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Say Your Prayers so No One Can Hurt You
Oliver Fisher Winchester was an entrepreneur who made a fortune in the shirt manufacturing business during the 1830s and 1840s. He took over a bankrupt arms manufacturing company in New Haven, Connecticut in 1857, which eventually became the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him—nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of discovery. After he passed in 1880, his son William Wirt Winchester became the second President of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. However, this accomplishment was shortly enjoyed. William Winchester died in 1881, leaving his fortune and most of the company to me, his wife, Sarah L. Winchester. It was, as far as I can ascertain, March 7, 1881 that I drew open the door of Winchester Hall, in the heart of New Haven, Connecticut. Only to find my husband had died in his sleep. Terribly distraught, I laid beside him. That evening, light shone on the building, making the window-panes glow like so many fires. The clock in the church-tower, buried in tress of the edge of the park, only its golden weathercock catching the light, was striking six, and the sound came gently beating down the wind. It was altogether a pleasant impression, though tinged with the sort of melancholy appropriate to an evening like this. Several years later, I relocated to Santa Clara, California and started on the construction of Llanda villa. It presents a somewhat forbidding aspect to the World, for the rumours of the curse, do not suggest gaiety or warmth or any of those qualities put into its construction. Rather, these stories make this vast edifice of stone exude an austerity, cold and repellant, a hint of ancient mysteries, medieval darkness and hauntings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
There were plenty things about the mansion and the gardens which Daisy, my niece, who was of an adventurous and inquiring turn, was anxious to have explained to her. “Why did you build the nine story Observational Tower? Who was the old man lurking on the staircase to the ceiling, sitting at a table, with a skull under his hand?” These and many similar points were cleared up by the resources of my powerful intellect. There were others, however, of which the explanations furnished were less satisfactory. One November evening Diasy was sitting by the fire in the housekeeper’s room reflecting on her surroundings. “Did uncle William go to Heaven?” she suddenly asked, with the peculiar confidence which youth possess in the ability of their elders to settle these questions, the decision of which is believed to be reserved for other tribunals. “Good?—bless the child,” said the maid, Denise Kurlander. “Master was as kind a soul as ever I saw.” Didn’t I never tell you of the he took in out of the street, as you may say, this nine years back? and the little girl, three years after I first started working for your family? “No. Do tell me about them,” Mrs. Kurlander—now this minute!” “Well,” said Mrs. Kurlander, “the little girl I don’t seem to recollect so much about. I know master bought her back with him from his walk one day, give orders to Mrs. Heidelberg, as was housekeeper then, as she should be took every care with. And the pre child hadn’t no one belonging to her—she telled me her own self—and here she lived with us a matter of three weeks it might be; and then, one morning she out of her bed afore any of us had opened, a eye, and neither track nor yet trace of her have I set eyes on since. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
“Master was wonderful put about, and had all the ponds dragged; but it’s my belief she had away by them witches, for there was singing round the house for as much as an hour the night she went, and Turkheim, he declare as he heard them a-calling in the woods all that afternoon. Dear, dear ! a hodd child she was, so silent in her ways and all, but I was wonderful taken with her, so domesticated she was—surprising. “And what about the little boy?” said Diasy. “Ah, that pore boy!” sighed Mrs. Kurlander. “He were a foreigner—Eduard he called hisself—and he came a tweaking his ‘urdy-gurdy round and about the drive one winter day, and master ‘ad him in that minute, and ast all about where he came from, and how old he was, and how he made his way, and where was his relatives, and all as kind as heart could wish. But it went the same with him. They’re a hunruly lot, them foreign nations, I do suppose, and he was off one fine morning just the same as the girl. Why he went an what he done was our question for as much as a year after; for he never took his ‘urdy-gurdy, and there it lay on the self.” The remainder of the evening was spent by Daisy in miscellaneous cross-examination of Mrs. Kurlander and in efforts to extract a tune from the hurdy-gurdy. That night she had a curious dream. At the end of the passage of the house, in which her bedroom was situated, there was an old disused bathroom. It was kept locked, but the upper half of the door was glazed, and, since the muslin curtains which used to hand there had long been gone, you could look in and see the lead-lined bath affixed to the wall on the right hand, with its head towards the window. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
On the night of which I am speaking, Diasy found herself, as he thought, looking through the glazed door. The moon was shining through the window, and she was gazing at a figure which lay in the bath. She described a horrid figured, inexpressibly thin and pathetic, of a dusty leaden colour, enveloped in a shroud-like garment, thin lips crooked into a faint and dreadful smile, the hands pressed tightly over the region of his heart. As she looked upon it, a distant, almost inaudible moan seemed to issues from its lips, and the arms began to stir. The terror of the sight forced Daisy backwards, and she awoke to the fact that she was indeed standing on the cold boarded floor of the passage in the full light of the moon. With a courage which I do not think can be common among a young lady her age, she went to the door of the bathroom to ascertain if the figure of her dream were really there. It was not, and she went back to bed. Mrs. Kurlander was much impressed next morning by her story, and went so far as to replace the muslin curtain over the glazed door of the bathroom. That evening, when I came up here to my room after dinner, I just sat in front of the long glass and stared and stared. I must have done it for half an hour or perhaps an hour. I only roe to my feet when it had become quite dark outside. I decided it was time to move to another bedroom. The Crystal Bedroom was much too big and there were only two wooden chairs, painted in greeny-blue with gold lines, or once painted like that. I hate to having to lie on my bed when I should prefer to it and everyone knows how bad it is or the back. Besides, this bed, though it’s enormous, seems to be as hard as when the Earth’s dried up in summer. Not that the Earth’s like that here. Far from it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
