginative, customized solutions to new social problems. And it reflects the impatience of millions around the World who have given up waiting for governments and formal institutions to solve problems. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
However, in rich societies it reflects something ese. In the past, very few people had the luxury of time, energy and education to devote themselves to imagining and inventing—or fighting for—new institutions for the future. Today vast and growing numbers of people, including the best-educated and most creative among us, have time, money and access to one another through that empowering global change-maker called the Internet. When it comes to life, it is never good to be the first to defect. Theoretical results show that it pays to cooperate as long as the other individuals are cooperating. The single best predictor of how well a rule performed was whether or not it was nice, which is to say, whether or not it would ever be the first to defect. In a business deal, each of the top eight rules were nice, and not one of the bottom seven were nice. In the second round of meetings, all but one of the top fifteen rules were nice (and that one ranked eighth). Of the bottom fifteen rules, all but one were not nice. Some of the rules that were not nice tried quite sophisticated methods of seeing what they could get away with. For example, TESTER tried an initial defection and then promptly back off if one of the managers or other employees retaliated. As another example, TRANQUILIZER threw in additional defections at more frequent intervals, until it was forced to back off by the other’s response. However, neither of these strategies which experimented with being the first to defect did particularly well. There were too many other individuals who were not exploitable by virtue of their willingness to retaliate. The resulting conflicts were sometimes quite costly. Even many of the experts did not appreciate the value of avoiding unnecessary conflict by being nice. In the first round of meetings, almost half of the entries by managers were not nice. But to little avail. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
There is another way of looking at why nice rues do so well. A population of nice rules is the hardest type to invade because nice rules do so well with each other. Furthermore, a population of nice rules which can resist the invasion of a single mutant rule can resist the invasion of any cluster of other rules. The theoretical results provide an important qualification to the advantages of using a nice strategy. When the future of the interaction is not important enough relative to immediate gains from defection, then simply waiting for the other to defect is not such a good idea. It is important to bear in mind that TIT FOR TAT is a stable strategy only when the discount parameter is high enough relative to payoff other parameters. In particular, if the discount parameter is not high enough and the other player is using TIT FOR TAT, a player is better off alternating defection and cooperation, or even defecting. Therefore, if the other player is not likely to be seen again, defecting right away is better than being nice. This fact has unfortunate implications for groups who are known to move from one place to another. An anthropologist finds that a grifter approaches a non-grifter expecting trouble, and a non-grifter approaches a grifter suspiciously, expecting double-dealing. For example, a physician was called in to attend very sick grifter’s baby; he was not the first doctor called, but he was the first willing to come. We escorted him toward the back bedroom, but he stopped short of the threshold of the patient’s room. “This visit will be one thousand dollars, and you owe me three hundred and thirty-three dollars from the last time. Pay me the thirteen hundred and thirty-three dollars before I see the patient,” he demanded. “Okay, okay, you will get it—just look at the baby now,” the grifter pleaded. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Several more go-arounds occurred before I intervened. Six hundred and sixty-six dollars and fifty cents changed hands and the doctor examined the patient. After the visit, I discovered the grifters, in revenge, did not intend to pay the other six hundred and sixty-six dollars and fifty cents. In a California community, grifters were again found not to pay all of a doctor’s bills, but municipal fines were paid promptly. These fines were usually for breaking garbage regulations. This was among a group of grifters who returned to the same town every winter. Presumably, the grifters knew that they had an ongoing relationship with the garbage collection service of that two, and could not shop around for another service. Conversely, there were always enough doctors in that area for them to break off one relationship and start another when necessary. Short interactions are not the only condition which would make it pay to be the first to defect. The other possibility is that cooperation will simply not be reciprocated. If everyone else is using a strategy of always defecting, then a single individual can do no better than to use this same strategy. However, if even a small proportion of one’s interactions are going to be with others who are using a responsive strategy like TIT FOR TAT, then it can pay to use TIT FOR TAT rather than to simply defect all the time like most of those in the population. In the numerical example presented there, it took only 5 percent of one’s interactions to be with like-minded TIT FOR TAT players to make the members of this small cluster do better than the typical defecting member of the population. Will there by anyone out there to reciprocate one’s own initial cooperation? In some circumstances this will be hard to tell in advance. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
However, if there has been enough time for many different strategies to be tried, and for some way of making the more successful strategies become more common, then one can be fairly confident that there will be individuals out there who will reciprocate cooperation. The reason is that even a relatively small cluster of discriminating nice rules can invade a population of meanies, and then thrive on their good scores with each other. And once nice rules get a foothold, they can protect themselves from reinvasion by meanies. Of course, one could try to “play it safe” by defecting until the other person(s) involved in the business negation cooperates, and only then starting to cooperate. The tournament results show, however, that this is actually a very risky strategy. The reason is that your own initial defection is likely to set off a retaliation by the other party involved in the business deal. This will put the two of you in the difficult position of trying to extricate yourselves from an initial patter of exploitation or mutual defection. If you punish the other’s retaliation, the problem can echo into the future. And if you forgive the other, you risk appearing to be exploitable. Even if you can avoid these long-term problems, a prompt retaliation against your initial defection can make you wish that you had been nice from the start. The ecological analysis of the tournament revealed another reason why it is risky to be the first to defect. The only rule that was not nice and that scored among the top fifteen in the second round of business negotiations was the eighth-ranking rule, HARRINGTON. This rule did fairly well because it scored well with the lower ranking entries in the business negotiations, the lower ranking entries became a smaller and smaller proportion of the population. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Eventually, the non-nice rule that originally scored well had fewer and fewer strategies it could do well with. Then it too suffered and eventually died out. Thus the ecological analysis shows that doing well with rules that do not score well themselves is eventually a self-defeating process. The lesson is that not being nice may look promising at first, but in the long run it can destroy the very environment it needs for its own success. Radical egalitarism is the cure for the evils of egalitarianism. Dr. Freud talked about interesting things not found anywhere in Marx. The whole psychology of the unconscious was completely alien to Marx, as was its inner motor, eros. None of this could be incorporated directly into Marx. However, if Dr. Freud’s interpretation of the cases of neuroses and his treatment of the maladjusted could itself be interpreted as bourgeois errors that serve enslavement to the capitalist control of the means of production, then Marx would move in on the Freudian scene. What Dr. Freud said were permanent contradictions between human nature and society could be set in motion dialectically, and in a socialist society there would be no need for the repression that causes neuroses. So Dr. Freud was neatly enrolled in the Marxist legions, adding to the charm of economics that of eros, and thereby providing a solution to the problem of what men are going to do after the revolution—a problem left unsolved by Marx. This is what we find in Marcuse and many others, who simply do not talk about the difficult posed by the contradiction between Marx’s fundamental principles and those of Dr. Freud. Two powerful systems are served up in a single package. Dr. Freud is the really meaty part of the concoction. Marx provides a generalized assurance that capitalism is indeed at fault and that the problems can be solved by more equality and more freedom, that the liberated people will possess all the virtues. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The genius and audacity of American capitalists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, men who were quicker and more focused than those of other nations in exploiting the economic possibilities of new technologies is inextricably the reason the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology finds fertile ground on American soil. Among those exploiting them are Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, John Astor, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, and many others, some of who were known as the Robber Barons. What they were robbing—it is clearer now than it was then—was America’s past, for their essential idea was that nothing is so much worth preserving that it should stand in the way of technological innovation. These were the men who created the twentieth century, and they achieved wealth, prestige, and power that would have amazed even Richard Arkwright. Their greatest achievement was in convincing their countrymen that the future need have no connection to the past. Third, the success of twentieth-century technology in providing Americas with convenience, comfort, speed, hygiene, and abundance was so obvious and promising that there seemed no reason to look for any other sources of fulfilment or creativity or purpose. To every Old World belief, habit, or tradition, there was and still is a technological alternative. To prayer, the alternative is penicillin; to family roots, the alternative is mobility; to reading, the alternative is television; to restraint, the alternative is immediate gratification; to sin, the alternative is popular appeal established through scientific polling. There is even an alternative to the painful riddle of death, as Dr. Freud called it. The riddle may be postponed through longer life, and then perhaps solved altogether by cryogenics. At least, no one can easily think of a reason why not. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
As the spectacular triumphs of technology mounted, something else was happening: old sources of belief came under siege. Nietzsche announced that God was dead. Darwin did not go as far but did make it clear that, if we were children of God, we had come to be so through a much longer and less dignified route than we had imagined, and that in the process we had picked up some strange and unseemly relatives. Marx argued that history had its own agenda and was taking us where it must, irrespective of our wishes. Dr. Freud taught that we had no understanding of our deepest needs and could not trust our traditional ways of reasoning to uncover them. John Watson, the founder of behaviourism, showed that free will was an illusion and that our behaviour, in the end, was not unlike that of pigeons. And Einstein and his colleagues told us that there were no absolute means of judging anything in any case, that everything was relative. The thrust of a century of scholarship had the effect of making us lose confidence in out belief systems and therefore in ourselves. Amid the conceptual debris, there remained one sure thing to believe in—technology. Whatever else may be denied or compromised, it is clear that airplanes do fly, antibiotics do cure, radios do speak, and, as we know now, computers do calculate and never make mistakes—only faulty humans do (which is what Frederick Taylor was trying to tell us all along.) For these well-known reasons, Americans were better prepared to undertake the creation of a Technopoly than anyone else. However, its full flowering depended on still another set of conditions, less visible and therefore less well known. These conditions provided the background, the context in which the American distrust of constraints, the exploitative genius of its captains of industry, the success of technology, and the devaluation of traditional beliefs took on the exaggerated significance that pushed technocracy in America over into Technopoly. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
