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The Fear Was Terrible
In was December. The air was ripe with the promise of the new year. The estate was full of life and sound. After the years of supernatural violence and denunciation, it seemed the demons had set their sights elsewhere and, for a while, we were at peace. There were, of course, the usual shadows lurking about. As we walked about the gardens, a boy came running out of the orchards. He was in a state of shock, swallowing his words and talking too fast for me us to hear what he was saying. Ms. Daisy managed to calm him and, with great patience, coax out of the terrified child that there had been massacres. That villages lower down the road had been put to the torch. If old men, women, cut down where they stood. Children, too. I turned cold. “Oh, dear Heavens.” We had no ways of knowing if the report was true. True or false, his testimony would spread panic and alarm. Far better to wait until to verify the stories and then decide what action to take. When I arrived at dinner, everyone was in good spirits. Living as we did, to come together to celebrate, with food enough for everyone and in the warmth, my heart wept at the knowledge that in a matter of hours, all this might be lost. So I sat, knowing what I knew and yet having to conceal it. And all the time, I was watching the door, waiting for my niece, Ms. Daisy. Later I learned she had questioned the boy further and was satisfied that she was telling the truth without embellishment. I instructed the servants to be on alert. My head was spinning with so much information. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
I instituted a search of the house. I sighed as I sat down in my chair. It was a grueling day. It was the middle of winter and the wind howled down the chimneys. Shuddering, I pulled my chair a bit closer to the fireplace. Listening to the domestic sounds from the kitchen made me smile. I was home and warm for the night. Tomorrow’s problems were not yet to be faced, and the warmth of the fire slowly lulled me to sleep. The sound of knocking at my front door startled me awake. The sounds seemed a bit faint, but they were persistent. I hurried to the door, wondering who could be out on such a bitter evening and what emergency would I find on the other side. I flung open the door and at first thought that no one was there, but then I was shocked to see a thin little girl no more than nine or ten years old, standing just before me. She was woefully underdressed for the blustery night. She wore thin shoes, a tattered dress, and a blue shawl that she had pulled tightly around her tiny shoulders. I wondered how the child stayed upright against the wind that buffeted her. The little girl did not wait for me to speak. “Mrs. Winchester, you must come, my mother’s sick bad and she won’t make it through the night without your help. Hurry!” Something about the wispy child and the intensity of her pleas moved me to action. “Some in my child, come in at once,” I said and shut the door. I quickly gathered my coat and scarf, pulled on my gloves and hat, and grabbed up my bag. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
We moved swiftly to one of the Victorian cottages on my estate. She ushered me into her home. Her mother was one of the housemaids. She was normally a sassy lass, but now she was reduced to a skinny rack of bones. Her body was woefully undernourished and she was indeed extremely ill. Upon closer examination, she was gravely ill. Indeed, the lass would not last through the night without quick intervention—she was suffering from pneumonia. As I tended the fire, I talked to the woman. I told her that she would be all right and that and that my servants were coming with medicine. I also spoke to her about the brave little girl who had come to fetch me. I inquired as to the child’s whereabouts. The ill woman looked at me with honor. “My daughter died a month ago. Her shoes and shawl are there in the little cupboard.” The woman broke off with a sob. I felt compelled to look in the close. Inside hung the little blue shawl that I seen the little girl clutching earlier. Her shoes lay on the shelf. I reached out to feel them and they were dry. It would have been impossible for those articles to have been worn that same night. I tended to the woman for a bit longer. As soon as the servants arrived, I ordered the cottage searched for the child I had seen. No child was found. I was amazed at the power of human love and the lost child who reached beyond the grave to save her mother from death. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
I returned home. The evening was nearly over, when I noticed a dark shadow to my left. However, when I focused my eyes directly on the spot, I could see nothing. I decided that perhaps my eyes were undoubtedly becoming tired. It was, after all, nearly midnight. A few moments later, I saw the shadow again. This time it crossed directly in front of me, moving toward the sofa. However, once again, when I focused directly on the thing, I saw nothing but the shadows of the dark room. I shrugged, distracted from the heading to bed. “Are you a ghost?” I asked, speaking toward the area in front of the sofa where I had last seen the shadow. There was no response. I went upstairs to bed. By the morning I had forgotten the entire episode with the mysterious shadow. Several moments later, a peculiar sound caused me to raise from my slumber, and I was surprised to see the shadow again. It crossed in from of my bed, then sat on an arm chair. Sometime between two and four in the morning I was awakened by the sound of artillery firing from the fields. It sounded like cannons firing one-at-a-time. I could hear there reloading between the shots. The fire lasted about ten minutes, then faded out, back into some mysterious fold of Time. Frightened, I did not look outside. I work my niece Ms. Daisy in the middle of the night to ask if she heard it. Unfortunately, she had been sound asleep and did not. However, I did not believe the sounds were figments of my imagination. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
My mansion served as the venue for a most remarkable connection between the dead and the living which seems to spanned the ages. I tried to sleep, but there was another odd noise that echoed across the fields of my estate. Faint at first, the sound was soon recognizable: drumbeats. I finally fell asleep, never understanding the source of the sound. Once again, I was awakened by bone chilling cold, so cold it sent me running from my room. There was an icy apprehension as I ran forward, as if I was running for my life. I came to a new pathway in my mansion and entered it. I felt the sharp coldness of the air, but I knew I had to keep going. The fear was terrible. As I came around a curve, blood ran through the corridor like water. A strange haze formed. The haze was a visage of a young man with brown hair and a moustache, sideburn in front of his left war, with his eyes gazing to the right. Then a woman walked through the streams of blood, she was moving at a fast walk. She had blonde hair and seemed in a hurry. As I moved down the pathway, she vanished, but there, hanging on the wall, was a shriveled, mummified, human arm. The hand was a contorted claw. I was also astonished to see, floating before my eyes, a white, glowing, disembodied arm pull back and vanish into darkness of the room. The pathway severed never-ending abyss of darkness and horrors than any human being could imagine. A strong hand grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me so violently that I passed out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
I forced my eyes open once more, and I saw a pair of wooden clogs. I was lying on the fell, which was covered in blood. I struggled to push myself into a sitting position, dragging my legs round from under me, then tried to stand. “Let me help you,” an apparition said. The ghost’s strong hand was under my elbow, guiding me back to a parlor on the second floor. “Here.” I slumped down and leaned forward, elbows on my knees, waiting for the spinning to stop. I looked around the room. Clearly, it was morning. Everything was bathed in a flat, white light. The fire had burned out, leaving a pyramid of soft, gray ash in the grate. “We were concerned when you did not come down to breakfast, Mrs. Winchester. Why are you covered in blood? Have you been injured,” the butler demanded. “No. I slipped and fell in a puddle of blood in the new pathway recently built,” I said. “But Mrs. Winchester, the entire estate is as clean as we left in yester evening.” I frowned, trying to get the sequence of events clear in my mind. I had taken a bath, come back to the room, and enjoyed a cup of tea. Then I heard a cat in the room. As I looked around the room, there was nothing there. Within a short while, the tea cups started dancing about the table. Extended across the table, just inches from me and draped with what looked like some lacy fabric, was a woman’s arm, from the elbow down, the pale fingers eerily entwined in the tea cups. I screamed. The butler came running and saw the phantom limb. “What is it, devil is it Mrs. Winchester?” “There are forces in this house. Such power does not come from the devil. Do you see those books around you? They are full of stories of such persons, called in one place sorcerer, and in another witch, but what has the devil to do with such things? If you have such powers, what can and can they not do?” #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
The butler’s eyes grew large but his face was hard. His hands tightened on the arms of the chair and he cocked his head to the left as he looked the room up and down. I saw the look of fear coming to his face. The housemaid whispered: “She is reading our thoughts, Morgan, she can hide her own thoughts from us.” “Morgan,” Mrs. Winchester said, “what you have witnessed is terrible. I can see spirits. I have powers.” Morgan’s face was transformed from cold suspicion to sudden contempt. “Ah, witch!” he cried. “Why did you not tell me? Your house is full of witches! You are an order of Satan. This house is expanding so quickly because you have the power to stop time.” And then as tears poured down his face, I sobbed. He wrapped his arms around me. “We are all damned,” he said, “and you hide here in this mansion where they can’t burn you! Oh, clever, clever witch in the devil’s house!” “Wicked am I? A witch am I? Stopper of time? I will not have you speak to me in that manner!” Mrs. Winchester moved into the very center of the room and looking up and out the window, it seemed to the blue sky, she cried: “Come now Caim and you 30 Legions of Spirits Infernal! I entreat thee to favor me in the adjuration which I address to thy might minister LUCIFUGE ROFOCALE! Come hither to speak with me.” And at once a great dark shadow appeared in the window, as if the spirit upon whom she had called condensed himself to become small and strong within the room. “Damn you into hell, witch. I shall not be your warlock,” Morgan cried, and as the books began to fall around he, he feld the mansion, and the door slammed front doors shut after him and no one could pry it open ever again, try as they might. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Phantom limbs hovering over us, or playfully touching, or roughly shoving us. What could it be that allows the many manifestations of an active, viable, yet impossible World, sometimes seen, more often unseen, that apparently exists right next to us? What aberration in Time or Physics or Mass or Energy reveals to us this other land, usually unheard and invisible, that seems the dwelling place of the dead? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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And Finally the Spirits Drew Blood
Life-changing, miraculous, beautiful—it has been the scene of serious studies by aspiring intellectuals, of raucous parties filled to the brim with youthful enthusiasm. It was also been the dwelling place of Death. There was a persistent malevolent visitor within the walls of the house, who had an agenda of pursuit and manipulation for evil all of his own. By the time they reached my estate, Hendrick had a fairly good understanding of what the Winchester Mansion was, and he had assured Mr. Hansen that he would keep confidential forever what he was about to read in the files. Henrick loved the idea of the Winchester Mansion, the flashing, sparkling panorama of Santa Clara Valley. However, he grew coldly and unexpectedly calm as he puzzled over the catacombs, and reviewed in his mind all the popular myths he had heard about the apparitions, and this brief interlude of excitement began to fade. “Mrs. Winchester, I have to go on leave,” Hendrick explained. “It’s unavoidable.” How calm his voice sounded as all the color drained out of his face. I insisted that we go at once to a small screened porch off the back of the second story, and there, overlooking a formal garden with miles of green grass and fountains, we could sit down to eat. However, Hendrick insisted that he had to leave at once. Mr. Hansen showed him to the door. The atmosphere began to change. I felt a whisper of fresh air on my face. The floor suddenly veered precipitously upward. Tiny drops of blood began to fall from the ceiling. Rappings shook the walls. Then a large butcher knife appeared and menacingly headed in our direction. When ran into the morning room, and all the chairs therein fell over and danced about noisily. “The spirits are angry,” said Mr. Hansen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
I felt light-headed, intoxicated by the danger. There were noises, a myriad of them and terror-filled cries of the wounded and dying echoing long and pitifully into the night; disembodied rumblings from artillery, and even more mysterious, unidentifiable rustling in the darkness just behind my shoulder. Several knives and a large glass paperweight were thrown at us by invisible intruders, narrowly missing our heads. “Do angels really lack knowledge of the heart?” I asked Mr. Hansen as I wept. There was the dark melee, horrifying screams in the night. Night was always a time of icy fear and apprehension. It must stem from our most primal subconscious. It can bring sudden death. And sleep, if it should come, steals consciousness, our last warning system and makes us more vulnerable to Earthly creatures who would do us harm. Or to other entities not of this Earth with perhaps the same ambition. Perhaps sleep was the main portal through which ghosts came into our lives. I felt Mr. Hansen’s brown eyes sweep across my face. He shook his head. There was something about the translucent moon that gave me the impression he was made of air or water, rather than blood and bone. I looked at him more closely, scared that he might have slipped away. But he was still there. “I feared you had…” “Not yet,” Mr. Hansen said, reading my mind. Around and around the room an unexplainable jingling went, pausing first in one corner, then at another wall, until the sound was right next to us. Then it became a plopping sound like water dripping. We were being troubled by entities that seemed set upon us by a curse of black magic. Suddenly, a hooded figure appeared and was moving about the house. It appeared to be the image of a man with thinning white hair on the sides, and bald at the top. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
There were secret passageways in the mansion, hidden from view. The tiniest opening in the mahogany walls lead to tunnels, hiding places, a labyrinthine sequence of passageways and caverns. As we entered a secret passageway to escape the ghost, I heard a whole bunch of voices whispering, but I could not understand them. They were all jumbled together. As we walked along the pathway, Mr. Hansen said my name right in my ear, and when I turned to look at him, he was gone. The voice was a demon voice: throaty, hoarse and very mean. It said to me, “Sarah, show yourself to me!” I could not actually pinpoint the exact location the voice had come from. But there was a black, floating swirling mass, about four feet high and three feet wide. It unnerved me so much that I feld the catacombs, and as I came out where the dining room was, something hit the wall with such a force that it knocked down several of the paintings. It looked like there had been an earthquake. And I was about to fall. However, something grabbed the collar of my collar of my shirt, and pulled me back to safety. No apparition could be seen, but the collar of my shirt had been pulled back. It was midnight when I went back to my room in the north wing. I rose early the next morning. Drawing back the curtain, then I saw a dark shadow of a woman entering my home. I could hear the dark figure ascending up their stairs and towards my room. The footsteps and voices got louder. The shadow of the woman appeared in the doorway to the room I was in. It disappeared as quickly as it manifested. I felt a cold wind pass by me, and the curtains closed and billowed as a shadowy figure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I decided to stay in my room until I fell asleep. Not only did I lock the door, but I put a chair against the door as an added safety measure from intruders. Late into the night, I was awakened by the loud rattling of the door and the chair. Frighteningly, the sound came from inside the room and not outside the door. It was as if someone was trying to get outside the room, not in. The room was dimly illuminated by a faint, green-glowing light. On the wall hangs a mirror, into which the light casts its luminescence. In a semi-awakened state, I gazed into the mirror and saw the reflected light begin to take the shape of a woman dressed in a beautiful dress. As I continued to stare at the apparition in the mirror, she was suddenly accompanied by a man dressed as a cavalry man, complete with high cavalry boots. How long I had been sitting in bed, I scarcely know; I had been half meditating, half dozing, mixing broken snatches of thought with brief glimpses of dreaming, when I was startled into wakefulness by a sound that was strange to me. As I opened my eyes, the sun risen. I inspected the chair and found that somehow it had been pulled out, away from the door about an inch. I stood transfixed. When suddenly my entire body flew back, and on to the floor. My eyes rolled into the back of my head. Mr. Hansen and Ersula overheard the commotion and burst into the room. “Mrs. Winchester, are you okay, where have you been?!” Ersula demanded as she and Mr. Hansen lifted me off the floor. “You are as pale as a ghost!” he said. “Never mind the sal volatile,” I said at last. “I am not ill; I have been startled, that is all.” Even now, I get the chills thinking about that night. I do believe there was something evil in the house. I have been quite reluctant to tell about the hauntings, for most people just do not want to know the truth about what is out there. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The spinning in my head slowed and then finally stopped altogether. As the last chime of the clock struck ten, I came downstair to the reception area. I felt my heart expand with the beauty of the same old World but seen through new eyes. Glancing out the skylight, a white winter sun hung low in the sky and it was bright but cold. A bird was singing. My plans for construction where castles in the air, dreams of sliver days. Places where I could spend countless dusks watching the sun sinking down into the Earth. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move. A flash of blue, perhaps. I could not tell. A shiver crept down my spine. For a moment, I stood motionless. Everyone looked very dead now, very empty. There was no odor yet, but they were dead. The rigidity of Ersula’s face absorbed me. The body of Hendrick on the floor was dry and wrinkled. Not even murmuring melodies to myself of the songs I most liked to play meant anything to me. In my ears, I heard a din as if the imps of Hell were making a horrid music to drive me out of my mind. I whispered to myself to silence it. Shortly after discovering the bodies, I heard muffled voices and noises on the second floor, followed by a sharp crash. I rushed up stairs to find a large painting in the hallway had been flung violently across the hall into a freshly painted wall. The wall had been damaged by the force of the crash. I was terrified to hear the wails of a baby coming from the wall. Petrified, I remained on the second floor with the terrible cries until carpenters began a search and found me. Nearly incoherent when I was taken to my chamber, I told the carpenters about hearing the baby cry. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Emperor Lucifer, Master and Prince of Rebellious Spirits, as the agent of the strong living God, of His beloved Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and by the power of the Great ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM, please appear instantly. I command thee to surrender me the nearest treasure, and I promise thee as a reward the first piece of gold or silver which I touch with my hands on the first day of every month. Such is my demand. Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, O Lord! And I shall be clean: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. I Do invocate and conure thee, O Prince of the Rebellious Spirits; and being with power armed from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALDACHIENSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachidae, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocating conjure thee. And being armed with power from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto whom all creatures be obedient. Also I, being made after the image of GOD, endued with power from GOD and created according unto HIS will, do exorcise thee by that most mighty and powerful name of God, EL, strong and wonderful; O thou Emperor Lucifer. And I command thee and Him who spake the Word and His Fiat was accomplished, and by the names of God. Also by the names of AFONAI, EL, ELOHIM, ELOHI, EHYEH, ASHER EHYEH, ZABOTH, ELION, IAH, TETRAGRAMMATON, SHADDAI, LORD GOD MOST HIGH. Come thou peaceably, visibly, and affably, now, and without delay, manifesting that which I shall desire. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Something awakens you from a fitful sleep. You roll over in your bed and there, right at the foot of it, is a misty shape resembling a human. However, its features are hazy, unclear. The dress it wears is recognizable, but from an era long past, and it is tattered, as if it had spent too much time hanging in a closet, or lying in the damp mustiness of a coffin. The figure is, at first, an object of curiosity, since you immediately assume you are dreaming. However, its tendril-like arms begin to wave, to move towards you—no, to beckon you—and the face twists into the mockery of a smile. Now you begin to panic as you realize-despite your hoping it is not true—that you are fully awake, that this is no dream and there is no explanation for the horrid sight before you, except that it is real, in all its dead splendor. It is well known that, possessions, apparitions, and other supernatural intrusions have occurred what is now known as The Winchester Mystery House.