The rain has never stopped since I left New Haven. Never once. This bed is really huge. It would take at least eight people my size. I do not like to think about it. I have just remembered: it is the third of the month so that I have been gone exactly a year. What a lot of places I have been to in that time—or been through! Already I have quite forgotten some of them. I never properly saw them in any case. Llanada Villa is a huge palace—castle—fortress that simply frightens me some times. The housemaid provided me with no fewer than thirteen candles. I found them in one of the drawers. I suppose there is nothing else to do but read—except perhaps to say one’s prayers. Unfortunately, I finished all the book I brought with me long ago, and it is so difficult to buy any news ones. Daisy would do well to take care of herself, and shut her bedroom windows at night. Two incidents occurred recently that made an impression upon her mind. The first was after an unusually uneasy and oppressed night that she had passed—though she could not recall any particular dream that she had had. The following evening Mrs. Kurlander was occupying herself in mending her nightgown. “Gracious Me, Ms. Daisy!” she broke forth rather irritably, “how did you manage to tear your nightdress all to flinders this way? Look here, Ms. Daisy, what trouble you do give to poor servants that have to darn and mend after you!” There was indeed a most destructive and apparently wanton series of slits or scorings in the garment, which would undoubtedly require a skillful needle to make good. They were confined to the left side of the chest—long, parallel slits, about six inches in length, some of them not quite piercing the texture of the linen. Daisy could only express her entire ignorance of their origin: she was sure they were not there the night before. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
“But, she said, Mrs. Kurlander, they are just the same as the scratches on the outside of my bedroom door; and I am sure I never has anything to do with making them.” Mrs. Kurlander gazed at her open-mouthed, then snatched up a candle, departed hastily from the room, and was heard making her way upstairs. In a few minutes she came down. “Well,” she said, “Ms. Daisy, it’s a funny thing to me how them marks and scratched can ‘a’ come there—too high up for any car or dog to ‘ave made ‘em, much less a rat: for all the World like a vampire’s finger-nails, as my uncle archeology used to tell us of when we was young girls together. I wouldn’t say nothing to Mrs. Winchester, not if I was you, Ms. Daisy, my dear; and just turn the key to the door when you go to bed.” “I always do, Mrs. Kurlander, as soon as I have said my prayers.” “Ah, that’s a good child: always say your prayers, and then no one can’t hurt you.” Herewith Mrs. Kurlander addressed herself to mending the injured nightgown, with intervals of meditation, until bed-time. This was on Friday night in March, 1898. In a shrill chorus there seemed to lurk a note of tense and evil expectancy. Without warning came these deep, cracked, raucous vocal sounds which would never leave the memory. Not from any human throat were they born, for the organs of man can yield no such acoustic perversions. Rather would one have said they came from the mansion itself. It is almost erroneous to call them sounds at all, since so much of their ghastly, infra-bass timbre spoke to dim seats of consciousness and terror far subtler than the ear; yet one must do so, since their form was indisputably though vaguely that of half-articulate words. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
They were loud—loud as the rumblings and thunder from the bowels of the mansion from which the echoed—yet did they come from no visible being. And because imagination might suggest a conjectural source in the World of non-visible beings, I winched as if in expectation of a blow. More hideous sounds came croaking out from the bowels of the mansion. The speaking impulse seemed to falter, as if some frightful psychic struggle were going on. There appeared three grotesquely silhouetted human figures in the Observational Tower, all moving their arms furiously in strange gestures as their incantation drew near its culmination. From the black pits of Hell, Acherontic fear or feeling, from the unplumbed gulfs of the mansion’s consciousness or obscure, long-latent heredity, were those half-articulate thunder-croakings drawn? Presently they began to gather renewed force and coherence as they grew in stark, utter, ultimate frenzy. Indisputably English syllables poured thickly and thunderously from the basement. I jumped violently at the deafening, cataclysmic peal whose source, be inner Earth. A single lightning-bolt shot from the sky. Outside, trees, grass, and underbrush were whipped into a fury and the frightened servants in the mansion, were weakened by the lethal foetor that seemed about to asphyxiate them, as they were hurled off their feet. Wolves howled from the distance hills, green grass and foliage wilted to curious, sickly yellow-gray, and over field forest were scattered the bodies of the dead. Slowly the beams of a sunlight shone more brilliant and untainted. My estate was grave and quiet, and seemed shaken by memories and reflection even more terrible than those which had reduced the groups of Indians to a state of quivering. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
After the death of Mrs. Winchester, the items in her home were auction off in San Francisco, California. However, the queer atmosphere which clings to all in The Winchester Mansion were responsible for the wide-spread story that in opening the mansion of Sarah L. Winchester, and selling all of her possessions, people exposed themselves to the fury of some malignant influence. Recirculating rumours about fears of a curse under sent collectors in a panic. All over the country, people were sending their treasures to museums, anxious to get rid of them because of the superstition that Mrs. Winchester was killed by vengeful spirits. E.E. Evans-Pritchard argued that “cruses are capable of proving effective even after the lapse of thousands of years.” Rumours of The Curse of the Winchester Fortune were always cited. It was said that on the day Pastor Kunst laid bared the entrance to The Winchester Mansion, his pet dog had been devoured by a cobra. Julius Streicher, closely involved with the auction of items from The Winchester Mansion, recalled that “News of this spread quickly and all the natives now said, ‘Alas, that was Oliver Winchester’s cobra, revenging itself on the dog for having betrayed the place of the Winchester Repeating Arms.’” It was said that a solid gold tablet had been discovered in the mansion with the inscription “Death shall come on swift wings to whoever toucheth the home of The Winchester’s.” Mr. Streicher allegedly destroyed the tablet to prevent the superstitious fellaheen from abandoning the auction and so, one believer in the curse states, it was “wiped from the written record of the mansion’s history.”