In speaking about molecular texture–the ground underfoot, like everything around you, is pebbly with atom-sized bumps the size of your fingertips. Objects look like bunches of transparent grapes or fused marbles in a variety of pretty but imaginary colours. The simulation displays a view of atoms and molecules much like those used by chemists in the 1980s, but with a sharper 3-D image and a better way to move them and to feel the forces they exert. Actually, the whole simulation setup is nothing but an improved version of systems built in the late 1980s—the computer is faster, but it is calculating the same things. The video goggles are better and the whole-body powersuit is major change, but even in the 1980s there were 3-D displays for molecules and crude devices that gave a sense of touching them. The gloves on this suit give the sensation of touching whatever the computer simulates. When you run a fingertip over the side of the smaller nanocomputer, it feels odd, hard to describe. It is as if the surface were magnetic—it pulls on your fingertip if you move close enough. However, the result is not a sharp click of contact, because the surface is not hard like a magnet, but strangely soft. Touching the surface is not hard like a magnet, but strangle soft. Touching the surface is like touching a film of fog that grades smoothly into foam rubber, then hard rubber, then steel, all within the thickness of a sheet of corrugated cardboard. Moving sideways, your fingertip feels no texture, no friction, just smooth bumps more slippery than oil, and a tendency to get pulled into hollows. Pulling free of the surface takes a firm tug. The simulation makes your atom-sized fingertip feel the same forces that an atom would. It is strange how slippery the surface is—and it cannot have been lubricated, since even a single oil molecule would be a lump the size of your thumb. This slipperiness makes it obvious how nano-scale bearings can work, how the parts of molecular machines can slide smoothly. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
However, on top of this, there is a tingling feeling in your fingers, like the sensation of touching a working loudspeaker. When you put your ear against the wall of the nanocomputer, you flinch back: for a moment, you heard a sound like the hiss of a twentieth-century television tuned to a channel with no broadcast, with nothing but snow and static—but loud, painfully loud. All the atoms in the surface are vibrating at high frequencies, too fast to see. This is thermal vibration, and it is obvious why it is also called thermal noise. While we are on the subject of TV, all technical reproduction of art, nature, and the human image deletes what is called “aura.” Before the age of mechanical reproduction, art objects did not exist in a context outside of their original use. If a religious object were carved in bronze, this piece of bronze gained its meaning from its context, that is, the place and time of its use. When it is dug up by archeologists two thousand years later, it may have intellectual meaning and be informative or beautiful, but it will not have retained the quality of its original power. This depended upon its connection to time and place. When it is then put behind glass in a museum, it has still less power. When it is photographed and reproduced then thousand times on postcards, although it can then be found in ten thousand homes, it is so many times removed from its original shell that it conveys nothing. At this point, it could be used by anyone for any purpose, including advertisement. Meaning must be invested into it, as it no longer has any of its own. What is true for art objects is even more true for natural, living beings. The art object, once separated from its source in time and place, loses the powers invested in it. The human being loses humanness itself. The plight of the performer in a film, for example, has the job of conveying one’s self through machinery which is predisposed not to allow such a conveyance. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
This situation might be characterized as follows: for the first time—and this is the effect of the film—man [the actor] has to operate with his whole living person, yet foregoing [his] aura. For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it. The feeling of strangeness that overcomes the actor before the camera…is basically of the same kind as the estrangement felt before one’s image in the mirror. However, now [with photography and film] the reflected image has become separable, transportable….The film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the “personality” outside the studio. The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the “spell of the personality,” the phony spell of a commodity. Mechanical reproduction of images is the great equalizer. When you reproduce any image of anything that formerly had aura (or life), the effect is to dislocate the image from the aura, leaving only the image. At this point, the image is neutral, it has no greater inherent power than commodities. Products have no life to begin with, neither did they have any aura that attached to some original artistic or religious use at a certain place or time. There is no original car or vacuum cleaner, at least not among those that are advertised. They are all duplications of each other, like the fiftieth copy of a photograph. So products lose virtually nothing when their images are reproduced mechanically or electronically, while original art objects lose their contextual meaning, and human being and other living creatures lose virtually everything that qualifies as meaningful. Humans become image shells, containing nothing inside, no better or worse, more or less meaningful than the product images that interrupt them every few minutes. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
By the simple process of removing images from immediate experience and passing them instead through a machine, humans beings lose one of the attributes that differentiate us from objects. Products, meanwhile, suffer no such loss and effectively obtain a kind of equality with these aura-amputated living creatures shown on television. These factors conspire to make television an inherently more efficient and effective medium for advertising than for conveying any information in which life force exists: human feeling, human interaction, natural environment, or ways of thinking and being. Advertisers, however, are not satisfied with equality. Leaving their products in their natural deadness would not instill any desire to buy. And so the advertising person goes a step further by constructing drama around the product, investing it with an apparent life. Since a product has no inherent drama, techniques are used to dramatize and enliven the product. Cuts, edits, zooms, cartoons and other effects have the effect of adding artificial life force to the product. These technical events make it possible for products to surpass in power the images of the creatures whose aura has been separated from them by the act of mechanical or electronic reproduction. So television accomplishes something that in real life would be impossible: making products more “alive” than people. There is an important political and psychological conclusion that can be drawn from the disconnection of humans and art from their auras. In destroying aura via the mechanical reproduction of art, all as well as humans and nature lose their grounding, their meaning in time and place. At this point, like the product in the advertisement, the art image or the human image can be used for any purpose whatsoever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The disconnection from inherent meaning, which would be visible if image, object and context were still merged, leads to a similarly disconnected aesthetics in which all users for images are equal. All meaning in art and also human acts becomes only what is invested into them. There is no inherent meaning in anything. Everything, even war, is capable of becoming art, and we are back to Werner Erhard, Solaris and 1984. To illustrate the problem, quoted is Filippo Marinetti, one of the founders of Italian Futurism: “For twenty-seven years, we Futurist have rebelled against the branding of war as antiesthetic…Accordingly we state…War is beautiful because it establishes man’s dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metalization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others…Poets and artists of Futurism….remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art…may be illuminated by them. This loss of the inherent meaning which is connected to art, humans and nature furthers the notion that all experience is equal, leading in short steps to fascism: Fascism expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of “l’art pour l’art.” Mankind, which Homer’s time was an object for contemplation of the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“Knowledge of good and evil” means nothing else than: cognizance of the opposities which the early literature of mankind designated by these two terms; they still include the fortune and this misfortune or the order and the disorder which is experienced by a person, as well as that which he causes. This is still the same in the early Avestic text, and it is the same in those of the Christian Bible which precede written prophecy and to which ours belongs. In the terminology of modern thought, we can transcribe what is meant as: adequate awareness of the opposites inherent in all being within the World, and that, from the viewpoint of the Biblical creation-belief, means: adequate awareness of the opposites latent in creation. If we remain full aware that the basic conception of the all the theo- and anthropology of the Hebrews, namely the immutable difference and distance which exists between God and man, irrespective of the primal fact of the latter’s “likeness” to God and of the current fact of his “nearness” to Him, also applies to the knowledge of good and evil. This knowledge as the primordial possession of God and the same knowledge as the magical attainment of man are Worlds apart in their nature. God knows the opposites of being, which stem from His own act of creation; He encompasses them, untouched by them; He is as absolutely familiar with them as he is absolutely superior to them; He has direct intercourse with them (this is obviously the original meaning of the Hebrew verb “know”: be in direct contact with), and this in their function as the opposite poles of the World’s being. For as such He created them—we may impute this late Biblical doctrine to our narrator, it its elementary form. Thus He who is above all opposites has intercourse with the opposites of good and evil that are of His primordial familiarity with them He appears, as can be gathered from the words, “one of us,” to have bestowed upon the “sons of God” by virtue of their share in the work of creation. “And now Father, I pray unto thee for them, and also for all those who shall believe on their words, that they may believe in me, that I may be in them as thou, Father, art in me, that we maybe one,” Reports 3 Nephi 19.23. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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The Death Spell Had Broken Between the Living and the Dead
