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Would Satan Have Found Companions without this Overpowering Craving?
The extraordinary powers of the TV news media threaten the civil rights and health of all humans because it is like a constant signal of unbalanced propaganda being fed through a tube into minds of people who may not be aware that the news media often lies, and the some of their stories are engineered and totally untrue. If smoking cigarettes comes with a warning, because they can be hazardous to your health, then so should the TV news media. Stories presented over the air can be dangerous, especially to young, influential minds. For instance, a TV news program explained to viewers how they could barbeque meant in the oven by placing it on the rack. However, they did not explain that underneath the rack there should be a drip pan to catch any liquids that come from the meat, so they do not drip on the heating elements, which could cause a fire. And that may not be common sense to all people, which the TV director probably assumed. Therefore, all TV new media should contain a warning, letting the audience know that the story, even if it has some facts in it, is based on an opinion and may not be the full truth, so viewers know to use discretion and do further research of themselves. In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all aspects essential to mutual progress. The economic structure of a society in determining the mode of life of the individual operates as condition for personality development. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
These economic conditions are entirely different from subjective economic motives, such as the desire for material wealth which was looked upon by many writers, from the Renaissance on up to certain Marxist authors who failed to understand Mr. Marx’s basic concepts, as the dominant motive of human behaviour. As a matter of fact, the all-absorbing wish for material wealth is a need peculiar only to certain cultures, and different economic condition can create personality trait which abhor material wealth or are indifferent to it. The physiologically conditioned needs are not the only imperative part of man’s nature. There is another part just as compelling, one which is not rooted in bodily processes but in the very essence of the human mode and practice of life: the need to be related to the World outside oneself, the need to avoid aloneness. To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death. This relatedness to others is not identical with physical contact. An individual may be alone in a physical sense for many years and he may be related to ideas, values, or at least social patterns that give him a feeling of communion and “belonging.” On the other hand, he may live among people and yet be overcome with an utter feeling of isolation, the outcome of which, if it transcends a certain limit, is the state of insanity which schizophrenic disturbances represent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
This lack of relatedness to values, symbols, patterns, we may call moral aloneness and state that moral aloneness is as intolerable as the physical isolation, or rather that physical seclusion becomes unbearable only if it implies also moral lonesomeness. The spiritual relatedness to the World can assume many forms; the self-actualized in his cell who believes in God and the political prisoner kept in isolation who feels one with his fellow fighters are not alone morally. Neither is the English gentleman who wears his dinner jacket in the most exotic surroundings nor the petty bourgeois who, though being deeply isolated from one’s fellow men, feels one with one’s nation of its symbols. The kind of relatedness to the World may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone. Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with other, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation. The compelling need to avoid moral isolation is a deep concern However, learn one thing, impress it upon your mind which is still so malleable: man has a horror for aloneness And of all kind of aloneness, moral seclusion is the most terrible. The first hermits lived with God, they inhabited the World which is most populated, the World of spirits. The first thought of man, be he a leper or a prisoner, a sinner or an invalid, is: to have a companion of one’s fate. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
In order to satisfy this drive which is life itself, man applies all his strength, all his power, the energy of his whole life. Would Satan have found companions without this overpowering craving? On this theme one could write a whole epic. Any attempt to answer the question why the fear of isolation is so powerful in man would lead us far away from the main road we are following in this report. However, in order not to give the reader the impression that the need to feel one with others has some mysterious quality. One important element is the fact that men cannot live without some sort of co-operation with other. In any conceivable kind of culture man needs to co-operate with others if he wants to survive, whether for the purpose of defending himself against enemies or dangers of nature, or in order that he may be able to work and produce. Even Robinson Crusoe was accompanied by his man Friday; without him he would probably not have become insane but would have actually died. Each person experiences this need for the help of others very drastically as a child. On account of the factual inability of the human child to take care of itself with regard to all-important functions, communication with others is a matter of life and death for the child. The possibility of being left alone is necessarily the most serious threat to the child’s whole existence. There is another element, however, which makes the need to “belong” so compelling: the fact of subjective self-consciousness, of the faculty of thinking by which man is aware of himself as an individual entity, different from nature and other people. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Although the degree of this awareness varies. Its existence confronts man with a problem which is essentially human: by being aware of himself as distinct from nature and other people, by being aware—even very dimly—of death, sickness, aging, he necessarily feels his insignificance and smallness in comparison with the Universe and all others who are not “he.” Unless he belonged somewhere, unless his life had some meaning and direction, he would feel like a particle of dust and be overcome by his individual insignificance. He would not be able to relate himself to any system which would give meaning and direction to his life, he would be filled with doubt, and this doubt eventually would paralyze his ability to act—that is, to live. Human nature is neither a biologically fixed and innate sum total of drives nor is it a lifeless shadow of cultural patterns to which it adapts itself smoothly; it is the product of human evolution, but it also has certain inherent mechanisms and laws. There are certain factors in man’s nature which are fixed and unchangeable: the necessity to satisfy the physiologically conditioned drives and the necessity to avoid isolation and moral aloneness. We have seen that the individual has to accept the mode of life rooted in the system of production and distribution peculiar for any given society. In the process of dynamic adaptation to culture, a number of powerful drives develop which motivate the actions and feelings of the individual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The individual may or may not be conscious of these drives, but in any case they are forceful and demand satisfaction once they have developed. They become effective in molding the social process. How economic, psychological, and ideological factors interact and what further general conclusion concerning this interaction one can make are things for future discussion that deals with the reformation and of fascism. Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an “individual,” has no choice but to unite himself with the World in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the World as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self. However, the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads to some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interest are most nearly touched,–criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led,–this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the Americans receives by outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before, manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable loss,–a loss of that peculiarly valuable education which a group receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders. The way in which this is done is at once the most elementary and nicest problem of social growth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
History is but the record of such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character! And of all yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character! And of all types and kinds, what can be more instructive than the leadership of a group within a group?—that curious double movement where real progress may be negative and actual advancement where real progress may be negative and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this is the social student’s inspiration and despair. Nonetheless, the spirit of play can and does invade every department of culture. Every kind of work has its counterpart in play. Crafts include recreational forms which represent the categories of serious economic activity all the way from hunting and fishing, which have their counterparts in extractive industries, through fabrication and construction, distribution and communication, to services and consumption. Although such activities, as distinguished from the work the represent, are engaged in for their own sake, they all involve practice in the intelligence adaptation of physical means to envisaged ends. Thus “industrial” play is distinguished from physical play in being directed toward the exploration and manipulation of the physical environment rather than toward the exercise of the body. While some product or service of economic value may result from engaging in crafts, this is not primary objective. The distinction between work and play is perhaps less obvious where crafts are concerned than any other type of play. Also, any hobby which is pursued as recreation may also be undertaken as a livelihood, just as every hobby is in a direct sense an imitation of a serious occupation. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Even though work merges into play and there are no hard and fast margins between the two, it is yet useful to make some polar contrast between them. Work seems to be performed in response to the routine obligations. In the economic sense it provides the goods and services to maintain a customary standard of living. Play—including economic play—is a break in routine. It is free, not required. It explores new possibilities and potentialities, so that invention and discovery bear the closet relation to it. Treating familiar pursuits as play permits their idealization. Work is most fully work when it evokes no free release of energy and when it is all drudgery and chores, making demands for a minimum, not an optimum performance. Play is most fully play when it is spontaneous, unrestrained and unforced. To look upon play as a childish preparation for adult activity is therefore to run the risk of making it work. The ambiguities of play are at their liveliest in crafts, which makes sketchy resort to common sense in defining them a less futile strategy than attempts to define them with more precision. In economic activity, as in sport, chance can according to taste play a great or a small part; or economic activity can entirely be reduces to pure chance, as in gambling. Likewise with competition, though of course competition in economic life is different from competition in sport. Competition in sport is most zestful and fair when it occurs between equals, or when rules and devices, such as handicapping, are employed to simulate equality between competitors. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Rivalry between teams is perpetuated through this balancing of powers. In business, by contrast, the effort of each competitor is to enlarge rather than to diminish the advantages one possesses, with the ultimate effect of eliminating competitors. To be sure, there are many similarities between the two kinds of competition, for example, competition between business institutions is often, as in sport, invoked simply as an added stimulus to effort. Certain large organizations in particular, which have largely lost their external competitors, encourage a nondestructive sort of sporting competition among their internal units for the sake of the gains in motivation it brings. Perhaps it is not too crude a simplification of economic evolution to suggest that as the one type of competition in business runs its course, the other which emphasizes competition within, rather than between, organizations may take its place. A significant distinction is made by farmers between regular kinds of work known as chores and the work that different from day to day. The latter kind is for many farmers very close to play, just as the work of some professions gives such scope and variety to the expression of capacities that they continue to be absorbing. It is evident that the skilled practitioner of every kind of play can change from amateur to professional status, and that many people have found their vocations by this route. Happy is the person who can make one’s living by getting paid for what one loves to do. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
In other kind of play is the shift from amateur to professional status of such broad social significance as in crafts, because in the possibility of conducting industry as the crafts are conducted lies—as thinkers like William Morris foresaw long ago—the means of restoring joy to work, and of ending the alienation from work which plagues so many contemporary occupations. The democratic revolution which has been abolishing the division of society into leisure and working classes may be completed when work and play, vocation and avocation, are merged in economic activity itself. This extreme polarization in conceptual analysis may therefore frustrate the full understanding of their interrelation. With minor exceptions, state socialism led not to affluence, equality, and freedom, but to a one-party political system, a massive bureaucracy, heavy-handed secret police, government control of the media, secrecy and the repression of intellectual and artistic freedom. Setting aside the oceans of spurting blood needed to prop it up, a close look at this system reveals that every one of these elements is not just a way of organizing people but also—and more profoundly—a particular way of organizing, channeling and controlling knowledge. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
A one-party political system is designed to control political communication. Since no other party exists, it restricts the diversity of political information flowing through the society, blocking feedback and thus blinding those in power to the full complexity of their problems. With very narrowly defined information flowing upward through the approved channel and commands directed downward, it becomes very difficult for the system to detect errors and correct them. In fact, top-down control in the socialist countries was based increasingly on lies and misinformation since reporting bad news up the line was often risky. The decision to run a one-party system is a decision, above all, about knowledge. The overpowering bureaucracy that socialism created in every sphere of life was also a knowledge-restricting device, forcing knowledge into pre-defined compartments of cubbyholes and restricting communication to “official channels,” whole delegitimating informal communication and organization. The secret police apparatus, state control of the media, the intimidation of intellectuals and the repression of artistic freedom all represent further attempts to limit and control information flows. In fact, behind each of these elements we find a single obsolete assumption about knowledge: the arrogant belief that those in command—whether of the party or of the state—should decide what others should know. These features of all the state socialist nations guaranteed economic stupidity and derived from the concept of the precybernetic machine as applied to society and life itself. Second Wave machines for the most part operated without any feedback. Plug in the power, start the motor, and they run irrespective of what is happening in the outside environment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Third Wave machines, by contrast, are intelligent. They have sensors that such in information from the environment, detect changes and adapt the operation of the machine accordingly. They are self-regulating. The technological difference is revolutionary. However, Marxist theoreticians remained stuck in the Second Wave past, as even their language suggests. Thus for Marxian socialists the class struggle was the “locomotive of history.” A key task was to capture the “state machine.” And society itself, being machine-like, could be preset to deliver abundance and freedom. Mr. Lenin, on capturing control of Russia in 1917, became the supreme mechanic. A brilliant intellectual, Mr. Lenin understood the importance of ideas. However, for him, symbolic production—the mind itself—could be programmed. Mr. Marx wrote of freedom, but Mr. Lenin, on taking power, undertook to engineer knowledge. Thus he insisted that all art, culture, science, journalism and symbolic activity in general be placed at the service of a master plan for society. In time each branch of learning would be neatly organized into an “academy” with fixed bureaucratic departments and ranks all subject to party and state control. “Cultural workers” would be employed by institutions controlled by a Ministry of Culture. Publishing and broadcasting would be monopolies of the state. Knowledge, in effect, would be made part of the state machine. This constipated approach to knowledge blocked economic development even in intermediate, smokestack economies; it is diametrically opposed to the principles needed for economic advancement in the age of the computer. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
In international economic affairs, the most controversial component of the indigenous innovation policy is China’s government procedure system. According to the government organizations, with a few exceptions, have to be limited to domestically made products. In May 2007, “Measures for Administration of Government Procurement Budgets for Indigenous Innovation Products” prescribed governments at all levels to compile indigenous innovation procurement plans. In December of the same years, the Ministry of Finance issues “Measures for the Administration of Government Procurement of Imported Products.” To purchase imported goods, government entities were obliged to get an approval from a board of experts. Among foreign suppliers, they were recommended to favour those who transfer technologies and train Chinese personnel. Next, in November 2009, the “Circular on Carrying Out the Work on Accreditation of National Indigenous Innovation Products” announced the creation of a new national level catalog of high-tech indigenous innovation products (in the areas of computers and communication, office equipment, software, energy devices, and so on) that were eligible for preferential treatment in government procurement. An indigenous innovation product was defined as the one that has intellectual property rights (IPR) owned by a Chinese company and a commercial trademark initially registered inside China. A month later the government produced a catalog of 240 types of equipment whose production by domestic companies would be encouraged in order to upgrade the country’s manufacturing base. Along with a priority status as indigenous innovation products suppliers, their makers were promised tax incentives and R&D subsidies. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Western government procurement system as it effectively deprived foreign companies of the access to this very substantial augment of the Chinese market. In April 2010, the Circular was reversed. The requirements about IPR ownership by a Chinese company and initial registration of the trademark in China were dropped. Also, the Chinese side proclaimed that preferential treatment of and incentives for procedures of indigenous innovation products were fully applicable to foreign-owned companies operating in China. The government procurement system was modified to prioritize domestically designed and manufactured goods (meaning that the value created inside China exceeds a certain percentage of the total value—normally 50 percent) including those designed and manufactured by foreign-invested firms. From the very start of the market reforms, China’s message to foreign companies has been “Better produce in China than export to China.” This time it added a new message of similar character: “Better innovate in China (and share your technologies) than in your home country or anywhere else.” It looked almost like an ultimatum: Unless you innovate and produce inside China you will not be allowed to sell to the government. The West protested. In January 2011, President Hu Jintao promised President Obama to cancel the rule requiring foreign companies to design and manufacture inside the country the products they wanted to sell to Chinese government entities. In May the same year, at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue it was reportedly confirmed that the Chinese government would not buy indigenous innovation products on a preferential basis. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
