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And the Cold Was Back—Much Worse than Before!
I strolled through my pretty garden, bleak in winter, which perfectly matched my mood. I paused, as I always did, at the Cupid fountain. Just behind the fountain, a corridor of gaunt fir and black pine led to the wrought-iron gate. The stone tips of carved angels’ wings and Christian crosses guarded my estate and the peaks of my thirteen palm trees were just visible above the high walls. I thought to myself, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.” It was one of my favorite lines from Macbeth Act V, Scene ix. In this World, people purposefully create life’s counterfeit realities, and that is where so many feel most at home…where humans may transfigure themselves convincingly into characters who live only when the play’s on in their mind, and they act it out a daily life. I hesitated to go inside as I fancied the damp Earth. I started to walk around from my beautiful garden, but I was too slow. I saw him. For a fraction of a second, a shadow in the diminishing light or a trick of my unreliable eyes, I saw him standing on the stone steps directly to my front door. I felt a jolt of happiness and raised my hand to wave. Like the old days. “William?” His name dropped into the silent air. Then I felt my ribs tighten a notch, cracking like the tired winding mechanism on our old grandfather clock, and my arm fell back to my side in despair. There was nobody there. Though he did often come from the spirit World to visit me. I always felt a rush of joy, elation, and for a moment was able to believe he was still alive. But ghosts frequently float ephemerally around my mansion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
My family’s wealth and my home seemed to always being the long dead back, not just to entertain the living, but also to shed some light on life…from a rather unique point of view. It is after all a remarkable structure, the nine-story observational tower, the medieval-style turrets, and the high, gabled wood-clad interior ceiling complete with flying buttresses. Inside, because of its alteration there are bricked-up windows, stone walls that seal off rooms, lattice work light-wells which lead up to the turrets, false entrances and stairways, trap doors, dark, labyrinthine passageways, and a long stairway that dips into the depths of the catacombs and up into the bell tower. Where ghost, demons, and angels walked the boards for the ancient rites proclaiming life after death. Even in the daytime, with the subtle interior lighting, shadows and forms are seen to float across the walls. This is where it all started. This is where I cried and screamed. I am convinced that my home was constructed on the site of a graveyard. One night, when I was having a conversation with the housemaid, I saw a cloud form past the foot of the sofa, gathering like a white mist. Gertrude’s view was obstructed because she was facing me, but I could see the cloud take shape like a small person. It then put its hands on the arm of the sofa and pulled itself up by its hands, peeking at the housemaid for a moment, then lowering itself, holding on, and peeking again at her from the side of the sofa. Almost suddenly as she started to turn around it was gone. I had stopped talking and just watched the apparition for about a minute. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Gertrude asked, “Mrs. Winchester, did you just see something?” I answered tht I had and asked what she had seen. She replied that she thought she caught a glimpse of something small looking t her. I asked Gertrude if it had scared her. She answered no, because it resembled a young person, maybe a child. I agreed and that was that. The mansion always seemed haunted, and there were many instances of odd happenings. The Catacombs, darkly reminiscent of early Christian burial chambers. From the hayloft, there is an angled passageway. The servant use it to move through the mansion so they do not disturb anyone or anything, they frequently bump into someone in that narrow, twisted passageway. Bout no one else is there—or at least, no one who can be seen. Mrs. Nellie Maynard lived nearby, and during her carriage ride to my estate, she imagined that every advancing figure was her husband, Edward Maynard, who had passed away. As she pulled onto the estate, she felt her nervousness gaining on her. I came out to greet her and ushered her into my home. A sudden chill raced through her and she crossed into the hallway. “There is something here,” she said, looking down towards the door and bathroom off the hall. “I can feel a coldness creeping over my legs. Is it just my overactive imagination or are the forces in the house reaching out to us?” I felt it, too. That cold comes from no place, yet everywhere. Mrs. Maynard, now shaken, moved to the bathroom. “This is where he is,” she said. “There is a young man, a boy, and a woman.” Mrs. Maynard did not know that the hallway was the center of the disturbances in the house. I often felt as if I were being watched when I showered in that room. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The feelings that we were being observed by an unseen presence continued up the stairs and even to the Daisy bedroom, where a shadowy arm had materialized, only to vanish. After carefully searching the entire house, we retired to the living room. Mrs. Maynard sat, frozen on the sofa, in a trancelike state. I called to her, growing more and more uncomfortable at her motionless, seemingly sightless state. She remained for several moments, perhaps as long as a full minute, unaware of anything but what transfixed her at the time and unable to break away from the forced, temporary captivity of her mind. When I asked her what was the matter? She said, “Look behind you.” There, seated on arm chair and relaxed as if to the manner born, was an elderly gentleman, replete in his uniform of a general officer of the Civil War. Mrs. Maynard and I looked at each other in disbelief, and when we looked back, only an empty chair remined. The General, as he is known to the servants, has been seen before and since. Occasionally I would notice an ethereal figure peering from the arched windows on the eastern side of the mansion—windows which were covered over from the inside years ago when the fourth floor was built. It is almost commonplace to hear footsteps crossing the floor. Almost every night the doors in the house would rattle violently, and we often hard the sound of children running alongside footsteps that sounded as if they were made by a large man wearing heavy work boots. One evening, we even heard the voice of a woman saying, “I’ve got mine.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
The meaning of these words remains unknown. The house is a mysterious place. One night, I had turned into the library. I switched on the electric light and shut the door. I immediately got a cold, eerie feeling and jumped to my feet. I was suddenly hugged from behind by a small child. It was such a loving hug that I turned around. There was no one there. The next day, in a bedroom on the third floor, rolls of lincrusta-Walton wall paper had been unrolled and the window shades had been pulled down generally making a mess. As I was reading in the days that followed, I could hear feet running back and forth upstairs. Tools were missing, and many of the carpenters left the job unfinished because of these strange happenings. They said they could not seem to complete their work. They kept getting gooseflesh and felt strange sensations of happiness, loneliness, and love. One calm autumn night, Gertrude had been working in the back kitchen on the second floor, preparing for a dinner party. Gertrude, the housemaid, had almost caught her breath from carrying the turkey to the oven when her eye was attracted to the electrical cord dangling from the ceiling. A day or two before she had accidentally knocked the chandelier from the ceiling while cleaning it and had made a mental note to replace it. As she stood up from putting the turkey into the oven, the coiled cord was nearly at eye-level, hanging about six feet from the ceiling. As she watched, slowly the coil began to swing, back and forth, in an arc about three feet, side to side. Her first thought was the wind, but she noticed that it was calm. The loop swung even, eight, maybe nine time, then gradually slowed until it wrapped around her neck, leaving her suspended from the ceiling. The next morning, we smelled the turkey and went to check on her. As she hung from the ceiling, there was a figure level with her, moving in a circular pattern around her body. The auxiliary lights went out and started blinking, flashing, dimming at seemingly their own whim. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