Speculation is bound to pursue a wealthy, extremely beautiful, celibate recluse, who has lost those who mean the most to her and is haunted by spirits of the damned. Many wild rumors circulated about Sarah Winchester during her residence in Santa Clara Valley—her opulent estate was even known locally as “The Spirit House”—and some say the rumors may have added to Mrs. Winchester’s isolation. However, the glory, the splendor, the beauty of her mansion, surpassed the vicious rumors and speculation; and the fragrances of the Victorian garden were intoxicating. The tracks were gone; they vanished where the velvet emerald green sod began. There were plenty of creatures, and they welcomed her with caresses. Yet, Mrs. Winchester was bent, broken, withered, widowed—her head was white with unnumbered sorrows. She had been familiar with grief for a thousand years. The deaths of her young husband and her six-week-old daughter Annie stood out clear in her memory, for it was a land-mark; it brought Mrs. Winchester her first real misery, her first real heartbreak. Her memories were blurred with tears, and after ten centuries she cried over and over and over again. Crying over it for pity of that poor child—the child she had lost. Other mothers have felt something akin to this in recalling, not their former selves, (as in her case), but the little figures which represents sons and daughters of their which have since grown to the gravity and stature of full age. Sometimes, for a moment, these poor mothers have a vision of those little creatures romping by, and they recognize the voices of laughter—gone silent long ago!—and they have a pain at the heart, as knowing that those children are lost to them for always, in the flesh, although their grown-up selves are still present in life and still precious. The loved and lost! Lives having gone out from their mothers’, lives to return no more but in visions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Yes, across the mouldering centuries Mrs. Winchester could still see that silken little baby, with her waxen round arms, and delicate smile, just as she was, the fairest thing in this fair World; and in her heart, leathery as it was, she felt again the pang of that day’s disappointment, holding on to the memory of what could have been. It was weeks that she had been wandering the halls of her enormous mansion, and had found no trace of William, her husband. The Valley was so cruelly vast! Early she had a happy thought, and took the bloodhound throughout the estate and showed him the tracks, and was fully of hope, not doubting he would hunt him down in an hour. But she knew that she tried everything she could try, and just needed to say goodbye forever. The track gave no scent. William Winchester was dead. The hurt stayed with her, and Mrs. Winchester was resolved to absorb herself in the construction of her mansion. She did the work, but the old pleasure in it was somehow gone; she did not care anymore. She had between 500 to 600 rooms constructed, but thought they were not good ones and tore them down because her heart was not in it. Some of them were tolerable, but mainly they were crude and inartistic; they lacked finish. The miles of twisting hallways were made even more intriguing by secret passageways in the walls. When Mrs. Winchester set out for her Séance Room, it might well have discouraged the ghost of the angry spirits or even of a bloodhound, to follow her. After traversing an interminable labyrinth of rooms and hallways, suddenly she would push a button, a panel would fly back and she would step quickly from one apartment into another, and unless the pursuing ghost was watchful and quick, he would lose her. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Then she opened a window in that apartment and climbed out, not into the open air, but on the top of a flight of steps that took her down one story only to meet another flight that brought her right back up to the same level again, all inside the house. This was supposed to be very discomforting to evil spirits who are said to be naturally suspicious of traps. Mrs. Winchester was the most unfortunate of women. Rich, respected, very well educated and of sound health and mind—with many other advantages usually valued by those having them and coveted by those who have them not—she sometimes thought that she would be less unhappy if they had been denied her, for then the contrast between her outer and inner life would not be continually demanding a painful attention. In the stress of privation and the need of effort, she might sometimes forget the sombre secret ever baffling the conjecture that it compels. After communing with the spirits, as she turned the hallway, Mrs. Winchester could hear a sound of a door gently closing, and saw in the darkness, indistinctly, the figure of a man, which instantly disappeared among the statues and furniture. A hasty pursuit and brief search of the mansion in the belief that the trespasser was someone secretly visiting a servant proving fruitless, she entered an unlocked door and mounted the stairs to her chamber. Its door was open, and stepping into black darkness she fell headlong over some heavy object on the floor. She spared herself the details; it was her poor William, dead of strangulation by human hands! Nothing had been taken from the house, the servants had heard no sound, and excepting those terrible fingermarks upon the dead man’s throat—dear God she hoped to forget them!—no trace of the assassin was even found. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Although William had Tuberculosis, something had come to end his life before the illness did. Mrs. Winchester kept barbarous murder a secret. Mrs. Winchester donated a substantial sum of money to the Winchester Clinic of the General Hospital Society of Connecticut, for the care and treatment of tuberculosis patients. The clinic still exists today as part of the Yale New Haven Medical Center. One night, a few months after the dreadful event, Mrs. Winchester and her butler were walking back from the carriage house after a trip to the city. The full moon was about three hours above the eastern horizon; the entire countryside had the solemn stillness of a summer night; their footfalls and ceaseless song of the katydids were the only sound, aloof. Black shadows of bordering trees lay athwart the mansion, which, in the short reaches between, gleamed a ghostly white. As they approached the door to the mansion, whose front was in shadow, and in which no light shone, her butler suddenly stopped and clutched her arm, saying, hardly above his breath: “God! God! what is that?” “I heard nothing,” Mrs. Winchester replied. “But see—see!” he said, pointing along the road, directly ahead. Mrs. Winchester said: “Nothing is there. Come, Henry, let us go in—you are ill.” He had released her arm and was standing rigid and motionless in the center of the illuminated roadway, staring like one bereft of sense. His face in the moonlight showed a pallor and fixity inexpressibly distressing. She pulled gently at his sleeve, but he had forgotten her existence. Presently he began to retire backward, step by step, by step, never for an instant removing his eyes from what he saw, or thought he saw. Mrs. Winchester turned half round to follow, but stood irresolute. She did not recall any feeling of fear, unless a sudden chill was its physical manifestation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
It seemed as if an icy wind had touched her face and enfolded her body from head to foot; she could feel the stir of it in her hair. At that moment her attention was drawn to a light that suddenly streamed from an upper window of the mansion: one of the servants, awakened by what mysterious premonition of evil who can say, and in obedience to an impulse that she was never able to name, had turned on the Carbide gas lights, which were operated by pushing an electric button. When she turned to look for the butler he was gone, and in all the years that had passed no whisper of his fate has come across the borderland of conjecture from the realm of the unknown. Mrs. Winchester retired and had fallen almost immediately into a peaceful sleep, from which she awoke with an indefinable sense of peril which was, a common experience in her estate. The servants slept in another part of the house. But these were familiar conditions and never distressed Mrs. Winchester. Nevertheless, the strange terror grew so insupportable that concurring her reluctance to move she sat up and pushed the button to turn on the lights at her bedside. Contrary to her expectation this gave her no relief; the light seemed rather as added danger, for she reflected that it would shine out under the door, disclosing her presence to whatever evil think might lurk in the halls of her mansion. You that are still in the flesh, subject to horrors of the imagination, think what a monstrous fear that must be which seeks in darkness security from malevolent existences of the night. That is to spring to close quarters with an unseen enemy—the strategy of despair! Extinguishing the gas lights, Mrs. Winchester pulled the bedclothing about her heard and lay trembling and silent, unable to shrike, forgetful to pray. In this pitiable state she must have lain for what you call hours—with her there are no hours, there is no time. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
At last it came—a soft, irregular sound of footfalls on the stairs! They were slow, hesitant, uncertain, as of something that did not see its way; to her disordered reason all the more terrifying for that, as the approach of some blind and mindless malevolence to which is no appeal. She even thought that she must have left the hall gasolier burning and the groping of this creature proved it a monster of the night. This was foolish and inconsistent with her previous dread of the light, but what would you have? Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated. In Mrs. Winchester’s mansion lived those who have passed into the Realm of Terror, who skulk in eternal dusk among the scenes of our former lives, invisible even to themselves, and one another, yet hiding forlorn in lonely places; yearning for speech with out loved ones, yet unenlightened, and as fearful of them as they of humans. Sometimes the disability is removed, the law suspended: by the deathless power of love or hate they break the spell—they are seen by those whom they would warn, console, or punish. What form they seem to them to bear one knows not; they know only that they terrify even those whom they most wish to comfort, and from whom they most crave tenderness and sympathy. What a thing it is to have legions of spirits, cowering and shivering, fearful and vengeful in an altered World, roaming the hallways of one’s house. However, Mrs. Winchester did not die of fright: the Thing turned and went away. She heard it go down the stairs, hurriedly, she thought, as if itself in sudden fear. Then she rose to call for help. Hardly had her shaking hand found the annunciator when—merciful Heaven!—she heard it returning. Its footfalls as it remounted the stairs were rapid, heavy and loud; they shook the mansion. She fled to an angle of the wall and crouched upon the floor. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Mrs. Winchester tried to pray. She tried to call the name of her maid. Then she heard the door thrown open. There was an interval of unconsciousness, and when she revived, she felt a strangling clutch upon her throat—felt her arms feebly beating against something that bore her backward—felt her tongue thrusting itself from between her teeth! And the she felt the life pass from her. As the spirits still dwelled in the mansion of the shadows, lurking in its desolate places, peering from brambles, thickets, towers, corners, stairways and doors. Ghosts at the Winchester mansion know when it is night, for then most people retire and they can venture from their places of concealment to move unafraid about in their old mansion, to look in at the windows, even to enter and gazes upon people’s faces who might still be wandering in the evening hours. Vainly, spirits often seek some method of manifestation, some way to make their continued existence and their great love and poignant pity understood by their loved one’s or those they wish to haunt and terrorize. Ghosts dare to approach people when they are awake, but the terrible eyes of the living frighten them by the glances that they seek from the purpose the hold. Demons, ghosts, and other spiritual beings search for the living in the Winchester mansion during the moonlight dawn. At the time of her death, the unrelenting construction had rambled over six acres. The sprawling mansion contained 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and 6 kitchens. Carpenters even left nails half driven when they learned of Mrs. Winchester’s death. According to the provisions of her will, Mrs. Winchester’s personal property, including the furnishings, household goods, pictures, jewelry, and papers were left to her niece, Mrs. Marian Merriman Marriott, who promptly has the furnishings auctioned off. It is said to have required sic trucks working six weeks to car the furnishings away! The mansion and farm were not mentioned specially in the will. They became part of the Mrs. Winchester’s estate. #RandolphHaris 7 of 16
