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/

The scream tore through the house. I rose to find the sky uncommonly clear and full of visible stars. A good omen for Llanada Villa. On the desk in the library, I was astonished to see an ancient book, more of a handwritten codex, with brilliant illustrations on its wooden cover. Carefully lifting the pages, which were bound by three different ties of human skin made into thong, the very first page revealed several magic spells, written in faded but clearly visible and very crowded Latin script. It was as old a book of magic as I have ever beheld, and of course its claim—the claim of its title page—was to the very earliest of all black arts ever known since the Fall of Man. I was more than familiar with the legends surrounding vampires and the tale of the Watcher Angels who lay with woman, and taught magic to the Daughters of Men, as so the Book of Genesis states. However, the most important sentences were as follows: “It was a belief very strongly and generally held by the ancients—of whose wisdom in these matters I have had such experience as induces me to place confidence in their assertions—that by enacting certain processes, which to us moderns have something of a barbaric complexion, a very remarkable enlightenment of the spiritual faculties in man may be attained: that, for example, by absorbing the personalities of a certain number of one’s fellow-creatures, an individual may gain a complete ascendancy over those orders of spiritual beings which control the elemental forces of our universe. It is recorded of Adam that he was able to fly in the air, to become invisible, or to assume any form he pleased, by the agency of the soul of a boy whom he had ‘murdered.’” #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

“Similar happy results may be produced by the absorption of the hearts of not less than three human beings blow the age of twenty-one years. The best means of effecting the required absorption is to remove the heart from the living subject, to reduce it to ashes, and to mingle them with a pint of some red wine, preferably port. The remains of the first two subjects, at least, it will be well to conceal: a disused wine-cellar will be found convenient for such a purpose. Some annoyance may be experienced from the psychic portion of the subjects, which popular language dignifies with the of ghosts. However, the man of philosophic temperament—to whom alone the experiment is appropriate—will be little prone to attach importance to the feeble efforts of these beings to wreck their vengeance on him. I contemplate with the liveliest satisfaction the enlarged and emancipated existence which the experiment, if successful, will confer; not only placing one beyond the reach of human justice (so-called), but eliminating to a great extent the prospect of death itself.” Frightened by the pages that had just been translated, I no longer wanted to fear the torment of those words. I could not believe such words had been written. Deep in the bowels of my mansion are dungeons. I supposed I could burry the codex there and no one would ever discover it, nor attempt the experiments mentioned in the ancient text. However, after reaching the dreadful dungeon, a creature abhorrent to the eyes, was found, his head thrown back, his face stamped with an expression of rage, fright, and mortal pain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

To my surprise, it was my butler, Josef Schwalber. In his left side was a terrible lacerated wound, exposing the heart. There was no blood on his hands, and a long knife that lay on the table was perfectly clean. A savage wild-dog might have inflicted the injuries. The window of the dungeon was open, and it was the opinion of the Detective Kasberger, that Mr. Schwalber had met his death by the agency of some wild creature. However, after study of the codex, I am led to a very different conclusion. The next morning while I was drinking my coffee and eating my panini (always very flaky and powdery like in Italy), I had the servants sweep the spiders out of the Bath House at the far end of the formal garden (it is said to have been built by the Byzantines). The transformation is quite bewildering. A team of seamstresses had to work day and night for 48 hours, in in the fairy tales, to create my new impracticable dress. Nevertheless, I had quite enough dresses already even if it were the Pope and his cardinals who were going to entertain me. I have learned from experience that new dresses are more often than not thoroughly disappointing. I keep remind myself of that, but I needed to forget about what transpired last evening. But I can say no more than I had said already. Everything that I can remember, I have told with perfect candour. Nothing has been distorted or concealed, and if anything remains vague, it is only because of the dark cloud which has come over my mind—that cloud and the nebulous nature of the horrors which brought it upon me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

Vision or nightmare it may have been—vision or nightmare I fervently hope it was—yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shocking hours after I went into the dungeon. It saddens me that Mr. Schwalber had gotten into my vast collections of strange, rare books on forbidden subjects, which many are written in languages that I master; but there are some with those in languages I cannot understand. I remembered how I shuddered at his facial expression on the night before the awful happening, when he talked so incessantly of his theory, why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years. Certainly it had something to do with the ancient book in undecipherable characters Mr. Schwalber left on my desk in the library. The picture seared into my soul is of one scene only, and the hour must have been long after midnight; for a waning crescent moon was high in the vaporous Heavens. I have been thinking on and off all day about the differences between the ways we are supposed to behave and the ways we actually do behave. And both are different from the ways in which God calls upon us to behave, and which we can never achieve whatever we do and however hard we apply ourselves. I am so friendless and alone in this alien land. It occurs to me that I must have great inner strength to bear up as I do and to fulfill my duties with so little complaint. The portrait, at the beginning of the beautifully engraved codex, I have begun to feat that I shall see that face looking over my shoulder as I sit gazing into the looking glass. I live on a spiritual plane and desire only the sweet and stimulating companionship of my husband. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

