With the first glimmer of dawn, during the jovial season of merry autumn, the voice of God had sung to me through times and space, and he told me there were things I would know and understand as others could not. He told me that if I opened to him and bult this mansion and never ceased construction that He would give me His strength and secrets. He has been driven to preserve me, and He loved me. There was nothing in the World I wanted more at this moment than to look God right in the eyes and understand Him, but all the gold and diamonds in the nineteenth century could not give Him a face. Curiosity flared up beyond sense and caution, and in my youthful egotism, I fancied God looked like my beloved husband William Winchester. I paced the area between the bookcases and the overstuffed Victorian chairs. I have learned the power of the night, of fear, of blood. Terror, certainly, has a vigour, but it is nothing compared to loving. As I came to the footmark of the staircase, for an instant I gazed at a stranger, on which war, with its fatigues and its wounds, had made a great alteration. A kind of cold face pressed against my own, and moving slowly over it, and of several—I do not know how many—legs or arms or tentacles or something clinging to my body. I screamed out and fell away backward from the step on which I stood, and the creature slipped downwards, I suppose, on to that same step. But the uncertainty last no longer than a few seconds before the visitor vanished. I believe I am acquainted with the extremity of terror and repulsion which a woman can endure without losing her mind. If corpses walked, some, not nearly revived enough, stood in plain view in Llanada Villa. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

Of course, there is also a room in my house in which people spend the night, and in the morning, they are found kneeling in the corner moaning and crying. One of the guests said that she heard a noise in the passing at night, opened her door, and saw someone crawling towards her on all fours with blood on his face and pale unseeing eyes, those of a dead man. I had seen queer things in my parlour. Each night around thirteen o’clock, I would wake up and go downstairs to watch these curious lights that played on my walls and ceiling. One night in particular, I saw a neat, black-clad figure moving with easy grace through the long slanting bars of moonlight. After I starred for a while, he vanished along with the lights. After these odd events, Daisy and I were discussing the occurrences. “What do you think it all means, Aunt Sarah?” she said. I waited a long time before answering. “I feel that someone is trying to contact me,” I replied. “Why?” It seemed like a simplistic question to ask, but Daisy had learned that when magic was involved, sometimes the most obvious questions brought the most interesting answers, so she asked it anyway. “Why, indeed?” I responded. “Maybe someone wants to give me more powers?” Daisy smiled and sipped her tea. She began to shiver a little. “Daisy,” I asked, “what seems to be troubling you?” “Well, Aunt Sarah, sometime after you had gone to bed last night, I remained downstairs reading, and I was going one the stairs, someone passed me. The lights flickering made it hard to see, but I thought it was one of the servants, perhaps. However, this morning I found that it could not have been so, as none of them had been out of their rooms at that hour.” I trembled a little and blinked. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

On the night of November 1, I saw the figure. I heard footsteps outside on the landing at about 3 a.m. I got up at once, and went outside. There was a bright full moon, and the apparition was then at the end of the landing at the top of the stairs, then went downstairs, stopping again when she reached the hall below. I opened the drawing-room door and she went in, walked across the room to the couch in the bow window, stayed there a little while, then came out of the room, went along the passage, and disappeared by the garden door. I spoke to her, but she did not answer. That afternoon I was in the greenhouse, and on my way to the site of the projected rose garden. I did not know much about the conditions most suitable to these nurseries, but I had a great gardener. Collin, my gardener, had disappeared mysteriously about the ground, and I was looking for him to fetch him to tea, and going down this path I suddenly saw him, not hiding in the bushes, as I rather expected, but sitting on the bench in the old summer-house—there was a wooden summer-house here, you know—up in the corner, asleep, but with such a dreadful look on his face that I really thought he must be ill or even dead. I rushed at him and shook him, and told him to wake up; and wake up he did, with a scream. I assure you the poor boy seemed almost beside himself with fright. He hurried me away to the house, and was in a terrible state all that night, hardly sleeping. Someone had to sit up with him, as far as I remember. He was better very soon, but for days I could not get him to say why he had been in such a condition. It came out at last that he had really been asleep and had had a very odd disjointed sort of dream. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

He never saw much of what was around him, but he felt the scenes most vividly. First he made out tht he was standing in a large room with number of people in it, and that someone was opposite to him who was “very powerful,” and he was being asked questions which he felt to be very important, and, whenever he answered them, someone—either the person opposite to him, or someone else in the room—seemed to be, as he said, making something up against him. All the voices sounded to him very distant, but he remembered bits of things that were said: “Where were you on the nineteenth of September?” and “Is this your handwriting?” and so on I can see now, of course, that he was dreaming of some trial: but we were never allowed to see the papers, and it was odd that he would be dreaming of what went on in court. All the time he felt, he said, the most intense anxiety and oppression and hopelessness (though I do not suppose he used such words as that to me). Then, after that, there was an interval in which he remembered being dreadfully restless and miserable, and then there cam another sort of picture, when he was aware that he had come out of doors on a dark raw morning with a little snow about. It was in a street, or at any rate among houses, and he felt that there were numbers and numbers of people there too, and that he was taken up some creaking wooden steps and stoon on a sort of platform, but the only thing he could actually see was a small fire burning somewhere near him. Someone who had been holding his arm left hold of it and went towards this fire, and then he said the fright he was in was worse than at any other part of his dream, and if I had not wakened him up, he did not know what would have become of him. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

A few weeks later, I was coming out of my dormant rose garden, and I walked toward the orchard, when I saw the figure of the ghostly woman cross the orchard, go along the carriage drive in front of the house, and in at the open side door, across the hall, and into the drawing room, I following. She crossed the drawing room and took up her unusual position behind the couch in the bow window. Daisy came in soon after, and I told her the ghost was there. Daisy could not see the figure, but went up to where I showed her the ghost was. She then went swiftly round behind Daisy, across the room, out of the door, and along the hall disappearing as usual near the garden door, we both following her. We looked out into the garden, having first to unlock the garden door, which my niece Daisy had locked as she same though, but we saw nothing of her. After a time, I seemed to hear the stairs and corridors creak at intervals as if with footsteps, and wondered what was going on. There were no voices, however, and it struck me that there was something subtly furtive about the creaking. I did not like it, and debated whether I had better try to sleep at all. Some of my servants were queer people and there had undoubtedly been several disappearances. After a long, dreary interval, and prefaced by a fresh creaking of stairs and corridor, there came that soft, unmistakable sound which seemed like a malign fulfillment of all my apprehensions. Without the least shadow of a doubt, the lock on my hall door was being tried—cautiously, furtively, tentatively—with a key. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

My sensations upon recognizing this sign of actual peril were perhaps less rather than more tumultuous because of my previous vague fears. I had been, albeit without definite reason, instinctively on my guard—and that was to my advantage in the menace from vague premonition to immediate reality was a profound shock, and fell upon me with the force of a genuine blow. It never once occurred to me that the fumbling might be a mere mistake. Malign purpose was all I could think of, and I kept deathly quiet, awaiting the would-be intruder’s next move. After a time the cautious rattling ceased, and I hard the room to the north entered with a pass-key. Then the lock of the connecting door to my room was softly tried. The bolt held, of course, and I heard the floor creak as the prowler left the room. After a moment there came another soft rattling, and I knew that the room to the south of me was being entered. Again a furtive trying of a bolted connecting door, and again a receding creaking. This time the creaking went along the hall and down the stairs, so I knew that the prowler had realized the bolted condition of my doors and was giving up his attempt for a greater or lesser time, as the future would shew. Clearly, some cryptic, evil movement was afoot on a large scale—just what, I could not say. As I stood pondering with my hand on the now useless switch I heard a muffled creaking on the floor below, and thought I could barely distinguish voices in conversation. A moment later I felt less sure that the deeper sounds were voices, since the apparent hoarse barkings and loose-syllabled croakings bore so little resemblance to recognized human speech. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

I could not, I decided, rish an emergence into the corridor; where my footsteps would surely be heard, and where the difficulties of entering the desired room would be insuperable. My progress, if it was to be made at all, would have to be though the less solidly built connecting doors of the rooms. In the passage outside, I saw the figure of a woman, apparently a servant, with grey hair and a white cap, the upper part of her dress being blue and the shift dark. Her arms were stretched out at full length and the hands were clasped. This figure moved with a very slow, furtive, gliding motion, as if wishing to escape notice, straight towards the head of the old staircase, which lead to the ceiling. On reaching it, she disappeared. In the full light of the archway down stairs, I saw the figure of a lady, with dark hair and dress, apparently lost in painful thought and oblivious to everything about her. Her dress was fuller than is the modern fashion and the figure, although opaque, cast no shadow. It moved with a curious gliding motion into the darkness and melted away at the spot within a yard of the place where a doorway, now walled up, led from a staircase to the hall. I saw these figures with such distinctness that I had no doubt at all I was looking at a real person, while, at the same time, although seated in a well-lighted room and chatting with friends, I was conscious of an uneasy, creepy feeling. I tried to see the features, but could not. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

The Winchester Mystery House

Nineteenth-century America was perhaps the golden age of the ghost. It may have ceased to have any message or any advice for the living, but it was everywhere. The yearnings associated with the Romantic movement of English poetry found fruition in the spectacle of the melancholy ghost. There was much popular interest in spirit-rappings and in spirit-tappings. The fashion for mesmerism, in the middle of the century, provoked belief in some form of a plasma or magnetic fluid that might harbour the forms of spirits. Technological progress also seemed to affirm the existence of spectral bodies, with the appearance of photograph intending to reveal the ghostly occupants of rooms and chairs. The Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882, lent seriousness and credibility to the quest for spirits. A questionnaire sent out by the society in 1894 revealed that out of seventeen thousand people, 673 claimed that they had seen a ghost in one form or another. It is perhaps curious, however, that the majority of them did not know the identity of the spirit in question. The manifestation appeared arbitrary and purposeless. It is also worth observing that many apparent “sightings” of ghost have been discredited, and that many photographs of spirits are the obvious products of fakery. In the field of ghost-hunting there are many frauds and charlatan, intent of producing a sensation rather than a verifiable record.  