Heinz Bongartz, however, remembers on his visit to the mansion that “Death the who enter” was an “inscription over the door.” It was said that when Gustav Jungbauer opened Mrs. Winchester’s main safe, they found a fortune in diamonds, gold, silver, and other precious stones, and he was bitten by a mosquito, and died shortly afterwards. Soon enough people, anyone who was loosely connected to the sale of the estate and auction of Mrs. Winchester’s goods died, their deaths were folded into the dreamlike elaboration of the curse rumour. The conservators of the estate then decided it would be best to keep the mansion from being further disturbed, and opened it as a tourist attraction to help with the repairs and maintenance of the estate. In May of 1923, Mr. Streicher’s half-brother Peter Geschiere warned that “seeds of destruction are hidden inside,” before he died after a long illness. Close attention was paid to any association with the sale of the estate and items from it. In November of 1929, Tore Olsson, who helped organize the auction, died suddenly in his sleep and is believed to have been troubled by the legendary curse which is said to be associated with those who looted The Winchester Mansion. Victor Petrov, who was also involved, was found dead at his London club in ambiguous circumstances.
Three months later, Mr. Petrov’s father incoherent suicide note included the line: “I really can’t stand any more horrors.” Luke Eggers, a caretaker of The Winchester Mansion, claimed that Pastor Kunst was eventually murdered by shadowy authorities for knowing too much about the truth behind The Winchester Family. This includes the claim that Pastor Kunst’s first operation—supposedly for cancer—in 1923 was a deception and the first attempt in a conspiracy to kill him. Other enthusiasts have continued to track The Curse of the Winchester Fortune into the present day. By 1980, Arthur Jores, German physician, counted one hundred and thirteen victims. Johann Kruse has suggested that the death of Ernst Haeckel, Director of Antiquities, in a car accident in 1976, followed his denunciation of curse stories. When treasures from Mrs. Winchester’s estate were displayed in a New York Museum in 1925, rumours circulated that the crew that transported the items from Santa Clara, California were also subject to misfortune. In 2001, Bedfordshire on Sunday carried a headline “Is Boy, 2, latest Winchester Victim?”, regarding a story about his home in Sacramento, California; “a luxury villa said to be jinxed by the Cruse of the Winchester Fortune.” Such stories have been partly fostered by allegedly authoritive sources. There is a weird fusion of history, myth, and occultism surrounding The Winchester fortune and bloodline. Might the dead return or punish the living for shortcomings of their ritual propitiations? Superstitions proliferate where such borders are breached. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for witches stand, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, for Liberty and Justice for all.
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/
Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
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/
Had I Not Pledged My Soul?
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
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 Wonder the Nightmares
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/
Warning to Our Patrons: This Establishment is Purported to be Haunted
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
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.
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/
For the Sake of All Our Souls
There was a strange melody echoing throughout Llanada Villa. I had known it, somehow, when I had awakened this morning. I knew it more surely now, staring out of the library windows into the early afternoon sunlight slanting down among the mansion to cast a pattern of light and shadow. I knew that soon, perhaps even today, something important was going to happen. Whether good or bad I did not know, but I darkly suspected. And with reason; there are few good things that may unexpectedly happen to a person, things, that is, of lasting importance. Disaster can strike from innumerable directions, in amazingly diverse ways. A voice said, “Hey, Mrs. Winchester,” and I turned away from the widow, slowly. That in itself was strange for it was not my manner to move slowly. However, this time something made me turn slowly from the window. Something upstairs moaned and scrabbled and I heard the screech of rent timber. As I walked across the room, there was a heavy scrape from above as something at the top of the house took its first step down to me. Puffs of plaster dust were shaken out of the library’s ceiling around its wooden supports. I walked over to the window, and stood looking out. The sun had moved hardly at all. Yet the shadow pattern inside was different. I strode from the window over to the desk and banged my fist down. That is when I heard a loud bestial roar of something surprised, maybe even hurt. There were more noises from above. The entire house seemed to screech and shudder. It shifted. Floors buckled and walls bellowed inward and outward with shock and repercussion. Noise came in savage and frenetic squalls and faded abruptly. Drafts erupted and rippled and were gone. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The music, though, had entirely ceased. Its absence was unnerving in the house, in the fine, falling precipitation of dust. There was a rumble and a roar from a landing above. It was a cry of primeval triumph. Then something sauntered and crashed downwards. I thought I heard music again. Demonic mutterings of thunder, and Charonian shadows athwart the walls. The thud of hooves was imperious down the stairs. A great physical faintness had overwhelmed me. My arms, my legs, lay like dead things. My heart was fluttering weakly. The curtain billowed in the breeze, though I was sure I had closed the casement. And then suddenly I threw back my head and screamed! For a dark universe crashed and shuddered in pain and rage above my head. I made my way into the corridor. There were many doors in the gloom of its considerable length. However, there was light under only one of them. It was pale in a narrow strip and softly inviting. I needed to get my bearings and could not do so in the darkness. The door opened on to a parlor lit by opaque globes of glass suspended from the ceiling by electrical wires, the wires covered by black fabric woven into plaits. It was now night, because outside the narrow windows all was dark. Cold perspiration broke out on my forehead due to the abysmal horrors of my mansion. It was acutely uncanny, even when frightful and uncanny things were common to heard the rumble of a thunderstorm gathering over Llanada Villa. This sound naturally stirred me. I walked up a flight of stairs, my footsteps echoing loudly in the stillness, and into a long, panelled room, much lighter than the one below. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