Small pleasures seemed greater for having been snatched in the shadow of wretchedness. I have been subjected to a fate I fear more than the slowest tortures. My life has become filled with gore and grue, ghosts and ghouls and ghastly events, and I must confess I am impartial to such entertainments. The servants show me stains on the wall and tell me it is the blood of a murdered innocent killed by the Winchester Rifle fifty years before: no amount of washing will ever remove that stain, they tell me in sepulchral tones, and indeed it deepens and darkens on a certain day of the year, the anniversary of the violent passing. One is expected to nod gravely, of course, and one does, if one wishes. Back in the eleventh century, you will be apprised, a battalion of foreign invaders were vanquished by the skeletons of long-dead patriots who arose from their tombs to defend their homeland and then returned to the Earth when the enemy had been driven from their borders. (And since the servants are able to show you the very graves of these lively bones, how can one disbelieve them?) The servants have pointed to the Observational Tower and told me of a spectral tyrant who, a scant dozen years before, is suspected of having died from poisoning. My silver used to be store in the part of the tower where 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 white who asked him for some water. Think it was one of the mansion’s 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 that her longing for water suggest that she was poisoned. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

Beside the Grand Ball Room, the voices of two men are often heard talking although no one can make out what they are talking about. If one makes an effort to trace them, they stop talking suggesting that whoever the ghosts are, they are aware of what is going on around them. Servants have also reported having their hair pulled, arms scratched, and even being bitten by unseen assailants while in the dark of its mahogany walls and corridors. I am cursed by Lucifer, they say, suffering the tortures. From the day, I wish the ghost would not strike terror to my soul and stop filling my heart with but paltry pity. Still, I have journeyed in foreign countries, and I long for peace at Llanada Villa. Amorphous shadows seem to lurk in the darker recesses of the mansion and to flit as in some blasphemous ceremonial procession past the portals of the catacombs; shadows which could not have been cast by a trick of light. These things are too utterly beyond thought—I dare not tell a soul—no one could know it and live—Great God! I never dreamed of THIS! Around me there are ghost and the darkness and the shadows; below me, some peril beyond the radius of the human imagination. Curse these hellish things—legions—My God! Beat it! Beat it! Beat it! After that was silence. I know not how many interminable aeons I sat stupefied; whispering, muttering, calling, screaming into the Heavens. Over and over again through those aeons I whispered and muttered, called, shouted, and screamed, “William! William! Answer me—are you there?” And then there came to me the crowing horror of all—the unbelievable, unthinkable, almost unmentionable thing. I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath my silver German chandelier. And this is what it said: “YOU FOOL, WILLIAM IS DEAD!” #RandolphHarris 6 of 6

The Winchester Mystery House

You have fallen into a time loop and cannot get out. Most paranormal accounts of hauntings fall into the realm of the residual. A cacophony of footsteps, knocking on the walls, music playing by unseen hands, and even smells repeat themselves when the time—and audience—is right. There is no actual ghost interacting during a residual haunting—you have simply stepped into a memory and gotten a bit on your soul. Some objects seem to react to certain dates, such as anniversaries or a time of death, and we think that whatever is making it reach out and say, “YOU FOOL, WILLIAM IS DEAD!” is trapped within its own vortex. Demons can literally attach themselves to certain types of objects. And if a person happens to bring one of these cursed objects into their house, the demon can then start to attack the people who are living in the house as a result of them being attached to that object.

Curses petition the deities for rulings in a Heavenly court. Although it is not surprising, it is unfortunately common that tourists will try to steal artifacts from archaeological sites. What may be surprising is that the tourists have tried to steal relics or artifacts from the Winchester Mystery House, but often voluntarily return them or turn themselves in to the authorities. Some have sent notes apologizing for the theft, claiming that the artifacts are cursed. However, sometimes the thieves just regret their actions and feel guilty, but the Winchester Mystery House has received hundreds of packages through its one hundred years of tours of stolen antiques, as the accompanying letters would say, those objects were responsible for harm to the relic thieves and their families. Some people have even donated things it hopes that the spirits of The Winchester Mystery House would save their lives. Could such curses be real? It seems more believable, perhaps, for objects once owned by Sarah L. Winchester, to be cursed. It adds to the mystery and mystique of the Winchester Mystery House. However, many people have claimed that everyday objects harbour negative energies, including decorative items, paintings, dolls, jewelry, and even a set of Mercedes Benz automobiles!