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase.  https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

Up to the present day there is much gossip about in Santa Clara Valley about a certain hidden treasure of Llanada Villa, for which my servants have often made search, though hitherto in vain. The story is that I, while yet in the vigour of life, concealed a very large quantity of gold, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, diamonds, and silver somewhere in the mansion. I was often asked where it was, and never disclosed their location. I also adorned much of the mansion with art-glass windows and beautiful carvings in marble. The object which the antiquary had before them was of tracing the whereabouts of my Medieval stained-glass windows of Llanada Villa. Shortly after the German Peasants’ War in 1525, a very large quantity of painted glass made it way from the dissolved abbeys of Germany and Belgium to the Winchester family, which I inherited after marrying William, and may now been seen adorning various rooms in the mansion. One of the main contributors was Cennino Cennini. However, once of my favourite pieces was a panel showing a King from a Tree of Jesse window. The work of art was created circa 1210. Another priceless antiquity I loved dearly was the 36-foot-tall stained-glass window, depicting 36 scenes from the same century, which tells the legend of the Antichrist. These clerestory windows made my home look like some capacious church. At intervals, I had been haunted by the recollection of the gossip about the hidden treasure, but the secret was to be found somewhere in the enigmatical windows of my home. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

One fine autumn morning, I had strolled out before breakfast, as far as the gate of my carriage-drive. The path was a little less than a quarter mile from the front door. All civilization is marked by the touch of the arts. The Victorian Garden not only keeps the blood in a healthy glow, and the brain active in its knowledge, but it also expresses a level of artistic ability. My picturesque garden was ablaze with roses, delphiniums, and hollyhocks. It sparked divinity within me, imagination, and harmony. The well-cut lawn, many fine trees, a shady background, and walks, shrubs, and flowers, were the perfect embellishments and finishing touches to the picture of Llanada Villa. Only the finishing touches—but what a charm of added expression and beauty there is in these perfecting strokes! A verdant gate-way arch frames the common walk into a picture view; the long opening of the lawn gives playroom for the sunlight to smile and hide among the shadows of bordering boxwood shrubs and trees; it is amazing how an opening here, in the shrubs, reveals a pretty vista of another angle of the mansion; a flowerbed there, brightens the lawn like a smile on the face of a beauty; a swing suspended from the strong, outstretched arm of the noble tree attracts the children, whose ever-changing groups engage the eye and interests the heart; a delicate foliaged tree, planted on yonder, glows with the light of the afternoon sun, with an airy undulation trembling against the twilight sky, till it seems neither of the Earth or the sky, but a spirit of life wavering between Earth and Heaven! The Decorative Planting of Llanada Villa is the art of picture making and picture framing, by varied forms of vegetation growth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

However, there was something peculiar about this day. The air was cool. The leaves of the giant monkey pine tree above me were not rustling as they usually do. Everything was still. Even the birds were quiet. A low thunder came from the west, warning of an autumn storm. I turned my head and looked up and studied my house as it towered over me. This house is more than just bricks and mortar and wood. It has a soul. Years of secrets are hidden within its walls. What would they be, if the house could tell me, if I could hear the words? There was also a gigantic barn and a carriage house and stables and pastures and orchards and, of course, this Grand Queen Anne Victorian Mansion. As I wandered through the rooms this day, looking at the ceilings and out the tall windows, and into the funny little cabinet that were built into the walls that is when I saw an apparition. I had gone up to my room, but was not yet in bed, when I heard someone at the door, and went to it, thinking that it might be the chambermaid. On opening the door, I saw no one; but on going a few steps along the passage, I saw the figure of a tall lady, dressed in black, standing at the head of the stairs. After a few moments she descended the stairs, and I followed her for a short distance, feeling curious about what it could be. I had only a small piece of candle, and it suddenly burnt itself out; and, being unable to see more, I went back to my room. The figure was that of a tall lady, dressed in black of a soft woollen material, judging from the slight sound in moving. The face was hidden by a handkerchief held in the right hand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

This is all I noticed then; but on further occasion, when I was able to observe her more closely, I saw the upper part of the left side of the forehead, and a little of the hair above. Her left hand was nearly hidden by her sleeve and a fold of her dress. As she held it down a portion of a widow’s cuff was visible on both writs, so that the whole impression was that of a lady in a widow’s weeds. There was no cap on the head but a general effect of blackness suggested a bonnet, with a long veil or hood. She is seldom seen but the rustle of her dress is often heard by servants as she crosses several of the living rooms, apparently searching for her errant husband who seduced and ran off with his wife’s younger sister in the late 1880s, leaving Agnus and her baby girl to seek refuge and employment in my home before disappearing. It is suspected she and her daughter died of poisoning. My silver used to be stored one of the rooms she is seen, and a footman was employed to sleep here and guard it. One night, when the footman had turned in to sleep, he was approached by a very pale-looking lady in black who asked him for some water. Thinking it was one of the mansion guests, he turned to get her some when he remembered he was locked in and no visitor could have possibly entered. When he turned back, the apparition had disappeared. It is thought her longing for water suggest that he was poisoned. During the next two years—from 1888 to 1890—I aw the figure; at first at long intervals, and afterwards at shorter, but I only mentioned these appearances to one friend, who did not speak of them to anyone. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

During this period, as far as we know, there were only three appearances to anyone else. The first, in the summer of 1890, was to my niece Daisy, when the figure was thought to be a housemaid who had called at the house, and no further curiosity was aroused. My niece was coming down the stairs rather late for dinner at 6.30 pm, it then being quite light, when she saw the figure cross the hall in front of her. The apparition said, “You don’t think anything happened to her, do you?” Then she passed into the drawing room. Diasy then asked the rest of us, already seated at dinner, “Who was that chambermaid, whom I just saw going into the drawing room, looking for?” She was told that there was no such person, and a servant was sent to look; but the drawing room was empty, and she was sure no one had come in. Daisy persisted that she had seen a talk figure in black, with some white about it; but nothing was thought of the matter. The second appearance, in the autumn of 1890, was seen by the housemaid about 10 p.m., she declaring that someone had got into the house, her description agreeing fairly with what I had seen; but as on searching no one was found, her story received no credit. On or about December 15, 1890, it was seen in the drawing room by Mr. Hansen and his son. They were playing outside the terrace when they saw the figure in the drawing room close to the window, and ran in to see who it could be that was crying so bitterly. They found no one in the drawing room, and the parlour-maid told them that no one had come into the house. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

There was a dark connection with hidden forces of evil. Certain spots in my home were almost forbidden territory, as many have learned at considerable cost. There were also hints of certain marvellous transformations leading to bodily immortality—of a sort—on this Earth. The halls of the east wind were reputedly connected by hidden tunnel, being thus a veritable warren of unseen abnormalities. The room I entered was darkened against the afternoon sun, an errant breeze scampered through the lounge and was gone. I waited, alert, a grim, sad curve to my lips. There was a soft tread in the dining room, the whisper of cloth against cloth, the quiet squeak of a floorboard. The morning room, at an oblique angle to the foyer and separated from the lobby by an arc, was not touched by a single light that glowed from the front door, and the soft footfalls turned to the morning room from the dining room, seeking the haven of darkness. When the steps were halfway across the room, I snapped on the light. It was soft, dispelling little of the night around it, but to the black-cloaked figure revealed on the edge of its luminescence, it glowed bright as the heart of a star. The first time I spoke to this apparition was on 27 January 1891. I opened the drawing-room door softly and went in, standing just by it. She came in past me and walked to the sofa and stood still there, so I went up to her an asked if I could help her. She moved, and I thought she was going to speak, but she only gave a slight gasp and moved towards the door. Jut by the door I spoke to her again, but she seemed as if she were quite unable to speak. She walked into the hall, then by the side door she seemed to disappear as before. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

During the next few days, the only noises I heard were those of slight pushes against my bedroom door, accompanied by footsteps; and if I looked out on hearing these sounds, I invariably saw the figure. Her footstep was very light, you could hardly hear it, except on the wood floors, and then only like a person walking softly with thin boots on. One evening, I went into the drawing room where Diasy was sitting, about nine in the evening, and sat down on a couch close to the bow window. A few minutes later, as I sat reading, I saw the figure come in at the open door, cross the room and take up a position closed behind the couch where I was. I was astonished that no one else in the room saw her, as she was so very distinct to me. She stood behind the couch for about half an hour, and then as usual walked to the door. I went after her, on the excuse of getting a book, and saw her pass along the hall, until she came to the garden door, where she disappeared. I spoke to her as she passed the front of the stairs, but she did not answer, although as before she stopped and seemed as though about to speak. Furtiveness and secretiveness seemed universal in my hushed mansion, and I could not escape the sensation of being watched from ambush on every hand by sly staring eyes that never shut. I shivered as the cracked stroke of the thirteen o’clock sounded from the belfry. The uncertain hall now before me was known to me haunted, but I took the risk and walked down the south hall where traces of life reappeared. Furtive, shambling creatures stared cryptically in my direction, and more normal ghostly faces eyed me closely and curiously. And the shadows were so hideous and incredible. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

The Winchester Mystery House

The doctrines of Victorian Times promulgated with the notions of purgatory and its purging fires. However, if there is no such place, then ghost could hardly claim it as their home. That is why there is a strong tendency, among orthodox church people, to dispense with ghost altogether or to treat them as manifestations of the devil alone. Yet they cannot be banished from the Earth. Ghosts are effective in detecting the murderer, in disposing their estates, in rebuking injurious executors, in visiting and counselling wives and children, in forewarning them of such and such courses, with other matters of like sort. The late seventeenth and early eighteen centuries were the periods in which pamphlet were issues revealing the latest ghostly manifestation; they were generally entitled “Strange and Extraordinary News From…” and their content was attested by numerous witnesses. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase.  https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