Demon possession is a well-defined phenomenon and should be clearly distinguished from spiritism. Since the same demonic forces are at work in both phenomena, they bear some similar characteristics and result in the same occult oppression and bondage. The demonized state of the demon possessed is similar to the trance of the spiritistic medium. Both are under the direct influence of demons who speak through them. In the case of the medium who processes to communicate with the spirits of deceased persons, the demon apes the personality and voice of the deceased. In the case of the demon possessed, the evil spirits appear to be more crassly cruel, unclean, violent, and less sophisticated and subtle than spirits working through a clairvoyant medium. In demon possession, they are also more domineering and brutally enslaving. Nervous muscular reactions and contortions peculiar to the demoniac often appear also in the spiritistic medium when one goes into a trance, but in a much milder form. Then, too, the demoniac is normally an involuntary victim of possession, while the medium is a willing subject, who cultivates psychic propensities and willingly yield to demonic control. Extraordinary movements of inanimate objects surrounding the demon-possessed remind us of similar happenings in spiritism. Extraordinary movements of inanimate objects surrounding the demon-possessed remind s of similar happenings in spiritism and magic. Tables, chairs, dishes, and the like are mysteriously moved about without anybody touching them, recalling tumbler moving and table lifting so common in spiritistic séances, and magic conjurations. In demon possession as well as in spiritism, unexplained rappings and noises in so-called “haunted houses” are heard. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
After the Winchester mansion was opened for tours, a spirit from the house had taken possession of one of the tour guides. The spirit insisted on taking up its abode with them, since it has been driven away from its for dwelling by the presence of Christians. Such cases of haunted houses about everywhere in occult literature in connection with mediums, magicians, and demon possessed persons. The tour guide saw apparitions and had frequent attacks in which she fell unconscious and demons spoke through her in their own voice and personality. A thorough investigation was conducted. Persons were stationed all around the house, in various rooms, and even in the Daisy Bedroom. Noises were heard which gradually increased in violence and seemed to concentrate in the bedroom Mrs. Winchester died in. Chairs bounced, windows rattled, plaster fell from the ceiling, and objects moved about without any visible explanation. Prayer caused the noises and telekinetic phenomena continued for a while in the mansion. On one occasion, after continued prayer, one of the demons inhabiting Jane cried out, “All is now.ost. Our plans are destroyed. You have shattered our bond, and put everything into confusion. You, with your everlasting prayers—you scatter us entirely. We are 13,130,130,130 in number. But there are still multitudes of living men, and you should warn them lest they be like us forever, lost and cursed of God.” The demon confessed that he was an emissary of Satan. The next day, the contents of the mansion were found in compete disarray and utter confusion. The amazing and terrifying thing was that the doors were still securely locked. No man or beast had entered. Evil spirits had obviously been at work in a satanic assault. On that day there were some tremendous crashing and knocking noises heard in the Winchester mansion, as if the whole house was filled with evil spirits. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Everyone giving tours in the mansion in the early 1900s, used to hear knocking and rumbling and crashing noises to such an extent that some of the visitors were frightened by them. Ghosts were also seen there quite regularly, even during the day time. A headless ghost was repeatedly seen in the mansion. Many people reporting becoming burned after contact with the “possessed” tour guide Jane. The autumn of 1925, all the pigs on the Winchester mansion’s farm died. The cause of death could not be found even though one of the carcasses was sent to a biological institute for examination. They tried everything but all to no avail. The following year the same thing happened again. This time the farmer redoubled his efforts to discover the cause of the pigs’ death. He had the stables inspected and the food analyzed but again without success. He thus decided to have the conservators of the estate decided to have the pigsty torn down and rebuilt on another site using completely different materials. Next year the pigs died again. They would all of the sudden squeal and then collapse. The whole process was repeated and every possible examination made in order to find out why the pigs had died. At this time certain of the member of the community began to say that someone must be killing the pigs magically out of spite. At first the conservators of the Winchester Estate would have nothing of this and continued to seek the advice of the vet and other such people. However, they could not help them, and so in the end they went to see the local minister to ask him about the question of magic. The minister simply laughed and said that the idea was stupid. Nevertheless the villagers pointed out to the representatives that there did exist some people in some areas of California who could kill livestock by means of magic. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The conservators could do nothing though, and the event recurred year after year in spite of the fact that by now they had doubly secured the stables with locks and had sometimes stayed up all night with thread stretched out around the estate in order to discover if anyone was causing the animals’ deaths. One day, however, the circumstances changed. The minister visited the estate and asked one of the tour guides to accompany him to the vicarage. There they found one of the neighbour’s of the Winchester Estate, a man who had been less affluent, and this man confessed that it was he who had been the cause of everything. He had killed the pigs using black magic. The tour guides and conservators were naturally upset because by now 39 pigs had been killed. When asked why he had done this, the neighbour replied that it was because the tourists made such a noise outside his house. He had become so angry that he had tried to get his revenge in this way. He had subscribed himself to the devil with his own blood. To do this he had gone out on a Friday night to some crossroads and there drawn up a contract between himself and the devil. He mentioned that the devil had not appeared to him as he is often pictured, but that he met a black curly headed figure with blood-red eyes and a small snout and that the figure had been dressed in rather old-fashioned clothes. Ever since that day the man confessed that among other things, he had had the power to kill his friend’s pigs. The minister asked him what had made him come out into the open about the whole matter. His answer was that the people at the Winchester estate had been so kind to him over the year, donating food, clothes and furniture, that he had felt ashamed and he now asked for them to forgive him, and promised he would no longer plague them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Not wanting to take any legal action, the conservators of the Winchester Estate forgave him and all went well until the neighbour ceased going to church and slid back into his old ways. Since his confession none of the estate’s pigs had died but now the man again took up his drinking habits two more of the pigs died in exact same ways as the others. The conservators decided to shutdown the farming land of the Winchester Estate and sell off hundred of acres, only keeping four. In the process, several other Victorian houses on the grounds, along with fountains, and gazebos were demolished. From the psychological point of view it is suggested that a person delving into magic and who believes in occult practices is really only succumbing to a fulfilment compulsion. One unconsciously fulfils the things that one seeks to perform by magic. One is the victim of auto-suggestion. However, even if this were the whole explanation as some people affirm, it would still be true to say that occult practices have a corrupting effect on all those who get involved in them. Demons tend to be somewhat more independent than angels…When possession takes place, you will not get to see them at all. The Florida-based Luciferian Light Group (LLG) adopted the ‘Watcher myth’ of devils that were originally angels, sent to Earth to guard humankind and cursed by God for screwing their charges. In the original myth the couplings produced monsters, but, according to the LLG, the actual result was the Aryan race. They say that African Americans and other racial groups take pride in their cultural roots, so the argument goes, why should the same concept not apply to Europeans? The argument cannot be countered by liberal sophistry, and so the ghosts of German volkisch occultists continue to be conjured. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
The role of cultural villain again proves to be a delicate balancing act—nothing can ever be condemned on purely moralistic grounds. Many people are still trying to protect “The Black House.” The Black Pope himself once reassured his flock, “the first 99 years are always the toughest. Rege Satanas!” Satanism is opposed to victimology and scapegoating. Many people are really drawn to the dark side because they grow up reading a lot of books and watching a lot of movies about it. If witches are out there, practicing some of the old ways of the pre-Christian gods and goddesses, then they are still Satanic in the sense that they are heretical. One side of the heretical and diabolical is the scientific aspect of Satanism. Copernicus and Galileo were regarded as practicing sorcerers in as far as they dared to challenge the supremacy of God with their heresies-their scientific research. Anton LaVey codified modern Satanism. There is a rich heritage of hearsay and blasphemy behind it, but as far as an aboveground religion that reveres Satan, there was not anything before the Church of Satan’s foundation in 1966. There were Black Masses that parodied the Catholic Church. A lot of modern Satanism draws from that codification or personification of Satan used as an archetype in mythology. Satanist are more interested in power, and what was going on in the castles and courts of the times. The interactions of power and Machiavellian machinations interest a Satanists rather than going out and find herbs to cure indigestion. Satanists are reaching for a religion of the aristocracy. They have all the aspects of that pride, that energy, that stye, and hopefully those elevated standards. Many people fear them because they believe they will lure you in their house and kill you, but is that not what many Christians are doing today? #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Your relationship with your personal Satanic archetype is yours alone. The only way some can see how effective one is as a practicing black magician is how well one gets on in the outside of the World. Satanism has always represented and will always represent the adversary. He is a counterbalance to the unspoken injustice that prevails in the current society, whether that be overweening elitism or, going to the opposite extreme, mob rule. They always have to be in the minority that push hard in the other direction to get the pendulum swinging. Satanism will never be a religion of the people. It will never be populist beyond its current position. You see hundreds of thousands of kids making the sign of the horns, wearing black, getting devil tattoos, and listening to rock music they think is Satanic. They will take all the trappings and even grasp a few of the basic ideas, like Satan representing indulgence and independence of spirit. But, beyond that, they will always be a minority and that is how some think it should be. The Winchester mansion is a common site of demonic assault. In the early 1900s, a group of tourists and tour guides were attacked by demons; some became possessed; 30 people in the group were seized. In 1926, Satan and his allies once again possessed people at the Winchester mansion. For the first time in their lives, many of these people found themselves to be powerful, significant beings, establishing their own realm of authority. When they spoke, everyone in the mansion stopped to listen, for their shrill cries became testimony. Many historians have argued that the Satanism at the Winchester mansion was only the product of demented minds. However, there was something quite real in all the series of accusations and counteraccusations of the witnesses and the possessed—some definitely evil driving force that led humans to turn against one another like mad dogs lusting for the smell of blood. If Satan was to have presided over the Satanism at the Winchester Mansion, much was left out of the picture. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