And where were my servants? The house seemed deathly quiet. Moonlight blazed over the dark bulk of the house, silvering the slates and spilling along hallways like pooled water. Shadows were threatening to overwhelm the house. However, my eye was drawn, most of all, to the mesmerizing orange glow coming from the fourth floor. I stood motionless for several seconds, or so it seemed. Torrential rain fell causing the light to dim. The extreme, almost nocturnal darkness of the sky caused me to stumble sadly, but I was guided by the frequent flashes of lighting. I felt suddenly too weak in spirit to go further. It was getting chilly. The stormy vigil caused me to reflect on my ghastly night. My mind turned to that odd question which had kept recurring since the deaths of my husband and daughter. Why had not the demons taken their victims in natural order? With what manner of far-reaching tentacles did it prey? In the midst of these reflections, as if dramatically arranged to intensify them, there fell near by a terrific bolt of lightning followed by the sound of sliding Earth. At the same time the wolfish wind rose to demonic crescendos of ululation. I was sure that the Observational Tower had been struck again. As I went to inspect the damage, the rain howled deafeningly so. Clutching at the edge of the table, I stood there swaying. The events of the past few hours rose before me in all their horror now, and I could see the black significance of every detail. As I entered the Observational Tower, it was cloaked in gloom, and a narrow corridor stretched before me. The floor was littered with rubble and fallen masonry; the ceiling interlaced with a thousand cobwebs. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Feeling the strange tendrils of a cancerous horror whose roots reaching into illimitable pasts and fathomless abysms of the night that broods beyond time, I stumbled forward, my eyes quickly accustoming themselves to the half-light from the almost opaque windows. At the end of the corridor a second door barred my passage. I thrust it open—and stood swaying there on the sill staring inward. From the skylights, a sprinkling of stars was visible for some of the clouds had cleared. Beyond was a small room, barely ten feet square, with low-raftered ceiling. And by the light of the open door, I saw side by side in the center of the floor—two white wood coffins. How long I stood there leaning weakly against the stone all I do not know. There was an odor of an ancient grave drifting out the chamber. In one of the coffins lie my butler. Dieter Hulsmann, was dead. And on what remained of his chewed and gouged head, there was no longer a face. Once again, the thunderstorm starting brewing. I believed that my mind was partly unhinged by the evens, and I was in fear of opening the other coffin. That shock had done something to my brain, and I could think only of the quest for a horror now grown to a cataclysmic stature in my imagination. The scenes of this night would alone have been enough to unnerve any ordinary person. Baleful primal shadows of unholy size, and grotesqueness leered above me like the pillars of some hellish nightmare; thunder, hushing the clawing wind, admitted but little rain. Beyond the coffins in the background, illumined by faint flashes of filtered lightning, rose spirits. History had led me to build this mansion. History, indeed, was all I had after everything else ended in mocking Satanism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
I now believed that the lurking fear was no material thing, but ghosts that rode the midnight lightening. There came a seeming echo of howling, shrill, faint, and eerie. I walked unresistingly to the window sill. Behind e was the blackness of an unknown chamber. I was afraid, but hid my fear. As I raised my glance, I saw glistening in the distance two demonic reflections, two reflections glowing with a baneful and unmistakable effulgence, and provoking maddeningly nebulous memories. I stopped automatically, though lacking the brain to retreat. The eyes approached, yet of the thing that bore them I could distinguish only a claw. But what a claw! Then far overheard I heard a faint crashing. It was the wild thunder of the mountain, raised to hysteric fury, and those eyes still stared with vacuous viciousness. I ran, staggering. I blundered through the hallway and to the elevator. As I took the elevator down nine stories, I breathed deeply, fished out my handkerchief and mopped my face. My hand was quivering like a grass stalk in a breeze, as I experienced virtual convulsions of fright. As I came back to the main house, I stood looking up at the tower. It was a peaceful, Arcadian scene, but I knew there was something sinister lurking about. Everything seemed to me tainted with a loathsome contagion, and inspired by a noxious alliance with distorted hidden powers. Through the precipitous abysses of my haunted mansion, I stumbled upon a passageway and with great determination, I was eager to reach the innermost secret of the fear, which I had once more come to deem definite, material, and organic. The moon no longer shone through the skylights and a bone chilling breeze blew out my candle and left me in stark blackness. Every second I was consumed with a mixture of fear and curiosity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The apparition came abruptly, a demon, scurrying from pits remote and unimaginable, a hellish panting stifled grunting, and burst through the wall—a loathsome night spawned flood or organic corruption more devastatingly hideous than the blackest conjurations of mortal madness and morbidity. God knows how many there were—there must have been hundreds. These demons were deformed, dwarfed, hairy devils. In spite of my daze of fright and disgust, I did not run. These ghoulish beasts where what was lurking in the walls of my home. They were the embodiment of all the snarling chaos and grinning fear that lurk in the darkness. I am afraid I am not mad—I hoped at first that I might be, but I was not. I am not now. Llanada Villa is perplexing. It also produced a music which enchanted me for hours with strains I have never heard before; strains which must have been of its own devising. To describe their exact nature is impossible for this music was immortal. They were a kind of fugue, with recurrent passages of the most captivating quality. Those haunting notes I had remembered, and had often hummed and whistled inaccurately to myself. Voices drifted down out of the darkness like gossip from another World. But to me in the night another voice was clearer, louder, more insistent—now like the striking of crystal cymbals, now like an elfin chuckling, always a breathless, never-ending whisper. I stood in the full moonlight, my face turned up to receive it, drinking in its brightness. It tingled in me like a draft from the things I had forgotten, in another World. It dissolved the dull ache of cold that was in my body and mind, that stiffened my swollen limbs, and lay like an icy nugget behind my eyes. It soaked into me, and into the World about me, so that every corner of my mansion shone with pale light, white and vaporous, as far as I could see. It was a strange World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
At Midnight, on the night of December 5th 1889, Mrs. Winchester and her niece Daisy made themselves comfortable on a third floor landing outside one of the haunted rooms and settled down for a all-night vigil. At 1am they heard the sound of bare feet running across the floor, then knocking sounds as if someone was rapping with their knuckles on the bare boards. Other noises followed in quick succession—a hallow cough and a rustling—suggesting that a presence was making itself known. By 3am, Mrs. Winchester assumed that the show was over and was planning to retire to bed leaving Daisy on the landing, but before she could do so Mrs. Winchester saw a sight that was to haunt her for the rest of her life. A closet door swung open and the figure of her husband, attired in a Navy suit, with his head inclining downwards, and one had pressed upon the chest as if in pain, strode slowly towards her. The specter advanced toward Mrs. Winchester, and passed right through her. Mrs. Winchester recollected nothing for several hours afterwards.