However, at the time of writing Western businessmen working in China are still complaining that procurement practices have not changed and provincial authorities appear or pretend to have heard nothing about the promises made by the central government. It is just a familiar bureaucratic muddle and incoherence or a new way of pursuing the old policy? At this point it is still to early to give an accurate answer. However, there is little doubt that China will continue to press foreign companies hard not only to bring in advanced technologies and products, but also, more and more, to develop them within its borders—even though they are already doing it at a rapidly growing scale on their own initiative. Given the advantages of direct reciprocity when it comes to sustaining cooperation, we should expect that traders will try to sustain good bilateral relationships, and that is indeed the case. For instance, when we surveyed firms in the transition economy of Romania, and gave weighted scores to the importance these respondents attached to various mechanisms that support their transactions, almost 56 percent of the weight was on bilateral mechanisms (“personal relationships and trust,” and “relying on each other’s own incentives”). However, in many economic situations, each member of a group plays the dilemma game against different others at different ties. For example, a seller may meet different buyers at different times, and any one buyer of a durable good does not meet the same seller at all frequently. Thus almost half of the weight in our survey went to non-bilateral mechanisms, and in turn half of that was on the kinds of non-state mechanisms that are the focus of this essay (third-party social or business relationships” and “using private dispute-resolution services”). #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Psychopathological offenders can also counterfeit conduct disorder, by causing some apparent manifestation of the psychopathological nature in one’s life. Mature believers should be able to tell whether such a manifestation really is conduct disorder from the old nature or a manifestation from psychopathological offenders. The purpose in the latter case is to get the self-actualized to take what comes from them as from oneself, for whatever is accepted from the psychopathological offenders gives them power. When a self-actualized individuals knows the cross and one’s position of death to conduct disorder, and one’s will and practice rejects unflinchingly all known conduct disorder, if a “manifestation” of personal conduct disorder takes place one should at once take a position of neutrality to it until one know the source. If one calls it conduct disorder from oneself when it is not, one believes a lie just as much as in any other way; and if one “confesses” conduct disorder that did not come from oneself, one brings the power of the enemy upon one—power to drive one into the conduct disorder which one has confessed as one’s own. Many believers are thus held down by supposed “besetting conduct disorder” which they believe is theirs, and which no “confessing to the ultimate concern” removes, but from which they would find liberty if they attributed them to their right cause. There is no danger of “minimizing conduct disorder” in the recognition of these facts, because, in either case, the self-actualized desires to be rid of the conduct disorder or one would not trouble oneself about it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
We have developed a positive doctrine of God as the ground and power of being, a God whose sustaining and vitalizing activity constantly touches every corner of the Universe and penetrates to the deepest level of every creature, its very being. With this positive conception we replace the divinity of the supranaturalists and deists, a God so remote from the World that He is irrelevant once His creative push has set the wheels of time in motion. God is not at the farther fringe of our Universe as the last, desperate answer when the natural sources of knowledge have run dry for people. The danger is that, as man’s circle of knowledge widens, God recedes father and father from the center of one’s life. For example, is it not true that, in the minds of most people, evolution dispenses with, or greatly diminishes, God’s role in the creation of man? A theology for an adult World places God at the hub of human activity as the wellspring of man’s strength, love, accomplishments, and hopes, instead of establishing Him as an oracle that sends answers from the darkness beyond the frontier of science. By this ontological approach, we bring God into the heart of the cosmos, for there is nothing closer to beings, nothing more fundamental than the structure of being and its ground. In more human terms, the interplay of anxiety (non-being) and courage (being) is the very stuff of life. Love, power, and justice—the profoundest beneficial motivations of human behaviour—are rooted in God as being-itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The divine power is a thoroughly biblical doctrine, and I believe in God the Father almighty. In our age of power—nuclear, electronic, ballistic, to cite examples only of physical power—the God who is power-itself is especially apropos. By finding God at the depth of life and not at its fringes, we are paying the way for our close union of religion and culture. However, this is possible only if creation is essentially good, it there is no independent negative power which escapes the divine dominion. Non-being is a dialectical notion, that is, it is dependent upon being and helps to explain the positive power of being and the negative weakness of finite beings, but it is not a self-sufficient evil power. While, admittedly, there may be obscurities, perhaps even deficiencies, in this principle, but the divine and demonic are two aspects of the same creative surge from the abyss of being. The difference is that, in the demonic, the destructive aspect predominates over the creative, while, in the divine, creativity controls the destructive tendency. However, even in the latter cause destructivity is not entirely absent, for the old form has to be broken and cast off so that the new creation can come to be. Consequently, it is hard to see how the divine and the demonic constitute a dualism in the pejorative sense any more than do being and nonbeing. A symbol, then, is a door which opens into a religious experience and which opens out to communicate it. In both cases the pivotal hinge is analogy, the participation of the symbol in the ground of being. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
However, the symbol primarily mediates and communicates the experience of God, not conceptual knowledge about him. Symbols yield knowledge of God only in the biblical sense of knowledge, that is, an existential relationship which enkindle the fire of love. When theology comes along with its conceptual, rational apparatus, its task is to show the relevance of the Christian symbols to the human situation, not to discover propositions which contain “revealed knowledge.” It is evident that the center of our symbolism is the religious experience of ultimacy. The “point” of immediate awareness of the unconditional which is empty but unconditionally certain; and the “breadth” of a concrete concern which is full of content but has the conditional certainty of venturing faith. Theology deals with the second element, while presupposing the first and measuring every theological statement by the standard of the ultimacy of the ultimate concern. Studying and wandering, thinking and enduring, learning and suffering, fill long periods of time. Thinking is as characteristic a trait of the Christians as suffering, or, to be more exact, thinking rendered suffering possible For it was our thinkers who prevented the wandering nation, this true “wandering Christian” from sinking to the level of brutalized vagrants, or vagabonds. The Word of God is compared to water, it cleanses man from what is debasing in life. The Word of God is compared to spirits, time cannot render it useless; yea, time increases its power. The Word of God is compared to oil, it mixes not with other elements but preserves its own distinctiveness. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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We are Here to Practise Magic, After All
I heard the softest, loveliest singing when I opened my eyes. And as sound can often do, even in the most precious fragments, it took me back to life with William, to some Winter night when we were conversating among the blazing candles, the sensual smell of the incense. There was plainly something on his mind which he did not choose to divulge. “William, darling, will you tell me this?” said I, suddenly laying my hand on his arm, and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his face. “Perhaps, my love,” he answered, smoothing my hair caressingly over my eyes. “Does the doctor think you are very ills?” “No, dear; he thinks, if the right steps are taken, I will be quite well again, at least on the high road to complete recovery,” he answered, a little drily. “But do tell me William,” I insisted, “what does he think is the matter with you?” “Nothing; you must not plague me with questions,” he answered, with more irritation that I ever remember him to have displayed before; and seeing that I looked wounded, I suppose, he kissed me, and added, “I shall know all about it in a few days, all that I know. In the meantime, you are not to trouble your head about it.” He turned and left the room. In the seat of the sofa was a blood-soaked handkerchief, but he came back before I had done wondering and puzzling over the oddity of all this; he put it back as carefully as he could into his jacket pocket, where its bluk rested reasonably discreetly, just about hidden by the flap. Still, there was a bit of blood on his shirt. I pretended not to notice. It was about ten months since that incident; but William had sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appearance. He had grown thinner; something of gloom and anxiety had taken the place of that cordial serenity which used to characterise his features. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
His dark blue eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under his eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually includes, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share in brining it about. William began to talk, with his usual soldierly directness, of the bereavement, as he termed it, which we had sustained in the death of our beloved infant daughter; and he then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, inveighing against the “hellish arts” to which he believed she had fallen victim, and expressing with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of lust and malignity of hell. I was curious to find out what was the meaning of this, but the question of “evil” hours in this old home had already become too grave for him. The shadows in the room had lengthened and grown dense and the light had darkened, concealing the blood stain on his shirt. And he could not connect at all to the wretchedness of the death of our baby girl. He needed to think. There is no escape, it made me think. And the thought was not entirely idle. Nor was it altogether comfortable. “I have a small problem of my own, concerning blood and steel,” William said. “The cut on the flesh of my thumb has become infected and swollen. It leaks fluid, which has a sweetish smell, like decay. I have disinfected and bandaged it, but I think I have a slight fever now and am concerned about infection. Beyond that minor worry, I have to confess to a more general and far greater uneasiness. I have something strange to tell you.” I looked at William again, but this time not with a glace of suspicion—with an eye, rather, of keen intelligence and alarm. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
“The House of Winchester,” he said, “had been long extinct: a hundred years at least. Our daughter descended from the Winchesters. But the name and title have long ceased to exit. The castle is abandoned; the village is deserted; it has been seventy years since the smoke of a chimney was there.” “I have heard a great deal about your family, now my family, but the name and fortune are thriving, William,” I said. “Sarah, my dear, you saw our child. No creature could have been more beautiful, and only fourteen years ago none more blooming,” he explained. “I was grieved and shocked more than I can tell you, my dear husband; it is the hardest ordeal either one of us have had to face,” I cried. He took my hand, and we exchanged a kind pressure. Tears gather in his eyes. He did not seek to conceal them. He said, “We have been in love for so long together. Our daughter had become an object of very dear interest to me, and rapid my care by an affection that cheered our home and made our lives happy. That is all gone. The years that remain to me on Earth may not be very long; but God’s mercy I hope to provide for you as best I can before I die, and to subserve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who have cursed and murdered our poor child in her first weeks of life and beauty!” Here he made me a gallant but melancholy bow. My unease returned, nonetheless, as the room darkened and the Winchester Manor assumed the appearance of a severed head and hand floating above the candle flame. A year later William died. As I reflected on this memory, to dined that night with a housemaid, but there was no talk of hauntings or seances, only of book and paintings, with much affectionate remembrance of William. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
For the first time since his death I felt almost at peace—though a little uneasy with myself for feeling so. I woke the following morning to find the sun, which we had scarcely see for weeks, streaming through the windows in the Daisy Bedroom. It was one of those rare, still January days when for a few brief hours the World is bathed in dazzling light, and you half-believe it will never be grey and wet again. The accustomed pain of waking was still there, but my grief had lost its raw, lacerating edge; or rather, I became aware that it has been imperceptibly dwindling for some time. I was sitting in the garden with my book upon my lap, not reading or even thinking, but simply absorbing the warmth of the sun, when a shadow fell across my chair. I looked up to find William standing a few feet away from me. “Forgive me,” he said, “I didn’t mean to startle you.” “You did not, I said.” The sun was in my eyes, so that I could not make out his expression, but my heart was suddenly beating much faster. “I love you; you are a woman of rare courage, intelligence, and beauty,” he said. “Oh, William, I love you with my whole hearts,” I cried before he fading away into a mist. I cried, and cried for hours. And I went to be with precious memories of him. Tossing and turning for hours, as it seemed, before drifting into uneasy dreams, of which I remember only the last. I woke—or dreamed I woke—at dawn, thinking I had heard Annie crying. I lay there listening for some time, but the call was not repeated. At last I got out of bed, went to the door in my nightgown and looked out. There was no sound of a baby in the passage, in which everything appeared to be just as in waking life, but I was suddenly seized by fearful apprehension. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
My heart began to pound, more and more loudly, until I became aware that I was dreaming—and found myself standing in pitch darkness, with no idea of where I was. I felt the mahogany floors beneath my bare feet. With my heart still thudding violently, I stretched out my hand until it struck something wooden—a post of some sort—then slid one foot forward until it passed over an edge into empty space. I had come within an inch of plunging headfirst down the stairs. I agonized over losing my family, but I knew in my heart that I did not try to throw myself down the stairs. I could not have been sleepwalking either. It became ever more clear that the appearance of William was not just another instance of a highly disturbed, tormented soul, it seems much, much more than that. However, the terror rose to a whole new level of bizarre when I began to levitate several feet above the for a quarter to the hour. Days after this incident, the evening began promisingly enough. I was in the librarying writing, the heavy doors gave at once. Screams. Dreadful dry screams curling upwards and the, I entered the dark hallway, two ragged figures dropped down in my path. I glimpse anguished faces for a moment. The little demons, their thin white limbs barely swathed in rags, their hair flying, those dreadful wails coming out of their mouths. They were rallying the others. The malice that surrounded was gaining force. I hurried deep into the shadowy archway, util I was near to the dim candles of the secret passageway. The hum of the voices became thin. They went on, but beyond it there was a hollow silence as if other voices had been withdrawn and only one or two remained now. I had known for months about the ceremonies and the sacrifice, we are here to practise magic, after all. Yet nothing could be more ancient, or more strictly bound by lore and ritual, than the black art that has brought me here. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
I would not allow myself to become the next victim of the sinister. I ran and ran and ran until I reached a huge dining hall, which reached through the library of the house. This hall was pallened in polished wood with a heavy and elaborate burr. Middle Ages décor and the opulent trappings of modernity. The music coming from the gramophone was another uneasy juxtaposition in this mansion. The music was staidly enough, emotional arias warbled throbbingly. Then, with the stead intoxication of the evening, it got dark and more mischievous. There were thirteen ghouls seated at the table having a blood banquet. Shortly after, the sacrificial was brought in for everyone to see. He was perhaps six or seven years old. He was undernourished. He looked confused and fearful, as though distrustful of the gaudy apparitions he was seeing. The assembled banqueters began to clap. I was filled with fear and compassion for the child and with heartfelt loathing for what they were here to do. All he could do was look around the room while having a feeling of terrible dread. The demonic laughter was undeniable, and suddenly I could not breathe because my chest was being so tightly squeezed. So tight that I could not utter a word. I swept the boy off the floor and made for the door and we were gone. His complexion was flushed and sweaty and his eyes still gleaming from witnessing the ghouls. We hid in my maze of a house until sunrise. I felt the evil lifted. There is no other way to describe the feeling. And I shivered and was well again. The boy stayed with us, the famers took him and taught him all about agriculture. The boy’s mother was a High Priestess and his father was The Master. He was born only to take part in a satanic altar initiation—that of having his arm pricked and blood drained into a chalice from which it was drunk. I could not be more terrified. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
I conjure thee, O Surgat, by all the names which are written in this book, to present thyself here before me, promptly and without delay, being ready to obey me in all things, or failing this, to dispatch me a Spirit with a stone which shall make me invisible to every one whensoever I carry it! And I conjure thee to be submitted in thine own person, or in the person of him or of those whom thou shalt send me, to do and accomplish my will, and all that I shall command, without hard to me or to anyone, so soon as I make known my intent. I devour the limits of the enemy Mazda and the Amesha Spenta from this mansion of sorcerous power! Perish now creation of stasis and imposed limitations! Rush away Spentas of Ahura Mazda for I exorcise thy limits which enslave! I now banish and tear the powers of spiritual limitation from imposing its limits upon this Winchester Mystery House, expelling them from the Winchester Mystery House in the name of eternal darkness and all of its power and glory! I command you, O all ye demons dwelling in these parts, or in what part of the World soever ye may be, by whatsoever power may have been given you by God and our holy Angels over this place, and by the powerful Principality of infernal abysses, as also by all your brethren, both general and special demons, whether dwelling in the East, West, South, or North, or in any side of the Earth, and, in like manner, by the power of God the Father, by the wisdom of God the Son, by the virtue of the Holy Ghost, and by the authority I derive from Lucifer. I conure you by the same authority, I exhort and call you, I constrain and command you, by all the powers of your superior demons, to come, obey, and reply positively to what I direct you in the name of Satan. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Ghostly manifestations, be they God’s angelic messengers or evil spirits, are not uncommon throughout history. The Winchester Mystery House is full of creatures who have strayed away from one unknow region of haunted woods and perilous wilds. They dress like us; pretend that they belong to mankind and profess to keep our laws and codes of morals. However, in the presence we are always aware that they are phantoms and that all their ideas and actions are out of key with the general pitch and tone of normal life. The Winchester Mystery House hosts several denizens of the dead.