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/

Death, darkness and horrible things lurked in the night. Some spirits here are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay on sore stroke. I hated the sight of blood. It was, as far as I can ascertain, in September of the year 1890 that the evening twilight fell when a gnawing fear and tremendous sense of terror strangely domed Llanada Villa and the, deep, shadowy fruit orchards. The quite dread and portent produced strange noises that troubled the large mansion and fell on my ear. Curious noises they were sometimes. I could have sworn I heard a thin metallic voice laughing high in the Observational Tower. I darted an inquiring glance at my carpenter. He was white to the lips. “It is he—that is—it is no one; the door is locked,” was all he said, and we looked at each other for a full minute. The mansion began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises—the muffled footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible seemed, no doubt to becoming more frequent and insistent. A rain of tears appeared on my cheeks. The carpenter began for the first time to show signs of hurry and impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when his tools and notebooks were finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned a carriage. He turned to his companion. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” The other man nodded and climbed into the carriage as the horses quickly galloped away. The moon had vanished behind a cloud. I was able to go over to the library, and for the rest of the evening tortured my brain with strange and terrible books drawn voluminously from the stack shelves and from secure places of storage. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

There were things in these books which simply could not be believed by those who had not seen the evidence. The more I reflected on these hellish diaries, the more I was inclined to believe in the Earth-threatening entity which, unknow to me, was the source of the curse. Rumors about “The Winchester Fortune,” were clearly sustained enough to reach the pages of The Oakland Tribune and be referred to as if they were common knowledge. The stories that surrounded The Winchester Fortune and my mansion were so persistent that inquirers were directed to an information sheet that was put together in 1889 to describe my family, legacy, and unique architecture of my home and fill in some of the “vast web of mythology [that] has formed around it.” After the information on provenance, the sheet told a loose variety of myths that around the purchase and construction of Llanada Villa, gesturing vaguely at the accidents, misfortunes and deaths said to have been suffered by carpenters, servants, and members of the Winchester family. It also spoke about the suit of armor—priceless relics, vast halls, tapestries evidenced throughout; strong, heavy, richly carved furniture everywhere. The time-defying walls, comfortable chairs, tea tables, and unusual architectural features were also of great curiosity. And of course, the curse that was principally attached to the fortune and mansion, or rather from whom the curse began its impressive path of contagion through. When disaster struck killing our infant daughter, and fifteen years later my husband, they were claimed to be subjects to the law of the recursive curse and were assumed to be victims. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

The popular account of Williams’s death is that, not believing in the malignant powers of the celebrated curse of The Winchester Fortune, he determined to make a slashing attack on the belied in the columns of the Connecticut Gazette of New Haven, and went to the Winchester Factory Castle, and sent his photographer there, to collect materials for that purpose; that he was then, although in perfect health, struck down mysteriously by some malady of which he died. The Gazette published his piece and also reported ghost stories about Llanada Villa with a studiously neutral air. Yet William’s death, widely mourned by his colleagues, was probably the impetus for an outline of the alleged curse that appeared in the Connecticut Magazine, which spoke of a “terrible story” that “will never be written in full; but some of its chapters may be told in a few words.” The essay was curiously signed pseudonymously and again the historical actors were replaced by initials. This report likely prompted an anonymous person to syndicate an article on the story, which flashed the rumour of The Curse of the Winchester Fortune around the World. The Correspondence files in the New Haven press, for instance, carried a cutting sent by someone from The Oakland Tribune, which screamed “Ghost of those Killed by the Winchester Rifle Haunt the Sizable Fortune.” A journalist who died investigating the hauntings, along with William and Annie were merely the frames of The Winchester Curse, but their deaths seemed to confirm that even testing the strength of the chain of rumour associated with the Winchester Fortune came with risks. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

Those who have often been so gay and vivacious, the delight of soirees, would become distant, and aloof, of serious mien, unsmiling after visiting my estate and succumbing to magical thinking, spooked by “the feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn around us with infinite skill and delicacy.” The atmospheric writing strained to evoke a liminal territory on the edge of American civilization where superstition merges into everyday experience. The allegedly rational solution to the deaths of my infant daughter and husband feeds into the formula for family curses, as Holmes solves the case through a proper understanding of heredity and threat of degeneracy within aristocratic bloodlines. “The deaths of Mr. William Winchester and infant daughter Annie Winchester was caused by demonic “elementals” guarding the land, because Mr. Winchester had expanded the family business and begun an investigation of the stories of “The Gun that Won the West’s” malevolence….I warned Mr. Winchester against concerning himself with the curse. He persisted, and his death proceeded the death of his infant daughter. He became engrossed in the subject, and wrote with feverish haste and in bewildering abundance. Of skepticism there was none. I told him he was tempting fate by pursuing his inquiries, but he was fascinated and would not desist. Then his daughter was overtaken by illness six weeks after her birth by the mysterious childhood disease marasmus. And Mr. Winchester premature death was fifteen years later from tuberculosis, which added to Mrs. Winchester’s distress. However, this is the way in which the demonic “elementals” guiding the Winchester bloodline might act.” A statement by Weston St. Joyce of the Hellfire Club. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