The Devil manifested himself in many forms to people at the Winchester Mansion—as a horse, a fox, a dog, a cat, a pig, and as a shadowy figure. At the Sabbats, the Devil was always present in the form of a tall, handsome man with blue eyes and black hair making no attempt to disguise his identity in any way Neither was the all-important bloodletting present in the ceremonies, either in the form of a sacrifice or in the singing of the pact. There was no defiling of sacred object, nor mention of the administering of the witches’ mark, a painful ceremony that was quite vivid in the minds of many of the witches at the estate. The Sabbats, all in all, seemed to have been rather staid affairs, involving no wild ritual or debauchery. The Devil offered not immediate wealth or riches, but a new system of government, where all humans would be equal, each human being free to “live bravely.” He promised an end to beliefs. Whoever the Devil was at those meetings, he obviously did not seek adulation, but rather he sought to establish a more equal and suitable social order among humans. Taken in this context, the entire episode begins to sound like a huge projection, a gigantic wish fulfillment on the part of the disgruntled citizens, who were expressing disdain for the system that, in their eyes had become oppressive. The figure chosen by the confessors as the Devil presiding over the midnight Sabbats had himself become disillusioned by the system. Perhaps he had been holding nocturnal meetings in the mansion in an effort of “cleansing the soul.” At any rate, the meetings were necessary psychological safety valves in the minds of the people. People would stand around begging for the master to teach them his secret. How to become invisible, how to acquire love, and oh! beyond all, how to make gold. How much gold would you give for the Secret of Infinite Riches? Humans became strengthened with wonderful power through the order of angels, so that one declares the divine will. From the Seraphim, that we cling with fervent love. From the Cherubim, enlightenment of the mind, power and wisdom over the exalted figures and images, through which we can gaze upon divine things, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
From the Thronis, a knowledge of how we are made and constituted, that we may direct our thoughts upon eternal things. From Dominationbius, assistance to bring into subjection our daily enemies, who we carry with us constantly, and enabling us to attain salvation. From Potestatibus, protection against human enemies of life. From Virtuibus, God infuses strength into us, enabling us to contend against the enemies of truth and reward, that we may finish the courage of our natural life. From the Principtibus, that all things become subject to humans, that one may grasp all power, and draw unto oneself all secret and supernatural knowledge. From Archangelis, that one may rile over all things that God has made subject to one, over the animals of the field, over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air. From the Angelis one receives the power to be the messenger of the divine. When the veil between the conscious and the subconscious mind begins thinning it is likely that one will begin to experience certain phenomenon that will grab your attention throughout the day. This will occur more and more as the veil between Worlds thins merging your spiritual awareness with your physical life. Usually it will manifest in the form of synchronicity, Déjà vu, or circumstance which seems to jump out and grab your attention. Thee I invoke, the Bornless one. Thee, that didst create the Earth and the Heavens: Thee, that didst create the Night and the Day. Thee, that didst create the Darkness and the Light. Thou art Osorronophris: Whom no human has seen at any time. Thou art Ahriman. Hear Thou Me, for I am the Angel of Paphro. Osorronophris: this is Thy True Name, handed down to the Prophets of Ishrael. Ahriman rise up through the infernal planes through the seal of Arezura and find rest within this manifestation of the blessings. Fill this sorcerous fluid with your power and might that it will serve my cause of counter creation through the intent of my own evil mind. Bless this blood as the very powers of death, destruction, and decay that I may cast out all that does not serve the cause of my own great work upon this path of enlightenment. Come tour the dark, brooding and mysterious, promising all kinds of forbidden treats. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
Happy weekend! Will we be seeing you on the estate today? 🌻 https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
By the Way of King Diamond and Diamond Baby
Black metal, as a 1990s phenomenon, is a creature with an identity largely distinct from its parent heavy metal music. Growing like a poisonous fungus away from the light of mainstream media and interest, it developed its own bizarre sounds, imagery and philosophies. Fostered upon a diet of xeroxed fanzines with names like Thanatograpy (after Thanatos, Greek god of death), Hammer of Damnation and Baphomet, its teenage male exponents were keen to make their mark with a genre too willfully obnoxious for outsiders. Visually, bands tried to outdo each other with outrageously macabre or offensive imagery: fire-breathing; tattered black clothing or robes; blood-soaked or naked flesh; medieval weaponry; bullet belts and spiked leather; insane calligraphy—spattered with profane images—which rendered band names illegible or scarcely identifiable. The most striking black-metal “fashion statement,” however, was the sepulchral black-and-white make-up worn by many bands which became known as “corpse paint”—a mutated offspring of the theatrical greasepaint worn by KISS in the 1970s, by way of King Diamond. At the movements genesis, few band members had racked up enough years of experience to excel at their instruments in the traditional fashion—instead, they concentrated on producing unearthly, crazed, bizarre sounds with guitars, drums, the human voice and keyboards. Specialist independent record labels, founded by fans or the bands themselves, sprang up as a truly international underground: Osmose Productions in France; Blackground Records 2.0 and Wild Rags in America; Candlelight Records in Spain. The list continues to proliferate to the present day, but the most influential of all was a small Scandinavian label called Deathlike Silence—of which, much more later. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
One of the more arresting rock artists of the early 1990s bridged the gap between the musical extremes of black metal and rock “n” roll’s demonic roots in the blues. Far subtler than most black metal bands, Glenn Danzig still operated at the infernal end of the spectrum. An anomaly who stubbornly refused to bow to the expectations of either purists or populists, Danzig began his career at the height of the punk revolution in 1977 as vocalist for New Jersey band the Misfits. No ordinary punk band, Danzig’s classic rock “n” roll delivery gave a quasi-1950s feel to their abrasive sound, while they spurned the usual punk look in devour of an all-year-round Halloween image. Sporting monstrous black quiffs they dubbed “devil locks,” the Misfits often took the stage in skeletal garb—indeed, Danzig’s skull make-up was prescient of the “corpse paint” popular among the 1990s black metal bands. The Misfits were one of the first punk bands whose songs possessed a strong gothic undercurrent. Many reflected their love of fascinating schlock movies, such as “Teenagers from Mars” and “Return of the Fly,” but others were genuinely disturbing explorations of hat and violence. Their second recording, Bullet, featured a song entitled “Hollywood Babylon,” inspired by magus and film-maker Kenneth Anger, while another track included an authentic Latin chant for effecting a werewolf transformation. In what was to become a familiar pattern, Danzig tired of the more tongue-in-cheek aspects of the Misfits, forming Samhain (pronounced “Sow-En”—the precursor to Halloween, a Celtic festival dedicated to fire and death) who released their first album, Initium, in 1984. This was a stark journey into primal evil, threatening rhythms and bleak guitars combining with Danzig’s lupine vocals to create a musical beast that howled at the World. It was all too bleak for most audiences and, in 1987, the vocalist dissolved the band in order to enter his third incarnation—called simply Danzig. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Danzig was in many ways the singer’s most innovative project, as well as the most overtly Satanic. Voodoo blues as deep and black as Mississippi mud met predatory heavy metal, with vocal style redolent of early rock “n” roll’s late-fifties/early-sixties crooners. Typically, Glenn Danzig’s insistence on treating his Satanic subject matter without a trace of irony did not endear him to the press. Short, powerfully built, with raven black hair and prominent side-burns, the music media dubbed him as “Evil Elvis” or, more irreverently, “Fonzig.” Some audiences were also perplexed: younger black metal fans wanted a less subtle Satanism, while rock fans who appreciated Danzig’s musical approach found his lyrical preoccupation off-putting. Nevertheless, the ban attracted a dedicated fan base, appreciative of a familiarity with demonic subject matter that most shock-horror rockers could only envy. Nietzschean howls of defiance against the Creator, such as “Godless,” complemented more traditional takes on hellish suffering like “Tired of Being Alive.” At his quietest, Danzig was at his most sinister—like the poet William Blake, Danzig identified love as “a Devil’s thing.” In 1994, when MTV picked up on the video for the anthemic “Mother, the band received mainstream attention; in the same year, an uncompromising Glenn Danzig released a solo project entitled Black Aria: an album of quasi-classical music retelling the story of Satan’s fall from grace. In 1996, after four albums of powerfully-infernal rock music, Danzig took his eponymus band in a new direction. BlackAcidDevil was predominantly an industrial record, many fans mourning the passing of the classic Danzig sound and dismissing at as “poor man’s Nine Inch Nails.” In truth, when the industrial grind is layered with the dark velvet of Danzig’s seductive tones—as on “Come to Silver,” an exploration of temptation—then the material becomes really interesting. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The indifferent sales and reviews that greeted BlackAcidDevil tested Danzig’s already-strained relationship with the music business. He let the band slip back into the cult status he was perhaps happiest with, and began spending the money he had made from his musical career on other projects—most notably a comic-book company named Verotik. As the company’s name suggests, these comics are crammed with violence and erotica, combined with the fascination for all things infernal that has become Glenn Danzig’s trademark. Scripting many of the comic-strips himself, Danzig introduced overly devilish characters, like the vamp Satanika, to stake his claim as one of the main modern contributors to Satanic popular culture. On the continent of Europe, particularly in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, things were being taken to a less subtle extreme. Deathlike Silence was an independent record label owned by a young man who re-named himself Euronymous—according to some folklore traditions, a cannibalistic demon with skin the bluish-black colour of a meatfly’s carapace—who also ran a dank, dingy specialist record store named Helvete (meaning “Hell”) and founded a band called Mayhem. Mayhem formed in 1984, just as the original black metal scene was peaking, debuting with a demo called Pure Fucking Armageddon and an album called Deathcrush. Interest in Satanic imagery, with its attendant gothic spikes-and-leather garb, was faltering among audiences at this time, but Mayhem clung onto its uncompromising style. They sounded like a rawer, more grinding version of Venom, screaming and thundering between militaristic marches and growling rage. As the tastes of young underground fans in the 1990s swung further towards the diabolical excess, Euronymous’ obsessive dedication made him a potent force on the newly-burgeoning black metal scene. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