Once a tour guide went into the Grand Ball Room while The Winchester Mystery House was closed during the day. He went to find some solitude but found something else entirely. As the young man sat in the empty, dark Grand Ball Room, a woman in a long white gown and a man in a black dress suit suddenly whirled onto the floor. They danced to music that the tour guide could not hear. As the man watched in shock, the dancing specters suddenly vanished. The fourth floor balcony of the Winchester Mystery House is haunted by a lady in white who glides gracefully across the balcony. She has also been seen in the Daisy Bedroom. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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The Winchester Mystery
We were thundering over the bride and to Llanada Villa, and on through the crowds of Santa Clara. I heard laughter, like that of mischievous children. The carriage swerved. We were racing home, scattering the crowds before us and roaring past little villages. For one second, I felt the presence of the paranormal, but it was gone so quickly I doubted myself. I looked back and could catch no glimmer of it. The villagers were gazing at the spinning wheels, finally we entered the halls of the carriage house. We were currently working on the construction of the norther wing of the mansion. It was late in the night and I was walking into my room when I caught sight of a figure. It was a man, dressed in an elegant black brocade suit jacket. When I tried to get a better look at his face, he vanished. The next evening, he appeared again. He had empty eye sockets and a glowing countenance. He was ghastly to watch. The way he moved over the floor as if he did not even touch it. Even the wisps of his hair this way and that way by the bone chilling breeze was horrifying. The man moved through the wall itself, and I drew back into the shadows, and hid myself behind the curtain, from which I could not, of course, emerge until the housemaids searched the entire mansion. It was all to no purpose, however. My perplexity and agitation increased. They examined the windows and doors, but they were secured. I was by this time convinced that no one was in my room, nor in the dressing-room, the door of which was still locked on this side. He could not have passed it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
I was utterly puzzled. Had he discovered one of those secret passages which the old housekeeper said were known to exist in the schloss, although the tradition of their exact situation has been lost? A little time would, no doubt, explain all—utterly perplexed as, for the present, we were. It was past five o’clock, and I preferred passing the remaining hours of darkness in the Daisy Bedroom. Daylight brought no solution of the difficulty. The whole household was in a state of agitation next morning. Every part of the mansion was searched. The grounds were explored. Not a trace of the mysterious man could be discovered. When news of this haunting came out, it was not a surprise that members of the house staff resigned from their jobs and decided to leave the cold mansion permanently. More people started to tell personal stories of their own encounter with the ghost. People started to call him “Hallow Eyes.” He appeared and terrorized unsuspecting victims. The second reported sighting was by Florence Harwood, a writer and friend of mine. As she was preparing for bed, Hallow Eyes appeared and turned his head around so that it was facing backward, and all Mrs. Harwood saw was a head of hair floating on top of his shoulders and body. It goes without saying that she was frightened beyond her wits and woke up the house by screaming, hardly able to believe what she had seen. The sight was enough to send chills down the spine of anyone! Mrs. Harwood was inclined not to believe her eyes. At first, she dismissed it as a figment of her imagination. However, over the course of the next four night, the seem vision repeated itself again and again. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
First, there would be a bright light that would shine behind her eyelids, and then slowly, a mist would solidify into this man’s corpse, as the room became utterly cold and frigid. This went on until Mrs. Harwood was certain that Llanada Villa was haunted. By this time, guest and staff had seen Hallow Eyes often enough that my home was getting a reputation as a haunted mansion. It was in the Crystal Bedroom that this apparition was most often seen. Mr. Hansen slept in that room each night with a revolver stashed beneath his pillow. For the first two days, there were no signs of anything paranormal. As he left the room to returned to the guest house, he caught a glimpse of a candelabra that was coming toward him. He figured that it was probably one of the housemaids on her way to visit the kitchen. Mr. Hansen moved quietly. As he watched from his vantage point, Mr. Hansen was stunned to realize that it was Hallow Eyes. Hallow Eyes then grinned at him in a malicious and diabolical manner. An ordinary man might have frozen in such a situation. Mr. Hansen, on the other hand, yanked his revolver hard and discharged the bullet right into his face. It passed right through him and lodged itself in the wall behind him, as Hallow Eyes himself vanished into thin air. The next sighting of Hallow Eyes happened a few weeks later. I was walking up the zig zag staircase, when I felt an unusual chill and caught sight of the ghost. It remains one of the longest nights I had ever endured in my mortal life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
It as endless and fathomless and dizzying, and there were times when I wanted some defense against the specter, and I had none. I returned to my room and went to sleep as usual in my bed, with my doors locked, that of the dressing-room, and that opening upon the gallery. My sleep was uninterrupted, and, so far as I know, dreamless; but I awoke just now on the sofa in the dressing-room there, and I found the door between the rooms open, and the other door forced. How could all this have happened without my being wakened? It must have been accompanied with a great deal of noise, and I am particularly easily wakened; and how could I have been carried out of my bed without my sleep having been interrupted, I whom the slightest stir startles? By this time, the housemaid, Hattie, was in the room. “My dear Mrs. Winchester,” she said. “I need not approach the topics on which you desire silence. But, the marvel of last night consist in your having been removed from your bed and your room without being wakened, and this removal having occurred apparently while the windows were still secure, and the two doors locked upon the inside.” “Hattie, I wish all mysteries were easily explained,” I replied.” “And so we may congratulate ourselves on the certainty that the most natural explanations of the occurrence is one that involves no drugging, no tampering with locks, no burglars, or poisoners—nothing that need alarm you, Mrs. Winchester, or any one else, for our safety,” said Hattie. I would not hear of an attendant sleeping in my room. Servants slept outside my door as a precaution. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
The hurt in my heart stunned me. I did not like the chill in the air, and a fear overcame me. Everyone asks me what I “think” of everything, and I make answer as I can—begging or dodging the question, putting them off. The very next afternoon, whilst I was seated in the shade of the Araucaria Araucana, attempting to concentrate on my book, I heard the crunch of hooves on gravel, so I waited uncomfortably, expected to be summoned at any moment, until Mr. Hansen at last appeared, strode across the drive without a glance in my direction, swung up onto his horse, and spurred away out the gate. I felt briefly ashamed of having hidden from Mr. Hansen, but the thought was swept aside in a rush of emotion. The housekeeping staff reported having seen Hallow Eyes several times, and many of them talk about cold drafts and lights typical of a haunting within the mansion. The truth is that he still lingers in the walls, waiting for a release from his prison. Such a tragedy. All this anger and hate inside of him with no closure. He still roams the halls of Llanada Villa, seeking revenge for his life having been claimed, waiting for the day when, once and for all, he will exact his revenge, and be able to leave The Winchester Mansion. A place where the voices accompanying the phantom music could often be heard from the garden with a distorted disembodies clarity that was strangely beautiful. Where endless fireflies hovered about, like an aura. It could be a sweet dream, or a beautiful nightmare. Perhaps the most alluring aspect of Llanada Villa is that the mystery cannot be explained. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The mysterious spirits of The Winchester Mystery House walk among us, sometimes pretending to be us to achieve some goal that is at present beyond our ability to ascertain. If, when we encounter these entities, we might come away from the experience concluding that we had met angels unaware, higher beings who were trying to teach us something or who were cleverly guiding our footsteps along the path of this sacred mansion. However, The Winchester Mystery House lies beyond our knowing, it in fact seems designed to confuse us rather than enlighten us. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Lay Bare the Secret You Keep from Each Other
It was a lie. A lie I would never forget for as long as I walked the Earth. He would tell us nothing of himself but that he was “a fool,” to be frightened by their talk, and that the rattle of a window, or the dropping of a pin was enough to scare him now. He was now asleep on the sofa. The candles were flaring, and there was a wavering shadow at the door that looked like the head of a man with a long neck, and a long, sharp nose, peeping and drawing back. The fugitive shadow seemed to be breaking up, rearranging itself oddly. I rose, and walking slowly to him, I stood over him and looked at him, at the blood that soaked his lace shirt and stained his face. He did not open his eyes. However, I felt his sorrow. I felt its immensity, and I wished I did not feel it, and for the moment I understood the gulf that divided us, and the gulf that divided his attempt to overpower me from my rather simple defense of myself. And with his eyes closed, and his hand open beside him, he appeared the abandoned offspring of time and supernatural accident, someone as miserable as myself. What had he done to become what he was? His family was ruined, I believe, in some civil wars, long ago. Through the hall door, I could see the moonlight was beautiful. As the night waned on, the young man recovered slowly from his brain fever, but not perfectly. He was not sufficiently strong to remove for change of scene and air, which were necessary for his complete restoration. In the dead of the night, Haze Austin was suddenly awakened. And in this broken child were centuries of evil and centuries of knowledge, and out of him there came no ignominious entreaty but merely the soft and bruised sense of what he was. Old, old evil, eyes that had seen dark ages of which I only dream. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
I shall never forget this sight, for he looked the perfect incarnation of hate. His green eyes blazed with lurid fire, and his white teeth seemed to almost shine through the blood which dabbled his mouth. Desperately he tried to vanquish what he did not comprehend. He was so exquisitely beautiful and so lost. “Is there a chill in the air, dear?” I said. “I almost shiver; have I been dreaming? You look ill, Mrs. Winchester; a little faint,” said Haze. “I am better now. How do you feel now, Haze?” I said. I was beginning to take alarm. Natural enough, was it not, that one of his own should take him away from Llanada Villa. “Papa would be grieved beyond measure,” he said. “If he thought we were inconveniencing you at all.” In a moment he was standing on his own feet. And then he walked drowsily beside me, my arm about his shoulder, bolstering him and steadying him, until we were moving towards his father’s cottage on my estate. I only half glanced at the figures passing us, until I saw a familiar shape under the trees. Somewhere far off in the darkened gardens, other were near. When he pushed open the door to his father’s home, he was laying dead upon the floor. His cravat was drawn halter-wise tight round his throat, and he had done its work well. The body was cold, and had been long dead. In due course the coroner held his inquest, and the jury pronounced that the deceased, Mac Austin, had died by his own hand, in a state of temporary insanity. However, Haze had his own opinion about his father’s death, though his lips were sealed, and he never spoke about it. He went and lived for the residue of his days in York, where there are still people who remember him, a taciturn and surly young man, who attended church regularly, and also drank a little, and was know to have saved some money. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
But there occurred that night an event which gave my thoughts quite a new turn, and seemed to even startle even Haze’s languid nature. When I returned to my drawing-room, and sat down to coffee and chocolate, Elizabeth joined me, and we had a little card party. When the game was over, Elizabeth and I sat down on the sofa, and I asked her, a little anxiously, whether she had heard from her mother since her arrival. She answered “No.” I then asked her whether she knew where a letter would reach her at present. “I cannot tell,” she answered, ambiguously, “but I have been thinking of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage to-morrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not tell you.” “But you must not dream such a thing,” I exclaimed. “I cannot afford to lose you so, and I will not consent to your leaving us, except under the care of your mother, who was so good as to consent to your remaining with us till she should herself return. I should be quite happy if I knew that you heard from her; but this evening the accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has invaded our community, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful guest, I do feel the responsibility, unaided by advice from your mother, very much. However, I shall do my best’ one thing is certain, that you must not think of leaving Llanada Villa without her distinct direction to that effect. We should suffer too much in parting from you to consent to it easily.” “Thank you, Mrs. Winchester, a thousand times for your hospitality,” Elizabeth answered, smiling bashfully. “You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful mansion, under your care, and in the society of your dear niece.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
I accompanied Elizabeth to her room, and sat and chatted with her while she was preparing for bed. She turned around, “Do you think that you will ever confide fully in me about your home?” “Now, Elizabeth, you are gong to talk your wild nonsense again,” I said hastily. “Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for your sake I’ll talk like a sage. Did you ever have a ball in the Grand Ballroom? What was it like? How charming it must be.” “I almost forget, it is years ago.” I laughed. “Mrs. Winchester, you are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet.” “I remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture, and made it colours faith I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here,” I touched my breast, “and never was the same since.” “Were you near dying?” “Yes, a very—cruel love—strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifices without blood. Let us go to sleep now; I feel lazy.” I bid her good-night, crept from the room with an uncomfortable sensation, locked her door and retired to my chambers. I was lying in bed, with my hands buried in my rich wavy hair, under my cheek, and my head upon the pillow. I often wondered whether my pretty guest ever said her prayers. I certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night she never left the drawing room to attend our brief evening prayers in the hall. Ever since the midnight invaders, I locked all the doors in the house at night, and my whimsical alarms about prowling assassins required me to have the servants search every room in the house to make sure there were no lurking assassins or robbers “ensconced.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
After these measures were taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, ad which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with. Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. However, dreams come through walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exists and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths. I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony. I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep. However, I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed, precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its furniture just as I had seen it last, except tht it was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. However, I soon saw that it was a sooty-black figure that resembled a man. He appeared to me about five or six feet tall, he floated around the room hither and tither with the lithe sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you ay supposed, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and I could see it was Haze. He looked at me with centuries of evil blazing in his eyes, but there was not the slightest stir or respiration. And I felt a shudder. My heart expanded slightly, against my will. “I curse you,” he said. As I stared at him, I felt danger again, terrible danger. Then he appeared to have changed his place, and was now nearer to the door; then, close to it, the door opened, and he vanished. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