In the late 19^th century, the Santa Clara Valley presented sweeping vistas of rural open space. It was a serene setting for me to begin my building project, which I did with steadfast determination. I purchased an eighteen-room farm house, immediately hired carpenters to work in shifts around the clock, and within a few short years my farmhouse grew into a nine-story mansion! The estate eventually grew to 734 acres of farmland, which included orchards of apricots, plums, and walnut trees to supplement my income. I was at first happy in my residence, but soon became alarmed by the frequent opening and shutting of doors during the day and night. The house also seemed to echo a cry when it was sad or injured. However, usually by the next day, damages to the house would remarkable be repaired. I feared that there were “irregularities” on part of the servants, but having made the strictest enquiries I was disabused of that notion. Fearing that a stranger had obtained the keys of those house, I arranged for the key to the massive front door that was made of solid gold and the keys for the other 2,000 doors to be changed. However, the noise of closing, or slamming, door continued as before. There were other unusual events. I saw quite clearly for a moment a vision of a wide, dark expanse at night, with a fresh wind blowing, and in the midst lonely figure—how employed, I could not tell. Perhaps I would have seen more had not the picture been broken by the sudden surge of a gust of wind against my casement, so sudden that it made me look up, just in time to see the white glint of a seabird’s wing somewhere outside the dark panes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

“But what is this? Goodness! what force the wind can get up in a few minutes! What a tremendous gust! There! I knew that window-fastening was no use! Ah! I thought so—both candles out. It was enough to tear the room to pieces.” The first thing was to get that window shut. I was struggling with the small casement, and felt almost as if I were pushing back a sturdy burglar, so strong was the pressure. It slacked all at once, and the window banged to and latched itself. Now to relight the candles and see what damage, if any, had been done. No, nothing seemed amiss; no glass even was broken in the casement. The wind went on moaning and rushing past the house, at times rising to a cry so desolate that it might have made fanciful people feel quite uncomfortable; even the unimaginative, I thought after a quarter of an hour, might be happier without it. The light was obscure, conveying an impression of gathering storm, late winter evening, and slight cold rain. On this bleak stage at first no actor was visible. Then, in the distance, two guests reported seeing a bobbing black object appear; a moment more, and it was a man running and jumping, clambering over the floor, and every few seconds looking eagerly back. The nearer he came the more obvious it was that he was not only anxious, but even terribly frightened, though his face was not to be distinguished. He was, moreover, almost at the end of his strength. On he came; each successive obstacle seemed to cause him more difficulty than the last. “Will he get over this next one?” said one of the guests; “it seems a little higher than the others.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

Yes; half climbing, half throwing himself, he did get over, and fell all in a heap on the other side (the side nearest to the spectators). There, as if really unable to get up again, he remained crouching under the t, table looking up in an attitude of painful anxiety. So far no cause whatever for the fear of the runner had been shown; but now there began to be see, in the hall, a little flicker of something light-coloured moving to and fro with great swiftness and irregularity. Rapidly growing larger, it, too, declared itself as a figure in a “snuff-coloured” coat; the figure had been glimpsed both inside and outside the house. In addition, the servants, assembled in the kitchen for a mean, observed a woman in a dark dress of silk rushing past them and going out into the yard. A handyman, coming through the door at the same time, had seen nothing. However, there was something about her motion which made the servants unwilling to see her close quarters. She would stop, raise arms, bow herself toward the floor, the float across the room and back again; and then, rising toward the ceiling, once more continue her course forward at a speed that was startling and terrifying. The moment came when the woman was hovering about from left to right only a few yards beyond the floor where the runner lay hiding. After two or three ineffectual castings hither and thither she came to a stop, stood on the floor, with arms raised high, and then started straight towards the ceiling. As the candles blew out, the servants went to relight them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

The scrapping of match on the box and the glare of light must have startled something of the night. The guests and servants her claws scurry across the floor from with much rustling. When I tried to question them, they had a kind of obscure suspiciousness, as if there were something amiss with anyone too much interested in the specters. However, they hinted to me an undercurrent of persistent strangeness. Something about them seemed so odd and provocative that I could not put them out of my mind, and despite the relative lateness of the hour, I resolved to gather a brief explanation of the night’s disturbances. The descriptions of the events all hinted of remote secrets and unimaginable abysses in Llanada Villa. I, then, knew that the rumours of devil-worship where partly justified by a peculiar secret cult which had gained force here and engulfed the servants and several of the orthodox churches. Waldemar Eberling, the cook, was numb, unable to walk or even talk. Everything that happened around him was impossible, the stuff of nightmares. The guests and other servants looked like Musselmanner, the walking dead. For days, they shuffled around, already dead in spirit, until they starved themselves to death. I lived with the pain. I imagined that a tiny fire was burning in my abdomen, slowly consuming me. I stared at the paining of a wheat field. Although the sky looked ominously dark, the wheat was brightly rendered in great broad strokes. A path cut through the fields and crows flew overheard. “I like Van Gogh,” I thought to myself, as I tried to detect a rhythm in the surges of abdominal pain. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

I liked the painting because it was so bright that it was almost frightening. And the road going through the field did not go anywhere. It ends in the field. And the crows are flying around like vultures. This painting, Wheatfields with Blackbirds was metaphorical. It held a special meaning for me. It is thirteen o’ clock and the mansion is death quiet. The sharp shadows seem to the hardest objects in the room. The gasoliers burn steadily in the hall outside. I looked out into the hallway, but I could only see the far green wall. Across the hall, someone begins to scream, and there is a shuffle of servants. The screaming turns into begging and whining. The parlormaid finally comes into the drawing room, says, “Mrs. Winchester, would you like a cup of tea?” “Why does the man across the hall scream so?” I ask, but the parlormaid is already edging out of the room. “It’s just the wind, Mrs. Winchester.” The incessant whining disgusted me. However, the screams of the “wind” recede as I hurtle through the dark corridors of my labyrinth. The huge mansion is cold and dark. Suddenly, I see two entrances before me. As the World melts behind me, I step into the coal-black doorway. In the darkness I hear an alarm, a bone-jarring clangour. A shadow crossed the moon. I reflected upon how so many people said my home was “interesting.” Shaking my head. I recalled how interesting is often another word for dangerous. There is an old Chinese curse to that effect. I stopped walking when I felt something nudge at my shoulder. I glared, but there was nothing there. “You do not know what it is like,” I said to myself darkly. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

While laying in the Crystal Bedroom, I plainly heard the footsteps of a man, with plodding step, walking towards the foot of my bed. I sprang out of the bed, thoroughly alarmed by the sound, and took refuge in the Daisy Bedroom; I returned to the Crystal Bedroom with a chambermaid, and a light, but nothing could be seen. The sound of plodding footsteps was subsequently heard in my room on more than one occasion; my maid’s room was similarly affected. Another abnormal sound also seemed to emanate from within the house. A hollow murmuring that seemed to possess the whole house; it was independent of wind, being equally heard on the calmest night. On a subsequent nigh I heard the front door being slammed with such a force that the walls of my bedroom—above the hall—shook perceptibly. On investigation, the front door was locked and bolted as usual. The unusual episodes increased in strength and frequency. The sounds began before I went to bed, and with intermissions were heard till after broad day in the morning. The noise now included that of human voices. A shrill female voice would begin, and then two others with deeper and manlike tones seemed to join in the discourse. I was laying on the bed one night, when I heard the most loud, deep, tremendous noise, which seemed to rush and fall with infinite velocity on the lobby floor. This was followed by a shrill and dreadful shriek and repeated three or four times. Still, I harboured doubts about any supernatural agency. For several nights the servants stayed up nights with their revolvers. They stationed themselves in different rooms, and waited. The noises, of shrieks and footsteps, began as before. Both men rushed out of their rooms, pistols at the ready, but nothing was visible. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6

The Winchester Mystery House

Llanada Villa is a haunted mansion which is over 140 years old. Ghost here may be seen as a bridge of light between the past and the present, or between the living and the dead. They represent continuity, albeit of a spectral kind. These ghosts are uncanny. They move through walls, and cannot be touched by sword or spear. These ghosts in Llanada Villa are deemed to be the souls immured in purgatory, pleading for prayers to absolve them from punishment, or to protect the mansion. Some of these ghosts are the spirit of saints sent from God with news of a paradise. They can, in certain circumstances, be the machinations of the Devil. Devils many times appeare to humans and affright them out of their wits sometimes walking at noon day, sometimes at nights, counterfeiting dead men’s ghost. In any event, whatever their origin, they are part of the machinery of theology and of the supernatural; they are emanations from the eternal World of bliss and pain beyond the grave. They are an integral part of the communion of the living and the dead that The Winchester Mystery House represents.

