Home » Winchester Mansion (Page 16)
Category Archives: Winchester Mansion
Haunted by a Counteracting Spell—My Whole Soul Withering!
God created man He committed Lucifer a position of authority in relation to the Earth and its surrounding planets. For this reason, Satan is called the “god of this World” in the New Testament. This angelic creature of surpassing beauty and intelligence, however, initiated a rebellion against God. This explains the entrance of sin, suffering, and death into a universe which had been “good” as it came from God’s creative hand. The Scriptures do not attempt to tell us why God permitted sin to invade His World, for His reasons are among the “secret things” which “belong unto the Lord our God,” reports Deuteronomy 29.29. We cannot fully understand how or why an infinitely holy God brought about the possibility of evil, nor can we explain the origin of pride and rebellion against Him. However, by faith we are assured that God is holy, wise, and loving. Our confidence in Him enables us to believe that behind His permission of sin, suffering, and death lies infinite holiness, wisdom, and goodness. The Bible simply affirms that the angel Lucifer, now called Satan, became proud and rebelled against his Maker. Lucifer, the daystar, succumbed to pride and revolted against God. Apparently many angels joined in the rebellion, for the Bible speaks of “angels that sinned,” reports 2 Peter 2.4, “angels who kept not their first estate,” reports Jude 6, and Revelation 12.4 in figurative language describes the red dragon (Satan) as pulling down a third of the stars (angels) from Heaven with his tail. Satan and his followers have been cast out of Heaven to Earth. They hate God and His people, and have neither desire for nor hope of salvation. The terms “evil” and “foul” are sometimes used to describe the evil spirits who make up Satan’s army. Even the name “Satan” means adversary, and the word “devil” portrays him as one who accuses or criticizes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
The fall of Lucifer made him an implacable enemy of God, a false accuser, and a liar whose every activity is marked by deceitfulness. The devil today is the leader of a vast host of evil spirits who are organized into a military-like structure. However, remember that Satan, though intelligent and powerful, is not omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. He can be in only one place at a time, but his myriads of assistants can largely make up for his inherent finiteness. With their help he tries to lead people into sinful practices and introduces false doctrine into the professing church. Though fallen humanity possess an evil nature, many of the completely inhuman and unnatural evils of society are at least in part traceable to the devil and his evil spirits. The widespread confusion and strife within the realm of professing Christendom is also partly due to Satanic activity. Evil spirits seek to divide and corrupt the church. However, remember, Satan was originally sinless and the most glorious of all created beings. In 1324 A.D., Dame Alice Kyteler (such apparently being her maiden name), the facile princeps of Irish witches, was a member of a good Anglo-Norman family that had been settled in the city of Kilkenny for many years. The lady in question must have been far removed from the popular conception of a witch as an old woman of striking ugliness, or else her powers of attraction were very remarkable, for she had succeeded in leading four husbands to the alter. She had been married, first, to William Outlawe of Kilkenny, banker; secondly, to Adam le Blund of Callan; third, to Richard de Valle—all of whom she was supposed to have got rid of by poison; and fourthly, to Sir John le Poer, whom it was said she deprived of his natural senses by philtres and incantations. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
The Bishop of Ossory at this period was Richard de Ledrede, a Franciscan friar, and an Englishman by birth. He soon learnt that things were not as they should be, for when making a visitation of his diocese early in 1324 he found by an Inquisition, in which were five knights and numerous nobles, that there was in the city a band of heretical sorcerers, at the head whom was Dame Alice. The following charges were laid against them. They had denied the faith of Christ absolutely for a year or a month, according as the object they desired to gain through sorcery was of greater or less importance. During all that period they believed in none of the doctrines of the Church; they did not adore the Body of Christ, nor enter a sacred building to hear mass, not make sure of consecrated bread or holy water. They offered in sacrifice to demons living animals, which they dismembered, and then distributed at cross-roads to a certain evil spirit of low rank, named the Son of Art. They sought their sorcery advice and responses from demons. In their nightly meetings they blasphemously imitated the power of the Church by fulminating sentences of excommunication, with lighted candles, even against their own husbands, from the sole of their foot to the crown of their head, naming each part expressly, and then concluded by extinguishing the candles and by crying Fi! Fi! Fi! Amen. In order to arouse feelings of love or hatred, or to inflict death or disease on the bodies of the faithful, they made use of powders, unguents, ointments, and candles of fat, which were compounded as follows. They took the entrails of cocks sacrificed to demons, certain horrible worms, various unspecified herbs, dead men’s nails, the hair, brains, and shreds of the cerement of boys who were buried unbaptized, with other abominations, all of which they cooked, with various incantations, over a fire of oak-logs in a vessel made out of the skull of a decapitated thief. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The children of Dame Alice’s four husbands accused her before the Bishop of having killed their fathers by sorcery, and of having brought on them such stolidity of their senses that they bequeathed all their wealth to her and her favourite son, William Outlawe, to the impoverishment of the other children. They also stated that her present husband, Sir John le Poer, had been reduced to such a condition by sorcery and the use of powders that he had become terribly emaciated, his nails had dropped off, and there was no hair left on his body. No doubt he would have died had he not been warned by a maid-servant of what was happening, in consequence of which he had forcibly possessed himself of his wife’s keys, and had opened some chests in which he found a sackful of horrible and detestable thing which he transmitted to the bishop by the hands of two priests. The said dame had a certain demon, an incubus, named Son or Art, or Robin son of Art, who had carnal knowledge of her, and from who she admitted that she had received all her wealth. This incubus made its appearance under various forms, sometimes as a cat, or as a hairy black dog, or in the likeness of an African, accompanied by two others who were larger and taller than he, and of whom one carried an iron rod. Dame Alice was declared to be a sorceress, magician, and heretic, and it was demanded that she should be handed over to the secular arm and have her goods confiscated as well. One of Dame Alice’s accomplices was Petronilla of Meath, she was made the scapegoat for her mistress. The Bishop had her flogged six times, and under the repeated application of this form of torture she made the required confession of magical practices. She admitted the denial of her faith and the sacrificing to Robert, son of Art, and as well that she had caused certain women of her acquaintance to appear as if they had goats’ horns. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
She also confessed that at the suggestion of Dame Alice she had frequently consulted demons and received responses from them, and that she had acted as a “medium” (mediatrix) between her and the said Robert. She declared that although she herself was a mistress of the Black Art, yet she was as nothing in comparison with the Dame from who she had learnt all her knowledge, and that there was no one in the World more skillful than she. Petronilla of Meath also stated that William Outlawe deserved death as much as she, for he was privy to their sorceries, and for a year and a day had worn the devil’s girdle round his body. When rifling Dame Alice’s house there was found “a wafer of sacramental bread, having the devil’s name stamped thereon instead of Jesus Christ, and a pipe of ointment wherewith she greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed.” Petronilla was accordingly condemned to be burnt alive, and the execution of this sentence took place with all due solemnity in Kilkenny on 3rd November 1324. Dame Alice fled the country. “With regard to the other heretics and sorcerers who belonged to the pestilential society of Robin, son of Art, the order of law being preserved, some of them were publicly burnt to death; others, confessing their crimes in the presence of all the people, in an upper garment, are marked back and front with a cross after they had abjured their heresy, as is the custom; others were solemnly whipped through the town and the market-place; others were banished from the city and diocese; others who evaded the jurisdiction of the Church were excommunicated; while others again fled in fear and were never heard of after. And thus, by the authority of Holy Mother Church, and by the special grace of God, that most foul brood was scattered and destroyed.” Possibly Dame Alice and her associated actually practiced magical arts, and if so, considering the period at which it occurred, some can see why the Bishop took the steps he did. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
However, others suspect such baser motives as greed of gain and desire for revenge. John XXII was elevated to the Papacy. The attitude of that Pope towards magical arts was no uncertain one. He believed himself to be surrounded by enemies who were ever making attempts on his life by modelling images of him in wax, to be subsequently thrust through with pins and melted, no doubt; or by sending him a devil enclosed in a ring, or in various other ways. Consequently in several Bulls he anathematized sorcerers, denounced their ill-deeds, excited the inquisitors against them, and so gave ecclesiastical authorization to the reality of the belief in magical forces. Indeed, the general expression used in the Bull Super illius specula might be applied to the actions of Dame Alice and her party. He says of certain persons that “they sacrificed to demons and adore them, making or causing to be made images, rings, and so forth, with which they draw the evil spirits by their magical art, obtain responses from them, and demand their help in performing their evil designs.” Heresy and sorcery were now identified, and the punishment for the former was the same as that for the latter, burning at the stake and confiscation of property. The attitude of this Pontiff evidently found a sympathizer in Bishop de Ledrede, who deemed in necessary to follow the example set by Head of the Church, with what results we have already shown: thus we find In Ireland a ripple of the wave that swept over Europe at this period. It is very probable, too, that there were many underlying local causes of which we can know little or nothing; the discontent and anger of the disinherited children at the loss of the wealth of which Dame Alice had bereft them by her exercise of “undue influence” over her husbands, family quarrels, private hatreds, and possibly national jealousy helped to bring about one of the strangest series of events in the chequered history of Ireland. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s arrival was a sensational event. The Santa Clara Valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; they those freight cars sidetracked in Santa Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building activity that mushroomed an eight-room farm house into a 26-room mansion, the first six months. Here was game for all! They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like-but everyone enjoyed. Talk begat rumors and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanada Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. There had been a thunderstorm in the valley. Every door was shut, every dog in its kennel, every rut and gutter a flowing river after the deluge of rain that had fallen. Up at the Winchester mansion, which seemed to be supernaturally growing, the fawns on the estate were venturing their timid heads from behind the trunk of trees, and Mrs. Winchester has risen from her knees, and was putting back her prayer-book on the self. In the garden, April roses, unwieldy with their full-blown richness, and saturated with rain, hung their heads heavily to the Earth; others, already fallen, lay flat upon their blooming faces on the path, where Agnus, Mrs. Winchester’s maid, would fund them, when going on her morning quest of rose-leaves for her lady’s pot-pourri. Ranks of white lilies, just brought to perfection by today’s sun, lay dabbled in the mire of flooded mould. Tears ran down the amber cheeks of the plums on the south wall, and not a bee had ventured out of the hives, though the scent of the air was sweet enough to tempt the laziest drone. The sky was still lurid behind the boles of the upland oaks, but the birds had begun to dive in and out of ivy that wrapped up the mansion. This thunderstorm took place more than a century ago, and must remember that Mrs. Winchester was dressed in the fashion of that time as she walked out from behind the squire’s chair, now that the lightning was over, and, with many nervous glances towards the window, sat down before the tea-urn, and the muffins. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
We can picture her fine lace cap, with its peachy ribbons, the frill on the hem of her cambric gown just touching her ankles, her embroidered stockings, the rosettes on her shoes, but not so easily the lilac shade of her mild eyes, the satin skin, which still kept its delicate bloom, though wrinkled with advancing age, and the pale, sweet, puckered mouth, that time and sorrow had made angelic while trying vainly to deface its beauty. The room in which she sat was a pleasant old-fashioned drawing-room, with a spider-glass window, carpet, tawny wreath on the pale blue; blue flutings on the walls, and faint gilding on the furniture. A huge urn, crammed with roses, in the open bay-window, through which came delicious airs from the garden, the twittering of birds settling to sleep in the ivy close by, and occasionally the pattering of a flight of rain drops, swept to the ground as a bough bent in the breeze. The urn on the table was ancient silver, and the china rare. There was nothing in the room for luxurious ease of the body, but everything of delicate refinement for the eye. At this moment a rolling sound struck upon the ears. The lady rose from her seat trembling, and folded her hands together, while the tea-urn flooded the tray. Presently pretty Agnus of the rose-leaves appeared at the door in flutter of blue ribbons. “Please, madam, a lady has arrived, and says she is expected. She asked for her apartment, and I put her into the room that was got ready of Miss Marriot. And she sends her respects to you, madam, and she will be down with you presently.” Hardly had she spoken when the door again opened, and the stranger appeared—a small creature, whether a girl or a woman it would be hard to say—dressed in a scanty black silk dress, her narrow shoulders covered with a white muslin pelerine. Her hair was swept up to the crown of her heard, all but a little fringe hanging over her low forehead with an inch of brows. Her face was brown and thin, eyes black and long, with blacker settings, mouth large, sweet, and melancholy. She was all head, mouth, and eyes; her nose and chin were nothing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
This visitor crossed the floor hastily, dropped a courtesy in the middle of the room, and approached the table, saying abruptly, with a soft Italian accent: “Madam, I am here. I am come to play your organ.” “The organ!” gasped Mrs. Winchester. “Yes, the organ,” said the little stranger lady, playing on the back of a chair with her finger, as if she felt notes under them. “It was but last week that the handsome signor, your son, came to my little house, where I have lived teaching music since my English father and my Italian mother and brothers and sisters died and left me so lonely.” Here the fingers left off drumming, and two great tears were brushed off, one from each eye with each hand, child’s fashion. However, the next moment the fingers were at work again, as if only whilst they were moving the tongue could speak. “Your son,” said the little woman, looking trustfully at Mrs. Winchester, while a bright blush shone through her brown skin, “he often came to see me before that, always in the evening, when the sun was warm and yellow all through my little studio, and the music was swelling my heart, and I could play out grand with all my soul; then he used to come and say, ‘Hurry, little Bianca, and play better, better still. I have work for you to do by-and-by.’ Sometimes he said, ‘Brava!’ and sometimes he said ‘Eccellentissima!’ but one night last week he came to me and said, ‘It is enough. Will you swear to do my bidding, whatever it may be?’ Here the black eyes fell. And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Now you are my betrothed.’ And he said, ‘Pack up your music, little Bianca, and go off to San Jose to my American mother, who has an organ in her house which must be played upon. If she refuses to let you play, tell her I sent you, and she will give you leave. The spirits are always high and about. You must play all day, and you must get up in the night and play. You must never tire. You are my betrothed, and you have sworn to do my work.’ I said, ‘Shall I see you there, signor?’ And he said, ‘Yes, you shall see me there.’ I said, ‘I will keep my vow, signor.’ And so, madam, I am come.’” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The soft foreign voice left off talking, the finger left off thrumming on the chair, and the little stranger gaze in dismay at her auditor, pale with agitation. “You are deceived. You make a mistake,” said Mrs. Winchester. “My son—” began Mrs. Winchester, but her mouth twitched, her voice broke, and she looked piteously. “Yes, yes, said the little foreigner. “If you have though him dead have good cheer, dear madam. He is alive; he is well, and strong, and handsome. But one, two, three, four, five’ (on the fingers) “days ago he stood by my side.” “It is some strange mistake, some wonderful coincidence!” said Mrs. Winchester. “Let me take you to the gallery,” murmured the mother of this son who was thus dead and alive. “There is yet light to see the pictures. She will not know his portrait.” The bewildered wife led her strange visitor away to the long gloomy room at the west side of the mansion, where the faint gleams from the darkening sky still lingered on the portraits of the Winchester family. “Doubtless he is like this,” said the madam, pointing to a fair-haired young man with a mild face, a cousin of Mr. Winchester, who had been lost at sea. But Bianca shook her head and went softly on tiptoe from one picture to another, peering into the canvas, and still turning away troubled. However, at last a shriek of delight stated the shadowy chamber. “Ah, here he is! See, here he is, the noble signor, the beautiful signor, not half so handsome as he looked five days ago, when talking to poor little Bianca! Dear sir and madam, you are now content. Now take me to the organ, that I may commence to do his bidding at once.” Mrs. Winchester said faintly, “How old are you, girl?” “Eighteen,” said the visitor impatiently, moving towards the door. “And my son has been dead for fifty-four years. That is his father. We tried to have another child after the tragic death of our daughter, but I miscarried,” said Mrs. Winchester. Up the grand staircase the little woman followed Mrs. Winchester. The mansion was fitted with much great luxury and richness. The appointments of the mysterious Grand Ballroom was built almost entirely without nails. It cost over $9,000 (2021 inflation adjusted $242,038.24) to complete at the time when an entire house could be built for less than $1000 (2021 inflation adjusted $26,893.14)! #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The silver chandelier from Germany illuminated the room quite well, the was a robust fire blazing in the fireplace, and the walls, floors, and ceiling were made of six hardwoods—mahogany, teak, maple, rosewood, oak, and white ash. The most curious elements of the Grand Ballroom are the two leaded stained-glass windows, each inscribed with a quote from Shakespeare. Ironically, the ballroom was never used to hold a ball. Mrs. Winchester had invited a celebrated orchestra from San Francisco to perform at her home, but scheduling conflicts prevented the visit. The spirit must have known Mrs. Winchester wanted to hear live music. The appointments of this room announced it the sanctum of a woman who depended for the interest of her life upon resources of intellect and tastes. However, with all the luxury in the Grand Ballroom, what stood out most to Bianca was nothing but a morsel of biscuit that was laying on a plate. “May I have it?” said she eagerly. “It is so long since I have eaten. I am hungry.” Mrs. Winchester sat Bianca down and told her how she lost the baby. “There was a party of men, who named themselves the “Devil’s Club,” and they were in the habit of practising all kinds of unholy pranks in the country. They had midnight carousings on the tombstones in the Grove Street Cemetery; they carried away helpless old men and children, who they tortured by making believe to bury them alive; mock feast. On one occasion there was a very sad funeral from the village. The corpse was carried into the church, and prayers were read over the coffin, the chief mourner, the aged father of the dead man, standing weeping by. In the midst of this solemn scene the organ suddenly pleaded forth a profane tune, and a number of voices shouted a drinking chorus. A groan of execration burst from the crowd, the clergyman turned pale and closed his book, and the old mad, the father of the dead, climbed the altar steps, and, raising his arms above his head, uttered a terrible curse. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
“He said that if Mr. Winchester did not give him the ‘Colt,’ that his family would meet with tragedy. The Colt is a legendary gun that was created in 1835, during the appearance of Halley’s Comet, and the chamber could hold 13 bullets. It was made by a blacksmith who tinker with the occult. In German tradition, the blacksmith ends his work on Saturday by striking his anvil, chaining the Devil for another week. So anyway, he cursed Mr. Winchester to all eternity, he cursed the organ he played, that it might be dumb henceforth, except under the fingers that had now profaned it, which, he prayed, might be forced to labour upon it till they stiffened in death. And the curse seemed to work, for the organ stood dumb in the church from that day, except when I purchased it and put it in my Grand Ballroom as a reminder of my miscarried son. William used to hammer away at the organ so many laborious hours. He only stopped when our daughter was born, but shortly after birth she passed away. William went back to locking himself up in the ballroom with the organ, but one day I hid myself among the curtains, and saw him withering on his seat, and heard him groaning as he strove to wrench his hands from the keys, to which they flew back like a needle to a magnet. It was soon plainly to be seen that he was an involuntary slave to the organ; but whether through madness that had grown within himself, or by some supernatural doom, having its cause in the old man’s curse, we did not dare to day. By-and-by there came a time when I was wakened out of my sleep at nights by the rolling of the organ. He wrought now night and day. Food and rest were denied him. His face got haggard, his bread grew long, his eyes started from their sockets. His body became wasted, and his cramped fingers like the claws of a bird. He groaned piteously as he stooped over his cruel toil. I was afraid to go near him. I tried to put wine and food between his lips, while the tortured fingers crawled over the keys; but he only gnashed his teeth; I retreated from him. At last, one dreadful hour, we found him a ghastly corpse on the ground before the organ. The doctor said he died from tuberculosis.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
“From that hour the organ was dumb to the touch of all human fingers. I had it shipped here when I moved to the Santa Clara Valley and built this beautiful room for it. Many, unwilling to believe the story, made preserving endeavours to draw sound from it, in vain. However, when the darkened empty room was locked up and left, we heard as loud as ever the well-known sounds humming and rolling through the walls. Night and day the tones of the organ boomed on as before. It seemed that the doom of the wretched man was not yet fulfilled, although my family rests in the cemetery. As time went on, the curse of this perpetual music was not removed from the house. Servants refused to stay about the place. Visitors shunned it. I left this house for several years, and returned; left it, and returned again, to find my ears still tortured and my heart rung by the unceasing persecution of terrible sounds. At last, but a few months ago, a holy man was found, who locked himself up in the cursed and mysterious Grand Ballroom for many days, praying and wrestling with the demon. After he came forth and went away the sounds ceased, and the organ was heard no more. Since then there has been peace in the house. And now, Bianca, your strange appearance and your strange story convinces me that you are a victim of a ruse of the Evil One. Be warned in time, and place yourself under the protection of God, that you may be saved from the fearful influenced that are at work upon you.” Little Bianca went fast asleep, her hands spread before her as if she played an organ in her dreams. “We will save you from your horrible fate!” Mrs. Winchester whispered, and had the butler carry the girl to bed. In the morning, Bianca was gone. Mrs. Winchester found the girl’s chambers empty. “She is just a wild thing,” thought Mrs. Winchester, “as would rush out at sunrise to hear the larks!” and she went forth to look for her in the meadows, behind the fruit orchard in the estate’s deer park, and found nothing. She returned, her quest had been unsuccessful. The little international girl had vanished. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
A second search after breakfast proved also fruitless, and towards the evening there was panic and distress. Mrs. Winchester sat in the palour. The servants, with pale faces, were huddled together in whispering groups. The haunted organ was booming and roaring again through the mansion. Mrs. Winchester hastened to the fatal Grand Ballroom, and there, sure enough, was Bianca, perched upon the high seat before the organ, beating the keys with her small hands, her slight figure swaying, and the evening sunshine playing about her weird head. Sweet unearthly music she wrung from the groaning heart of the organ—wild melodies, mounting to rapturous heights and falling to mournful depths. She wandered from Mendelssohn to Mozart, and from Mozart to Beethoven. Mrs. Winchester stood fascinated awhile by the ravaging beauty of the sounds she heard, but, rousing herself quickly, put her arms around the musician and forced her away from the mysterious Grand Ballroom. Bianca returned the next day, however, and was not so easily coaxed from her post again. Day after day she laboured at the organ, growing paler, and thinner, and more weird-looking as time went on. “I worked so hard,” she said to Mrs. Winchester. “The signor, your son, is he pleased? Asked him to come and tell me himself if he is pleased.” Mrs. Winchester got ill and took to her bed. The butler swore at the young international star and roamed abroad. Agnus was the only one who stood by to watch the fate of the little organist. The curse of the organ was upon Bianca; it spoke under her hand, and her hand was its slave. At last she announced rapturously that she had a visit from the brave signor, who had commanded her industry, and urged her to work yet harder. After that she ceased to hold any communication with the living. Time after time Agnus wrapped her arms about the frail thing, and carried her away by force, locking the door of the fatal chamber. However, locking the chamber and burying the key were of no avail. The door stood opened again, and Bianca was labouring on her perch. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
One night, wakened from her sleep by the well-known humming and moaning of the organ, Mrs. Winchester dressed and hastened to the unholy room. Moonlight was pouring down the staircase and cascading on the stained-glass windows. It shone on the marble bust of the late Mr. Winchester, that stood in the niche above Mrs. Winchester’s sitting-room door. The Grand ballroom was full of it when Mrs. Winchester pushed open the door and entered—full of pale blue moonlight from the window, mingled with another light, a dull lurid glare which seemed to center round like a dark shadow, like the figure of a man standing by the organ, and throwing out in fantastic relief the slight form of Bianca writhing, rather than swaying, back and forward, as if in agony. The sounds that came from the organ were broken and meaningless, as if the hands of the player lagged and stumbled on the keys. Between the intermittent chords low moaning cries broke from Bianca, and the dark figure bent towars her with menacing gestures. Trembling with the sickness of supernatural fear, yet strong of will, Mrs. Winchester walked forward with the lurid light, and was drawn into its influence. It grew and intensified upon her, it dazzled and blinded her at first; but presently, by a daring effort of will, she raised her eyes, and beheld Bianca’s face convulsed with torture in the burning glare, and bending over her the figure and the features of William Winchester! Smitten with horror, Mrs. Winchester did not even lose her presence of mind. She wound her strong arms around the wretched girl and dragged her from her seat and out of the influence of the lurid light, which immediately paled away and vanished. She carried her to her own bed, where Lisa lay, a wasted wreck, raving about the cruelty of the pitiless signor who would not see that she was labouring her best. Her poor cramped hands kept beating the coverlet, as though she were still at her agonizing task. Mrs. Winchester prayed a way might be shown by which to put an end to this curse. She prayed for Bianca, and then, thinking that the girl rested somewhat, stole from the room. She thought that she had locked the door behind her. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
She went to the blue séance room with a pale, resolved face, and, without consulting anyone, sent to the village for a bricklayer. Afterwards she sat by the foreman, and explained to him what was to be done. Presently, Mrs. Winchester went to the door of Bianca’s room, and hearing no sound, thought the girl slept, and stole away. By-and-by she went downstairs, and found that the bricks had arrived and the foreman already begun his task of building up the Grand Ballroom door. He was a swift workman, and the mysterious ballroom was soon sealed safely with stone and mortar. A few hours went by and no one had seen Bianca. The house was searched, upstairs and downstairs, in the garden, in the grounds, in the fields and meadows. No Bianca. Mrs. Winchester made inquiries everywhere; she pondered and puzzled over the matter. In the weak, suffering state the girl was in, how far could she have crawled. Meanwhile, the mansion was still growing by leaps and bounds from 8 room, to 26 room, a nine-story tower, 156 more rooms, as if it was under construction by legions of ghosts. A few years went by, and still no one had seen Bianca. When one night, Angus decided to quit. “I love you dearly, and it breaks my heart to go away, but the organ…I am frightened out of my life, I cannot stay, Mrs. Winchester.” “Who has heard the organ, and when?” asked Mrs. Winchester, rising to her feet. “Please ma’am, I heard it years ago, the night you went away—the night after the door was built up. I heard it again this morning.” “No,” said Mrs. Winchester; “it is only the wind.” However, as pale as death she flew down the stairs and laid her ear to the yet mortar. All was silent. There was no sound but the monotonous sough of the wind in the trees outside. The Winchester mansion was shut up and deserted for many years. At night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled regularly at midnight to summon incoming flights of spirits. Later it rolled again to warn these visitors to return to their sepulchers. However, once a week these departed one relaxed and faced in the Great Ballroom. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
Any plans for the weekend? Come hang out at the Winchester Mystery House 😉 winchestermysteryhouse.com
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle .
The Winchester Mystery House would like to wish you a safe and Happy Halloween 🎃
Tickets are still available for our festive Jack O’ Lantern Trail. Treat stations are set along the path creating a safe and fun trick or treat experience for the whole family! Any plans for the weekend? Come hang out at the Winchester Mystery House 😉 winchestermysteryhouse.com
Witches, Warlock, and Ghost in the Mansion of Mrs. Winchester!
Some people call themselves witches, and believe that they are able to contact and utilize powers from the invisible realm. However, there are many questions about witchcraft. Is it merely a game some people play? Is it beneficial to humanity? Or is it evil and dangerous? Universities all over the World are offering courses in occultism, and teams of scientists are investigating reports of mysterious magical phenomena all over the globe. They are baffled by some of the amazing incidents they encounter, and admit that present scientific knowledge cannot account for them. The Word of God may not provide a specific explanation for every problem one may encounter as one studies Satan, Satanism, and witchcraft, but it sheds much light on these subjects and offers practical guidelines by which God’s children can avoid dangers inherent in occultism. An unexpected and amazing development of this enlightened age is the resurgence of interest in Satan and an increase in occultic activity. A few years ago, most people assumed that the devil was dead, in the same manner that some theologians recently have affirmed the death of God. It is now becoming increasingly apparent that these reports were premature. Satan is very much alive, and is actively involved in today’s World. Though many scientists and philosophers still scoff at the idea of a personal devil, highly educated people all over the World meet regularly to worships Satan. Some groups, having dedicated themselves to the service of the devil, have committed brutal sacrificial slayings, while others engage in vile acts of immorality. Witchcraft, seances, and fortunetelling, for many years limited to areas of ignorance and superstition, are now discussed in highly respected magazines. Newspapers carry horoscopes, and multitudes consult them seriously every day. Prominent people have received a great deal of publicity by reporting the reception of personal messages from the spirits of the dead. The late Bishop Pike, for example, published a widely-read book telling of seances in which he purportedly talked with his dead son who had committed suicide. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Others, claiming the ability to foretell the future, also have become the objects of widespread interest, and have name Jeane Dixon comes to mind. She reportedly communicated with Mrs. Winchester who wanted to continue the restoration of her mansion. Mrs. Dixon is considered a prophetess by many people, and top leaders in government industry consult her for information about the future. In Europe today, more people are making a livelihood through the practice of occultism than the total number engaged in the Christian ministry. Belief in the existence of an unseen spiritual realm to be entered at death, and which has an influence upon human life, has captivated the minds of multitudes. The millions involved with occultism are unaware of the real nature of these mysterious and dangerous areas of investigation, and refuse to turn to the one source of truth regarding the kingdom of darkness. The Bible, the holy Word of God, reveals the true nature of the supernatural. It teaches that two real spiritual Worlds exist, one good and the other evil. It tells us that God is a Spirit (John 4.24), and that a great number of angels called “ministering spirits” (Hebrews 1.14) worship Him in Heaven and carry out His assignments upon Earth. The other invisible kingdom is evil, and is under the direction of Satan, who controls an organized host of wicked spirit beings. They are a formidable foe arrayed against God and His people, and the apostle Paul declared, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. All that can be known about the devil’s origin, fall, and present activity is to be found in the Bible. Although it does not specifically answer every question we may ask, it tells us the important facts about him and his kingdom. He was once a glorious, sinless creature, but he rebelled against God, was cast out of Heaven to Earth, and now leads his great army of spirit beings in a futile attempt to defeat God and destroy His people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
The devil was created an angelic being of great beauty and splendor and at one time had great favour with God. Ezekiel describes him in his sinless state as follows, “Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyre, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold; the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have seen thee so; that wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee,” Ezekiel 28.12-15. Although the prophet was addressing these words primarily to an Earthly ruler, the king of Tyre, it is apparent that the full meaning of this prophecy is not exhausted by its reference to a flesh-and-blood monarch. The ultimate subject of Ezekiel’s words was Satan, the real instigator of the king’s pride and cruelty. Many Bible students reject this interpretation of Ezekiel’s dirge. They consider this viewpoint to be untenable and imaginative, and prefer to consider the prophet’s description to be a highly figurative portrayal of the king of Tyre. Some even say this lamentation incorporates a well-known Tyrian myth about a primeval being who lived in the “Garden of God” until he was expulsed for pride and rebellion. It is unlikely, however, that the inspired prophet would incorporate a myth into his message of judgment. Then, too, many prophetic pronouncements contained a double perspective. Isaiah, for example, after giving a stern warning of impending disaster, told Ahaz that the Lord would give a sign that the message he had spoken was true. “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken by both her kings,” reports Isaiah 7.14-16. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The fourteenth verse is a definite reference to Christ, the virgin-born Son of God, but verses fifteen and sixteen point to Maher-shalal-hash-baz, the infant son of Isaiah whose birth and early years are described in the following chapter. Before the lad was three years old, Pekah and Rezin, king of Israel and Syria, had been executed as the prophet had predicted. Since this type of double reference is common in the prophetic Scriptures, it should not be thought strange that Ezekiel, in pronouncing judgment upon the king of Tyre, should also be alluding to Satan, who motivated the Earthly monarch to his sinful pride and cruelty. The prophet declared that in his original state Satan was a creature of great wisdom and beauty. He portrays the devil as having been in Eden, the garden of God, and describes him as having been lavishly adorned with jewels at that time. The translation in our King James Version also speaks of the “timbrels” and “flutes” prepared by him on the day he was created, and some Bible students have inferred from this that he had great musical ability and was given charge of the Heavenly choirs which sang their praises to God. The Hebrew words, however, are difficult to translate, and most students are convinced that the words rendered “timbrels” and “flutes” more likely refer to the gold settings and engravings of his ornamental attire. “Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold; the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created,” reports Ezekiel 28.13. This exalted creature is also declared to be “the anointed cherub that covereth,” reports Ezekiel 28.14, which indicates that God appointed him to have a place of special prominence in connection with his throne. The remainder of the verse, “thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire,” indicates that before his sin, he was in the immediate presence of God’s glorious holiness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
In fact, Satan may have been the most exalted of all the angels, and the memory of this former glory could have been the reason Michael did not dare “bring against him a railing accusation,” (Jude 9). Dr. Eric Sauer suggests the possibility that even before God created man, He committed to Lucifer a position of authority in relation to the Earth and its surrounding planets. For this reason, Satan is called the “god of this World” in the New Testament. In England and Scotland during the mediaeval and later periods of its existence, witchcraft was an offence against the laws of God and man; in Celtic Ireland dealing with the unseen were not regarded with such abhorrence, and indeed had the sanction of custom and antiquity. Consequently, when the Anglo-Normans came over, they found that the native Celts had no predisposition towards accepting the view of the witch as an emissary of Satan and an enemy of the Church, though they fully believed in supernatural influences of both good and evil, and credited their Bards and Druids with the possession of powers beyond the ordinary. The persecution of witches did not cease in the countries where that the growth and spread of witchcraft made headway—far from it; on the contrary it was kept up with unabated vigour. Infallibility was transferred from the Church to the Bible; the Roman Catholic persecuted the witch because Supreme Pontiffs had stigmatized her as a heretic and an associate of Satan, while the Protestant acted similarly because Holy Writ contained the grim command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The evil that was wrought by such amongst an unenlightened and superstitious people can be well imagined; unbelievers would be converted, while the credulous would be rendered more secure in their credulity. In the 16th century, during the rule of the Commonwealth Parliament thirty thousand witches were put to death in England. Even as late as 1690 torture was judicially applied to extract evidence, for in that year a Jacobite gentleman was questioned by the boots. However, Scotland, even at its worst, fades into insignificance before certain parts of the Continent, where torture was used to an extent and degree that can only be termed hellish; the appalling ingenuity displayed in the various methods of applying the “question extraordinary” seems the work of demons rather than of Christian, and makes one blush for humanity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Nonetheless, the punishment of death by fire for witchcraft or sorcery was not employed to any extend in Ireland. We have one undoubted instance, and a general hint of some others as a sequel to this. How the two witches were put to death in 1578 we are told, but probably it was by hanging. Subsequent to the passing of the Act of 1586, the method of execution would have been that for felony. On the Continent the stake was in continual request. In 1514, three hundred persons were burnt alive for this crime at Como. Between 1615 and 1635, more than six thousand sorcerers were burnt in the diocese of Strasburg, while, if we can credit the figures of Bartholomew de Spina, in Lombardy a thousand sorcerers a year were put to death for the space of twenty-five years. The total number of person executed in various ways for this crime has, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, been variously estimated at from one hundred thousand to several millions; if the latter figure be too high undoubtedly the former is too low. In the persecution of those who practised magical arts, no rank or class in society was spared; the noble equally with the peasant was liable to torture and death. This was especially true of the earlier stages of the movement when sorcery rather than witchcraft was the crime committed. For there is a general distinction between the two, though in many instances they are confounded. Sorcery was, so to speak, more of an aristocratic pursuit; the sorcerer was the master of the Devil (until his allotted time expired), and compelled him to do his bidding: the witch generally belonged to the lower classes, embodied in her art many practices which lay on the borderland between good and evil, and was rather the slave of Satan, who almost invariably proved to be a most faithless and unreliable employer. Anybody might become a victim of the witch epidemic; noblemen, scholars, monks, nuns, titled ladies, bishops, clergy—none were immune from accusation and condemnation. Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
According to alchemists, the souls of the dead can be pinned into homunculi. A homunculi is a very small human being or humanoid creature; a supposed microscopic but fully formed human being which a fetus was formerly believed to develop. Much that passed current in the west as White (id est permissible) Magic was only a disguised goeticism, and many of the resplendent angels invoked with divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs. It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes. The pentagram is a symbol of faith, a symbol of the five elements Spirit, Air, Earth, Water, and Fire (one for each point), and the circle (the Universe) contains and connects them all. The Golden Ratio is the number 1.61803399, represented by the Greek letter Phi, and considered truly unique in its mathematical properties, prevalence throughout nature, and its ability to achieve a perfect aesthetic composition. It is integral to the pentagram. Shorter and longer sections of each line exist in golden ratio. If you look at God’s fingers and the general position of the bodies in Michelangelo’s fresco, you will see pentagrams. After Mrs. Winchesters mysterious disappearance in 1922, the mansion of emptied of her belongings. It took six trucks working around the clock for six weeks to move all of her furniture out. Many people say not only was it a lot of stuff, but the movers would get lost in the mansion. Nonetheless, some things were left behind. From time to time the mansion was rented out. A young couple Oliver Hall and Ethel Taylor rented the place, but the story of what happened is very fascinating. No one ever thought that Ethel Taylor would marry Oliver Hall; but he thought differently, and things which Oliver Hall intended had a queer way of coming to pass. He asked her to marry him before he went Yale. She laughed and refused him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
The Next time Oliver came home, he asked her again. However, she laughed, tosses her luscious blonde locks, and refused again. A third time he asked her; she said it was becoming a confirmed bad habit, and laughed at him more then ever. Oliver was not the only man who wanted to marry her, but his attempts were like an elephant, at whose clumsy feats were considerably amusing. Ethel was the belle of the Santa Clara Valley, and every one was in love with her more or less; it was a sort of fashion, like masher collars or Inverness capes. Therefore everyone was very annoyed as surprised when Oliver Hall walked into the Bank of Italy Building and invited everyone to his wedding. “Your wedding?” “You do not mean it?” “Who is the happy fair? When is it to be?” Oliver Hall filled his pipe and lighted it before he replied. Then he said—“I am sorry to deprive you fellow of your only joke—but Miss Taylor and I just let the Winchester mansion and are to married at the estate in April. “You do not mean it?” “He has got the mitten again, and its turned his head.” “No,” he said, rising “I see it is true. Lend me a pistol someone—or a first class fare to other end of Nowhere. Hall has bewitched the only pretty girl in our twenty-mile radius. Was it a mesmerism, or a love-potion, Oliver?” “Neither, sir, but a gift you will never have—perseverance—and the best luck a man ever had in this World. It is so glorious to know of a surety that now we can think, feel, speak, act—above all, love one another—haunted by no counteracting spell, responsible to no living creature for our life and our love.” There was something in his voice that silenced everyone, and all chaff of the other fellows failed to draw him further. The queer thing about it was that when we congratulated Miss Taylor, she blushed and smiled, and dimpled, for all the World as though she were in love with him, and had been in love with him all the time. They had been laughing very heartily, cherishing the mirth, as it were like those who caress a lovely bird that had been frightened out of its natural home and grown wild and rare in its visits, only tapping at the lattice for a minute, and then gone. Women are strange creatures. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
In Santa Clara everyone who was anyone was asked to the wedding at Llanada Villa. Many people were truly more interested in the trousseau than the bride herself. The coming marriage was much canvasses at afternoon tea-tables, and at the Bank of Italy over the saddler’s, and the question was always asked: “Does she care for him?” The best man used to ask that question in the early days of their engagement, but after a certain evening in April, the pause between the acts, when the house was half-darkened, and the laughter died away made him never ask that question again. “How cold is it,” said John, the best man, shivering. Oliver shivered too; but not with cold, it was more like the involuntary sensation at which people say, “Someone is walking over my grave.” He said so, jestingly. “Hush, Oliver,” whispered John, and again the draught of cold air seemed to blow right between them. The next week, John was coming home from the Bank of Italy through the churchyard. Their church was on a thyme-grown hill, and the turf about it is so thick and soft that one’s footsteps are noiseless. He made no sound as he vaulted the low lichened wall, and threaded his way between the tombstones. It was at the same instant that he heard Oliver Hall’s voice, and saw his face. Ethel was siting on a low flat gravestone with the full splendour of the western sun upon her mignonne face. Its expression ended, at once and for ever, any question of her love of Oliver; it was transfigured to a beauty John should not have believed possible, even to that beautiful little face. Many people said she was like a reincarnation of Mrs. Winchester. Oliver lay at Ethel’s feet, and it was his voice that broke the stillness of the golden April evening. “This spring is cold for you, my love. I half wish we had taken courage, and sailed once more for Hispaniola. My dear, my dear, I believe I should come back from the if you wanted.” John coughed at once to indicate his presence, and passed on into the shadow fully enlightened. “Oh, no—oh, no! No mor of the sea. Llanada Villa is perfect for me,” she said, with another and stronger shoulder. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
“Ethel,” he said at last, rousing himself, with a half-smile, “I think I must have grown remarkably attractive. Look! half the glasses opposite are lifted to our box. It cannot be to gaze at me, you know. Do you remember telling me I was the ugliest fella you ever saw?” “Oh, Oliver!” Yet it was quite true—she had thought him so, in far back, strange, awful times, when she, a girl of sixteen, had her mind wholly filled with one idea!—one insane, exquisite dream; when she brought her innocent child’s garlands, and sat him down under one spreading magnificent tree, which trees of the Victorian garden at Llanada Villa, until she felt its dews dropping death upon her youth, and her whole soul withering under its venomous shade. “Oh, Oliver!” She cried once more, looking fondly on his beloved face, where no unearthly beauty dazzled, no unnatural calm repelled; where all was simple, noble, manly, true. “My dearly beloved, I thank Heaven for that dear ‘ugliness’ of yours. Above all, though blood runs strong, they say , I thank Heaven that I see you no likeness to—” Oliver knew what name she meant, though for a whole year past—since God’s mercy made it to them only a name—they had ceased to utter it, and let it die wholly out of the visible World. The wedding was to be early in April. Two days before, John had to run up town on business. The train was late, of course, for they were on the South-Eastern, and as he stood grumbling with his watch in his hand, who should he see but Oliver Hall and Ethel Taylor. They were walking up and down the unfrequent end of the platform, that he obtrusively passed the pair with his Gladstone, and took the corner in a first-class smoking-carriage. He did this with as good an air of not seeing them as he could assume. John prided himself on his discretion, but if Oliver were traveling alone he wanted his company. He had it. “Hullo, old man,” came his cheery voice as he swung his bad into John’s carriage; “here is luck; I was expecting a dull journey!” “Where are you off to?” John asked, discretion still bidding him turn his eyes away, though he saw, without looking, that hers were red-rimmed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
“To old San Francisco,” he answered, shutting the door and leaning out for a last word with his sweetheart. He stood—clasping her hand secretly and hard; then he grew quitter; until, as the drop-scene fell, the same cold air swept past them. It was as if someone fresh from the sharp sea-wind had entered the box. “Oh, I wish you would not go, Oliver,” she was saying in a low, earnest voice. “I feel certain something will happen.” “Do you think I should let anything happen to keep me, and the day after tomorrow our wedding-day?” “Do not go,” she answered, with a pleading intensity which would have sent anyone’s Gladstone on to the platform and one after it. However, Oliver Hall was made differently; he rarely changed his opinion, never his resolutions. He only stroked the little ungloved hands that lay on the carriage door. “I must go, Ethel, The old boy’s have been awfully good to me, and now he is dying I must go and see him, but I shall come home in time for—” the rest of the parting was lost in a whisper and in the rattling lurch of the starting rain. “You are sure to come?” she spoke as the train moved. “Nothing shall keep me,” he answered; and they steamed out. After he had seen the last of the little figure on the platform he leaned back in his corner and kept his silence for a minute. When he spoke it was to explain to John that his godfather, whose heir he was, lay dying in Le Petit Trianon, some fifty miles away, and had sent for Oliver, and Oliver felt bound to go. “I shall be surely back tomorrow,” he said, “or, if not, the day after, in heaps of time. Thank Heaven, one has not to get up in the middle of the night to get married nowdays!” “And supposed Mr. Koshland dies?” “Alive or dead I mean to get married on Thursday!” Oliver answered, as he unfolded Oakland Tribune. At the Third and Townsend Depot they said their “goodbye,” and he got out and John saw him ride off; John went to Berkeley, where he stayed the night. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
When John got home the next afternoon, a very wet one, by the way, his sister greeted him with—“Where is Oliver Hall?” “Goodness knows,” he answered testily. Every man, since Cain, has resented that kind of question. “I thought you might have heard from him,” she went on, “as you are to give him away tomorrow.” “Is he not back,” I asked, for I had confidently expected to find him at Llanada Villa. “No, John,”—his sister Alexis always had a way of jumping to conclusions, expecially such conclusion as were least favourable to her fellow-creatures—“he has not returned, and, what is more, you may depend upon it he will not. You mark my words, there will be no wedding tomorrow.” His sister Alexis has the power of annoying him which no other human being possess. “You mark my words,” John retorted with asperity, “you had better give up making such a thundering idiot of yourself. There will be more wedding tomorrow than ever, you will take first part in.” A prophecy which, by the way, came true. However, though, John could snarl confidently to his sister, he did not feel so comfortable when, late that night, standing on the door step of the Winchester mansion, heard the Oliver had not returned home. Filled with German superstitions, the young man grew almost pale, but kept a courteous calmness. There was nothing too ghastly or terrible for his own imagination to conjure up. John went home gloomily through the rain. Next morning brought a brilliant blue sky, gold sun, and all such softness of air and beauty of cloud as to make up a perfect day. However, he woke with a vague feeling of having gone to bed anxious, and of being rather averse to facing that anxiety in the light of full wakefulness. However, with his shaving-water came a note from Oliver which relieved his mind and sent him to the Winchester mansion with a light heart. Ethel was in the garden. He saw her blue gown through the hollyhocks as the mansion’s gates swung behind him. So he did not go up to the mansion, but turned aside down the turfed path. “He has written to you too,” she said, without preliminary greeting, when John reached her side. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
“Yes, I am to meet him at the station at three, and come straight back to the mansion.” Her face looked pale, but there was brightness in her eyes, and a tender quiver about the mouth that spoke of renewed happiness. “Mrs. Koshland begged him so to stay another night that he had not the heart to refuse,” she went. “He is so kind, but I wish he had not stayed.” John was at the station at half-past two. He felt rather annoyed with Oliver. It seemed a sort of slight to the beautiful young lady who loved him, that he should come as it were out of breath, and with the dust of travel upon him to take her hand, which some of them would have given the best years of their lives to take. However, when the three o’clock train glided in, and glided out again having brought no passengers to their little station, John was more than annoyed. There was no other train for thirty-five minutes; he calculated that, with much hurry, he might just get back to the mansion in time for the ceremony; but, oh, what a fool to miss that first train! What other man could have done it? That thirty-five minutes seemed like a year, as he wandered round the station reading the advertisements and the time-tables, and the company’s bye-laws, and getting more and more angry with Oliver Hall. This confidence in his own power of getting everything he wanted the minute he wanted it was leading him too far. John hated waiting. After no sight of Oliver, he flung himself into the carriage that he had brough for him. “Drive to the mansion!” he said, as someone shut the door. “Mr. Hall has not come by this train.” Anxiety now replaced anger. What had become of the man? Could he have been suddenly taken will? John had never known Oliver to have an illness in his life. And even so, he might have telegraphed. Some awful accident must have happened. Maybe his corpse was picked up off a wreck, and committed to the deep—in the Gulf of Mexico. The thought that he had played her false never—no, not for a moment, entered John’s head. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Yes, something terrible had happened to Oliver, and on John lay the task of telling his bride. John almost wished the carriage would upset and break his head so that someone else might tell her, not Joh, who—but that is nothing to do with the story. It was five minutes to four as they drew up to the gate of the Winchester mansion. A double row of eager onlooker lined the path of the palm avenue. John sprang from the carriage and passed up between them. The estate’s gardener had a good front place near the door. He stopped. “Are they waiting still, Thomas?” he asked, simply to gain time, for of course he knew they were by the waiting crowd’s attentive attitude. “Waiting, sir? No, sir, why it must be over by now.” “Over! Then Mr. Hall has come?” ‘To the minute, sir; must have missed you somehow, and I say, sir,” lowering his voice, “I never see Mr. Oliver the bit so afore, but my opinion is he has been drinking pretty free. His clothes was all dusty and his face a sheet. I tell you I did not like the looks of him, with never a look or a word for none of us; him that was always such a gentleman!” I had never heard Thomas make so long a speech. The crowd in at mansion wee talking in whispers and getting ready rice and slippers to throw at the bride and bridegroom. The ringers were ready with their hands on the ropes to rung out the merry peal as the bride and bridegroom should come out. A murmur from the Winchester mansion announced them; out they came, Thomas was right. Oliver Hall did not look himself. There was dust on his coat, his hair was disarranged. He seemed to have been in some row, for there was a black mark above his eyebrow. He was deathly pale. However, his pallor was not greater than that of the bride, who might have been carved in ivory—dress, veil, orange blossoms and all. As they passed out the ringers stooped—there were six of them—and then, on the ears expecting the gay wedding peal, came the slow tolling of the Winchester Bell. A thrill of horror at so foolish a jest from the ringers passed through all the guests. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
However, the ringers themselves dropped the ropes and fled like rabbits down the belfry stairs. The bride shuddered, and grey shadows came about her mouth, but the bridegroom led her on down the path where the people stood with the handfuls of rice; but the handfuls were never thrown, and the wedding-bells never rang. In vain the ringers were urged to remedy their mistake: the protested with many whispered expletives that they would see themselves further first. In a hush like the hush in the chamber of death the bridal pair passed into their carriage and its door slammed behind them. Then the tongues were loosed. A babel of anger, wonder, conjecture from the guests and spectators. “If I had seen his condition, sir,” said old Seymour to me as we drove off, “I would have stretched him on the floor of the mansion, sir, by Heaven I would, before I would have let him marry my daughter!” Then he put his head out of the window. “Drive like fury,” he cried to the coachman; “do not spare the horses.” He was obeyed. They passed the bride’s carriage. John forbore to look at it, and old Seymour turned his head away and swore. They reached reception hall before it. They stood in the hall doorway, in the blazing afternoon sun, and in about half a minute, they heard the wheels crunching the gravel. When the carriage stopped in the front of the steps old Seymour and John ran down. “Great Heaven, the carriage is empty! And yet—” he had the door open in a minute, and this is what he saw—No sign of Oliver Hall; and of Ethel, his wife only a huddled heap of white satin lying half on the floor of the carriage and half on the seat. “I drove straight here, sir,” said the coachman, as the bride’s father lifted her out; “and I will swear no one got out of the carriage.” We drove back to the Winchester mansion, and carried her back into the house in her bridal dress, and drew back her veil. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Her face. No one would ever forget. White, white and drawn with agony and horror, bearing such a look of terror as no one has never seen except in dreams. And her hair, her radiant blonde hair, it was white like snow. As John and her father stood, both half mad with horror and mystery of it, a body came up the avenue—a telegraph boy. They brought the orange envelop to John. He tore it open. “Mr. Hall was thrown from his horse on his way to the station at half-past one. Killed on the spot!” And he was married to Ethel Taylor in the Winchester Mansion at half-past three, in the presence of fifty guests. “I shall be married, dead or alive!” What had passed in that carriage on the drive to the reception hall? No one knows—no one will ever know. Oh, Ethel! Oh, my dear!” Before a week was over they laid her beside her husband in the Oak Hill Memorial Park on the northern most hill in the San Juan Bautista Hills of South San Jose. Thus was accomplished Oliver Hall’s wedding. Whether or not one believes in superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss the unusual events that have taken place at this estate. Just like the original construction, restoration and maintenance work at Winchester Mystery House is never complete. The actual amount of materials requires is staggering. For example, it takes over 20,000 gallons of pain to cover the exterior—and by the time the workers have finished, they have to start all over again! Continuous work is being done on the massive structure, with carpenters, painters, and gardeners toiling away just like they did during Mrs. Winchester’s day. The sons, grandsons, and great grandson of Mrs. Winchester’s original employees have been some of these workmen! The restoration work is very demanding. Although you can still find spots where the cracked plaster has not been fixed after the 1906 Earthquake, almost everything will eventually be restored. This has been left like this on purpose, like a frozen moment in time, to show people how Mrs. Winchester lived there. An ongoing search continues for fine examples of the period furnishings, similar to what Mrs. Winchester herself would have used. Her original furnishings were auctioned off after her death and never have been recovered. The job of overseeing the restoration is a painstaking one. The historical accuracy of every project is researched and approved by the Restoration Board of Directors. Winchester Mystery House receives no funds from any government agency; the continuous restoration and maintenance programs are funded entirely from tour, café, and gift shop revenues. Since 1973, millions of dollars have been invested to ensure that this unique landmark will be preserved as the premier showcase of the Santa Clara Valley’s gracious past. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
The Witches Cap 🧙🏼♀️- named for it’s conical resemblance of a witches hat. Many famous mediums claim this room was “important” to Sarah Winchester, although we do not know what it was used for. How did you feel when you experienced the Witches Cap for the first time? winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Dead and the Living Can Never be One—God Has Forbidden it!