Mrs. Winchester Might be the Next Victim
In reliving those years of despair, I weep for my beautiful angel as she was experiencing a most unfortunate horror. My heart filled with anguish as I remember the horrible ending to her life. Her lungs had filled beyond further help; her stomach could no longer function properly and she could not be fed orally any longer. She was only six weeks old. My husband and I consulted with her doctors about her condition and were advised that no further feedings be given. However, the final decision was ours. Our final decision to discontinue all further feedings took all our strength. Although we were aware it was the only human thing to do, we also knew that while we watched her take her last breaths, we too would be dying within ourselves. We loaded the carriage and drove her to the hospital for the last time. As I held Annie in my I arms, I knew that this memory would remain within my heart eternally. The memory of that trip and the finality that is possessed still feel so real to me. When we arrived at the hospital, I laid my baby girl gently in her bed, never to hold her in my arms again. Later, I tried to hold her again but she became extremely rigid in the process of lifting her. The doctor said she was dying from malnutrition. She has a curious disease known as Marasmus. My baby could not digest her food. She was so tiny. She did not have round waxen arms and legs like other babies, now puffy pink cheeks. My dear Annie was reduced to a skeleton. Her beautiful eyes were vacant. She barely had the energy to muster up a cry. #RandolphHarris 1 of 3
I knew then that she could no longer endure living with great pain she had known. She was ready to leave us. There was nothing more we could do for her but allow her to leave. Two days later, Annie died, along, unaware of another human being. She had been under heavy sedation and was unable to further communicate. Her days of torment and agony were over. It broke my heart that I brought a baby in the World who was slowly, agonizingly dying as we pondered the imponderable eternity for days, hours, until her life force abandoned us. But her precious memories will always remain alive and real in our hearts. She left the deepest feeling of compassion and love with Mr. Winchester and myself. Her tragic memories are embedded within our hearts. I shall find a way to dedicate meaning to her life so she will not have suffered in vain. In 1862, Sarah L. Winchester married William Wirt Winchester, son of Oliver Fisher Winchester, Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut and manufacturer of the famous Winchester repeating rifle. The couple’s life together was happy, and they moved in the best of New England society. However, in 1866, disaster struck when their infant daughter, Annie Winchester, died of the then curious childhood disease marasmus. Mrs. Winchester fell into a deep depression from which she never fully recovered. Fifteen years later, in March 1881, her husband’s premature death from tuberculosis added to Mrs. Winchester’s distress. A medium explained to Mrs. Winchester her family and her fortune were cursed and being haunted by spirits and that she would be the next victim. #RandolphHarris 2 of 3
However, the medium also claimed that there was an alternative. Mrs. Winchester was instructed to move West and appease the spirits by building a great house for them. As long as construction never ceased, Mrs. Winchester could rest assured that her life was not in danger. Building such a house was even supposed to being her eternal life. Innumerable spirits shuffled off their mortal coils embrace the Winchester Mansion as their home. They have surrendered their spirits to the miles of winding and twisting hallways in the Winchester Mansion. Humans beings that were mowed down in sheaves, bowled over by bounding shot, decapitated, disemboweled, dismembered, exterminated instantly all call this place home. Although bullets dropped many of them, they all did not die right away. They gagged their last words, hoping that God would hear them. They paid with their heart’s blood for defending this great nation. Countless others as well, unready, perhaps unwilling, have left their shadows behind to haunt this estate. It cannot be surprising then, that Mrs. Winchester and the caretakers, reluctantly admit they saw apparitions. Particularly on sultry moonlit summers nights, when the mists hang low in the garden, there can be seen, slowly trotting across the lawn, a long horseman, in the finery of a Civil War officer. Where medical doctors were scarce in the Civil War, witches provided cures for a variety of common ailment. They were said to worship Satan Himself during their infamous sabbats, gatherings at which the Devil was sometimes present in person, and can almost be seen lurking about the estate. #RandolphHarris 3 of 3
It is difficult to see in hindsight what Mrs. Winchester had to do with all this, but as time went on and the estate grew, wild accusations came to be leveled, chief among which was that of Mrs. Winchester having made a pact with Satan. How else but through diabolic abetment could a mere woman exercise such power? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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There is No One Who Could Help Now?
I turned away astonished to see that in the few moments we had been talking, dusk had stolen the remnants of the day. Time always did seem to pass differently in my home. As we clattered down the corridor, I glanced into the rooms where the doors stood open. All were empty. There were no sounds of conversation, of caretakers going about their duties. Mr. Hansen stopped in front of a high wooden desk at the foot of the stairs. I caught the smell of beeswax polish, a sharp reminder of the back stairs leading up to the attic of the witches cap. We walked on the staircase, until I stopped in front of a paneled door and unlocked it. “I will have the fire made up,” Mr. Hansen said. The room was bone chillingly cold, though it was clean. I lit the oil lamps from the candle, and looked around. A small writing table and chip and dale arm chair sat adjacent to the door. Straight ahead, two tall windows, floor to ceiling, filled one side of the room. On the opposite side of the room was a heavy chest of gold, covered by a lace runner. When Mr. Hansen returned, I said, “Dearest Jim, will you please open that chest, there is something inside of it for you and your family.” Mr. Hansen eagerly walk over to the chest, and his eyes lit up like a new born baby having his first birthday cake. “Go ahead, Mr. Hansen, it is for you.” “No, Mrs. Winchester; I can well believe it. But this is a treasure I can live on for years. Only you must tell me how I can repay you…In a hundred years I could never do enough for you,” he said. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Well, that word went to my heart; but for a minute I did not know how to answer. For it was true I had risked my soul, and that was something he could not pay me for; but then maybe I had saved his, in getting him away from those foul people, so the whole business was more of a puzzle to me than ever. However, then I had thought that made me easier. Mr. Hansen went on to explain to me, “Well, Mrs. Winchester, the day before yesterday, I was with my young son; the poor young man, without health or hope, lying sick in a mean rooming house. Until now, I had no way to know how I would care for him.” Mrs. Winchester sat up in bed in a flutter of pity. “Oh, Mrs. Hansen, how dreadful! Why did you never tell me? You must hire a better room for him at once. Has he a doctor? Has he a nurse? Quick—give me my checkbook!” “Thank you, Mrs. Winchester. But you have already given me a king’s ransom.” When I got back to my room after a long, hot soak in the bath, a fire was burning in the grate, releasing an aroma of pine resin into the room. The smell snapped at my heartstrings, taking me back to New Haven winters when William was home from work. I gazed into the fire awhile longer, happy in my own company. I sometimes wondered if some of those grizzled old souls were able to make the journey from New Haven to Santa Clara. My home seemed to add so much to the ambience of the area. However, unlike the Earth, this huge estate seemed to need people within it to survive. That is one of many reasons my construction project went on so long. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Have you ever noticed how houses, as long as they have someone occupying them, no matter how little maintenance is done, always hold up better than houses that are abandoned? Houses, like a body which the soul has abandoned, deteriorate more rapidly when on one resides within. One evening in the cooling fall of the year, Mr. Hansen and his wife left the caretaker’s house on the estate for a social function. The son of Mr. Hansen was home alone. He was in the basement which was used as a recreation room. It was getting late and her was expecting his parents any minute. Sure enough, he heard footsteps on the floor above his head. They traveled across the living room and into the dining room and back again. He thought it unusual that his father and mother would be in the house walking around for nearly a minute and not call him. He walked to the stairs that led from the basement to the first floor and called out, “Daddy?” The only answer was the sound of footsteps crossing the room and beginning to ascend the stairs to the second floor. “Daddy?” he called again. With still no answer, he began to slowly climb the stairs from the basement to the first floor. He could hear what he was convinced was an intruder walking through the bedrooms just above his head, apparently looking for something valuable. The footsteps crossed the second floor just above his head and began approaching the stairs and descend to the first floor. He rushed into the basement again. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Wanting to run but not wanting to run into whoever it was who prowled above his head, he could only wait in icy apprehension for his parents. As he waited, the intruder stalked the floor above him, apparently not interested in valuables, seeking something known only to him. His wanderings became more aimless. First to the kitchen, then back to the living room, then the dining room—pacing…pacing—to perhaps peer out a window at the fruit orchard. The ancient floorboards that once soaked up blood of those killed by the Winchester rifle, groaned with the wandering footfall of an apparently lost intruder. Slowly the footsteps approached the cellar steps…he swore he heard him put a foot on the top step. Ghosts supposedly went out of fashion when electric light came in. What nonsense! The supernatural were always around on my estate. My very mansion was patrolled by headless victims with clanking chains, and even though it was a comfortable house with an ice box and 47 fireplaces where you feel, as soon as you are in it, that there is something wrong, it sends chills down your spine! It is certainly a lovely, airy, high-ceilinged house with electricity, but I knew we were dealing with something that was invisible and could not be seen—something that was very malevolent. I often saw a boy with glowing eyes near the 7-11 staircase. But here I belonged and here I would stay. There morning had been bitter, with a driving sleet—though it was only the last day of October—but after lunch a watery sun showed for a while through banked-up wooly cloud and tempted me out. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
I was an energetic walker, and given, at that season, to walking about the beautiful grounds. I made my usual round, and was following the path back to the mansion when I overtook a plainly-dressed woman walking in the same direction. When I caught up with the intruder, I was surprised to find she was a stranger. It was almost dark, and the woman’s face was hardly visible, but this woman was middle-aged, plain and rather pale. I greeted her, and then added: “You are going to my house?” “Yes, ma’am,” the woman answered, in a voice that the Connecticut Valley in the old days would have called “foreign.” I could not say where she came from. What struck me as queer was that I did not know her. I asked the woman, politely, what she wanted, and the woman answered: “Only to see Annie.” The answer was natural enough, but there was no one by that name on my estate. I turned off from the drive to the lower part of the gardens, so that I saw no more of the visitor then or afterward. And, in fact, half hour later something happened which put the stranger entirely out of my mind. I approached my house, slipped on a froze puddle, turned my ankle and lay suddenly helpless. Elroy, the butler, and Ersula the housemaid, knew exactly what to do. In no had me stretched out on a lounge, and Dr. Parker had been notified. When he arrived, he ordered me to bed, and did the necessary examining and bandaging, and shook his head over my ankle, which he feared was fractured. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Concerned about how I would get around my estate, as I was laying in bed, the spirit gave me an idea of building mini stairs that rose only two inches, so I could make it around, until I healed without being bound in plaster. From that night on, there was an appearance of ghost, who would manifest in front yard, walk up to the house and enter it, and interact with me. My home brought me deeper and deeper into a mysterious territory whose boundaries I had never before dream of transgressing. Ghosts often took shape right before my eyes. They would start off as tendrils and grow into glowing, mistlike things. Turning into orbs, the figures would grow larger and denser and began to assume a humanlike form. One evening, I extended my hand into the mist, and could feel its cold interior. Such a bold act may have been considered very rude by the entity, as the glowing image suddenly vanished. There were plenty of vibrations in my mansion to tune into. The place was drenched with psychic vibrations. In my Blue Séance Room is where the glowing lights and ethereal broadcast were received well enough that caretakers were aware of their presence. They would morph into columns of light about the height of a man and make their trek out of the room. One night Ersula reported seeing ghostly face looking through the window at her one night. The ghost then chased her hands away from the cows during an evening milking. The following morning, it was about nine o’clock before I admitted to myself that something uncommonly strange must have happened in the house. Mysterious things—dreadful things—were associated with darkness; and the wholesome prosaic daylight had not come to banish there. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
I conjure thee, O Spirit Pheynix, and your 20 Legions of Spirits, by all the most glorious and efficacious Names of the Great and Incomparable Lord the God of Hosts, come quickly and without delay, from whatsoever part of the World thou art in; make rational answers to our demands; please come visibly, speak affably, speak intelligibly to our understanding. We conjure and constrain thee, O Spirit Pheynix and your 20 Legions of Spirits, as also by these seven other Names wherewith Solomon bound thee and thy fellows in the brazen vessel, to wit, ADONAI, PRERAI, TETRAGRAMMATON, ANEX-HEXETON, INESSENSATOAL, PATHUMATON, and ITEMON; do thou manifest in the Winchester Mansion, fully our will in all things that they may seem good to us. Come, therefore, in the Holy Names ADONAI, ZEBAOTH, AMIORAM, come, ADONAI commands thee. Please grants us your powers and virtues by the powers and virtues, and by the name PRIMEMATUM, which commands the whose host of Heaven. Do thou force and compel the Spirit of Sarah L. Winchester here before to return to her mansion, in a fair and comely shape, without injury to herself or any creature, that she many continue to expand and make her estate thrive, so that she accomplished her desired end, whatsoever it be, provided that it is proper to her office, by the power of God, EL, who hath created and doth dispose of all things, celestial, aerial, terrestrial, and infernal. Please appear and make the sweet perfumes, give good entertainment. May all the Company of Heaven, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Light of Hosts of Heaven guide you back to your estate by the power of TETRAGRAMMATON, ANEXHEXETON, PRIMEMATUM. So bless it be. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
If such peculiar manifestations as orbs and ghosts should be as intelligent as their actions often indicate, just what are they and what is their purpose? We have folklore that is at least 2,000 years old that equates these mysterious globes of light with spirits of the dead and with those beings we label nature spirits—the Devas, the elves, and the fairies. The manipulation of glowing balls of light as a means of transportation may even be employed by angelic beings and spirit guides. Indeed, these benevolent beings may take form as ghosts of light before fully materializing in our dimension. These orbs seen in the Winchester Mansion are intelligent and may be able to manifest a physical appearance that is most compatible with the level of understanding of each individual witness.