One of Daisy’s reminiscences is striking for embroiling all the central figures of The Winchester story in occult: “I had attended at least two seances which my aunt had held at Llanada Villa…I had watched aunt Sarah put into a trance on an occasion when Bertha Haas had been present. It had been an eerie, not to say unpleasant, experience which had shaken me considerably…Suddenly she had started talking in an unknown tongue which, to everyone’s astonishment, Bertha Haas had pronounced as being Coptic…I remembered particularly one séance when Bertha has been placed in a trance.” Friday morning, the day was pleasant, but even in the brightest sunlight, a cold shudder ran through me and visitors like, and every ear seemed strained in a kind of instinctive, unconscious listening. I knew that I had come upon the horror and its monstrous work, and trembled with the responsibility I felt to be mind. Night would soon fall, and it was then that the spirits really became restless. No material weapon would be of help. Having read William’s diaries, I knew painfully well what kind of manifestations to expect, but I did not add to the fright of the servants by giving any hints or clues. As the shadows gathered, the servants commenced to disperse homeward, anxious to bar themselves indoors despite the present evidence that all human locks and bolts were useless before a force that could bend trees and crush houses when it chose. Whatever was in Llanada Villa was biding its time. A downpour waxed in heaviness, and distant peals of thunder sounded from far horizons. Sheet lighting shimmered, and then a forky bolt flashed near at hand, as if descending into my accursed mansion itself. They sky grew very dark, and watcher hoped that the storm would prove a short, sharp one followed by clear weather. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

It was still gruesomely dark when, not much over an hour later, a confused babel of voices sounded down the hall. Another moment brought to view a frightened group of more than a dozen men, running, shouting, and even whimpering hysterically. But in another minute, we were in a sitting-room of the house, a large, high chamber with a mahogany floor, full of moving shadows cast by a wood-fire that flickered in on the great hearth. Before lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauleon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a lead from an illuminated manuscript. Such a collection I had hardly dreamed of in my wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which could not be later than A.D 700. Further on was a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told me at once, must belong to some very early unknown patristic treatise. Could it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord,” which was known to have existed as late as the twelfth century at Nimes? In any case, my mind was soon brought back to the chaos. The swishing, lapping sound of the bending trees and bushes caught my attention. And there was an awful stomping and splashing in the mud. However, I did not see anything at all, only just the bending of the trees and the underbrush. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

The I heard an awful creaking and straining. The servants were yelling and shrieking when something heavy struck the house—not lightning, nor anything, but something heavy and again, and again. It kept launching itself again and again, though I could not see anything. Lines of fright deepened on every face, we could hear a terrible crashing and a hall full of screaming. In the hall before us were grouped four carpenters, surrounding a crouching figure. A fifth carpenter lay dead on the floor, his neck distorted, and his eyeballs staring from his head. The four surrounding carpenters were looking at him. In their faces the sentiment of horror was intensified; they seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit trust in me. All this terror was plainly excited by any words I could say. I absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of the evening, and for many nights I had not dared to put out my lights before going to sleep. All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over me. Before my eyes appeared a  mass of coarse, matted black hair, and this body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires out of my mind. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the ceiling with a look of beast-like hate. This appalling effigy inspired terror. With such intense physical fear and the most profound mental loathing, I grasped blindly at my silver crucifix, that I was conscious of a movement toward me on the part of the demon, and then it screamed with the voice of an animal in hideous pain. Hans and Robert, two sturdy little serving-men, who rushed in, saw nothing, but felt themselves thrust aside by something that passed out between then, and found me in a swoon. They sat up with me that night. The phases of Nature can be utterly forbidden, and wholly outside the sane experience of mankind. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

The Winchester Mystery House

When The Winchester Mansion was opened after the passing of Mrs. Winchester in 1922, a carpenter made a small breach in the upper left-hand corner of the front doors, and put a candle through the hole: “At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment—an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by—I was struck dumb with amazement, and when the movers, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ It was all I could do to get out the words. ‘Yes, wonderful things.’” It took seven weeks to clear the mansion of its objects, each item laboriously documented, photographed and carried out to moving vans. This took place under the intense gaze of tourist crowds and the restless journalists from the World’s press. Beyond the door, the foyer was almost entirely filled with a shrine covered in gold leaf, and shrines within shrines that protected sacred objects. They found an open store, stuffed with golden statuary and guarded by an impressive Anubis figure.