Life is richest when you realize that we are all snowflakes. Each of us is absolutely beautiful and unique. And we are here for a very short time. Mrs. Winchester was a pretty little brunette, rather pale, with dark hair, brilliant brown eyes, a resolute mouth and a bright, intelligent expression. She was orderly, trim and feverishly energetic, and seemed to live every moment of her life. The Winchester mansion was like a paradise on Earth; and in this light I still regarded it, until a great change came over the temperature, and the month of April introduced me to red-hot winds, sleepless nights, and the intolerable “brain fever” bird. The next morning, rested and invigorated, we set out on a tour of inspection; and it is almost worthwhile to undergo a certain amount of baking on the sweltering heat of the plains, in order to enjoy those deep first draughts of cool hill air, instead of a stifling, dust-laden atmosphere, and to appreciate the green valleys and blue hills by force of contrast to the far-stretching, eye-smarting, white glaring roads that intersect the burnt-up plains—roads and plains that even the pariah abandon, salamander though he be! No doubt the work of some extremely roughish-looking and grotesque imps and demons, who were inflicting various torments. However, to our delight and surprise, Mrs. Winchester had by no means overdraw the advantages of her new estate. The Grand Queen Anne Victorian mansion was solidly built of wood, brick, and stone, nine storied, and ample in size. It stood on kind of a shelf cut out of the hill side, and was surrounded by a pretty flower garden, full of roses, fuchsias, carnations. There was also a fruit orchard, many exotic trees and plants, and an avenue of palm trees. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
There was a delightful, flagged verandah. The stairs were very steep. At the head of them, the passage and rooms were repeated. There were very small nooks, a switchback staircase, which has seven flights with forty-four steps, rising only about nine feet, since each step was just two inches. Miles of twisting hallways, secret passageways in the walls, a labyrinth of rooms, and dressing-rooms, 13 bathrooms, and plenty of good water. From the fourth-floor balcony, there was a glorious view, across a valley, far away, to the snowy range. As we looked around the drawing-room, here were carpets, curtains, solid, very solid chairs, and Berlin wool worked screens, a card-table, and any quantity of pictures. All the rooms were well, almost handsomely, furnished, in an old-fashioned style. There was no scarcity of wardrobes, looking-glasses, or even armchairs, in the bedrooms, and they pantry was fitted out—a most singular circumstance—with a large supply of handsome glass and china, lamps, old moderators, coffee and tea pots, plated side dishes, and candlesticks, cooking utensils and spoons and forks, wine coasters, and a cake-backet. The chins was Spoke, the plate old family heirlooms, with a crest—a winged horse—on everything, down to the very mustard spoons. There were gold- and silverplated chandeliers, imported Tiffany art glass windows, German silver and bronze inlaid doors, Swiss molded bathtubs, rare precious woods like mahogany and rosewood. Handsome Dresden china vases, nice boxes of firewood in every room, clocks, real hair mattresses—in short, it was a treasure trove. It was well built with some peculiar effects such as stairs that lead to the ceiling, doors that go nowhere and that opened onto walls, and chimneys that stop just short of the roof. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
It is estimated that there were some 500 to 600 rooms in the house. However, it is haunted! According to a Boston medium, Mrs. Winchester and her family and her fortune were being haunted by spirits. Supposedly the untimely deaths of her daughter and husband were caused by these spirits, and it was implied that Mrs. Winchester would be the next victim. We soon forget about the dismal prophecy, being too gay and too busy to give her, or it a thought. We had so many engagements—tennis parties and tournaments, picnics, concerts, dances and little dinners. We ourselves gave occasional afternoon teas in the verandah, using the best Spode cups and saucers and the old silver cake-basket, and were warmly complimented on our good fortune in being guests in such a charming house and garden. Mrs. Winchester also had an African grey parrot—a rare bird indeed—and a cute little dog named Zip. Later that night, we had dinner in a handsome and somewhat antique-looking room. A cheerful wood-fire blazed in the capacious hearth; a little at one side an old-fashioned table, with richly-carved legs, was placed—destined, no doubt, to receive the supper, for which preparations were going forward; and ranged with exam regularity stood the tall-backed chairs whose ungracefulness was more than counterbalanced by their comfort. A stranger stopped at the door of the room, and displayed his form and face completely. He wore a dark coloured cloth cloak, which was short and full, not falling quite to the knees; his legs were cased in dark purple silk stockings, and his shoes were adorned with roses of the same colour. The opening of the cloak in front showed the undersuit to consist of some very dark, perhaps sable material, and his hands were enclosed in a pair of heavy leather gloves which ran up considerably above the wrist, in the manner of a gauntlet. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
In one hand he carried his walking-stick and his hat, which he had removed, and the other hung heavily by his side. A quantity of grizzled hair descended in long tresses from his head, and its fold rested upon plaits of a stiff ruff, which effectually concealed his neck. So far all was well; but the face!—all the flesh of the face was coloured with the bluish leaden hue which is sometimes produced by the operation of metallic medicines administered in excessive quantities; the eyes were enormous, and the white appeared both above and below the iris, which gave to them the impression of insanity, which was heightened by their glassy redness; the nose was well enough, but the mouth was writhed considerably to one side, where it opened in order to give egress to two long, discoloured fangs, which projected from the upper jaw, far blow the lower lip; the hue of the lips themselves bore the usual relation to that of the face, and was consequently nearly black. The character of the face was malignant, even satanic, to the last degree; and, indeed, such a combination of horror could hardly be accounted for, except by supposing the corpse of some atrocious malefactor, which had long hung blackening upon the gibbet, to have at length become the habitation of a demon—the frightful sport of satanic possession. It was remarkable that the worshipful stranger suffered as little as possible of his flesh to appear, and that during his visit he did not once remove his gloves. There was something indescribably odd, even horrible about all his motions, something undefinable, something unnatural, unhuman—it was as if the limbs were guided and directed by a spirit unused to the management of bodily machinery. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The stranger said hardly anything during his visit, which did not exceed half an hour; and the host himself could scarcely muster courage enough to utter the few necessary salutations and courtesies; and, indeed, such was the nervous terror which the presence of Theophilus Dunn inspired, that very little would have made all his entertainers fly bellowing from the room. During his stay he did not once suffer his eyelids to close, nor even to move in the slightest degree; and further, there was a death-like stillness in his whole person, owing to the total absence of the heaving motion of the chest caused by the process of respiration. These two peculiarities, though when told they may appear trifling, produced a very striking and unpleasant effect when seen and observed. He saw a shadowy and ill-defined form gliding into the apartment. Sharp guests of wind and warning rumblings of thunder that seemed to shake the mountains, blew away the table cloth. As it was whirling into space, Dunn drew his sword, and raising the candle as o throw its light with increased distinctness upon the objects in the room, he entered the chamber into which the figure had glided. No figure was there—nothing but the furniture which had belonged to the room, and yet he could not be deceived as to the fact that something had moved before them into the chamber. A sickening dread came upon him, and the cold perspiration broke out in heavy drops upon his forehead; nor was he more composed when he heard the increased urgency, they agony of entreaty, which Mrs. Winchester implored him not to leave for a moment. “I saw him,” she said. “He is there! I cannot be deceived—I know him. He is by me—he is with me—he is in the room. Then, for God’s sake, as you would save me, do no stir from beside me!” #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
Mrs. Winchester had it prevailed upon her to lie down upon the bed, where she continued to urger everyone to stay by her. She frequently uttered incoherent sentences, repeating again and again, “The dead and the living cannot be one—God has forbidden it!” and then again, “Rest to the wakeful—sleep to the sleep-walkers.” There was a Greek curse inscribed on a lead tablet in the drawing room from the city of Selinus in Sicily. Mrs. Winchester used it to communicate with gods and spirits. A spirit had been summoned and bound to the tablet to make sure the curse was effective. Souls after death do as yet love their body which they left, as those souls do whose bodies want due burial or have left their bodies by violent death, and as yet wander about their carcasses in a troubled and moist spirit, being, as it were, allured by something that hath an affinity with them. Many spirits had been invoked that night, this one had been brought out and seated on a sixteen-sided stand (an improvement on the double pentacle called Solomon’s seat). Mrs. Winchester lay in the inner chamber, the door of which was open; and by the side of the bed, at her urgent desire, stood her niece Marion “Daisey” Marriam Marriott; a candle burned in the bedchamber, and three were lighted in the outer apartment. Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton arrived, and cleared his voice, as if about to commence a prayer; but before he had time to begin, a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to illuminate the room in which Mrs. Winchester lay, and she with hurried alarm, explained: “Sir Lancelot, bring in another candle; the darkness is unsafe.” Sir Lancelot stepped from the bedchamber into the other, in order to supply what she desired. “O God! do not go, Sir Lancelot!” shrieked the unhappy Mrs. Winchester; and at the same time she sprang from the bed and darted after him, in order, by her grasp, to detain him. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
However, the warning came too late, for scarcely had he passed the threshold, and hardly had Mrs. Winchester has time to utter the startling explanation, when the door which divided the two rooms closed violently after him, as if swung to by a strong blast of wind. Sir Lancelot and Dunn both rushed to the door, but their united and desperate efforts could not avail so much as to sake it. Shriek after shriek burst from the inner chamber, with all the piercing loudness of despairing terror. Sir Lancelot and Dunn applied every energy and strained every nerve to force open the door; but all in vain. There was no sound of struggling from within, but the screams seemed to increase in loudness, and at the same time they heard the bolts of the latticed window withdrawn, and the window itself grated upon the sill as if thrown open. One last shriek, so long and piercing and agonized as to be scarcely human, swelled from the room, and suddenly there followed a death-like silence. A light step was heard crossing the floor, as if from the bed to the window; and almost at the same instant the door gave way, and yielding to the pressure of the external applicants, they were nearly precipitated into the room. It was empty. The window was open, and Sir Lancelot sprang to the chair and gazed out upon the fruit orchard and the lake below. He saw no form, but he beheld, or thought he beheld, the waters of the broad lake beneath settling ring after ring in heavy circular ripples, as if a moment before disturbed by the immersion of some large and heavy mass. No trace of Mrs. Winchester was ever after discovered, nor was anything certain respecting her mysterious wooer detected or even suspected; no clue whereby to trace the intricacies of the labyrinth, and to arrive at a distinct conclusion was to be found. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
However, an incident occurred, which, though it will not be received by our rational readers as at all approaching to evidence upon the matter, nevertheless produced a strong and a lasting impression upon the mind of Sir Lancelot. Many years after the events at the Winchester Mansion, which we have detailed, Sir Lancelot, then remotely situated, received an intimation of his father’s death, and of his intended burial upon a fixed day in an independent chapel in Bath late in the day upon which the funeral was appointed to take place. The procession had not then arrived. Evening closed in, and still it did not appear. Sir Lancelot strolled down to the church—he found it open; notice of the arrival of the funeral had been given, and the vault in which the body was to be laid had been opened. The official who corresponds to our sexton, on seeing a well-dressed gentleman, whose object was to attend the expected funeral, pacing the aisle of the chapel, hospitably invited him to share with him the comforts of a blazing wood fire, which as was his custom in winter time upon such occasions, he had kindled on the hearth of a chamber which communicated by a flight of steps with the vault below. In this chamber Sir Lancelot and his entertainer seated themselves; and the sexton, after some fruitless attempts to engage his guest in conversation, was obliged to apply himself to his tobacco-pipe and can to solace his solitude. In spite of his grief and cares, the fatigues of a rapid journey of nearly forty hours gradually overcame the mind and body of Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, and he sank into a deep sleep, from which he was awakened by someone shaking him gently by the shoulder. He first thought that the old sexton had called him, but he was no longer in the room. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
There was a kind of ghostly twilight. The ghostly lights passed and disappeared in the gathering darkness. He roused himself, and as soon as he could clearly see what was around him, he perceived a female form, clothed in a kind of black robe of muslin, part of which was so disposed as to act as a veil, and in her hand she carried a lamp. She was moving rather away from him, and towards the flight of steps which conducted towards the vaults. Sir Lancelot felt a vague alarm at the sight of this figure, and at the same time an irresistible impulse to follow his guidance. He followed it towards the vaults, but when it reached the head of the stairs, he paused; the figure paused also, and turning gently round, displayed, by the light of the lamp it carried, the face and features of the beloved, Sarah Winchesters. There was nothing horrible, or even sad, in the countenance. On the contrary, it wore the same arch smile which used to enchant him long before in his happy days. A feeling of awe and interest, too intense to be resisted, prompted him to follow the specter, if specter it were. She descended the stairs—he followed; and, turning to the left through a narrow passage she led him, to his infinite surprise, through the door to nowhere, into what appeared to be an old-fashioned Victorian apartment. Abundance of costly antique furniture was disposed about the room, and in one corner stood a four-post bed, with heavy black cloth curtains, and by the light of the lamp which she held towards its contents, she disclosed to the horror stricken clergyman, sitting bolt upright in the bed, the livid and demoniac form of Theophilus Dunn. Sir Lancelottt had hardly seen him when he fell senseless upon the floor, where he lay until discovered, on the next morning, by persons employed in closing the passages into the vaults. He was laying in a cell of considerable size, which had not been disturbed for a long time, and had fallen beside a large coffin which was supported upon small stone pillars, a security against the attacks of vermin. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
To his dying day Sir Lancelot was satisfied of the reality of the vision which he had witnessed, and he has left behind him curious evidence of the impression which it wrought upon his fancy, in a painting executed shortly after the event we have narrated, and which is valuable as exhibiting not only the peculiarities which have made the Winchester Mansion sought after, but even more so as presenting occurrences in Mrs. Winchester’s interviews and journals that defy explanation. However, Mrs. Winchester’s mysterious fate must ever remain a matter of speculation. Yes; sometimes at night the most terrible weeping and sobbing can be heard coming from the “Daisy bedroom,” and a phantom horse can be heard plunging in the carriage house, and the wild, unearthly and utterly appalling shriek. The scene of horrible dinner parities has even been seen in the dining room. A party of ghouls meets there a few times of year, after midnight, and are assembled with the spoils of the graves they have violated, and are feasting on the flesh of long-buried corpses. One of the servants even saw his own wife, who, by the way, never touched supper at home, playing no inconsiderable part in the hideous banquet. Hundreds of wild stories have appeared about this mysterious mansion. It seems odd that none of her relatives or former employees ever came forward to contradict these stories, despite the fact that many of them lived for forty years after the estate was opened for tours. For some reason, did they feel threatened by talking—or did they continue to guard Mrs. Winchesters privacy? At the Winchester Mystery House, we may never be able to separate fact from legend—so here are some stories that have been told since the late 1800s and early 1900s. We leave it to guests and readers to decide for themselves why Mrs. Winchester really built the house the way she did, or what is it really? A portal or just a museum? #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Winchester Mystery House is an extravagant maze of Victorian craftmanship—marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least. Tour guides must warn people not to stray from the group or they could be lost for hours. Countless questions come to mind as you wander through the mansion—such as, what was Mrs. Winchester thinking when she had a staircase built the descends seven steps and then rises eleven? By the way, Harry Houdini, an occultist, was attracted to the Winchester and tried to escape from the mansiin blindfolded; he also died Halloween 1926.
Winchester Mystery House
What it feels like walking through a microscopic spiderweb….🕷🕸
All Hallows’ Eve, Lost in the House tour tickets are still available for tonight. Hurry and purchase before they sell out!
🎟link: http://ow.ly/k5wM50GqWTb
The Long Lost Friends
There is something in distortions that is very appealing to Americans. If that were not the case, we should long ago have recognized them for what they are. Interpersonal approaches to psychological problems assume that people’s social relationships are intimately tied to their well-being and mental health. When interpersonal relationships become distressed and dissatisfying, they become sources of stress with remarkable power to disrupt psychological well being. Sometimes this disruption is brought about by problems with the ability and/or motivation to engage effectively in interpersonal communication. At other times it occurs because of problematic interactions and relations with other people who are themselves distressed, or like to behave in ways that are interpersonally destructive. In either case, interpersonal problems are strongly connected to psychological problems, since interpersonal relationship quality is one of the most important aspects of human existence. Research findings and evidence for this interpersonal perspective are rapidly developing and expanding. Despite its newness and its relatively recent recognition, the interpersonal perspective on psychological problems can be traced back at least 125 years, and it shares assumptions with many other modern-day paradigms in psychopathology. Throughout recorded history, human beings have sought to develop explanations for psychopathology. Although they bear little resemblance to modern scientific theories, hypotheses and explanations for deviant behaviour and thinking can be traced back thousands of years. For example, as far back as 1000-2000 B.C., psychological problems were explained by some through demonology. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
According to this perspective, an autonomous evil being would inhabit a person’s body and cause odd and destructive behaviour that the person could not control. As preposterous as such a “theory” of mental illness may appear to most of us today, demonology preserved as a common explanation for psychopathology well into the 19th century. A woman was condemned to death for witchcraft in England as late as 1712, twenty years after the Salem trials. In that case, the last in England, the judge obtained a royal pardon, so there was no execution. However, there were executions in Scotland as late as 1722, and Sarah Bassett, and enslaved African, was burned at the stake in Bermuda in 1730. Hanging was, as we have seen, the usual punishment for witchcraft. However, burning or boiling to death were prescribed where petty treason was also involved—treason against someone other than the king to whom one owed obedience. The murder of one’s husband, or parent, or master was petty treason, and since Sarah Bassett had used her charms and her poisons against her master she died at the stake. She was the last to be executed in an English-speaking country, and in 1736 the English and Scottish laws prescribing death for witchcraft were repealed, to be replaced by laws against the fraudulent practice of the occult. On the Continent there were executions throughout the eighteenth century: in France as late as 1745; in Germany in 1775; in Spain in 1781; in Switzerland in 1782; in Poland in 1793. There was a rash of witch-burnings in South America during the nineteenth century, lynchings have continued into the present century. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
In 1929, for example, three Pennsylvania-Germans were convicted of murdering a “pow-wow doctor.” They were after his copy of The Long-Lost Friend, the grimoire still in use among the Pennsylvania-Germans, and believed he had used it to bewitch them. The Hausa, an African tribe whose witches keep magical stones in their stomachs, eat their victims’ souls slowly, causing the victim to waste away and die. Another African witch, Sukuyadyo or Obayito, bind victims magically and drain their blood or life force. Sukuyadyo can change their skins, hiding their real skin under a pot or mortar in their house and taking on the appearance of another. Obayito transform into a ball of light to drain the life force. The Salem trials were the last in which an entire community believed its existence threatened by malefic witchcraft. However, they enjoyed that dubious distinction by little more than a decade; it was in 1680 that the court of Louis XIV was shaken by a witchcraft scandal which makes for an instructive comparison with the trials at Salem. Some of the countries of the Sun King apparently thought little more of consulting a practitioner of the occult than of consulting their confessor. According to Visconti’s memoirs, the Duchesse de Foix had appealed to the Devil for bigger casaba melons and Madame de Vasse for more voluptuous gams. Nobody expected revelations more serious than this when in March of 1679 the Paris police arrested Catherine Deshayes, known as La Voisin, the leader of a fashionable ring of occultists who dealt in magic potions, some of them poisonous, as well as in spells and charms. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The investigation was conducted by a special commission of twelve called the Chambre Ardente after the black-draped, candle-lit room in which the hearings were held, an some of its findings show little more than a depraved curiosity on the part of La Voisin’s noble clients: one courtier had merely wished to be introduced to the Devil. Others, however, had wanted considerably more. The wife of the king’s flutist was accused of having poisoned her first husband, and she was executed in May. By the end of the year far more important people were incriminated, including the Comtesse de Soissons, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, who was also suspected of husband-poisoning. She and several others were allowed to flee the kingdom, although Louis instructed Nicholas de la Reynie, one of the commissioners, that the matter was to be pursed to the finish without regard for rank or gender. Within another year, however, Louis had reduced the commission to two persons (including La Reynie) working in the utmost secrecy, and had personally removed some of their documents from the files. The commission had obtained testimony incriminating no less a person than Madame de Montespan, the mistress of the king, who had been a client of La Voisin for thirteen years. She had been asked for and obtained spells to make the king forget his former mistress and his queen, and she had ordered love potions as well. These she had mixed with the king’s food over a number of years. Louis was a generally healthy person, and one of the more interesting aspects of this affair is whether his occasional indispositions during this period may not have been a result of the bats’ blood, powered dessicated mole, and similar ingredients his mistress was incorporating in his diet. (One ingredient of her potions, cantharides, is still in use as an aphrodisiac.) #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Up to this point most authorities are agreed: Madame de Montespan had been a client of La Voisin, and she had used both spells and potions to obtain and hold the king’s love. Beyond this point, however, there is much controversy, in part because of the sensational nature of the testimony and in part because it was obtained under torture. What the testimony says is the Louis’ affections had become increasingly hard to hold, and Madame de Montespan therefore had recourse to more and more drastic measures. A number of priests were of La Voisin’s ring, and in 1672 she called on the most depraved of these, the Abbe Guibourg, to perform amatory masses, which involved using Madame de Montespan’s body in her birthday suit as an altar on which to place the chalice. It also required the ritual sacrifice of an infant, part of whose blood was mixed with flour in the chalice to make an obscene sacramental wafer. At the conclusion of the mass the wafer and some of the infant’s blood were given to the Sun King’s mistress; as the strongest of love potions, they were to be mixed with his food, as before. Amatory masses were performed again in 1676. However, by the Montespan concluded that she had lost the king and ordered a mortuary than an amatory mass. When that piece of imitative magic did not succeed in killing Louis she planned to poison him, but La Voisin was arrested before the plot could be carried out. La Voisin had been burned at the stake in 1680 before anyone ad mentioned the name of the king’s mistress, but the surviving member of her ring ended their lives chained to the walls of French prisons. The last of them died in 1724, thirty-two years after the last witch was hanged in Massachusetts. Louis personally burned the testimony relating to his mistress, so what survives is only La Reynie’s summary of it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Torture, secrecy, imprisonment without trial—these were the methods of the Old Regime. During and after the Salem trials witchcraft was a matter of continual debate, and when as a result of that debate it became apparent that the innocent had suffered, both individuals and the state did what they could to make reparations. Western civilization stopped executing witches when the literate and balanced portion of its members stopped believing in their capacity to harm. And since the witch’s genuine power was a consequence of her victim’s belief, the practice of witchcraft has very nearly vanished along with the penalties for it. However, new figures have risen to take the spectral place in popular fears vacated by the witch; the spirit of the witch hunt is still with us. This explains in part the continued fascination of the Salem trials. They epitomize those crises of belief which are the ultimate test both of leadership and the body politic of a democratic society. While sometimes the cases of witchcraft were real, some people did unknowingly get swept up in the hype and there was shedding of innocent blood to a corrupt leadership motived by their own discreditable lust for power, and particularly to the clerical leadership. Often times, people in positions of authority would accuse a person they had a grievance with of being a witch so they could rip apart their family, confiscate their estate, and kill that person. Other times, young ladies unknowingly bought potions and love spells to use on their husbands or men they admired, and sometimes they worked, but other times these tonics resulted in death because some of them contained poisonous herbs. That fact was not often disclosed to the person seeking magical powers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
When people look at the Winchester Mansion, often times they think of the occult. Sure it is a beautiful museum, but there it something magical about it. From time to time, clouds of tawny dust rise from the ground without wind or warning, flinging themselves tablecloth-wise among the tops of the parched trees, and then coming down again. Then a-whirling dust-devil will cutter across the plain for a couple of miles, break, and fall outward, though there was nothing to check its flight. One Summer, it was oppressively warm. The sun had long disappeared, but seemed to have left its vital spirit of heat behind. The air rested; the leaves of the palm trees that shrouded my windows hung like a plumb on their steady stalks. The noises of the city seemed to be wrapped in slumber, and the shrilling of the mosquitoes was the only sound that boke the stillness. As I lay with my feet elevated on the back of a chair, wrapped in that peculiar frame of mind in which thought assumes a species of lifeless motion, the strange fancy seized me of making a languid inventory of the principal articles of furniture in my estate. It was a task well suited to the mood in which I found myself. However, I could command a view of all my possessions without even turning my head. Solid silver railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. It was a very large house Victorian house, and all the floors communicated by a huge circular staircase that wound up through the center of the mansion, while at every landing long, rambling corridors stretched off into mysterious nooks and corners. This palace of mine was very high, and its resources, in the way of crannies and windings, seemed to be interminable. Nothing seemed to stop anywhere. Cul-de-sacs were unknown on the premises. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The corridors and passages, like mathematical lines, seemed capable of indefinite extension, and the object of the architect was to erect an edifice in which people might go ahead forever. The whole place was a beautiful show of a home, not so much because it was large, but because it had an Earthly warmth that seemed to pervade the structure. The staircases, corridors, halls, stained glass windows and lofty rooms gave it a real sense of style, history, and character. The walls were carefully dressed in finished in a very sophisticated style, which complimented the dramatic Victorian architecture of details of the structure. The architects very carefully incorporated beautiful features on the walls to highlight the long vistas of the labyrinth. There were ornately hand craved fireplaces, crushed formica in the wallpaper, which made it sparkle like gold and diamonds. Extravagant Lincursta wall covering, wainscoting, moulded masks peering down from the cornices, marble vases on the landing, brass newel post lamps on the staircases. The dual-fitted gas/electric chandeliers with eye-catching metal work, and Vaseline glass shades add colour to the room, along with the skylights that allow light to flow through the house. There was an eminent feeling of love and serenity and want of life—so rare in an American establishment—all over the house. It certainly was not Hood’s Haunted House put in order and newly painted. However, the servants were sometimes shadowy, and chary of their visits. Bells rang three times before the gloomy chambermaid could be induced to present herself; the waiter, a ghoul-like looking creature obeyed the summons only when one’s patience was exhausted or one’s want satisfied some other way. When he did come, one felt sorry that he had not stayed away altogether, so sullen and savage did he appear. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
He moved along the echoless floors with a slow, noiseless shamble, until his dusky figure advancing from the gloom, seemed like some reluctant afreet, compelled by superior power of his master to disclose himself. When the doors of all the chambers were closed, light illuminated the long corridor, and one could conjure up an enchanting feel that helped balance the oddities. The house suited me. Of meditative and sedentary habits, I enjoyed the extreme quiet. However, the staff sometimes had a somber spirit, were quiet, and ghost-like in their movements. One evening, I walk down the wide staircase in my pursuit of daises. The garden, as I entered it, did feel somewhat cooler than the parlour. Along the cypress-shrouded walks, it grew dark, and the tall growing flowers that bordered the path were so wrapped in gloom as to present the aspect of solid pyramidal masses, all the details and blossoms being buried in an embracing darkness, while the trees had lost all form, and seemed like masses of overhanging cloud. It was a place and time to excite the imagination; for in the impenetrable cavities of endless gloom there was room for the most riotous fancies to play at will since the gardener went to his bungalow and began cleaning a rifle to shoot a buck and naturally fumbled with the trigger, and shot himself through the head—accidentally. It is associated in my mind with the most sacred recollections—Summer evenings in the mansion, stained-glass windows, light going out, and reading a hymnbook. Now all that is left is the echoing desolation of his bungalow, and the first thing I saw standing in the verandah was his figure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
That was not the first time I had met a similar apparition. I walked and walked, and the echoes of my footsteps on the ungravelled and mossy path suggested a double feeling. I felt alone and yet in company at the same time. The solitariness of the place made itself distinct enough in the stillness, broken alone by the hollow reverberations of my step, while those very reverberations seemed to imbue me with an undefined feeling that I was not alone. I was not, therefore, much startled when I was suddenly accosted from beneath the solid darkness of an immense cypress by a voice saying, “Good evening.” Somebody advanced. If the thing slides away from me all in one piece, like a ghost, I shall know it is only my eyes and stomach that are out of order. If it walks—my head is going. I fancied that I had caught a glimpse of a pale, weird countenance, immersed in a background of long, wild hair. I could not say certainly whether this was an actual impression or the mere effort of imagination to embody that which the sense had failed to distinguish. “You are out late,” said this unknow to me. “Not later than usual,” I replied, drily. “Hum! You are fond of the late wanderings, then?” “That is just as the fancy seized me.” “Do you live here?” “Yes.” “Queer house, isn’t it?” “I have only found it quiet.” “Hum! But you will find it queer, take my word for it.” This was earnestly uttered; and I felt at the same time a bony finger laid on my arm, that cut it sharply like a blunt knife. “I cannot take your word for any such assertion,” I replied; rudely shaking off the bony finger with an irrepressible motion of disgust. “No offense, no offense,” muttered by unseen companion rapidly, in a strange, subdued voice, that would have been shrill had it been louder; “your being angry does not alter the matter. You will find it a queer house. Everybody finds it a queer house.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