These were Mrs. Winchester’s carpenters on the estate. One of these gentleman has been spotted inside the house by both guests and tour guides for decades! He is usually seen fixing the fireplaces and rolling around his wheelbarrow in the basement. Can you guess which one he is? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/ 👻
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Angels and Demons, Gargoyles and Ghostly Apparitions
Except for William, the idea of love to me always seemed a question of submission. Of giving in to some powerful emotion, of losing control. Poor souls. However, with my beloved William, love seemed a natural thing, something one did not even need to remark upon, like breathing or raising one’s face to the sun on a summer’s day. It is no matter now, for he passed away years ago, and all I ask is to be left alone in my chair. Money has been an armor, you see; and there are few cracks in it. But William had a loving nature, if only others had show him love. He was a delicate boy when he was little, so his mother could curl him up, and put him into black velvet pants, like that boy in the book—little Lord Something. However, when his legs grew out of the pants, and they sent him to school, she said he was not her own little cuddly baby any more; and it riles a growing boy to hear himself talked about like that. It was like being pushed out of an illuminated ballroom, all flowers and chandeliers, into the winter night and snow. Yet, Mr. Winchester grew up into a fine man and that is why I married him. He used to go over and see his mother now and again; or she would come home for the holidays. And he used to take her out for lunch, or to dance at those cabaret places; and when the headwaiters adore his mother’s beauty and charm, he would talk about it for a week. For a time she used to get some comfort out of telling me about her early triumphs; and I used to listen to her patiently, taking notes on how to be a good wife and mother. You must not think of her as an unkind woman. She was friendly to her husband, and friendly to her children, but she knew she had to raise William to be tough and strong. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
There were always people prowling about in the background that she did not like the look of; people, you understand, who live on weak people. There is nothing more I can say. Reflecting of these memories was nice. It allowed me to sleep all day and into the evening. Or, rather, I drifted in and out of twilight state. I was aware of the housemaids and the parlor maids coming and going, shapes, blurred faces, the sound of kindlin and a striking match, the maid laying a fire. I work fully only twice. First, when Ersula placed a bowl of soup and bread beside the bed and waited until I had eaten it all. The second time, when she returned to administer a second draft of the bitter white medicine, a sleeping draft or some kind of traditional remedy, I never knew and hardly cared. My skin was alternatively burning and clammy with sweat. I tossed and turned in bed, like a ship on a storm-wracked sea, plagued by dreams and delusions. Angels and demons, gargoyles and ghostly apparitions, long-since deserted friends waltzed in and out of my head. For hours, so Ersula later told me, things hung in the balance as my temperature climbed as high as the nine-story observational tower. Certainly, I oscillated between beauty and horror. A skeletal hand pushing up from beneath freshly turned Earth, blossoms dying on the bough. The back of Annie’s heads, impassive and deaf to my consoling up her upset tummy. William smiling at me, in the orchard and by the stream, but then stepping just out of reach and turning away when I called out to him. Barbed wire and mud and blood, chlorine gas, a World of unimaginable pain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Nearly 175,000 men—jamming the streets and roads and field of my estate, attempting to tear each other apart, and in doing so, leaving anywhere from 44,000 to 51,000 casualties behind, to be cared for immediately after the battle by a handful of doctors, orderlies, and the servants of my estate, and my mansion metamorphosing into one vast charnel-house. To day the least, my tidy rooms, barns, and farmhouses, and Victorian gardens were overflowing with men who were seriously hurt and badly needed shelter from the elements. These horrors seemed to last for weeks. The fever broke at about three o’clock in the morning. My temperature dropped. I stopped shaking and my skin, sticky with fever, returned to normal. For the first time in hours, I was able to get out of bed. In the still and sleeping house, I could hear the whirring and chiming of the grandfather clock in the hall downstairs. A ribbon of moonlight made its way between the shutters and painted a line across the floor. I watched the moonbeams dance, slowly shifting, as the hours passed and the World continued to turn. I walked through the hallway, looking through a couple of doorways and back into the original section of the house when I noticed a fresh-countenanced young man standing and watching the goings-on with a peculiar look on his face. The more I watched him, the more I saw it was a look of wanting to come out of the Grand Ball Room. Catching his eye, I motioned for the young man to come join me for a cup of tea. He just stood there and stared, the expression on his face becoming even more painted. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Then it dawned on me that he was a ghost, and he was stuck in the old part of the house and could not leave the Grand Ball Room. With an understanding shrug, he turned away from the door and walked further into the room to join the other apparitions. I stood back with my eyes closed, and a quiet smile on my face. By this time, the sky was a mass of teal and fuchsia. At first it looked like a kite-flying contest, the could over my mansion obstructed by swooping streaks of color that danced on the air currents, trailing multi-hued streamers behind them. Then I heard the chirping cacophonous twittering like an orchestra of xylophones. As I looked further through the skylights, I realized that the kites’ long tails were really feathers, and they were not tethered to the ground by strings. A flock of birds, what seemed like hundreds of them, painted the air with wings the color of the rainbow, dipping and soaring on air currents visible only to them. I could barely take my eyes off the flock. I wished the birds would stay forever: They were like an elaborately painted scene on a China teacup, and their chirping filled me with the kind of inexplicable joy that I had felt as a child, climbing onto my mother’s lap and smelling the faint scent of her jasmine perfume after a long day of play. The birds, as if acting on an invisible signal from above, formed two loose lines and soared higher, heading towards Heaven. I wished I could fly with them, borne along on whatever invisible breeze they had ridden in on. The birds had stirred something powerful in me, mysterious symphony of joy and emotion. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
It must have been some kind of European sorcery and magic. And, there seemed to be something else in the atmosphere. Around 5.45 a.m., I heard what sounded like for all the World, a small child. It came from further down the hallway, and I walked curiously down towards where the sound seemed to be coming from, the sound moved into the living room. I followed, and it kept moving and cooing at a distance of what I estimated was about six feet in front of me. As I got to the living room, the cooing baby moved on into the next room, the kitchen. I stood in the living room and rationalized for a moment. The lights from outside the mansion were spilling into the room, and it slowly occurred to me that if the baby had been playing, I would surely have seen her cross the room between the hall and the kitchen. I listened to the cute baby sounds in the next room, and a chill went down my spine. I now had no idea what I was dealing with. The cooing faded within the next moment, and I backed down the hall, ducking into the Alice in Wonderland room and, of course, there was no one in the room, but the tiny rocking chair was swaying back and forth. A few nights later, I was up in the middle of the night. I was in complete darkness. No windows in the room, no light, just darkness. Suddenly, from the area to my left, which would have been the bathtub, I heard very clearly—sharp and loud enough to make me jump—a voice shout, “Belly Ache!” The voice was that of a little girl, but there was something sweet and warm about the voice, like the voice of an angel. I pushed the button to turn on the light. Nothing. Not that I found the matter unfathomable. Quite frequently, I saw the figure of a little girl moving up and down the hall past my bedroom door during the night. She has a soft, blue glow. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
For week, I lie awake at night, thinking this could be my beloved Annie. I waited and waited, night after night to see her again and perhaps talk with her, but she did not return. However, the bathtub faucet leaked and dripped fairly on occasion. I lay in bed, listening to the drip. It had developed a steady rhythm, as drips will. Suddenly, the rhythm changed. The drip sound changed in pitch, and it literally played a tune. It was the Highland Fairy Lullaby. The temperature in the room dropped, and I could clearly hear the sound of a little girl playing with her doll. She was singing a tuneless little song, the kind of melodic chat that was common among young children, especially little girls at play. From time to time, she would interrupt the humming of her sing-song to speak lovingly to her doll, and then she would call rather loudly to her mother that she had a tummy ache. However, there was no response from the mother, and she would return to playing with her doll and singing. I could almost see the little girl dressing her doll, combing its beautiful hair. From that night on, I would awake in the middle of the night or in the morning and hear the little girl calling for her mother. Once I had thoroughly searched the house and determined that it must be the sound of some lost and confused spirit-child, eternally singing and occasionally calling for her mother, or perhaps it was some kind of ethereal phonograph, eternally reproducing the sounds of a little girl. For some, this haunting might be considered a nightmare, but for me, it reminded me of the death of my six-week-old daughter, and it gave me hope that she was still near me, in my house growing and aging, even if she were only a spirit. I took these as signs from the spirit World and had a bird aviary constructed with exotic birds from all over the World, and invited my niece Daisy to live with me. Someone I could be a mother to. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
I invoke, conjure, and command thee, Spirit Botis, and your 60 Legions of Spirits to bring with you power armed from the Supreme Majesty, I do strongly command thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALDACHINENSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachide, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocating conjure thee. Magic forces, black and white, reaching out through space and light, be he far or be he near, brings us the demon Balthazar here. Ancient powers, we summon thee, we the power of three and seek your help in finding the demons who are in the Winchester Mansion. Come thou peaceably, visibly, and affably, now, and without delay, manifesting that magic running through this estate, help us see with clarity, power that we have summoned here, protect us and we will have no fear. Throne having eyes before and behind, by the fire which is about the Throne, by Holy Angels of Heaven, by the Mighty Wisdom of God; by the Seal of Basdathea, by this name PRIMEMATUM, which Moses named, and the Earth opened and swallowed Corah, Dathan, and Abiram; do thou make faithful answers unto all our demands and perform all our desires, so far as thine office shall permit. Come therefore peaceably and affably; come visibly and without delay; manifest that which we desire; speak with a clear and intelligible voice, that we may understand. TETRAGRAMMATON IEHOVAH, do I command three, at which being heard the elements are overthrown, the air is shaken, the sea runneth back, the fire is quenched, the Earth trembleth, and all the hosts of the celestials, terrestrials, and infernals do tremble together, and are troubled and confounded. Wherefore come thou, O Spirits Sarah, William, and Annie Winchester, forthwith, and without delay, from any or all parts of the World wherever thou mayest be, and make rational answers unto all things that we shall demand. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
A thin door indeed it is between life and death: one moment young and full of future, the next lying wounded in some stranger’s house in a small farm-town, the following instant forever lost and wandering in eternity. Could it be the vital spark, the spirit of not only souls killed by the Winchester rifle, but also members of the Winchester family that still search for the youth they lost, roaming the miles of hallways in the Winchester Mansion for all of eternity? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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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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I Woke Up and Called this Morning, the Tone of Your Voice Was a Warning
Half our mistakes in life arise from feeling when we ought to think, and thinking when we ought to feel. Many people are content to allow authority figures to call the shots. If someone with an impressive array of credentials or degrees or a well-known name speaks out on a matter, of if a social institution or a book makes a statement on a matter, or if a social institution or a book makes a statement, the matter is “settled.” However, authority figures are subject to error, just as any of us are. If I do not keep my mind open to this possibility, then I may ignore my own feelings on a subject. Rationalization is a way of coping with a situation in which, for either practical or emotional reasons, or both, a battered woman is stuck. For some women, the situation and the beliefs that rationalize it, may continue for a lifetime. For others, changes may occur within the relationship, within individuals, or in available resources which serve as catalysts for redefining the violence. When battered women reject prior rationalizations and begin to view themselves as true victims of abuse, the victimization process begins. There are a variety of catalysts for redefining abuse; we discuss six: (1) a change in the level of violence; (2) a change in the resources; (3) a change in the relationship; (4) despair; (5) a change in the visibility of violence; and (6) external definitions of the relationship. The traditional ideal of many societies is to hold back strong or unpleasant emotions for the sake of others. However, feelings held in are likely to come out in some way—often an inappropriate one. So we are really not doing the other person much of a favor by trying to cover up feelings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