During the early 1990s, Euronymous’ store became the focus for a small circle of likeminded Scandinavian metal fans who all started their own bands. This loose group named itself variously the Black Metal Circle, Satanic Terrorists or Black Metal Mafia, and was influenced by the supposedly Satanic doctrines of Euronymous—based around a vague reading of the biblical concept of war between Heaven and Hell. For Euronymous, siding with Satan meant endorsing everything that was considered evil, spiteful, hateful. Hate motivated his philosophy, coloured by the cold, depressive morbidity that characterizes the negative edge of the Scandinavian psyche. All of the releases on Deathlike Silence were stamped with the “Anti-Mosh” symbol (moshing is a raucously combative form of dancing common to thrash and death metal fans). Around the symbol were stamped the messages “No Mosh,” “No Core” (a reference to the hardcore punk revival), “No Trends” and “No Fun”—these sentiments taking against those metal audiences who were introducing splashes of gaudy mainstream colour, in the form of Bermuda shorts, baseball caps and skateboards. In the center of the “No Moshing” symbol was a red line struck through those figures Euronymous professed to hate most: Scott Burns, the Florida-based record producer whose work had come to dominate the death metal scene, and curiously, Anton LaVey. Euronymous divorced himself from all Satanic tradition, loathing LaVey because of the Church of Satan’s philosophy of self-empowerment and individualism. Euronymous’ simple faith expressed all that was negative: a cold core for violent code of self-destructive nihilism. Joining Mayhem in their isolated World of hate were several other extreme bands. Burzum—chiefly a vehicle for Count Grishnackh (given name Kristian Vikernes, though he legally changed his first name to Varg, Norwegian for “wolf”), who had lived in the damp, lightless cellar of the Helvete record shop for some time—were a prominent presence. Burzum were an odd blend of frustrated insanity and strange, sad, ambient mood music, pained pathos and gibbering fury—oddly effective, but distinctly disturbed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Founder member Grishnackh took his name from one of the evil “orc” characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings, while Burzum meant “darkness” in the orcish language conceived by Tolkien. Perverse as this seems, it should be remembered that The Bible is just a book of stories—in this light, perhaps using The Lord of the Rings as the basis for an (im)moral philosophical code is not wholly ludicrous. However, it does an infernal philosopher’s credibility no favours to identify too closely with “hobbits” (glorified goblin). Grishnackh’s personal mythology combined the darkness-versus-light motifs of “mystic quest”/sword-and-sorcery sagas with the violent Viking tradition he believed true Northern Europeans belonged to. While this seems symptomatic of Scandinavia’s peripheral removal from—and distorted imitation of—Western pop culture, it also has an authentic dark side. As is common among Norse pagan revivalists, the Black Metal Circle began to espouse race-based Nazi political views. (Though totalitarian-loving Euronymous also expressed admiration for communist despots and Cambodian genocidalist Pol Pot.) Also pivotal in this new movement were the bands Emperor, Immortal, Enslaved and Arcturus. The last to join Euronymous’s Norwegian cadre were Dark Throne, who had already recorded one death metal album, Soulside Journey, in 1990. In the following year, they disowned their debut, donned corpse-paint and joined the “Satanic Mafia” with their album A Blaze in the Northern Sky. If Euronymous exemplified the nihilistic hate at the heart of the Black Metal Circle, and Burzum represented its violent Norse/Nazi fantasies, then Dark Throne symbolized the Circle’s isolation and sociopathic need for solitude. Taking their country’s sombre, anti-social reputation to extremes, the band never met to record, spoke little, and spent increasing periods alone in the frost-bitten Norwegian wilderness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
In the spring of 1991, Mayhem’s vocalist died: a Swede who, by way of black comedy, had re-named himself “Dead.” Dead blew his head off with a shotgun, leaving a note to day that he felt he was not of this World, but belonged instead to the cold solitude of the forest. He also apologized for the mess. As in common with obsessively inward-looking groups like the Black Metal Circle, a crisis of this type either causes the grouping to dissolve, or re-enforces their convictions. The latter instance applied, and the Circle hailed Dead as a hero. Euronymous, who found the corpse, rushed out for a camera to take his final photograph of Dead before altering the authorities—claiming a morsel of brain to make into soup and a fragment of skull to fashion into a necklace. At this point, the Black Metal Circle were no longer merely a group of disaffected teens and early-twentysomethings, but a subculture who believed themselves to be at the center of significant, apocalyptic events. Euronymous’ demented, anti-social rants were making him a regular feature in the underground metal fanzines; despite the continued indifference of the global music media, black metal was rising from the grassroots across the World. The “legend of Dead” contributed to a growing international interest in extreme, Scandinavian Satanic metal, with Deathlike Silence treating the grim event as a grotesque promotional gimmick. For the first time, European countries bordering the Mediterranean also began throwing up a slew of black metal acts—most notably the Greek band Rotting Christ. In contrast to the could hatred of the Northerners, the Southern European scene was inclined to a less self-destructive, more LaVeyan approach—though Anton LaVey would have regarded many of them as blasphemy-fixated novices, struggling to topple the repressive Christianity that dominates their culture. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Much of black metal is supposed to be inspired by demons. They cannot be any worse than human being, right? Many of them just have never possessed a body of their own. They are souls who have been lurking around before humanity. Before the dinosaurs. They are the darkness. The reason God created life so that life could flourish and grow and rest when it is dark. Demon possession is a condition in which one or more evil spirits or demons inhabit the body of a human being and can take complete control of their victim at will. By temporarily blotting out one’s consciousness, they can speak and act through one as their complete slave and tool. The inhabiting demon (or demons) comes and goes much like the proprietor of a house who may or may not be “at home.” When the demon is “at home,” one may precipitate an attack. In these attacks the victim passes from one’s normal state of possession. The condition of the afflicted person in the “possessed” state varies greatly. Sometimes it is marked by depression and deep melancholy, sometimes by vacancy and stupidity that resemble idiocy. Sometimes the victim may be ecstatic or extremely malevolent and wildly ferocious. During the transition from the normal to the abnormal state, the victim is frequently thrown into a violent paroxysm, often falling to the ground unconscious, foaming at the mouth with symptoms similar to epilepsy or hysteria. The intervals between attacks vary greatly from an hour or less to months. Between attacks, the subject may be healthy and appear normal in every way. The abnormal or demonized stages can last a few minutes or several days. Sometimes the attacks are mild; sometimes they are violent. If they are frequent and violent, the health of the subject suffers. The chief characteristic of demon possession or demonomania is the automatic projection of a new personality in the victim. During attack the victim’s personality is completely obliterated, and the inhabiting demon’s personality takes over completely. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The inhabiting demon uses the victim’s body as a vehicle for one’s own thoughts, words, and acts. The demon even speaks out of the victim’s mouth and declares emphatically that one is a demon. Frequently one gives one’s name and dwelling place. The new personality reveals itself in a different voice and sometimes uses a different language or dialect on a completely different educational or cultural level. Pronouns are used to emphasize the new personality. The first personal pronoun consistently designates the inhabiting demon. Bystanders are addressed in the second person. The victim is referred to in the third person and looked upon during the attack as unconscious and for all practical purposes as nonexistent during this interval. Demonomania should be clearly differentiated from the insanity in which a person imagines oneself to be someone else, often a famous personality such as Liz Taylor, Julius Caesar, of William Randolph Hearst. The demoniac, when in the demonized state characterized by the new personality, speaks and acts in all respects like a completely different person. By contrast, the insane person is one’s own diseased self, one’s assumed personality being a transparent unreality. In cases of demon possession the new personality clearly and constantly recognizes the distinct existence and individuality of its “possessed” victim, speaking of that victim in the third person, an element entirely lacking in cases of insanity. Because various inadequate theories have left demon possession largely unexplained, it is quite probable that some patients in mental hospitals are demon possessed rather than insane. This was the conviction of the famous nineteenth-century specialist in mental diseases, Dr. Forces Benignus Winslow (1810-1874). He correctly recognized the demoniac by a strange duality; and by the fact that, when temporarily relived from the oppression of the demon, he is frequently able to describe the force which takes control of one and compels one to act and speak shamefully. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
While in the demonized state many persons give evidence of knowledge which cannot be accounted for naturally. The demon who takes control of the body of one’s victim is obviously the source of the superhuman knowledge. While demon possessed, many persons recognize the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and display an aversion to and a fear of Him (Mark 1.23-24; 5.7). The case of Mrs. Winchester, who lived in Santa Clara County, illustrates how a woman came under demon domination through practicing séances. Being centered within our own God like power is of utmost importance. Even when evoked to create change directly, keep in mind that you are the God that wields these powers for the cause of Counter Creation. Just be careful! As a God you will be tested and so how these powers are wielded is a powerful initiatic test in its own right. Mrs. Winchester was in her Blue Séance Room, she lite a candle on her left first, and then a candle on her right. A sacred serpent was sacrificed over the wood sigil and the blood was left to drain upon the idol. Then the body of the serpent was encircled around it, she chanted “I do invocate and conjure thee, O Spirit, Sabnock; and being with power armed from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALADACHIENSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachidae, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat or Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocating conjure thee. And being armed with power from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto whom all creatures be obedient. Also I, being made after the image of GOD, endued with power from GOD and created according unto His will, do exorcise thee by that most mighty and powerful name of GOD, EL, strong and wonderful; O thou Spirit Sabnock. And I command thee and Him who spake the Word and HIS FIAT was accomplished and by all the names of God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