My lovely home, my retreat from the bleak past, was becoming the focus of an evil presence. And it would announce itself in an all-too-familiar way. The chilling coldness that had plagued the mansion started to creep into my bedroom. It was September and still very mild outside, but inside the house it was near freezing. Sometimes I kept the fireplaces burning all day, but it was to no effect. At night I piled my bed with extra wool blankets. It was the only way I could get to sleep. I could not run. I could not hide. I feld from room to room every night and it would find me again. I felt helpless in the face of encroaching evil. Prophetic dreams also followed and daytime visions. The manifestations of these forced would manifest at any time, without warning. One day I was working on a quilt. I could feel the color draining out of my face as I got an eerie feeling and looked over my shoulder and saw an old woman standing at the base of the stairs. I figured she was a new housemaid. I said “hi” and asked her if she needed anything. She just shook her head “no” and smiled. I went about my business. Then I felt the same eerie feeling. I looked over my shoulder and, there she was, about five feet from me. I got up from the arm chair and said, “Can I help you?” She smiled and, once again, shook her head “no.” Just then I heard the carpenters drawing near in a carriage. I turned to see where the new housemaid was and she was already at the base of the stairs, about 60 feet away. I said, “Are you sure you don’t need anything?” She just looked at me and motioned with her finger for me to come with her. Then I heard the carpenters enter the house on the first floor. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The old woman again motioned for me to follow her. She was backing toward a crawl space just under the stairs. I took my eyes off her for a second to try to figure out where my friend was and when I looked back, I saw the most horrifying old woman motioning me with a bony, leather finger. This time she said, “Get over here!” I watched her disappear into the crawl space. I felt sick and hot and the voices were deafening…I began to scream and scream. That was the worst thing to do, because the fear became too much and I did not know to do. I was held by an unseen force and I was burned with heated skewers. I felt so guilty because the spirits said everything they did, they said it was for me. My hands started trembling and the burning stopped. I gazed intently out the window as if in some dreadful shock. It took me several hours to shake off the effect. I felt the blood in my temples, and my hand began to tremble again. In deep silence, there was an icy chill emanating from the walls, it sounded like a human cry. My sight must have blurred, or else dazzled by the reflection of the lamplight on the smooth surface of the table. I rested my two hands on the table, and drew a deep breath, as I felt the contagion of my whiteness. Reflecting on what depths of the unknow lurk in my home, I felt a flash of wholesome anger. Now the spirits seemed to wear a look of fear and hatred, of incredulous dismay and almost cringing defiance. It was as if they were warring. The bare walls cried out, “Don’t you see that we are everywhere in this house, and the closer you get to him, the more visible we will become. I dropped into a chair and cover my face with my hands. A turmoil of sobbing shook me from head to foot. At length a touch on my shoulder made me look up, and I saw my late husband being over me. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
I beseech Thee, O Grand ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM, to please be propitious unto me and endow the Winchester Mansion with the power and virtue of the rob of Jacob and Moses, and of the mighty Joshua! I also beseech Thee, O Grand of Jacob, of Moses, and of the mighty Joshua! I also beseech Thee, O Grand ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM, to infuse into the Winchester Mansion the whole strength of Samson, the righteous wrath of EMANUEL, and the thunders of mighty Sariatnatmik, who will avenge the crimes of men at the Day of Judgment! By the grand ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM. I bid thee join with and attract all substances which I desire, by the power of the sublime ABONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM. I command thee, by the opposition of fire and water to separate all substances as they were separated on the day of the World’s creation. We praise you with honor and glory, sublime Adonay, as we are convinced that we are in possession of a most priceless Treasure of the light. By the mystery of this holy Winchester Mansion, I will clothe it with the armor of salvation in the strength of the Most High, ANCOR, AMICAR, AMIDES, THEODONIAS, ANITOR, that so the end which I desire may be effected, O ADONAL, through Thy strength, to whom be praised and glory for ever and ever. I invoke and conjure thee, O Spirit William Wirt Winchester, and, fortified with the power of the Supreme Majesty, I strongly command thee by BARALAMENSIS, BALDACHIENSIS, PAUMA-CHIE, APOLORESEDES, and the most potent princes GENIO, LIACHIDE, Ministers of the Tartarean Seat, chief princes of the seat of APOLOGIA in the ninth region; I invoke ADONAI, EL, ELOHIM, ELOHE, ZEBAOTH, ELION, ESCHERCE, JAH,TETRGRAMMATON, SADAI, do thou forthwith appear and show thyself unto me, here before this mansion, in fair and human shape, without any deformity or horror; do thou come forthwith, from whatever part of the World and make rational answers to my questions. Come fulfil my desires. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
It will be seen with sufficient research, investigation and documentation of the state of witchcraft, occultism, and satanism as World movements, no exaggeration, overstatement or silly claims were necessary. The facts speak for themselves. It exists. It is growing. And certain aspects are indeed very, very real. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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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
Happy Sunday! House tours 10am-5pm today 🏠 come see us!
🎟️ link in bio. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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.
Until Her Pining Soul and Weeping Eyes Prevail
Through various windows we could see the palm trees accenting the drive, or the pines at the end of the pond, or the fields out back with new-cut grass. That part was pretty nice. The Winchester Mansion rambled on and on, it was a never-ending story. It was a nice estate, with the fence alone it, and cedars behind the fence, so people could not see in. Then you want past a couple of dairy farms, with cows grazing and corn growing and white houses and red barns. The Winchesters owned the farms and rented them out to the farmers. They lost a lot of money on the farms, but the idea was to keep developers from getting the land. Millions and millions of dollars actually came from the farms on Mrs. Winchester’s estate. However, being a Winchester was not easy. People always knew in the back of their minds that you were a Winchester. And being a Winchester made one not one of them. People would leave stuff around the Winchester mansion, and the public would say, “So what, the Winchester can afford to have somebody clean the place up. They on the mills and the bank and half the houses the people live in.” This was a time when other people were living on boiled potatoes and waiting in breadlines to get handouts. Some people’s pride was hurt badly by that because the Winchesters did not know what it was like to take handouts to feed their family. When you name is Winchester, that was enough for most people. But people forgot about the curse that came with all that money. They did not care that the mansion was haunted by monstrous females with huge teeth like those of swine, brazen claws, and snake hair. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The house was full of monsters, beings of unnatural proportions or parts, and they were usually regarded with terror. They possessed immense strength and ferocity, which they employed for the injury and annoyance of the Winchester family. Shortly after the nine-story tower was erected, the mansion was afflicted with a monster which infested it. It laid crouched on top of the tower and arrested all travellers who came that way, proposing to them a riddle, with the condition that those who could solve it should pass safe, but those who failed should be killed. Not one had yet succeeded in solving it, and all had been slain. The murders might have been news, but the police worked to suppress the gory details, making them look like ordinary homicides. So from what the papers printed, no one could tell that there was something unusual about the victims. Mrs. Winchester would have guards prowl around the estate to see if they were getting any reports of unusual attacks by coyotes or cougars or other predators. And not just attacks on people, but on livestock—cows, sheep, and pigs. There were even some neighbourhoods where a lot of family pet were disappearing and being chewed up real bad by something wild. Some people thought it might even be a werewolf. One of the strangest things was the sudden and complete recovery of Mrs. Winchester’s sense of security the very next day. It was in the air when she woke in her Daisy Bedroom; it went with her downstairs to the breakfast table, flashed out at her from the fire, and reduplicated itself from the flanks of the urn and the sturdy flutings of the Georgian teapot. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