A change in the level of violence: the severity of abuse is an important factor in women’s decisions to leave violent situations. There is no significant correlation between the number of years spent cohabiting with an abuser and the severity of abuse. On the contrary: the longer women lived with an abuser, the more severe the violence they endured, since violence increased in severity over time. What doe seem to serve as a catalyst is a sudden change in the relative level of violence. Women who suddenly realize that battering may be fatal may reject rationalizations in order to save their lives. One woman who had been severely beaten by an alcoholic husband for many years explained her decision to leave on the basis of a direct threat to her life: “It was like a pendulum. He’s swing to the extremes both ways. He’d get drunk and beat me up, then he’d get sober and treat me like a queen. One day he put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. It wasn’t loaded. But that’s when I decided I’d had it. I sued for separation of property. I knew what was coming again, so I got out. I didn’t want to. I still loved the guy, but I knew I had to for my own sanity.” A change in resources: Although some women rationalize cohabiting with an abuser by claiming they have no options, others begin reinterpreting violence when the resources necessary for escape become available. The emergence of safe homes or shelters since 1970 has produced a new resource for battered women, but they are not always safe places. While not completely adequate or satisfactory, the mere existence of a place to go alters the situation in which battering is experienced. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Public support of shelters is a statement to battered women that abuse need not be tolerated. Conversely, political trends which limit resources available to women, such as cutbacks in government funding to social programs, increase fears that life outside a violent marriage is economically impossible. One 25-year-old woman discussed this catalyst: “I stayed with him because I didn’t want my kids to have the same life I did. My parents were divorced, and I was always so ashamed of that. Yes, they’re all on their own now, so there’s no reason left to stay.” A change in the relationship: In the stages of a battering relationship, violent incidents are usually followed by periods of remorse and solicitude. Such phases deepen the emotional bonds, and make rejection of an abuser more difficult. However, as battering progresses, periods of remorse may shorten, or disappear, eliminating the basis for maintaining a positive outlook on the marriage. After a number of episodes of violence, a man may realize that this victim will not retaliate or escape, and thus feel no need to express remorse. Extended periods devoid of kindness or love may alter a woman’s feelings toward her partner so much so that she eventually begins to define herself as a victim of abuse. One woman recalled: “At first, you know, we used to have so much fun together. He was kind’ve, you know, a magnetic personality; he can be really charming. But it isn’t fun anymore. Since the baby came, it’s changed completely. He just wants me to stay home, while he goes out with his friends. He doesn’t even talk to me, most of the time….No, I don’t really love him anymore, not like I did. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Despair: Changes in the relationship may result in a loss of hope that “things will get better.” When hope is destroyed and replaced by despair, rationalizations of violence may give way to the recognition of victimization. Feelings of hopelessness or despair are the basis for some efforts to assist battered women, such as Al-Anon. The director of an Al-Anon organized shelter explained the concept of “hitting bottom”: Before the Al-Anon program can really be of benefit, a woman has to hit bottom. When you hit bottom, you realize that all of your own efforts to control the situation have failed; you feel helpless and lost and worthless and completely disenchanted with the World. Women cannot really be helped unless they are ready for it and want it. Some women come here when things get bad, but they are not really ready to be committed to Al-Anon. Things have not gotten bad enough for them, and they go right back. We see this all the time. A change in the visibility of violence: Creating a web of rationalizations to overlook violence is accomplished more easily if no intruders are present to question their validity. Since most violence between couples occurs in private, there are seldom conflicting interpretations of the event from outsiders. Only 7 percent of the respondents in our study who discussed spatial location of violence indicted events which took place outside the home, but all reported incidents within the home. Other report similar findings. If violence does occur in the presence of others, it may trigger a reinterpretation process. Battering in private is degrading, but battering in public is humiliating, for it is a statement of subordination and powerlessness. Having others witness abuse may create intolerable feeling of shame which undermine prior rationalizations. (And the thing about self-defense, the person who throws the first blow is usually the offender, but how do you prove it?) #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
“He never hit me in public before—it was always at home. But the Saturday I got back [returned to husband from shelter], we went Christmas shopping and he slapped me in the store because of some stupid joke I made. People saw it, I know, I felt so stupid, like, they must all think what a jerk I am, what a sick couple, and I thought, ‘God, I must be crazy to let him do this.’ Then one time at a party on a yacht, he jumped on me and my dad just watched and let him beat me. Then another time, he beat me and dragged me down the hallway by my hair, saying he was going to pull my wig off, but it was my real hair in a ponytail. I was screaming for help, but no one came. I thought he was going to pull all of my hair out.” External definitions of the relationship: A change in visibility is usually accomplished by the interjection of external definitions of abuse. External definitions vary depending on their source and the situation; they either reinforce or undermine rationalizations. Battered women who request help frequently find others—and especially officials—do not believe their story or are unsympathetic. Experimental research supports these reports. Observers usually fail to respond when a woman is attacked by a man, and justify nonintervention on the grounds that they assume the victim and offender were married. One young woman discussed how lack of support from her family left her without hope: “It wouldn’t be so bad if my own family gave a damn about me…Yeah, they know I’m here, and they don’t care. They didn’t care about me when I was a kid, so why should they care now? I got raped and beat as a kid, and now I get beat as an adult. Life is a big joke.” Clearly, such responses from family members contribute to the belief among battered women that there are no alternatives and that they just tolerate the abuse. However, when outsiders respond with unqualified support of the victim and condemnation of violent men, their definitions can be potent catalyst toward victimization. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Friends and relatives who show genuine concern for a woman’s well-being may initiate an awareness of danger which contradicts previous rationalizations. “My mother-in-law knew what was going on, but she wouldn’t it…I said, ‘Mom, what do you think these bruises are?’ and she said ‘Well, some people just bruise easy. I do it al the time, bumping into things.’ …And he just denied it, pretended like nothing happened, and if I’d said I wanted to talk about it, he’d say, ‘life goes on, you can’t just dwell on things.’…But this time, my neighbor knew what happened, she saw it, and when he denied it, she said, ‘I can’t believe it! You know that’s not true!’ …and I was so happy that finally, somebody else saw what was goin’ on, and I just told him then tht this time I wasn’t gonna’ come home! You can call the police, file police reports and go to the doctor with obvious signs of abuse, and sometimes the abuser never leaves. Even when the police say that they have handled the situation, he would just be quietly waiting in another room to beat me again for reporting him. One time him and one of the girls he was cheating with jumped me and he slammed my head into the wall and busted my lip. They bragged about. One night, he was hanging out with my dad and I would not come pick him up because he was drunk and I did not want him to beat me, and he my dad let him drive his car to my mother’s house, and when I opened the door, he started beating me and ripped my new silk blouse. My baby brother and his friend had to pull him off of me and he left. Victim’s f domestic violence should qualify as disabled because we truly are. ” The song Never No More by Aaliyah was meant to be a theme song for women not to put up with domestic violence anymore. Unfortunately, she was killed in a plane crash before they got a chance to launch the campaign. Shelters for battered women serve not only as material resources, but as source of external definitions which contribute to the victimization process. They offer refuge from a violent situation in which a woman may contemplate her circumstances and what she wants to do bout them. Within a shelter, women meet counselors and other battered women who are familiar with rationalizations of violence and the reluctance to give up commitment to a spouse. In counseling sessions, and informal conversations with other residents, women hear horror stories from others who have already defined themselves as victims. They are supported for expressing anger and rejecting responsibility for the abuse. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The goal of many shelters is to overcome feelings of guilt and inadequacy so that women can make choices in their best interest. In this atmosphere, violent incidents are reexamined and redefined as assaults in which the woman was victimized. The relevance of these catalysts to a woman’ interpretation of violence vary with her own situation and personality. The process of rejecting rationalizations and becoming a victim is ambiguous, confusing, and emotional. Prison is not a mere physical horror. It is using a pickaxe to no purpose that makes a prison; the horror resides in the failure to enlist all those who swing the pick in the community of mankind. True love is not blind. A person who loves you wants to see you doing well, not be blind to the abuse he or she is inflicting. This special form of deception is pointedly said to be in connection with spiritual rather than Worldly things. This surely shows that people of God, at the time of the end, will be expecting the coming of the Lord, and we can infer that they will be keenly awake to all movements from the supernatural World, in such a measure that deceiving spirits will be able to take advantage of it and anticipate the Lord’s appearing by “false Christs” and false signs and wonders. They mix their counterfeits with the true manifestations of the Spirit of God. The Lord says that men will be deceived (1) concerning Christ and His Parousia (appearing); (2) concerning prophecy—teachings regarding the future, from the spiritual World through inspired messengers: and (3) concerning the giving of proofs that the “teachings” are truly of God, by “signs” and “wonders” so Godlike as to be indistinguishable from the true even by those described as “the elect”—who will need to possess some other test than the judging by appearances of a “sign” being from God if they are to be able to discern the false from the true. The Apostles Paul’ words to Timothy, containing the special prophecy given to him by the Holy Spirit for the Church of Christ in the last days of the dispensation, exactly coincide with the words of the Lord recorded by Matthew. These two letters of Paul to Timothy are the last epistles that he wrote before his departure to be with Christ. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Both were written in prison, and Paul’s prison was to him what Patmos was to John—a time when he was “in the Spirit” (Rev. 1.10) and shown things to come. Paul was giving his last directions to Timothy for the ordering of the Church of God right on to the end of her time on Earth—giving rules to guide not only Timothy but all God’s servants “in dealing with God’s household.” In the midst of all these detailed instructions, his keen seer’s vision looks on to the “later times”; and by express command of the Spirit of God he depict in a few brief sentences the peril of the Church in those times, in the same way that the Spirit of God gave the prophets of the Old Testament some pregnant prophecy only to be fully understood after the events had come to pass. The apostle said: “The Spirit saith expressly, that in later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, seared in their own conscience as with a hot iron…” (1 Tim. 4;1-2). I have wondered whether anyone has considered or indeed is already involved in making the experience of loneliness, especially for prisoners in solitary confinement for long periods, a meaningful experience of personal inner growth, enlargement of mental and spiritual horizons, and the discovery that limitations such as cement wall, iron bars, hostile “keepers,” and isolation can indeed be the challenge to discover the richness of the World within? If no one in your knowledge has as yet considered this kind of contribution may I suggest it as a most terribly needed one? It is necessary for you to understand that the stopping of the expression of negative emotions and the struggle with negative emotions themselves are two quite different practices. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Trying to stop the expression comes first. You can do nothing about negative emotions and the struggle with negative emotions are two quite different practices. Trying to stop the expression comes first. You can do nothing about negative emotions themselves until you have learned to stop the expression of them. When you have acquired a certain control over the expression of negative emotions, you can begin to study negative emotions in themselves. You can make an effort to classify your negative emotions. You can find which negative emotions you have chiefly; why they come, what brings them, and so on. You must understand that your only control over emotions is through your mind, but the control does not come immediately. If you think rightly for six months, then negative emotions will be affected because they are based on wrong thinking. If you begin to think rightly today, negative emotions will not be changed tomorrow; but negative emotions may be changed in six months’ time, if you start to think rightly now. The ground has to be prepared beforehand. If you can learn to create a right attitude toward your irritability, bad temper, suspicion or whatever unpleasant emotion you experience most frequently, then—after some time—that attitude will help you to stop the negative emotion at the beginning. Once it has been allowed to start you cannot stop it. Once you begin to express it, you are in its power. The struggle must begin in your mind, and you must find your way of thinking on a definite subject. You cannot control your temper when it has already begun to appear. It is already too late; it has already jumped out. You can control such things as manifestations of temper, for instance only in one way. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Suppose you have to meet a certain man, and suppose he irritates you. Whenever you meet him your temper is liable to show itself. You do not like that but how can you stop it? You must begin with the study of your thinking. What you think about this man—not what do you feel when you are irritated, but what do you think about him at quiet moments? You may find that in your mind you argue with him; you prove to him that he is wrong; you tell him all his mistakes; you find that, generally, he behaves wrongly towards you. This is where you are wrong. You must learn to think rightly; you must find the way to think rightly. Then, if you do, it will happen like this: although emotion I much quicker than thought, emotion is a temporary thing, but thought can be made continuous; so whenever emotion jumps out, it hits against this continuous thought and cannot go on and manifest itself. So you can struggle with the expression of negative emotions, as in this example, only by creating continuous right thinking. Contrary to an assumption that some sociologist make, there seems to be little doubt that improper behavior in one situation can sometimes tell us a great deal about the offender’s reception in other situations. In any given society, different situations will be the scene of many of the same normative assumptions regarding conduct and of the same situational rulings. An individual who is remiss in one way in one situation, then, can be remiss in this same way whenever one shows one’s face to man. Thus, a person with senile deterioration who drools spoil his participation in all his situations in the same way and for the same reason. A person who is hard of hearing or who is near-blind will not be able to maintain the communication niceties that have here been considered at length; one will be forced to be all thumbs in all one’s situations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Thus, improper conduct in one situation can bespeak a general disenfranchisement in face-to-face interaction. Such conduct need not arise from a psychopathological condition; presumably it can, however, give rise to one through the response the individual may make to his excommunication. Some offenses, then, tell us about the price the offender must pay for one’s offensiveness, and the price one may pay for one’s price. Granting the occurrence of widely relevant offensiveness, the general procedure in this study has been to try to learn what this offensiveness costs the gathering in which it occurs, rather than what it means to and about the offender in the first place. When an individual intentionally or unintentionally conducts oneself in a way that others consider situationally improper, and shows thereby that one is either alienated from, or an alien to, the gathering, what other information can this provide them about one’s current conditions—apart from what one’s impropriety tells them about one’s likely fate? The meaning that offended personas impute to an offensive act is partly determined by whether they feel the act was intentional or unintentional. However, the complexity and ambiguity of this dichotomy, and the shifting but intimate relevance of its bearing, prevent any simple discussion of the actual or imputed meaning of situational offenses. In actual use, the dichotomy does not so much refer to a physiological factor of volition or control accountable by reference to the distinction between stripped and smooth muscles, the cerebrospinal and the autonomic nervous systems, but rather to the kind of responsibility of the act. The undesired acts in themselves need not be characteristically voluntary or involuntary from the physiological point of view. For example, to fail to appear at a social party because of one’s disapproval of the host is considered to be an intentional act; the same failure due to the sudden death of a kinsman may be considered aa fully warranted, excusable reason for staying away. In the first case we speak of the individual staying away voluntarily, in the second case, involuntarily. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Of any situationally offensive act and of any offender the following questions can be asked, taking the point of view of the others present: Does the actor have the capacity and training to appreciate the meaning of one’s offense, and if so, does he in fact appreciate its meaning? Is the act within the physical control of the actor, and if so, would one be willing to change one’s conduct if one were apprised of its meaning and given the opportunity to do so? Does the actor have extenuating reasons, external to the participants in the situation, for committing the offense? These factors, in various, combinations, provide so many concrete possibilities that little implication can be drawn from the mere presence or absence of one sense or another of intentionality. Living in the city or in the countryside are considered equally attractive. The choice is based solely on financial considerations—they will go where they will earn the most money. Like the commuters between Berkeley and San Francisco, the decision is made selfishly. For instance, dentists want to maximize their individual payoffs. Since there are many rural areas without enough dentists, this suggests that there is room for an increased number of dentists to practice in rural areas without causing any congestion. Thus rural dentistry is not quite as lucrative as having a large city practice, but it is a more certain route to an above-average income. Both the incomes and the value to society of rural dentists stays roughly constant as their numbers grow. Being a city practitioner is more kin to driving over the Oakland Bay Bridge—it is wonderful when you are alone and not so great when the city gets too crowded. The first dentist in an area can be extremely valuable, and maintain a very large practice. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
However, with too many dentists around, there is the potential for congestion and price competition. If the number increases too far, city dentists will be competing for the same patient pool, and their talents will be underutilized. If the population of city dentists grows even further, they may end up earning less than their rural counterparts. In short, as the number of city practices increase, the value of the marginal service that they perform falls, as does their income. As in the case of the commuters, the equilibrium does not maximize the combined income of dentists. But society cares about the consumers of dentistry as well as the practitioners. The reason is that there are two side effect created when one more person decided to be a city dentist. The additional city dentist lowers all other dentists’ incomes, imposing a cost on the existing city dentists. However, this reduction in price is a benefit to consumers. The two sides effects exactly cancel each other out. The difference between this story and our commuting example from the past is that no one benefited from the extra commuting time when the Oakland Bay Bridge became congested. When the side effect is a change in price (or income), then the purchasers benefit at the producers’ cost. There is zero net effect. From society’s viewpoint, a dentist should not worry about lowering colleagues’ incomes. Each dentist should pursue the highest-paying practice. As each person makes a selfish choice, we are invisibly led to the right distribution of dentist between city and rural areas. And, the two careers will have equal incomes. Or, to the extent that living in a city is worth more than living in a rural area, this differential will be reflected in income differences. Of course, the American Dental Association may look at this differently. It may place more weight on the loss to city dentists’ incomes than on the saving consumer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
From the dental profession’s perspective there is indeed a misallocation, with too many dentists practicing in the city. If more dentist took rural practices, then the potential advantages of a city practice would not be “wasted” by competition and congestion. Taken as a whole, the income of dentists would rise if it were possible to keep the number of city dentists below the free market level. Although dentist cannot place a toll on those who want to practice in the city, it is in the profession’s self-interest to create a fund that subsidizes dental students who commit to establish a rural practice. The human race is approaching the great historical transition to thorough, inexpensive control of the structure of matter, with all that implies for medicine, the environment, and our way of life. What happens before and during that transition will shape its direction, and with it the future. Is worth getting excited about? Look at some of the concerns that bring people together for action: Poverty, weapons systems, deforestation, toxic waste, social security, housing, global warming, deadly viruses, Alzheimers disease, heart disease, lung disease, cancer, endangered species, freedom, jobs, nuclear power, life extension, space development, acid rain. Each of these issues mobilizes great effort. Each will be utterly transformed by nanotechnology and its applications. For many of these issues, nanotechnology offers tools that can be used to achieve what people have been striving to accomplish. For many of these same issues, the abuse of nanotechnology could obliterate everything that has been achieved. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
A good companion to the precept “Think globally, act locally” is “Think of the future, act in the present.” If everyone were to abandon short-term problems and today’s popular causes, the results would be disastrous. However, there is no danger of that. The more likely danger is the opposite. The World is heading straight for a disruptive transition with everything at stake, yet 99.9 percent of human effort and attention is going into either short-term concerns or long-term strategies based on a fantasy future of lumbering twenty first-century technology. What is to be done? For people more concerned with feeling good than with doing good, the answer is simple: Go for the warm feeling that comes from adding one more bit of support to an already-popular cause. The gratification is immediate, even if the contribution is small. For people more concerned with doing good—who can feel good only if they live up to their potential—the answer is less simple: To do the most good, find an important cause that is not already buoyed up by a cheering multitude, a project where one person’s contribution almost automatically makes a big difference. There is, today, an obvious choice for where to look. The potential benefits and drawbacks of nanotechnology generate a thousand areas for research, discussion, education, entrepreneuring, lobbying, development, regulation, and the rest—for preparation and for action. A person’s contributions can range from career commitment to verbal support. Both can make a difference in where the World ends up. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Benjamin Day was a twenty-three-year-old printer with wild ideas when he changed the history of what we now call the media. This was 1833 and New York had grown to a population of 218,000. However, the largest daily newspaper in the city claimed only 4,500 subscribers. At a time when the average urban worker in American earned 75 cents a day, a New York newspaper cost 6 cents, and not many people could afford them. The papers were printed on handpresses capable of turning out no more than a few hundred copies an hour. Day took a crazy chance. On September 3, 1833, he launched the New York Sun and sold it for only one penny a copy. Mr. Day unleashed a horde of newsboys into the streets to sell his paper—an innovation at the time. For $4 a week he hired another printer to go to the courthouse and cover police cases. It was one of the earliest uses of a “reporter.” Within four months the Sun had the biggest readership in the city. In 1835 he bought the latest technology—a steam driven press—and the Sun reached the unheard-of circulation of 20,000 daily. Day had invented the popular press, crime stories and all. His innovations were paralleled at about the same time by other “wild men”—Henry Hetherington with his Twopenny Dispatch in England and Emile de Girardin with La Presse in France. The down-scale “penny paper”—called the “pauper press” in England—was more than just a commercial affair. It had lasting political effects. Along with the early trade unions and the beginnings of mass education, it helped bring the less affluent classes into the political life of nations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
By the 1870s something called “opinion” had to be take into account by politicians of every stripe. “There is, now,” wrote one French thinker, “no European government which does not reckon with opinion, which does not feel obliged to give account of its acts and to show how closely they conform to the national interest, or to put forward the interest of the people as the justification for any increase in its prerogatives.” A century and a half after Benjamin Day, another wild, feral man, feeling as guilty as a criminal, came up with an idea sure to bankrupt him. Tall, gusty, impatient, and brilliant Ted Turner had inherited a billboard company when his father died from death by suicide. Mr. Turner built it, acquired radio and television stations, as was wondering what to do next when he noticed something odd. Cable television stations were springing up around the United States of America, but they were starving for programs and advertising. Meanwhile, up in the Heavens were things called “satellites.” Mr. Turner put two and two together and turned it into five. He beamed the programming from his Atlanta station up to a satellite and down to the program-hungry cable stations. At the same time, he offered a “one-buy” national market for advertisers who wouldn’t trouble to purchase time on scores of small individual cable systems. His Atlanta “superstation” because the cornerstone of a growing empire. On June 1, 1980, Mr. Turner took the next, even loonier step. He formed what critics labeled the “Chicken Noodle Network”—for CNN, or Cable News Network. CNN became the laughingstock of every media pundit from the canyons of Manhattan to the studies in Los Angeles. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Wall Street was sure CNN would collapse, probably taking Mr. Turner’s other businesses down with it. No one had ever even tried to create a twenty-four-hour news network. CNN today is the opiate of the mass. Perhaps, the most influential broadcast news source in the United States of America. TV monitors are constantly tuned to CNN in the White House, in the Pentagon, in foreign embassies, as well as in millions of homes all over America. However, Mr. Turner’s wild dreams went far beyond the United States of America, and today CNN operates in over 100 countries, making it the most global of all television networks, mesmerizing the Middle East skeiks, European journalists, and Latin America politicians with its extended firsthand coverage of such events as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the antics of President Biden as he seems dazed and confused, or the conflict in Ukraine. CNN is carried over the air, or over cable, into hotel rooms, offices, homes, even staterooms on the Queen Elizabeth II. Although many people believe FOXNews is more balanced and convers the invasion at the southern border, which America tries to suppress. One of Mr. Turner’s little-known prize possessions is a videotape of his private meeting with Cuba’ Fidel Castro. In the course of the visit, Mr. Castro mentions that he, too, routinely watches CNN for the big news. Mr. Turner, never shy about promoting his companies, asks Mr. Castro if he would be willing to say as much on camera for a commercial. Mr. Castro puffs on his cigar and says, in effect, why not? The commercial has never run on air, but Mr. Turner hauls it out to show his visiting friends now and then. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Mr. Turner is one of a kind. Handsome, raucous, funny, erratic, he owns a buffalo ranch, the Atlanta Braves baseball team, and MGM’s library of old movies. A fierce exemplar of free enterprise, he was also a peace activist long before he and actress Jane Fonda began a highly-publicized romance. He launched the “Goodwill Games” in Moscow at a time when it took political, as well as financial, courage to do so. His networks also run a heavy schedule of pro-ecology programming. Today, Mr. Turner is by far the most visionary of a dozen or so hard-driving media barons who are revolutionizing the media even more deeply than Benjamin Day—and whose collective efforts will, over the long run, shift power in many countries. What people do depends on what they believe. The path to a World prepared to handle nanotechnology begins with the recognition that nanotechnology is a real prospect. What would be the response to a new idea as broad as nanotechnology, if it were true? Since it does not fall into any existing technical specialty, it would not be anyone’s job to provide an official, authoritative evaluation. Advanced molecular manufacturing cannot be worked on in the lab today, so it would not matter to scientists playing the standard careers-and-funding game. Still, some scientists and engineers would become interested, thinking about it, and lend support. Science News, covering the first major conference on the subject, would announce that “Sooner or later, the Age of Nanotechnology will arrive.” This is, in fact, what happened. However, what is the idea were false? Some curious scientists or engineer would soon point out a fatal error in the idea. Since the sweeping implications of nanotechnology make many people uncomfortable, a good counterargument would spread fast, and would soon be on the lips of everyone who would prefer to dismiss the whole thing. No such counterargument has been heard. The most likely reason is that nanotechnology is a sound idea. Reactions has been changing from “That’s ridiculous” to “That’s obvious.” The basic recognition of the issue is almost in place. When nanotechnology emerges from the World of ideas to the World of physical reality, we will need to be prepared. However, what does this require? To understand what needs to be done today, it is best to begin with the long term and then work back to the present. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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I Will Condemn Thy Body and Soul
The desire to communicate with spirits is older than history; it connects with ineradicable principles inhuman nature. The sources of occult wisdom, it proceeds, are, firstly, in God, second spiritual essences—that is to say, the Angelical Hierarch; thirdly, in corporal creatures, the reference being probably to the signatura rerum of Paracelsus; fourthly, in Nature—that is to say, in a knowledge of the secret virtues of interval things, as, for example, herbs and precious stones; fifthly, but after a long interval in the apostate spirits reserved to the last judgment; sixthly, in ministers of punishment in hell, which seems to connect with the classical conception of avenging infernal gods; seventhly, in the people of the element, that is, the Salamanders, Sylphus, Undines, and Pigmies. If we would call any evil Spirit to the circle, it first behoveth us to consider and to know his nature, to which of the planets it agreeth, and what offices are distributed to him from the planet. This being know, let there be sought out a place fit and proper for his invocation, according to the nature of the planet and the quality of the offices of the same Spirit, as near as the same may be done. For example, if his power be over the sea, rivers or floods, then let a place be chosen on the shore, and so of the rest. The Spirits of Mars have a tall body and a choleric, filthy countenance, brown, swarthy, or red in colour; they have horns like the hart, claws like a griffin, and they bellow like wild bulls. They have the motion of burning fire, and their sign is thunder and lightening about the circle. Their particular forms are an armed king riding on a wolf; and armed man; a woman holding a buckler on her thigh; a she-goat; a horse; a stage; a red garment; wool; a cheestip. Wool of a choleric disposition is perhaps a Geotic form of dun-cotton. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