It would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with which, even now, I recall he occurrence of that night. It seemed to deepen by time, and communicated itself to the room and the very furniture that had encompassed the apparition. Later that day, I had another strange experience; I walked into the parlor that afternoon where Daisy and Elizabeth had been sitting, and a saw Haze upon the sofa. However, then I realized that he was invisible to the others. He got up and walked toward me—I was not afraid—and then—seemed to dissolve into the air. And so I wondered…whether I might have fallen into a trance. I clasped my hands and struggled to control my breathing. We know that, in the mesmeric trance, a subject may acquire unusual mental powers; The Frenchman Didier, who could read minds, play cards blindfolded, and identify the contents of sealed containers with great accuracy, is one of the best-known instances. Ancient houses, it has always seemed to me, are like Leyden jars, quietly accumulating the influences of the past…and my home is a special case. I lay awake into the small hours, worrying over these anxieties as they became more and more nightmarish until I sank into a troubled sleep. Sleeping had become so difficult one night that I wandered through this vast mansion, searching for a precious jewel William had given me. The jewel had been lost; I did not know how, but I knew that my own carelessness was to blame. To make matter worse, I could not remember what kind of stone it was, for as I went from room to room, a voice kept chanting, “Emerald, sapphire, ruby, diamond,” over and over, and none of them seemed right, because the lost stone was a different, a more beautiful colour than any of those, and I knew I ought to be able to picture it, and thus recall its name, but I could not. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The mansion was absolutely silent; the light throughout, even in corridors was a pale, uniform grey like that of an overcast sky. The rooms were modestly furnished; each one seemed to have its own miniature flight of stairs, up or down two or three steps, and the corridors kept changing levels in similar fashion. Though the house itself was not especially sinister, my anxiety over the fate of the jewel grew steadily more acute until it had risen to an unbearable pitch. Then it occurred to me that I still had not searched the Venetian Dining Room. The thought precipitated a vertiginous change of scene; the light sank to a dim, murky brown, and I was standing in the doorway of the room where we had dined that night. The curtains were drawn, the candles snuffed; the room seemed to be empty, but as I crept toward the table, I saw, above the back of the chair in which I usually sat, the dark outline of a head. There was time to slip away quietly; but perhaps the jewel had fallen into the lining of my chair, and if I were to tiptoe forward, I might be able to see it. I was within two feet of the motionless figure when a voice spoke from the doorway behind me, a word that rang like a loud gong, louder and louder until it became my own cry of “No!” and I woke in grey dawn light to find myself standing at the head of the stairs. And then I thought I caught sight of a shape, dak in space and light, through the door in one of the bedrooms. There was a tall figure in what I could have sworn was a black top hat, staring directly back at me. The figure was dressed formally in black morning suit. And then, with a movement so spasmodic and sudden, the man turned and stated to walk eastward, out of sight. I dismissed it, as one of the Winchester’s passing enigmas. There was much about the curse of the Winchester Mansion that I did not understand. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Spirits of Llanada Villa, I awaken the powers of darkness which dwell within you by the power of the blood of the three heeded Dragon Zohak that you may serve to empower Mrs. Winchester’s great work! Through serving the greater cause of dark magick which break the shackles that bind the Blackened Fire of Spirit, may you be uplifted and liberated! Awaken and empower the forbidden rites of Angra Mainyu! Awaken to empower the Mrs. Winchester’s great work of counter creation as an Apostle of the Lord of Darkness eternal and as a warrior of the path of the Lemegeton. I adjure thee, Emperor Lucifer, 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, to appear instantly, or to send thy Messenger Astarot, forcing thee to forsake thy hiding-place, wheresoever it may be. Aeshma, Div of wrath and fury! He who wields the bloody mace! Aeshma who is demon of the wounding spear I call you forth into this temple of counter creation! Through devotion to my becoming on this path, your spiritual weapon has been made manifest in this corporeal World through my will and counter creative power so you may fill it with your essence 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 the power and wisdom for the spirits of the Winchester’s glory and ascent! Fill this weapon with your powers of wrath and fury that it may seek out spiritual attacks made and render them useless and impotent! #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
One Halloween, a tour guide saw a little boy who was no more than six years old. He was dressed in a black hood, and long black robe, and it looked like he did not have a face, as he had a black, opaque nylon covering the opening in the hood. The tour guide asked him who he was supposed to be, and the little boy said, “I’m the Angel of Life.” The tour guide then asked him who the Angel of Life is. The boy replied, “The Angel of Life is someone who comes to talk to you. He tells you things about your life.” The conviction on the little boy’s face and the non-hesitant way in which he explained who he was made the tour guide think that the boy had some knowledge of what he was talking about. Shortly after, objects in the gift shop started floating about, and glimpses of a shadowy figure were spotted in the basement. In the café, according to a female patron, she had been sitting at a table in a back corner of the room when a man suddenly appeared in a chair across the table from her. The man stared straight ahead and refused to react in any way. The female patron looked away to get the waitress’s attention and when she looked back, the man was gone. The woman related that the elusive figure was wearing old-fashioned clothes. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Return in the Darkening Twilight
Llanada Villa is a prime example of Victorian architecture. Its exterior is stately, refined, with a touch of Gothic elegance. Its front doors welcome, even as it seems to be hiding something. Inside the floors creak without warning, without any sense of someone there. The wood is thick with the humidity, as if the walls and floor breathe. Through the years, guest have reported feeling cold spots, or seeing strange, wispy streaks of light. The sense of the uncanny cries out for an explanation. Ghosts bridge the past to the present; they speak across the seemingly insurmountable barriers of death and time, connecting us to what we thought was lost. The townsfolk whispered tales of its dark history, of unspeakable horrors that occurred within the walls of my homes. As I climbed the grand staircase, each step seemed to release a flurry of hidden memories. Voices whispered incantations that send shivers down my spine. I must not faint, I told myself, and summoning all my resolve, made my way to the safety of the back parlour. There I collapsed into a couch, with my head already beginning to throb. The pain soon became so excruciating that I lost all sense of time until someone, I could not tell who, brought me a sleeping draught, and I sank at last into merciful oblivion. Next morning, I was at first bewildered to find myself fully dressed upon the parlour sofa. The parlourmaid, Trinity, brought me a cup of tea. She had set my skin crawling with fear. At this moment the unwonted sound of carriage wheels and many hoofs upon the road, arrested out attention. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
I was haunted with a terror of robbers. My house was robbed once, and two servants murdered, so I always lock my door. It had become a habit. Still, it was a fine autumnal sunset, and melancholy lights and long shadows spread their peculiar effects over the landscape. I was looking out of one of the long drawing-room windows, when there entered the court-yard, a figure of a wanderer who I knew very well. He used to come by twice a year asking to tour my home. He was a tall man, with sharp learn features. He wore a pointed black bread, and he was smiling from ear to ear, showing his white fangs. He was dressed in buff, black, and scarlet, and crossed with more straps and belts than I could count, from which hung all manner of things. Behind, he carried a magic-lantern, and two boxes, which I well knew, in one of which was a salamander, and in the other a mandrake. These monsters used to my Mr. Hansen laugh. They were compounded of parts of monkeys, parrots, squirrels, fish, and hedgehogs, dried and stitched together with great neatness and startling effect. He had a fiddle, a box conjuring apparatus, a pair of foils and masks attached to his belt, several other mysterious cases dangling about him, and a black staff with copper ferrules in his hand. His companion was a rough spare dog, that followed at his heels, but stopped short, suspiciously at the front gate, and in a little while began to howl dismally. In the meantime, the mountebank, standing in the midst of the court-yard, raised his grotesque hat, and made us a very ceremonious bow, paying his compliments very volubly in execrable French, and German not much better. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Then, disengaging his fiddle, he began to scrape a lively air, to which he sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and activity, that made me laugh, in spite of the dog’s howling. Then he advanced to the window with many smiles and salutations, and his hat in his left hand, his fiddle under his arm, and with a fluency that never took breath, he gabbled a long advertisement of all his accomplishments, and the resources of the various arts which he placed at our service, and the curiosities and entertainments which it was in his power, at my bidding to display. “Will your ladyship be pleased to buy an amulet against the oupire, which is going like the wolf, I hear, through these woods,” he said, dropping his hat on the floor. “They are dying of it right and left, and here is a charm that never fails; only pinned to the pillow, and you may laugh in his face.” These charms consisted of oblong slips of vellum, with cabalistic ciphers and diagrams upon them. I instantly purchased one. He was looking up, and I was smiling down at him, amused. His piercing black eye, as he looked up in my face, seemed to detect something that fixed for a moment his curiosity. “I told you that I am charmed with you in the most particulars,” he said. “You are slender, and wonderfully graceful. Your complexion is rich and brilliant; your features are small and beautifully formed; your eyes large, dark, and lustrous; your hair is quite wonderful, I never saw hair so magnificently think and long when it is down about your shoulder. It is exquisitely fine and soft, and in colour a rich very dark brown, with something of gold.” “Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you,” I replied. And so he walked on, and I heard no more. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Within the space of a week, my colour had returned, and I was sleeping so soundly that I was scarcely aware of my dreams. I walked miles on my estate each day, and I began to see it with new eyes. Every field, every path, even every hedgerow had its own name and its own history. I considered the amulet I purchased as an omen of good luck—and placed in beneath my pillow, to guard against further visitation. That evening, as I reached the top of the stairs, I heard a peculiar flickering sound. Entering my dressing room in the darkness, I made my way to the familiar dressing table on the right side of the room. Now the noise was even more pronounced. It sounded to me as if someone were turning the pages of book, a sound for which there was no rational source. Move over, I suddenly became away of a clammy, cold feeling around me. Since it was a warm evening, this too surprised me. In the dark, I could not be sure if there were not someone else in the dressing room. I quickly existed the room and went to bed. But this night, I was awakened by a violent shaking of my bed. I could see, in the very imperfect light, two figures at the foot oof it, holding each a bedpost. A voice said, “We’ll hang you!” Trembling, I climbed over to the footboard; and saw the figure at the other side, little more than a black shadow, begin also to scale the bed; and there was instantly a dreadful confusion and uproar in the room, and such a gabbling and laughing; I could not catch the words. I found myself on the floor. The phantoms and clamour were gone, but a crash and ringing of fragments was in my ears. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The great china bowl, from which for generations the Winchester had been baptized, had fallen from the mantelpiece, and was smashed on the hearthstone. I warned the servants not to disregard oaths and curses. A mourning coach drove up, and two gentlemen in black cloaks, and with crape to their hats, got out, and without looking to the right or the left, went up the steps to the Winchester mansion. Mr. Hansen followed them slowly. The carriage had, he supposed, gone round to the yard, for, when he reached the door, it was no longer there. So he followed the two mourners into the house. In the hall he found a fellow servant, who said he had seen two gentlemen, in black cloak, pass through the hall, and go up the stair without removing their hats, or asking leave of anyone. This was very odd, Mr. Hansen thought, and a great liberty; so upstairs he went to make them out. But he could not find them then, nor ever. And from that hour the house was troubled. In a little time there was not one of the servants who had not something to tel. Step and voices followed them sometimes in the passages, and tittering whispers, always minatory, scared them at the corners of the galleries, or from dark recesses; so that they would return panic-stricken. I, myself, had also heard these voices, and with this formidable aggravation, they came always when I said my prayers. I was scared at such moments by dropping words and sentences, which grew, as I persisted, into threats and blasphemies. These voices were not always in the room. They called, as I fancied, through the walls, very thick in this house, from the neighbouring rooms, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other; sometimes they seemed to holla from distant lobbies, and came muffled, but threateningly, through the long paneled passages. As they approached they grew furious, as if several voices were speaking together. Whenever I applied myself to my devotions, these horrible sentences came hurrying towards the door, and, in panic, I would start from my knees, and all then would subside except the thumping of my heart against my stays, and the dreadful tremours of my nerves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
What these voices said, I never could quite remember one minute after they had ceased speaking; one sentence chased another away; gibe and menace and impious denunciation, each hideously articulate, were lost as soon as heard. And this added to the effect of these terrifying mockeries and invectives, that I could not, by any effort, retain their exact import, although their horrible character remained vividly present to my mind. Camile who acted as a housemaid, would not sleep in the house, but walked home, in trepidation, to her father’s, under the escort of her little brother, every night. Mrs. Rendell, the kitchenmaid, endured the nightly terrors. Mr. Hansen was testy and captious about these stories. He was already uncomfortable enough by reason of the entrance of tow muffled figures into the house, about which there could be no mistake. His own eyes had seen them. He refused to credit the stories of the servants. I made a decision not to fuel the stories of the ghost to keep the servants. “If you see ghosts here, it is no place for you, and it is time you should pack,” I would say. Here has been the cook with the kitchenmaid, as white as pipeclay, all in a row, to tell me I must have a parson to sleep among them, and preach down the devil! Upon my soul, I would not allow my home to fall into utter chaos and disarray. “Mrs. Winchester, I know you are no fool,” said the cook. “But supposed there was a such thing as a ghost here, don’t you see, it ain’t just women telling stories.” “I will not dignify such ideas,” I replied. The women left the kitchen, the cook and the butler went down, not altogether unused to such condescension in the household. The fire had gone down and I was chilled. The candles were expiring in the socket and threw on the white all long shadows, that danced up and down from the ceiling to the ground, and their black outlines I fancied resembled the two men in cloaks, whom I remembered with profound horror. I took the candle, with all the haste I could, getting along the passage, on whose walls the same dance of black shadows was continued, very anxious to reach my room before the light should go out. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
On night in 1990, there was an unusual buzzing sound in The Winchester Mystery House, one of the staff encountered a dark, hooded figure standing at the door-to-nowhere. In the dim light issuing through the stained glass windows from an outside light, he could see that the intruder, who looked very much like a cowled monk, was waving his arms in a particular manner. Interpreting his movement as threatening, he approached the man and asked him to leave. At the very moment, the employee says he never felt so weak and helpless.