“I find it quite beautiful. I developed the plan with some very special architects,” I answered very sharply, for the individual’s manner, combined with my utter uncertainty as to his appearance, oppressed me with an irksome longing to be rid of him. “Oh, you don’t? Well, I do. I know what they are,–well, well, well!” and as he pronounced the three last words his voice rose with each, until, with the last, it reached a shrill shriek that echoed horribly among the lonely walks. “Do you know what they eat?” he continued. “No, sir—nor care.” “Oh, but you will care. You must care. You shall care. I will tell you what they are. They are enchanters. They are ghouls. They are cannibals. Did you never remark their eyes, and how they gloated on you when you passed? Did you never remark the food that they served up at your table? Did you ever in the dead of the night hear muffled and unearthly footsteps gliding along the corridors, and stealthy hands turning the handle of your door? Does not dome magnetic influence fold itself continually round you when they pass, and send a thrill through spirit and body, and a cold shiver that no sunshine will chase away? Oh, you have! You have felt all these things! I know it!” The earnest rapidity, the subdued tones, the eagerness of accent, with which all this was uttered, impressed me most uncomfortably. It really seemed as if I could recall all those weird occurrences and influences of which he spoke; and I shuddered in spite of myself in the midst of the impenetrable darkness that surrounded me. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
“Hum!” said I, assuming, without knowing it, a confidential tone, “may I ask how you know these things?” “How I know them? Because I am their enemy; because they tremble at my whisper; because I hang upon their track with the perseverance of a bloodhound and the stealthiness of a tiger; because—because—I was of them once!” “Wretch!” I cried excitedly, for involuntarily his eager tones had wrought me up to a high pitch of spasmodic nervousness “then you mean to say that you—” as I uttered this word, obeying an uncontrollable impulse, I stretched forth my hand in the direction of the speaker and made a blind clutch. The tips of my fingers seemed to touch a surface as smooth as glass, that glided suddenly from under them. A sharply, angry hiss sounded through the gloom, followed by a whirring noise, as if some projectile passed rapidly by, and the next moment I felt instinctively that I was alone. A most disagreeable feeling instantly assailed me—a prophetic instinct that some terrible misfortune menaced me; and eager and overpowering anxiety to get back to my house without loss of time. I turned and ran blindly along the dark cypress alley, every dusky clump of flowers that rose blackly in the borders making my heart each moment cease to the sounds of unknown pursuers following fast upon my track. The boughs of lilac-bushes and syringas, that here and there stretched partly across the walk, seemed to have been furnished suddenly with hooked hands that sought to grasp me as I flew by, and each moment I expected to behold some awful and impassible barrier fall across my track and wall me up forever. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
At length I reached the wide entrance. With a single leap I sprang up the four or five steps that formed the stoop, and dashed along the hall, up the narrow zigzagging stairs, and again along the dim, funereal corridors until I paused, breathless and panting, at the “Door to Nowhere.” Once so far, I stopped for an instant and leaned heavily against one of the panels, panting lustily after my late run. I had, however, scarcely rested my whole weight against the door, when it suddenly gave way, and I staggered in head-foremost. To my utter astonishment, the room I had left in profound darkness was now a blaze of light. So intense was the illumination that, for a few seconds while the pupils of my eyes were contracting under the sudden change, I saw absolutely nothing save the dazzling glare. This fact in itself, coming on me with such utter suddenness, was sufficient to prolong my confusion, and it was not until after several minutes had elapsed that I perceived the rom was not only illuminated, but occupied. And such occupants! Amazement at the scene took such possession of me that I was incapable of either moving or uttering a word. All that I could do was to lean against the wall, and stare blankly at the strange picture. It have been a scene out of Samuel Jackson Pratt’s Sympathy, or Hannah Cowley’s The Fate of Sparta, or Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Round a large table in the center of the room, that I had left unfinished, were seated half a dozen persons. Three were men and three were women. I do not even know what possessed me to open this door. The table was heaped wit a prodigality of luxuries. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
There were luscious eastern fruits piled up in silver filigree vases, though whose meshes their glowing rings shone in the contrasts of a thousand hues. Small silver dishes that Benvenuto might had designed, filled with succulent and aromatic meats, were distributed upon a cloth of snowy damask. Bottles of every shape, slender ones from the Rhine, stouts fellows from Holland, sturdy ones from Spain, and quaint basket-woven flasks from Italy, absolutely littered the board. Drinking-glasses of every size and hue filled up the interstices, and the thirsty German flagon stood side by side with the aerial bubbles of Venetian glass that rest so lightly on their threadlike stems. An order of luxury and sensuality floated through the apartment. The lamps that burned in every direction seemed to diffuse a subtle incense on the air, and in a large vase that stood on the floor, I saw mass of magnolias, tuberoses, and jasmines grouped together, stifling each other with their honeyed and heavy fragrance. The inhabitants of my incomplete room seemed beings well suited to so sensual an atmosphere. The women were strangely beautiful, and all were attired in dresses of the most fantastic devices and brilliant hues. Their figures were round, supple, and elastic; their eyes dark and languished; their lips full, ripe, and of the richest bloom. The three men wore half-masks, so that all I could distinguish were heavy jaws, pointed beards, and brawny throats that rose like massive pillars out of their doublets. All six lay reclining on Roman couches about the table, drinking down the purple wines in large draughts, and tossing back their heads and laughing wildly. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
I stood, I suppose for some thirteen minutes, with my back against the wall staring vacantly at the bacchanal vision, before any of the revellers appeared to notice my presence. At length, without any expression to indicate whether I had been observed from the beginning or not, two of the women arose from their couches, and, approaching, took each a hand and led me to the table. I obeyed their motions mechanically. I sat on a couch between them as they indicated. I unresistingly permitted them to wind their arms about my neck. “You must drink,” said one, pouring out a large glass of red wine, “here is Clos Vougeot of a rare vintage; and here,” pushing a flask of amber-hued wine before me, “is Lachryma Christi.” “You must eat,” said the other, drawing the silver dishes toward her. “Here are cutlets stewed with olives, and here are slices of a filet stuffed with bruised sweet chestnuts”—and as she spoke, she without waiting for a reply, proceeded to help me. The sight of the food recalled to me the warning I had received in the garden. This sudden effort of memory restored to me my other faculties at the same instant. I sprang to my feet, thrusting the women from ne with each hand. “Demons!” I almost shouted, “I will have none of your accursed food. I know you. You are cannibals, you are ghouls, you are enchanters. Begone, I tell you! Leave my home in peace!” A shout of laughter from all six was the only effect that my passionate speech produced. The men rolled on their couches, and their half-masks quivered with the convulsions of their mirth. The woman shrieked, and tossed the slender wine-glasses wildly aloft, and turned to me and flung themselves on my bosom fairly sobbing with laughter. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Agonized at the ever-darkening mysteries that seemed to thicken around me, and despairing of being able to dissipate them by the mere exercise of my own will, I cried eagerly. The woman touched a small golden ball that stood near her on the table, and it had scarce ceased to tinkle when a dwarf entered with a sliver tray on which were dice-boxed and dice. Then it seemed as if some unseen power caught me by the shoulders and thrust me toward the door. In vain I resisted. In vain I screamed and shouted for help. In vain I implored them for pity. All the reply I had was those mocking peals of merriment, while, under the invisible influence, I staggered to the door. As I reached the threshold the organ pealed out a wild, triumphal strain. The power that impelled me concentrated itself into one vigorous impulse that sent me blindly staggering out into the echoing corridor, and, as the door closed swiftly behind me, I caught a glimpse of the apartment I had left forever. A change passed like a shadow over it. The lamps died out, the siren women and masked men vanished, the flowers, the fruits, the bright silver and bizarre furniture faded swiftly, and I saw again, for the tenth of a second the incompleted room return. The next instant the door closed violently, and I was left standing in the corridor stunned and despairing. As soon as I had partially recovered my comprehension I rushed madly to the door, with the dim idea of beating it in. When I opened it, there was nothing but a two story drop to the garden. I looked from left to right, and there was no room. Just a door to nowhere. I rushed downstairs shouting madly. No one answered. I met the butler; I seized him by the collar, and demanded he show me to my room. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
The demon showed his white and awful teeth, which were filed into a saw-like shape, and, extricating himself from my grasp with a sudden jerk, fled down the passage with a gibbering laugh. Nothing but echo answered to my despairing shrieks. The lonely garden resounded with my cries as I strode madly through the dark walks, and the tall funeral cypresses seemed to bury me beneath their heavy shadows. I met no one—could find no one. I had to bear my sorrow and despair alone. Since that awful hour, every time I open that door, there is nothing on the other side, but a two story drop into the gardens. Shall I ever find it? I left that portion of the house incomplete in hopes that my room would return. Death is the separation of the soul from the body. The creation of a zombie is the rebinding of body and soul via necromancy. The animated body can move, speak, even think, but it still cannot outrun physical decay. Zombies do not last very long, and the more able they are to think, the more they suffer from the same derangement that eventually gets any spirit that has been prevented from moving on. It is a rule: if spirit cannot move on, the tug of the afterlife sooner or later drives them mad. (Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her child and husband left a bizarre and impressive architectural reflection of her psyche. The fascinating story of the Winchester Mystery House has its roots in the personal tragedies suffered by Mrs. Winchester and the legacy of the Winchester rifle, “The Gun That Won the West.” There were occurrences that defined explanation. Neighbours would hear a bell ring a midnight and 2am, which according to ghost lore are the times of the arrival and departure of spirits. Some said that Mrs. Winchester never slept in the same bedroom two nights in a row, in order to confuse any evil spirits that might be waiting for her.) #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Winchester Mystery House
If you’ve got it, haunt it 😉
Tickets for our All Hallows’ Eve, Lost in The House tour are still available! Purchase them today and be prepared for a fright 👻
Buy tickets 👉 Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
More Wonders of the Invisible World
Witchcraft is one of the most hidden works of darkness. And California had its full share of obscurity. People groping their way in the dark are unlikely to be either stable or judicious, and thus it is hardly surprising that much of the legends about witchcraft are violent and partisan. The Devil improves the darkness of this affair to push us into a blind man’s buffet, and we are even ready to be sinfully, yea, hotly and madly mauling one another in the dark. Some people want to contact the dead and consider seances, but they are dangerous because it is easy for a gate to be opened and something evil to come along with the spirit you want to contact. There is an old urban legend about “Bloody Mary.” If you chant “Bloody Marry” thirteen times into a mirror in a dark room, her spirit will appear. Some say she will prophesize for you, other versions say she will attack you. Historically, Bloody Mary was a nickname for Mary I of England, who suffered several miscarriages. She was also alleged to be a witch and was burned at the stake. Divination by mirror has been practiced in nearly all cultures for as long as mirrors have been around. Before that, any reflective surface, especially still water, was used to prophesy or catch a glimpse of the future. In many of these legends, the danger is that while you are trying to catch a glimpse of your future, you might also see some aspect of Death. Tradition also holds that at the moment of death, all the mirrors in the house should be covered so hey do not trap the departing spirit. Ancient Greeks and Native Americans believed that the reflection contained the soul, and could be capture by water. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
It is bad luck to break mirrors because they are reflections of the soul, and also because they hold the future. That is why the seven years of bad luck occurs, you have broken your future. Many of the persons confessing these myths are witches by their own confession and have therefore abjured God and Chris, and given themselves up to the Devil, the Father of Lies. And what credit is to be given to the testimony of such against the lives of others? Many historians believe these early American legends are important and endeavor that the complete history of secret California witchcrafts and possessions might not be lost. The preservation of that history might in a be a singular benefit unto the church and unto the World, which makes many solicitous about it. Mrs. Winchester, who has been strangely visited by some shining spirits during the construction of her mansion, believed they were good Angels in her opinion of them. She intimated several things unto her friends, whereof some were to be kept secret. She also said that a new storm of witchcraft would fall upon the country to chastise the iniquity that was used in the willful smothering and covering of the last, and that many fierce opposites to the discovery of witchcraft would be thereby convinced. Many people are looking to acquire authentic, single-family Victorian homes because they believe in the renaissance of witchcraft and these homes possess souls, spirit, ghost, hidden occult symbol, and are supposedly spiritual nexuses. They are a power source to contacting the other World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
All spirits have something in common, but it matters who they are haunting. It matters what their traditions were when they were alive. In many Native American legends, they have thousands of Gods, and each of them had attendant monsters and demons. Pishachas are beings who haunt places where violent deaths have occurred. They eat human flesh and are supposed to be the sons of anger. They haunt cemeteries and places where cremations have taken place and can change their shape and become invisible. Sometimes they attack and eat their victims, in other instances they possess them and drive them insane. It is believed because there was some covenanting with the Devil they had committed and it was an unpardonable sin, that sin of which the scriptures said we must not pray for. Sometimes anyone who was not in a proper covenant with God was considered to be a witch. Witches are known to change into rabbits, cats, other familiar animals. Halloween costumes are a surviving remnant of the belief that transformed witches would be abroad before All Hallow’s Eve. Some of the Indian Powows [id est, pries-magicians] in this country during the 17th century, having received the Gospel and given good evidence of a true conversion to God in Christ, had with much sorrow of heart declared how they had, whilst in their Heathenism, by the hands of Evil Angels murdered their neighbours. A Nagual is a human being, a Shaman, who has acquired the power to shapeshift. Some Nagual have vampire qualities, changing into bats or owls to drain blood; in other cases the nagual is a respected and feared member of the community. In some places nagual are said to attack Indians who have too much contact with mestizo or Anglo populations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
There are myriad instances of witchcraft both in history and in the Bible, but some of the demonologists personal experiences are remarkable enough to make us wish they had given a more detailed account of the. In referring to Balaam, the biblical conjurer of familiar spirits, one of them said, “we have seen and know such wizards among the Heathen in our own land.” If I meant anything, it was that a ghost story would have a great pull over other ghost stories if one could see the person it happened to. One does get rather provoked at never coming across him or her. In April, nearly fifteen years after the Winchester Mansion opened for tour, it was a clear spring day, with no fog or half-lights about, and it was not yet four o’clock in the afternoon—not very ghost-like circumstances, you will admit. I had come home early from my club—it was a sort of holiday time with me just then for a few weeks—intending to get some letters written which had been on my mind for some days, and I had sauntered into the library of the mansion, a pleasant, fair-sized room lined with books, on the first floor. Before setting to work I sat down for a moment or two in an easy-chair by the fire, for it was still cool enough weather to make a fire desirable, and began thinking over my letters. No thought, no shadow of a thought of Mrs. Winchester was present with me, of that I am perfectly certain. The door was on the same side of the room as the fireplace; as I sat there, half facing the fire, I also half faced the door. I had not shut it properly on coming in, I had only closed it without turning the handle, and I did not feel surprised when it slowly and noiselessly swung open, till it stood right out into the room, concealing the actual doorway from my view. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
If you think of the door as just hen acting like a screen to the doorway, you will perhaps understand the position better. From where I say I could not have seen anyone entering the room ill he or she had got beyond the door itself. I glanced up, half expecting to see someone come in, but there was no one; the door had swung open of itself. For the moment I sat on, with only the vague thought passing through my mind, “I must shut I before I begin to write.” However, suddenly I found my eyes fixing themselves on the carpet; something had come within their range of vision, compelling their attention in a mechanical sort of way. What was it? I rubbed my eyes and the wavy something that kept gliding, rippling in, gradually assumed a more substantial appearance. It was—yes, I suddenly became convinced of it, it was rippled of soft silken stuff, creeping in as if in some mysterious way unfolded or unrolled, not jerkily or irregularly, but glidingly and smoothly, like little wavelets on the sea-shore. And I sat there and gazed. I sat there still, as if bewitched, or under some irresistible influence, I cannot tell, but so it was. And it—came always rippling in, till at last it began to rise as it sill came on, and I saw that a figure, a tall graceful woman’s figure, was slowly advancing, backwards of course, into the room, and that the waves of pale silk—a very delicate shade of pearly grey I think it must have been—were in fact the lower portion of a long court-train, the upper part of which hung in deep folds from the lady’s waist. She moved in—I cannot describe the motion, it was not like ordinary walking or stepping backwards—till the whole of her figure and the clear profile of her face and head were distinctly visible, and when at last she stopped and stood there full in my view just, but only just beyond the door, I saw—it came upon me like a flash, that she was no stranger o me, this mysterious visitant! #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
I recognized, unchanged I seemed to me since the day, twenty-five years ago, when I had last seen her, the beautiful features of Mrs. Winchester. I should not have said unchanged. There was one great change in the sweet face. You remember my telling you that one of Mrs. Winchester’s greatest charms was her bright sunny happiness—she never seemed gloomy or depressed or dissatisfied, seldom even pensive. However, in this respect the face I sat there gazing at was utterly unlike Mrs. Winchester’s. Its expression, as she—or “it”—stood there looking, not towards me, but out beyond, as if at someone or something outside the doorway, was of the profoundest sadness. Anything so sad I have never seen in a human face, and I trust I never may. However, I sat on, as motionless almost as she, gazing at her fixedly, with no desire, no power perhaps, to move or approach more nearly to the phantom. I was not in the least frightened. I knew it was a phantom, but I felt paralyzed and as if I myself had somehow got outside of ordinary conditions. And there I sat—staring at Mrs. Winchester, and there she stood, gazing before her with that terrible, unspeakable sadness in her face, which, even though I felt no fear, seemed to freeze me with a kind of unutterable pity. I do not know how long I had sat thus, or how long I might have continued to sit there, almost as if in a trance, when suddenly I heard the front-door bell ring. It seemed to awaken me. I started up and glanced round, half-expecting that I should find the vision dispelled. But no; she was still there, and I sank back into my seat just as I heard my brother coming quickly upstairs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
He came towards the library, and seeing the door wide open walked in, and I, still gazing, saw his figure pass through that of Mrs. Winchester in the doorway as you may walk through a wreath of mist—only, do not misunderstand me, the figure of Mrs. Winchester till that moment had had nothing unsubstantial about it. She had looked to me, as she stood there, literally and exactly like a living woman—the shade of her dress, the colour of her hair, the few ornaments she wore, all were as defined and clear as a real person, or perhaps became so again as soon as my brother was well within the room. He came forward, addressing me by name, but I answered him in a whisper, begging him to be silent and to sit down on the seat opposite me for a moment or two. He did so, though he was taken aback by my strange manner, for I still kept my eyes fixed on the door. I had a queer consciousness that if I looked away it would fade, and I waned to keep cool and see what would happen. I asked George in a low voice if he saw nothing, but though he mechanically followed the direction of my eyes, he shook his head in bewilderment. And for a moment or two he remained thus. Then I began to notice that the figure was growing less clear, as if it were receding, yet without growing smaller to the sight; it grew fainter and vaguer, the colours grew hazy. I rubbed my eyes once or twice with a half idea that my long watching was making them misty, but it was not so. My eyes were not at fault—slowly but surely Sarah Winchester, or her ghost, melted away, ill all trace of her was gone. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
I saw again the familiar pattern of the carpet where she had stood and the objects of the room that had been hidden by her draperies—all again in the most commonplace way: but she was gone, quite gone. Then George, seeing me relax my intense gaze, began to question me. I told him exactly what I have told you. He answered, as every common-sensible person of course would, that it was strange, but that such things did happen sometimes, and were classed by the wise under the head of “optical delusions.” I was not well, perhaps, he suggested. Been overworking? Had I not better see a doctor? However, I shook my head. I was quite well, and I said so. And perhaps he was right, it might be an optical delusion only. I had never had any experience of such things. “Poor” Mrs. Winchester I cannot help calling her. I heard of her indirectly, and probably, but for the sadness of her story, I should never have heard it at all. It was a friend of her husband’s family who had mentioned the circumstances in the hearing of a friend of mine, and one day something brought round the conversation to old times, and he startled me by suddenly enquiring if I remembered Sarah Winchester. I said, of course, I did. Did he know anything of her? And then he told me. She was dead—she had died some months after a long and trying illness, the result of a terrible accident. Something happened one evening when dressed for some grand entertainment or other, and though her injuries did not seem likely to be fatal at the time, she had never recovered the shock. “She was so pretty,” my friend said, “and one of the saddest parts of it is she could have not been any older than twenty when she passed away in 1922. She was such a sweet and bright lady.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
We all thought the she had finished construction of her mansion and moved up north to build another one. I did not tell him my story, for I did not want it chattered about, but a strange sort of shiver ran through me at his words. Not everyone was in agreement that the specters in the Winchester mansion had all been angry spirits or a delusion of the Devil. It having been represented to us that a most horrible witchcraft or possession of Devils hath invested several towns in Our Province of California under your government, and that divers persons have been convicted of witchcraft, like the Prison’s of the River, in Sacramento, California; some whereof have confessed their guilt, but others being of a known and good reputation these proceedings had caused a great dissatisfaction among our good subjects, for which reason you have put a stop thereunto until Our Pleasure should be known concerning the same, We therefore until Our Pleasure should be known concerning the same, We therefore approving of your care and circumspection herein have thought fit to signify Our Will and Pleasure, as We do hereby will and require you to give all necessary directions that in all proceedings against persons accused for witchcraft or being possessed by the Devil the greatest moderation and all due circumspection be used, so far as the same may be without impediment to the ordinary course of justice within Our said Province. And so We bid your very heartily farewell. Given at the Winchester Mansion the 15th day of April, 1947, in the fifth year of Our Reign. By Her Majesty’s Command. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Although the topic of witchcraft was now explosively controversial in California, nobody was to deny that people practiced it, and there was still some interest in investigating it. There are therefore references to it in many of the sermons in the 19th century. However, after the Winchester mansion was opened for tour, the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Winchester was thought to be paranormal and a circular letter was sent by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to investigate the collection of more instances of “remarkable providences” (these would include unusual natural phenomena as well as the preternatural). Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings in the Winchester mansion, on stones in the basement on the walls in the dressing room, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings in forbidden areas of the mansion which interpret to the mystical the inspired secrets of Mrs. Winchester, in the cryptic emblems of her old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practiced at reception by this secret society, there were found indications of a doctrine which was everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. It is likewise to be understood, those who are desirous to raise any souls of the dead, ought to select those places wherein these kind of souls are most known to be conversant; or by some alliance alluring the souls into their forsaken bodies, or by some kind of affection in times impressed in them in their life, drawing the souls to certain places, things, or persons; or by the forcible nature of some place fitted and prepared to purge or punish these souls: which places for the most part are to be known by he appearance of visions, nightly incursions, and apparitions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Mrs. Winchester lists convincing evidence that her experience of witchcraft extended well beyond what she had committed to writing: I know a young man who had gone so far as to get ready a Covenant with Satan, written all of it in his own blood. However, before the signing of it, the sinful, I was made the happy instrument of his deliverance. As soon was this man was left alone in the mansion, the devil, imagining that he had found the right moment for breaking his courage, incontinently roused up his own chosen vessel, who appeared to have reposed longer than usual. Having beheld this from afar, he grew stiff with terror by reason of his being alone; but soon recovering his courage, and no place of refuge being at hand, he valiantly withstood the onset of the fiend, who came rushing upon him with a terrible noise, and he struck the axe which he wielded in his hand deep into his body. On receiving this wound, the monster groaned aloud and turning his back, fled with a rapidity not at all inferior to that with which he had advanced, while the admirable man urged his flying foe from behind, and compelled him to seek his own tomb again; which opening of its own accord, and receiving its guest from the advance of the pursuer, immediately appeared closed again. Hence it is that the souls of the dead are not to be called up without blood or by the application of some part of their relict body. In the raising therefore of these shadows, we are to perfume with new blood the bones of the dead, and with flesh, eggs, milk, honey, and oil, which furnish the soul with a medium apt to receive its body. Gosh, it must be terrible to know you witnesses something, but that you will never be able to remember it or tell anyone about it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
I know a woman whose brother was tortured with a cruel, pricking, incurable pain in the crown of his head, which continued until there was found with her a puppet in wax, resembling him, with a pin pricked into the head of it, which being take out her recovered immediately. He goes on about demons. A demon killed his wife, he says, and just expects me to believe it. However, what he looks like to me is someone who let grief turn him into a monster. Whatever happened to his wife, it does not excuse what he had done. He attacks, kills, then springs away before anyone can react. Wicked sorceries have been practised in the land, and, in the late inexplicable storms from the invisible World thereby brought upon us, we were left by the just hand of Heaven unto those errors whereby great hardships were brough upon innocent persons, and (we fear) guilt incurred which we have all cause to bewail with much confusion of face before the Lord. We confess that we ourselves were not capable to understand nor able to withstand the mysterious delusions of the Powers of Darkness and Prince of the Air, but were, for want of knowledge in ourselves and better information from others, prevailed with to take up with such evidence against the accused as on further consideration and better information we justly fear was insufficient for the touching the lives of any, whereby we fear we have been instrumental with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon ourselves and this People of the Lord the guilt of innocent blood, which sin the Lord saith in scripture He would not pardon (2 Kings 24.4), that we suppose, in regard of His temporal judgments. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
I know a person who, missing anything, would use to sit down and muter a certain charm, and then immediately by an invisible hand ben directly led unto the place where the thing was to be found. turquoise carvings placed in Native American graves to attract good spirits and guard the grave. Also, turquoise tied onto a bow was supposed to make you shoot more accurately. The body of saints often times cannot be found when their graves are dug up because their bones were frequently interred in the cornerstones of cathedrals, so their spirits would guard the holy location. Unwilling sacrifices would be more likely to become angry spirits instead of guarding. Canaanites sacrificed infants and put them in the foundations of houses and temples. “At the cost of his first-born shall he se up its gates,” reports Joshua 6.26. Bones were discovered in the basement of the original farm house that was engulfed as part of this estate during the expansion. Sightings of Hell Hounds date back to 1888. Some reports say the creatures are threatening. The Victorian parklike grounds seem to breed sightings of big wolf creatures or beast at night. Since the legends have been uncovered, many people have reported seeing a big black wolf and two men walking around the Winchester mansion at night, even when it is closed. Four kids and a police officer allegedly disappeared after climbing the gate to get a closer look one night. Nearly 134 years of sightings. These people are probably sadly deluded and mistaken, their minds are more likely disquieted and distressed, and we do therefore humbly beg forgiveness, first of God for Christ’s sake for this error, and pray that God would not impute the guilt of it to ourselves nor others. And we also pray that we may be considered candidly and aright by the living suffers as being then under the power of a strong and general delusion, utterly unacquainted with and not experienced in matters of that nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
I know a woman who upon uttering some words over very painful hurts and sores did use instantly to cure them, unto the amazement of the spectators. Now, thought I, if this wretch can effectually employ Devils to cure hurts, why may not she to cause them also, which is the worst that the witches do? The matter being so dark and perplexed as that there is no present appearance that all God’s servants should be altogether of one mind in all circumstances touching the same and believing the Devil’s accusations. These practices and principles have been the beginner and procurer of the sores afflictions, not to Llanda Villa only, but to this whole country, that did ever befall them. It should be noted in passing that Llanda Villa’s attorneys have concluded that these peoples visions and afflictions are due to illness caused by demonic possession. No specters evidence may be hereafter accounted valid or sufficient to take away the life or good name of any person or persons within this province. God hath a controversy with us about what was done in the time of the witchcraft. I fear that innocent blood hath been shed, and that many have had their hands defiled therewith. Public acknowledgement of guilt, and humiliation for it, and the more particularly and personally it is done by all that have been actors, the more pleasing it will be to God and more effectual to turn away his judgments from the land, and to prevent his wrath from falling upon the persons and families of such as have been most concerned. Moreover, if it be true, as I have been often informed, that families of such as were condemned for supposed witchcraft have been ruined by taking away and making havoc of their estates and leaving them nothing for their relief, I believe the whole country of lies under a curse to this day, and will do till some effectual course be taken by our honored governor and Supreme Court to make them some amends and reparations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Winchester Mystery House
Get in the Halloween spirit and celebrate the first weekend of October 2021 at the Winchester Mystery House! Our All Hallows’ Eve tickets are selling fast so be sure to grab them while you can 👻
🎟️link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Devil Loveth No Salt in His Meat!