White Magic, as the intelligences concerned are said to be good and great, but their offices are mixed and confusing, including the discovery of treasures, the detection of secrets, fomenting war, opening locks and bolts, and procuring the love of women, inclining men to luxury and sowing hatred and evil thoughts. Obviously, White Magic of this kind is much blacker than it is painted. And I will tell you something else, too. Within the Winchester Mansion there lies the legendary wonder-World of Mysticism, Magic, and Sorcery, a World of fascination or terror. There, also, the dead live, and the hierarchies of extra-mundane intelligence are within easy communication, and become ministers or tormentors, guides or destroyers of man. The jewels, the stained-glass and led glass windows, the family’s fortune, it is all connected. Same with the Winchester name. The powers possessed by these Intelligence are very curiously set forth. They rule naturally over certain departments and operations of the material World, but outside these departments they perform the same operations magically. The mansion is filled with Pentacles and Sigils, instrument used in magical ceremonies. Along the long, winding and twisting hallways, it is difficult to say where the mansion actually beings, so it is uncertain where it ends. There are many curious secrets or transcendental good and transcendental evil. Many of the recent revelations lead us to concede, within certain limits, that there may have been some recrudescence of diabolism on the estate, as it is possible that there was formal communication with the Powers of Darkness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Under the pretence of White Magic, usually includes the Rites for the invocation of Evil Spirits. Many people do roam the halls of the Winchester Mansion looking about one to see if any Spirit does appear. And if any Spirit shall appear, let the invocant turn toward him or her, receive him or her courteously, and earnestly entreating one, let one require one’s name. Let one ask whatsoever he or she will. There are generally Spirits of the Air, who are undoubtedly demons, and a set of angelical conjurations floating about. Beyond the fact that the evoked Spirits are Lucifer, Beelzebuth, Astaroth, and the inferiors, be forewarned that conjurer is expected to give oneself, body and soul, to the demon who serves one. One might be otherwise be appalled at the frightful figures of those rebellious angels who in sin were cast into the abyss, and become tormented by witch craft or possessed by the demon. Sarah L. Winchester had been in a near daze one night from exhaustion. The heavy, leaden sky, the wind roaring against the windows. Darkness was falling with a pure metallic monotony to it. Heavy footsteps, sounds produced by a number of booted feet, were crossing the landing. Several moved quickly and as one, as if marching to some ethereal command; others dragged behind as if they belonged to the wounded. They paused abruptly at the top of the stairs because they lead to the ceiling, which confused the ghosts, as they stood marching on the spot. Mrs. Winchester bit her lip in fright. The housemaid, Hedvig, laid a comforting hand on her arm. Mrs. Winchester glared at the and waited for the commotion to cease. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The phantom footsteps began descending the stairs, tramping out a slow, ordered rhythm. Their determined marching was like that of a platoon of battle-weary soldiers advancing in a final push. With each tread gained, the marching grew louder. The footsteps were drawing ever close to the Venetian Dining Room. Although Mrs. Winchester’s heart did, in a perpetual eagerness of attention, sit in her great house alone, day after day, month after month, deprived of company, this fate was more cruel than she deserved and more painful than she could bear. Mrs. Winchester let out a cry, “It is rather gashtly. All the millions and—imprisonment in my home by spirits. Think of it—day after day, winter after winter, year after year, howling, banging, ghost, devils, demons, angels, and alone I remain.” Mrs. Winchester seemed to be the only one showing fear. Hedvig seized her chance. She spoke out into the tense silence, in a voice that was loud and confident. “You have my complete sympathy, Mrs. Winchester,” she’d said, briefly explaining her own position. “I can heart it.” Hedvig’s hands began to tremble. However, she looked at Mrs. Winchester with a reassuring smile. Mrs. Winchester began to sob in terror. There came a frantic pounding, as if several heavy boots were trying to kick down the door. The door flew open. Mrs. Winchester and Hedvig turned in fear. Suddenly the door slammed shut again. Mrs. Winchester stood up. She was terrified. Hedvig had been arrested by the opening and closing of the door, and was gasping out something inarticulate. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Mrs. Winchester ran out of the dining room and went upstairs. She rushed down the passage and through a door which communicated, rather surprisingly, with a narrow walled-in stair case that was unfamiliar to her. At the top, she found herself on a small landing upon which two doors opened. Through the confusion of her mind Mrs. Winchester noticed that these rooms, with their special staircase leading down to what had always been called Mr. William Winchester’s suit. It was neat, glossy and extremely cold. The red-apple glaze had barely faded from her cheeks, and not a lock was disarranged in the unnatural luster of her false front; even her cap and ribbons hung symmetrically along either cheek. However, death had happened to her, and had made her into someone else. At first glance it was impossible to say if the unspeakable horror in Hedvig’s wide open eyes were only the reflection of that change, or of the agent by whom it had come. Mrs. Winchester paused a moment. “Her hand is warm still—but no pulse. How did she get up here? She’s dead,” Mrs. Winchester pronounced. “Oh, poor thing! But how–?” Mrs. Winchester drew near, and was kneeling down, taking the inanimate hand in hers. Mrs. Winchester bending over, distinctly saw a circle of red marks on Hedvig’s throat—the marks of recent bruises. She looked again into the awful eyes. “She’s been strangled, but by whom? Perhaps that is why I was led to this bedroom.” Mrs. Winchester, with a shiver of fear, drew down the housemaid’s eyelids. There seemed, in the air o the cold room, something that forbade wonderment and silenced conjecture. “You hadn’t ought to have meddled with Mr. Winchester’s suit, my lady. That is what he must have punished you for. When it came to his privacy, he would not ever listen to human reason…even in his death, he demands privacy.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Someone in the grip of demonic control feels compelled to act, to do the most objectionable things to others in order to somehow save themselves. There is a hierarchy of evil spirits. The minor ones, the foot soldiers, do the dirty work, to prepare the way for the generals. We know so little about ourselves and how our minds work. And there are demons just waiting to fool us. Hedvig had stumbled on Mr. Winchester’s Verus Jesuitarum Libellus, or “True Magical Work of the Jesuits,” which contained most powerful conjurations for all evil spirits of whatever state, condition, and office they are, and a most powerful conjuration of the Spirit Uriel. It was an original copy from the 16th century. The Conjurations are excessively curious. The first is addressed to a spirit whose name is not indicated, but he is supposed to have been obedient to Abraham and Isaac, and is directed to bring the magician out of the depths of the sea so many millions—the number is not specified, and depends upon the cupidity of the operator—of the best Spanish gold; otherwise, says the Conjuration, I will condemn thy body (sic) and thy soul. In the second formula, the spirit is cited by the knowledge and exorcising power of Agrippa, which again puts a definite limit to the antiquity of the collection, were it otherwise necessary. The third Invocation is addressed to the spirit Zayariel, who is conjured by Agla Scheffert and the great Jehova Podashocheia. The remainder, to the number of seven in all, are nearly identical in character and quite in purpose, the demon being invariably required to bring that which is desired by the operator from the depths of the sea, or from the abyss of the waters, or from the spiritual abyss. The Discharge or Absolution which concludes the series is really an additional conjuration. Perhaps we are not really as advanced as we think and should heed warnings about occulta powers. I implore Thee, O Thou Grand and Powerful ADONAY, Master of all Spirits! I beseech Thee, O Eloim! I Implore Thee, O JEHOVAM! O Grand ADONAY, I give unto Thee my soul, my heart, my inward parts, my hands, my feet, my desires, my entire being! O Grand ADONAY, deign to be favourable unto me! So be it. Amen. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
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The Mystery Has Never Been Solved!
Much of the ceremonial rituals that took place in The Winchester Mansion goes back to the Knights Templar. The Order of the Knights Templar can be traced in part to the Templars. And yet, the Knights Templar are also the claimed ancestors of satanists, a fact which is decidedly hard to prove, though within an organization so large there may well have been diverse groups who followed their own calling. The knights, largely from France and England, joined the order over a period of many years. They had a system of leadership with a Grand Master, knights, chaplains, sergeants, craftsmen, seneschals and commanders. The order had its own clergy and its meetings were held in the strictest secrecy. Unmarried knights wore a white mantle with a red cross while others wore a black mantle with a red cross. Membership was mostly male, and established orders in virtually every Latin country, drawing people from all over Europe. It also became a great trading agency and though originally the Roman Catholic Church actually supported a number of secret societies who were Christian-based, the power of the Templars began to wield became the fear of successive popes and of European noblemen. Philip IV of France began a series of attacks against the Knights Templar and his campaign was given official blessing by the election of Pope Clement V (1305-1314) who renounced the Templars as immoral heretics. Many people know that Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester had a Famous Blue Séance Room where she carried on her rituals and had a series of colourful robes she wore. However, the mystery has never been solved as to why she built the strangest mansion in the World? #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Stories were already circulating that Mrs. Winchester, behind the closely guarded doors of her mansion, indulged in the most offensively blasphemous rituals said to be directed totally towards the reversal of Christianity itself. She was said to worship a goat-like idol, the Baphomet, anointing it with the fat of pigs, while the Knights used the fat of murdered children, roasting children and eating them, laying women across their altars for the most violent forms of indecencies to satisfy their lust for life-blood; they were said to have indulged in homosexual rites and other various claims alleged they stamped the Holy Cross under foot, spat and urinated upon it and used the Mass as the basis for their own worship—later to be known universally as the Black Mass. Actual proof of these events is largely contained in the confessions received under torture which followed the arrest of Mrs. Winchester’s butler Albert Pike. He and 140 of his brethren were imprisoned in Santa Clara Valley, tortured and then executed en masse. Algernon Blackwood, under extreme torture, confessed to speaking against Christianity but denied depravity. In 1890, he was brough out on to the nine-story tower of The Winchester Mansion and ordered to repeat his confession in front of the villagers and accept a sentence of life imprisonment. On the balcony of the tower, he burst into a rage of anger and protested innocence of all charges and thus signed his own death warrant. The order was given that he should be taken into the fruit orchard and burned at the stake. As the flames licked his body, he summoned Mrs. Winchester and, in his dying, breathe to meet him at the Bar of Heaven. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Diocesan priest, Father Peter Yorke, who was then editor of the Archiocesan newspaper, The Monitor, emerged sending orders to every village where the Templars operated, instructing that they should be arrested and charges of heresy and sorcery brought against them. He published a series of exposes, and hundreds of knights were brought to trail, tortured, and executed. The vast wealth of the Templars working at The Winchester Mansion were accused of devil worship. What remained to be handed down and revived, especially in the twenty-first century, were the rumors of ritual and dastardly happenings which many of today’s extremist followers of the Knights Templar seem prepared to believe and accept with some enthusiasm. One of the more important traditions handed down by Mrs. Winchester concerns an instruction for future secret societies. On the day the Knights planned to burn to death Father Yorke, a pact was made and communicated to all surviving Knights who had now gone to ground. The instruction was clear—that the Order of the Knight Templar should be continued in perpetuity. It is said that the surviving Templars should thereafter fight for the destruction of the papacy and prevent Mrs. Winchester from being stripped of her wealth and murdered. These orders, it was said, were handed on to descendants of the order and the Winchester family, who at various points in history have included satanists and a diverse calling of occultists. What remained of the Winchester family and the Knights went into the deepest secrecy, surfacing occasionally and surrounded constantly by rumour, but little discernible fact. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The Illuminati came to fortify The Winchester Mansion, which had reached seven-stories high, with 600 rooms, after the 1906 Earthquake. While it was true that Mrs. Winchester left her mansion, there are more reasons as to the why. The avowed spiritualist, Mrs. Winchester, had constructed a boathouse and erected a huge mountain of Earth upon which a new mansion she had planned to build would be erected. It was to overlook the bay, an immense seawall and costly cannel system, with proper floodgates, through which the Winchester private fleet of launches and yachts were to wend their way. It was said that Mrs. Winchester was being haunted by vicious spirits and that death would be her penalty for leaving her home. Her existence was mythical because only half a dozen people had seen her. A sheriff had been striving for the past three months to serve upon her a summons to appear in court in proceedings that a real estate dealer had brought upon her. Bloodhounds roamed the grounds of the mansion and polite Asian staff answered telephone calls. Mrs. Winchester was always alone save for a bodyguard. She was wealth as few women were and found her pleasure in superintending a half dozen workmen, who for seven years had gone from wing to wing of the mansion, constructing one month what they were called to destroy on the following month. Her mansion was considered the pride of the county and the basis for mysterious legends. The Illuminati came were concerned about a group of subversives who were discovered to be using occult practices and rituals to attack Mrs. Winchester and her mansion. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