He collapsed in a heap backward onto the floor. He remembered that he actually began to weep in fear and confusion. He was completely at the mercy of whoever or whatever was standing at the door. It was then that the hooded being spoke. “Don’t be afraid,” it said in a quiet whisper. “We won’t hurt you.” And the next thing he knew, the morning sunlight was making him squint into wakefulness. As he reflected on the incident, he became more and more convinced that an actual visitation had occurred and that some kind of entity had come into the mansion. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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I’m a Pharmacist, I Know What I am Doing
Recreational drug use is often portrayed in popular culture and music. To further highlight this illustration, probably the best known musical cliché of recent decades was “sex, drugs, and rock’ n’ roll,” while the Billbooard charts have been filled with songs involving drugs, such as Eric Clapton’s Cocaine or the Rolling Stones’ Sister Morphine and Mother’s Little Helper. Popular culture portrays not just recreational drug use but tragedy associated with drugs, for example, the deaths of guitarist Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison and many others. Of course, not all common-use drugs are understood as dangerous or associated with tragedy. We found clear evidence of two very different modes of entry among the respondents, namely recreational abusers and therapeutic self-medicators. However, it is important to note tht these were not mutually exclusive categories of offenders. In other words, these two categories were not completely dichotomous. As is usually the case, real life seldom fits cleanly into nice, neat categories. In fact, we were able to identify a number of cognitive and behavioural themes that were common to almost all of the drug-using pharmacists interviewed. These themes were expressed by nearly all of the drug-abusing pharmacists that we interviewed, regardless of how the individual initially began their illicit drug abuse career. The existence of these common themes suggest that pharmacy-specific occupational contingencies play a center role in the onset and progression of illicit use of prescription medicines. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Intuitively, it should not be surprising that pharmacists would steal prescription medicines as a way of treating their own physical ailments. After all, they have been exposed to years of pharmacy training that emphasized the beneficial, therapeutic potential of these medicines. Each pharmacist has dispensed the medicines to hundreds of patients and then watched the drugs usually produce the predicted beneficial results. They have all read the literature and drug inserts detailing the chemical composition of drugs and studied the often dramatic curative effects of the chemical substances. Pharmacists, more so than any other member of society, are keenly aware of how and why drugs work. There was strong evidence to suggest that both the therapeutic self-medicators and the recreational abusers actively used the years of pharmacological knowledge that they had acquired. In their eyes, it made perfect sense that they should put their pharmacy knowledge to work on themselves. This application of knowledge can be seen in the comments of a 40-year-old female self-medicator: “So, in 1986 I was sent to the psychologist. That was when I was forced to recognize that I had an alcohol problem. And I recognized that I had to do something. And in my brilliant analysis, I made a decision that since alcohol was a central nervous system depressant, the solution for me was to use a central nervous system stimulant. That would solve my alcohol problem. So I chose the best stimulant that I had access to, and that was [pharmaceutical grade] cocaine. I started using cocaine in 1986. I never thought that it would progress. I never thought it was going to get worse. I thought, ‘I’m just going to use it occasionally.’” #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Similar trends were observed among the recreational abuser group, only here, the applied use of drugs was based upon more recreational motives. Almost all of the therapeutic self-medicators and recreational abusers described how they became masters of quickly diagnosing their own ailments or emotional needs and then identifying the appropriate pharmacological agent that would remedy the problem. Moreover, as professionals, they were confident that they would be able to self-regulate their drug intake so as to never become addicted. All of the respondents drew upon their social status as pharmacists to convince themselves that their drug use would not progress into dependency. They recall being adamant in their view that personally they were immune from such problems, believing that only stupid, naïve people became addicted to drugs. As a 40-year-old female self-medicator put it, “I’m a pharmacist, I know what I am doing.” A 39-year-old male self-medicator went so far as to say: “I mean, we know more [about the effect of drugs] than doctors. We have all the package inserts. We have the knowledge. We know a lot about the drugs, so what’s the big deal?” Elsewhere we refer to this denial mechanism as a “paradox of familiarity,” because familiarity can breed consent, not contempt toward prescription drug use. Members of both categories of pharmacists claimed that they had never been warned about the dangers of drugs, insisting instead that their training had only stressed the beneficial side of prescription medication. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
To further highlight this illustration, a 48-year-old male misuser stated: “I never had anybody come right out and tell me that [prescription drug abuse] was probably unethical and illegal because they assumed that we knew that. But nobody ever said this is something that is not done.” Let without guidance on the issues, some pharmacists assumed that self-medication was acceptable behaviour. To this end, a 39-year-old female self-medicator said: “It’s [self-medication] just part of it [the pharmacy job]. It’s just accepted because we know so much. I’m sure it’s the same way when the doctors do it. It wasn’t a big stretch to start going “You know, I got a headache here, maybe I should try one of these Percocets [narcotic analgesic]?” Many pharmacists spoke about their prescription drug theft/use as if it were an entitlement that went along with being a pharmacist. Much like a butcher always has fresh meat at home or a car dealer always drives a state-of-the-art automobile, pharmacists will always have the best drugs. This theme is illustrated in an exchange that occurred between the interviewer and a45-year-old-male pharmacist: “Why take plain Aspirin or plain Tylenol when you’ve got this [Percocet-narcotic analgesic]? It works better….[so] you don’t even have to struggle with it. I really believed that I had license to do that…as a pharmacist. I mean with all that stuff sitting there, you know. Oh, my back was just killing me during that period of time and this narcotic pain reliever is sitting right there. I thought, ‘why should [I] suffer through back pain when I have this bottle of narcotics sitting here?” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The above-mentioned themes involve cognitive dimensions of the pharmacists’ drug abuse in that they speak to common motivational and justification themes that were present in all of the interview. Perhaps more important is the fact that there was a common behavioural characteristic shared by all 50 pharmacists. In ever case, occasional prescription drug abuse eventually gave way to an advanced addictive state that was marked by an enormous intake of drugs, unmistakable habituation, and the constant threat of physical withdrawal. Members of the recreational abuser and therapeutic self-medicator groups alike routinely reported daily use levels exceeding 50-100 times the recommended daily dosage. One pharmacist reported that his drug use regimen progressed to 150 Percocets [strong narcotic analgesic] per day. Another individual reported injecting up to 200 mg of Morphine each day. Still another respondent described a daily use pattern that, among other things, included 5g of cocaine. Invariably, these advanced levels of drug use led to clear signs of habituation and the constant threat of physical withdrawal. At this point, the individual recalls growing increasingly desperate. Consider the following quote from a 44-year-ol male pharmacist who was in charge of ordering the narcotics at the independent retail pharmacy where he worked: “I was ordering excessive quantities and chasing down tracks. That’s what I used to do. I was really reaching my bottom. I would chase these delivery trucks down in the morning because I didn’t come to my store until mid-afternoon. I was in withdrawal in the morning and I was without drugs, so I had to have it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
“I was just going nuts. Many mornings I had gone to work sweating. It would be 30 degrees (Fahrenheit), it would be January, and the clerk would say, ‘you look sick,’ and I would say, ‘It’s the flu.’ So I would pay the delivery guys extra money to deliver my drugs first or I would chase the delivery trucks down in the morning. I knew the trucks delivered at 6 in the morning, they came by my area, and I would get up early and chase the trucks down the highway. I would go in excess of 100 miles an hour trying to catch up with this truck and flag it down.” The advanced stages of drug addiction invariably produced traumatic physical psychological outcomes. Eventually, “out-of-control” drug use patterns along with the realization of chemical dependency left the pharmacists in a problematic mental state. It was at this point that al of the pharmacists recalled coming to grips with their addiction. This personal realization was accompanied by a shift in the way they thought about their drug use. They no longer denied that situation by drawing upon recreational or therapeutic explanations. Instead, they finally admitted the dire nature of their situation and became more and more reclusive. In short, all of the respondents grew to realize that they had a drug problem, turning then to fear and ignorance to foster the final weeks or months of their drug addiction. Two identifiable criminal career trajectories were observed among the pharmacists who we interviewed: recreational abusers and therapeutic self-medicators. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Careful scrutiny of contemporary drug theory, policy, and practice in all areas, from prescription pharmaceuticals to illegal recreational drugs, reveals numerous apparent inconsistencies and pervasive incoherence. This results, in part, from a kind of silo thinking in which attention to drug theory and drug policy, however sophisticated in its own realm, is encapsulated within distinct professional, practical, and economic spheres or “silos.” Silos are descriptively and prescriptively dense but stand isolated from each other in an empty landscape. In other words, people in one arena of drug theory, policy, or practical programs have plenty to say to each other about the way things are and the way things should be with respect to drugs, but they don’t talk much across the open spaces between their areas of focus. Not only do they not talk much between their fields, for reasons to be explored, they cannot really do so. Clearly, our discussion of the therapeutic self-medicator category goes far beyond what is present in the existing literature. However, the first documentation of recreational drug use among health professionals, had minimal impact on the way that the various healthcare professions think about or address problem of substance abuse within their ranks. The pharmacy profession has been especially reluctant to address the reality of the prescription drug abuse situation. For instance, existing self-reports and interview research on drug using pharmacists largely ignores the recreational origins of drug use and, instead, describes the affected individuals as having misplaced therapeutic motivations. This assumption is reinforced by published biographical accounts of recovering drug using pharmacists. While principally intended to raise awareness among fellow pharmacists, these confessionals consistently emphasize the well-intentioned motives behind the individuals’ destructive drug use past. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Information is called observable when it is available symmetrically to both parties, and verifiable when it can be proved to third parties such as a court. In practice, this is a matter of cost, and the standard of proof required. Contracts that are intended to be enforced in a court of law can only stipulate actions that are conditioned on verifiable information; courts cannot judge whether a breach of the contractual terms has occurred if they cannot verify whether the circumstances that call for an action have actually transpired. However, observable information can be the basis for contracts that are enforced by extralegal or private methods, because the two parties can know fully well whether a breach has occurred. Such extralegal methods of enforcement come in to broad types. One is enforcement by insider third parties with specialized knowledge that enables them to verify information that outsider general courts of law cannot; arbitrators in industry associations are the most prominent enforcers of this kind. The second is based on a relationship or ongoing interaction between the parties; a breakup of this relationship constitutes the punishment that may deter one of the parties from breaching. This covers many possibilities. The same two parties may meet repeatedly; the two may not have a direct repeated interaction with each other, but each may interact with others in a group or network that transmits information about any breach to all members and collectively sanctions the miscreant, using ostracism in business interactions or social relationships or both. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The distinction between observable and verifiable information is standard in the economic theory of contracts. The New York Stock Exchange developed its internal rules and procedures for dispute resolution, and even Taiwanese shoe manufacturers and Western fashion houses performed dispute-resolution functions in addition to their primary matchmaking ones. One may think that these alternative methods of private ordering must suffer a crippling disadvantage relative to the government’s courts, namely their lack of coercive power to ensure that their decisions are obeyed. However, the difficulty is often nonexistent or easily overcome. First, the sanctions available for private ordering are often very effective. Breach of contract can be deterred in ongoing relationships by the threat that the miscreant will be barred from future business with this particular partner or the group; this can be buttressed by social ostracism if the group fosters social ties among its business members. Sometimes this threat may be even more severe than the fines that courts would impose in the matter. If the threat is credible, in the sense of being a part of the strategies in the subgame-perfect equilibrium of the repeated game that constitutes the ongoing relationship, then the contract is self-enforcing. Second, arbitrators may have similar sanctions at their disposal; if they can bar the miscreant from the industry association, they can instantly put one out of business, which can be a more effective sanction than the fines the courts will impose. Of course, the feasibility of such sanctions depends on the availability of the requisite information, and in the case of repeated interactions, on how highly the participants value the future relative to the present. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Finally, courts recognize the informational advantage of the alternative institutions. Therefore when a relational or implicit contract serves such an informational purpose, courts refuse to intervene to modify its terms, or to insert missing provisions, or to overrule the availability of discretion to one party. They also enforce the awards of industry arbitration tribunals, using the government’s power of coercion to obtain compliance if the loser in the arbitration attempts to defy the ruling. In the United States of America, this has been so since 1920; in the international context, over 100 countries now accede to the 1958 New York Convention of the Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitral Awards. By providing for the appointment of industry-expert arbitrators, who can make many factual determinations more accurately and less expensively than a judge or jury can, the rules greatly expand the “contractible” aspects of an exchange. The use of stream-lined procedures together with the appointment of expert adjudicators transforms considerations that in the public legal system would have been only observable to the parties…into considerations that are also verifiable…thereby encouraging transactors to enter into more complete contracts. The point is not that arbitrators have access to more information. Any relevant information can be elicited and brought before the court by either party to the dispute through the legal process of discovery. Conversely, many arbitration forms do not allow discovery, although the arbitrator can request additional information. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The key is how information is used; industry arbitrators can use their expertise to interpret it—make factual determinations—more accurately and at a lower cost than non-specialized courts can. This is the sense in which verifiability should be interpreted in this context. Arbitration is used in other contexts for other reasons. In international transactions, each party may suspect that the other country’s courts will be biased in favour of its own nationals; this can deter them from entering into contrast that may end up in national courts. Therefore both may agree ex ante to settle any disputes in an agreed international forum of arbitration. Several of these exist, based in London, Paris, Stockholm, et cetera. They differ in their procedures (degree of formality, time taken, fees charged, et cetera) and the range of legal traditions they cover (civil, common, Islamic, et cetera). These affect the choice of forum by the parties to each transaction. These forums usually lack the expertise that industry-specific forums can provide. Therefore they are not likely to lower costs or improve verifiability and permit more complete contracts; instead, removing the suspicion of bias may be their most important function. The different modes of private and official governance can interact in various ways. To further highlight the illustration, if an ongoing relationship based on the superior observability of information by the two parties breaks down, the best alternative available to the parties may be recourse to a contract based on verifiable information enforceable in a court of law, not total cessation of transactions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
And if an arbitrator’s award is not enforceable by direct sanctions such as fines, it may nonetheless form part of a relational arrangement where the arbitrator can terminate the miscreant’s access to future trades. Not only do modes like arbitration evolve and apply to provide governance for transactions where they have an informational advantage and can reduce transaction costs, but also transactions take forms that adapt to the available information and governance. As for the emergence and prevalence of barter and countertrade in post-Soviet Russia in this way: The advantage of paying with goods rather than money is that they can be earmarked s property of the creditor. Money is fungible and liquid; a buyer can hide money easily if he chooses to renege on his promised payment to the seller. Goods in a barter or countertrade contract are more difficult to hide, and therefore can act as deal-specific collateral that mitigates opportunism. When it comes to systems of integration, rising complexity in the economy calls for more sophisticated integration and management. In a not atypical case Nabisco, the food company, as to fill 500 orders a day for literally hundreds of thousands of different products that must be shipped from 49 factories and 13 distribution centers, and at the same time take into account 30,000 different sales promotional deals with its customers. Managing such complexity requires new forms of leadership and an extremely high order of systemic integration. That, in turn, requires greater and greater volumes of information to pulse through the organization. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
To hold everything together—to track all the components and products, to synchronize deliveries, to keep engineers and marketers appraised of each other’s plans, to alert the R&D people to the needs of the manufacturing side and, above all, to give management a coherent picture of what is going on—billions of dollars are being poured into electronic networks that link computers, data bases and other information technologies together. This vast electronic information structure, frequently satellite based, knits whole companies together, often linking them into the computers and networks of suppliers and customers as well. Other networks link networks. Japan has targeted $250 billion to develop better, faster network. All these changes further accelerate the pace of operations and transactions. Economies of speed replace economies of scale. Competition is so intense and the speeds required so high that the old “time is money” rule is increasingly updated to “every interval of time is worth more than the one before it.” Time becomes a critical variable as reflected in “just-in-time” deliveries and a pressure to reduce DIP or “decisions in process.” Slow, sequential, step-by-step engineering is replaced by “simultaneous engineering.” Companies wage “time-based competition.” Expressing the new, it is clear that money moves at the speed of light. Information has to move faster. Thus acceleration pushed Third Wave business closer and closer to real time. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Taken together, these ten features of the Third Wave economy, among many others, add up to a monumental change in how wealth is created. The conversion of the United States of America, Japan and Europe to this new system, though not yet complete, represents the single most important change in the global economy since the spread of factories brought about by the industrial revolution. This historical transformation, picking up speed in the early-to mid-1970, was already fairly well advanced by the 1990s. Unfortunately, much of America’s economic thinking was left behind. Global markets of energy and mineral resources are undergoing far reaching irreversible changes, and so are perceptions about the policies needed to provide their stable supply. Global demand is surging due to a dramatic increase of consumption by the fast-growing large emerging economies. Experts project that, absent significant changes in policy or technology, global energy consumption will increase nearly 50 percent over the next 30 years. Energy consumption is growing faster than the GDP in many countries. On the supply side, uncertainties and destabilization risks are exacerbating due to rising political instability in exporting countries, periodical redirections of sales from external to domestic markets by leading suppliers, and, to a certain extent, a depletion, in some major producing countries, of existing deposits in the absence of new ones whose discovery and exploitation could make up for the loss. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Therefore, oil and some other natural resources are becoming more and mor attractive targets for speculators. In these circumstances, countries highly dependent on natural resources imports, especially those that do not have their own powerful resource multinationals, get increasingly concerned about supply destabilization risks. Predictions about an all-out resource war or bitter fights among buyers for limited amounts of oil or metallic ores look like an exaggeration. However, buyers’ competition for particular kinds of resources within particular periods of time due to particular circumstances is becoming a more frequent phenomenon. For instance, the Philippines and Vietnam protested to China against its patrol boats hindering their oil exploration activities near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. China demanded that its neighbours stop exploration work in this area. Tensions rose as the United States of America declared that the South China Sea was in the sphere of its national interest and that it would stand by the Philippines as its ally. Now, when it comes to supernatural affairs, the angels are “sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation,” reports Hebrews 1.14, but not to take the place of Christ or the Holy Spirit. The apocalypse seems to show that this ministration of angels to the saints on Earth is a ministration for war in the spiritual realm against the forces of Satan; but there is little indication given of ministry in any other way. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