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/
Do You Believe in Ghosts?
The garden was thickening and closing up in the darkness. There was thunder in the air, and lurking fear, half hidden, rearing up before me. Llanada Villa, with its dark wings, cupolas, towers and façade oddly resembled a colossal dragon, crouched and ready to spring. My estate bore an aspect more than usually sinister as viewed it by night. It was not a wholesome landscape after dark. Even if they were ignorant of the terror that stalked here, I believe anyone would notice its morbidity. The ancient lightning-scarred trees seemed surreal, large, and twisted, and the other vegetation unnaturally thick and feverish. Fear had lurked on the estate for as long as I could remember. The psychic power which had been leading me had now become a reality. The surroundings under the moonlight blended harmoniously with my mood. I felt a shiver run through me. It was with a suddenness that brought me electrified to my feet. For over a century, the curse of the Winchester Fortune had been the subject of stories incredibly wild and monstrously hideous; stories of apparitions that come back from the dead of their own accord. Silent, colossal, creeping death which stalked inside of Llanada Villa where it welled up a consciousness of terror. With whimpering insistence, the people told tales of demons which sized lone servants after dark, either carrying them off or leaving them in a frightful state of gnawed dismemberment; while others whispered of blood-trails toward my mansion. It was also said that Llanada Villa was ghoulishly haunted and it had a voice—its voice was thunder. Thunder that could even creep up on a clear summer’s day. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Through the haze of exhaustion, it occurred to me that I felt lost and knew only that I was wandering away from the utter unknown. I went for a midnight stroll through the miles of hallways within my home to relieve myself of the terrible events of the past. A strange nervousness had slowly seized me. An impression stole upon me that there was something prowling about. Thin shadows were moving across the rooms and had attracted my gaze. These must be the souls, not of the good, but of the evil, which are compelled to wander about my home in payment of the penalty of their former evil way of life. For a moment, I thought I saw a curious cloud formation racing low and directly above me, a cloud black and impenetrable with two wing-like ends strangely in the shape of a monstrous flying bat. There were no lights lit in the house. And in the unremitting rain outside, there was no moonlight. There was a noise from some remote floor above, a dry chuckle like the scrape of lazy chains. The voice above tightened and broke with a roar. These ghosts were the players of a diabolical game. Serving a playful master. I descended stairs. A corridor followed. The bellowing fury above me faded slightly. However, that was no comfort. The corridor was catacomb-like. I felt more deeply entombed with every step. The pitiful throughs of the ghosts of natives shrieked and whined of the unnamable horror which had descended upon them. Death was indeed there. The disordered corridor was covered with blood and human debris bespeaking too vividly the ravages of demon teeth and talons; yet no visible trail led away from the carnage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Haunted by these apocalyptic visions of such cryptic deaths, horribly mangled bodies, chewed, and clawed in the catacombs of my home, it was certainly clearly that something demonic had been unleashed, for I have never heard of any rifle capable of creating carnage in such a hideous fashion. This curse was vastly different than the memory of endless prairies shimmering in the bright sun; of the breath of the evergreen forest in summer; of the crooning of ice-armored pines at the touch of the winds of winter; of cataracts roaring between hoary mountain masses; of all the innumerable sights and sounds of the wilderness; of its immensity and mystery; and of the silence that brood in its still depths. The death that had come had left no trace save destruction itself. However, a phantasmal chaos had suddenly caused my nerves to jump on edge, as I heard hideous shrieks beyond anything in my former experience or imagination. In the shrieking the inmost soul of human fear and agony clawed hopelessly and insanely at the veil of the living. Then came the devastating stoke of lightning which shook the whole mansion, lit the darkest corridors, and reverberated throughout my soul. There was something preternaturally about this experience. While the glare from beyond the window caught my eyes, a shadowy figure appeared before me. He had old sunken skin around the eyes and coarsely textured about his complexion. His shoulders were bunched under the black vanity of the silk embroidered robe he wore. His neck was a wattle of flesh. The eyes themselves were only partially focused, as though mostly lost to some wild and sly avenue of speculation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
As I passed by the apparition, his eyes followed me. This man was smugly and completely given over to evil. I had become lost in the forgotten turns of my mansion’s maze. Grief shuddered through me. I felt the grip of comforting fingers on my shoulder. I stared at the stain on the table. I sighed and my breath faltered. From far above, I heard the beast’s cavorting laughter. Tears blurred my eyes. There was blood everywhere. “Marvellous!” said a voice. There were two figures by the parlor. They were attired in evening wear and white silk mufflers and top hats. The glass of a monocle glittered above the spoiled grin of one of them. Even from forty feet distant, they smelled of cigars and brilliantine. And they stank of dead meat, sour wine, and feral rot. The figures began to fade. They had receded from sight almost entirely when one of the apparitions said, “You’ve angered Chief Little Fawn. And Chief Little Fawn will settle with you shortly.” I looked at my own soft, unaccustomed hands. And a voice that caused the skin on my head to crawl icily called down all the way from the top of the stairs to reach me where I stood. “My name is Chief Little Fawn.” There was a pause. “Are you coming up to fight? Or am I coming down for you?” My house was warming with the baleful threat of the thing above. In was becoming harder to breath. Demonic mutterings of thunder, and shadows thwarted me. As I shivered and contemplated my next move, I knew that I had pried out one of Earth’s supreme horrors. A fall of rain was drumming the mansion, and the heavy blanket of clouds glowed with a soft radiance where the moon was trying to break through. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Then the blue moonlight returned, illuminating the mansion. A large white hound leaped from the wall and ran towards me, before it slinked across the room and disappeared. Startled, I had no idea which direction to turn. A click, and a dazzling white light enveloped the entire floor. For a brief second, I saw a woman outlined there against the wall. “Fool!” she cried hoarsely. “Blundering fool! What have you done?” Her eyes were glaring at me, smouldering with hatred. I gazed at her curiously as she stood erect, head thrown back, body apparently taut as wire, and a slow shudder crept down my spine. Then without warning, she gathered up her dress and floated down the path towards the door to nowhere. A moment later she disappeared somewhere in the shadows. I stood there, staring after her in a daze. Suddenly, there rose a low animal snarl. And before I could move, a huge gray shape came hurtling through the hallway, bounding in great leaps toward me. Its face was contorted in diabolic fury, and its jaws were dripping slaver. Even in that moment of terror as I stood frozen before it, the sight of those black nostrils and those black hyalescent eyes emblazoned itself on my mind, never to be forgotten. Then with a lunge it was upon me. I had only time to run. I could feel those teeth trying to clamp down on my heels. The beast coughed and faded into a black mist and vanished. Endless hours I spent confined to my room suffering the tortures of the damned. When twilight came, I had vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for an odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul. That I am still alive and sane, is a marvel I cannot fathom. I cannot fathom it, for these ghouls were a blasphemous abnormality from hell’s nethermost craters; abominations which no mind could fully grasp. There I lay, alone, in my accursed mansion, shivering, and terrified. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House seems to be drenched with the powerful emotions of spiritual energy. Of all the anomalous phenomenon which is reported, ghosts and ghostly sightings are by far the most common. One need not venture off to a distant loch, travel deep into a jungle wilderness, spend the night in a graveyard staring at the stars to have an extraordinary, life-changing, mind-blowing encounter. In The Winchester Mystery House, a ghost can appear to anyone, at anytime, for any reason. People from all walks of life have had a ghostly encounter in this beautiful but bizarre mansion. Be it an apparition that appears in a hallway or upon the step, mindless and unaware of your presence; or the giggles of children who once played nearby many, many years ago. Ghost, of course, have walked by our side since time immemorial. Ghosts arrived on stage by the Upper Paleolithic, perhaps around 50,000 BC. The simple conception that something recognizable of a dead person might at some time return to human society is neither fanciful nor surprising. Its roots originate at that developmental horizon where burial with goods became the norm for the first time. Ghost have waited in the winds from the beginning and have fluttered persistently as part of human cultural, religious, or philosophical baggage ever since. Practically speaking, as a result, they are inexpungible. Dying without a grave, accidently or otherwise, was a terrible fate. It was a weapon in warfare and judgement, for no quietus was attainable. Hammurapi of Babylon, in the eighteenth-century BC, threatens that the soldiers of any other king who does not follow his laws should be thrown on the plain in heaps and his troops denied burial. Other laws show that executed criminals were similarly treated. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Crucially, burial is not compelling of itself in our search for ghosts, for there were always many reasons for rapid burial of the dead; it was understood before thought it self what happened to corpses, diseased or otherwise, and there was the question of say, respect for the dead, or predators. Archaeologically speaking, burial as such carries no implication necessarily different from waste disposal. The gradual establishing of deliberate burial in early ancestor communities, however, must have led to significant consequences. Shared ritual tied with mourning would come to teach that individual life itself was finite. With the development of abstract thought and the sharing of language and experience, the great lesson would come to be explicitly, rather than instinctively, understood: all that lives must die, passing though nature to eternity. For Babylonian men and women, accordingly, ghosts were an unpredictable reality. Everyone knew that ghosts must be unhappy: those responsible could list all the reasons. Omens, spells and rituals were available that could help the experienced diviner or exorcist in assessing his or her case as well as dealing with it. It is easy to imagine that deceased members of extended or extending families who had long inhabited the same place would not only feel close to their descendants but also tied to the rooms and passages where they had spent so much of their lives. Most ghosts, probably, were of the local and family type, but what must have been especially frightening was the idea that a dangerous ghost might be unconnected with anyone at in in one’s personal World—a killer bent on random street murder—or a ghost fastened on his or her victim through mistaken identity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The ancient Egyptians were so preoccupied with the prospect of an afterlife that their entire civilization was founded on the cult of the dead. Many believe that the pyramids may have been built not only as tombs for their pharaohs, who were venerated as living descendants of the Gods, but also as the means of initiation into the mysteries of life and death. As with the pyramids, the structural shape of The Winchester Mystery House is believed to have both a mystical significance and a practical purpose, focusing the Earth’s magnetic energies to a specific point and to such effect that the initiate would be unable to resist the force drawing their etheric body out of its physical home. According to some sources, a Boston medium consulted by Mrs. Winchester explained that her family and her fortune were being haunted by spirits. Supposedly their untimely deaths of her daughter and husband were caused by these spirits, and it was implied that Mrs. Winchester might be the next victim. However, the medium also claimed that there was an alternative. Mrs. Winchester was instructed to move west and appease the spirits by building a great house for them. As long as construction of the house never ceased, Mrs. Winchester could rest assured that her life was not in danger. Building such a house was even supposed to bring her eternal life. Earth energies are stronger near the water which suggests one explanation of why Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester chose the Santa Clara Valley to build her beautiful estate and vibrant gardens.
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/
May America Previl?