E.W. McClellan of Burlingame, the contractor of 98 acres of land purchased by Mrs. Winchester, was holding it and refused to give it up because he believed she was the lead of a secret society working to “establish Satan’s kingdom on Earth,” an accusation which was a direct throw-back to the age of the Knights Templar; and that dictum still exists today. The Psychosophical Society stated that The Winchester Mansion had existed since the sixteenth century and comprised the World League of Illuminati. They wanted to prevent Mrs. Winchester from passing on her palatial estates in all their purity to the next generation. The hotbed of intrigue, rumour and gossip directed at The Winchester Mansion supposedly involved the death/assassination of some, the suicide/murder of others over the scandals invariably linked to Propaganda 2 (P2) Lodge and various Intelligence agencies like the KGB and the CIA with a scandal which is too immense to expound here, nor is it suitably for this part of the report. What can be said, however, is that occult groups working within the traditions of the Illuminati represent a definite consideration of these events. Mrs. Winchester’s husband, William Wirt Winchester, was a master of mathematics and the possessor of certain secret occult knowledge. He gathered seven disciples around him and went into the World of the brotherhood to perform good works. Staff have described that 120 years after his death, his perfectly preserved corpse was found in one of the many buildings of The Winchester Mansion. Because of the secrecy and the mystery that surround The Winchester Mansion, thousand want to know more and are desperate to visit it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Sometimes the hysteria surrounding The Winchester Mansion morphed into such hysterical proportions that the authorities have had to shut the mansion down for a day or ban people from entering, even though many do not believe that it actually exists. Fans of The Winchester Mansion have sprouted up all over the World. Some people still regard the story of The Winchester Mansion as a fable, but most know it does actually exist and possesses esoteric knowledge of mystery and mysticism. Some the people who were involved in the construction of The Winchester Mansion were magicians, writers, statesmen and novelist. This mansion has quit a following and has collected members through the ages, in positions of far greater power and influence than the Illuminati. Legend has it that descendants from the founding fathers of the Middle Ages are on the board of trustees. The official secret society in control of the estate have connections throughout Europe and the United States of America, whose membership is an indication of the current revival in the mystery religions and semi-secret societies. The mansion alone boasts of some 60,000 members and operates from its headquarters in San Jose, California with affiliated lodges in Britain, France, Germany, Australia and South Africa. The caretakers are preserving the traditional beliefs of the 19th century. A cipher manuscript was found in one of the libraries of The Winchester Mansion. The author of the manuscript was not identified but it was obviously someone with a very intense knowledge of the supernatural, alchemy, astrology and the magical theories of Eliphas Levi. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Mrs. Winchester’s mansion and gardens reflect her colourful and ornate rituals and its purpose was “to obtain control of the nature and power of my own being.” The might wings of the mansion outspread dove-like sitting brooding on the vast abyss. What is dark in Mrs. Winchester is to be illumined, what is lose raised and supported; the nine-story tower was constructed so that Heaven could hide nothing from Mrs. Winchester’s view, nor the deep tract of hell. Hell said to be a hideous flaming ruin and combustion in a bottomless perdition, there where Satan dwells in adamantine chains and penal fire. Nine times the space that measures day and night to mortal men, Satan and his horrid crew lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, confounded though immortal: but his doom reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought both of lost happiness and lasting pain torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes that witnessed huge affliction and dismay mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate: at once as far as angels ken he views the dismal situation waste and wild, a dungeon of horrible. Many leaders of the Church do not preach about Hell anymore because the Church has become a tax-free business and they do not want to hear about where they may go, nor do they want to scare their dirty money away from the Church. As a result of the loss of real churches who teach about Satan and demons, people are all wild and out of control and no longer fear anything and go around sinning like rain in Seattle. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
On a hot and dry Friday the 13th of June 1890, Mrs. Winchester drifted into an uneasy sleep, but not for long. Half an hour later she was wide awake again. Something was wrong; a change was coming over the bedroom. There was a sense of dread. Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, were peace and rest could not dwell entered. Her home started to feel like a place where hope could not come, and all that did come was torture without end. She sat up, fully alert, straining her ears for the slightest untoward sound, but all was silent except for the little trusted noises the home made during the evening. However, Mrs. Winchester noticed something odd: an unnatural coldness was stealing over the room. It had been a hot summer day. How could it be so cold? She shivered and ducked back under the covers, tugging them more snugly about her. It did not help; the cold kept increasing. She pulled the covers over her head, chiding herself for being silly and willing herself into sleep. However, the terrible dread kept gnawing at her. She tried to think pleasant thoughts, tried to ignore her thudding heart, and tried to pray. Her attempts brought little comfort; the fear continued to build. She sensed that something frightful was about to happen. She held her breath and waited, not knowing what to expect. Before too long, she heard a sound: the unmistakable creak of the doorknob. The spring bolt was sliding back with tiny clicks. Mrs. Winchester froze. Very slowly, the door began to open. Her fear quickened further as she heard the tread of heavy, booted feet approaching the bed. She wanted to call out for help, but was too afraid, as if some force was willing her to silence. Mrs. Winchester was helpless in the face of that power. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
When she tried to pray, a demon started to speak. “The force of hose dire arms has caused me to fall to a place with floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire. Fierce contention brought along innumerable force of Spirits armed with durst in a dubious battle of unconquerable will, revenge, immortal hate.” Mrs. Winchester was dying and she knew it. This demon had come to claim her soul. She was making gaps, with long spaces between. A perspective of stern and cruel memories stretching away, like its own grey avenues, into a blur of darkness. Certainly no house had ever more completely and finally broken with the present. Mrs. Winchester lit a candle. A little animal stood before her, forbidding, almost menacing: there was anger in his large brown eyes. He came no nearer. As she advanced, he gradually fell back, and she noticed another dog, a vague, rough, brindled thing. At the same moment a third dog, a long-haired white mongrel, slipped out of a doorway and joined the others. All three stood looking at Mrs. Winchester with grave eyes; but not a sound came from them. Zip, had seemed to be observing them with a deeper intentness. Mrs. Winchester endured many long years of the company of many different creatures. They would return again and again. As she was in her morning room, the coldness came back. Her mind was alert but her body seemed paralyzed. The entity seemed to have the power to immobilize her from a distance. She heard the dull footfalls crossing her mahogany floors. There was an evil lurking in her home. Something started pounding on the table. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The pounding was so fierce that her cup of tea bounced off the table and fell to the floor. Then it stopped. Mrs. Winchester thought maybe she was having delusions. But whatever it was did not want her to drink the tea. More odd things began to happen—occurrences no one could explain. A malignancy pervaded. Often, people would hear a horrible, mocking, evil laugh. Lights would slicker for no reasons; water taps would turn themselves on, then off. She would find her silverware mysteriously rearranged. On several occasions she discovered her solid gold dinner service hidden in a corner of the room. One night, she had a roaring fire in the fireplace of her bedroom, went to the bathroom, and returned the fireplace totally clean with nothing it in burning. The servants began to complain of hearing mice in the night, but Mrs. Winchester was certain there were no mice in the house. On several occasions, one could very clearly hear the floorboards creaking upstairs, as though somebody was walking about the house. The servants heard the creaking too but, as is often the case with servants, they got used to it, and to the other noises and unexplained presences. Mrs. Winchester urged them no to speak of those things outside of the house. It was bd enough that she was subjected to the disturbances and torment; the last thing she wanted was to attract undue attention to her home. People do not, as a rule, react compassionately to reports of supernatural infestations; many tend to suspect that the victim has somehow, whether by word or deed, “brought it on herself.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
At times, Mrs. Winchester felt that the entity was trying to crush the life out of her. She left her light burning all night. Through time, Mrs. Winchester was forced to accept her suffering. There was nothing else she could do. One winter night, one of the butlers was found dead at the head of a narrow flight of stairs leading down from his room. It was Mrs. Winchester who found him and gave the alarm, so distracted with fear and horror—for his blood was all over her—that at first roused household could not make out what she was saying, and thought she was waking from a nightmare. However, there, sure enough, at the top of the stairs lay the butler, stone dead, and head foremost, the blood from his wounds dripping down the steps below him. He had been dreadfully scratched and gashed about the face and throat, as if with curious pointed weapons; and one of his legs had a deep tear in it which had cut an artery, and probably caused his death. Bu how did he come there, and who had murdered him? Mrs. Winchester declared that she had been asleep in her bed, and hearing his cry had rushed out to find him lying on the stairs; but this was immediately questioned. A shadow was rearing up from the body. Mrs. Winchester described it as “a blob, like smoking black cloud, not the shape of a person—just a thing, but a terrible thing. The absolute evil that came from it was overwhelming. I was so gripped with terror, I could not move, and I knew that if it came toward me, I would be swallowed up…destroyed, and that would be the end of me. Imagine what it feels like to know that you are going to be killed, and the specter that is torturing you is deliberately making you suffer beforehand. That is how it was. I felt a level of fear that is beyond words. Then I heard a voice and screamed.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
The male voice was hoarse, stertorous, angry almost. “You have left us this our spirit and strength entire strongly to suffer our pains that we my so suffice his vengeful ire, or do him mightier services as his thralls by right of war, whatever his business be here in the heart of hell to work in fire, or do his errands in the gloomy deep; what can it then avail though yet we feel strength undiminished, or eternal being to undergo eternal punishment?” Mrs. Winchester instantly went to sleep—chilling testimony to the control the demon had over her. When she awoke, she was clean, in her sleeping gown, and in her bed. However, it was with the possibility, and the hope, that the end of her long ordeal might well be in sight. Little of the fast-fading sunlight entered the house through the windows, many of which were partly or entirely covered with drapes. However, it was bright enough for Mrs. Winchester to see that the French Provincial sofa’s upholstery was slashed. Shredded wool spilled onto the floor. A solid oak bookcase had been hammered to pieces against the wall, gouging holes in the lath and plaster walls, running the Lincrusta-Walton Wallcovering. Her silver tea service has been smashed, along with a floor lamp. Books had been taken off the shelves, torn apart, and scattered across the living room. Mrs. Winchester lit a candle. It did not shed much light, just enough to reveal more details of the rubble. Looks like somebody went through here with a wrecking ball and scissors, she thought. The house remained silent. Leaving the door open behind her, she took a couple of steps into the room, and the crumpled pages of the ruined books crunched crispy underfoot. She noticed the dark, rusty stains on some of the paper and on the bone-white foam wool stuffing, and suddenly she stopped, realizing the stains were blood. A moment later, Mrs. Winchester spotted the corpse. It was that of a big man, lying on his side on the floor near the sofa, half-covered by gore-smeared book pages, book boards, and dust jackets. Zip’s growling grew louder, meaner. Moving closer to the body, which was just a few feet from the dining-room archway. Mrs. Winchester remembered that John Hansen had lately been making repairs, including a leak faucet and a broken door lock. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
However, Mrs. Winchester thought because of the way the room looked, he had been killed weeks ago. Her house was so big that it would often take weeks, months, and sometimes years to get around it. Yet, on closer inspection, the corpse proved to be neither bloated with the gas of decomposition nor marked by any signs of decay, so it could not have been there for very long. Perhaps only a day or less. The body had been disemboweled. Zip’s low growling gave wat to ugly snarling punctuated with hard, sharp barks. With a nervous twitch and a sudden pounding of her heart, Mrs. Winchester turned from the corpse and saw that zip was facing into the nearby dining room. The shadows were deep in there because the drapes were drawn shut over all the windows, and only a thin gray light passed through from the kitchen beyond. “Go, get out, leave!” an evil voice told her. It was certainly not the voice of Mr. Hansen. Something in the dining room was moving. There was no doubt of its presence, because it rushed out onto the dining-room tables, and came straight at Mrs. Winchester, emitting a blood-freeze shriek. She saw lantern eyes in the gloom, and nearly a man-sized figure that—in spite of poor light—gave an impression of deformity. Then the demon was coming off the table, straight at her. I Do conjure thee, O Spirit Focalor and your legion of thirty spirits to manifest your spiritual weapon in this corporeal World through my will and might! Empower it so that it may serve me here upon the corporeal plane! May it serve as a key to the realms above and below unlocking power and wisdom for my glory and ascent! Fill this weapon with your powers of wrath and fury that it may seek out spiritual attacks made toward me rendering them useless and impotent! I DO conjure thee Spirit Vephar, pierce the Heavens and cause the seas to be right stormy to cleanse the Earth of sin. Spirit Vizaresh, I DO conjure thee to drag sinful souls into hell, noosing them with the power of their own sins. May the snare be the power of their own evil, words, thoughts, and deeds and let this be you will to drag unwilling souls into Hell. May this cord gain its power through one’s practical application of evil principles. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
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Mrs. Winchester never recovered from the 1906 earthquake. Staff said she grew weaker and weaker as the years went by, and that she was often heard talking to her dead husband. The house was already large, but it morphed to be as long as several city blocks and was taller than the tallest trees on the green lawn. I suppose, ultimately, it was the spirits who kept her in this estate by not allowing her to build another one of this magnitude. When Mrs. Winchester passed away in 1922, she left $5,000,000.00 to charity. The mansion is truly special and a national treasure.