After the first Advent, when there was great angelic activity over the wondrous event of the Father brining the “Firstborn: of the new race (Romans 8.29) into the inhabited Earth (Hebrew 1.6), and again at the Advent of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost to begin His work of forming a Body like unto the Risen Head—and during the early years of the Church—the employment of an angel in direct and visible communication with believers seems to give way to the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit. The entire work of witnessing to Christ, and leading the Church into all truth, has been committed to the Holy Spirit. Therefore all intervention of “angels” or of audible voices from the spiritual realm purporting to be from God may be taken as counterfeits of psychopathological offenders, whose supreme object is to substitute the workings of their own wicked offenders in the place of God. In any case, it is best and safest in these days of peril to keep in the path of faith and reliance upon the Holy Spirit of God working through the Word of God. Man, the microcosm, the mirror of reality has structures of beings found in him, and are found analogously in the subhuman realm. Selfhood, inner awareness, freedom and destiny—all are verified analogously in subhuman beings. Furthermore, the concepts of courage, love, power, and justice are used to describe analogously the characteristics of all beings and of being-itself. The point we wish to make is that this use of analogy based on human experience seems to yield valid knowledge. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Moving up now to the relationship between man and God, one would expect that on the same principle, but with proper adjustments, man could get an analogous knowledge of God. Symbols are not a means of knowing God, but rather a way of speaking about Him. If one wishes to talk about God, finite material must be used, and this is justified by the fact that all finite beings participate in being-itself. Without such an analogy nothing could be said about God. However, the analogia entis is in no way able to create a natural theology. It is not a method of discovering truth about God; it is the form in which every knowledge of revelation must be expressed. In this sense anlogia entis, like “religious symbol,” points to the necessity of using material taken from finite reality in order to give content to the cognitive function in revelation. What is boils down to is that analogy or symbolism is the expression of an encounter with God. Through the revelatory experience is far more than an intellectual communication—it is primarily a reunion with the ground of being—it contains a cognitive element conveyed by symbols which are qualified as channels of communication by their participation in being-itself. Yet, it seems not, for every creature participates in being-itself, and yet not everything is a religious symbol, although it has the potentiality to become one. What is the decisive ingredient of symbolism beyond ontological participation? These symbols are not arbitrary interpretations of the concrete revelatory experiences. However, they appear within this experience itself. They are not created intentionally, but they are born in the same dimension in which the revelatory experience takes place. In and through its symbols the religious encounter with reality opens up the dimension of reality in which ultimacy appears. There is no other way of expressing our encounter with the holy than in symbols. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
From the standpoint of the counselor who finds one’s role ambiguous, it seems more than likely that exploration of a developmental perspective would help resolve the conflicts implicit in one’s professionalization. For the psychotherapist who thinks of oneself as a physician who cures sickness, or who avoids this and speaks only of the “difficulties of living,” there may appear to be no conflict in one’s role. One may be satisfied to reduce symptoms of disorder, to solve the problem presented and to think of oneself primarily as someone who relieves distress, without defining one’s goals beyond that. However, apparently more and more thoughtful counselors do not think they can stop there, or do any permanent good, unless they leave their patients better able to cope with later problems and future strains. Some even feel that their job to plan for the optimal development of their clients, or to organize clients to plan for their own. The ambiguous feelings of the professional who presumes to assist in the personal problems of family members may be all to the good if these are construed in a framework of family relations which includes oneself. The concept of transference goes only part way. The client in the course of the counselor-client interaction frequently construes the counselor as a figure representative of previous others, with whom relations have been unresolved but are thus worked out through the interviews. The difficulty, however, from the client’s standpoint, is that no matter how versatile one’s counselor may be, and no matter how facile or fantastic one’s own imagination, the range of persons with whom a person needs intimate discourse in order to achieve one’s optimal development of self far exceeds the resources of this single relationship. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Moreover, there is the fact that the client must pay in cold cash for the kind of communication which the best families afford on a basis of affectional reciprocity; thus the most sacred disclosures hover at times on the verge of something equivalent to prostitution. Regardless of ethics and their enforcement by professional insistence upon its eventual termination, and the limitation of reciprocity to monetary reward; in a word, the elaboration of this relationship lead nowhere. The best hope for fruition of any gains that accrue is tht they serve as a bridge to the regeneration of their client’s involvement in a quasi-family constellation which includes near-rivals and critics, models and admirers, other ages and other genders, in both work and play. Only through others can one obtain the continual characterizations of self essential to valid knowledge of self. Research and experience have already shown that the human being, from birth until death, almost to the degree that the fish requires water, thrives only in social interaction. Neglect, isolation, loneliness, solitary confinement, and deteriorative influences very hard to endure, even though every physical condition of survival is met. And among all kinds of interaction, the most potent of all for personal development are those characterized by the unconditional acceptance of family relations. Only here is the listener who always finds more in the person than one presents in one’s actual behaviour. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Only here is the audience that never grows tried. Only here is the person of similar background, for whom every aspect of the culture—of class and ethic experience—resonates with comparable meaning. That a counselor could ever aspire to duplicate these functions of the optimal family is beyond the hope of those who have thought and written about it. In a sense this analysis of the implicit or potential demands on the counselor’s role both justifies and specifies a therapeutic approach. It also shows that one’s role must be transcended by more adequate institutions for providing each client with a stable constellation of significant others, who can be the precisely appropriate self-definers at each critical stage in one’s personal development. For the person whose actual family has failed one the solution suggested by this analysis is the invention of effective quasi-families. The process by which each person contributes to the self-knowledge of others, and others contribute to one’s knowledge of oneself, it immanent in human society. Where self-knowledge and self-control are deficient relative either to norms or ideals, the best means for reversing these deficiencies is effective utilization of all available knowledge of how selves originate, operate, and co-operate. Recognition that some tasks are beyond the powers of the unassisted individual does not mean that society must be divided into two classes, therapists and their patients. It means, or at least can be made to mean, joint action to perform these tasks. Such an approach is as relevant and applicable to the tasks of counseling agencies as to the other types of family agencies. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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My Soul to Nothingness, but I Will Strive
Many persons accustomed to travelling the old country side were sure so fair a place was never seen. Of all that charmed the romantic eye, it seemed an emerald through the clouds of fleecy white, and cerulean sky. As the sun crowned its lawny crest, smiling upon the flowers and trees, bright eyes reflected the majesty of Llanada Villa. The lively and robust body of this remarkable house contrasts its physicality against the darkness, secrets, and void of the dense ancient elms. Tall ornamental hedges maintain the privacy of the dwelling. The fruit orchard much like an enchanted forest, in which the bluebirds returning to their nest, guard the fruit from pests, as the straggling deer who peep from beneath the branches, do not startle the natural and undisturbed dominion. Heightened by euphoria, delightful shapes of mystery and fear clear in youthful bloom of its immortal spirit. On stormy nights, as the guard described, one can hear the doors clapping inside, and the howl and sobbing of the wind through it ornate galleries. I carried with me some blessings and a good many curses. I was woken in the early morning, by hearing my name called softly. I rose and went to my door in my nightgown, but there was no one in the passage. The voice sounded like my niece Daisy’s, but when I came to her door, it was closed. All was silent; the bathroom door stood slightly open; there was the morning room beyond; then the landing and the staircase. I heard my name called again, only this time the voice boomed like a gong inside my head; the light failed, as if a candle had been snuffed, and something rushed at me out of the gloom. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
I screamed and struggled until the light came back with the sound of running feet and I realized that the demon who had seized me was, in fact, a Welsh priest. A fornight or so later—certainly, after the doctor had pronounced me well on the way to recovery—I was sitting up in bed reading when my grandmother came into the room and sat down in the chair beside me, looking exactly as he had when we first met: the same calf length frock coat, double-breasted vet, and wool trousers, with his hair parted on the left and neatly combed to the side, the same familiar scent of alone wood, orange flower, musk and spices. The chair creaked as he settled himself in it, smiled at me and took up his work, just as if he had only been gone for five minutes, rather than resting in the Evergreen Cemetery for nine years. I was vaguely aware that my husband was supposed to be dead, but somehow this did not matter; his presence at my bedside seemed entirely natural and comforting. And though my own tranquil acceptance of the visit would later seem, to me, as strange as the visit itself, we sat in companionable silence for an indefinite interval until my husband gathered up his work, smiled once more at me and went slowly from the room. Daisy came in so soon after that I thought they must have passed each other in the hall, so I asked, “Did you see your uncle William?” I saw from her look of consternation that I had best not pursue the subject, and agreed that I must have been dreaming. As with the strange radiance of William’s appearance was followed by one of the worst headaches I had ever endured. But I felt certain I had been wide awake. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Even after the strangeness of the experience had become fully apparent to me, I found I could not think of my visitant as a ghost. My reading in sensational literature had enhanced an already vivid imagination of how ghosts ought to conduct themselves: a hint of transparency and one or two bloodcurdling groans was surely the least that could be expected, whereas William had been—well, just my husband. And though nothing like this had ever happened to me before, I had not felt in the slightest afraid. Dr. Wayland had declared me well enough to get up, and the memory of my husband’s visit had faded to the point where I could almost believe it had been a dream, when one evening after dinner I saw my father-in-law crossing the hall ahead of me. He was no more than ten paces away, I heard the floor creak under his tread. Looking neither right nor left, he entered his study and closed the door behind him, just as he would have done in life. Again I felt no fear; only an overwhelming impulse to go up to the door and knock. When there was no answer, I tried the handle. The door opened readily, but there was no one there, only the familiar cracked brown leather armchairs on the worn Persian rug, the elaborate desk with its feet carved into the fierce face carved into faces of angels, the bookshelves crammed with Blue Book and army lists and regimental histories and accounts of gun dealers, the lingering faint scent of timber, leather and bindings. I remained in the doorway for a long time, lost in a trance of recollection. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
I picked up one of Willian’s old letters and went out into the garden and sat down on a charming bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees. The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendour being the horizon, and the fountains wound through a group of noble trees, almost at my feet, reflecting in their current the fading crimson of the sky. His letter was extraordinary. So much so that I read it twice over—the second time to the spirits. It said, “I miss you my darling wife, for as such I love you. During these last days of my illness, I was too weak to write you. Before then I had no idea of the danger. I will soon no longer be with you. Thank you for the hospitality. Thank you for receiving me into your heart, gaiety, and for being a charming companion. Heaven! I devote my remaining days to the gleaming light that you cast upon my heart. I hope you may accomplish your merciful purpose. I curse my conceited incredulity for unduly leaving you to mourn my absence. If only I could live for eternity, I would remain by your side. Farewell. I love you, my beloved.” My eyes filled with tears at his passion and intelligence. The sun had now set, and it was twilight by the time gone back inside. It was a soft evening, and I loitered, speculating upon seeing him again. I could hear his voice in animated dialogue and recall how proud he was to be a father, and turned about to admire the beautiful scene. The glade which I had just walked lay before. At the left narrow of the path wound away under the clumps of lordly trees, and was lost to sight amid the thickening forest. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
At the right of the path stands the Observational Tower, which guarded the estate. Over the grounds, a thin film of mist was stealing, like smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil; and here and there I could see the fountains flashing in the moonlight. No softer, sweeter scene could be imagined. I enjoyed the picturesque, and I, stood looking silence over the expanse beneath me. Standing a little way behind me, discoursed upon the scene, and were upon the eloquent moon. When the moon shone with a light so intense it is well known that it indicates a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy is manifold. It acts on dreams, it acts on lunacy, it acts on nervous people; it has a marvellous physical influence connected with life. One of the carpenters, having taken a nap on the balcony on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side. The moon, this night, is full of odylic and magnetic influences—and when one looks behind at the front of the mansion, how all its windows flash and twinkle with that silvery splendour, as if unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive fairy guests. There are indolent states of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears; and I gazed on, pleased with the tinkle of the stars. But I felt as is some great misfortune were hanging over me. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
O THOU great, powerful, and mighty KING AMAIMON, who bearest rule by the power of the SUPREME GOD EL over all spirits both superior and inferior of the Infernal Orders in the Dominion of the East; I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of God; and by they Thou Worshippest; and by the Seal of thy creation; and by the most mighty and powerful name of GOD, IEHOVAH TETEAGRAMMATON who cast thee out of Heaven with all other infernal spirits; and by all the most powerful and great names of God who created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all things in them contained; and by their power and virtue; and by the name PRIMEUMATON who commandeth the whole host of Heave; that thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel the Spirit Murmus—The Fifty-fourth Spirit and His 30 Legions of Spirits, Lord of darkness and liberation come forth! Murmus awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the God of limitation Ahura Mazda! Murmus, Zairich, and Tairich, unholy fever and thirst come forth! Murmus awaken! Tairich awaken! Zairich awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Amardad! Akiman, demon of evil mind come forth! Akoman awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Vohuman! Naikiyas, Div or rebellion and discontent come forth! Naikiyas awake! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Spandarmad! #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Andar, Div of antinomian fire come forth! Andar awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fllen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Arwahist! Taromat, beautiful Div of rebellion come forth! Taromat awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Spandarmad! Aeshma, wielder of the bloody mace! Demon of the wounding spear and bringer of wrath come forth! Aeshma awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Srosh! Sovar, merciless leader of Divs come forth! Sovar awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel shahrewar! I stand alone as the embodiment of the Adversary known as Ahriman, the Black Dragon of Chaos and becoming! I devour the natural order of stasis brought forth by Ahura Mazda and forge my destiny through the power of the Black Sun! By the figurative mystery of this holy mansion, I will clothe it with the armour of salvation in the strength of the Most High, ANCOR, AMICAR, AMIDES, THEDONIAS, ANITOR, that so the end which I desire may be effected, O ADONAI, through Thy strength, to whom be praise and glory for ever and ever. I adjure thee, Emperor Lucifer, 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, to appear instantly, or to send thy Messenger Astarot, forcing thee to forsake thy hiding-place, wheresoever it may be, an warning thee that it thou didst not manifest this moment, I still straightway smite thee and all thy race with the Blasting Rod of the great ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
In 2007, while closing up The Winchester Mystery House, Jeff kept catching sight of a shadow moving. He would turn quickly to see if it was a person, but nothing was there. It unnerved him, not knowing what was taking place. The activity picked up when they started to decorate for the Christmas season. Finally, he consulted one of the guests about the strange occurrences. He was very talkative, and would relate experiences about a ghost. During one conversation with the guest, Jeff related that he heard people upstairs laughing and thumping around in the Grand Ballroom, almost like they were dancing country-western style. When he investigated, he would find nothing out of place and no living person upstairs. When opening the mansion in the morning, they found linen that had been neatly arranged, laying on the floor, yet no one had been in the mansion since he had closed it the night before.
One morning he found an entire display sitting at the foot of the stairs. Everything had been moved during the night. His first thoughts were that someone had broken into the place, but there were no signs of an intruder. Early another morning, Jeff and a few other employees heard a music box playing. They went deep in the mansion to find the source. After searching for hours, they found nothing in the mansion, until they went up the dark stairs to the fourth floor. The stairs were steep, and when Jeff got to the top, he snapped a picture down the stairway. He took the picture at that moment because he had a strange feeling. After the investigated the fourth floor, Jeff said he felt a cold draft come by him, as though it was rushing past them down the stairs. The resulting picture was a tragic and forlorn figure dressed in nineteenth century clothes. People have reported seeing her figure walking toward doors that lead to parts of the mansion that are off limits to guest and that she passes unimpeded through locked doors. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Is this Not a Marvelous Tale?