Every night in the year, four of us sat in the parlous of the Winchester Mansion. This particular night, there was a thin, bright moonshine: it was bitter cold, windy, and frosty; the town had not yet awakened, but an indefinable stir already preluded the noise and business of the day. The ghouls had come later than usual, and they seemed more than usually eager to be gone. They wished, and declared their wish, that their blood might be the last innocent blood shed. They prayed that God would discover the witchcraft were among us. They forgave their accusers. The fervency of the spirits were very affecting and drew tears from many. Affecting and melting to the hearts of some considerable spectators. They prayed earnestly for pardon for all other sin and for an interest in the precious blood of our dear Redeemer, and seemed to be very sincere, upright, and sensible of their circumstances. One of the ghouls said, “I have been put to death, and my grandfather suffered, and all his estate seized because of my own vile and wretched heart, confessed several things contrary to my conscience and knowledge, though to the wounding of my own soul—the Lord pardon me for it. But oh! the terrors of a wounded conscience, who can bear? Blessed be the Lord; He would not let me go in my sins, but in mercy I hope so my soul would not suffer me to keep it in any longer, but I was forced to confess the truth. Gunshots in the hills and the echo of that awful hellspawn voice in my head. I was sought after by a sorcerer, which resulted in fatal mishaps for those sorcerers because they caught me in the wrong mood, and I turned into a lethal weapon. Dear Mrs. Winchester, let me beg your prayers to the Lord on my behalf, and please send us a joyful and happy meeting in Heaven.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Mrs. Winchester replied, “But the Lord He know it is, if it be possible, that no more innocent blood be shed, which undoubtedly cannot be avoided in the way and course you go in. I question not but your honours do to the utmost of your powers in the discovery and detecting of witchcraft and witches, and shall not be guilty of innocent blood for the World.” A horrible sense of blackness and the treachery of fate seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student and the other ghouls. “My God! she cried, “but what have I done? and when did I begin?” Nothing could be explained any further because we realized that we had long since ceased to pay attention to anything said by the suspect. Our minds and hearts were so filled with the hideous torments of the afflicted and the frightful tales of the confessors that we were quite unable to absorb anything else. The student was violent, and it was said that she had beaten to death a former teacher and other students in the classroom before she and her accomplices were shot dead by a Winchester model 1866. They were much addicted to sorcery in the said town, and there were forty men in it that could raise the Devil as well as any astrologer. Time had little changed this small town. It stood then, as now, upon a crossroad, out of call of human habitations, and buried fathom deep in the foliage of six thousand cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the neighbouring hills, the streamlets upon either hand, one loudly singing among pebbles, the other dripping furtively from pond to pond, the stir of the wind in mountainous old flowering chestnuts, and once in seven days the voice of the bell and old tunes of the precentor, were the only sounds that disturbed the silence around the rural Winchester Mansion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
The Resurrection Man was not to be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs found on the estate, the paths worn by the feet of legions of spirits and mourners, and the offerings and the inscriptions of bereaved affection. To rustic neighbourhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious, and where some bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the body-snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in Earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamp-Iit, terror-haunted resurrection that often happened at the Winchester Mansion, which was fully of uneasy ghosts. It was pitch dark; and we had just raised a few souls from the dead. Their bodies awaited them in the basement. Here and there a white gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for a short space across the night; but for the most part it was at a foot pace, and almost groping, that they picked their way through the resonant blackness to their solemn and isolated destination. In the basement the last glimmer failed them, and it became necessary to kindle a match and reillumine one of the lanterns of the gig. Thus, under the dripping pipes, and environed by huge and moving shadows, they reached the scene of their unhallowed labours. However, the devil, imagining that he had found the right moment for taking possession of one of these resurrected bodies. A creeping chill began to possess my soul. It grew upon my mind that some unnatural miracle had been accomplished, that some nameless change had befallen one of the dead bodies, and in fear of their unholy burden wolves were outside the mansion howling. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The curse of evil had come into one of the bodies, and the evil malediction spread into his parts with a strange kind of screaming sound that made me turn pale with fear. He then rose to his feet, proclaiming he was the Devil and that he would take these other resurrected bodies with him to the underworld and speak with the dead. Mrs. Winchester said, “I rebuke you, Satan!” The Devil laughed and said he was not at all afraid of us. “You insult me with these testimonies as if you were Divine Oracles!” he said. Then departed in a black cloud of smoke with the resurrected bodies. How often I have read in books written by Jesuits that Martin Luther was a wizard, and that he did himself confess that he had familiarity with Satan! The Holy Son of God himself was reputed a magician, and one that had familiarity with the greatest of Devils. The blaspheming Pharisees said, “He casts out the Devils through the Prince of Devils,” reports Matthew 9.34. There is then not the best saint on Earth, man or woman, that can assure themselves that the Devil shall not cast such an imputation upon them. At the time when Luther died all the possessed people in the Netherlands were quiet. The Devils in them said the reason was because Luther had been a great friend of theirs, and they owed him that respect as to go far as Germany to attend his funeral. But the Father of Lies is never to be believed. He will utter twenty great truths to make way for one lie; he will accuse twenty people of witchcraft if he can but thereby bring one innocent person into trouble. However, it is better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned. The Devil makes his witched to dream strange things of themselves and others which are not so. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos, who invented the Pythagorean theorem, a^2+ b^2 = c^2, also lead seances in approximately 540 BC, using something like a Quija board. Grim reapers are purely psychic entities, with power over time and perception. They can change the way a human sees one’s surroundings, and change their own appearance, usually to ease the transition from life into death. If it is by virtue of some contract with the Devil that witches have the power to do such things, it is hard to conceive how they can be bid to do them without being too much concerned in that Hellish covenant. We ought not to practice witchcraft to discover witches. The Devil have of late accused some eminent persons. It is an awful thing which the Lord had done [id est, permitted] to convince some among us of their error. To take away the life of anyone merely because a specter or Devil in a bewitched or possessed person does accuse them will bring the guilt of innocent blood on the land where such a thing shall be done. What does such an evidence amount unto more than this: either such an one did afflict such an one, or the Devil in one’s likeness, or one’s eyes were bewitched. The natural way for a living person to see a reaper is as a wraith-like figure wearing tattered winding sheets or burial cloth. Black dogs are also buried in the foundations of churches to guard and protect the gates between here and the afterlife. What will be the issue of these troubles God only knows. I am afraid that ages will not wear off that reproach and those stains which these things will leave behind them upon our lands. It is possible that bewitched and possessed person are afflicted by the Devil, but without agency of witches. Yes, there are witches, and there have been since the beginning of the World. Their craft is performed with the Devil’s assistance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
During one evening at the mansion, Mrs. Winchester invited the maid in for a séance. She chanted, “By the virtue of the holy resurrection and the torments of the damned, I conjure and exorcise thee, spirit of Malphas, thirty-ninth Spirit, to answer my liege demands, being obedient unto these sacred ceremonies, on pain of everlasting torment and distress. Arise, arise, arise, I charge and command thee.” A black man appeared, I do not think he was human. His skin was black as midnight and I could not see his eyes, teeth, or any other features. He was just black and in the shape of a man. He offered her a book to sign. The book was supposed to contain witches’ pacts, and he told her that is she touched it, it would cure her of the hauntings. In all, Mrs. Winchester was tempted from three boos. The third she demanded that they let her read before she think of signing it. The man refused. In general the book seemed a journal of the chief things acted or designed a their great witch-meetings, not without some circumstances that carried an odd resemblance of the Koran. It has in it the methods to be used in seducing of people unto the service of the Devil, and the names of them that had been seduced, with terms which they were to serve. It particularly surprised some in the room, on the even of May 13, 1888, to overhear her, in the book then opened unto her, spelling a word that was in Latin. The letters she recited was “Quadragesima.” Mrs. Winchester conversed at length with the spirit(s) who visited her, and the voices were “big, low, thick,” as they had been reported to be in European witchcraft accounts. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
We saw flames arise from the cauldron on the table, and the room smelled of brimstone. The spirit of a bird appears. It attacked the maid and the next morning, she was found tied to the tree top. She was excessively sore when we brought her down from the tree. There were blisters raised upon her. To cure the soreness which last night’s fiery trail gave to her, we were forces sometimes to apply oil commonly used for the cure of scads. And yet (like other witch-wounds) in a day or two all would be well again. Only the marks of some wounds thus given her, she will probably carry to her grave. I may add that once they thrust an hot iron down her throat, which though it were to us invisible, yet we saw he skin fetched off her tongue and lips. Indeed, her sufferings were so severe that Mrs. Winchester thought the rapid healing of her wounds was part of a design to keep her in continual torment. She was, Mrs. Winchester wrote, “wounded with a thousand pains all over, and cured immediately that the pains of these wounds might be repeated.” One of the maid’s symptom occurred when her hallucinations were peopled by specters bring her a little cup that had a whitish liquor in it (unto us wholly invisible), which they would pour down her throat, holding her jaws wide open, in spite of all [her] shriekings and strivings. We saw her swallow this poison, though we saw not the poison, and immediately she would swell prodigiously and be just like one poisoned with a dose of rats-bane [arsenic trioxide]. After these potions she was capable ordinarily to beg of us that we would he her to some salad-oil, upon the taking whereof the swelling would in a little while abate. Sometimes our laying our hands on the mouth of the maid, when she perceived the specters forcing their poisons into her mouth, did keep her from taking of them in. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The maid, Agnus, was unable to hear prayer or religious instruction directly. However, not only did she hear the spectral Christmas dance, but several times Agnus had her arms cruelly scratched and pins thrust into her flesh by Fiends while they were molesting her. Several persons did sometimes actually lay their hands upon these Fiend. The wretches were palpable while they were not visible, and several of our people though they saw nothing, yet felt a substance that seemed like a dog. And though they were not fanciful they died away [id est, fainted] at the fright. And at this time, Mrs. Winchester believed much of this unchristian practice was the result of someone delivering curses. A curse delivered by a woman, Margaret Rhodes Crocker, known to have dabbled in witchcraft, although again it is not absolutely certain that she practiced malefic witchcraft. It was upon the Lord’s Day, the 8th of September, in the year 1889, that Margaret Crocker, after some hours of previous disturbance in the Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, fell into odd fits, which caused her friends to carry her home, where her fits in a few hours grew into a figure that satisfied the spectators of their being preternatural. Some of the neighbours were forward enough to suspect the rise of this mischief in an house hard-by, where lived a miserable woman who had been formerly imprisoned on the suspicion of witchcraft, and who had frequently cured very painful hurts by muttering over them certain charms, which I shall not endanger the poisoning of my reader by repeating. This woman had, Mary Frances Sherwood Hopkins Searless, the evening before Margret fell into her calamities, very bitterly treated her and threatened her. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
However, the hazard of hurting a poor woman that might be innocent, notwithstanding surmises that might have been more strongly grounded than those, caused the pious people in the vicinity to try whether incessant supplication to God alone might not procure a quicker and safer ease to the afflicted than hasty prosecution of any supposed criminal. Mary Francis was assaulted by eight cruel specters, whereof she imagined that she knew three or four, but the rest came still with their faces covered, so that she could never have a distinguishing view of the countenance of those who she thought she knew. She was very careful of my reiterated charges to forbear blazing the names, lest any good person should come to suffer any blast of reputation through the cunning malice of the great Accuser. Nevertheless, she having since privately named them to myself, I will venture to say this of them, that they are a sort of wretches who for these many years have gone under as violent presumptions of witchcraft as perhaps any creatures yet living upon Earth, although I am far from thinking that the visions of this young woman were evidence enough to prove them so. Margaret Crocker’s hallucinations were somewhat varied. She saw not only spectral witches and the “Black Man….their master” who was often seen in abandoned mansions, where he resisted new residents, but also a “White Spirit” who she took to be an Angel. Such a figure had also been seen at the Winchester and in several Oakland witchcraft cases, such as at the Ellen Kenna Mansion, Emma Bray’s Mansion, and at Alexander Dunsmuir’s mansion. The white spirit comforted and advised Margaret during her attack. Among other things, the Angel told her that Oliver Winchester was her spiritual father. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The Angel had always maintained the Devils might appear in the shape of an innocent person. Mrs. Winchester cried for the Lord, as for the deliverance of these women from the malice of Hell, for the deliverance of the powers of Hell has now seized upon all of them. And that the whole plot of the Devil to reproach her poor maid, Angus, be defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ. During a séance Mrs. Winchester was told that one of the several beings that was haunting her and these other grand estates was a Rakshasa. A being reincarnated from evil human beings. They are a type of demon. Rakshasa have the power to change their shape at will and appear as animals, as monsters, or in the case of female demons, as beautiful women. They also have magical powers, including invisibility. They are cannibalistic, and particularly target anything religious or holy. In addition to human flesh they, they will eat spoiled food. Their finger nails are poisonous. They are most powerful in the evening, particularly during the dark person of a new moon, but are dispelled by the rising sun. They especially detest sacrifices and prayer. Most powerful among them is their kind, the 10-headed Ravana. Many believe him to be Satan. Margaret had the common inability of afflicted persons to hear religious words, especially, in her case, the words of prayer. She had a full catalog of physical symptoms. She would be strangely distorted in her joins an thrown into such extravagant convulsions as were astonishing unto the spectators in general. She would be cruelly pinched with invisible hands very often in a day, and the black and blue marks of the pinches became immediately visible unto the standers by. She was also afflicted with pins, both real ones found about her person and spectral ones. The psychosomatic skin lesions would in a few minutes ordinarily be cured. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
As with Mary Frances, her specters burnt her with spectral brimstone, and she would be so bitterly scorched with the unseen sulphur thrown upon her that very sensible blisters would be raised upon her skin. Like Angus, Margaret was forced to swallow spectral poison. She would sometimes have her jaws forcibly pulled open, whereupon something invisible would be poured down her throat. We all saw her swallow, and yet we all saw her try as she could that she might not swallow. She would cry out “as of scalding brimstone poured into her” and would be so monstrously inflamed that it would have broken a heart of stone to have seen her agonies. The spectators would testify also that the Crocker Mansion often reeked “so hot of brimstone that we were scarce able to endure it.” And one of the occasion “the standers by plainly saw something of that odd liquor itself on the outside of her neck.” There was a spectral powder thrown into her eyes, and “one time some of this powder was fallen actually visible upon her cheek, from whence the people in the room wiped it with their handkerchiefs.” Mrs. Winchester was also afflicted by spirits. “We once thought we perceived something stir upon her pillow at a little distance from her, whereupon one present [the Butler Clayton] laying his hand there, he to his horror apprehended that he felt, though none could see it, a living creature not altogether unlike a vampire bat, which nimbly escaped from him. And there were diverse other persons who were thrown into a great consternation by feeling, as they judged, at others times the same invisible animal.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
However, the most starling phenomenon in Mrs. Winchester’s case was levitation. “Once,” said Clayton, “her tormentors puled her up to the ceiling of the chamber and held her there before a very numerous company of spectators, who found it as much as they could all do to pull her down again.” Clayton obtained signed confirmations of this and other instances of levitation: “I do testify that I have seen Mrs. Winchester in her hauntings from the invisible World lifted up from her bed, wholly by an invisible force, a great way towards the top of the room where she lay. In her being so lifted she had no assistance from any use of her own arms or hands or any other part of her body, not so much as her heels touching her bed or resting on any support whatsoever. And I have seen her thus lifted when not only a strong person hath thrown his whole weight across her to pull her down, but several other persons have endeavoured with all their might to hinger her from being so raised up, which I suppose that several others will testify as well as myself when called unto it. Witness my hand,” Clayton Straus. “We can also testify that we have several times seen Mrs. Winchester so lifted up from her bed as that she had no use of her own limbs to help her up, but it was the declared apprehension of us, as well as others that saw it, impossible for any hands but some of the invisible World to life her.” Henry Brown, Frank Drew, Phillip Goodwin. “We whose names are underwritten do testify that one evening when we were in the chamber where Mrs. Winchester then lay in her haunting, we observed her to be by an invisible force lifted up from the bed whereon she lay, so as to touch the garret floor, while yet neither her feet nor any other parent of her body rested either on the bed or any other support, but were also by the same force lifted up from all that was under her, and all this for a considerable while. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
“We judged it several minutes, and it was as much as several of us could do with all our strength to pull her down. All which happened when there was not only we two in the chamber, but we supposed ten or a dozen more whose names we have forgotten.” W. R. Leigh and Spenser T. Olin. These accounts could not be the power of suggestion because these people were not just bystanders. They believed that they witnessed levitation, and they were engaging in violent physical activity, trying to bring her body back to the bed. Such activity would, ordinarily, break the power of suggestion. And levitation has been so frequently reported, from so many times and places (from the 5th century to the 21st century), that one cannot be at all sure there is a satisfactory explanation for it, particularly since so many witnesses insisted that no part of Mrs. Winchester’s body was touching the bed. However, whatever the explanation for these symptoms, Mrs. Winchester and her estate are truly a mystery. However, it is also noted the other prominent Queen Anne Victorian Mansions and other built during the Victorian times experienced afflictions. Witchcraft is one of the most hidden works of darkness. Although some people and some estates were more haunted than others, the Bay Area, during Victorian Times, had its full share of obscurity. All publications on witchcraft and supernatural events have been forbidden by these prominent families at the time. Their desire was to quail tempers, and use wisdom to relax fear, while upholding their honour, integrity, and reverence for the Victorian era. “All things are possible to one that believeth,” reports Mark 9.23. Who that beareth it upon one shall not dread one’s enemies, to be overcome, nor with no manner of poison be hurt, nor in no need misfortune, nor with no thunder one shall be smitten nor lightning, no in no fire be burnt suddenly, nor in no water be drowned. Nor one shall not die without shrift, nor with thieves to be take. Also one shall have no wrong neither of Lord or Lady. This be in the names of God and Christ. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Winchester Mystery House will be going dark this weekend for All Hallows’ Eve, but we will be back to haunt you Thursday, September 30th! Purchase your tickets for next weekend early and let the ghoul times roll 👻
See link in bio for ticket info 🎟 winchestermysteryhouse.com
You are Giving Away Your Soul—The Blood is Life!