It was as if in some roundabout way, all her diffused fears of the previous day, with their moment of sharp concentration about the newspaper article—as if this dim questioning of the future, and startled return upon the past, had between them liquidated the arrears of some haunting moral obligation. It was as clear, thank Heaven, as the bright outer light that surprised her almost with a touch of summer when she issued from the house for her daily rounds of the gardens. And her recovered sense of safety gave, on this particular morning, a peculiar zest to her progress through the sweet still place. She went first to the kitchen garden, where espaliered pear trees drew complicated patterns on the walls, and blue jays were fluttering and preening about the turrets. At the further end of the yard rose a grass terrace, looking across the fish pond and yew hedges to the long front with its stone chimney stacks and red roof angles all drenched in the pale gold moisture of their air. Mrs. Winchester had never before had such a sense of her intimacy with her estate, such a conviction that its secrets were all beneficent, kept, as they said to children, “for one’s good,” such a trust in its power to gather up her life into the harmonious pattern of the long long story the mansion was weaving in the sun. She heard steps behind her, and turned, expecting to see the gardener. But the figure that was in sight, was a boy recking with poison and menacing with his fangs. Mrs. Winchester’s courage failed. The clouds begin to smoke, and the mountain tops take fire; the fields were parched with heat, the plants wither, the trees with their leafy branches burned, the harvest was ablaze! #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The air Mrs. Winchester breathed was like the air of a furnace and full of burning ashes, and the smoke was of a pitchy darkness. She dashed forward she knew not whither. Then the farmers on the estate became black by the blood being forced so suddenly to the surface of the Earth. The Earth cracked and opened. Mrs. Winchester glanced up at her peaceful hose front. As she hurried back to the house, she expected to see someone coming out to meet her. However, she found no one in the court but an undergardener raking thing ashes, and the hall, when she entered it, was so silent that she guessed no one was in the mansion. The parlormaid heard all the commotion and rushed the disheveled Mrs. Winchester to a bath. What seemed like the end of the World was just the demon on the nine-story tower making its presence known. Then of a sudden, Mrs. Winchester was seized by a vague dread of the unknown. She had closed the door behind her on entering, and as she stood alone in the long silent rom, her dread seemed to take shape and sound, to be there breathing and lurking among the shadows. Her shortsighted eyes strained through them, half-discerning an actual presence, something aloof, that watched and knew; and in the recoil from that intangible presence, she rang the annunciator. But no one, not even the kitchenmaid answered. Except for bright ribbons of fresh blood that banded Mrs. Winchesters face, she was very white, wet and sickly pale like some creature that swam eternally in the deepest reaches of the seas. Something very big was going on, something so important. The best kept trying to pry forbidden knowledge out of Mrs. Winchester. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Wind-swayed branches of sycamores cast vague moon-shadows on the floor, and the glossy leaves outside rustled with pale reflections of lunar light. Coyotes howled in the distance as they chased down a rabbit or other small creature. However, something growled. The growling was deep and angry. Not like anything Mrs. Winchester has heard before. She was curious, even concerned, but not afraid. She stood very still, listening. The thing growled again, louder this time. Closer, too. She could still not see the source of the sound. The creature was moving through the hallways of the mansion faster than before. It was running. Mrs. Winchester ran, too. The growling escalated into hard, vicious snarles. Mrs. Winchester went through the door of her Blue Séance Room and latched it. The only light in the room was from candle light, and it did not dispel the shadows in the corners. Phantoms of reflected candlelight cavorted across the walls. A few moon-slivered clouds appeared phosphorescent against the velvety blackness of the night sky. The creature had wondered off. Mrs. Winchester opened the door to her dressing room to gain access to her bedroom. Then she glimpsed a movement in her bedroom. She squinted, saw nothing, remained watchful for another minute or two. Just when she decided she had imagined the movement, she saw it again: something coming out from behind the wall. She had not completely closed the door to the Blue Séance Room and it was a good thing. Something was rushing across the floor. Instead of revealing the nature of the enemy, the moonlight made it more mysterious, shapeless. The thing was hurling at the Blue Séance Room. Abruptly—Jesus, God!—the creature was airborne, a strangeness flying straight at her through the darkness, and Mrs. Winchester cried out, and an instant later the best explored through this window in the Blue Séance Room and fell into the kitchen. Mrs. Winchester screamed, but the scream was cut short, as she fainted. A wind howled and lightning struck and no one dared answer Mrs. Winchester’s cries for help. In the morning when all was silent, there were bodies laying on the floor of the mansion. The walls were splattered with blood and there were claw marks on the floor. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Mrs. Winchester’s interest in the occult continued to take her into deeper channels in her quest for knowledge. She had become fascinated with a new interest, that of crystal gazing through which she believed she would make contacts with spirits which would inform her how to continue the construction of her mansion. She was able to look into the crystal and transcribe her visions. Soon she began describing the vision of an angel whom she identified as Uriel, the angel of light. The angel Uriel had instructed Mrs. Winchester how to add wings to her mansion to appease the spirits. She seemed convinced of the importance of the architectural details and were convinced they were the remedy. However, instilled in Mrs. Winchester was a certain fear of all kinds of supernatural activity. Not only were demons and spirits accepted, now they were feared. There were also secret societies that were also feared; members of these secret groups were rumoured to cloak their activities to hide conjuring demons. Mrs. Winchester began studying the past works of great magicians and produced a series of books on high magic and established a reputation of being a master sorceress. Her writings became especially noteworthy to those who were anxious to follow her skill in making contact with demons and spirits. Many people wanted Mrs. Winchester to do tricks, like making demons appear before them, but being haunted by them she did not want to unleash them on others. However, Mrs. Winchester did agree to make private contact with the spirits to discover answers and questions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Behold thy confusion if thou refusest to be obedient! Behold the Pentacle of Solomon which I have brought here before thy presence! Behold the person of the exorcists in the midst of the exorcism; him who is armed by God and without fear; him who potently invocateth thee and calleth thee forth unto appearance; even him, thy master, who is called Octinimos. Wherefore make rational answers unto my demands, and prepare to be obedient unto thy master in the name of the Lord: BATHAL OR VAHAT RUSHING UPON ABRAC! ABEOR COMING UPON ABERER! Then he or they will be obedient, and bid thee ask what thou wilt, for he or they be subjected by God to fulfil our desires and commands. And when he or they shall have appeared and showed himself or themselves humble and meek, then shalt thou rehearse: Welcome Spirit Vassago and your legion of Spirits to the Winchester Mansion, O most noble king! I say thou art welcome unto me, because I have called thee through Him who has created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all that is in them contained, and because also thou hast obeyed. By that same power by which I have called thee forth, I bind thee, that thou remain affably and visibly here before this Circle so constant and so long as I shall have occasion for thy presence; cross all space and time and do not depart without my license until thou hast duly and faithfully performed my will without any falsity. BY THE PENTACLE OF SOLOMON HAVE I CALLED THEE! GIVE UNTO ME A TRUE ANSWER. GRANT GREAT WEALTH AND FORTUNE.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Winchester Mysteryhouse
A few tickets left – grab them before they are gone! 🎟 link in bio.