Through His Demon Ambassadors His Tactics May Capture Individuals
In the winter of 1864, twenty-four-year-old Sarah L. Winchester and her husband William Wirt Winchester were living in a mansion in New Haven, Connecticut USA. It was a small town and Mr. Winchester worked at Winchester Factory Castle, which was, believe or not, 3.2 million square feet. There were 1,200 employees employed in the castle. They produced rifles. To the town’s people, Mr. and Mrs. Winchester were the average affluent couple, outwardly no different from their friends or neighbors. However, outward appearances can be deceptive. Although she was part of a successful business, and married to the son of the Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut and manufacture of the famous Winchester repeating rifle, inside Mrs. Winchester carried the scars of being haunted. The couple’s life together was happy, and they moved in the best of New England society. However, in 1866, disaster struck when their infant daughter, Annie, died of the then mysterious childhood disease marasmus. Mrs. Winchester fell into a place of utmost suffering, horror, and excruciating terror, with no inkling of pity or mercy. Fifteen years later, in March of 1881, her husband’s premature death from tuberculosis added to Mrs. Winchester’s distress. She was living in a place of torment, evoking the quality of sinister wilderness. It was a dismal situation of waste and wild, as if Satan was surveying on the suite to which he had fallen. Life had become an infernal World of horror, a horrible dungeon burning like a huge furnace. Yet, from the burning flames came no light which was needed to make the darkness visible. Mrs. Winchester felt that she was damned and deprived of the sight of God who is light. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
It did not end here. Mrs. Winchester found herself having to flee her New Haven mansion frequently—often in the middle of the night–because her home had become a sorrowful place which had only doleful shades to droop down. At night, she would hear footsteps coming up the stairs, and when she went to inspect, she could see two balls of fire walking up the stairs. When investigated the following day, there were hoof marks scorched in the mahogany floors and stairs. It was a land of darkness. Mrs. Winchester decided to move to Santa Clara, California USA. This village presented sweeping vistas of rural open space. It was a serene setting for Mrs. Winchester to begin her building project, which she did with steadfast determination. She immediately hired carpenters to work in shifts around the clock to build a Grand Queen Anne Victorian mansion. However, there was one strange thing. There was never an architect employed, but Mrs. Winchester often had plans for the construction of her mansion that were truly out of this World and luxurious. By the turn of the century, the eighteen-room farmhouse has grown into a nine-story mansion. The estate eventually grew to around 740 acres of farmland, which included orchards of apricots, plums, and walnut trees to supplement Mrs. Winchester’s income. However, all was not well. Given the family background and the horrors they had endure from the beginning, one could assume that Mrs. Winchester’s day-to-day reality continued to be one of fear. She had been initiated into a World of evil—an evil that was to pursue her for the remainder of her life, and if she stopped construction of her home, that would immediately prove to be fatal for her. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
Mrs. Winchester was cursed and the demons gave her precise instructions on how to stay alive. Evil has the uncanny knack of seeking out the vulnerable. Given such circumstances, Mrs. Winchester stood little chance of ever leading a normal, well-adjusted life. She developed an eating disorder, and allegedly tried to kill herself twice and suffered prolonged periods of depression. She was caught in a recalcitrant World of darkness and danger. One night at the dinner table, the butler Gavin Dorchester, had not wished to leave without paying his respects to Mrs. Winchester. However, when he approached Mrs. Winchester, she sat staring at him with a look of terror. He seemed to her like the indifferent emissary of some evil power. Mrs. Winchester then said, “has your wife decided to drop her lawsuit against my estate?” “Oh, yes,” he replied. “My lawyers knew we had not a leg to stand on. You see, she borrowed most of the money lost in the fruit orchard from you without your knowledge, and she was up a tree. That is why she shot herself with your model 1886 rifle with the sterling silver buttplate mount.” The horror was sweeping over Mrs. Winchester in great deafening waves. “She shot herself? She killed herself because of that?” “Well, she did not kill herself, exactly. She dragged on two months before she died.” Mr. Dorchester emitted the statement as unemotionally as a cotton gin plucking cotton from the fields. “You mean that she tried to kill herself, and failed? And tried again?” “Oh, she did not have to try again,” said Mr. Dorchester grimly. They sat opposite each other in silence, he swinging his eyeglasses thoughtfully about his finger, she, motionless, her arms stretched along her knees in an attitude of tension. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
Mrs. Dorchester had been a housemaid who apparently mishandled hundred of thousands of Mrs. Winchester’s money, which caused crops to fail and several farmers to lose their jobs. “But if you knew all of this,” Mrs. Winchester began at length, hardly able to force her voice above a whisper, “how is it that when I wrote you at the time of your wife’s disappearance you said you did not understand the letter?” Mr. Dorchester received this without perceptible embarrassment: “Why, I did not understand it—strictly speaking. And it was not the time to talk about it, if I had. The Winchester business was settled when the suit was withdrawn. Nothing I could have told you would have helped you to find my wife.” Mrs. Winchester continued to scrutinize him. “Then why are you telling me now?” Still Mr. Dorchester did not hesitate. “Well, to begin with, I suppose you knew more than you appear to—I mean about the circumstances of my wife’s death. And then people are talking of it now; the whole matter has been raked up again. And I though if you did not know you ought to.” Mrs. Winchester remain silent, and he continued: “You see, it has only come out lately what a bad state your affairs were in because of my wife. She is a proud woman, and she fought on as long as she could, going out to work, and taking on sewing at home when she got too sick—something with the heart, I believe. But having to admit what she had done with your money was too much for her. She knew you would never forgive her.” Chocking back her tears. “Dead, dead, dead,” she whispered. “But she was alive yesterday and the day before and the day before that, and I was here, and I did nothing! Dead! Dead! Dead!” #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
And then the bizarre scene shifted, as if the tragedy of her rage were passing into another act. Mrs. Winchester saw herself beating with her fists on all the walls of wood and glass around her, beating with her fists until the blood ran from her bruised hands. She sat down on the chair at the kitchen corner, her body crumpling, hand up to shield her face, and she began to sob aloud in the labyrinth of a house she had built, the images passing through her mind. Finally she laid her head down on her folded arms, and she cried and cried, until she was choked and exhausted with it, and all she could do was whisper over and over: “I told you all if you ever needed anything to come to me. Never to still. Do you not understand this blood money is cursed? These objects in my home are cursed! If you steal them, you bring that curse into your family!” At last, she wiped her face with her napkin, and she went to the Hall of Fires to lay down. Her head hurt and all the World seemed empty to her and hostile and without the slightest promise of warmth or light. It would pass. It has to. She felt this misery on the day Mr. Winchester was buried. She had felt it before, standing in the hospital corridor as her new born baby girl Annie cried in pain. Yet it seemed impossible now that things could get better. And her thoughts continued, abysmal and miserable, sapping her spirit and her belief in herself. It must have been an hour that she lay there, the floors hot from the fire fireplaces in the room. Mrs. Winchester was ashamed and lonely. She was ashamed of being the victim of this anguish. Her heart hammering in her ears. She sat quiet, controlling the quiver of her lips, and waiting till she could trust her voice; then she said, “I bet she died in October, on the 22nd, when the crops failed and many of the farm hands went missing.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
“Oh, my God!” Mrs. Winchester said. “They will not know till afterward. They will not know till long, long afterward.” Mrs. Winchester thought of the torments which her employees who stole would have to endure in contrast to the bliss and joy of being honest workers; she knew her mansion must have infused a feeling of horror in their minds, but they were paid well. This mansion can make a Heaven of Hell and a Hell of Heaven. Mrs. Winchester struggled to her feet—and surprised herself when she discovered that the act of getting up made her immediately feel better. A calm was enveloping her whole body. She was no longer afraid. Wind murmured and moan in the mansion’s eaves. Now and then the house creaked with ordinary middle-of-the-night settling noises. Exhausted from the emotional as well as the physical exertions of the day, Mrs. Winchester was soon asleep in her Daisy Bedroom. Near dawn, she came half awake and realized that Zip was at the bedroom window again, keeping watch. She murmured the dog’s name and wearily patted the wool mattress. However, Zip remained on guard, and Mrs. Winchester drifted off to sleep once more. A disturbance occurred awakening Mrs. Winchester. From directly overhead, she heard a series of thuds; it was as if someone was jumping from one part of the room to another. The thuds were loud, so heavy that the crystal chandelier trembled. Mrs. Winchester took Zip with her to investigate. However, Zip was having none of it; he would not venture up the stairs. He stood with his front paws on the bottom step, barking up at something unseen. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
Mrs. Winchester’s blood ran cold. She walked up the stairs, flung open the door, and pushed the light button, but nothing happened. The bulb was blown. She glanced up at the bedroom window and saw what looked like a figure standing just beyond the open drapes. She could swear she saw the drapes move. That was enough for her, she immediately left the room, shut and locked the door. The next morning, the light in the bedroom where the noise was coming from was working perfectly. However, something rosed her. She had the distinct feeling that someone had just ran fingers through her hair. She could still feel her scalp tingling from the touch. It happened a second time. The fingers of a spectral hand pressed themselves deep into the nape of her neck and raked swiftly through her hair, right to the crown of her head. All she remembered when she came to was her uncontrollable screaming. These physical anomalies were not, in themselves, as troubling as Mrs. Winchester’s deteriorating relationship with her beloved Zip. He refused to go near her. This was very unusual. Mrs. Winchester and Zip had been inseparable. Now Zip was unwilling to share the same room with her. Mrs. Winchester looked around the room to see what could be the matter. At the foot of the bed was a woman. Possibly Mrs. Dorchester. She was wearing a green ballgown. Her hands were extended in a beckoning gesture and she had a grin on her face. The grin was not a mirthful one; it seemed utterly malevolent. Mrs. Winchester was terrified. Then she started howling with terror. At that, the ghost raised its hands to its throat and made a throttling gesture that had so frightened Mrs. Winchester. Then is slowly disappeared. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
Zip was whining, ears back, his tail between his legs. He seemed to be staring at the place where the apparition had been. The butler Mr. Dorchester was on duty this night, and he heard a great commotion and strange sounds coming from Mrs. Winchester’s bedroom. When he went to inspect, Mrs. Winchester was shaking. She seemed to be having some kind of fit. “Mrs. Winchester?” She did not respond. Gurgling noises grew louder. Mr. Dorchester could believe what he was seeing: it was the most macabre sight he had ever witnessed. Mrs. Winchester’s eyes were bulging; in the light from the fireplace he could see that her face was discolored. She was choking. Mr. Dorchester saw the cause. There, as clear as say, was a hand fastened about her throat. However, it did not belong to Mrs. Winchester. It was a pale, almost translucent hand, and it was trying to strangle the life out of Mrs. Winchester. The hand ended at the wrist in a frilled green cuff and wore a diamond ring on the ring finger. Mr. Dorchester was petrified. Mrs. Winchester’s face turned blue under the hand’s murderous grip and her eyes had rolled in her head. She was gasping for air. Mr. Dorchester seized the grisly hand. It was ice cold to the touch and immensely strong. Then someone with long fingernails dug into Mr. Dorchester’s shoulder. He struggled and struggled to free Mrs. Winchester. Finally he died. She collapsed onto the bear skin rug, gasping for air. As Zip lay by her side trying to comfort her, Mrs. Winchester had never felt closer to death than she had that night. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
In the hollow of her back, a single drop of sweat traced the course of Mrs. Winchester’s spine. She was more scared than she had ever been—or had ever thought she could be—but she did not want to leave her home for any reason. She stood in the bloody-orange late-evening sunlight, at the perimeter of the trees, peering into the purple shadows and mysterious green depths of her estates. The spruces and pines and sycamores rustled in the breeze, and she thought she heard something more moving furtively through the brush. Imagination, of course, she told herself. Squinting into the forest on her estate, Mrs. Winchester strained to see through steadily deepening shadows, trying to catch another glimpse of the movement that had drawn her attention a moment ago. There. A ripple in the murkiness beneath the evergreen boughs. About eighty feet from her bedroom window. Something was moving quickly and stealthily from one sheltering shadow to another. Them movement grew closers, much closer. Mrs. Winchester had been confused by the layers of shadows, she drew the drapes closed. However, she did not seem to realize that not confronting these things gives the Devil free rein to do as he chooses. It is easy to see how evil can be promulgated over generations, if the individuals concerned have neither the fortitude nor the resources necessary to put an end to it. Satan’s bid for our souls is predicted on the debasement of our humanness as early as possible in our childhood. The Winchester Mansion is believed to a portal by which supernatural forces can access this World. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
The superstitious were terrified of The Winchester Mansion and of the screams, the shrieks and the wailing that floating from the mansion after midnight, and crossed themselves every time they passed it. Oh, the town’s people gossiped about Mrs. Winchester. They claimed she had caused the manifestation of the demon Choronzon, the epitome of all disharmony and confusion, whom she conjured up in the form of a naked savage. Many also thought she was a German spy. Some even said that Annie did not die, but Black Magic caused her to disappear mysteriously. People also believed that Mrs. Winchester had the ability to invoke evil spirits and summon up supernatural darkness during daylight hours. They mystery of The Winchester Mansion and of secret societies has long been part of man’s total fascination with the occult and it would indeed be wrong to give the impression that all forms of magical and mystical endeavour and not real. There are many pursuits and secret organizations which are described as mystical or esoterical, embracing a wide variety of students and scholars seeking the knowledge of Western inner traditions. Then, more in tune with popular suspicions about secret societies, there are also occult groups whose object is clearly to influence the World order, by infiltrating the Church, politics, pressure groups and the business community. The great secrecy which surrounds the higher echelons of The Winchester Mystery House makes it virtually impossible to penetrate any senior mansion meeting, and indeed no person who has not been initiated into the meeting the secret society would be allowed to observe even the most simple of rituals. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
Because of this secrecy, which is seldom broken—even by a deserter—it is virtually impossible to identify those at the top, although there are many visible employees, much press, and television interviews and news articles. The members and agents of The Winchester Mystery House operate in the upper echelons of the World establishment circles. This is not of a sensational or World-threatening order, far from it; but it exists, has a voice among powerful bodies in international politics and is strong enough. It aims have been varied and covert, ranging from utopian dreams of fully restoring and furnishing the estate, to addressing the historical importance and destiny of authentic Victorian homes, those that have been untouched by time, and have most of their original splendour. The second level of the secret society is pure, occult, based on the old traditions, with meetings of the like-minded individuals who are moved by the romanticism of gathering for purpose of divine illumination and reaching out for contact with non-human entities, either in their spiritual or physical manifestation. The idea of these groups of men and women meeting secretly for mystical or occult pursuits, adorning themselves in their expensive robes and calling themselves by obscure titles lend itself to colourful theories about what they actually do before their secret altars. Fuelled by images from the media, it is easy to conjure up the view that all that is secret must be evil. This is not the case, yet activities of these occult groups are fascinating. He basis for much of the ritual secrecy and traditions of occult societies invariably leads us back to the famous Order of the Knight Templar, formed in 1119 for the purpose of protecting pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land and which subsequently became noted for its military prowess against the Saracens and the immense wealth of those who joined. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
Baldwin I, King of Jerusalem, provided them with headquarters in his palace, which was said to be part of the Temple of Solomon. It has been most notably the belief in the train of the goddess Diana and the host of the dead as of great interest to scholars. Welcome Spirit Marax, 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 bond three, that thou remain affably and visibly here before this Circle so constant and so long as I shall have occasion for thy presence; and not to depart without my license until thou hast dully and faithfully performed my will without any falsity. BY THE PENTACLE OF SOLOMON HAVE I CALLED THEE! GIVE UNTO ME A TRUE ANSWER. Ahriman, Lord of Darkness divine, I thank you for your presence within this unholy temple of counter creation. I have offered you this life of this beautiful mansion as a gateway to your manifestation with this realm to stand before me! You are Angra Mainyu ho is the Lord of counter creation, who has brought forth the mountains to the plains! You have brought forth the beasts to the fields and creatures to the night. Ahriman and Marax, with your infernal blessings I asked that you both would bring forth the baneful powers of the wolf kin to fuel with atmosphere with their essence that it may be compelled according to my will. Allow of to hear the howling of wolves and perceive their phantom shadows around us. Feed the spirits and make them hunger more to walk among the living and subject them more to my will. Open a gateway to the predatory powers of the wolf and a gateway to initiation by these lupine demons. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
Standing proud and majestic on a limestone outcrop and commanding panoramic views out over the surrounding countryside, The Winchester Mystery House is regarded as the finest of the many Castles built. This impressive and historically important property has evolved over the centuries to incorporate the splendour of its medieval heritage and the elegance of the Arts and Crafts movement of the early 20th Century. The Gardens are a delight, with fine stands of trees, wild meadow flowers and stone steps lead up to the Castle Entrance. Come hang around and enjoy a tour.
Have you purchased your tickets for Friday the 13th yet?! 👀🔦 The Winchester Mystery House is offering Friday the 13th Self-Guided Flashlight Tours. These self-guided tours give guests the opportunity to roam through the halls of the purportedly haunted Victorian mansion while hearing tales of its former and (possibly current!) inhabitants. Guests will guide themselves through the mansion that is famous for its dizzying floorplan and lack of formal blueprints. Tour Hosts will be stationed throughout the house to ensure guests don’t get lost. TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
Randolph Harris II International Institute 