This morning I saw a star twinkling just over the nine-story tower—the first since the beginning of May. My son, when he was examined, because he would not confess that he was guilt when he was innocent, they tied him neck and heels till the blood gushed out at his nose, and would have kept him so twenty-four hours if one more merciful than the rest had not taken pity on him and caused him to be unbound. These actions are very like the Popish cruelties. A man’s outer case generally gives some indication of the soul within. He has told me several times that the thought of death was a pleasant one to him, which is a sad thing for a young man to say; he cannot be much more than thirty. Some great sorrow must have taken him and blighted his whole life. Why of course, they were in effect saying, the Devil can impersonate the innocent, just as we have said all along. God might permit Satan to impersonate the virtuous. But surely, he would not permit discord in the Winchester mansion? I should have thought Mrs. Winchester’s staff would have been above such vulgar delusions. All this disquisition upon superstition leads me up to the fact that my son saw a ghost last night—or at least, says that he did, which of course is the same thing. Indeed the fellow is honestly frightened, and I had to give him some chloral and bromide of potassium this morning to stead him down. He has been hired as a ranch had to work at the estate. When grounds keepers found a mutilated cow, some of the other men thought he had been possessed by the devil, and torture him to confess. I was obliged to pacify him by keeping as grave a countenance as possible during his story, which he certainly narrated in a very straightforward and matter-of fact way. No one wanted Mrs. Winchester to believe the curse was real and the hauntings had started again. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
“I was on the balcony,” he said, “about four bells in the middle watch, just when the night was at its darkest. There was a bit of a moon, but the clouds were blowing across it so that you could not see far from the mansion. John Brunton, the foreman, came after from the tool shed and reported a strange noise on the estate. I came down and went forward and we both heard I, sometimes like a bairn crying and sometimes like a wench in pain. I have been seventeen years to the country and I never heard an animal, old or young, make a sound like that. As we were standing on the rear porch the moon came out from behind the cloud, and we both saw a sort of black figure moving across the farm in the same direction that we had heard the cries. We lost sight of it for a while, but it came back insight, and we could just make it out like a shadow amongst the trees. I sent a hand art for the rifles, and Brunton and I went down to the fruit orchard, thinking it might be a bear. When we got near the trees I lost sight of Brunton, but I pushed on in the direction where I could still hear the cries. I followed them for a mile or may more, and then running round a well I came right on to the top of it standing and waiting for me seemingly. I do not know what it was. It was not a bear any way. It was tall and black and straight. This black dog, or the devil in such a likeness, running all along down the body of the mansion with great swiftness, and incredible haste, he passed between two people, wrung the necks of them both. I made my way for the mansion as hard as I could run, and precious glad I was to find myself inside. I signed articles to do my duty by the estate, and on the estate I will say, but you will not catch me on the grounds after sundown.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
That is his story given as far as I can in his own words. I do not know what happened there. I fancy what he saw must in spite of his denial, have been a young bear erect upon its hind legs, and attitude which they often assume when alarmed. In the uncertain light this would bear a resemblance to a human figure, especially to a man whose nerves were already somewhat shaken. Whatever it may have been, the occurrence is unfortunate, for it has produced a most unpleasant effect upon the crew. Their looks are more sullen than before and their discontent more open. The double grievance made more dreadful when a barn of dead bodies was found on the edge of the estate. Written in blood, “Keep building,” and a huge bloody hand print was discovered on the wall. Some say it was the Devil’s handprint. In the old days in the New World, people used to say “I put my hand and seal” on a document when signing it. In the Old World this was literal in some cases. The emperor of Japan in ancient in ancient days “signed” important documents by dipping his hand in blood and putting a full bloody handprint on the page. In the history of pacts with the Devil, people were supposed to sign their names in blood. I have seen a couple of alleged pacts from earlier centuries. Blood undoubtedly stressed the seriousness of the signing. The Devil may sometimes have a permission to represent an innocent person as tormenting such as are under diabolical harassments, but that such things are rare and extraordinary. You were giving away your soul. The Blood is life. Afflicted persons were subject to diabolical torments; making evidence of such torments was accepting the word of the Devil; worse, accepting such evidence was holding commerce with the Devil, and therefore in itself a kind of witchcraft. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The afflicted persons do tell who are witches, of which, some they know and some they do not. Secondly, they tell who did torment such a person, though they know not the person. Thirdly, they are tormented themselves by he looks of the persons that are present, and recovered again by the touching of them, they recover, or do not fall into torment. Fifthly, they can tell when a person is coming before they see them, and what clothes they have [on], and some, what they have done for several years past, which nobody else ever accused them with nor do not yet think them guilty of. Sixthly, the dead out of their graves do appear unto them and tell them that they have been murdered, and require them to see them to be revenged on the murderers, which they name to them, some of which persons are well known to have died their natural deaths, and been publicly buried in the sight of all humans. Now if these things be so, I thus affirm: First, that whatsoever is done by them that is supernatural is either divine or diabolical. Secondly, that nothing is or can be divine but what has God’s stamp upon it, to which he refers for trial (Isaiah viii. 19,20): If they speak not according to these, there is no light in them. Thirdly, and by that rule none of these actions of theirs have any warrant in God’s Word, but are condemned wholly. First, it is utterly unlawful to inquire of the dead or to be informed by them (Isaiah viii. 19). It was an act of the Witch of Endor to raise the dead, and of a reprobate Saul to inquire of him (1 Samuel xxviii.8, 11-14; Deuteronomy viii. ii). Secondly, it is a like evil to seek to them that have familiar spirits (Leviticus xix.31). It was the sin of Saul in the forementioned place (1 Samuel xxviii.8) and of wicked Manasses (2 Kings xxi.6). #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Thirdly, no more is it likely that their racking and tormenting should be done by God or good angels, but by the Devil, whose manners has ever been to be so employed. Witness his dealing with the poor child (Mark v.2-5) besides what he did to Job (Jon ii.7) and all the lies he told against him to the very face of God. Fourthly, the same may be rationally said of all the rest. Who should tell them things that they do not see but the Devil, especially when some things that they tell are false and mistaken? May we believe the confessed witches that do accuse anyone? Can the fruit be better than the tree? If the root of all their knowledge be the Devil, what must their testimony be? Their testimony may be legal against themselves, because they know what themselves do. However, their words should not be taken against those who denied the charges and whose previous behaviour had been blameless. The fits to which the afflicted and of come of the confessors were subject to, they were the Devil’s way of force them to accuse the innocent. We see by woeful and undeniable experience, both in the afflicted persons and the confessors, some of them, that the Devil torments them at his pleasure to force them to accuse others. The accusations of the apparently innocent makes some people think that both the afflicted and the confessors are liars. However, perhaps the sufferings are pitiable and genuine. It is possible that the Devil is lying through them. And no matter who is lying, the effect of the lie is still the same. For if they counterfeit, the wickedness is the greater in them and the less in the Devil; but if they be compelled to it by the Devil against their wills, then the sin is the Devil’s and the suffering is theirs. However, if their testimonies be allowed of, to make persons guilty by, the lives of innocent persons are alike in danger by them, which is the solemn consideration that does disquiet the country. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The Devils have a natural power which makes them capable of exhibiting what shape they please I suppose nobody doubts, and I have no absolute promise of God that they shall not exhibit mine. It is the opinion generally of all Protestant writers that the Devil may thus abuse the innocent. My son told me of another experience he had while working at the Winchester mansion. “I dreamt that it was night and that I was lying in my bed. (My bed stood with its foot toward the window; in front of the window there was a row of old walnut trees. I know it was winter when I had the dream, and nighttime.) Suddenly the window opened of its own accord, and I was terrified to see that some black wolves were sitting on the big walnut tree in front of the window. There were six or seven of them. The wolves were quite black, and looked more like foxes or sheep dogs, for they had big tails like foxes and they had their ears pricked like dogs when they pay attention to something. In great terror, evidently of being eaten up by the wolves, I screamed and woke up. I swore there was something there. I could feel it, hovering over me. It is watching, it is waiting, I think it is even mocking me.” Apart from this absurd outbreak of superstition, things are looking rather more cheerful. Mrs. Winchester loved the new year; she loved the idea of a fresh start for everyone. She always made a resolution, one a year, and unlike most people, she kept hers. Every year she tried to talk her staff into making one, but some of them never saw the point. The estate was undergoing heavy construction. Some workers reported seeing a ghost woman in nineteenth-century dress. That is not what was strange. What was strange is the fact that it was there was a thunder storm, but no rain was falling on a section of the mansion were the roof was still being added to the nine-story tower. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Mrs. Winchester wanted the tower because she said that she could get visions of the spirit World more clearly there. I always got a wee bit creeped out in the tower because the crucifix on the wall would turn upside down when anyone went near it. The Devil is said to appear there twice a year, on the vernal equinox and Halloween. The tower marks the grace of one of his children, born of a human witch and dead after a few days. I am learning about the hauntings at the Winchester mansion. Everyone has heard about them, but they all have different stories. In the World of spirits there is always a very great number of them, but there is no fixed time for their stay on Earth; for some are translated to Heaven and others confined to Hell soon after their arrival; whilst some stay on Earth days, weeks, maybe even centuries. Gerald Pomper thinks that my son devoted himself to construction of the Winchester simply for the reason that it is the most dangerous occupation which he could select, and that he courts death in every possible manner. He mentioned several instances of this, one of which is rather curious, if true. It seems that on one occasion he did not put in an appearance on the estate, and a substitute had to be selected in his place. That was at the time the tower was near completion. When he turned up again next spring he had a puckered wound in the side of his neck which he used to endeavour to conceal with his cravat. Whether the mate’s inference is true or not, it was certainly a strange coincidence. Of course, Johann Weikhard von Valvasor recorded the first written documented on vampires. Jure Grando Alilovic (1579-1656) was a villager from the region of Istria (in modern-day Croatia) who may have been the first real person described as a vampire in historical records. He was referred to as a strigoi, a local word for something resembling a vampire and a warlock. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Jure Grando lived in Kringa, a small town in the interior of the Istrian peninsula near Tinjan. He died in 1656 due to illness but according to legend, returned from the grave at night as a vampire and terrorized his village until his decapitation in 1672. The legend tells that, for 16 years after his death, Jure would arise from his grave by night and terrorize the village. The village priest, Giorgio, who had buried Jure sixteen years previously discovered that at night somebody would knock on the doors around the village, and on whichever door he knocked, someone from that house would die. This is why Mrs. Winchester boarded up the East Wing of her mansion. During one of her seances, she said Jure communicated with her. No telling? When you contact the spirit World, there is no telling what will come through. Some of the spirit in the mansion may be hundred of years old. Mrs. Winchester owned an original copy of Die Ehre deB Herzogthuma Crain, which she kept locked away in a safe. Vampires are said to infest come parts of this country. These Vampires are supposed to be the bodies of deceased persons, animated by evil Spirits, which come out of the graves, in the night-time, suck the blood of many of the living, and thereby destroy them. Petar Blagojevic was also accused of being a Vampire, and was alleged to have killed several people after his death. When the body was exhumed, it was undecomposed, the hair and beard were grown, there was new skin and nail, and blood could be seen in the mouth. When people grew outraged and staked his body through the heart, a completely fresh amount of blood flowed through the ears and moth of the corpse. Finally, the body was burned. The wind is veering round the mansion in an easterly direction, but it is still very slight. As far as the eye can reach, there is a shadow. The butler was staring out up the stairs with an expression in which horror, surprise, something approaching to fear were contending for the mastery. In spite of the cold, great drops of perspiration were coursing down his forehead and he was evidently fearfully exited. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
His limbs twitched like those of a man upon the verge of an epileptic fit, and the lines about his mother were drawn hard. “Look!” he grasped, seizing me by the seizing me by the wrist, but still keeping eyes upon the window, and moving his head in a horizontal direction, as if following some object which was moving across the field of vision. “Look! There, man, there! Between the palm trees! Now coming out from behind the far one! You see her, you must see her! There still! Flying from me, by God, flying from me—and gone!” His face was so livid that I expected him to become unconscious, so lost no time leading him down the stairs, and stretching him out upon one of the sofas in the parlour. I then poured him out some brandy which I held to his lips, and which had a wonderful effect upon him, bringing the blood back into his white face and steading his poor shaking limbs. He raised himself up upon his elbow, and looking round to see that we were alone, be beckoned me to come and sit beside him. “You are it, did you not?” he asked, still in the same subdued awesome tone so foreign to the nature of the man. “No, I saw nothing.” They have made up their minds that there is a curse upon the mansion, and nothing will ever persuade them to the contrary. The next night, there was a glorious sunset, which made the great fields look like a lake of blood. I have never seen a finer and at the same time more ghastly effect. Wind is veering round. There was a cry, sharp and shrill, upon the silent air of the night, beginning, as it seemed to me, at a note as such a prima donna never reached, and mounting from that ever higher and higher until it culminated in a long wail of agony, which might have been the last cry of a lost soul. The ghastly scream is still ringing in my ears. Grief, unutterable grief, seemed to be expressed in it and a great longing, and yet through it all there was an occasional wild not of exultation. It seemed to come from close beside me, and yet as I glared into the darkness, I could make out nothing. I waited some little time, but without hearing any repetition of the sound, so I came below, more shaken that I have ever been in my life before. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Odd things have happened here. Four kids in three years, from 1887-1890, vanished without a trace. Other people see things. No one will talk about. The butler was certain that something had come up through the “door to nowhere” five years ago, and was about to again. Some kind of hellspawn. The Devil may impudently impose his communion upon some that care not for his company. However, if the communion on the person’s part be proved, then the business be done. Specter evidence may be grounds for investigation, and may strength other presumptions, but it is not evidence on which to convict. The mansion could be a dangerous place, even at its best—a treacherous, dangerous place. The butler was staring at something. By the sudden intensity of his attitude, I felt that he saw some. I crept up behind him. He certainly was looking at something with an eager questioning gaze, at what seemed to be a wreath of smoke. It was a dim nebulous body devoid of shape, sometimes more, sometimes less apparent, as the light fell on it. The moon was dimmed in its brilliancy at the moment by a canopy of thinnest cloud, like the coating of an anemone. He held out his hand as if to clasp it, and so ran into the darkness with outstretched arms. That came from somewhere. Was it a demon? It took the shape of a man, and eventually of the man of whom we were in search of. He was lying face downwards upon the floor, frozen. Many little crystals of ice and feathers of snow had drifted on to him as he lay, and sparkled upon his dark seaman’s jacket. As we came up some wandering puff of wind caught these tiny flakes in its vortex, and they whirled up into the air, partially descended again, and then, caught once more in the current, sped rapidly away in the direction of the east wing. To my eyes it seemed but a snow-drift, but the butler averred that it started up in the shape of a woman, stooped over the corpse and kissed it, and then hurried away across the floor. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
It was the former cook Bill Thompson, who has gone missing in 1886. Sure he had met with no painful end, for there was a bright smile upon his blue pinched features, and his hands were still outstretched as though grasping at the strange visitor which had summoned him away into the dim World that lies beyond the grave. Surely this same apparition would also lead the butler into the eternal darkness. The smoke went into his mouth and he started to jerk, and speaking in tongues. That awful hellspawn had possessed him, and with his body dying and something inside of him, the butler staggered over to the sulfur stinking wall, sat down and died. Then he faded away and was gone. There he shall lie, with his secret and his sorrows and his mysteries all still buried in his breast, until that great day when the Winchester Mansion shall give up its dead, and Clarence Earl Gideon, known as “the butler,” come out from among the shadows with a smile upon his face, and his stiffened arms outstretched in greeting. I pray that his lot may be a happier one in that life than it has been in this. As for my son, I have not seen him in several years. In 1904, at the palace late at night, men who were pure of spirit, had thought they say a strange demoniac form taking the place of my son, John Wesley Thompson Faulkner. One man said that Mrs. Winchester suddenly rose from her throne and walked about, and immediately John’s head vanished, while the rest of hos body seemed to ebb and flow: whereat the beholder stood aghast and fearful, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. However, he perceived the vanishing head filling out and joining the body again as strangely as it has left it. Another said he stood beside Mrs. Winchester as she sat, and all of the sudden the face changed into a shapeless mass of flesh, with neither eyebrows nor eyes in their proper places, nor any other distinguishing feature; and after a time the natural appearance of his countenance returned. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
I write these instances not as one who saw many of them myself, but heard them from people who were sure they had seen these strange occurrences at the time. They also say that the cook, Bill Thompson, very dear to God, at the instance of dinner time, went to beg forgiveness that some of the guess had been offended beyond endurance by a dish he made. And when he arrived at the dining room, he forthwith secured an audience with Mrs. Winchester; but just as he was about to enter his apartment, he stopped short as his feet were on the threshold, and suddenly stepped backward. Whereupon the maid who escorted him, and others who were present, importuned him to go ahead. However, he answered not a word; and like a man who has had a stroke staggered back to his lodging. And when some followed to ask why he acted thus, they say he distinctly declared he saw the King of the Devils sitting on the throne in the palace, and he did not care to meet or ask any favour of him. I shall not continue my journal. Our road home lies plain and clear before us, and the great Winchester palace will soon be but a remembrance of the past to me. It will be some time before I get over the shock produced by recent events. When I began this record of my visit, I little thought of how I should be compelled to finish it. I am writing these final words in the lonely chamber, still starting at times and fancying I hear the quick nervous step of the dead man upon the floor above me. I entered his chambers tonight as was my duty, to make a list of his effects in order that they might be entered in the official log. All was as it has been upon my previous visit, save that the picture which I have described as having hung at the end of his bed had been cut out of its frame, as with a knife, and was gone. With this last link in a strange chain of evidence I close my diary of the Winchester mansion. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Note by William Clark Falkner, Col. CSA: “I have read over the strange evens connected with the mystery, as narrated in the journal of my son. That everything occurred exactly as he describes it I have the fullest confidence, and, indeed, the most absolute certainty, for I know him to be a strong-nerved and unimaginative man, with the strictest regard for veracity. Still, the story is, on the face of it, so vague and so improbable, that I was long opposed to its publication. Within the last few days, however, I have had independent testimony upon the subject which throws a new light upon it. I had run down to Edinburgh to attend a meeting of the British Medical Association, when I came across Aleister Crowley, an old college chum of my son’s, now involved with the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennet. Aleister told me that he had been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who confirmed that that Witch Trials were started by people who wanted to break up convents and get their magic potions, spells, talismans, and secrets, while also getting the church in an uproar. Upon my telling him of this experience of my son’s, he declared to me that he was familiar with the man, and proceeded, to my no small surprise, to give me a description of him, which tallied remarkably well with that given in the journal, expect that he depicted him as a younger man. According to his account, the cook and butler and my son had all been in love with the same woman. However, the cook was engaged to the young lady of singular beauty residing upon Sierra. During their absence at the Winchester mansion, his betrothed had died under circumstances of peculiar horror. She became a Chenoo, a winter spirit with a heart of ice, created from a human, which wants to kill those it loves. In the period of transformation, the person who is becoming a Chenoo eats snow and refuses other food. One will be ill-tempered and angry. After the transformation, the Chenoo will attack and kill other members of the tribe.” There are many mysteries surrounding the Winchester Mansion. Have a visit and tell me a little story. Winchester Mystery House–a 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
In the 1800s, so many deer and cattle within the mansion’s proximity were found dead that staff members were accused of being werewolves. Today, staff and visitors have reported banging sounds, footprints, seeing white mists, and feeling someone breathe on them. They also report tormented ghosts wandering through the mansion at night. Even if you do not believe ghost stories, you might still get goosebumps passing by, do not chalk those taps on your shoulder and whispers in your ear as all up to imagination.
During mansion renovations in the early 1900s, workmen found a secret dungeon in the Bloody Tower with so many human skeletons, they filled three cartloads when hauled away. The basement was designed so that prisoners would fall through a trap door. These hallways won’t wander themselves 😳 Give you and your friends a fright this weekend on the Lost in The House Tour during All Hallows’ Eve at the Winchester Mystery House!
All Hallows’ Eve value night tickets are still available!
🎟️ Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Door to Nowhere—The Curse of Evil Has Come into His Body!
Some people do not believe in ghost. For that matter, some people do not believe in anything. There are persons who even affect incredulity concerning the “Door to Nowhere,” at the Winchester mansion. They said that it did not stand wide open—that it was not a gateway to the Spirit World and that they could have shut it; that the whole affair was a delusion; that they are sure it must have been a conspiracy; that they are doubtful whether there is such a place as the Winchester mansion on the face of the Earth; that the first time they are in California they will look it up. Perhaps, before going further, I ought to premise there was a time when I did not believe in ghosts either. If you had asked me one summer’s morning years ago when you met me on the Golden Gate Bridge if I held such appearances to be probable or possible, you would have received an empathic “No” for answer. However, at this rate, the story of the Door to Nowhere will never be told; so we will, with your permission, plunge into it immediately. I was interested in why this “Door to Nowhere” in the Winchester mansion would not keep shut? They say the place is haunted. What nonsense. There was one thing I can truly say about our office, we were never serious in it. I fancy that is the case in most offices nowadays; at all events, it was the case in ours. We were always chaffing each other, playing practical jokes, telling stupid stories, scamping our work, looking at the clock, counting the weeks to next Christmas, counting the hours to Saturday. For all that we were earnest in our desire to have our salaries raised, and unanimous in the opinion no fellows ever before received such wretched pay. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
I had $75,000 a year, which I was aware did not half provide for what I ate at home. My mother and sisters left me in no doubt on the point, and when new clothes were wanted I always hated to mention the fact to my poor worried father. We had been better off once, I believe, though I never remember the time. My father owned a small property in the country. I wanted money badly—I must say I never had sixpence in the World of my own—and I thought if I could earn two sovereigns I might buy some trifles I needed for myself, and present my father with a new Ultimate Driving Machine. Then I recalled the amount of the rent was being asked for the Winchester mansion; then I decided gladly this would be a great place to stay if only the ghost turned out of possession. I decided I should like to try to whether, I could not solve the mystery. I was accustomed to lonely houses, and I would not feel at all nervous; I did not believe in ghost, and as for burglars, I was not afraid of them. I was told to just try it out first. To stay in the house for a week; if as tht end of that time I could keep the door shut, locked, bolted, or nailed up, to telegraphy the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and they would actually pay me to stay there. To me, this sounded like a great bargain. If I lay the ghost, or find out the ghost, I think I ought to have enough money to buy a small house for myself. However, I could not have said what frightened me about this endeavour. A week after I moved into the Queen Anne mansion, Mr. van Buuren from the Winchester Repeating Arms Company came to visit me. He wanted to speak to me about the mansion. I heard a sound of irritation in his voice. “The Winchester Mansion!” he said; “and what have you got to say about the Winchester Mansion?” #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
“That is what I wanted to tell you, Mr. van Buuren,” I answered, and a dead hush seem to fall over the office as I spoke. The silence seemed to attract his attention, for he looked sternly at the clerks, who were not using a pen or moving a finger. “Come this way, then,” he said abruptly; and next minute I was in his private office. “Now, what is it?” he asked, flinging himself into a chair, and addressing me, who stood hat in hand beside the great table in the middle of the room. I began—I will say he was a patient listener—at the very beginning, and told my story straight through. I concealed nothing. I enlarged on nothing. A discharged clerk I stood before him, and in the capacity of a discharged clerk I said what I had to say. He heard me to the end, the he sat silent, thinking. At last he spoke. “You have heard a great deal of conversation about the Winchester, I suppose,” he remarked. “No, sir; I have heard nothing expect what I have told you.” “And why do you desire to strive to solve such a mystery?” “If there is any money to be made, I should like to make it, sir.” “How old are you?” “Two-and-twenty last January.” He laughed—he lay back in his chair and laughed—and I laughed myself, though ruefully. We went on talking for a long time after that; he asked me all about my father and my early life, and how we lived and the people we knew; and, in fact, put more questions than I can well remember. “It seems a crazy thing to do,” he said at las; “and yet I feel disposed to trust you. The house is standing perfectly empty. I cannot live it in, and I cannot get rid of it; all my own furniture I have removed, and there is nothing in the place except a few old-fashioned articles belonging to Mrs. Winchester. The place is a loss to me. It is of no use trying to let it, and thus, in fact, matters are at a deadlock. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
“You will not be able to find out anything, I know, because, of course, other have tried to solve the mystery ere now; still, if you like to try you may. I will make this bargain with you. If you like to go down, I will pay your reasonable expenses for a fortnight; and if you do any good for me, I will give you a $1,000,000 note for yourself. Of course I must be satisfied that what you have told me is true and that you are what your represent. Do you know anybody in the city who would speak for you?” I could think of no one but my uncle. I hinted to Mr. van Buuren he was no grand enough or rich enough, perhaps, but I knew nobody else to whom I could refer him. “What?!” he said, “Greg Ryan, of Lakeview Street. He does business with us. If he will go bail for your good behaviour I shan’t want any further guarantee. Come along.” And to my intense amazement, he rose, put on his hat, walked me across the outer office and along the pavements till we came to Lakeview Street. “Do you know this youth, Mr. Ryan?” he said, standing in front of my uncle’s desk, and laying a hand on my shoulder. “Of course I do, Mr. van Burren,” answered my uncle, a little apprehensively; for, as he told me afterwards, he could not imagine what mischief I have been up to. “He is my nephew.” “And what is your opinion of him—do you think he is a young fellow I may safely trust?” My uncle smiled, and answered, “That depends on what you wish to trust him with.” “A long column of addition, for instance.” “It would be safer to give that task to somebody else.” “Oh, uncle!” I remonstrated; for I had really striven to conquer my natural antipathy to figures—worked hard, and every bit of it against the collar. My uncle got off his stool, and said, standing with his back to the empty fire-grate: “Tell me what you wish the boy to do, Mr. van Buuren, and I will tell you whether he will suit your purpose of not. I know him, I believe, better than he knows himself.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
In an easy, affable way, for so rich a man, Mr. van Buuren took possession of the vacant stool, and nursing his right leg over his left knee, answered: “He wants to go and shut the “Door to Nowhere” at the Winchester Mansion for me. Do you think he can do that? My uncle looked steadily back at the speaker, and said, “I thought, Mr. van Buuren, I was quite settled no one could shut it?” Mr. van Buuren shifted a little uneasily on his seat, and replied: “I did not set your nephew the task he fancies he would like to undertake.” “Have nothing to do with it, Justin, advised my uncle, shortly. “You do not believe in ghost do you, Mr. Ryan?” asked Mr. van Burren, with a slight sneer. “Do you not, Mr. van Buuren?” retorted my uncle. There was a pause—an uncomfortable pause—during the course of which I felt the million dollar note, which in imagination, I had really spent, trembling in the scale. I was not afraid. For one million dollars, or half the money, I would have faced all the inhabitants of spirit land. I longed to tell them so; but something in the way those two men looked at each other stayed my tongue. “If you ask me the question here in the heart of the city, Mr. Ryan,” said Mr. van Buuren, at length, slowly and carefully, “I answer ‘No’; but if you were to put me on a dark night at the Winchester, I should beg time to consider. I do not believe in supernatural phenomena myself, and yet—the ‘Door to Nowhere’ at the Winchester is as much beyond my comprehension as the ebbing and flowing of the sea.” “And you cannot live at the Winchester?” remarked my uncle. “I cannot live at the Winchester, and what is more, I cannot get anyone else to live at the Winchester.” “And you want to get rid of your lease?” “I want so much to get rid of my lease that I told Tuck I would give him a handsome sum if he could induce anyone to solve the mystery. Is there any other information you desire, Mr. Ryan? Because if there is, you have only to ask and have. I feel I am not here in a prosaic office in the city of Santa Clara, but in the Palace of Truth.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