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? 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!
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Beloved, Believe Not Every Spirit, but Try the Spirits
The magical is a great hidden wisdom…no armour can shield against it because it strikes at the inward spirit of life. Of this, we make restore assured. In recent years there has been a growing inclination to interpret any human awareness that cannot be readily explained as E.S.P. or Extra Sensory Perception. Of course, it is admitted in even the most polite circles that animals have this faculty. Rather than admit that animals have full use of one or more of the so-called five sense, they are credited with a sixth sense, which we call E.S.P. However, I believe that the majority of thing that are attributed to E.S.P., or a sixth sense, are nothing more than unconscious manifestations of our existing five sense: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. The reason the techniques of utilizing these five senses to the degree that would explain away much of the sixth sense nonsense are not learned is because to do so would mean admitting that animals had something we do not have and they might be able to teach us a few things. Man cannot quite bring himself to learn from the animals, though, because he has been brainwashed into thinking he is something special, a higher type of being. He cannot beat his chest like a bongo and play god, because that is reserved for the guy upstairs, and he cannot learn from the animal kingdom, because he is supposedly emancipated from it. If something comes along he cannot explain, he ask somebody else, and, if there are still no satisfactory explanations, he looks to his gods for one. If faith in his old gods wanes, because of doubts in his mind as to the validity of his religion, he can no longer call strange happenings “miracles.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
However, his ego will not allow him to lose what little self-respect he has acquired, by regressing to animalism in any way, shape or form—even if it means he might learn something. So he thinks of a new “scientific” term which will break away from the religious terminology of “miracles” that has lately left him so disenchanted. He still knows little more than he ever did, but he feels better because he thinks he is on the right track—not dependent on his old god and not trafficking with the Devil. H.S.P. or Heightened Sensory Perception simply means that we receive impressions through our existing five senses that we do not recognize as coming through these agencies. H.S.P relays messages to our brain based on indicators in the environment, and these signals are based on more factors than we could ever imagine have influenced us. Now, psychic phenomena is often thought to be connected with witchcraft. As William Wirt Winchester had taken a job the family business, he was warned the New Haven, Connecticut USA had become a center for witch ceremonies. People were warned to keep their children away from Hallowe’en celebrations, “We know there are adults in the village who are thing to introduce children to witchcraft for their own demonic reasons,” Maureen Crawford said. There were purportedly a dozen separate witch covens operating in New Haven, and they were all suspected to be involved in blood rituals, so the whole village of witches was branded as black (black magic). #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Mr. Winchester had been invited to an initiation ceremony at a house in New Haven. He knew the High Priest quite well, and he was knowns for his powers. The ceremony was already in progress when Mr. Winchester arrived, and he put on a ceremonial robe and was shown into a third-floor room, where an overpoweringly beautiful crystal chandelier was the main feature. However, it was not switched on, and glistened only from the light of candles on a large altar. There, on the alter, he saw a young woman—woman who was made up to look like an ancient Egyptian. “I was absolutely certain in my own mind that she was a virgin, she looked so young, but she was obviously a willing participant. She was not strapped down and made no move to get up. Somehow I feared the worst. I wanted to get out of that place but the doorway was guarded by two men holding ritual swords. The Great Rite that was being performed has no place in this town. This was palpably a black imitation and the real purpose behind it was to raise power for the High Priest. He was calling upon dark forces. He began in what sounded like gibberish—but was Enochian texts. Then, standing close to the altar, he took the young woman and led her away, tears streaming down her face. I pulled out my revolver and told him to step aside, and I rescued the maiden. While we were walking in the pitch black night, she confessed to me her name was Sarah Pardee, and she had been abducted from Sunday School. Eight men tied her hands behind her back, and she was blindfolded as her companions carried her to the ritual casting magic circle. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
“The men took Sarah to this old wooden Victorian home. She pulled herself free from the binding cords and ripped off her blindfold. ‘Immediately I wish I had not,’ Sarah said. ‘For there before me were four wooden stakes and upon each one had been impaled a dead cat. I have out a terrible scream and vomited. I was sick at heart, infuriated and fearful.’ As Sarah and I wondered through the forest, I was so happy I was able to get her away from the scenes of black magic.” Descriptions of such sense are not uncommon, there were many witches and warlock involved in black sorcery. Several years later, in 1862, William and Sarah were married. Their marriage was based on mutual love and affection, and when William died Mrs. Winchester mourned him for the rest of her life, avoiding public appearances for years, and living in a hermitic existence in Santa Clara County. The reason Mrs. Winchester moved to Santa Clara County is because she found a small box with three thorns, earth from a cemetery, a dead butter fly, and a picture of herself in the box. It had been sealed with black wax and placed in her kitchen. The effects had been catastrophic. A witch does have to make a pact with the devil himself, at least symbolically. Among his ten commandments is one tht calls for the confidence in the belief that a witch can destroy rivals through the use of curses thrown without mercy—the only way a curse can be thrown is without mercy, and the power of the curse is most effective. Perhaps this is why Mrs. Winchester was not only robbed of her husband, but her new born daughter. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The belief in black magic circles is that it is possible for the magician to achieve a state of being verging on astral projection, whereby the spirit may travel to the “victim,” engage in pleasures of the flesh and returning. The female attacking a male is known as a succubus; the male attacker is known as an incubus and both have their origins in the recorded witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Mrs. Winchester’s marriage to Mr. Winchester, “was a beautiful, really, as his eyelashes. He had such a natural grace. And he was so affectionate, and so happy with me. After his death, I had to get away from family life. There was not a trace of hypocrisy in William. He was sure that his ‘call’ was irresistible, while to me it was the saving grace of my life. He was enchanting and enchanted. I knew he was too beautifully brave to exist in such a cruel world. The day I met him, I said to myself: ‘I shall have him for life’—and I had never seen anyone, man or woman, whom I was quite sure of wanting on those terms. Well, this impulse of egotism decided me. I was ashamed of it, and to get away from it I took a leap that landed me straight in William’s arms.” It is easy to see why Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the death of her child and husband left a bizarre and impressive architectural reflection of her psyche. And what went on inspire is beautiful mansion she built left something hung in darkness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