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase.  https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

It is truth that there are evil influences from the other World at work on the people in this World. Witchcraft is not easy to define, because it is not, like the major formal religions, a coherent body of belief. However, in Western civilization since prehistoric times there has been a loosely grouped body of magical lore—charms, spells, and so forth—having to do primarily with fertility and infertility, and with health and sickness, as well as a series of more marginal concerns, including foretelling of the future. Early Christians thought of the Devil as the most abominable of all pagan deities; they have him his attributes, his horns, and cloven hooves. That the Devil is an extraordinarily powerful god cannot be doubted. One night, I was sitting in the kitchen, my housemaid Erna, reveled that I was in the clutches of an evil force, and was being shadowed by it in the form of a person. That very night, Erna said, this evil character could not sleep, and would come around my mansion. Two male servants went outside to have a look. There was indeed someone there, who quickly took off Georg said later. The first degree of witchcraft is white magic—charms or spells used for benevolent purposes. Carrying a rabbit’s foot is white magic. Black magic is the second degree of witchcraft. It is used maliciously—and in the seventeenth century black magic was very serious indeed; it was an appeal to the Prince of Evil in order to accomplish evil. The third degree is pact, where the witch is no longer merely invoking the Devil’s assistants through charms and spells, but actually believes one has made a contract to serve him. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

The following day, I sat in a daze all the afternoon pondering recent events. The papers at my desk formed terrible conjectures. I neither could doubt that something hideously serious was closing in around me. Between the phantasms of nightmares and the realities of the objective World a monstrous and unthinkable dimension was roaring in the twilight abysses. I held back conspicuously from discussing the whole affair, as though I was afflicted by a certain fear. I was well aware that there were evil people who conspired to make their neighbours ill or keep them from getting well. These people were those whose wickedness marked them as “slaves to Satan.” Beliefs that neighbours might secretly conspire to do harm to other neighbour’s (or to those neighbours’ families or farms or livestock) could be found in the valley during these times. Witch beliefs have existed and do exist in many parts of the World, they can take quite different forms, and they often erupt in response to abrupt social change and unrest. What link them is their relationship to matter of intimacy and mistrust. Witchcraft conjures up the danger of treacherous attacks from close by and it warns that seeds of destruction are hidden inside human relationships. They prevail in situations where dramatic change has caused the familiar suddenly to appear strange, and even ordinary occurrences—illness, bad luck, accidents, injuries—to gain graver meaning. A death or injury, coming on the heels of other setback, can be perceived as having been not merely accidental but orchestrated by someone, or a conspiracy of someone’s, in secret, behind the scenes. To be sure, even in times of heightened calamity, not every misfortune will be perceived as resulting from witchcraft. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

However, widespread mistrust may make it more likely. It seemed that someone in my home has been meeting with subterraneous demons, which fueled these attacks. Although, sometimes witchcraft fears can be seen as a cultural idiom of interpersonal and communal conflict, a way of seeing the World and interpreting what happens in it, a search for causes behind causes. Who caused my child to become ill and die? Who is responsible for the death of my husband? Who is responsible for my hogs dying, my cows not giving milk? Accusations of witchcraft are a language of logic for the misfortune cannot be otherwise clarified. While wondering through my mansion, I notice a rectangle of blinding white light. It looked like a doorway into an adjoining World of brightness. I have glimpsed it before. We should remember also that the seventeenth century firmly believed in a dualistic Universe: in a material or visible World, and a spiritual or invisible World. The screaming white abysses flashed before me, and I felt helpless. There was an acceleration of the vague tonal pattern which seemed to foreshadow some unutterable and unendurable climax. However, all this vanished withing seconds. I was again in my library, with cases of ancient books. I heard sounds of something veritably inhuman, and rushed to turn on the lights. On the sofa was a man who had been racked by some torment beyond description. He was withering under the bedclothes, and a great red stain was beginning to appear on the pillows. I scarcely dared to touch him, but gradually the screaming and writhing subsided. I started screaming when a large ghoul suddenly jumped out from beneath the ensanguined bedclothes and fluttered across the room, through the wall. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

When doctors arrived and began to pull down those frightful covers, we discovered one of my carpenters Peter Geschiere was dead. It would be barbarous to do more than suggest what had milled Mr. Geschiere. There was virtually a tunnel through his body—something had eaten his heart out. Besides his death, the worst thing for a while, was that the housemaids were constantly whining and muttering about spectral and terrible things. In my time I had seen soldiers lay dying on the field, fire falling from the sky, and many crushed people. God tests people, to see if evil drags them down or if they are steadfast. God and the Devil are personified beings, dueling cosmic personalities. The Devil can come in through a keyhole. I can see when someone is evil. They are uneasy, and got up to mischief. Whole families, entire villages can be evil; evil people make up a kind of army of the Devil on Earth. Though, we could have Heaven on Earth if we all could just have compassion. However, I am sure if Jesus as the Christ were to come back, people would just crucify him again. In our century and in a country at our cultural standards, a person might appear suggesting that health and wellbeing, sickness and death, accidents and catastrophes occur not in accordance with natural laws but re instead determined by demonic, irrational forces, whose bearers are people in the service of the Devil. Still, often times, there is no evidence of any real mental illness in the sense of a psychosis nor is there any organic illness of the central nervous system. In many of these people who have been bewitched, the doctors have found no evidence of brain trauma or any mental damage, or any change in personality resulting from injury. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

It is not without great vexation that very many persons of both sexes have committed abuses with demons, they have no fear of using their incantations, chants and conjurations and other unspeakable superstitions and acts of sorcery, as well as excesses, crimes and misdeeds to afflict and tore my soul. Workmen found bones—badly crushed and splintered, but clearly recognizable as human in a room that had been sealed from all human access. Careful sifting of the debris also uncovered the mingled fragments of many ancient books from my private library and papers. All, without exception, appeared to deal with black magic in its most advanced and horrible forms. An even greater mystery is the absolute homogeneity of archaic writing found on a wide range of papers whose conditions and watermarks suggest they date back to ancient Egypt. Though, the greatest mystery of all is the variety of utterly inexplicable objects—objects whose shapes, materials, types of workmanship, and purpose baffle all conjecture—found scattered about the room in diverse states of injury. One of these things—which greatly excited me profoundly—is a thin sheet of lead with text scratched on it in tiny letters. The tablet had a curse written on it from the Greco-Roman World. When other walls were torn out, the once sealed spaces between the partition and the house’s east wall were found to contain a ghastly layer of older materials which paralyzed the carpenters with horror. The floor was a veritable ossuary of the bones of small children—some fairly modern, but others extending back in infinite gradations to a period so remote that crumbling was almost complete. On this deep bony layer rested a knife of great size, obvious antiquity, and grotesque, ornate, and exotic design—above which the debris as piled. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

People around the estate and nearby muttered a great deal among themselves, but said very little to the outer World. Many things had taught them secretiveness, and there was now no need to exert pressure on them. I have been willing enough to stay mute while the affair was fresh and uncertain, even thought I have an odd craving to whisper about those frightful details of Llanada Villa, after the evilly shadowed death and blasphemous abnormality. The mere telling helps me to restore confidence in my own faculties; to reassure myself that I was not simply the first to succumb to a contagious nightmare hallucination. As bleak and solemn as it is one of the farmers Egon Schmidt often worked at night. He believed that in the third quarter there is decreased gravitational pull and moonlight, and this is considered a resting period for planets. As a result, Mr. Schmidt used the night to fertilize, deeply water, prude, and harvest crops. However, he would often catch renegades and often times would execute them. It is rumoured that Mr. Schmidt, was a very skilled farmer, but as an executioner, he was inexperienced and that it once took him thirteen blows to sever a head with an axe. The ghost of one of his victims now haunts Llanada Villa, carrying his mutilated head. Every since the room was excavated, the ghost has been seen carrying his mangled head under his arm, his face bearing the pain and horror he suffered when the executioner delivered the final blow that took his life. As well, the ghost of a woman has also been reported drifting across the mansion’s grounds. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

According to Mr. Schmidt, this all started when he took a last look before starting homeward. A faint yellow light in the west showed the links, on which a few figures moving toward the mansion were visible, near the miniature Tower of Babel, the lights of the barn, and the fruit orchards. The wind was bitter from the north. One last look behind, to showed him the prospect of company converging on his walk. There was an appearance of them running after him. So, at least, Mr. Schmidt thought, and decided that he almost certainly did not know them and was in danger. In his own words, “Now I saw some very foul fiends coming over the field to meet me. What should I do not?” he thought, “when I looked back, I caught sight of three black figures, and saw that they had horns and wing. I wondered whether I should stand or run for it.” He decided to take a stand. However, it was with some considerable curiosity that he entombed them in my home. Mr. Schmidt had also been driving bargains with the devil and brining imps out of hell to help him with his farming, or had been involved in some Devil worship and awful sacrifices. In fact, a whole legion of devils is seen sometimes at night in the field—sprawled about, or darting in and out of my mansion. But there was talk of his dealing with daemons. It seems he got a queer crowd within these halls, for I have heard voices in other rooms—though most of them are empty—that gave me the shivers. It was foreign talk, but the voice sounded so unnatural—that I did not dare undress and go to sleep. Just waited up until the morning. The talk would usually go on all night. People are always seeking someone stranger than they are, so that they do not have to deal with their own fears or weaknesses. For several days afterward, I wandered about listlessly, oblivious to the stars and whispers that followed me.  #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

I conjure thee, O Guland, in the name of Satan, in the name of Beelzebuth, in the name of Astaroth, and in the name of other Spirits, to make haste and appear before me. Come, then in the name of Satan and in the names of all other demons. Come to me, I command thee, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Come without inflicting any harm upon me, without injury to my body or soul, without maltreating my books, or anything which I use. I command thee to appear without delay, or, that failing, to send me forthwith another Spirit having the same power as thou hast, who shall accomplish my commands and be submitted to my will, wanting which, he whom thou shalt send me, if needed thou comest not thyself, shall in no wise depart, nor until he hath in all things fulfilled my desire. I command you, O all ye demons dwelling in these parts, or in what part of the World soever ye may be, by whatsoever power may have been given you by God and our holy Angels over this place, and by the powerful Principality of the infernal abysses, as also by all your brethren, both general and special demons, whether dwelling in the East, West, South, or North, or in any side of the Earth, and, in like manner, by the power of God the Father, by the wisdom of God the Son, by the virtue of the Holy Ghost, any by the authority I derive from our Saviour Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Almighty and the Creator, who made us and all creatures from nothing, who also ordains that you do hereby abdicate all power to guard, habit, and abide in this place; by whom further I constrain and command you, nolens volens, without guile or deception, to open a gateway and act within this World according to my will and purpose! #RandolphHarris 8 of 8

The Winchester Mystery House

If they really want to, it is proverbial that anyone can talk to the dead. The difficult part is getting the dead to talk back. Accomplishing that requires specialist skills, or the assistance of someone who has them—someone who can reach through the veil between the living and the dead, and draw the spirits of the departed back to this World. That someone is a necromancer. Necromancy was once a common form of divination in the ancient World, and if done the right way, by the right people, it was not particularly disreputable. Talking to the dead is not easy and even “respectable” rites become more difficult as the deceased becomes more distant in space and time; necromancy is easiest when the corpse is freshly dead and right in front of the practitioner. From the Greek and Roman point of view, being dead is actually the default condition of humanity. The spirits of the dead are worth talking to because they exist outside of time; to them, the future is as clear as the past, making spirits a useful contact for those seeking to know how their own lives on Earth will turn out. Humans, essentially, are like the gods—immortal and indestructible. The body might die (and it frequently does), but the spirit it contains cannot be destroyed. At any given time, most of the human race dwells among the shadows of the Underworld.