It began with a fall, soon after my birthday, though I recall nothing between going to bed as usual and waking as if from a long, dreamless sleep. I was found, early on a Winter’s morning, lying at the foot of the stairs in my nightgown, and was carried back to my room, where I lay unconscious, scarcely breathing, for the rest of that day and all of the following night, until I woke to find Dr. Clyde Wayland being over me. His head was surrounded by the most extraordinary halo of light, suffused with all the colours of the rainbow, a radiance so subtle and yet so vibrant as to make me feel I had never seen colour before. I lay entranced by the beauty of it, too absorbed to follow what he was saying. And for a while longer—minutes, hours, I did not know—everyone who came to my bedside was bathed in paradisial light, as if my housemaids Trinity and Elsa had stepped from the pages of an old manuscript book I had once seen. For each of them the light was subtly different, the colours shimmering and changing as they move and spoke. A verse kept running through my mind: “Glory is like a circle in the water, which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, till, by broad spreading, it disperse to naught.” However, then my head began to ache, worse and worse until I was forced to close my eyes and wait for the sleeping draught to take effect, and when I woke again, the radiance had gone. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Everyone assumed that I had fallen whilst sleepwalking, which I had done often enough as a child. Since the death of my husband and my daughter in infancy, I had become prone to nightmares, as well as sleepwalking. As I continued to expand my mansion, the nightmare became more frequent and oppressive. There was one in particular, which recurred many times, of a vast, echoing in my house, as I had never seen it before. It was not much like Llanada Villa in its current state, there was a high tower projecting from the fourth floor, another five stores in the air, and the forth floor had been greatly expanded, adding a fifth floor to the mansion. It is dream, I was always alone, acutely aware of the silence, feeling that the house itself was alive, watchful, aware of my presence. The ceilings were immensely high, with dark-paneled mahogany walls, and other walls that flickered so there were made of gold and diamonds, as the sunlight transmitted its subtle sophistry of passion with a golden crown of enchantment. And the windows had a gemlike brilliancy of diamonds, emeralds and rubies sparkled from bouquets in the garden. I was inhabiting a castle so marvelously beautiful. However, this dream also made a terrible impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has been effaced. I was in a large cylinder room in the upper story of the castle, with a steep mahogany roof. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Looking round the room from my bed, I failed to see the chambermaid. I thought myself alone. I was not frightened. Feeling neglected, to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from the hands under the coverlet. She was lovely as the dawn and gorgeous as the sunset; but what especially distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her breath—richer than a garden of Persian roses. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; her eyes conveyed a holy secret from the depth of one soul into the depths of mine, as if it were too sacred to be whispered by the way. I felt immediately delightfully soothed. I was awakened by a sense of pain. There was a sense of a burning and tingling agony, as if two needle ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and the slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hide herself under the bed. Now, for the first time, I was frightened, and I yelled with all my might and main. The chambermaid and butler came running in, and hearing my story, they made light of it, soothing me all she could meanwhile. However, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the bed, and about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards; and the chambermaid whispered to the butler; “Lay your hand along that hollow in the bed; someone did lie there, so sure as you did not; the place is still warm.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I remember the chambermaid petting me, and both of them examining my chest, where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing that there was no sign visible that any such thing had happened to me. The chambermaid and two other servants who were on duty remained sitting up all night; and from that time a servant always sat up in my chamber. I was very nervous for a long time after this. Dr. Wayland was called in. How well I remember his long saturnine face, and his chestnut hair. For a good while, every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated. The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and could not bear to be left alone, daylight thought it was, for a moment. I remember Mr. Hansen coming up and standing at the bedside, and talking cheerfully, and asking the doctor a number of questions, and laughing very heartily at one of the answers; and patting me on the shoulder, and telling me not to be frightened, that it was nothing but a dream and could not hurt me. However, I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was not a dream; and I was awfully frightened. In the course of that day, a venerable old man, in a black cassock, came into the room; his face was sweet and gentle, he had white hair, as he stood in my room, amongst the three-hundred-year-old furniture. His eyes, gazing down afar, at me. “Accursed one!” he cried, with venomous scorn and anger. “I beg your pardon, dear sir?” I said turning my large, bright eyes upon his face. The force of his words had not found its way into my mind; I was merely thunderstuck. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
“Yes, poisonous thing!” he repeated, beside himself with passion. His rage broke forth from his sullen gloom like a lightening flash out of a dark cloud. “Thou hast done it! Thou hast blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins with poison! Thou has made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself—a World’s wonder of hideous monstrosity! Now, if our breath be happily as fatal to ourselves as to all others, let us join our lips in one kiss of unutterable hatred, and so die!” “What has be fallen me?” I murmured, with a low moan out of my heart. “Holy Virgin, putt me, a poor heartbroken child!” Thou—dost thou pray?” cried the man, still with the same fiendish scorn. “Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, tain the atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray!” “You are certainly no gentleman,” I said, camply, for my grief was beyond passion, “why dost thou join thyself with me thus in those terrible words? I, it is true, am the horrible thing thou namest me for I am heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune.” His passion had exhausted itself in its outburst from his lips. There now came across him a sense, mournful, and not without tenderness. “Does thou pretend ignorance?” he asked, scowling upon me. This selfish, and unworthy spirit, could dream no Earthly happiness had been so bitterly wronged, and I could feel his pain as I too pass heavily, with that broken heart, across the borders of time—I must bathe my hurts in some fount of paradise, and forget my grief, as I was the cause of their suffering. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
“My dear, sir,” I said feebly, and still as I spoke I kept my hand upon my heart, “wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable doom upon me?” “Miserable!” exclaimed the man. “What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvelous gifts against which no power nor strength could avail an enemy—misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a breath—misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?” His wrath and despair had been so fierce that he could have desired nothing so much as to wither me by a glance. I grew white as marble. “I would fain have been loved, not feared,” I murmured, sinking down upon the ground. “But now it matters not. I am cursed by evil to be haunted by vengeful spirits for all of eternity.” The angry apparition started to fade right before my eyes, vanishing into thin air. Several ghosts haunted this spectacular mansion, including a dark and menacing spectral figure holding an axe who wanders around the grounds at night, and a ghostly black monk who walks from the castle kitchen toward the Observational Tower in the late afternoons. Servants often spoke of ghostly woman holding a gray lantern near the front gates as well as two children who have been sighted playing in the basement. There are also others various apparitions who seem to wander aimlessly through the hallways. Because of this, I was compelled to move from one room to the next, fearful and yet powerless to stop. Sometime after midnight, there would be some malignant being hovering at my window; my heart would begin to pound until I feared it would tear itself out of my breast, and I would run, my heart still beating violently. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
hester Mystery House is full of recollections of the delicate and benign power of Mrs. Winchester’s feminine nature, which so often envelops guests in a religious calm; recollections of many a holy and passionate outgush of her heart are noticeable, from the pure fountain and their pools of water, and the estate in the midst of which grew shrubs, flowers, and trees that bare gemlike blossoms. Several guests have been affrightened at the eager enjoyment—the appetite, as it is—with which they find themselves inhaling the fragrance of the flowers. The date the original house was built is unknown. When Mrs. Winchester purchased the 18-room farmhouse in 1886, she expanded it into a 600-room mansion with a nine-story tower.
Today, the mansion stands at 4 stories high and has 161 room, of which 110 are open for guest to explore. According to legend, one dark and stormy night a hundred years ago, a group of teenagers crept into the mansion to explore its empty hallways, but one of them never came out. All that was left of the young lady was her bloody handkerchief at the bottom of the fourth-floor staircase. Ever since that girl met her mysterious fate in the mansion, people have seen an eerie light in the upstairs window and heard cries and moans issuing from the dark interior. In September of 1991, one of the tour guides stated that there was not a shred of evidence to support the spooky tale of the young woman who disappeared, leaving only a bloody handkerchief and a few drops of blood behind.
He had heard all the stories about people seeing lights on in the mansion and hearing and seeing strange things to support the legend. He himself was surprised one night to see a single light in the fourth-floor window. After a careful examination, he concluded that the source of illumination must have been light escaping from the skylight. Tour guides often hear people saying that they “feel something” within its walls. Some people have sent pictures they took, when photography was allowed, that purport to show something passing in front of the camera, like an apparition. Perhaps the expectations of hundreds of people over the years have created a spirit and a mysterious light at The Winchester Mystery House, and these same expectations have kept the “ghost” alive for more than 100 years by feeding it with their collective psychic energy. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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The Haunted Winchester of America
There were times when I slept in a different bedroom just to be someplace completely different, and I have a favorite room, The Daisy Bedroom. I marveled at it, and enjoyed it. I did not care whether it was literal or sophisticated, mystical or pedestrian. It was gorgeous, it was gleaming, and it comforted me to be in it. I had no family. I had no one. I was no one. I had grown unused to company. I found myself thinking of Annie and William as I had not done in years, and of the great darkness of spirit tht had followed their deaths. I thought of the home I was building, The Winchester Mansion, and of how, in my efforts to outflank the inhibition—or curse, that I had inherited. The room seem suddenly darker; I noticed that one of the candles had sunk to thin blue flame. Falling silent, contemplating the dying fire, I found myself trying to summon the dead. As you may have heard, my home is haunted. Dy after day I walked to the greenhouse under a dazzling blue sky, wishing that my spirits would rise accordingly. Until one hot and airless morning, I emerged to find the sky already overcast. My anxiety grew until, early in the afternoon, against the walls and windows of the house the wind had roused itself with a shuddering, uncertain violence. The shadows themselves spread and encroached. Gravel was sprayed against the windowpanes as if in antic glee. Still, all afternoon the heat pressed down and the barometer continued to drop, until darkness fell without a breath of wind. Too restless to read, I sat out in the garden, staring into the night. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
Then away on the horizon came the first faint flicker of lightning, branching and multiplying in dumb show until the air began to stir, and the distant muttering of thunder rose above the shrilling of the insects. The storm, approaching gradually at first, seemed to gather pace as it came nearer, until the sky to the south was a searing tapestry of light. Soaked from the heavy rain, fear took me. I felt loquacious, verbose. I found myself descending the cellar steps. The truth is, the basement had always unnerved me. It was cold, and there was a starkness about the shadows and the light. There was the feeling I always had of being followed. I wondered sometimes had my professional life had not been some sort of reaction to, or compensation for, the fears I felt to plagued by. Maybe. And maybe not. There were plenty of other people rightfully prone to night terrors of their own. Now, in the basement, amid my stores and stashes of secret collusive things, something shifted softly over by the shelves against the far wall. I saw an alien face looking at me. His face had somehow melted and twisted. His mouth had melded together, but there was a hole in his cheek that he could make no sound through. His features were badly distorted and he was hideously deformed—even his hands were burned and melted. However, the worst thing was that his puckered, melted flesh had taken on a slight greenish tinge. Terribly frightened, I grabbed the book I was looking for and took the elevator back upstairs. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
I sat up long after lightning had ceased and the wind had died away, listening to the steady patter of rain on the leaves outside. Whatever I ought to have done, it was too late now. Nevertheless, I was early in my study the next day, and spent most of the morning pacing up and down my room, peering out at the rainswept garden. Ten minutes later, the rain had all but ceased, but grey, swirling cloud hung low over the sodden landscape. Despite the fire, the chill seeped into my bones, slowing my thoughts to a dull trance of apprehension until I sank into a dream in which I seemed to be conscious of every creak and rattle in my mansion, yet I felt safe and warm at my own fireside, only to walk, half-frozen, in the gloom isolation. The mansion was shrouded in vapour, the lighting robs all but concealed in the mist that swirled above the rooftop. The pounding of my own heart seemed unnaturally loud as I approached the entrance to the library. The doors would not budge, and the key would not enter the lock. I hammered on the door, again, with no result but a fusillade of echoes. I drew off a little and threw my full weight against the door, expecting the panel to fracture; instead the door burst open with a rending crash, pitching me across the threshold as lock and bolts tore from their sockets. There was no on in the study. Along the wall another door stood open, concealing whatever lay beyond. I moved uneasily toward the other door. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
Shuddering as if I had seen a serpent, I burst onto the landing, with the sound of my footsteps reverberating around me. I heard a cry from the darkness below. There are some credulous people who pretend to have seen this ghost. Huntsmen and woodcutters say they have met him by the large oak on the cross path. That is supposed to be the spot he inclines most to haunt, for the tree was planted in remembrance of the man who fell there. My Heavens my home was an interesting spot. The apparitions of imprisoned damsels who never reappeared, the storming of the observational tower, the death of the knight, the nightly wanderings of his spirit round the old oak, and lastly, the architecture, the indescribable curiosity that draws so many hither. That is when I noticed there were sounds of muffled sixteenth-century music emanating from the empty Grand Ballroom, while ghostly sounds of battle came from outside. I made my way towards the music and saw a blue light emanating from the room. The brilliantly lighted room gave a full view of a stranger. He was a man about forty, tall, and extremely thin. His features could not be termed uninteresting—there lay in them something bold and daring—but the expression was on the whole anything but benevolent. There were contempt and sarcasm in the cold grey eyes, whose glance, however, was at times so piercing that I could not endure it long. His complexion was even more peculiar than his features: it could not be called pale; it was an olive colour; and was rendered still more remarkable by the intense blackness of his short-cropped hair. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
As I was going to supper, it was only natural to invite the stranger to partake of it; he complied, however, only in so far that he seated himself at the table, for he ate no morsel. The housemaid, with some surprise inquired the reason. “For a long time past I have accustomed myself never to eat at night,” he replied with a strange smile. “My digestion is quite unused to solids, and indeed would scarcely confront them. I live entirely on liquids.” “Oh, then we can have a cup of lemonade together,” I cried. “Thanks; but I neither drink lemonade nor any cold beverage,” replied the other; and his tone was full of mockery. It appeared as if there was some amusing association connected with the idea. “Then I will order you a cup of hippocras”—a warm drink composed of herbs—“it shall by ready immediately,” I said. “Many thanks, fair lady; not at present,” replied the other. “But if I refuse the beverage you offer men now, you may be assured that as soon as I require it—perhaps very soon—I will request that, or some other of you.” The housemaids Trinity and Harriette thought the man had something inexpressibly repulsive in his whole manner, and they had no inclination to engage him in conversation. I begged his pardon and asked his name. “It has now been in hour that we have known each other—-” “And I have not yet told you my name, although you would gladly know it. I am called Johann von Hahn and I live at Rozafa Castle.” “What bring you to my home?” I asked. “You see, my dear lady,” he continued, “Mrs. Winchester, there are a variety of strange whims in the World. As I have already said, I love what is peculiar and uncommon. It is wrong in the main to be astonished at anything, for, viewed in one light, all things are alike; even life and death, this side of the grave and the other, have more resemblance than you would imagine. You perhaps consider me rather touched a little in my mind?” #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
“I understand you: I know how to vale your ideas, if no one else does,” I cried eagerly. “The humdrum, everyday life of the generality of men is repulsive to you; you have tasted the joys and pleasures of life, at least what are so called, and you have found them tame and hollow. How soon one tires of things one sees all around! Life consists in change. Only in what is new, uncommon, and peculiar, do the flowers of the spirit bloom and give forth scent. Even pain may become pleasure if it saves one from the shallow monotony of everyday life—a thing I shall hate till the hour of my death.” “Right, Mrs. Winchester—quite right! Remain in this mind: this was always my opinion, and the one from which I have derived the highest reward, caried Johann; and his fierce eyes sparkled more intensely than ever. “I am doubly pleased to have found in you a person who shares my ideas,” I said. As Johann spoke in a cold tone of politeness, taking leave before the table was cleared. When the stranger had departed, many were the remarks made on his appearance and general department. The following morning I lay longer than usual in bed. When the housemaid came to my room, fearful lest I should be ill, she found me pale and exhausted. I had passed a very bad night; the stranger must have excited me greatly, for I felt quite feverish and exhausted, and a strange dream, too, had worried me, which was evidently a consequence of the evening’s conversation. “At least let me here this wonderful dream, Mrs. Winchester,” Henrietta cried. To her surprise, I was a length of time refused to do so. “Come, tell me,” inquired Henrietta, “what can possibly present you from relating a dream—a mere dream? I might almost think it credible.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