Daisy recalled the “dazed, bewildered look” of the esteemed visitors invited inside. However, she also stated, “I cannot but think that some risks are run by breaking into the last rest of my beloved aunt Sarah whose mansion is specially and solemnly guarded, and robbing her of her possessions.” A statue of gold was removed from The Winchester Mansion. Tourists had allegedly become supplicants to the statue, holding séances. There was a photograph in which “a shadowy human face has come between the camera and the object which was being photographed.” In other anecdotes, paintings gasped at the movers and the mansion exuded “an unaccountable sense of apprehension.” The first movers not only got lost, but came down with various illnesses (ophthalmia and delirium). A news story of the suicide that claimed one of the movers was frequently heard to mutter “the curse of the Winchester Fortune,” as though this had prayed on his mind. An auctioneer was also incorporated into the unfolding curse (in fact he had been ill with cancer, a fate of several movers). These people knew that they were meddling with terrible powers, yet saw that there was no other way to annul the deeper and more malign meddling which others had done before them.

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/

Oh, these were terrible thoughts. Did I not love Llanada Villa? Had I not pledged my soul? I was consumed with self-hatred and dread that the curse was controlling my life. These thoughts were too horrendous. They divided me from all that desired. I had to banish them from my mind. However, there was a great clamor, and people were beating on my windows and doors. Rocks were being thrown at my house. The wooden shutters were about to be broken in. Across the field, my estate lay strewn with the carcasses of cows and horses and, in one of the fields, sheep. No flies buzzed near the dead animals; there were no maggots burrowing. No vultures; the sky was clean of birds. And in all the untended rolling hills of grass and trees which had once sung and pulsed with a million voices, in all the land there was this immense stillness now, still as years, still as the unheard motion of the stars. I looked up through the still-hanging poison cloud, up to where the moon was now risen in full coldness. A little fat bald man with old eyes sighed and began to wave in the October dusk. The outline of his form wavered and disappeared in the shadows under the trees where the moonlight did not reach. Other followed him. The wind came limping back from the mountains. #RandolphHarris 1 of 2

It blew the heavy iron bell high in the belfry, as if lifted ancient dusts and hissed again through the trees. I watched the air turn black. I listened to it fill with the flappings and the flutterings and the squeakings. This chaos had caused much worry and bafflement. As I paused for a moment, looking out at the silent place of high dark grass, there were scrolls of stone-frozen children stained silver in the night’s wet darkness. The people were gone; my estate was empty. Morning found me in a cold sweat of terror and a frenzy of wakeful concentration. I sat at the table under the electric light with shaking hands all night. All day long I rested, while guns thundered outside. Then, in the slanting shadows of the later afternoon, the rumbling echoes faded into the distance and I knew it was over. As I climbed the stairs and entered the roofless foyer of Llanada Villa, where only a configuration of cobwebs veiled the radiance of the rising moon, I realized that success had brought me to a state of such fatigue that I had begun seriously to contemplate a long rest. I had not enjoyed a proper holiday in nearly three years. I am quite well, and live in great comfort here, although I receive but rarely and am content with my own company most of the time. I have found deep enjoyment and spiritual profit in foreign cities, having arrived, the tedium of travel itself has often made me think twice before starting out on a long voyage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 2

The Winchester Mystery House

A Blue Lady is said to haunt the mansion. According to legend, a princess wanted to marry one of Mrs. Winchester’s famers, but her father disapproved of him and his standing in life. To ensure the romance did not grow any stronger, the father sent the suitor overseas hoping that it would all blow over in time. After some time, the father told his daughter that her suitor had married someone else, and that she should forget all about him. To improve the spirits of the distraught girl, Mrs. Winchester asked her seamstress to make a dress in favourite colour, blue.

However, when it was completed, the princess put on the beautiful garment, then climbed to the top of the nine story Observational Tower, and threw herself to death. It is now said that the forlorn princess returns to the mansion every thirteen years, in her blue dress, wandering around, then making her way down to the veranda, where she stands at the front doors forever waiting the return of her lost love.

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 one, even those who have the facts concerning the recent horror, can say just what is the matter with Llanada Villa; though old legends speak of unhallowed rites and conclaves of the Indians, amidst which they called forbidden shapes of shadow out of the great rounded hills, and made wild orgiastic prayers that were answered by loud crackings and rumblings from the ground below. The evening air outside was fresh as it was warm, and full of the breath of the rain. A few ghosts of sunlight drifted down. I felt a rush of gratitude, and stood silently letting the air kiss my face and hands. All around the railings of this porch vines grow, tendrils dancing in the breeze, fine tiny leaves moving like so many little fairy wings beating against the screen. Flowers glimmering in the dark, white and delicate and beautiful. Looking out into the night, my ghoul-haunted mansion reawakened a sense of foreboding evil. It retained its mystic aura of the early colonials, and showed evidence of having been used for sinister purposes by colonial sorcerers and alchemists. In reality, I was more horrified than astonished; my home was developed with occult symbols to be used in certain conjurations. And there is an arrangement—a three-dimensional pattern. A maze of utterly baffling intricacy used in the construction to connect the hallways with the rooms. The unimagined space was alive with motion and music, and having no semblance to anything on Earth. And as I stood there looking in terror, the wind blew out both the candles in that ancient peaked garret, leaving me in a savage and impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium before me, and the demon madness of Llanada Villa which chilled me to the very core. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