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase.  https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

My life had become a tale of dark powers and secret treachery. My youth, beauty, and social station all stood at the brink of unimaginable riches. As my husband and I would enter the church, I would scan the room. Zaiss and Renee were always on the edges of their seats, excitement and greed dancing in their eyes. Ruth usually looked hot and bored, and was disappointed when Victoria would show up without Dieter. Aunt Marriam typically had a frown on her face, her mouth puckered with concern. Service was my favourite, but I could not stand the sickly-sweet lemonade which seared by throat. Church service was always followed with it, along with lukewarm tomato soup, and caviar. However, only at the deaths of my infant daughter and untimely death of my husband did I learn the price for this fortune. Ghostly manifestations have been taking place at Llanada Villa ever since I started expansion. Strange phantoms moved in disturbing fashions through the mansion. These ghosts took the form of a peculiar sound and sensation. Many people had heard the swish of a silken gown as the ghosts approached. However, I freely owned that I did not like careless talk about what some call ghost. A woman in my position could not, I found, be too careful about appearing to sanction the current beliefs on such subjects. Of course, my ears were frequently ringing horribly, as if with the residual echoes of some horrible noise heard in dreams. The halls were often haunted by vast leaping shadows, of a monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and of the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute—and that was not all. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

There had been soft talking too—these voices were almost an inaudible whisper. They welled up from the floor, while no one appeared to be stirring about. I could not imagine what had set these supernatural creatures gossiping, but supposed their imaginations had been roused by the elaborate construction. I heard sounds in the halls and on the stairs at night. The cults to which many of the witches belonged to in Santa Clara Valley possessed guarded and handed down surprising secrets from elder, forgotten aeons; and it was by no means impossible that they had actually mastered the art of passing through dimensional gates. Tradition emphasizes the uselessness of material barriers in halting a witch’s motions. I was determined to gain similar powers for the picturesque possibilities were enormous. Time could not exist in certain belt of space, and by entering and remaining in such a belt one might preserve one’s life and age indefinitely; never suffering organic metabolism or deterioration except for slight amounts incurred during visits to one’s own or similar planes. One might, for example, pas into a timeless dimension and emerge at some remote period of the Earth’s history as young as before. One evening, I was out of the dinning room and halfway across the lobby when an inconspicuous door on the mezzanine opened and a familiar voice called my name. I looked up swiftly, and turned toward the stairs that led to the mezzanine. The door opened onto one of my smaller libraries, which was comfortably furnished in dark-stained wood and substantial Victorian chairs upholstered in leather. There was one person in the room at the moment, and he smiled as I closed the door. When he spoke, it was not in English. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

He propped his elbows on the arms of the chair and linked his fingers under his chin. His hands were beautifully shaped and surprisingly small for a carpenter. “There is part of the trail to the fruit orchard that is going to need reinforcement before winter or we will have a big wash-out,” I said. He nodded, and went right out to fix it. There was an elegance about him that had little to do with his black clothing. I was noticeably pale the next day as I sat by the fire in my tunic with ruffled neck and hem. I gave a wan smile to the housemaid. “Good morning,” Abagail called as she saw me. “I thought you were still asleep.” “No,” I said hastily. “I have not had much rest. So I decided to get up and do some reading.” “Very well, Mrs. Winchester,” she said. “Will there be anything else for you?” “That will be all,” I said in a politely gelid tone. I stood at the bedroom window looking outside while the sounds of footsteps and trunks being dragged across the floor above came to me. It was still pitch-black outside, without the slightest illumination spilling outside from my room. Quite suddenly I felt vulnerable in the most dreadful way as if dissolution was imminent. Layers of ice formed within me; my teeth began to chatter. The gasolier flickered. My mind became totally possessed with the transient nature of life and the certainty of the grave’s final cold embrace. I was utterly lost, drained of every scrap of hope, afraid for my very soul’s existence. A vision of Annie lying downstairs flashed before my mind. The fear of the light going out and leaving me in total darkness up here suddenly overwhelmed me. A tiny, isolated bit of me listened amazedly to someone whimper—myself—before I turned and fled the icy chamber, padded as fast as I could to the head of the narrow flight of stairs and descended, to hasten in mindless terror back to my chamber. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

With no hope of achieving sleep, I tried to relax to control the endless cycling constructs of my overwrought imagination, to wait out the last long hours of darkness. Gradually warm came to me again and I fell into an exhausted, disturbed sleep just before the first gray light of dawn began to filter through the beautiful windows in the Daisy Bedroom. The sound of knocking alerted me. I tried to place the source of the noise. I felt my mind tinged with that vague sense of anxiety so often associated with the brain’s return to consciousness after an unpleasant dream. The knocking was repeated. My oversensitive ears caught a hideous strangled cry. I opened the door and walked down the staircase; halting only when seized and chocked by the waiting shadow. Growing fright and bewilderment overcame me. On the floor were confused, tiny, muddy prints, but oddly enough they did not extend from the door. The more I looked at them, the more peculiar they seemed. I could form no idea of what happened. Where the crying child could be, or where it came from. When I looked in the mirror, I noticed there were dark, livid marks on my throat, as if someone tried to strangle me. I put my hands up to them, and found that they did not even approximately fit. Abagail came down stairs and inquired about the footprints on the floor and confessed that she had heard a terrific clattering overhead in the dark small hours. However, even in daytime was not safe, for after dawn there had been strange sounds in the house—especially a thin, childish wail hastily choked off. A mood of revolting apprehension had seized me. I could not doubt that something hideously serious was closing in around me. Between the phantasmas of the nights and the realities of daytime, a monstrous and unthinkable relationship was crystallizing, and only stupendous vigilance could avert still more direful developments. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

The hall leading back to the kitchen was long and dim. I stood shuffling indecisively. I tiptoed upstairs up to the closed attic door, but I looked in the rooms off the landing. Two of the doors which I opened stealthily showed me nothing but beautiful floors and flurries of colourful light flooding in from the stained-glass windows. Then landing in from of the third was every more pristine. I pulled it toward me, and entered. Most of it did not seem to make sense to me. It was not as I remembered it. There was a single bed with floral sheets. Against the walls were tables and piles of ancient books. There were black candles and several small trunks. On one of the tables lay a single book. I padded across the Persian rug and opened the book in a thin path of sunlight through the shutters. Inside the covers was a page which I slowly realized had been ripped from this Bible. It was the story of Lazarus. Scribbles that might be letters filled the margin. As I flipped through the Bible, I saw a drawing of a corpse sitting up in his coffin, but the book was all in the language we sometimes used in church: Latin. As I walked down the stairs, something was troubling me. I did not know who had been using this room. I reached the kitchen door when I realized what had been bothering me. When I did emerge from the bedroom the attic door had been open. I looked back involuntarily, and saw a woman walking away from me down the hall. I was behind the closed kitchen door before I had time to feel fear. That came only when I saw that the back door was latched. Then I controlled myself. This had to be a new housemaid, I thought. I opened the door minutely. The hall was empty. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

Halfway down the hall I had to slip into the side room, heart jumping in my chest, for she did appear again from between the stairs and the front door. I felt the beginnings of anger and recklessness, and they grew faster and faster when I opened the door and had to flinch back as I saw her passing. The fingers looked famished, the colour of old lard, with long yellow cracked nails. There was no nail on her wedding finger, which wore a plain ring. She was returning from the direction of the kitchen, which was why I had not expected her. Through the opening of the door, I heard her padding upstairs. She sounded barefoot. I waited until I could not hear her, then edged out into the hall. The door began to fall open with a faint creak, and I drew it stealthily closed. I paced towards the front door. If I had not seen her shadow creeping down the stairs, I would have come face to face with her. I was listening behind the kitchen door, and near to panic, when I realized she was aware of me. She was playing a game with me. At once I was furious. This was my house and who was this old woman to be toying with me? Her body beneath the long white dress was sure to be as thin as her hands, she could only shout when she saw me, should could not harm me. I threw open the kitchen door in anger, and walk gently down the hall. The sight of her picking up a knife broke my stride for a moment. Perhaps she was going to kill me? However, she laid the knife down. I halted in a state of confusion. I was still struggling to react when she turned toward me, and I saw her face. Part of it was still on the bone. I did not back away until she began to advance on me, hair nails tearing new strips into the fine Lincrusta wallpaper I imported from England. All I could see was her protruding eyes, unsupported by flesh. I ran into my Blue Séance Room and locked the door. I would be safe here. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