“Also by the names ADONAI, EL, ELOHIM, ELOHI, EHYEH, ASHER EHYEH, ZABAOTH, ELION, IAH, TETRAGRAMMATON, SHADDAI, LORD GOD MOST HIGH, I do exorcise thee and do powerfully command thee, O thou Spirit Sabnock, that thou dost forthwith appear unto me here before this Circle in a fair human shape, without any deformity or tortuosity. And by this ineffable name, TETRAGRAMMATON IEHOVAH, do I command thee, at which being heard the elements are overthrown, the air is shaken, the sea runneth back, the fire is quenched, the Earth trembleth, and all the hosts of the celestials, terrestrials, and infernals do tremble together, and are troubled and confounded. Wherefore come thou, O Spirit Sabnock, forthwith, and without delay, from any or all parts of the World wherever thou mayest be, and make rational answers unto all things that I shall demand of thee. Come thou peaceably, visibly, and affably, now, and without delay, manifesting that which I shall desire. For thou art conjured by the name of the LIVING and TRUE GOD, HELIOREN, wherefore fulfill thou my commands, and persist thou therein unto the end, and according unto mine interest, visibly and affably speaking unto me with a voice clear and intelligible without any ambiguity. I do invocate, conjure, and command thee, O thou Spirit Sabnock, to appear and to show thyself visible unto me before this Circle in fair and comely shape, without any deformity or tortuosity; by the name and in the name IAH and VAU which Adam heard and spake; and by the name of God, AGLA, which Lot heard and was saved with his family; and by the name IOTH, which Jacob heard from the angels wrestling with him, and was delivered from the hand of Esau his brother; and by the name ANAPHAEXTON which Aaron heard and spake and was made wise; and by the name ZBAOTH, which Moses named and all the rivers were turned into blood; and by the name ASHER EHYEH ORISTON, which Moses named, and all the rivers brought forth frogs, and they ascended into the house, destroying all things. #RandolpHarris 11 of 21
“And by the name ELION, WHICH Moses named, and there was a great hail such as had not been since the beginning of the World; and by the name ADONAI, which Moses named, and there came up locusts, which appeared upon the whole land, and devoured all which the hail had left; and by the name SCHEMA AMATHIA which Ioshua called upon, and the sun stayed his course; and by the name ALPHA and OMEGA, which Daniel named, and destroyed Bel, and slew the Dragon; and in the name EMMANUEL, which the three children, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, sang in the midst of the fiery furnace, and were delivered; and by the name HAGIOS; and by the SEAL OF ADONI; and by ISCHYROS, ATHANATOS; and by these three secret names, AGLA, ON, TETRAGRAMMATION, do I adjure and constrain thee. And by these names, and by all other names of the LIVING and TRUE GOD, the LORD ALMIGHTY, I do exorcise and command thee, O Spirit Sabnock, even by Him Who spake the Word and it was done, and to Whom all creatures are obedient; and by the dreadful judgments of GOD; and by the uncertain Sea of Glass, which is before the DIVINE MAJESTY, mighty and powerful; by the four beasts before the throne, having eyes before and behind; by the fire round about the throne; by the holy angels of Heaven; and by the mighty wisdom of GOD; I do potently exorcise thee, that thou appearest here before this Circle, to fulfill my will in all things which shall seem good unto me; by the Seal of BASDATHEA BALDACHIA; and by this name PRIMEUMATON, which Moses named, and the Earth Opened, and did swallow up Kora, Dathan, and Abiram. Wherefore thou shalt make faithful answers unto all my demands, O Spirit Sabnock, and shalt perform all my desires so far as in thine office thou art capable hereof. Wherefore, come thou, visibly, peaceably, and affably, now without delay, to manifest that which I desire, speaking with a clear and perfect voice, intelligibly, and to mine understanding. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
“Tbatlu! Bualu! Tulatu! Labusi! Ubisi!—Let thee also appear and being before me the Spirit of Sabnock. Sovar, merciless leader of Divs come forth! Inner eye behold the demon before me. Sovar awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Shahrewar! I stand alone as the embodiment of the Adversary known as Ahriman, the Black Dragon of Chaos and becoming! I devour the natural order of stasis brought forth by Ahura Mazda and forge my destiny through the power of the Black Sun! Taromat, beautiful Div or rebellion come forthy! Inner eye behold the demoness before me. Toramat awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Spandarmad! Ahirman, Lord of Darkness divine, I thank you for your presence within this unholy temple of counter creation. I have offered you the life of this noxious creature as a gateway to your manifestation within this realm to stand before me! You are Angra Mainyu who is the Lord of counter creation, whom has brought forth the mountains to the plains! You have brought forth the beasts to the field and the creatures of the night! Ahriman with your infernal blessing I ask that you would bring forth the baneful powers of the wolf kin to fill this oil with their essence that it may be compelled according to my will! I offer my nails as fangs which will devour that which stands in my way! I offer my hair to embody their predatory essence! I give my blood as a gateway to empower them to act within this world according to my will and purpose!” Then Mrs. Winchester heard the distant howling of wolves and she perceived their phantom shadows as they began to surround her and encroach. She was focused on Sabnock and dared not fear that which she had just conjured. SABNOCK—of course is the Forty-third Spirit of the Winchester Mansion. He is a Marquis, Mighty, Great, and Strong, appearing in the Form of an Armed Soldier with a Lion’s Head, riding on a pale-coloured horse. His office is to build high Towers, Castles and Cities, ad to furnish them with Armour, etcetera. Also he can conflict Men for many days with Wounds and with Sores rotten and full of Worms. He giventh Good Familiars at the request of the Exorcist. Commandth 50 Legions of Spirits; and his Seal is this, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Mrs. Winchester fell down unconscious, frothing at the mouth, and was carried to her room, outside where the crescent hedge is planted. A doctor was called in gave her large doses of medicine to no avail. He left and refused to have anything more to do with the case as he saw with in hours gables and towers rise, wings of the mansion extended right before his eyes, and gardens grow from sprouts and spring up to mature plants and trees before night fall. For five of six days Mrs. Winchester raved wildly, and her staff and friends were in great distress. In desperation they proposed giving Mrs. Winchester more medicine. However, the demon, speaking through her, replied: “Any amount of medicine will be of no use.” Daisy then implored, “If medicine will be of no use, what shall we do?” The demon replied, “Burn incense to me, and submit yourself to me, and all will be well.” The staff knelt down and worshiped the demon, imploring him to torment Mrs. Winchester no longer. During that time Mrs. Winchester was in a state of complete unconsciousness. A little later when the demon drove Mrs. Winchester to renewed frenzy, her distraught staff repeated their promise to worship and serve him. They also promised that they would urge their Mrs. Winchester to do likewise. When Mrs. Winchester regained consciousness, she reluctantly consented to do so. The demon gave explicit directions regarding the proposed worship. On the first and fifteenth of each month, incense was to be burned, food offered, and the require prostration made before the shrine of himself, SABNOCK. Periodically the demon came, sometimes every few days, sometimes after a month’s lapse. Each time, Mrs. Winchester felt fluttering of her heart, a sense of overwhelming fear, and inability to control herself. She would quietly as Daisy to fetch a neighboring woman whenever the demon came. The two would burn incense to the demon in Mrs. Winchester’s stead and receive his directives, which they then communicated to the possessed. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Although these communications were spoken by the Mrs. Winchester’s (the victim) lips, she was completely unaware of them, since she was in the demonized state. The demon often bade the audience not to be afraid, protesting he would not harm them, but rather help them in various ways. He declared he would instruct the victim in the healing art, so that people would flock to her and be cured of their sickness. This soon proved true, although may diseases were not under the demon’s control. Apparently only those afflicted by evil spirits were completely cured. Mrs. Winchester’s long-ill child was not helped. The demon declared he controlled many inferior spirits. He also frequently outlined his plan for Mrs. Winchester’s life and work. He promised he would help her grow more proficient as a healer, and the people would compensate her for her services. Gifts thus earned were donated to the nearby ancient pagan temple. As certain parts of the Winchester mansion would appear but once every seventeen years, SABNOCK was never seen save on the eve of some awful calamity, visitors to the mansion had a very slight chance of seeing his physical body. There could be no doubt though of the existence of the mansion and SABNOCK, for everybody knows he was one of the greatest of the giants during his natural lifetime, nor could any better evidence be asked then the facts that he guided Mrs. Winchester into turning stone, wood, and class into the World’s most beautiful and bizarre mansions. The door-to-nowhere was also known as Lovers’ Leap;” from which Mrs. Winchester once flung herself when she was a state of deep morning, and survived unharmed. The path SABOCK made from the door-to-nowhere to the mountains was used by him when he would leave his island and come to shore. Upon being informed of the variety and amount of legendary material collected about the Winchester mansion and Mrs. Winchester’s doings, many people unhesitatingly pronounced the entire assortment condemned all the gathered treasures as creations of the supernatural. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
It was very well beknown that in them old days there were giants in plenty hereabouts, but they did not make the make an appearance at the estate very often. But everyone knows that there were giants, because if there were not, no one would know of them at all. They were just like human beings, except in the matter of size, and one of them could make a dozen like men that live now. When they walked, they carried oak trees for sticks and lived in the forest of the giants, and carved the mountain and caves. (It should be noted that spiritistic visions of this nature are quite likely to occur in the course of reading occult literature. Sometimes people mistake these visions for genuine religious experiences. However, it is again a case of Satan disguising himself as an angel of the light.) Yet, there are more than 20,000 accounts of spirits, ghost, angels and demons being seen in the Winchester mansion. The uncanny phenomena places one under a charm. The pattern of the courts during this early period in the 1800s was erratic, sometimes convicting, sometimes throwing cases out of court for lack of evidence, something awarding damages for slander to those who had been maligned as witches by accusers. This vacillation sprang from the fact that the judicial bodies that heard the causes were not religious but secular, and therefore had little competence in dealing with matters that were primarily religious. As far as control was concerned, in adhering to the principles of congregationalism, the responsibility for suppressing heresy and enforcing religious behavior within the communities went to the state. The trial judges were not the sure, steadfast, confident Dominican Inquisitors or Protestant prosecutors of the Old World, but merely secular officials of the valley who had been forced into the position of trying heresy for lack of anyone else to do it. Mary Johnson, who was hired at the Winchester mansion in 1887, as a cook, admitted have had “familiarity with the Devil” and was executed by the state. She confession to have pleasures of the flesh with demons and other sorted things. She made no mention of mass meetings; rather, her Devil seems to have been a personal one, coming to her assistance when needed. #RandolphHarri 16 of 21