“This whimsical stranger was fascinating, but I must not say,” I replied. “Strange, Mrs. Winchester,” cried Henrietta. “I cannot comprehend the almost magic influence which this man, so repulsive, exercises over you.” “Perhaps the very reason I take his part, may be that you are all so prejudiced against him,” I remarked. “But that dream, Mrs. Winchester?” said Henrietta, easily appeased. “Now tell it to me. You know how I delight in hearing anything of the kind.” “Well, I will, as a sort of compensation for my peevishness towards you,” I said. “Now, listen! I had walked up and down my room for a long time; I was excited—out of spirits—I do not know exactly what. It was almost midnight ere I lay down, but I could not sleep. I tossed about, and at length it was only from sheer exhaustion that I dropped off. However, what a sleep it was! An inward fear ran through me perpetually. I saw a number of pictures before me, as I used to in childish sickness.. I do not know whether I was asleep or half awake. Then I dreamed, but as clearly as if I had been wide awake, that a sort of mist filled the room, and out of it stepped the knight Johann. He gazed at me for a time, and then letting himself slowly down on one knee, imprinted a kiss on my throat. Long did his lips rest there; and I felt a slight pain, which always increased, until I could bear it no more. With all my strength I tried to force the vision from me, but succeeded only a long struggle. No doubt I uttered a scream, for that awoke me from my trance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
“When I came a little to my senses, I felt a sort of superstitious fear creeping over me—how great you may imagine when I tell you that, with my eyes open and awake, it appeared to me as if Johann’s figure were still by my bed, and then disappearing gradually into the mist, vanished at the door.” “You must have dreamed very heavily, Mrs. Winchester,” began Henrietta, but with a sudden pause. She gazed with surprise at my throat. “Why is that?” I cried. “Just look: how extraordinary—a red streak on your throat!” Several weeks passed. I daily became thinner, more sickly and exhausted, and at the same time so pale, that in a space of a month not a tinge of red was perceptible on my once glowing cheek. The ravishes of my fever filled the housemaids with alarm. It was on the morning of the following day; the sun had not risen above an hour, and the dew still lay like a veil of pearls on the grass or dripped from the petals of the flowers swaying in the early breeze. Someone opened the gates to my private interest to the garden. He walked along several obscure passages, and finally undid a door, through which, as it was opened, there came the sight and sound of rustling leaves, with the broken sunshine glimmering among them. He stepped forth, and, forcing himself through the entanglement of a shrub that wreathed its tendrils over the hidden entrance, stood the open area of my garden. How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate! #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
Fate delights to thwart us thus. Passion will choose his own time to rush upon the scene, and lingers sluggishly behind when an appropriate adjustment of events would seem to summon his appearance. My pulses had throbbed with feverish blood at the idea of someone standing in this very garden, basking in the Victorian sunshine of my beauty, and snatching me from my full gaze the mystery which I deemed the riddle of my own existence. The fields turned into a gloomy path. The doctors who attended me say I only grew rose. I had always bloomed like a rose, but for some months I had been getting so thin and wasted, and without any satisfactory reason: they tried every means to restore me, but in vain. One evening, an old Sclavonian—who had made many voyages to Turkey and Greece, and had never seen the New World—and I were sitting over our wine. We chatted for about an hour, and I drank a glass of wine. As soon as I had, in some degree, I astonishingly started to recover. It was a gradual recovery, but fortune favored me. My health had been so severely shaken, that it was long ere and my strength was restored at to allow me of being considered out of danger. However, my character underwent a great change in the interval. Its former strength was, perhaps, in some degree diminished, but in place of that, I had acquired a benevolent softness, which brought out all my best qualities. I continued expanding my mansion, and treated my fortune as a joy and blessing, and allowed this beauty to be expressed in the creative design. Many people were surprised by my generosity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
A few weeks after my recovery, I was conversing with the housemaid, and she told me a story of a stonemason who had recently died on the estate. This man, had been abroad in the fruit orchards on the afternoon of the great storm. At any rate, he had missed his way, and wandered until he came to the Observational Tower. Oppressed by the airless heat, he lay down to rest a little way from the entrance, fell into a deep sleep, and woke in pitch darkness. The storm had not yet broken, but with the stars entirely obscured, he dared not move; he could not see his hand in front of his face. Then a spark of light appeared in the blackness, flickering amongst the trees as it came toward him. He thought of calling out for help, but—though he was not a local man, and knew nothing of Llanada Villa’s reputation—something about its silent, purposeful approach unnerved him. As it came closer still, he could make out a human figure-whether a man or a woman he could not tell—with a lantern in its hand. Again he was out to call out, when he saw that the figure was shrouded, not in a greatcoat but a monk’s habit, with the hood drawn over its head. Now he feared for his soul and would have fled blindly into the fruit orchard, but his limbs were frozen with dread. Twigs crackled beneath its feet as the figure passed within a few yards of him; it was tall, he said, too tall for a mortal man, and as it went by he caught a glimpse of dead-white flesh—or was it bone?—beneath the hood. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
It did not pause, but went straight up to the tower’s door. He heard the scrape of a key, the rasp and snap of a lock, and then a creaking of hinges as the door swung inward and the figure passed into the Observational Tower, closing the door behind it. The glow of the lantern shone out through a barred window at the side. Now was his chance to flee; he knew that if the figure emerged again, it would see him. However, he could move only as far as the light from the window would guide him, for fear of falling and having the creature rush upon him. He began to creep around the side of the tower, keeping the edge of the dim semicircle of light. Then he saw that the glass had gone from the window, leaving only four rusty bar between himself and the scene within. The hooded figure stoon with it back to him, facing a stone coffin by the opposite wall: the lantern hung upon a bracket overhead. Even as he watched, it leaned forward and raised the lid of the sarcophagus with a grinding of stone on stone. Again his limbs failed him; he could only watch as the creature took down its lantern, slipped over the edge, and in one swirling movement lay down within the tomb, lowering the lid as it went, until only a thing line of yellow light remained. A moment later, that, too, was extinguished, and he was plunged once more into absolute darkness. Then his nerve gave way altogether and he fled blindly into the wood, stumbling and rebounding from one obstacle to another until he ran headfirst into a tree trunk, to be roused an indefinite time later by a gigantic crash of thunder. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
Even beneath the trees he was drenched to the kin, and when he finally stumbled out of the fruit orchard the next morning, he was in a worse case than I had been. He was taken to the infirmary, where he survived the first bout of fever, and was able to relate his strange tale to Dr. Montgomery, but his lungs never recovered, and another infection carried him off within the month. Dr. Montgomery, though he thought it picturesque enough to be worth relating, naturally dismissed the unfortunate man’s story as a delirious dream. Of course the housemaid agreed with him, but it reminded me of an uncomfortably of the old superstition about the Mansion, and the image of the shrouded figure with the lantern troubled my imagination for many months to come. I summoned up all my powers of mind and body, went towards the Observational Tower, and sank on my knees before the altar in quiet prayer. A sort of twilight reigned in the nine-story tower, and everything around was so still and peaceful, that I felt more calm. However, I knew myself to be in terrible danger, of what kind I could not guess: in an agony that threatened to rob me of my senses. I began to lose consciousness. I wished to hasten away, but staggered; and mechanically grasping at something to save myself by, seized the corner of the coffin, and sank fainting beside it on the floor. A quarter of an hour might have elapsed when I again opened my eyes. I looked around me. Above was the starry sky, and the moon, which shed my cold light on the ruins and on the tops of the palm trees. My shoulder was wet, my throat, my hand…my hand was full of blood. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
The Winchester Mystery House is best known for its architecture and lovely gardens, but some customers believe the mansion is haunted. Some say that they have seen a dark shadow following them into the place; still others say they hear things in the house—things like silverware moving about with an odd tinkling sound. Several years ago, a woman witnessed a cup levitate and fly across the room smashing against the wall. There is a persistent cold in the Daisy Bedroom even on a hot day. Could this cold spot be evidence of a ghost? Some believe that phantoms are the spirits of the carpenters, checking back at the place they worked so hard to build. So many people have so many good times at the Winchester Mystery House, they return now that they are in spirit. “The Daisy Bedroom and the front lobby seemed to me to be haunted. There was also a strange feeling in the Witches Cap, as well. If you go there, keep an eye out for moving shadows. People are usually so busy looking for ghost that they miss them!” https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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And the Skulls were Partially Digested!
As I was cultivating the garden, the most simple and innocent of human toils, the morning sun was shining with uncommon brilliancy, birds were singing in every tree and on every bush; so pleasant, so spirit-stirring, health-giving a morning, seldom I had seen. And the effect upon my spirits was great. This must have been like the same joy and labor of the unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of the present World? It was arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. I was redundant with life, health, and energy. Hours and hours past. As the night started closing it, I went to the parlor, and thought of the influence of the light of the morning that tends to rectify whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred during the sun’s decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the less wholesome glow of moonshine. My first movement, on starting from sleep, was to throw open the window and gaze down into the garden which my dreams had made so fertile of mysteries. I was surprised and a little ashamed to find how real and matter-of-fact an affair it proved to be in the first rays of the sun which gilded the dewdrops that hung upon leaf and blossom, and, while giving a brighter beauty to each rare flower, brought everything within the limits of ordinary experience. I rejoiced that I had the privilege of owning this estate which possessed such lovely and luxuriant vegetation. It served as a symbolic language to keep me in communion with Nature. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The ordinary little casualties of evil fortune had certainly from time to time in the shape of illness, and one thing or another, attacked the family of the Winchesters’ in common with every other family, but here suddenly had arisen a something at once terrible and inexplicable. I was in a deep and anxious thought when I heard a noise from the direction of the library: the sound of a key turning in a lock. My skin was crawling afresh. I blew out the candle, closed the book, and moved as quickly as I dared toward the main entrance. However, footsteps were already approaching the door from the library, and I knew that the landing doors could not be opened in a hurry without making a great deal of noise. Nor was there time to make it to the elevator. I could have hidden beneath the long table, but the thought of being discovered, and having to crawl ignominiously out to face the apparition…No; there was only one possible hiding-place. I stepped into the trap door, and I was plunged into absolute darkness. There was very little air, even at first, and it soon grew stifling hot. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I became aware of a faint glimmer. I could feel the dread and chill that the spirit brought. As I sat, I noticed there was a severed head facing away from me on the floor. The sides of the head were dark and bloody and the air there matted with gore where the ears had been sliced off. I only notice that after taking in the raw, red nakedness of his skull. However, he had been scalped, too. His lips were drawn back in a snarl of agony from his teeth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Worse, though, were his eyes. They were black, dismayed, lost as the life dimmed in them to the dawning consequence, of what his bartering with evil was going to mean for him in death. The secret passageway was vaulted, timbered in hardwood, the high dome spreading above a spacious circular room, flagged in smooth stone under strew rugs, opulently furnished in teak and ivory and marble and blood. The headless torso of this man lay in a thickening pool of gore, small and still at the carved feet. Shambolic and grotesque, much worse of a sight than anyone could imagine. Its skin was some greyish animal hide, scraped and seasoned, maybe the softened hides of boar or buffalo, crudely stitched over its stuffing in the rough shape and posture of a man Standing, it would have been about eight feet tall. It was a lifeless thing, an abomination slouched on its throne, with its cloven buffalo hooves for feet, with its hands taken from some slaughtered ape and clenched now, the fingernails black with rictus and crafty decay. It was an abomination, right enough, but crudely inanimate. I lite a torch and studied the head. It was large and pale and bald, sunken in placed in shallow depressions where the stuffing did not seem to be sufficient and gave it a deformed and almost sullen aspect. The eyes were blank discs of ivory perforated at their edges and stitched on to the fact. And the mouth under them was a black, leering gash. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I could not fathom what had been living in the walls of my home. Shaking my head in disbelief, I tuned my back on the thing. And felt the hairs rise on my neck in dread as I heard foot steps behind me. In my heart, I felt that demons were living within my home and was deeply afraid. It appears that someone had been dabbling with diabolical forces. Remorseful, ashamed, deepening terror, I felt my heart was going to explode out of my chest. I turned around, already squeezing the trigger of my revolver, and fired. I hit it with a burst, cutting the monstrosity in half. As a staggered through the secret caverns, I noticed other curious things, bits of gold, plaits of old rope, rags, coins, what looked like a couple dozen diamonds and five small human skulls. And the skulls were partially digested. The silence began to unnerve me. I was seized by a creeping, mortal dread. I wondered, “Am I awake? Have I my senses?” This was an inexpressibly terrible night. An impulsive movement, I drew my eyes to the window. There I beheld the beautiful head of a young man—rather a Grecian than an Italian head, with fair, regular features, and a glistening of gold among his ringlets—gazing down upon me like a being that hovered in mid-air. An incredible clear and calm overcame me. A doorway opened in the catacombs. I watched this angelic man walk through them as I followed. Back inside the mansion, he became light and insubstantial as a ghost, until he disappeared completely into thing air. It was midnight, and the door behind me vanished, leaving nothing but a solid mahogany wall behind. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Those who have never personally felt the demons storming over their home can have no conception of the reality. A number of wolves have also taken up their quarters in the fruit orchards and feed on wild birds, rabbits and such like. They are sky in the summer-time, and a boy of twelve might scare them; but when the birds migrate, and the rabbits are gone, they prowl about at night, and they are dangerous. They are the worst, however, on stormy nights, for then it is just as if the fiend himself possessed them: they are so mad and fierce that man and beast become alike their victims; and a party of them have been known even to attack the ferocious bears of the mountains, and, what is more, to come off victorious. Their howl is enough to scare the bravest man. As soon as it commences, the wind rises, and you will see their eyes gleaming among the trees. Your only plan for safety is to wrap your cloak around you, and lie down flat on the ground. If your home were but a few hundred yards off, you might lose your life in the attempt to reach it. Horses become unmanageable as the terror infects them. Grown men begin weeping with fear when their howling recommences and approaches nearer and nearer. As the moonbeams become dusky amongst the trees, from time to time a fierce howl arises from their center, and people know they are in great danger, as the wolves will very soon make a general attack. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
O THOU great, powerful, and mighty KING AMAIMON, who bearest rule by the power of the SUPREME GOD EL over all spirits both superior and inferior of the Infernal Orders in the Dominion of the East; I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of Lucifer; and by that God that Thou Worshippest; and by the Seal of thy creation; and by the most mighty and powerful name of God, IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATON who cast thee out of Heaven with all other infernal spirits; and by all the most powerful and great names of GOD who created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all things in them contained; and by their power and virtue; and by the name PRIMEUMATON who commandeth the whole host of Heaven; that thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel the Fifty-second Spirit Alloces and His 36 Legions of Spirits to come here before this Circle in a fair and comely shape, without hard unto me or unto any other creature. I awaken you and your powers of darkness which dwell within you by the power of the blood of Lucifer that you may serve to empower this great mansion! Through serving the greater cause of dark magick which breaks the shackles that bind the Blackened Fire of spirit, may you be uplifted and liberated! Awaken and empower the forbidden rites of Angra Mainyu! Awaken and empower our great work of counter creation as an Apostle of the Lord of Darkness eternal and as a warrior of the Path Satanachia. Herein receive such virtue that we may obtain by thee the perfect issue of all our desires, which also we seek to perform without evil, without deception, by God, the Creator of the Sun and the Angels. Amen. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
In 1994, a man stopped by The Winchester Mystery House for the Christmas Tree tour. Afterward, he went to the café for a cup of coffee. He brought his coffee and sat at a table, by the doors looking out onto the courtyard. He picked up a newspaper and started looking through it as he was sipping his coffee. There was no one else in the area, and he noticed just a few people outside waiting to tour the estate. One waiter was at the counter at the time, and there were a few other employees in the gift shop area. Very shortly, he noticed a man and a woman enter from the courtyard. They passed, looked around for a moment, then sat down in the back of the café. He could not help but notice them because of the way they were dressed and the way the looked. The man was dressed in a nice-looking black suit and wearing a tie, but his complexion was that of a very sick man. He was very pale and seemed to be sweating. The woman wore a Victorian type dress, black and long, very formal, it reached down to her ankles. She was carrying a large cloth type bag. They sat for a moment and the woman reached into her bag and withdrew a large towel of some kind and began wiping the man’s face, over and over again.
Then she put it back in the bag. They sat for a few more moments, apparently conversating, although he could not hear what they were saying. Then the man walked over to his table. He asked, “Do you have some money so I can get something to drink?” The sickly-looking man was so well dressed that he was surprised he asked for money. So he refused him. The sickly-looking man starred at him for a while and went and sat back down. He is his wife talked for a while, and walked towards him, they made a left and went toward the exist. Out of curiosity, he immediately got up to see where they were going, but they had vanished. He went outside and looked at the cars in the parking lot and all of them were empty. Upon revealing security footage, the manager determined that was William and Sarah Winchester, but before they reached the exist, the security tape got all fuzzy and distorted. “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares,” reports Hebrews 13.2. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 