Rushing airy presence could be heard faintly at certain hours from stated rooms. Then too, the servants are mortally afraid of the numerous apparitions which grow vocal on warm nights, lying in wait for fresh souls to consume. They time their eerie cries in unison with the sufferer’s fear. If these demons can catch the soul, they instantly flutter away chittering in evil laughter. Deposits of skulls and bones found on my estate sustain the popular belief that it was once an ancient burial-place. Many ethnologists persist in believing the remains Caucasian. Prior to purchasing and building my estate, the eighteen-room farmhouse had always been feared because the owner’s reputation for black magic, and the unexplained death by violence of his wife. After midnight, one can still hear the rhythmical screaming of shrill note bursting into a kind of pandaemoniac cachinnation which fills all the countryside, and it is not until dawn that they finally quiet down. The spirits walk unseen and foul in lonely places in the mansion, where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. Their seal is engraven in the basement. One night, I awoke during a wild thunderstorm, and the boards in the corridor outside my chamber were creaking loudly. Lightning leapt in through the large window, and loud cracking peals of thunder burst overheard. However, it was the creaking that bothered me—it sounded like people walking up and down. When I finally got up my courage, I opened the door and peered out. Nobody was there. The door to Daisy’s bedroom was shut, and she was probably asleep. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

Timidly, I crept down the front staircase and peered into the shadowy drawing room. As my eyes got used to the dark, I saw something that froze my blood: Someone was sitting in one of the arm chairs. I clenched my teeth and closed my eye. I could hear my heart hammering. Then I opened my eyes again, and a blue flash of lightning lit the room. The dark shape was gone. For a long time I stood in the doorway, staring into darkness. Then I made my way to a table and found a box of matches to light a lamp. The smoky yellowish glow showed that the room was empty. Anyone who tried to leave the room would have had to brush past me. Also, there would have been the sound of footsteps. You can imagine how all this crazy stuff strained my temper—and my imagination. I opened the window—I waited a few minutes first—and standing there getting some fresh air and trying to figure out what could be behind it.  After my fear died down, I made my way up the stairs and climbed into bed falling into an exhausted slumber. It was getting late in the morning. Light touched the dark skies with gray. A loose, crystal-smelling wind swept down from the mountains, an autumn chill of wetness. Down from the mountains and into Llanada Villa, where it set the trees hissing. And it even came into the mansion, because the bell in the belfry was ringing and there was no one to ring the bell. The farms in the yard stopped their talk and listened to the enchanting music. It came another wind then, mountain-scattered and fast: it billowed dresses, set damp hair moving; it pushed over pewter vases, and smashed roses and hydrangeas to swirling dust against the emerald green lawns. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

I felt a wave of fright as tangible as a draught of a tomb’s cold clamminess. An entity stretched like titan phantasms beyond all sphere of force and matter, space and time. From every corner of my home, I could hear sepulchral voices of intruding horror. The hellish ancient nightmare fastened itself to my soul. The vague evil was threatening this estate, which gave me a growing amazement which passed slowly through caried degrees of alarm to a state of really acute spiritual fear. Deep and terrible growls continued. What had come had indeed completed its entrance; for the growling and the screaming was now fast fading into a mixed low growling and moaning, proceeding unmistakably from within the walls. The mansion was full of frightful spirits which I knew too well, and three servants rushed across the hall to from whence a low whining came. For a second, nobody dared to turn on the light, then Hans summoned up his courage and pushed the button. One of the three—it is not certain which—shrieked aloud at what sprawled before them among the disordered tables and overturned chairs. I wholly lost consciousness for an instant, though I did not stumble or fall. Kunst lay half-bent on his side in a pool of blood and tarry sickness. He was not quite dead, but twitched silently and spasmodically while his chest heaved. “Quickly, get him out of my sight.” I shouted. “This man needs medical attention immediately!” “Yes, Mrs. Winchester,” my servants replied. Blood tricked along the parquet floors, and left a curious discolouration behing. Bits of shoe-leather and fragments of apparel were scattered about the room. Whatever attacked this man seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to Earth or the solar system. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