The phantom attacks began late one evening in Mrs. Winchester’s bedroom. A listless drowsy breeze filled the room. It was filled with the scent of the ocean, salty and clean, washing Mrs. Winchester and washing the room, and beyond she saw stars without number, stars of such radiance and such distance that the Heavens were no longer the painted vault of Heaven but a great endless ocean of stars. Suddenly, she was thrown by an unseen force. As she fell to the floor she found herself laying next to a headless body, it was moving, crawling, clawing at the polished floors with its great sprawling fingers and pushing through the robe with his knees. The body was making a muddy shadow underneath. This sight was so ghastly that for a moment Mrs. Winchester could not move. And as she looked at the body, its movements moved with hers, there overcame her a sense of its tacit complicity, of a deep hidden understanding between the, that was no worse than the first shock of its strangeness. Not that she understood the body, but it made it clear that someday she should. And that was the worst part of it, decidedly. The headless body leaked blood. The smashed head lying on the floor, staring at Mrs. Winchester with empty eye sockets. Mrs. Winchester puzzled over the situation a good deal, but could not find any hint of an explanation. She thought that this was a demon sent to torment her. This evil was insidious. He husband was too charming and her daughter too beautiful to be sacrificed to such demons. And so, after all, she never found out what it wanted. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
It was hard to describe the physical sense of distress. Mrs. Winchester lay back more exhausted than she had ever been in all her long existence. She could have slept for a year, but retired to a séance in her Blue Séance Room. Clad in a white dress, a spirit floating above the altar with great presence and depth. It was accompanied by an unpleasant sensation of pressure on her chest. There was also a music box playing and she could hear children laughing on the lawn at midnight. Mrs. Winchester was told that this was an omen of her impending death and that is she did not continue construction of her home, indefinitely, that she was meet the same fate. Everything was peaceful. Night birds were calling, and the frogs and crickets were contributing their music to nature’s sounds. Mrs. Winchester sat transfixed in the beauty and wonder of the scene. The following week, one of the farmers was found dead, sitting on a chair in the kitchen. Later the coroner examined the body and said the man had died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Following the mysterious death, the butler was running through the mansion, completely hysterical, shouting that he has seen the ghost. After that, the crazed butler disappeared. He was never seen again, dead or alive. You can make of witchcraft what you will—it is kind of religion, invitingly tinged with mystery, superstition, and legend. Many witches who use black magic believe that they will become vampires after their death. The fear of vampires has been famous for centuries. In 1823, a law was passed prohibiting the practice of burying unhallowed dead at a crossroads with a wooden stake driven through the heart of the corpse. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
There are few major towns or cities in America that do not barbour at least one—often several—secret societies whose purpose is the study and performance of esoteric religion or ritual magic. They are generally made up of small groups of people aligned to various separate organizations and beliefs whose proliferation in the twentieth century has continued a space in what Francis King, the acclaimed author on occult matters, described as an “astonishing revival of medieval magic and alchemy.” King is right when he says that the newspaper stories of the desecration of some deserted country church for the purposes of black magic or the activities of some cult or secret society, dancing around a blazing fire, or standing rapt before a crude altar, are only the tip of the ice berg. As leaders of witchcraft recognize, students of ritual magic and the occult are on a higher plane of activity which has throughout history attracted many gifted minds. The scour antiquity for the roots of a particular persuasion in a constant search for the source, the Philosopher’s Stone or such age-old secrets as turning common metals into gold. They seek and perform old rituals of past and famous magicians; they try to define the question of being and magic furnishes the human mind with an instrument of philosophical and religious certainty as exact as mathematics. Those who attain this knowledge and adopt it as a rule of life can make themselves masters of all inferior things. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
In the mystery of these vestures of the Holy Ones, I gird up my power in the girdles of righteousness and truth in the power of the Most High: Ancor: Amacor: Amides: Theodonis: Anitor: let be mighty my power: let it endure for ever: in the power of Adonai, to whom the praise and the glory shall be; whose end cannot be. I invoke and move thee, O thou, Spirits of William Wirt Winchester and Oliver Fischer Winchester: and being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, please Obey! In the name Beralensis, Baldachiensis, Paumachia, and Apologine Sedes: and of the mighty ones who govern, spirits, Liachidae and ministers of the House of Death: and by the Chief Prince of the seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee and by invoking conjure thee. And being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name of him who spake and it was, to whom all creatures and things obey. Moreover I, whom God made in the likeness of God, who is the creator according to his living breath, stir thee up in the name which is the voice of wonder of the mighty God, El, strong and unspeakable, O thou Spirits William Wirt Winchester and Oliver Fischer Winchester. And I say to thee, please obey, in the name of him who spake and it was; and in every one of ye, O ye names of God! I cast the limits of the garb of flesh into the refining black flames of Hell to be clothed with the powers of divine darkness eternal. Ahriman devours all including the limits of himself for the sake of evolution and becoming through the powers of the Druj-Nasu in order to reveal the truth of the lie unto the Dark Apostles! #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
In the name of Zohak, the first man turned Div; I offer the limits of self unto the Druj through the mouth of Arezura to be clothed with the garb of Ahriman which is divine darkness eternal. Druj-Nasu hear my call and be stirred now to this place! Devour the flesh of this vehicle of power and as you do devour my human weakness. Come forth now and receive this offering made by me! Druj-Nasu come! I now plant the seed of my desire within the black earth, through the mouth of Arezura where the powers of sorcery and counter creation dwell. Through this gateway of darkness, I now shine the light and power of my will upon this World for the benefit of me and mine! Moreover, in the names Adonai, El, Elohim, Elohi, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, Zabaoth, Elion, Iah, Tetragrammaton, Shaddai, Lord God Most Hight, I stir thee up; and in our strength I say please Obey! O Spirits of William Wirt Winchester and Oliver Fischer Winchester. Appear unto His servants in a moment; before the circle in the likeness of men; and visit me in peace. And in the ineffable name Tetragrammation Iehovah, I say, please Obey! whose mighty sound being exalted in power the pillars are divided, the winds of the firmament groan aloud; the fire burns not; the Earth moves in earthquakes; and all things of the house of Heaven and Earth and the dwelling-place of darkness and as earthquakes, and are in torment, and are confounded in thunder. Come forth, O Spirits William Wirt Winchester and Oliver Fischer Winchester in a moment: let thy dwelling-place be empty, apply unto us the secrets of Truth and obey my power. Come forth, visit us in peace, appear unto my eyes; be friendly: Obey the living breath! For I stir thee up in the name of the God of Truth who liveth for ever, Helioren. Obey the living breath, therefore continually unto the end as my thoughts appear to my eyes: therefore be friendly: speaking the secrets of Truth in voice and in understanding. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
The Winchester Mansion is of significant architectural merit which stands proudly in its surroundings. It is considered one of the most haunted houses in the World. Besides being a truly historic and beautiful home, it is also the source of many scary stories over the centuries. One of the bedroom on the fourth floor is apparently haunted by a young woman, presumably Sarah L. Winchester, who died in bed after suffering the shock of discovering a demon with “cloven hooves” in her room..