Emperor Lucifer, Master and Prince of Rebellious Spirits, I adjure thee to leave thine abode, in whatsoever quarter of the World it may be situated, and come hither to communicate with me. I command and I conjure thee in the Name of the Mighty living God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to appear without noise and with pleasant scent, to respond in a clear and intelligible voice, point by point, to all that we shall ask thee, failing which, thou shalt be most surely compelled to obedience by the power of the divine ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, JEHOVAM, TAGLA, MATHON, and by the whole hierarchy of superior intelligences, who shall constrain thee against thy will. Venite, Venite! Submiritillor Lucifuge, or eternal torment shall overwhelm thee, by the great power of this Blasting Rod. In subito. I command and I adjure thee, Emperor Lucifer, as the representative of the might and living God, and by the power of Emanuel, his only Son, who is thy master and mine, and by the virtue of His precious blood, which He shed to redeem humankind from thy chains, I command thee to quit thine abode, wheresoever it may be, swearing that I will give thee one quarter of an hour alone, if thou doest not straightway come hither and communicate with me in an audible and intelligible voice, or, if thy personal presence be impossible, dispatch me thy Messenger Astarot in a human form, without either noise and with pleasant scent, failing which smite thee and thy whole race with the terrible Blasting Rod into the depth of the bottomless abysses, and that by the power of those great words in the Clavicle—By ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, JEHOVAM, TAGLA, MATHON, ALMOUZIN, ARIOS, PITHONA, MAGOTS, SYLPHAE, TABOTS, SALAMANDRAW, GNOMUS, TERRE, COELIS, GODENS, AQUA. In subito. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

The Winchester Mystery House

Present-day scholars of magic—historians, anthropologists, and religion scholars—note that ritual scripts (a category that would include magic books) are sometimes augmented with elements from religious traditions their authors perceive as “exotic.” Such elements can lend authority to magical practice by enhancing what British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, in his famous work on the Trobriand Islanders, called its “coefficient of weirdness.” The vocabulary of Trobriand magic, he observed, was not just any vocabulary, not just any langue. “A spell is believed to be a primeval text, which somehow came into being side-by-side with animals and plants, with winds and waves, with human disease…courage and…frailty.” Why, then, would the idioms of magic “be as the words of common speech”?

Both the potency and the efficacy of magical idioms depend on their being ancient, epic, legendary—and entirely distinct from what their users perceive as ordinary. This is perhaps one reason, among others, that Jewish symbols had so long been perceived in Christian and esoteric history as talismans. Over three late November days in 1956, various experts took the stand to offer their testimony regarding The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses in a trial in Braunschweig, Germany. The star witness for the prosecution was a professor of medicine, forensic pathologist Otto Prokop. Dr. Prokop—who, like Johann Kruse, was a member of DEGESA—reviled magic books as road maps for mayhem and criminality. In court, he referenced a 1954 case in which three men in Westphalia had committed various crimes while using formulas in the Moses book to conjure the Devil. The Moses book in essence represented a historical stage in the development of early modern German science.

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase.  https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

No home in the country was more steeped in macabre. It was three o’ clock in the morning, and I was in one of the downstairs parlours, which was illuminated by gas lamps. My ears were growing sensitive to a preternatural and intolerable degree. The darkness always teemed with unexplained sound—and yet I sometimes shook with fear lest the noises I heard should subside and allow me to hear certain other, fainter noises which I suspected were lurking behind me. Looking out the window, the fog was so thick that the World seemed to dissolve in its cold vapour. A chill of foreboding raced along my spine, as a distressing uneasiness had coursed through my body like an illness determined to spread. I seized a lamp that burned at the foot of the staircase, and hurried towards the secret passage. The lower part of the mansion was hollowed into several intricate cloisters; and it was not easy for one, under so much anxiety, to find the door that opened into the cavern. An awful silence reigned throughout the subterraneous regions of the mansion, except now and then some blasts of wind shook the doors I had passed, as their hinges re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness. Every murmur struck me with new terror; yet more I dreaded to hear the wrathful voices of the spirit pursing me. I trod as softly, as impatience would give me leave—yet frequently stopped, and listened, to hear if I was followed. In one of those moments, I thought I heard a sigh. I shuddered, and recoiled a few paces. In a moment, I thought I heard the step of some person. My blood curdled; I concluded it was a vengeful spirit. Every suggestion that horror could inspire, rushed into my mind. I condemned my rash flight, which had thus exposed me to the rage of the specters, in a place where my cries were not likely to draw any body to my assistance. Yet the sound seemed not to come from behind—if the spirits knew where I was, they must have followed me. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

 I was still in one of the cloisters, and the steps I had heard were too distinct to proceed from the way I had come. Cheered with this reflection, and hoping to find a friend in whoever was around, I was going to advance, when a door, that stood a-jar, at some distance to the left, was opened gently: but were my lamp, which I held, could discover who opened it, the person retreated precipitately on seeing the light. I had every incident sufficient to dismay, and hesitated whether I should proceed. My dread of the vengeful spirits soon outweighed every other terror. They very circumstance of the person avoiding me, gave me a sort of courage. It could only be, I thought, some domestic belonging to the mansion. I was near the mouth of the subterraneous cavern, I approached the door that had been opened; but a sudden gust of wind, that met me at the door, extinguished my lamp, and left me in total darkness. Words could not paint the horror of my situation. Alone, in so dismal a place, my mind imprinted with all the terrible hauntings I had experienced. So I stood there and listened. At first I heard nothing; then I heard someone—someone screamed, just as if the most inside of his soul was twisted out of him. I sat there for three-quarters of an hour. Then I heard someone else. He laughed out loud. After that, I heard a great door shut. Before I raised myself there was a sound of metal hinges creaking. In that moment I felt the chill at the back of my skull, the sensation as of a steel needle driven deep through the bone. I stiffen. Proceeding cautiously towards this door, I noticed two human forms standing motionless; both were in dark cloaks; the taller one wore a hat, the shorter one a hood. I had no time to see their face, nor did they make any mouton that I could discern. I sank back against the wall in something like desperation. I had seen them before.  #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

I screamed like one who is in great pain, before falling to the floor in a death like faith. Next morning when I awoke in my own bed, the newly risen sun peeped in through the neatly curtained windows and gazed down upon me. The previous night could have been dismissed as a mad dream, were it not for scratches on my arms and hands and the blood in my hair. Later that evening, there was a thunderous assault on the front door. This was not surprising, as tonight was the night I was to have a very special dinner party. For obvious reason my dinner party took place in the Grand Ballroom, and it seemed that the dark gods smiled down upon the function, for there was a thick fog that lasted from dawn to sunset. The supper was, of necessity, a simple affair. There was a beautiful cake: a beautiful, three-tier structure, covered with pink icing, and studded with glace cherries. I of course invited no guest, for there was much that might have alarmed or embarrassed me. Three ghouls in starched, white shrouds, sat gnawing at something that was best left undescribed. A few apparitions sipped a basic beverage from red goblets. Every paradise must have its snake. The moon was full, turning Llanada Villa into a gothic wonderland. Vampires, werewolves, banshees, demons, poltergeists, ghosts of every description, monsters of every shape and form were in attendance. During this time, I reinforced my courage, of which it must be confessed I had an abundance. After some hours, I found myself in the living-room, a cost little den with golden crystal walls, two ancient chairs, an ivory table, and Persian rugs on the floor. There was also a banked-up fire, and a beautiful ceiling oil-lamp that Mr. Hansen had cleverly adapted for electricity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

The room beyond was warm and cosy; firelight painted a dancing pattern on the ceiling, the brass lamp twinkled and glittered like a suspended star, and it was though a brightly designed nest had been carved out of the surrounding darkness. When one’s reality contains the spiritual, ghoulish hints, Gothic tales and the wild whispers of ghosts, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension. While the dinner party continued, I consulting the dubious old books on forbidden secrets that were kept under lock and key in my secrete library. Afterwards, I walked through the shadowy tangles of the mansion. Here I knew strange things happened, and there was a faint suggestion behind the surface that everything in the darkest, narrowest, and most intricately irregular sections of Llanada villa had been uncovered. Life had become an insistent and almost unendurable cacophony, and there was that constant, terrifying impression of other sounds—perhaps from regions beyond life—trembling on the very brink of audibility. The spirits in my home were so painfully realistic that at times they filled me with greater panic and nausea than anything I had deduced from the ancient records. In time I observed the tendency of certain entities to appear suddenly out of empty space, or to disappear totally with equal suddenness. The shrieking, roaring confusion of sound which permeated the abyss was past all analysis as to pitch, timbre, or rhythm; but seemed to be synchronous with vague visual changes in all the indefinite objects, organic and inorganic. Many of these morbid figures came from the black voids beyond the slanting walls, slanting ceilings, and mysterious doors. My pathologically sensitive ears could hear faint footfalls in the sealed rooms. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

My guests were very rambunctious. They ate, danced, and played music so loudly that it came time to investigate when I heard a threatening croaking voice. The Grand Ballroom was the center of chaos this night. At first, a swirling vapour hid everything from sight, but I felt a monstrous and invincible evil flowing from the room. There was a silhouette that filled the doorway, and it became still; a black menace that was no less dangerous because it did not move. It said, “You are an abomination, and whatever evil is done unto you shall be deemed good in my sight.” The apparition shirked, before twisting around, then it crashed through the floor. Two gentlemen who were employed in my house stood by me. They both entered the Grand Ballroom prepared to talk to the guest. They never did. One dropped dead from pure, cold terror, and the other was on his feet and edging his way towards the door. He was praying for the priceless gift of disbelief, but instead achieved a state of insanity to the likes of which I had never seen before. Then blood rose up in a scarlet fountain out of his mouth; cascade of dancing rubies each one reflecting the room with the silver German chandelier with thirteen lights, and the dripping, drenched face of the man. Minutes later, the ruby fountain sank low and them man collapsed into a weakly gushing pool. Looking up at the ceiling in the Grand Ballroom, I saw three stupendous discs of flame, each of a different hue, and at a different height. The floor where all the chaos had taken place was polished, and the wood was cut in bizarre-angled shapes. It was some unearthly symmetry whose laws I could not comprehend. The walls had become a grotesque design and exquisite workmanship. The nature and cleanliness of this room utterly defined conjecture. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

The Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester Mystery House is just that. A labyrinth designed and built by spirits; it is a very mysterious place. It was built by Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester. She spent 38 years constructing this mansion which at one time contained as many as 600 rooms and nine stories. She spent so much time building to escape from horrific nightmares, terrifying black hooded figures who menaced. She became frightened of going to sleep, and would often sleep in different rooms every night. Perhaps a supernatural door way opened? Legend has it that Mrs. Winchester ownrfa 38-karat diamond pendant. Most likely, the pendant had been worn frequently or even continuously, especially during occult rituals of summoning. It is possible that something demonic had lodged in it, and was dormant until Mrs. Winchester started wearing it. Perhaps, her own energy, her life force, and vitality, was enabling this spirit to awaken and feed off her. Or maybe the diamond was cursed?