It was now sunset, with a great wrinkled sheet of purple and rose stretching half across the sky and the first stars appearing above in the dark horizon. Outside the window there was a gathering crowd and the sound of a panic-struck whirring and fluttering. A cry rose from the crowd. “No one is to be admitted until the medical examiner arrives!” I shouted. Meanwhile frightful changes were taking place on the floor.  Desiccated flesh was tight over his skull. Filthy strands of hair were matted over his scalp, tattered lips were drawn away from broken yellow teeth, and, sunken in their sockets, eyes that should be dead were bright with hideous life. I screamed again, desperate with fear. His cadaverous face fell away, and the sight of his caved-in forehead and unblinking eyes from between which thick blood had been oozing would awaken me from my nightmares on countless nights. I was almost convulsed with fright as I stumbled into the kitchen. Shivering afresh with fight, I was aware that there had been unseen things around Llanada Villa—living things—things that were not human. The next day all the countryside was in a panic; and cowed, uncommunicative groups came and went where the fiendish thing had occurred. Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside. Servants banded together and watched the mansion, but it was futile, an ineffective gesture against the vengeful spirits. Still, these bold souls held steadfast. At 3am, the ghouls screamed with such unusual persistence that many could not sleep. It was horrible, yet hardly a surprise. This was nothing more than the spiritually poignant phase of the unravelling horror of my family and fortune being haunted, and I might be the next victim. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

Happy Sarah L. Winchester Day!

“I have not received authorization to visit The Winchester Mansion. However, I have investigated secretly (and quite illegally) for a short time one night and was nearly caught. Came across reference to the place in collection of seventeenth century letters and papers in one of Mrs. Winchester’s libraries where she keeps the rare and forbidden books of old days. Writer denouncing the family as a brood of sorcerers and witches, references to alchemical activities and other less savory rumors—and describes underground stone chambers, pre-Columbian artifacts, et cetera, which are put to ‘foul usage and diabolic praktise.'”

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/

Whispers in the distance as a pale, vaporous moon lights the mansion. Shadows are deep. Then from across the hall came the sound of a shrill scream. A chair scraped and feet hit the floor of the corridor, walking away toward the sound of the scream. A door opened and closed. The room was illuminated only by the two ornate tabletop candelabra, their candles white, dripping wax. My floating thoughts were being drawn unwillingly from their free-roaming hinterland towards consciousness. There is in my heart, a dragging sorrow that seems to coagulate the blood, so that movement in my veins is slothful, wearisome, somehow making all effort to exist a ponderous affair. However, the whispering, almost sibilant, voice dispels much of that inner lassitude. “Sarah…” it calls again. I walk to the door and stand as if fearing to touch it. The voice said, “Come,” and I pulled the door open the rest of the way and went outside, past the desk and the empty chair that had been just outside the door of my chamber. With my heart beating wildly, I crept downstairs.  After I made it around the corner, I was in front of the main hall. There was an empty desk. I walked past it and to the front door. It was bolted. I threw the bolt open and twist the handle, the metal’s coldness leaping along my arm like iced energy released from a brumal host. The shock is mild against the damp chill of my own body. I pull the door open and the darkness beyond is more dense; it seems to sell into the foyer, a waxing shadow. An illusion. I shrink away, reluctant to make contact with this fresh darkness. My vision adjusts, and the inkiness dissipates as if weakened by its own sudden growth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

That fall on the stairs: I remember thinking that it had opened a crack in my mind, just enough to let in glimpses of a world beyond—a World I never wanted to see. As I advanced again, timorously rather than cautiously, passing through the doorway to stand shivering on the veranda, the stars were bright diamonds in the sky. Was one of them my star of destiny? Outside, the torches flicked with the burn of pitch and there were screams and glass shattering and the lusty voices sang. Walking through the wet grass, the droplets glittering like emeralds in the moonlight. The shape of a body showed in the wet grass, where he had lain facedown under a fallen tree. The footprints were sharp in the grass, and his feet had left dark, wet blotches where he had climbed the rock. He had lain there for a long time. Long enough it was for time to have lost its means. I turned back to look at my house, just before the trees grew so thick as to obstruct my view. I saw light on the glass of one of the Observational Tower’s thick windows. However, it was no more than a hint of moonlight. Its light fell upon his upturned face, on his sunken, brilliant eyes and the puffy blue of jowls on which the beard had started to grow, then stopped. The moonlight shone down on the World of trees and rocks of which he was a part, and gave it life. The night was warm. In the valley, the rain had long been gone. Flowers were pushing up through the moist Earth; frogs were Panpiping in every low spot. All through the warm night, squadrons of birds were passing across the face of the moon. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