The mansion is equipped with 110 out of 160 room that are open for you and your guests to explore, or even come into contact with a spectral visitor. There are a few rooms where it looks like a poltergeist has been wreaking havoc. Local legennd has it that a estate has the grave of a woman who committed suicide, where fresh flowers appear every morning, having been placed there by pixies. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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/
The Rampling of the Winchester Mansion
Lights twinkled beyond, through the thick forest of the Winchester Mansion, as oak, cypress, and palm trees swayed in the wind. Wild roses and ivy hung from the observational tower, and as the crickets sang here at the twilight, thirteen witches were hanged in the year 1888. Throughout the county of Santa Clara, there had been forty-nine executions nationwide. Mrs. Winchester’s interest in seclusion was evidence from the start. One of the first tasks of the gardeners was to plant a tall cypress hedge surrounding the house. She also kept her beautiful face covered with a dark veil at all times, and she fired servants who caught a glimpse of her gorgeous face by accident. There were several mass killings in Santa Clara Valley, which illustrated that there was no mercy for youngsters who were said to have become tainted by sorcery that locals believed was emanating from the Winchester Mansion. There were occurrences of neighbors hearing a bell ring at midnight and 2a.m., which according to ghost lore are the times for the arrival and departure of spirits. Thirteen children which likewise confessed that they were engaged in witchery, died as the rest. They were all burned at the stake. Pacts with the devil were a feature of a number of trials. There were numerous witches’ covens in the surrounding villages, two were said to have admitted signing in their own blood a written contract with a man in black in return for money to live gallantly and have the pleasure of the World for a period of thirteen years. The man in black always appeared at their coven meetings when he was called, and supervised their activities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Witchcraft had become an obsession that was hardly quelled. The obsession had been on a scale so vast that no single cause could be pinpointed. And Mrs. Winchesters arrival was a sensational event. The Valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Santa Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building activity that turned an eighteen-room farm house into an entire city in the first six months. Here was fair game for all! They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word. Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose, the local doctor pronounced them all bewitched, and fired by imagination and malice which seduced them into signing the devil’s book. The seemed little doubt that witchcraft was being practiced by Mrs. Winchester, who blasted into town with $20,000,000 and spirits and ghost in tow, two including her husband and daughter. This provided social upheavals. Barbara Butters and Mary Moses fell into dissolute habits, becoming harlots and drawing the disgust of their community. As they were shunned by Mrs. Winchester in those of the upper-class, they sore revenge and so—according to the confessions obtained under torture—called down the services of the devil. A midnight on 13 August 1889, according to their confessions, a tall black man appeared before them and said, “Be not afraid. I too am one of the Creation, pawn to me your souls for years and two months and I will assist you for all that time in whatever you desire. Some say that started the Rampling of Mrs. Winchester. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The two women agreed to the request of the devil’s representative and made a covenant writing in their own blood by pricking their fingers. One year later, they were arrested by the sheriff and accused of causing the deaths seventeen men and woman, and for putting a curse on the Winchester Mansion. They were also said to have killed four of Mrs. Winchester’s great hogs, and later sent two imps to haunt her mansion. What evidence there was for such allegations cannot be imaged. They were eventually found guilty of killing three people by roasting effigies in wax into which they had stuck pins. They were executed on 17 March 1890. As they stood at the gallows on the Winchester Estate, they were asked if they wanted to say their prayers and to be forgiven for their sins. They laughed, according to the record, and called for the devil to help them in such a blasphemous manner that the sheriff, seeing their impenitence, caused them to be executed without delay being hanged until almost dead and then they were burned. It sent a shock through the community to think of it. That is existed and was widespread is beyond doubt. Observations that the countryside was catacombed with covens of witches is possible, but difficult to prove in the maze of untruths and enforced confessions. Many of the confessions were dictated and written down by the torturers. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The evening was the longest of Mrs. Winchester’s life. Just terrified, she hovered with a tear-streaked face just by the window of her 4th floor bedroom. The twilight terrified her, it seemed an immense resonance with the darkness in her soul. She put her face behind her hands, and could never remember how she began. The stories of blasphemy and defilement became more and more frequent, and colorful accounts of exactly what Mrs. Winchester did began to emerge as gospel truth. The accusations against her were that the witches being hanged from the observational tower and burned at the stake were actually employees who she fired. But, even if that were true, was it without cause? The accusations of these witches included killing children for sacrificial purposes; killing animals by magic; murdering their enemies by imagery, id est, by forming an image in wax and stabbing it or roasting it; bringing hard to innocent people by just casting their evil eye upon them. Behind these capital changes were other accusations which included human sacrifice, cannibalism, incest and other wild pleasures of the flesh practices, not to mention blasting Mrs. Winchester’s crops and poisoning drinking wells. Others burst forth with superbly graphic and gory accounts, factual and fictitious, of the activities of witches, sorcerers and the devil’s disciples, and the mysteries of the dark and dangerous Worlds populated by evil. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Folks believed not only the witches, but Mrs. Winchester was also capable of some highly inexplicable activities—the unrelenting construction of her beautiful home had rambled over six acres. The sprawling mansion contained 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and six kitchens. Carpenters even left nails half driven when they learned of Mrs. Winchester’s death, as if fear and violent torment abruptly drew them away. And what happened in these years? What had become established in the community was the great fear of witchcraft and curses—still prevalent today. What housewife would not refuse to steal from the Winchester Mansion for fear of having a curse put on her house? In 1922, it was reported that a woman thought to be a witch was fired by Mrs. Winchester for stealing a sheep. She jumped from her chair and declared, “You will be dead in a week and nobody connected with this house shall die in bed. Within a week, however, Mrs. Winchester passed away in her sleep. The farm manager collapsed in the field while talking to his farm hand and died instantly. A cook committed suicide and a farmer who acted as a witness died in a fire. A few weeks later, a maid fell dead from her horse. There were many such stories which abounded this beautiful but bizarre estate, and prompted a continual flow of literature, occasional prosecutions and an undying fear in society at large of anything concerned with witchcraft and the occult. During these Victorian times—fortune-telling, clairvoyance and seances with mediums was not only the ultimate form of entertainment, but also a religious practice. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
As witches themselves had, by and large, returned to the shadows of society, the few prosecutions tended to be against charlatans accused of making money from what become a twentieth-century obsession—fortune telling and contact with the dead. No matter where you open the pages of the World treasure, as you walk through its 2,000 doors, the spirits will guide you. Conveyed along each hallway is divination, in every piece of art glass, inspiration, in the beams of the ceiling demonical possessions, up and down the stairs apparitions, trances in the Blue Séance Room, ecstasies on the fourth floor balcony, miraculous healing in the Victorian garden, and occult powers possessed by the mansion itself. I do invocate and conure thee, O Spirit, Forcalor; and being with power armed from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALDACHIENSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachidae, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocation conjure thee. And being armed with power from the SUREMEM MAJESTY, I do strongly command three, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto who all creates be obedient. Also I, being made after the image of GOD, endued with power from GOD and according unto His will, do exorcise thee by that most mighty and powerful name of GOD, EL, strong and wonderful; O thou Spirit Forcalor. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
And I command thee and Him who spake the Word and HIS FIAT was accomplished by all the names of God. Leay yli Ziarite zelohabe et negoramy Zien latebm dama mecha ra meti osira. Lagumen Emanuel therefore mechelag laigel yazi Zaseal. Meloch, hei alokim tiphret hod jesath. Tanabtain ainatem pagaij aijolo asnia hichaifale matae habonr jijcero. LORD GOD MOST HIGH, I do exorcise thee and do powerfully command thee, O thou Spirit Forcalor, 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, TETRAGRAMMATION IEHOVAH, do I command thee, at the 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 Forcalor, 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 fulfil thou and according unto mine interest, visibly and affably speaking unto me with a voice clear and intelligible without any ambiguity. Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The sense of a universal mirage, of a ghostly unreality, steals over us, which is the very moonlit atmosphere of the Winchester Mystery House itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Winchester Mystery House
Set against the medieval grandeur of a castle with centuries-old mosaic floors, stone fireplaces, and stained-glass windows, this Queen Anne Victorian exemplifies master craftsmanship on a grand scale with timeless order and contemporary appeal.