My uncle took no notice of the implied compliment. When company is good it needs nothing else. If a man is habitually honest in his speech and in his thoughts, he desires no recognition of the fact. “I do not think so,” he answered; “it is for the boy to say what he will do. If he be advised by me he will stick to his ordinary work in his employers’ office, and leave ghost-hunting and spirit-laying alone.” Mr. van Buuren shot a rapid glance in my direction, a glance which implying a secret understanding, might have influenced my uncle could I have stooped to deceive my uncle. “I cannot stick to my work there any longer,” I said. “I got my marching orders today.” “What had you been doing, Justin? Asked my uncle. “I wanted one million to go and lay the ghost!” I answered, so dejectedly, that both Mr. van Buuren and my uncle broke out laughing. “One Million dollars!” cried my uncle, almost between laughing and crying. “Why, Justin boy, I had rather, poor man though I am, have given thee one million dollars than thou should’st go ghost-hunting or ghost-laying.” When he was very much in earnest my uncle went back to thee and thou his native dialect. I liked the vulgarism, as my mother called it, and I knew my aunt loved to hear him use the caressing words to her. He had risen, not quite from the ranks it is true, but if ever a gentleman came ready born into the World it was Greg Ryan, upon whom at our home everyone seemed to look down. “What will you do, you man?” asked Mr. van Buuren; “you hear what your uncle says, “Give up the enterprise,” and what I say; I do not want either to bribe or force your inclinations.” “I will go, sir,” I answered quite steadily. “I am not afraid, and I should like to show you—” I stopped. I had been going to say, “I should like to show you I am not sure a fool as you all take me for,” but I felt such an address would be too familiar, and refrained. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
When I got to the Lodge, I showed Mr. van Buuren’s letter to the woman, and received the key. “You are not going to stop up at the Winchester alone, are you, sir? she asked. “Yes, I am,” I answered, uncompromisingly, so uncompromisingly that she said no more. The avenue led straight to the mansion; it was uphill all the way, and bordered by rows of the most magnificent limes I ever beheld. A light iron fence divided the avenue from the park, and between the trunks of the trees I could see the deer browsing and cattle grazing. Ever and anon there came likewise to my ear the sound of a sheep-bell. It was a long avenue, but at length I stood in front of the mansion—a square, solid-looking, Victorian mansion, four stories high, with several towers and a steeply pitched roof, beautiful stained-glass windows and statues, a basement; a flight of steps up to the principal entrance; several windows to the right of the door, several to the left of the door; the whole mansion flanked and backed with trees; all the curtains closed, a dead silence brooding over the place; the sun westering behind the great trees studding the park. I took all this in as I approached, and afterwards as I stood for a moment under then ample porch; then remembering he business which has brought me so far, I fitted the great key in the lock, turned the handle, and entered the Winchester Mansion. For a minute—stepping out of the bright sunlight—the place looked to me so dark that I could scarcely distinguish the objects by which I was surrounded; but my eyes soon grew accustomed to the comparative darkness, and I found I was in an immense hall, lighted from the roof; a magnificent old oak staircase conducted to the upper rooms. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The floor was of white marble. There were two fireplaces, fitted with dogs for burning wood; around the walls hung pictures, antlers, and horn, and in odd niches and corners stood groups of statues, and the figure of men in complete suits of armour. To look at the place outside, no one would have expected to find such a hall. I stood lost in amazement and admiration, and then I began to glance more particularly around. Mr. van Buuren has not given me any instructions by which to identify the ghostly chamber—which I concluded would most probably be found on the first floor. I knew nothing of the story connected with it—if there were a story. I was perfectly unencumbered of the mystery. I had not the faintest idea in which apartment it resided. Well, I should discover that, no doubt, for myself ere long. I looked around me—doors—doors—doors. I have never before seen so many doors together all at once. Two of them stood open—one wide, the other slightly ajar. “I will just shut them as a beginning,” I thought, “before I go upstairs.” The doors were of oak, heavy, well-fitting furnished with good locks and sound handles. After I had closed I tried them. Yes, they were quite secure. I ascended the great staircase feeling curiously like an intruder, paced the corridors, entered the many bed chambers—some quite bare of furniture, others containing articles of an ancient fashion, and no doubt of considerable value—chairs, antique dressing-tables, curious wardrobes, and such like. For the most part the doors were closed, and I shut those that stood open before making my way into the attics. I was greatly delighted with the attics. The window lighted them did not, as a rule, overlook the front of the Manion, but commanded wide views over wood, and valley, and meadow. Leaning out of one, I could see, that to the right of the mansion the ground, thickly planted, shelved down to a stream, which came out into the daylight a little distance beyond the plantation, and meandered through the deer part. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
At the back of the mansion the windows looked out on nothing save a dense wood and a portion of the stable-yard, whilst on the side nearest the point from whence I had come there were spreading gardens surrounded by thick yew hedges, and kitchen-gardens protected by high walls; and further on a farmyard, where I could perceive cows and oxen, and, further still, luxuriant meadows, and fields glad with waying and fruit orchards. “What a beautiful place!” I said. “van Buuren must have been a duffer to leave it.” And then I thought what a great ramshackle house it was for anyone to be in all alone. Getting heated with my long walk, I suppose, made me feel chilly, for I shivered as I drew my head in from the last dormer window, and prepared to go down stairs again. In the attics, as in the other parts of the house I had as yet explored, I closed the doors, when there were keys locking them; when there were not, trying them, and in all cases, leaving the securely fastened. When I reached the ground floor the evening was drawing on apace, and I felt that if I wanted to explore the whole house before dusk I must hurry my proceedings. “I will take the kitchens next,” I decided, and so made my way to a wilderness of domestic offices lying to the rear of the great hall. Stone passages, great kitchens, an immense servants’-hall, larders, pantries, coal-cellars, beer-cellars, laundries, brewhouses, housekeeper’s room—it was not of any use lingering over these details. The mystery that trouble Mr. van Buuren could scarcely lodge amongst cinders and empty bottles, and there did not seem much else left in this part of the building. I would go through the living-rooms, and then decide as to the apartments I should occupy myself. The evening shadows were drawing on apace, so I hurried back into the hall, feeling it was a weird position to be there all alone with those ghostly hollow figures of men in armour, and the statues on which the moon’s beams must fall so coldly. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
I would just look through the lower apartments and then kindle a fire. I had seen quantities of wood in a cupboard close at hand, and felt that beside a blazing hearth, and after a good cup of tea, I should not feel the solitary sensation which was oppressing me. The sun had sunk below the horizon by this time, for to reach the Winchester I had been obliged to travel by cross lines of railway, and wait besides for such trains as condescended to carry third-class passengers; but here was still light enough in the hall to see all object distinctly. With my own eyes I saw that one of the doors I had shut with my own hands was standing wide! I turned to the door on the other side of the hall. It was as I had left it—closed. This, then, was the room—this with the open door. For a second I stood appalled; I think I was fairly frighted. That did not last long, however. There lay the work I had desired to undertake, the foe I had offered to fight; so without mor ado I shut the door and tried it. “Now I will walk to the end of the hall and see what happens,” I considered. I did so. I walked to the foot of the grand staircase and back again, and looked. The door stood wide open. I went into the room, after just a spasm of irresolution—went in and pulled up the blinds: a good-sized room, twenty by twenty (I knew because I paced it afterwards), lighted by two long windows. The floor, of polished oak, was partially covered with a Turkey carpet. There were two recesses beside the fireplace, one fitted up as a bookcase, the other with an old and elaborately carved cabinet. I was astonished also to find a bedstead in an apartment so little retired from the traffic of the house; and there were also some chairs of an obsolete make, covered, so far as I could make out, with faded tapestry. Beside the bedstead, which stood against the wall opposite to the door I had as yet met with the interior of the house. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
It was a dreary, gloomy room: the dark panelled walls; the black, shining floor; the windows high from the ground; the antique furniture; the dull four-poster bedstead, with dingy velvet curtains; the gaping chimney; the silk counterpane that looked like a pall. “Any crime might have been committed in which a room,” I thought pettishly; and then I looked at the door critically. Someone had been at the trouble of fitting bolts upon it, for when I passed out I not merely shut the door securely, but bolted it as well. “I will go and get some wood, and then look at it again,” I soliloquized. When I came back it stood wide open once more. “Stay open, then!” I cried in a fury. “I will not trouble myself any more with you tonight!” Almost as I spoke the words, there came a ring at the front door. Echoing through the desolate house, the peal in the then states of my nerves startled me beyond expression. It was only the man who had agreed to bring over my traps. I bade him lay them down in the hall, and while looking out some small silver, asked where the nearest-post-office was to be found. Not far from the Winchester Estate’s Park gates, he said; if I wanted any letter sent, he would drop it in the box for me; the mail-cart picked up the bag at ten o’clock. I had nothing ready to post then, and told him so. Perhaps the money I gave was more than he expected, or perhaps the dreariness of my position impressed him as it had impressed me, for he paused with his hand on the lock, and asked: “Are you going to stop here all alone, master?” “All alone, I answered, with such cheerfulness as was possible under the circumstances.” “That is the room, you know,” he said, nodding in the direction of the open door, and dropping his voice to a whisper. “Yes, I know,” I replied. “What, you have been trying to shut it already, have you? Well, you are a game one!” And with this complimentary if not very respectful comment he hastened out of the house. Evidently he had no intention of proffering his services towards the solution of the mystery. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
I cast one glance at the door—it stood wide open. Through the windows I had left bare to the night, moonlight was beginning to stream cold and silvery. “Look here, Justin,” I said, all of a sudden; “life is not child’s play, as uncle truly remarks. That door is just the trouble you have now to face, and you must face it! However, for that door you would never have been here. I hope you are not going to turn coward the very first night. Courage!—that is your enemy—conquer it.” “I will try,” my other self answered back. “I can but try. I can but faith.” The moon’s beams were streaming down upon the mansion; I could see every statue, every square of marble, every piece of armour. For all the World it seemed to me like something in a dream; but I was tired and sleepy, and decided I would not trouble about fire or food, or the open door, till the next morning: I would go to sleep. However, I felt like an army of Devil’s was horribly broke in upon this place which is the center, and after a sort, the first-born of our Californian settlements. If a ghost was responsible for the hanging of nineteen people in this mansion, what was responsible for the burning of nine hundred people? What more likely time would the “Door to Nowhere” open up and let our arch-enemy, the Devil, choose a time for his attack? I spent the forenoon considering that door. I looked at it from within and from without. It was on the second floor and opened up to a two story drop outside of the house. What would possess someone to build a door like this, unless they had some knowledge of it being a portal? I eyed it critically. I tried whether there was any reason why it should fly open, and I found that so long as I remained on the threshold it remained closed; if I walked even so far away as the opposite side of the mansion, it swung wide. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Do what I would, it burst from latch and bolt. I could not lock it because there was no key. I was baffled. Then I stumbled upon a note which read: “One that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or consult, convenient with, entertain or employ, feed or reward any evil or wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman, or child, out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place, where the dead body resteth; or the skin, bone, or other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment; or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof: such offenders duly and lawfully convicted and attained, shall suffer death.” Then it dawned of me. Perhaps the mansion has been attraction people who are into the occult and they are the nearly 920 people who have been burned alive or hanged. And that is why the house cannot find renters, it consumes them all. Perhaps this is something like the Atonement of Christ. How God gave His one and only Son to pay the wages of sin man had created, this mansion is consuming souls of those who practise the occult to atone for the death of those killed by the Winchester rifle. The afflicted state of our poor neighbours that are now suffering by molestations from the invisible World, we apprehended so deplorable that we think their condition calls for the utmost help of all persons in their several capacities. We cannot but with all thankfulness acknowledge the success which the merciful God has given unto the sedulous and assiduous endeavours of our honorable rulers to detect the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country, humbly praying that the discovery of these mysterious and mischievous wickedness may be perfected. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
We judge that in the prosecution of these, and all such witchcrafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, leas by too much credulity for things received only upon the Devil’s authority there be a door opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us, for we should not be ignorant of his devices. After all, it was this mansion people could not live in—his door that would not keep shut; and it seemed to me these were facts he might dislike being forced upon the attention of the public. What had I seen? What did I think of the matter? Very honestly I did not know what to say. The door certainly would not remain shut, and there seemed no human agency to account for its persistent opening; but then, on the other hand, ghost generally did no tamper with fire arms, and my rifle, though not loaded, had been tampered with—I was sure of that. Mr. van Buuren later disclosed to me his theory that open door: “This is the room my uncle was murdered in, they say the door will never remain shut till the murderer is discovered.” “Murdered!” I did not like the word at all; it made me feel chill and uncomfortable. “Yes—he was murdered sitting in his chair, and the assassin has never been discovered. At first many persons inclined to the belief that I killed him; indeed, may are of that opinion still. “But you did not, sir—there is not a word of truth in that story, is there?” He laid his hand on my shoulder as he said: “No, my lad; not a word. I loved the old man tenderly. Even when he disinherited me for the sake of his young wife, I was worry, but not angry; and when he sent for me and assured me he had resolved to repair a wrong, I tried to induce him to leave the lady a handsome sum in addition to her jointure. “If you do not, people may think she has not been the source of happiness you expected,” I added. “Thank you, Reuban,” he said. “You are a goof fella; we will talk further about this tomorrow.” And then he bade me goodnight. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
“Before morning broke—it was in the about one hundred years ago—the household was arounds by a fearful scream. It was his death-cry. He had been stabbed from behind in the neck. He was seated in his chair writing—writing a letter in Latin. Part of it said, ‘Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursion adversarii, omne phanatasma, omnis leigo, in nominee Domini nostri Jesu Christi eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei.’ The rest of the letter was torn. His solicitor came forward and said he had signed a will leaving all his personalty to me—he was very rich—unconditionally, only three days previously.” Mr. van Buuren went away, and I stayed in the house. I never left it all day. I did not go into the garden, or the stable-yard, or the shrubbery, or anywhere; I devoted myself solely and exclusively to that door. If I shut it once, I shut it a hundred times, and always with the same result. Do what I would, it swung wide. Never, however, when I was looking at it. So long as I could endure to remain, it stayed shut—the instant I turned back, it stood open. Though feeling convinced that no human agency did or could keep the door open, I was certain that some living person had means of access to the house which I could not discover. This was made apparent in trifles which might well have escaped unnoticed had several or even two people occupied the mansion. In the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing of iron, was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sound like the rattling of chains, distant at first, but approaching nearer by degrees: immediately afterward a spectre appeared in the form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and squalid appearance, with a long beard and dischevelled hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands. The distressed occupants meanwhile passed their wakeful nights under the most dreadful terrors imaginable. This, as it broke their rest, ruined their health, and brought on distempers, their terrors grew upon them, and death ensued. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Even in the daytime, though the spirit did not appear, yet the impression remained so strong upon their imaginations that it still seemed before their eyes, and kept them in perpetual alarm. Consequently the mansion was at length deserted, as being deemed absolutely uninhabitable; so that it was now entirely abandoned to the ghost of the Winchester rifle. That night, I prepared to retire. However, I was open to the vain terrors of imaginary noises and spirits. The first part of the night passed in entire silence, as usual; at length a clanking of iron and rattling of chains was heard: however, I neither lifted up my eyes, nor got out of bed, but in order to keep calm, I pretended the sound was something else. The noise increased and advanced nearer, until it seemed at the door, and at last in my chamber. I looked up, saw, and recognized the ghost exactly as it has been described to me: it stood before me, beckoning with a finger, like a person calls another. I immediately arouse, and, candle in hand, followed it. The ghost slowly stalked along as if encumbered with its chains, and, turning into the area of the house where the “Door to Nowhere, was and suddenly vanished. What an idiot I have been! If I wanted to solve the mystery of the open door, or course I must keep watch in the room itself. The door would not stay wide unless there was a reason for it. When I walked into the room, it was deadly cold, and the scene was horrible. The door was wide open. A party of ghosts were assembled with, and were feasting on the flesh of corpses. I was astonished by this hideous banquet. As soon as I could safely escape, I stole back into my bed. I was rather crossed at being disturbed. The next day word on—the long, dreary day; evening approached—the night shadows closed over the Winchester mansion. The moon would not rise for a couple hours more. Everything was still as death. The house had never before seemed to me so silent and so deserted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
I took a candle, and went up to my accustomed room, moving about for a time as though preparing for bed; then I extinguished the candle, softly open the door, turned the key, and put it in my pocket, slipped softly downstairs, across the hall, through the open dor. Then I knew I had been afraid, for I felt a thrill of terror as in the dark I stepped over the threshold. I paused and listened—there was not a sound—the night was still and sultry, as though a storm were brewing. Not a leaf seemed moving. Noiselessly I made my way to the other side of the room. There was an old-fashioned easy-chair between the bookshelves and the bed; I sat down in it, shrouded by the heavy curtains. The hours passed—where ever hours so long? The moon rose, came and looked in at the windows, and then sailed away to the west; but not sound, no, not even the cry of a bird. I seemed to myself a mere collection of nerves. Every part of my body appeared twitching. It was agony to remain still; the desire to move became a form of torture. The locked door opened—so suddenly, so silently, that I barely had time to draw back behind the curtain, before I saw a woman in the room. A slight, lithe woman, not a lady, clad in all black—not a bit of white about her. What on Earth could she want? Then she fell on me with her nails and teeth, and tore at my throat, she was as strong as twenty devils. I felt something like a red-hot iron enter my neck. She opened a vein and sucked by blood, and I could but rush from the room before I fell senseless on the marble pavement of the hall. When the post man came that morning, finding no one stirring, he looked through one of the long windows that flanked the door; then he ran to the farmyard and called for help. “There is something wrong inside,” he cried. “That young gentleman is lying on the floor in a blood of blood.” To this day, the “Door to Nowhere” is still a mystery. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Winchester Mystery House
24 Hours till opening night of All Hallows’ Eve and our caretakers are working non stop to put the finishing touches on the show! Be here for the opening weekend! Tickets are still available. A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
All Hallows’ Eve:
🎟️ Link in bio. 🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
He Was Haunted By an Invisible Presence!
The facts which I am about to relate happened to myself some sixteen or eighteen years ago, at which time I was still young enough to enjoy a life of constant travelling. There are, indeed, many less agreeable ways in which an unbeneficent parson may contrive to scorn delights and live laborious days. In remote places where strangers are scarce, his annual visit is an important evet; and though at the close of a long day’s work he would sometimes prefer the quiet of a Victorian mansion, he generally finds himself the destined guest of the rector or the squire. It rests with himself to turn these opportunities to account. If he makes himself pleasant, he forms agreeable friendships and sees Victorian home-life under one of its most attractive aspects; and sometimes, even in these days of universal common-placeness, he may have the luck to meet with an adventure. My first appointment was to Llanda Villa ; which was largely peopled with my personal friends and connections. It was, therefore, much to my annoyance that I found myself, after a could of years very pleasant work, transferred to a new teaching position. I now spent half my time in hired vehicles and lonely country inns. I had been in possession of this position for some three months or so, and winter was near at hand, when I paid my first visit of inspection to the Winchester mansion. It was a dull, raw afternoon of mid-November, growing duller and more raw as the day waned and the east wind blew keener. I found the foot path without difficulty. It led me across a barren slope divided by stone fences, with here and there a group of smaller Victorian houses and gazebos. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
A light fog, meanwhile, was creeping up from the east, and the dusk was gathering fast. Now, to lose one’s way on such an expansive ranch and at such an hour would be disagreeable enough, and the footpath—a trodden track already half obliterated—would be indistinguishable enough in the course of another ten minutes, but the nine story look out tower, a top the mansion, stood erect as a compass guiding visitors to the bizarre and beautiful rambling mansion. Looking anxiously ahead, up to this moment, I had not met a living soul. However, then I saw a man emerging from the fog and coming along the path. As we neared each other—I advancing rapidly; he slowly—I observed that he dragged the left foot, limping as he walked. It was, however, so dark and so misty, that not till we were within half a dozen yards of each other could I see that he wore a dark suit and an Anglican felt hat, and looked something like a dissenting minister. As soon as we were within speaking distance, I addressed him. “Can you tell me, I said, about how much longer it will take to get to the Winchester mansion?” He came on, looking straight before him; taking no notice of my question; apparently not hearing it. “I beg your pardon,” I said, raising my voice; “but how much longer will it take on this path to get to the Winchester?” He had passed on without pausing; without looking at me; I could almost have believed, without seeing me! I stopped, with the words on my lips; then turned to look after—perhaps, to follow—him. But instead of following, I stood betwixted. What had become of him? #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
And what lad was that going up the path by which I had just come—that tall lad, half-running, half-walking, with a fishing-rod over his shoulder? I could have taken my oath that I had neither met nor passed him. Where then had he come from? And where was the man to whom I had spoken not three seconds ago and who, at his limping pace, could have made more than a couple of yards in the time? My stupefaction was such that I stood quite still, looking after the lad with the fishing-rod till he disappeared in the gloom under the park-palings. Was I dreaming? Darkness, meanwhile, had closed in apace, and, dreaming or not dreaming, I must push on, or find myself benighted. So I hurried forward, turning my back on the last gleam of daylight, and plunging deeper into the fog at every step. I was, however, close upon my journey’s end. The path ended at a turnstile; the turnstile opened upon a steep lane; and at the bottom of the land, down which I stumbled among stones and ruts, I came in sight of the welcome glare of a blacksmith’s forge. Here, then, was the Winchester. I found myself at the door of the Winchester mansion. When I was sitting in the cozy drawing room, I saw Mrs. Winchester, and she looked like an angel. Spreading loveliness everywhere, over all with whom she came in touch, over good and evil. When a small number of people often come together in the same room, a tradition readily develops as to where each individual has one’s place, one’s station; it becomes a kind of picture a person can unroll for oneself when one so desires, a map of the terrain. So it is also with us in the Winchester mansion—together we form a picture. We were to drink tea here this evening. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Mrs. Winchester strives for an air of mystery. She wants to whisper and usually does it so well that she becomes entirely mute; I make no secret of my effusions to Merriam, her niece, an estimate of how many quarts of milk it takes for one pound of butter through the medium of cream and the dialectic of the butter churn. Indeed, it is not only something any young girl can listen to without hard, but, what is far more unusual, it is a solid and fundamental and edifying conversation that is equally ennobling to the head and the heart. And is no nature magnificent and wise in what she produces, what a precious gift is butter, what a glorious accomplishment of nature and art! It is a curious picture we make together. Mrs. Winchester almost vanishes before our eyes in pure agronomy; we go into the kitchen and the cellars, up into the attic, look at the chicken and ducks, geese et cetera. This was fascinating to me. But it could just be that I was the kind of young man who became old prematurely; it is possible. I sat late over the fire, and by the time I went to bed, I had well nigh forgotten my adventure with the man who vanished so mysteriously and the boy who seemed to come from nowhere. Next morning, finding I had abundant time at my disposal. What a reinvigorating power I felt from the Winchester—not the freshness of the morning air, not the sighing of the wind, not the coolness of the sea, not the fragrance of wine, its aroma—nothing in the World has this reinvigorating power. In this way the days go by. Mrs. Winchester seemed perfect happy in her mansion. Her bedroom faced the courtyard. Sometimes she stands on the balcony for a moment, and at night she looks up at the stars, unseen by all. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
In these nocturnal hours, I walk around like a ghost. Then I forget everything, have no plans, no reckonings, cast understanding overboard, expand and fortify my chest with deep sighs, a motion I need in order not to suffer from my systematic conduct. Others are virtuous by day, sin at night; I am dissimulation by day—at night I am sheer inspiration. When I notice it, far off on the horizon there comes a flashing intimation from a quite different World, to the astonishment of Mrs. Winchester as well as Merriam. Mrs. Winchester sees the lightning but hears nothing; Merriam hears the voice but sees nothing. However, at the same moment everything is in its quiet order; the conversation between Mrs. Winchester and me proceeds in its uniform way, like post horses in the stillness of the night the; the sad hum of the samovar accompanies it. At such moments, it can sometimes be uncomfortable in the drawing room, especially for Merriam. She has no one she can talk with or listen to. I can well understand that it must seem to Merriam as if Mrs. Winchester were bewitched, so perfectly does she move to the tempo of my rhythm. She cannot participate in this conversation either, because one of the means I have also used to outrage her is that I allow myself to treat her just like a child. It is not as if I for that reason would allow myself any liberties whatever with her, far from it. I well know the upsetting effects such things can have, and the point is that her womanliness must be able to rise up pure and beautiful again. Because of my intimate relationship with Mrs. Winchester, it is easy for me to treat her like a child who has no understanding of the World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
Her womanliness is not insulted thereby but merely neutralized, for the fact that she does not know market prices cannot insult her womanliness, but the supposition that this is the ultimate in life can certainly be revolting to her. With my powerful assistance on this scored, Mrs. Winchester is out doing herself. She has become almost fanatic—something she can thank me for. The only thing about me that she cannot stand is that I have no position. Now I have adopted the habit of saying whenever a vacancy in some office is mentioned: “There is a position for me,” and thereupon discuss it very gravely with her. Merriam always perceives the irony, which is precisely what I want. The butler came in with more tea. I saw that he was lame. In the moment I remembered him. He was the man I met in the fog. “I met you yesterday afternoon, Mr. Brunton,” I said, as we went into the library. “Yesterday afternoon, sir?” He repeated. “You did not seem to observe me,” I said, carelessly. “I spoke to you, in fact; but you did not reply to me.” “But—indeed, I beg your parson, sir—it must have been someone else,” said the butler. “I did not go out yesterday afternoon.” How could this be anything but a falsehood? I might have been mistaken as to the man’s face; though it was such a singular face, and I had seen it quite plainly. However, how could I be mistaken as to his lameness? Besides, that curious trailing of the right foot, as if the ankle was broken, was not an ordinary lameness. I suppose I looked incredulous, for he added, hastily. “Even if I had not been preparing dinner for inspection, sire, I should not have gone out yesterday afternoon. It was too damp and foggy. I am obliged to be careful—I have a very delicate chest.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
My dislike to the man increased with every word he uttered. I did not ask myself with what motive he want on heaping lie upon lie; it was enough that, to serve his own ends, whatever those ends might be, he did lie with unparalleled audacity. “We will proceed to the examination, Mr. Brunton,” I said, contemptuously. He turned, if possible, a shade paler than before, bent his head silently, and called up the cuisine in their order. Profusely apologizing, he begged leave to occupy five minutes of my valuable time. He wished, under correction, to suggest a little improvement to many the menu more festive. “Under other circumstances…” I stopped and looked round. The butler repeated my last words. “You were saying, sir—under other circumstances?” I looked around again. “I seemed to me that there was someone here,” I said; “some third person, not a moment ago.” “I beg your pardon, sir—a third person?” “I saw his shadow on the ground, between yours and mine.” The mansion faced due north, and we were standing immediately behind it, with our backs to the sun. The place was bare, and open, and high; and our shadows, sharply defined, lay stretched before our feet. “A—a shadow?” he faltered. “Impossible.” There was not a bush or a true within half a mile. There was not a could in the sky. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could have cast a shadow. I admitted that t was impossible, and that I must have fancied it; and so went back to the matter of the menu. “Should you see Mrs. Winchester,” I said, “you are at liberty to say that I thought it a desirable improvement.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