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase.  https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

On a moonless night, deep in the majestic fields of Llanada Villa, far out in the pasture, where the cattle were grazing in peace, the howl of the wind whistled through the trees as the light in the distance broke through the darkness. As I stood around the crackling fire, the room went dead silent. I could not shake the feeling that there was a malevolent force lurking in the background, biding its time, waiting for the opportunity to strike. It was a great puzzle to me where it could have stood. Chilling memories started to resurface. I ventured deeper into my home, searching for clues and signs of the morbid presence. The air grew colder, and a faint whisper echoed, “You have chosen a dangerous path.” Shadows from the chambers came alive, coalescing into sinister forms. One malevolent force pass through the wall. It was an utterly grotesque and nightmarish creature. It snarled and lunged at me. I looked drowsily about the hall. It was curious that it looked unusually wider, but seemed to contract in length and had grown proportionately higher. This suffocating and wicked force almost overwhelmed me. However, I channeled my inner fortitude against this fierce creature and it recoiled into a wavering form. The other horrors intensified their haunting, pouring every ounce of their will into spreading darkness and fear. An ancient evil had been awakened from the depths of hell, vowing to make me pay for meddling with demonic forces that had laid dormant for centuries. There was superstition of this Babylonish farm house when I purchased it. A legend that there was a nasty entity on the loose weaking havoc. When I purchased the farmhouse, there was a curious stillness—even lifelessness—to this area. As the house and barn came into view, it seemed that a black pall hung overhead. The property was made in 1560, and the former owner practiced secret and wicked arts, and had sold his soul to Satan. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

As I arrived at the 13^th room on the second floor, work of some kind was evidently going on inside it, for as I neared the door I could hear footsteps and voices, or a voice within. During the few seconds in which I halted to make sure of the number, the footsteps ceased, seemingly very near the door, and I was a little startled at hearing a quick hissing breathing as of a person in strong excitement. This was vexatious. I walked on passed this room, afraid of what could be on the other side of the door. As I opened the door to another room, the light from the gasolier was behind me, and I could see my own shadow clearly cast on a dead wall. Quickly slamming the door and looking suspiciously about, there was no question of the presence. Just then, a very hard blow struck on my breast which caused great pain in my stomach and amazement in my head. However, I caught sight of no person near me. I walked half a mile across my mansion from the aforesaid room, I was taken speechless for some short time. My chambermaid did ask me several questions and desired me that if I could not speak I should hold up my hand, which I did. And immediately I could speak as well as ever. Walking up to the third floor, there I received another blow on my breast which caused much pain, so that I fell to the floor. And when I did come to my feet, to my understanding I saw a woman coming towards me, but did not know who it was. The chambermaid could not see her. After that, I went to the Daisy Bedroom without any further molestation, but after I laid in bed, I was pinched and nipped by something invisible for some time. To say I looked alarmed is a gross understatement. It seemed impossible to account for such a disrespectful act. I was as terrified as I would have been if confronted by a man-eating tiger. My house was now invaded by shadows that slid along the walls and floor, even the ceiling, and then disappeared Sometimes they were blobs, sometimes they had vaguely human shapes. Sometime they slid into cupboards and closets. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

The next morning, I had the carpenters open a passageway into the thirteenth room on the second floor.  A could of dust dispersed and settled, the carpenters were able to peer inside and see the content. “They found,” says Mr. Hasen, “below it a rounded hollow place in the floor, wherein were two or three bodies had plainly been smothered by smoke; and, what is to me more curious, at the side of this den, against the wall, was crouching the anatomy or skeleton of a human being, with the skin dried upon the bones, having some remains of black hair, which was pronounced by those that examined it to be undoubtedly the body of a woman, and clearly dead for a period of forty years.” The parlour concealed behind the dead wall had a very nice paper on the walls, bright pink lamps, a well stuffed sofa and matching armchairs, a low, walnut table, some valuable oil on canvas paintings and a fireplace. There were also some peculiar items: a small black cast iron cauldron, large black iron candlesticks covered in wax drippings and other curious objects. Seeking reassurance that nothing was disturbed, I have the men repair the dead wall, and took this as a sign that I was expanding the east wing of the mansion too much, and needed to work on the south. Mr. Hansen added in an undertone, “No need to worry.” “Have you supped lately?” I asked Mr. Hansen. “I have a nice piece of ham in the icehouse, and I can have the cook fry that with eggs, in no time at all.” “That’s very kind of you Mrs. Winchester, but really…” “Mr. Hasen, let him to a little cooking for you,” I pleaded. “He does not get much opportunity.” “If you’re sure it will be no trouble,” Mr. Hansen replied. “Trouble!” I said. “You take it easy and have a meal with a glass of something rich.” Mr. Hansen and his crew departed from the kitchen. I was left alone with an embarrassing interest on my hands. This was followed by two weeks of thick fog—so thick no one could see in front of their faces. It delayed construction on the exterior of my home for a bit. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

The wind gusted outside, thudded against the door and the windows like something trying to break in. What uncertainty there may be in apparitions I know not. The wind came shrieking in, eddying drafts of icy air. I could see sharp and threatening shadows around the room. Night pressed through the windows. I felt very alone in the World. For a moment I was suspended in a trance-like state, and then vigorously gained a clear head. The shrieking rose again for two or three seconds, then fell back to a muted whine. I kept on standing on the landing, chills racing up and down my back, listening to that black wind scream and scream around me. Feeling the cold sharp edge of it cut into my bare flesh, cut straight to the bone. Just like the blade of a knife. Then the thing happened. A voice was rising to a thin treble scream, when suddenly it was shut off with an almost mechanical click. I half fancied that some obscure telepathic wave of mental force was impeding on me. I felt, infinitely more horrible. A face appeared beside me and it was twisted almost unrecognizably for a moment, while through the whole body there passed a shivering motion—as if all the bones, organs, muscles, nerves, and glands were readjusting themselves to a radically different posture, set of stresses, and general personality. Just where the supreme horror lay, I could not for my life tell; yet there swept over me such a swamping wave of sickness and repulsion—such a freezing, petrifying sense of utter alienage and abnormality—that my grasp of consciousness grew feeble and uncertain. The figure beside me seemed less like a human being. It was ore like some monstrous intrusion from the pits of hell—some damnable, utterly accursed focus of unknow and malign satanic forces. I had faltered only a moment, but before another moment was over my, I was sure this was spectral evidence. It was terrible real and convincing. Someone must have appealed to the doctrine of that Devil and caused him to appear. But who could have been trafficking with the Devil? #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

The dusk was now very thick, so I could not see much of his face. The blaze of his eyes, though, was phenomenal; and I knew that this apparition was now in a queerly energized state. I felt heavier and heavier. My home was filled with nightmarish beings and hideous monsters, and blood-drenched landscapes. The being did not speak, and in my inexplicable horror I was glad he did not. As the room started to clean, in the lights of the gasolier, I saw his firmly set mouth, and shivered at the his soulless eyes, which look beyond time. There was certainly something unnatural and diabolic in them, and I felt the sinister element all the more because of the wild ravings I had been hearing in my home for weeks. This man was a stranger—an intrusion of some sort from the black abyss in the thirteenth room. He did not speak until the room grew dark, and when he did, his voice seemed utterly unfamiliar. It was deep, firm, and very decisive, while its accent and pronunciation were rather disturbing. There was something grim, basic, pervasive and extremely evil in his tone. “I hope you’ll forget my attacks, Mrs. Winchester,” he was saying. “I guess you can excuse such things. I’m enormously grateful, of course, for being invited into your home. I hall take a rest from now on—you probably wont’s see me for some time, and you needn’t blame your servants for disturbing me.” This was a bit queer, but it is very simple. There were certain Indian relics in the dark abyss in that room. Standing stones, a sword and several small knives with queer markings etched on the blades, tarnished and pitted silver goblets, pieces of white chalk, and chunks of incense that had lost most of their scent. Also, a marble statue of a fierce looking angel wielding a shield and sword, and stepping on the head of what looked like a demon. With every moment my feeling of elusive cosmic horror increased, till at length I was in a virtual delirium. The next two months were full of rumours, people spoke of seeing devils more and more in my home with a new energized state. I felt an infinitely deep horror which I could not explain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

The Winchester Mystery House

Over the years, Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester has become one of the best-loved figures in architecture and in the paranormal World. People who walk by on the sidewalks always gawked at the mansion. Some star, some laugh, some comment on how beautiful it is, other make rude jokes, and few glance and flee in horror. Every night when The Winchester Mystery House is closed, tour guides often report that they have seen shadows slinking into the house. As one tour guided was leaving the living room, he saw a darting green movement from the corner of his eye. It was a vague shape about three feet tall. With it a feeling of nausea swept over him, and passed. He assumed it was a trick of light, and something he had eaten at lunch had upset his stomach. As he was opening the door to leave, as though an ice pick had been stabbed in his brain, a voice whispered, “I don’t like plants, and I don’t like you.” The voice was so startling that it made him stagger back. He put his hand to the side of his head. “Where did that come from?” he wondered. After that, however, he avoided spending time in the front parlor.