Time passed, but whether it was minutes or hours, or whether there were still such things as minutes and hours, I could not have said. Time had no meaning for me in this new, strange World. Time passed, because the moon was higher and its light stronger and warmer on my flesh, but I did not sense it passage. I wondered how long my butler had been sprawled out on the law, dead? I moved close to a great evergreen tree whose limbs reached high above the tops of the other trees around it, and felt the quick chill as its shadow fell across me. A few minutes later I was sitting in the drawing room. I went along the corridor. It was as though I was being led through the almost-darkness, although I felt no physical touch upon me; I saw no physical presence beside me. But I walked confidently, although quietly on tiptoe, knowing I was not walk into anything nor stumble. The hallways echoed with the sounds of footsteps, and the voices of uncountable spirits could be heard engaged in unintelligible chatter or quietly chanting or singing hymns that droned on into the night. As the door to the kitchen swung open, I turned to see who was there. To my amazement, nobody was there. I stared for the door, but it swung shut before I could reach it. At the edge of my field of vision something moved. It drifted noiselessly through the mansion, like a puff of luminous cloud. It settled on the gasolier above my head, and I twisted my neck back and stared up at it. I could feel it warmth. Petrified with terror, I suddenly froze. In the silence there came a slight sound from the window—the shutter must have rattled in the night-wind. I had a curious desire to look out of that window at the glittering roofs and spires of Llanada Villa. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

What I did succeed in doing was tiptoeing to the fifth floor, then I grew bold enough to climb the last creaking staircase to the top of the Observational Tower. There in the narrow hall, outside the bolted door with the covered keyhole, I often heard sounds which filled me with an indefinable dread—the dread of vague wonder and brooding mystery. It was not that the sounds were hideous, for they were not; but that they held vibrations suggesting nothing on this globe of Earth, and at certain intervals they assumed a symphonic quality which I could hardly conceive as produced by one player. It must have been the apparitions from the Underworld beneath the kitchen floor, with its endless tunnels stretching away into the dark. I listened at the door and heard the shrieking viol swell into a chaotic babel of sound; a pandemonium which would have led me to doubt my own shaking sanity had there not come from behind that barred portal a piteous proof that the horror was real—the awful, inarticulate cry which only a mute can utter, and which rises only in moments of the most terrible fear or anguish. I knocked repeatedly at the door, but received no response. Afterward, I waited in the black hallway, shivering with cold and fear, till I heard the poor musician’s feeble effort to raise from the floor by the assistance of a chair. I renewed my rapping. I heard someone stumble to the window and close both shutter and sash, then stumble to the door, which he falteringly unfastened to admit me. As the door opened, I walked into the room, but there was no one inside. Shaking pathetically, I sat on the floor for some time inactive. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

Black vapor lay close over the room like a carpet. It was dense and impenetrable, dull, and lifeless. The chill had come on me again, numbing my nerves, dulling my labouring brain. As the black mist closed over me, all feeling went from my hands. Cold—terrible, numbing cold—ate its way like acid into my flesh and bones. The mist was draining the warmth—the life—out of me, through my hands and arms—sucking me dry. I swayed to my feet, then collapsed onto the floor. I lay there helpless for a long time. Little by little the moonlight revived me. Little by little the numbness went out of my muscles, and I could move my legs and grip things with my fingers. I pulled my legs under me and got to my feet, learning against the wall for support. I stared at the stairs. The black fog that lay on the stairs was deadly, draining the life-force out of whatever touched it. It was death! Something rattled in the shadow of the observational tower. Its black runways ribbed the glowing floor of the tower on every side. It made a wall of cold about the place where I was. The sun rose, bringing a scathing golden light that shrived my pallid flesh, allowing me to make my way down the stairs. Llanada Villa was full of life. It was alive with growing things, and the white mist that rose from them and clothed them filled it in the brim with a broth of light through which demons and apparitions cut sharp black lines of cold. There was another night, and I stood in the bright light of the shrinking moon, staring at that speck of golden light. There was something I should know about it—something that was hidden in that other World I had been in. There was something that drew me to it—an invisible thread, stretched across space through the white night, binding me to it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

The Winchester Mystery House

Sometimes, visitors and staff get the impression that the spirits occupying The Winchester Mystery House are oblivious to the fact tht their time has passed. Spectral sounds have resonated throughout the historic mansion on occasion. Footsteps walking around the building have been heard after the mansion is closed. Some have told of the sound of harp music emanating from the vacant front parlor after closing hours. At times, the reverberations have been so intense that they have set off the electronic alarm system. In 2010, a tour guide apparently caught a glimpse of the spirits responsible for the strange sounds. Once quiet evening, while walking through the front hall after hours, he was surprised by the sound of music. When he walked into the large front drawing room, he was astonished to see a group of people dressed in nineteenth-century attire moving about and talking. The tour guide left the room and walked to one of the offices to ask another staff member about the costume party across the hall. The staff member, who was unaware of any parties scheduled in the mansion at that hour, accompanied the young man back to the drawing room. The room was deathly quiet. Dust covering the tables and furniture indicated that no one had used the room for quite a while.

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