One of the most important things to do is to live in the moment. This does not mean that you forget where you come from or do not plan for the future, it simply means living righteously and enjoying the present, without focusing on past atrocities. No one can right the past, but we can create a better future. The best way to capture the moment is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake and enjoy the life we are having. However. Lapses in awareness are frequently caused by an eddy of dissatisfaction with what we are seeing our felling in that moment, out of which springs a desire for something to be different, for things to change. Fear is as nonsubstaintal as your shadow, but it is. The shadow also exists—nonsubstantial, negative, but not nonexistential—and sometimes the shadow can have a great impact on you. People are more afraid of fear than of anything else, because the very existence of fear shakes your foundations. The infant still feeling one with mother, cannot yet say “I,” nor has he any need for it. Only after he has conceived of the outer World as being separate and different from himself does he come to the awareness of himself as a distinct being, and one of the last words he learns to use is “I,” in reference to himself. In the development of the human race the degree to which man is aware of himself as a separate self depends on the extent to which he has emerged from the clan and the extent to which the process of individuation has developed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The member of a primitive clan might express his sense of identity in the in the formula “I am we”; he cannot yet conceive of himself as an “individual,” existing apart from his group. It should always be kept in mind that, in addition to sorrow and mourning, part of the psychological response to separation is great anger at the mother-figure for leaving. Thus mourning, along with his attachment and love become subjects of anxiety. In the medieval World, the individual was identified with his social role in the feudal hierarchy. The peasant was not a man who happened to be a peasant, the feudal lord not a man who happened to be a feudal lord. He was a peasant or a lord, and this sense of his unalterable station was an essential part of his sense of identity. When the feudal system broke down, this sense of identity was shaken and the acute questions “Who am I”—or, more precisely, “How do I know what I am?”—arose. This was the question that was raised, in a philosophical form, by Rene Descartes. He answered the quest for identity by saying, “I doubt, hence I think; I think, hence I am.” This answer put all the emphasis on the experience of “I” as the subject of my thinking activity, and failed to see that the “I” is experienced also in the process of feeling and creative action. The development of Western culture went in the direction of creating the basis for the full experience of individuality. By making the individual free politically and economically, by teaching him to think for himself and freeing him from an authoritarian pressure, one hoped to enable him to feel “I” in the sense that he was the center and active subject of his powers and experienced himself as such. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
However, only a minority achieved the new experience of “I.” For the majority, individualism was not much more than a façade behind which was hidden the failure to acquire an individual sense of identity. Many substitutes for a truly individual sense of identity were sought for and found. Nation, religion, class, and occupation serve to furnish a sense of identity. “I am an American.” “I am a Protestant.” “I am a businessman.” These are the formulae that help a man experience a sense of identity after the original clan identity has been acquired. These different identifications are, in contemporary society, usually employed together. If blended with older feudal remnants, they are in a broad sense status identifications, and they are more efficient, as in European countries. In the United States of America, where so little is left of feudal relics and where there is so much social mobility, these status identifications are naturally less efficient, and the sense of identity is shifted more and more to the experience of conformity. Inasmuch as I am not different, inasmuch as I am like the others and recognized by them as “a regular fellow,” I can sense myself as “I.” I am “as you desire me”—as Mr. Pirandello put it in the title of one of his plays. Instead of the preindividualistic clan identity, a new herd identity develops in which the sense of identity rests on the sense of an unquestionable belonging to the crowd. That is uniformity and conformity are often not recognized as such, and are covered by the illusion of individuality, does not alter the facts. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
The problem of the sense of identity is not, as it usually understood, merely a philosophical problem, or a problem concerning only our mind and thought. The need to feel a sense of identity stems from the very condition of human existence, and it is the source of the most intense strivings. Since I cannot remain sane without the sense of “I,” I am driven to do almost anything to acquire this sense. Behind the intense passion for status and conformity is this very need, and it is sometimes even stronger than the need for physical survival. What could be more obvious than the fact that people are willing to risk their lives, to give up their love, to surrender their freedom, to sacrifice their own thoughts for the sake of being one of the herd, of conforming, and thus of acquiring a sense of identity, event though it is an illusory one. The fact that man has reason and imagination leads to the necessity not only for having a sense of his own identity but also for orienting himself in the World intellectually. This need can be compared with the process of physical orientation that develops in the first years of life and that is completed when the child can walk by himself, touch and handle things, knowing what they are. However, when the ability to talk and to speak has been acquired, only the first step in the direction of orientation has been taken. Man finds himself surrounded by many puzzling phenomena and, having reason, he has to make sense of them, has to put them in some context which he can understand and which permit him to deal with them in his thoughts. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The further his reason develops, the more adequate becomes his system of orientation, that is, the more it approximates reality. However, even if man’s frame of orientation is utterly illusory, it satisfies his need for some picture which is meaningful to him. Whether he believes in the power of a totem animal, in a rain god, or in the superiority and destiny of his race, his need for some frame of orientation is satisfied. Quite obviously, the picture of the World that he has depends on the development of his reason and of his knowledge. Although biologically the brain capacity of the human race has remained the same for thousands of generations, it takes a long evolutionary process to arrive at objectivity, that is, to acquire the faculty to see the World, nature, other persons, and oneself as they are and not distorted by desires and fears. The more man develops this objectivity, the more he is in touch with reality, the more he matures, the better can he create a human World in which he is at home. Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the World by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the World with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the World more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs also to the animal part of man. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
There is a dialectical sense in which the existence of opinion necessarily presupposes difference of opinion. Without dissent, there would be nothing to discuss. There might be facts to ascertain, or indoctrination to preform upon recruits, but if all concerned are quite contented with current ways, and no one sees a better alternative, there is no problem of what is to be done. Dissent is possible only when the public has come to feel that there is a problem, and that something should be done, and when one or more definite proposals are then put forward. Even discussion over whether there is a problem or something should be done is academic until some plan of action is suggested. Those who are against action must have something to be against, just as those who want action must have at least one notion which they favour. Moreover, dissent over alternative lines of action (inaction being usually a synonym for traditional procedure) must be supposed by clashes of interest least it be merely academic and lead to no resolution. It is only an apparent contradiction to insist that discussion is conditional both on values held in common and on clashes of interest. Because of the values held in common each party can advance his proposal not as a mere assertion of interest but as a right which out to be binding upon the other. It is the justification of interests as rights which makes a discussion. Enemies of government by discussion exaggerate the ideological nature of a group’s moral justification of its position, but the wisest friends of government by discussion do not altogether deny the basis of group interest for each partisan’s view. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