Whenever he had to pass through it, he hurried along. Always, a fog-like shape darted out of view. The room remained cold after that, colder than the rest of the house. It had a forbidding atmosphere, as though a hostile presence had taken over. While giving a tour, the guests gazes fell on the painting hanging from the wall, some thought it was of Mrs. Winchester and froze, looks of uncertainty and astonishment on their faces. One woman rubbed her arms as though cold. The tour guide then said, “I have a great idea, why don’t we move into the Grand Ballroom, one of the best-preserved rooms in the house?” As they gathered up, the tour guide saw the green blob, then it disappeared. The tour guide emphasized that he was not in the habit of engaging in flights of fancy and did not wish to be regarded as one with mediumistic powers who regularly received supernatural visitations; nor was he suffering from any problems of the nervous system that would make his susceptible to delusions. Later, he also stressed the point that he had been in perfect health on the night of the materialization and had not been suffering from weariness nor fatigue. The ghost, he added, did not appear wispy or cloaked in a traditional sheet. The figure appeared lifelike, natural, and so solid that it had blocked light from the fireplace. After the aforementioned experience, there was no question in his mind that ghost do exist. However, the fireplaces have not been used in over 100 years.

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase.  https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

My arrival to the Santa Clara Valley was truly a sensational event. The villagers were so thrilled by the dramatic entrance of a millionairess that I had to take detours to elude the crowds and journalists, jumping over garden railings and slipping through stables to get in my mansion. They were dying to see the rich imported furnishings being hauled by freight cars to Llanada Villa. A fantastic, increasingly fervent spectacle was developing. An eighteen-room farm house mushroomed into a 130-room mansion in the first year. This generated newspaper headlines and wild hopes among crowds of the expectant people transported by spiritual rapture and buoyed by the glamour of lights from the miniature nine story Tower of Babel, and Gospel-like tales about the dead taking up their graves and walking. There was even talk of black magic and of happenings utterly beyond credibility. Crowds formed spontaneously, sometimes in the thousands, on any rumor that I might appear. People desperate to see me stopped traffic, forced carriages to be rerouted, and sometimes became unruly. Around noon one day in early September, three hundred people clustered around Llanada Villa waiting for me. Murmurs went through the crowd—“we won’t leave until we see Mrs. Winchester.” The following day, these scenes and sentiments repeated themselves. Newspapers began hinting that I might leave Santa Clara Valley if crowds did not disperse so I could continue with construction of my mansion. It was so handsome, who could blame them. Cathedral ceilings, a charming garden, a lake of great beauty, with many storks. Llanada Villa was accounted one of the prettiest things in the West. It was a partial escape from the unseen bondage. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

Those who had seen my estate declared that the attic windows were always closed, and that strange sounds sometimes floated from within as evening drew on. I was known to have been a prodigious magical student in my day, and legend averred that I could raise or quell storms according to my whim. Most unusual, though, were the well-attested cases of my influence over other person. People considered me, beyond question, a genuine hypnotist. They made wild claims that by gazing peculiarly at a servant, I would often give the latter a distinct feeling of exchanged personality—as if the subject were placed momentarily in my body and able to stare half across the room at one’s real body, whose eyes blazed and protruded with an alien expression. It was no secret that my mansion had many unique features. Rumors began to spread about my terrible meetings in lonely places, of Cyclopean rooms in the heart of Llanada Villa beneath which vast staircases lead down to abysses of knighted secrets, of complex angles that lead through invisible walls to other regions of space and time, and of hideous exchanges of personality that permitted explorations in remote and forbidden places, on other Worlds, and in different space-time continua. The servants pontificated about elusively coloured and bafflingly rooms, furniture, textured wallpaper, magical windows, and objects like nothing ever heard of on Earth within the walls of my mansion, whose insane curses and surfaces answered no conceivable purpose and followed no conceivable geometry. The servants watched my goings and comings. Through vigilant gossips, they declared there was someone in the attic of the house behind the doubly curtain windows. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

Then sun was declining in the Heavens. Supper-time was approaching. During my sunset sash through the Victorian gardens, I caught a stream of utterly insane drivel about an unholy pit in the basement of my home where the black realm begins and that a watcher guarded the gate. The extent to which it preyed on my nerves was plain, for these servants had woven a whole set of hallucinations around them. Their minds were in pitiable states; for they went on mumbling wild extravagances about me, about black magic, about Llanada Villa, and about some revelation which would convince even me. They repeated names which I recognized from my forbidden volumes, and at times made me shudder with a certain thread of mythological consistency—of consistency—of convincing coherence—which ran through his maundering. Again and again he would pause, as if to gather courage for some final and terrible disclosure. Moments later, the wind came with a shrieking and swirling. I could feel the numbing chill of it; it cut through me like the blade of a knife, that wind, straight to the bone. Feeling uneasy, I made my way to the entrance of my home. Once inside, the stillness had a strained feel, made almost eerie by the constant wailing outside. I could feel myself getting more jittery as the moments passed. While I sliced the ham, I watched two of the housemaids staring at the door. It was curious that they both were wearing the same type of expensive engagement ring.  I thought: they must have had words with each other over something; that was all there was to it. Except that was not all there was to it. I have seen a lot of servants come and go. However, I had never seen any like these two. That tension between them was not anything fresh-born, was not just the brief and meaningless aftermath of a squabble. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

No, there was real hatred on both sides—the kind that builds and builds, seething over long bitter weeks or months or even years. That kind that is liable to explode someday. Well, it was not really any of my business. Not unless the blowup happened in here, it was not, and that was not likely. Or so I kept telling myself. However, I was a little worried just the same. On a night like this, with the damned black wind blowing and playing hell with people’s nerves, anything could happen. Anything at all. I finished slicing the ham. Just as I sat down to eat, there was a loud banging noise from across the room that made me jump half a foot; it sounded like a pistol shot. But it had only been the cook slamming the pumpkin pie down on the table. I took a breath, let it out silently. He was found the next morning by The Good Will Boys Club. Police and an army of enthusiastic volunteers scoured the woods, but no trace of a ferocious wild beast was found. However, they did find the dead man, and he proved to be my cook. He had a reputation locally of being a person of solitary habits. An autopsy revealed he had died of a heart attack. The entire episode assumed the proportions of a thirteen-day wonder, and then was forgotten. The housemaid also no longer wore their engagement rings. Could they have been in love with the same man? Is it possible they killed him? After seating myself on one of the convenient window-seats, I sat some while looking at the rain-drenched gardens, then with a yawn, I turned and gave a quick glance along the long corridor that ran through a series of open doorways. Suddenly my attention was captured by a figure approaching over the long carpet. It was that of a girl in a black dress; she was a beautiful study in black and white. Black hair, white fac and hands, black dress. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

Not that there was anything sinister about her, for as she drew nearer I could see the look of indescribable sadness in the large, black eyes, and the almost timid way she looked round each room. Her appearance was outstanding, so vivid, like a black and white photograph that had come to life. She entered the morning room and I now I could hear the light tread of her feet, the whisper of her dress, and even those small sounds seemed unreal. She walked around the room, looking earnestly at the pictures, then as though arrested by a sudden sound, she stopped. Suddenly the lovely eyes came round and stared straight at me. They held an expression of alarmed surprise, that gradually changed to one of dawning wonderment. The atmosphere was chilling and she had a weird presence that seemed to permeate the room. She robbed me of speech. She nodded and her hair trembled like black silk in sunlight. She dabbed her eyes with a black lace handkerchief, while I tried to find my way out of a mental labyrinth. As I reached out to her, I watched her figure retreat until it disappeared into lots of beautiful clouds. It was a great pity that her behaviour was so erratic, because I would have dearly liked to have known her better. In fact, when I remembered the black hair and white face, I was aware of a deep disappointment, a sense of loss, and I had to subdue a useless urge to run after her. I remained seated in the window bay and when I looked out on to the gardens, I saw the rain had ceased, but thick cloud banks were billowing across the sky. I smiled gently and murmured, “Lovely clouds—I miss you, Annie Winchester.” I was halfway across the room, when a light touch on my shoulder made me turn, and there was the white face and black hair, with a sad smile parting her lips. Then she vanished. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

The Winchester Mystery House

Is it more frightening to see something you cannot explain, or to hear it and feel it around you, unseen, its appearance left totally to your wildly racing imagination? What if you feel “it” inside of you? To be “demon haunted” is an experienced you will never forget. Earth is a haunted planet. Throughout history, human beings have had daily contact with otherworldly residents and visitors whose actions range from benign to aggressive, and from mischievous to deadly. Humans have described, explained, catalogued, summoned, and exorcised these interlopers for centuries. The “paranormal” is far more complex and cannot be explained simply. From quantum physics, we have the concept of “many Worlds,” multi-dimensional realities stacked next to each other, all of which might feature their own inhabitants. The paranormal experiences at The Winchester Mystery House demonstrate that doorways or portals exist both on land and in human consciousness, which open up to these interdimensional realities in ways that awe us or terrify us, or both. “Demon Haunting” case are on the rise. Some people have even gotten more than they bargained for from the terrible trauma of artifacts from the 9/11 attacks.

There is no doubt that negative entities exist, and many are hungry and hostile, and can be bound to objects. Demons include a wide range of spirits, from tricky to evil, meddlers who created a host of problems for people, including all the bad luck and ills of this World. They include low-level irritating beings and dangerous powerhouses who wield the ability to destroy. These beings and spirits are still round us—they never went away, because they exist alongside of us in interdimensional space. They continue to pose problems, or help people, in some cases, shape-shifting in forms and tactics as humans have changed throughout the centuries. The Winchester Mystery House’s haunted objects of all kinds has built up during the 100 years of tours with the paranormal and demonic. Thousands of haunted objects are squeezed into the museum. Sometimes they just appear, have been here for over a century, some arrived by mail anonymously. Household items, art object, clothing, jewelry, ritual and religious objects, games, furniture, masks, dolls, you name it—anything can pick up a spirit hitchhiker who acts out when ushered into a new home. Mirrors are frequently haunted. Mirrors can create doorways for entities. Come for a fascinating tour of the beautiful yet eerily bizarre.

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase.  https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/