“I am much obliged to you, sir. Thank you—thank you very much,” he said, cringing at every word. “But—but I had hoped that you might perhaps use your influence”—“Look there!” I interrupted. “Is that fancy?” We were now close under the blank walls of the kitchen. On this wall, laying to the full sunlight, our shadows—mine and the butler’s—were projected. And there too—no longer between his and mine, but a little way apart, as if the intruder were standing back—there, as sharply defined as if cast by line-light on a prepared background, I again distinctly saw, though but for a moment, that third shadow. As I spoke, as I looked round, it was gone! “Did you not see it?” I asked. He shook his head. “I—I saw nothing” he said, faintly. “What was it?” His lips were white. He seemed scarcely able to stand. “But you must have seen it!” I exclaimed. “It fell just there—where that bit of ivy grows. There must be some boy hiding—it was a boy’s shadow, I am confident. “A boy’s shadow!” he echoed, looking round in a wild, frightened way. “There is no place—for a boy—to hide.” “Place or no place,” I said, angrily, “if I catch him, he shall feel the weight of my cane!” I searched backwards and forwards in every direction, the butler, with his scared face, limping at my heels; but, rough and irregular as the ground was, there was not a hole in it big enough to shelter a rabbit. “But what was it?” I said, impatiently. “An—an illusion. Begging your pardon, sir—and illusion.” He looked so like a beaten hound, so frightened, so fawning, that I felt I could with lively satisfaction have transferred the threatened caning to his own shoulders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
“But you saw it?” I said, impatiently. “No, sir. Upon my honour, no, sir. I saw nothing—nothing whatever.” His looks belied his words. I felt certain that he had not only seen the shadow, but that he knew more about it than he chose to tell. I was by this time really angry. To be made the object of a boyish trick, and to be hoodwinked by the connivance of the butler, was too much. It was an insult to myself and my office. I scarcely knew what I said; something short and stern at all events. Then, having said it, I turned my back upon Mr. Brunton and the mansion, and walked rapidly back to the village. As I was leaving the Winchester, it was a gloomy evening. I was standing high in the midst of a somber deer-park some six or seven miles in circumference. An avenue of palm trees, which led up to the house looked so lonely. The butler said, “If you would but be persuaded to say a day longer, a new experience awaits you. I will take you down the Winchester shaft, and show you the home of the gnomes and trolls. I am the king of Hades, and rule the under World as well as the upper. There is gold everywhere underlying this mansion. The whole place is honeycombed with shafts and galleries. One of our richest seams runs under this house, and there are upwards of forty men at work in it a quarter of a mile below our feet here every day. Another leads right away under the park, Heaven only knows how far! My father began working it five-and-twenty years ago, and we have gone on working it ever since; yet it shows no sign of failing. That is why Mrs. Winchester is rich enough to commit whatever design follies she pleases; and that is saying a good deal. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
“But then, to be always squandering money—always building a rambling mansion—always gratifying the impulse of the moment—is that happiness? Mrs. Winchester has been experimenting for several decades; and with what result? Would you like to see?” He snatched up a lamp and led the way through a long suite of unfinished rooms, the floors of which were piled high with packing cases of all sizes and shapes, labelled with the names of various foreign ports and the addresses of foreign agents innumerable. What did they contain? Precious marbles from Italy and Greece and Asia Minor; priceless paintings by old and modern masters; antiquities from the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates; enamels from Persia, porcelain from China, bronzes from Japan, strange sculptures from Peru; arms, mosaics, ivories, wood-carvings, skins, tapestries, old Italian cabinets, painted bride-chess, Etruscan terracottas; treasures of all countries, or all ages, never even unpacked since they crossed that threshold which the mistress’s foot had crossed but twice during the ten years it had taken to buy them! Should she ever open them, ever arrange them, every enjoy them? Perhaps—if she becomes weary of wandering—if she remarried—if she built a gallery to receive them. If not—well, she might found and endow a museum; or leave the things to the nation. What did it matter? Collecting was like fox-hunting; the pleasure in the pursuit, and ended with it!” Breakfast over, we went around the mansion, and saw the men working. Just as we were about to enter an underground tunnel—a tall, slender lad, with a fishing rod across his shoulder, came out rom one of the side doors of the mansion, crossed the open at field, and disappeared among the tree-trunks on the opposite side. I recognized him instantly. It was the boy whom I saw the other day, just after meeting the butler in the meadow. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
“If the boy think he is going fishing in a fruit orchard,” I said, “he will find out his mistake.” “What boy,” asked Mr. Brunton, looking back. “That boy who crossed over yonder, a minute ago.” “Yonder!—in front of us?” “Certainly. You must have seen him?” “No I.” “You did no see him?—a tall, thin boy, in a grey suit, with a fishing-rod over his shoulder. He disappeared behind those nectarine trees.” Mr. Brunton looked at me with surprise. “You are dreaming!” he said. “No living thing—not even a rabbit—has crossed our path since we left the mansion.” “I am not in the habit of dreaming with my eyes open,” I replied, quickly. He laughed, and put his arm through mine. “Eyes or no eyes,” he said, “you are under an illusion this time!” An illusion—the very word made use of by the butler! What did it mean? Could I, in truth, no longer rely upon the testimony of my senses? A thousand half-formed apprehensions flashed across me in a moment, I remembered the illusions of Nicolini, the bookseller, and other similar cases of visual hallucination, and I asked myself if I has suddenly become afflicted in like manner. “By jove! This is a queer sight!” exclaimed Mr. Brunton. And then I found that we had emerged from the fruit orchard, and were looking down upon the bed of what yesterday was a lake. It was indeed a queer sight—an oblong, irregular basin of the blackest slime, with here and there a sullen pool, and round the margin an irregular fringe of bulrushes. At some little distance along the bank—less than quarter of a mile from where we were standing—a gaping crowd had gathered. All the foremen seemed to turn out to stare. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Hats were pulled off and curtsies dropped at Mr. Brunton’s approach. He, meanwhile, came up smiling, with a pleasant word for everyone. “Well,” he said, “are you looking for the lake, my friends?” “I see a log of rotten timber sticking half in and half out of the mud,” one of the men said, “and something—a long reed, apparently…by Jove! I believe it is a fishing rod!” “It is a fishin’ rod, squire,” said the blacksmith with rough earnestness; “an” if yon rotten timber bayn’t an unburied corpse, mun I never stroike hammer on anvil agin!” There was a buzz of acquiescence from the bystanders. ‘Twas an unburied corpse, such enough. Nobody doubted it. “It must have come out, whatever it is, Mr. Brunton said presently. “Five feet of mud, do you say? Then here is a sovereign apiece for the first two fellows who wade through it and bring that object to land!” It was, in truth, an unburied corpse; part of the trunk only above the surface. They tried to life it; but it had been so long under water, and was in so advanced a stage of decomposition, that to bring it to shore without a shutter was impossible. Being cross-questioned, they thought, from the slenderness of the form, that it must be the body of a boy. “There’s the poor chap’s rod, anyhow,” said the blacksmith, laying it gently down upon the turf. Mrs. Winchester was summoned and told of the news. That night she rushed to her blue séance room and demanded the spirits tell her what happened to the boy. “I invoke thee, and move thee, and stir thee up O Spirit Leraikha,” said Mrs. Winchester. “From the 30 Legions of Spirits, appear unto my eyes before the circle in the likeness of a man in and tell me what has happened to this boy!” #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
“The words Adam spoke to God, and all things of water were as blood,” replied the Spirit Leraikha. “In the names Alpha and Omega, I am the God of Secret Truth who liveth forever, the All-Powerful. It is to I, to whom all creatures are obedient and in the Extreme Justice and Anger of God that I withdrawal this veil that is before the glory of God, might; and by the creatures of living breath before the Thone whose eyes are east and west; by the fire in the fire of just Glory of Mine Throne; by the Holy ones of Heaven; and by the secret wisdom of God, I, exalted in power, has been stirred up to cast a vision of the past and make clear the present! The secrets of truth in voice and understanding comes: This is the corpse of a boy of perhaps ten and four or ten and five years of age. There was a fracture three inches long at the back of the skull, evidently fatal. This might, of course, have been an accidental injury; but when the body came to be raised from where it layeth, it was found to be pinned down by a pitchfork, the handle of which had been afterwards whittled off, so as not to show above water, a discovery tantamount to evidence of murder. The features of the victim were decomposed beyond recognition; but enough of the hair remained to show that it has been short and sandy. He had a passion for fishing and was in the habit of slipping away at school-hours, and showed himself the more cunning and obstinate more he was punished. At last there came a day when the butler tracked him to the place his rod was concealed and beat the miserable lad about the head and arms with a heavy stick. Pin through hand and blood was running out of his mouth until he fell insensible and ceased to breathe. He dragged the body among the bulrushes by the water’s edge, and there concealed it as well as he could. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
“At night, when the neighbours and staff were in bed asleep, he stole out by starlight, taking with him a pitchfork, a coil of rope, a couple of iron-bars, and a knife. He weighted and sunk the corpse, and pinned it down by the neck with his pitchfork. He then cut away the handle of the fork; hid the fishing-rod among the reeds; and believed, as murderers always believe, that discovery was impossible. His dreadful secret had of late become intolerable. He was haunted by an invisible Presence. That Presence sat with him at table, followed him in his walks stood behind him in the mansion, and watched by his side. He never saw it; but he felt that it was always there. Sometimes he raves of a shadow on the walls of this mansion. I have now told you all that there is at present to tell.” When a community looks only for evidence of guilt and ignores or suppresses all contradictory evidence, the result is a witch hunt. Witch hunts are often used to conceal more heinous crimes. And when a witch hunt occurs, which is the very opposite of what was going on in the case of the murdered boy, the community feels itself so beset by evil that it is no longer capable of perceiving the good. The primary causes of witch hunts are clear. It is usually due to corruption, an outbreak of epidemic hysteria which usually ordinates in experiments with the occult. And the hysterical hallucinations of the afflicted persons are confirmed by some concrete evidence of actual witchcraft and by many confessions, the majority of them hysterical. A number of other explanations have been offered, but most of them are more or less unconvincing. It has been argued that the outbreak is usually due to some new religion. Typically a kind of insanity resulting from sexual repression or denying one’s true sexual nature. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Winchester Mystery House
It’s a beautiful day for a stroll through the gardens. Today, Winchester Mystery House marks 99 years since our lady of mystery, Sarah Winchester passed away peacefully in her bedroom of Llanda Villa. We mark her passing with the ringing of the bell 13 times as is our tradition. Thank you Sarah for creating this iconic home that we continue to share with guests from around the world.
🎟️ Link in bio.
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
In a Nightmare of Supernatural Terror—Afraid to Move Hand or Foot II!
Immediately after I sat down…and did see a black thing jump into the window. And it came and stood just before my face. The body of it looked like a monkey, only the feet were like a cock’s feet with claws, and the face somewhat more like a man’s than a monkey’s. And I being greatly affrighted, not being able to speak or help myself by reason of fear, I suppose, so the thing spoke to me and said, “I am a messenger sent to you. For I understand you are troubled in mind, and if you will be ruled by me you shall want for nothing in this World.” I would have cried out—would have shrieked, if every never had not been paralyzed. I could not doubt the evidence of my sense—if I could have done so the cold, unearthy horror which sicked my very soul would have borne its undeniable testimony that I had behold the impersonation of the hidden curse that rested on this dwelling. I stood there rigid and immovable, as if that blighting Medusa-glance had indeed changed me into stone. It may have been but a very few minutes—it seemed to me a cycle of painful ages, when the light of a brightly burning lamp shone before me, and I heard the cheerful sounds of the new nurse’s voice in my ears: “Come along, cook. Bless your heart, my dear! you need not be nervous; there is no occasion. Mrs. Winchester, ma’am, are you not well, ma’am? “No,” I said faintly, staggering to the woman’s outstretched hands. “Not down there—upstairs to the children.” She turned as I bade her, and supported me up the stairs and into the nursery, the cook following close at my skirts, muttering fervent prayers and chants. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
The sight of the peacefully sleeping little ones did far more to restore me than all the essences and chafing and unlacing which the two women busily administered. I had got suddenly ill when coming upstairs was the explanation I gave, which the cook, plainly perceived, most thoroughly doubted, at least without the cause she suspected being assigned, which, even in the midst of my terror-stricken condition, I refrained from giving, I did not speak to the nurse either of what had happened, but I felt that she knew as well as if she had been by my ide all the time. However, when William returned I told him. Distressed and alarmed on my account though he was, yet he did not, as before, refuse credence to my story. “We must leave the house, William. I should die here very soon,” I said. “Yes, Sarah; of course we must leave if you have anything to distress or terrify you in his manner, though it does seem absurd to be driven out of one’s house and home by a thing of this kind. Someone’s practical joke, or a trick prompted by malice against the owner of the property in order to lessen its value. I have heard of such things often.” “William, it is nothing of the kind,” I said earnestly; “you know it is not.” “No, I do not,” said William shortly and grimly, as he opened his case of revolvers, “and I wish I did.” The night passed away quietly, to our ears at least; but next morning when William had concluded the usual morning prayers, instead of the usual move of the servants, they remained clustered at the door, Jansen with an exceedingly elongated visage standing slightly in advance of the group as a spokesman. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
“Please, sir and ma’am, we cannot tell you what to do.” “Why, go and do your work,” retorted William, with a nervous tug at his moustache and an uneasy glance at me. Jansen shook his head slowly. “It cannot be done, sir—cannot be done, ma’am. Why, no living Christian, not to speak of humble, but respectable servants,” said Jansen with a flourish, quite unconscious of the nice distinction he had made, “could stand it any longer.” “What is the matter, pray?” said my husband. “Ghosts, sir—spirits—unclean spirits,” said Charles, in an awestruck whisper which was re-echoed in the cook’s “Lor” “a” mercy!” as she dodged back from the doorway with the housemaid holding fast to one of her ample sleeves, and the lady’s maid holding fast to the other. The New nurse, quietly dandling the baby in her arms, was alone unmoved. “What stories have you been listening to now?” said their master, what a slight laugh and a frown. “No stories, sir; but what we have seen with our eyes and understanded with our ears, and—and—comprehended with our hearts,” said Jansen, with an unsuccessful attempt at quoting Scripture. “What was it as walked the floors last night between one and two, sir? What was it as talked and shrieked and run and raced? What was it as frightened the mistress on the stairs last evening?” And the whole posse of them turned to me, triumphantly awaiting my testimony. I was feeling very ill, and looking so, I daresay, having struggled downstairs in order to prevent the servants having any additional confirmation of their surmises. “That is no affair of yours,” said William gravely; “your mistress is in delicate health, and was feeling unwell all day.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
“Will you allow me to speak, please, sir?” said the nurse, and, as her maser nodded assent, she turned to the frightened group with a pleasant smile. “You have no cause to be afraid, cook, or Mr. Jensen, or any of you,” said she, addressing the most important functionary first—“not in the least. I am only a servant like the rest, and here a shorter time than any one; but I think you are very foolish to unsettle yourself in a good situation and frighten yourselves. You need not think they will harm you. Fear God and do your duty, and you need not mind wandering, poor, lonely souls—-” “Lor” “a” mercy! ‘ow you talk, Mrs. Lewis!” said the coo indignantly. “I have seen them more times than one—many and many a time, Mrs. Cook; and they never harmed a hair of my head,” said the nurse, “nor they will ever harm your.” “Well, then,” said the cook, packing into the hall, followed by her satellites, “not to be made Cleopatra, nor the Virgin Mary neither, would I stay to be frighted out of my seven senses, and made into a lunatic creature like poor Linda was!” “Please to make better omelettes for luncheon, cook, than you did yesterday,” said William calmly, though he looked pale and angry enough, “and leave me to deal with the ghost—I will settle accounts with them!” The nurse turned quickly and looked earnestly at him: “I would not say that, sir—God forbid,” said she in an undertone, and the next moment was singing softly and blithely as she carried the children away to their morning bath. William and I looked at each other in silence. “I wish we have never come into this house, dear,” I said. “I wish from my heart that we never had, Sarah,” he responded; “but we must manage to stay the season out, at all events. It would be too absurd to run away like frightened hares, not to speak of the expense and trouble we have gone through expanding the mansion to four floors with a nine-story tower.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
“We can may get it taken off our hands with a substantial loss, perhaps,” I suggested. “See the house-agent, William.” “I have seen him, but we have one of the largest, and most expansive estates in the country. No one can afford it,” he replied. “He deeply regretted that we should have any occasion to find fault, especially after our huge investment in expanding the estate, and it is not even completed yet. The agent also said he was happy to do anything in the way of clearing up this little mystery, et cetera. Of course he was laughing at me in his sleeve.” Again, as after our previous alarms, says passed on and lengthened into weeks in undisturbed quietude. William had a good many business matters to arrange; the children looked as rosy and healthy as in their country home, from their constant walking and playing in the airy, pleasant parks. My own health was not every good; and Dr. Winchester, William’s cousin, was kindest and wisest of grave, gentlemanly doctors; so, all thing considered, we stay at the Winchester mansion we have build into a 600 room Queen Anne Victorian mansion from an 18-room farmhouse. Only on my husband’s account, I wished for any change. Something seemed to affect his health strangely, although he never complained of anything beyond the usual lassitude and want of a tone which a gay Santa Clara season might be expected to bequeath him. He was sleepless, frequently depressed, nervous, and irritable; and still he vehemently declared he was quite well, and seemed almost annoyed when I urged him to put his business aside for the present and leave town. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
He had been induced to enter into a large “Highly Finished Arms” promotion and sales of deluxe Winchesters, and had, besides, some heavy money matters to arrange, connected with his sister’s marriage settlements, which he expected would be required about Christmas. So, all things considered, he had some cause for feeling as haggard as he did. “It will be as well for William to leave Santa Clara, Mrs. Winchester, as soon as he can, said his cousin Dr. Winchester at the close of one of his pleasant “run-in” visits. “His nerves are shaky. We men get nervous nearly as often as the ladies, though we do not confess to the fact quite so openly. A little unstrung, you know—nothing more. A few weeks in sea or mountain air will quite brace him up again.” And as I dressed for dinner that evening, I determined that if wifely entreaties, and arguments, and authority, should not fail for the first time in our wedded life, William should have the sea or mountain air without another week’s delay; and, of course I determined, likewise, to back up entreaties, arguments, and authority with the prettiest dress I could put on. I cannot tell why wives, and young wives too, will neglect their personal appearance when “only one’s husband” is present. It is unpolitic, unbecoming, and unloving; and men and husbands do not like neglect—direct or implied, be sure of that, ladies—young, middle-aged, or old. “Your brown silk, ma’am?—it is rather cold this evening for that cream-coloured grenadine,” said Agnus, rustling at my wardrobe. “No, Agnus, I will not have that brown, I am tired of it,” I replied. If so happened that it was this dress which I had worn on the three occasions when I had been terrified by the strange occurrences in this house; and I had acquired a superstition aversion for this particular robe. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
So Agnus arrayed me in a particularly charming demi-toilette of pale yellow silk grenadine and white lace; and I felt myself to be a most amiable and affectionate little wife, as I went downstairs to await William’s return for dinner. I never sat in my pretty dressing-room alone. Truth to tell, I disliked the apartment secretly and intensely, and only for fear of troubling and displeasing George I would have shut it up from the first evening I spent in it. He was late for dinner, and I was quite shocked to see how thin and ill he looked by the gas-light; and, as soon as it was concluded, and that by the assistance of excellent coffee and a vast amount of petting, I had coaxed him into his usual smiles and good-humour, I began my petition—that he would leave town for his own sake. He listened to me in silence, and then said, “Very well, Sarah, we will go as soon as we can board up the east wing; I suppose you may come back here. “Oh! yes, I think so,” I replied, “maybe someone attracted these bad spirits and we need to let things cool off again. We shall spend Winter in New Haven, in our dear old house, William.” “Very well,” he said wearily, “though you must know, Sarah, I am not going on account of this one thing. I would hardly quit my house, indeed, because of ghostly or bodily sights or sounds.” He started up from the couch on which he was lying, flushed and excited as he always was when the subject was mentioned, his eyes gleaming as brightly as the flashing scabbard which hung on the wall before him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
“Certainly not, dearest,” I said soothingly. “I wish I could solve the mystery,” he pursued, more excitedly; “I would make somebody suffer for it! One’s peace destroyed, and people terrified, and servants driven away, as if one was living in the dark ages, with some cursed necromancer next door!” “Oh! well, it is some time ago now, and the servants have got over their fright. Pray, do not distress yourself about it, dear William.” “Ah, well—you do not—never mind,” he muttered; “but I mean to have tangible evidence before ever I leave this house—I have sworn it!” He was not easily roused, and I felt both surprise and alar to see him so now, and for so inadequate a cause. I had almost fancied he had forgotten the matter, as we, by tacit consent, never alluded to it. “Do not you allow yourself to be alarmed, Sarah, that is all I care about,” he went on, pacing the floor. “I have been half mad with anxiety on your account, for fear those idiotic servants should manage to startle you to death some dark evening-cowards, every one of them; but I mean to have someone to stay here and sit up—-” He paused suddenly, and listened, then stepped noiselessly to the door, and opening it, listened again intently. “William,” I whispered. He took no heed of me; but rapidly unlocking a cabinet drawer, he drew out a thirty-shooter, loaded and capped, and with his finger on the trigger stole softly to the door and into the hall, whither I followed him. Everything was silent, and the hall and stairs lamps were burning clear and high. I could hear the throbbing of my own heart as I stood there watching. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Suddenly we both heard heavy rapid footsteps, seemingly overhead; and then confused noises, as of struggling, and quarrelling, and sobbing, mingled in a swelling clamour which sounded now near, deafeningly near, and then far, far away; now overhead, now beside us, now beneath, undistinguishable, indescribable, and unearthly. Then the rushing footsteps came nearer and nearer. And, clenching his teeth, while his face grew rigid and white in desperate resolve, William sprang up the staircase with a bound like a tiger. It has all passed in less than half the time I have taken to relate it, and while I yet stood breathless and with straining eyes, William had nearly reached the last step when I saw him stagger backwards, the thirty-shooter raised in his hand. There was a struggle, a rushing, swooping sound, two shots fired in rapid succession, a floating cloud of white smoke, through which I saw the streaming yellow hair and steel-blue eyes flash downward, and then a shriek rang out—the dreadful cry of a man in mortal terror—a crashing fall, beneath which the house trembled to its foundations, and I saw my husband’s body stretched before the conservatory door, whither he had toppled backwards—whether dead or dying I knew not. I remember dimly hearing my own voice in agonized screams, and the terror-stricken servants hurrying from the kitchens below. I remember the kind of face of my new nurse as she bravely rushed down and dispatched someone for the doctor, and made others help her to carry the senseless figure, with blood slowly dripping from the parted lips and staining the snowy linen shirt-front in great gouts and splashes, up to the chamber, where they laid him on his bed, and I, a wretched frenzied woman, knelt beside him with the sole, ceaseless prayer that brain or lips could form—“God help me!” #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
I remember the physician’s arrival, and the grave face and low clear voice of Dr. Winchester, as he made his enquiries; and then another physician summoned, and the low frightened voices, and peering frightened faces, and the lighted candles guttering away in currents of air form opening and shutting doors, and the long hours of night, and the cold grey dawning, the heart-rendering suspense, and speechless, tearless, wordless agony, and the sun rose, gloriously cloudless, smiling in radiance, as if there was not the shadow of death over the weary World beneath his rays, and I hear the verdict—“there was scarcely a hope.” However, God was merciful to me and to him, and my darling did not die. With a fevered brain and a shattered limb he lay there for weeks—lay there with the dark portals half opened to receive him; lay there, when I could no longer watch beside him, but lay prostrate and suffering in another apartment, tended by kind relatives and friends; but at length, when the mellow sunshine, and the crisp clear air of the soft shadowy October days stole into the sick room. William was able to be dressed and sit up for an hour or two amongst the pillows of his easy-chair by the window. And there he was, longing to be gone away from London. “Sarah, darling, weak or strong I must go,” he said in his trembling uncertain voice, and with a restless longing in his faded eyes, “I shall never get better in this house.” And so a few days afterwards, accompanied by the doctor and two nurses, we went down in a pleasant swift railroad journey to our dear, beautiful, peaceful home in New Haven. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
William never spoke of that night of horror but once, when Dr. Winchester told of the story connected with the original 18-room farmhouse we purchased, which morphed into a labyrinth of endless room, twisting and winding tunnels, and catacombs. Thirty years before we bought the farmhouse, the man who was both proprietor and tenant of the estate died, leaving his two daughters all he possessed. He had been a bad man, led a bad wild life, and died in a fit brough on by drunkenness; and these two daughters, grown to womanhood, inherited with his ill-gotten fold his evil nature. They were only half-sisters, and were believed to have been illegitimate also. The elder, a tall, masculine, strongly built woman, with masses of coarse fair hair, and bright, glitter blue eyes; and the younger, a plump, dark-haired rather pretty girl, but as treacherous, vain, and bold, as her elder sister was fierce, passionate, and cruel. They lived in this house, with only their servants, for several years after their father’s death, a life of quarrelling and bickering, jealousy, witchcraft, and heart-burnings, on various accounts. The elder strobe to tyrannize over the younger, who repaid it by deceit and crafty selfishness and black magic. At length a lover came, who the elder sister favoured; whom she loved as fiercely and rashly as such wild untamed natures do; and by fiercely and rashly as such wild untamed natures do; and by falsehood and deep-laid treachery the younger sister cast a love spell on the man and won his fickle fancy from the great, harsh-featured, haughty, passionate elder one. The elder woman soon perceived it, and there were dreadful scenes between the two sisters, when the younger taunted the elder, and the elder cursed the younger. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
However, as fate would have it, one night and at length—there had been a fiercer encounter of words than usual, and the dark-haired girl maddened her sister by insults, and the sudden information that she intended leaving the house in the morning, to stay with a relative until her marriage, which was to take place in one week from that time—the wronged woman, demon-possessed from that moment, waited in her dressing-room, until her sister entered, and then she sprang on her and screaming and struggling, they both wrested until they reached the staircase, where the younger sister, escaping for an instant, rushed wildly down, followed by her murderess, who overpowered her in spite of her frantic struggles, and with her strong, cruel, bony hands deliberately strangled her, until she lay a disfigured palpitating corpse at her feet. She had several scars that seemed as if they had been long there, and they were done by witchcraft. The officers of justice arrested the murderess a few hours afterwards. The jailers put irons on her legs (having received such a command). [It was the curious theory that chaining the prisoner would prevent her specter from afflicting anyone.] The weight of them was about eight pounds. These irons and her other afflictions soon brought her into convulsion fits so they thought she would die that night. She died by poison self-administered on the second day of her imprisonment. What is now known as the Winchester Mansion had been shut up and silent for many a year afterwards, and when, at length, and when, at length, an enterprising landlord put it in habitable order, and found tenants for it again, he only found them to lose them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Year after year passes away, its evil fame darkening with its massive masonry, for none could be found to sanctify with the sacred name and pleasures of home that dwelling blighted by an abiding curse. “I never told you, Sarah,” William said, “although I told my cousin Dr. Winchester, that from the first evening I led a haunted life in that beautiful house, and the more I struggled to disbelieve the evidence of my senses, and to keep the knowledge from you, the more unbearable it became, until I felt myself going mad. I knew I was haunted, but will that last night I had never witnessed what I dreaded day and night to see. And then, Sarah, when I fired, and I saw the devilish murderess face, with its demon eyes blazing on me, and the tall unearthly figure hurrying down to meet me, dragging the other struggling, writhing figure, with her long sinewy fingers seemingly pressed around the convulsed face, then I knew it was all over with me. If there had been a flaming furnace beside me I think I should have leaped into it to escape that awful sight.” That was over a century ago. Sarah eventually returned to the Winchester all along and made several changes to it over 38 years. It is now a 4 story, 160-room mansion, with over 25,500 square feet, sitting on four acres. It was once up to 600 rooms, likely 95,625 square with as many as 737 acres. The strange thing about witchcraft and legends is many of them are based in truth, and sometimes there are unexplainable continuity errors. Take for example An hysterical fit, from J.M. Charcot, Lectures on the Disease of the Nervous System (London, 1877). Look at the extruded tongue, reported during the seventeenth century in witchcraft cases at Gordon, Boston, Salem, and elsewhere. Notice also the legs crossed in spasm; at one time Mary Warren’s legs could not be uncrossed without breaking them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Happy mansion Monday from one of the most beautiful and bizarre mansions around!
Let’s have a mysterious Monday together! We’re open 10:00am-5:00pm
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
Randolph Harris II International Institute 