It’s a cool and cloudy day at the Winchester Mystery House ⛅️ Truly somewhere you can relax, dream, and be creative. Open for daily tours this weekend 10-4pm!
🎟 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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Frequent Occurrences of Hauntings
Whether or not one believes in Mrs. Winchester’s superstitions about spirits, it is harder to dismiss frequent occurrences of hauntings which assaulted one’s vision wherever one would look. The question of the “evil” in her home had already become too grave for her. The place was known to swarm with ghosts. Mrs. Winchester was seated by her fire. abruptly she saw a shadow of a vast spider hung suspended in the air, just beyond the barrier. It passed swiftly around her and seemed to probe ever towards her, but only to draw back with extraordinary jerky movements, as might a living person who touched the hot bar of a grate. Round and round it moved and round and round she turned. Then, it retired almost beyond the glow of the vacuum light and then came straight towards her, appearing to gather form and solidity as it came. There seemed a vast malign determination behind the movement that must succeed. She was on her knees and jerked back, falling on to her left hand and hip, in a wild endeavour to get back from the advancing thing. With her right hand she was grabbing madly for her ivory-gripped Volcanic Navy pistol which she had let slip. The brutal thing came with one great sweep straight towards her. Mrs. Winchester yelled. Then, just as suddenly as it had swept over, it seemed to be hurled back by some mighty, invisible force. It was some moments before she realized that she was safe, and then she got herself together, feeling horribly done and shaken and glancing round and round the barrier, but the thing had vanished. Yet she had learnt something, for she knew not that the mansion was haunted. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
Suddenly, as Mrs. Winchester crouched there, she saw what had so nearly given the monster an opening through the barrier. In her movements within the halls of her mansion, she noticed that the door to nowhere was open. She closed it and felt almost safe again. For a long time, she felt uneasy, as she saw odd wavering over among the shadows near the door to nowhere. And a minute afterwards the door was opened and slammed wide with tremendous force. The next instant the thing made one swift, vicious dart at her from the shadows. Instinctively she started sideways from it and so plucked her hand from upon the fireplace poker, though—owning to her inconceivable foolishness—it had been enabled for a second time to pass through the door to nowhere. She shook for a time with sheer fear. Mrs. Winchester moved right to the center of a pentacle in the room and knelt there, making herself as small and compact as possible. She could not be sure if she was being influenced unconsciously or was she in danger? With her suspicious watchfulness, a mysterious hand materialized out of the shadows and seemed to leap almost into her face, so nearly did it approach her, but it was thrown back by some altogether enormous, over-mastering force. Yet, apart from the dazed fright in which it left her, she had for a moment that feeling of spiritual sickness, as if some delicate, beautiful, inward grace had suffered which is felt only upon the too near approach of the ab-human and is more dreadful in a strange way than any physical pain that can be suffered. She knew by this more of the extent and closeness of the danger, and for a long time Mrs. Winchester was simply cowed by the brutality of that Force upon her spirit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Mrs. Winchester had retired from the scene and, visiting the ample house from attic to cellar, making sure she was alone, and knew herself in safe possession and, as she tacitly expressed it, let herself go. Then she could, as seemed to her, most intimately wander and wait, linger and listen, feel her fine attention, never in her life before so fine, on the pulse of the great vague place: she preferred the lampless hours and only wished she might have prolonged each day the deep crepuscular spell. Later—rarely much before midnight, but then for a considerable vigil—she watched with her glimmering light; moving slowly, holding it higher, playing it far, rejoicing above all, as much as one might, in open vistas, reaches of communication between rooms and by passages; the long straight chance or show, as she would have called it, for the revelation she pretended to invite. It was a practice Mrs. Winchester found she could perfectly “work” without exciting remark; no one was in the least the wiser for it. She slowly opened some rich music. As she walked along the marble of the hall pavement, large black-and-white squares that she remembered the admiration of her childhood and that had then in her, as she now saw, for the growth of an early conception style. There was the effect of the dim reverberating tinkle of some far-off bell hung in the belfry—in the depths of the house, of the past, of that mystical other World that might have flourished for her had she attended to its midnight hour calls. The mansion held, as it were, this mystical other World, and the indescribably finer murmur of its heart strings was the sigh there, the scarce audible wail it would cry out in the night. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
With her presence, Mrs. Winchester awakened the ghostly life as the departed soul of the mansion enjoyed. They were mostly shy, but most of the were not really sinister; at least they were not as she had hitherto felt them—before they had taken the Form she so yearned to make them take, the Form she at moments saw herself in the light of fairly hunting on tiptoe, the points of her evening-shoes, from room to room and from storey to storey. However, Mrs. Winchester spent the rest of the night in a haze of sick fright and so tense that she could not make a single movement naturally. She was in such fear that any desire for action that came to her might be prompted by the Influence that she knew was at work on her. And outside of the barrier that ghastly thing went round and round, grabbing and grabbing in the air at her. There was a horrible wind blowing upon her from the corner of the room to the left of her bed. Then, just as the first touch of dawn came into the sky the unnatural wind ceased in a single moment and she could see no sigh of the hand. The dawn came slowly and presently the wan light filled. However, at about midnight, Mrs. Winchester had a queer knowledge that something was near to her, yet nothing happened for a whole hour after that. Then suddenly she felt the cold, queer wind begin to blow upon her. To her astonishment it seemed now to come from behind her and she whipped round with a hideous quake of feat. The wind hit her in the face. It was flowing up from the floor close to her. She started in a sickening maze of new frights. What on Earth had she done now! Suddenly, as she stared, bewildered, she was aware that there was something queer about her—a funny shadow movement and convolutions. She looked at them stupidly. And then, abruptly, Mrs. Winchester knew that the wind was blowing up at her from the floor. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
A queer indistinct smoke became visible to her, seeming to pour upwards through the ring and mix with the moving shadows. Suddenly she realized that she was in more than any mortal danger, for the convoluting shadows about the floor were taking shape and the deadly-man in a top hate was forming within the room. “My goodness,” she said, “This forces has found a ‘gateway’ into my home and the brute is coming through—pouring into the material World, as gas might pour out from the mouth pipe.” Mrs. Winchester knelt for a couple of moments in a sort of stunned fright. Then with a mad, awkward movement, she grabbed for the fireplace poker and something invisible, something living, was jerking t hither and tither. In an instant, it was torn from her grasp with incredible and brutal force. A great black shadow covered it and rose into the air and came at her. She saw that it was the man, vast and nearly in perfect form. Mrs. Winchester gave one crazy yell and jumped over the pentacle and the ring of burning candles and ran despairingly for the door. She fumbled idiotically and ineffectually with the key, and all the time she started, with the feat that was like insanity, toward the Barriers. The man with the top hat was floating towards her. However, the monster was chained, unable to reach her bed. She sprang from the room and slammed the door with a crash. Mrs. Winchester locked it and got to her Blue Séance Room, somehow; for she was trembling so that she could hardly stand, as you can imagine. She locked herself in the room and managed to get the candle lit; then she laid down on the floor and kept quiet for an hour or two, and so she grew steadier. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