Dolls were sometimes used as a means of projecting curses, and Mary said she had attended meetings with Satan and his consorts. Witches’ pact with Satan was attributed as part of God’s inscrutable plan of the Universe. The Puritan settlers in Santa Clara Valley believed in the doctrine of Original Sin wholeheartedly; their pessimistic outlook proclaimed that all men were unworthy until God saw fit to bestow His grace upon them. They believed that the God allowed the Devil to afflict not only the guilty but also anybody else that might happen to get in the way. If He had to teach misguided humans a lesson, He might punish an entire community for the sins of the most wicked in that community. And it appeared to the God-fearing Puritans that He was doing just that. The Puritans were highly intolerant and has a paranoiac distrust of other religious groups, some were farmers at the Winchester mansion, and did not always like the rituals that were performed, but they were very loyal and protective of Mrs. Winchester. Many of the people who worked at the Winchester mansion were often under suspicion of witchcraft. The Puritans came to the Winchester mansion because they felt it was a true kingdom of God on Earth, and they could help Mrs. Winchester live peacefully. However, what they found was something different. They found that the vast acres of the estate had bitterly cold winters, and the terrain could be inhospitable. They found themselves in a wilderness, surrounded by demonic tribes whom they considered to be the legions of Hell incarnate. Having come to settle in this last stronghold of the Devil, they were plagued by him constantly for the very reason that they were God’s chosen people, thus the most likely target for unholy temptation. The fact that the new settlers in the Santa Clara Valley were being attacked by Satan seemed incontestable. The estate was ravaged by smallpox, and had suffered constant harassment by envious local town’s people and demonic tribes. Mrs. Winchester wondered what she had done to offend God that He should allow the Devil such free range. She experimented with the spirits to bring peace to her life and home. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Mrs. Winchester had an answer: Judgment Day was at hand and Satan was therefore stepping up his activities in one last desperate move. It was simply the nova-like burst of the energy from a dying star. She glibly stated that “there will again be an unusual Range of the Devil among us, a little before the Second Coming of the Lord, which will be to give the last stroke in destroying the works of the Devil.” This theory found wide acceptance among the servants and laity of Santa Clara Valley, for not only did it offer a simple explanation for all their maladies and misfortunes, but it also gave them hope, promising cooly a quick end to their hardships. Satan is most able to seduce human in periods o great discontent, for human, in times of poverty and affliction, will turn knowingly to whatever hands will feed them. The valley had had a difficult time of it up to that time, and famines had reduced the population drastically. However, as if labouring under the most severe environmental handicaps was not enough, Puritan perfectionism went even further in making life unbearable. In seeking to establish a holy kingdom, according to Heaven’s law, self-indulgence in any form was strictly repressed. Severe punishments were meted out for drinking, swearing, and licentiousness; in Santa Clara, it was a punishable offense to walk on the streets on Sunday, except when going to and from church. And witches, people possessed by demons, and others also attended church to blend in and keep the peace. On top of it all, there stood the Calvinistic doctrine of election, holding that as soon as man was born, eh was judged to be headed for either Heaven or Hell, this choice being made according to God’s immutable law. However, even if a human thought oneself to be damned, the civil punishment for one’s indulgence were still exacted upon one. It was into this environment that the waters of the witchcraft flood would soon pour. The good people of Santa Clara clearly saw signs of Satanic activity in their midst, and an investigation was launched. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Mrs. Winchester confessed to having attended witches’ Sabbaths and of having met with the Devil, who was a tall, black man from New Haven, Connecticut. Soon the witch fever spread, and more people from the valley became posses by demons. The common belief was that at that time witches, when entering into a Covenant with Satan, because the owners of specters, with the help of which they could do harm to any person of their choosing. People believe that God—the Alpha and Omega was both God and Satan. That He has a soul and character. He is not just this futile entity but someone you can see many aspects to. Some people fled to Satanism because they had to deal with so much evil from Christians that they wanted another source of power to exalt them. Satanism is supposed to be something to be something secret, something people do not know anything of. One goes to America and in the telephone directory one can see “Church of God,” “Church of Jesus,” and “Church of Satan.” One calls, and a person answers: “Church of Satan, how may I help you?” One thinks, “This is not Satanism!” The Church of Satan deny Satan, they say He does not exist, yet they act as if He dd, they rebel against God. They call themselves Satanists because He also rebelled against God, but they are basically light and life worshipping individualists. Well, the phone is tapped, so I think you better write what you know. Some people have disappeared. And of course the normal grave yard desecration. Anne Winchester’s headstone was recently stolen, but replaced. Normal people just disappear and never show up again. It could have a Satanic connection. Every human is life, and some hate life, especially human life. That is why people disappeared. These people may have disappeared for some form of sacrifice. Something like that would be called a Satanic murder. The murder is the ritual sacrifice. These murders gain power from whoever was responsible. Everybody has their own aura, and auras can be stolen by sacrificing an individual, this allows one to gain more power. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Places of worship, such as churches, have their own spirit—the Winchester Mystery House, for example, has been worshipped in for maybe hundreds of years and has thus gained a lot of spirit in that time, it could qualify as a church and gain charitable tax exemption. But that is not the point. A person who sacrifices that will gains a lot of power and grows stronger. Some people fear the Winchester mansion, because there are a lot of different energies. There is fear, terror and suspense, but others feel a lot of light, happiness, and goodness. Sometimes the energy is mixed. Anton LaVey really surprises me. If your every rea his work, he seems very intelligent and not scary at all, but I guess it depends on what one reads. I have read parts of his Bible, and it is very straightforward, it is stuff people tell their kids every day. Stand up for yourself and do not let people run you over. I think that the Winchester mansion should also open on nights of a full Moon, not just Friday the 13th. During the full Moon, there is a lot of energy and symbolic value. A lot of people believe in the full Moon and a lot of people believe in virgins. That makes both the full Moon and the virgin more powerful because of belief in them. God was first and He created the World. Of course, a lot of scientists would deny that. However, I would challenge their view because I believe God used evolution, which is why it took so long, which is why we have evidence like dinosaur bones. Yet, some Gnostic Christians have suggested Satan created the World. Everybody will be taken as slaves except the warlords. Euronymus, who we talked about earlier, was murdered in August 1993, Aaliyah 2001. Some say that is a month when sacrifices are made. Grishnackh killed Euronymous, and a few hours later, he was laughing and joking, saying, “Ha ha, Euronymous is dead, I’m going to dance and piss on his grave.” It reminded of the jokes Howard Stern made about Aaliyah. It was not funny. These are not the rantings of someone who is all there. Grishnackh talked about the dynamite he had and how he was going to blow things up. Basically, they took things to illogical extremes, but it all made sense in their own heads. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
It is possible when dabbling with occultism for one to make an unconscious contract with the powers of darkness. The gift of discernment is absolutely necessary in life. It is generally not wise to lay one’s hands on a person who is occultly subjected. The retuning spirits will often attempt to creep back under the guise of some pious camouflage. It is in this way that evil can often enter unnoticed into one’s Christian life. A maid at the Winchester mansion once accepted the invitation of one of her coworkers to attend some spiritistic meetings. At first she felt as though she had gain something from going along to the meetings but later on she began to notice some psychic changes taking place in herself. She began to notice some psychic changes taking place in herself. She began to suffer from depression which resulted in her consulting a neurologist. During the course of the treatment she was committed to a lunatic asylum. However, as her condition improved, she could no longer attend the spiritistic séances. At the hospital the chaplain came to see her through his help and counsel she was able to make a complete recovery. One of the farmers at the estate wanted to see if charms actually worked, and some of them He. He practiced in the basement of the Winchester mansion. He drew a magic circle on the ground and drew some other magic symbols in the circle. He then used a charm three times in order to invoke the spirit. However, no spirit came. Yet, as he repeated, the charm he fell down in the magic circle and lay there unconscious for some time. The result was that for several weeks following this event he was semi-paralysed and drained of all his physical strength and will-power. After a few weeks, he died. Frequently identified as a common spot where the “wheelbarrow Ghost” is sighted, Steam Alley is one of the most well-known paranormal hot-spots in the mansion. Have you ever seen anything in the basement? #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Some stroll Sarah’s lovely gardens this Memorial Day Weekend. There is a beautiful parrot which Mrs. Winchester used to pet, it talks! He is supposed to be happy and impudent, and talks and laughs and screeches all the time. Maybe you may catch a glimpse at this wooded, flowery estate. It is such a beautiful spectacle, all of that life and grace and animation, and sun-smitten flash and sprinkle of rich colour.
This impressive mansion dates back to the 1880s, when it was developed by Sarah Winchester and the spirits, whose project enobed and enriched the community. It once had a nine-story military watchtower. Mrs. Winchester further developed the grounds of the 160 room mansion, introducing a Victorian garden at the hands of World renowed architect Gino Coppede around the turn of the century.
These adaptions made this idyllic mansion a unique asset, tinged with the signs and influences of eclecticism and Liberty, juxtaposed to the ancient Architectural characteristics of its medieval heritage. This mansion presents itself as impressive and spectacular. The building now spreads on four floors plus the basment, for a total of approximently 25,000 feet square.
There is lovely gift shop and cafe, and it is also an ideal venue for hosting private events, conventions and/or ballrooms are located on the back overlooking the internal garden with its panoramic position which glows thanks to its night-time lighting.
Inside the property there are splendid rooms filled with historial furniture, decorated ceilings and flamboyant fireplaces, vaulted ceilings and richly frescoes walls. In addition, there are several bedrooms, nine kitchens. and thirteen bathrooms, which made the structure a perfect luxurious accommodation for guests, and is now a tourist destination.
This mansion is located within a private park of 4 acres and elegant Nineteenth-century Victorian-gardens, that offer areas of wide lawns, and further green spaces. There is also a parking area, with free parking. Currently used to host guided tours and private events and functions. The enitre porperty sits at a close distance from the mall, hotels, and resturants. The high-fashion outlet complex and gourmet food has brought further development and tourism to Santa Clara County. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 