Mrs. Winchester got some rest, but when she woke, she was surrounded by a glowing star of a pentacle. Apparently Mrs. Winchester had tried an exorcism. Exorcism is the process of expelling evil spirits from persons or places by certain adjurations, incantations, magic acts, and formulas. Among ancient peoples, exorcise depended largely o the efficacy of magical formulas, commonly compounded of the names of deities, and repeated with magical ritual over the bodies or object that is possessed. Power to expel evil spirits supposedly resided in the words themselves. Therefore, great importance was attached to the correct recital of the right formulas and the meticulous observance of the prescribed ritual. The recovery of important incantation texts and magical papyri from Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian antiquity demonstrates the widespread believe in demon inhabitation and use of exorcisms. The same prevalence of demon inhabitation has been encountered in the Worldwide missionary outreach from about 1750 to the present. The penetration of China, India, Japan, Burma, Ceylon, and other countries with the Christian gospel has revealed the hold of demonism on pagan cultures and the varied methods of exorcism of evil spirits. The same phenomena exist among primitive people of South America, Africa, and the islands of the sea. The theory is that spirits seek to inhabit the bodies of men (and also animals) to find a resting place and in some inscrutable way obtain physical gratification. When the demon-possessed is in the demonized state and unconscious, inflected physical pain or pleasure is supposedly transferred to the possessing spirit. Discomfort will drive one out of his abode. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
When prostituted into a ritualistic rigmarole, as in white magic, it becomes a deceiving tool in the hands of Satan’s agents to delude the undiscerning by false miracles and spurious healings. Such diabolic miracles do not destroy Satan’s kingdom, but build it up. Diabolical exorcism does not produce true dispossession, but a mere reallocation. Demonic healing may relieve physical symptoms, but substitute a physical ill or doctrinal form of error. This subterfuge explains in part the increase of theological decadence and phenomenal growth of sect and cults within professing Christianity in these latter days. Under demon control, one of Mrs. Winchester’s servants, a young lady, insisted she must dance for the construction workers, which she did wildly and uncontrollably and with every evidence of demon possession. She became so violent that the only way to control her was to hold her by the hair. Her violent jerking almost pulled out her hair. When the young lady came to, she was asked why she was lying on the floor, but she did not know. She was asked if anyone had pulled her hair, she disavowed any knowledge of it. When she was asked to dance, she replied, “No. I do not know how to dance.” She was sweet, modest, and quiet and completely delivered from the demon that her possessed her. White magic is not always so easy to see its true nature. This form of magic more widespread than black magic, the reason being that it often hides itself behind a religious exterior. Hence, as we have said before, one needs to have great discernment in these matters in order to recognize the forces that are actually being called into play. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
The religious trimmings can be very deceptive. Again an example: A farm worker at the Winchester mansion was told by a doctor that he would have to have his leg amputated. Because he wanted to save his leg at all costs he went to visit a magic charmer without the doctor’s knowledge. This man told him, “You will have to believe me if you want to be healed.” He went on to repeat a magic charm and then said the Lord’s prayer three times. The man’s pain immediately vanished and when he returned to the hospital it was no longer necessary for his leg to be amputated. The doctors were puzzled. Later however, the man began to suffer from various psychic disturbances and his family to became accident-prone after this. White magic is more often than not accompanied by certain symbols that may include the use of the names of the Trinity, three Lord’s prayers, three verses of Scripture, three psalms, or three crosses and so on. People are thereby deceived and the method of healing is thus often mistaken for true Christian healing. In reality however, the third commandment is being broken, which says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord you God in vain.” Man cannot dictate to God, and man cannot treat God as a servant who is willing to jump to the aid of every magic charmer who so invokes Him. The Bible relegates both charming and the mechanical use of the Scriptures themselves to the level of sorcery, and so we find that white magic is merely black magic under a different guise. Satan is indeed transformed into an angel of light. The sense of compulsion connected with white magic is something quite different from the attitude of faith in the Christian who says, “They will be done.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Black magic becomes a minor legend for its exuberant offensiveness. Blasphemy is a regular component in life, while the most innovative creators in in this maturing medium of occultism shows increasing sympathy for the Devil. Satanic fringes are part of popular culture. People are so bored with the normal that they seek out the occult. Many people want to have a supernatural experience so they can feel alive, be entertained, and have something to talk about. Some people have a great fascination for all that is dark, forbidden, and feared. They consider the Devil their personal God. A daily routine of ritual and magic is normal for some. It is a way for them to open doors to outer gateways and let the Dark Ones march through. Often times, paintings can function as sigils [occult symbols], and create change in accordance with the Magician’s desires, and ultimately fashion a new Dark Aesthetic, and the creation of a Universal Satanic Necropolis. Artwork or any craft can be fueled by the powers of Satan, and it is possible that it will become popular for people who do great works to say, “the Devil made me do it.” Events, ranging from fires and weird illnesses to Earthquakes and ritual murders have been blamed on certain objects, art, and people, and that is why you will notice certain events get cancelled, have to be rescheduled and so forth. This is also why some have to take out extra insurance for their work, family members or property. Handlers have gotten wind of past experiences. Schedasi, Weduse, Tiwisi—I have sinned, I shall sin. Prayer—Eternal God of our all! Our God! hear our voice, spare and have mercy upon us. Accept our prayer in mercy and with pleasure. I have sinned. I have committed transgressions. I have sinned before Thee; I have done that which is displeasing unto Thee here in the Earth. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
For the sake of Thy great name pardon me all the sins and iniquities and transgression which I have committed against Thee from my youth. Perfect again all the holy names which I have blemished, great champion, terrible, highest God, eternal Lord, God Sabaoth. In the mystery of these vestures of the Holy Ones, I gird up my power in the girdles of righteousness and in truth in the power of the Most High: Ancor: Amacor: Amides: Thoedonias: Anitor: let be might by power: let it endure for ever: in the power of Adonai, to whom the praise and the glory shall be; whose end cannot be. I invoke and move thee, O thou Spirit Purson: and being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name Beralensis, Baldachuensis, Paumachia, and Apologiae Sedes: and of the mighty ones who govern, spirits, Liachidae and ministers of the House of Death: and by the Chief Prince of the seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee and my invoking conjure thee. Ans being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name of him who spake and it was, to whom all creatures and things obey. Moreover I, whom God made in the likeness of God, who is the creator according to his living breath, stir thee up in my name which is the voice of wonder of the mighty God. We need to come to understand that when creating changes within self for the sake of empowerment our external reality also begins to shift reflecting that internal empowerment. When working toward creating external shifts within our external reality our spirit is also empowered by simply exercising our own divine power. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Winchester Mystery House
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 