To insist, however, that justifications set forth in advocacy or defense of an action program are derived in some direct way from the interest of a group is to reduce discussion to a mere war of words, which it is not. Moreover, it willfully and knowingly overlooks the variety of justifications which may be asserted for any one group of interest, the often incoherent and contradictory diversity among the interests of a group, and, above all, the unformed, inchoate nature of any group’s interests. Often it assumes that a group’s interest is either an objective fact visible to all, or at least visible to some observers with special access to truth. This is never the case. A group, or even an individual, is often as divided within itself as to what it wants as the community of which it is a part. It may wish to justify its formulation of what it wants as much to itself as to the public. The integration of personality and the integration of the community are aspects of the same unceasing process. Some professed friends of government by discussion, however, presume that there is an objective public interest, usually implicitly represented and defined by themselves. There is no pre-existing public interest, any more than there is a pre-existing group interest. It is the public interest which is to be determined by discussion; the definition of the public interest is the product of discussion; it is the determinant only in the sense of being the end sought. Those who insist that they represent the public good in any sense except in demanding that agreement be reached are like the prophets whom make discussion impossible through dogmatically proclaiming “God says…” #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
When it comes to good and services, one consists of keeping track of any history of individual traders’ deviation and selling this information for a fee. This person (or organization) providing this service is called an information intermediary, or Info for shot. Another service is to deter cheating by the trader with whom a customer is currently matched, by threatening to inflict some dire punishment in response to such behaviour. This person providing this service is called an enforcement intermediary, or Enfo for short. If a customer of Info gets cheated, Info finds this out without incurrent any further cost. This may be because he provides his service by accompanying his customer (physically or metaphorically) to the trade. If a buyer or borrower defaults, credit-rating agencies, too, are likely to be told by their customer firms or lenders. A customer who has been cheated probably actually gets a little satisfaction from complaining, but even if he incurs a small cost by complaining, a contract like that in Milgrom, North, and Weingast will enable Infor to induce the customer to report the other party’s current cheating. In addition, Info can detect at a further cost any occurrences where someone who is not his customer gets cheated. At the start of each period, Info chooses his fee F and invites traders to become his customers. More precisely, the contact that Inform offers to each trader has the following form. Pay me F now. When your match is revealed, I will tell you what I know of that player’s history. If he has a history of cheating, of if he is not my customer, you should play Deviate; this will not count against you in the future. Otherwise you should play Comply. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Each trader decides whether to accept this offer. Then the pairings are revealed. Info tells his customers their partner’s history of behaviour, but Info’s truthfulness is not automatically guaranteed. Each trader can also observe whether his current partner is Info’s customer. Based on this information, each decides whether to play this period’s game; in the case I am considering the answer is yes. Info may double cross a customer by conspiring, for a separate fee, with the person on the other side of the deal and mislead the customer into choosing Comply while the other plays Deviate. And Infor may extort money from a trader with a clean history by threatening to asset that he has cheated in the past. After all the pairwise games for this period are played, Info keeps a record of any cheating of his customers, and decides whether to carry out an extra cost any additional detection activities. Infor merely tells a customer either “I know your match has cheated in the past” or “As far as I know, your match has not cheated in the past.” If Info says the latter and the other trader cheats this time, the customer has no recourse and Info will not inflict any punishment on the cheater. If Info lies about the other party’s history (and extracts an additional fee from the other party for allowing him to cheat in this way, the customer equally has no recourse; we have to find conditions under which the equilibrium is proof against such double crossing by Info. Similarly, we have to check whether Info has any incentive to extract extortion payments by threatening falsely to assert a history of cheating by someone who in reality has a clean record. Since customers’ contracts with Info cannot be externally enforced, Info cannot credibly enter into long-run contracts with large up-front fees to control customers’ cheating. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The phenomena which we observe in the neurotic person are in principle not different from those we find in the normal. They are only more accentuated, clear-cut, and frequently more accessible to the awareness of the neurotic person than they are in the normal who is not aware of any problem which warrants study. The term normal or health can be defined in two ways. Firstly, if he is able to fulfill the social role he is to take in that given society, from the standpoint of a functioning society, one can call a person normal or healthy. More concretely, this means that he is able to work in the fashion which is required in that particular society, and furthermore that he is able to participate in the reproduction of society, that is, that he can raise a family. Secondly, from the standpoint of the individual, we look upon health or normalcy as the optimum of growth and happiness of the individual. If the structure of a given society were such that it offered the optimum possibility for individual happiness, both viewpoints would coincide. However, this is not the case in most societies we know, including our own. Although they differ in the degree to which they promote the aims of individual growth, there is a discrepancy between the aims of the smooth functioning of society and of the full development of the individual. This fact makes it imperative to differentiate sharply between the two concepts of health. The one is governed by social necessities, the other by values and norms concerning the aim of individual existence. Unfortunately, this differentiation is often neglected. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Most psychiatrist take the structure of their own society so much for granted that to them the person who is not well adapted assumes the stigmas of being less valuable. On the other hand, the well-adapted person is supposed to be the more valuable person in terms of a scale of human values. If we differentiate the two concepts of normal and neurotic, we come to the following conclusion: the person who is normal in terms of being well adapted only at the expense of having given up his self in order to become more or less the person he believes he is expected to be. All genuine individuality and spontaneity may have been lost. On the other hand, the neurotic person can be characterized as somebody who was not ready to surrender completely in the battle for his self. To be sure, his attempt to save his individual self was not successful, and instead of expressing his self productively he sought salvation through neurotic symptoms and by withdrawing into a phantasy life. Nevertheless, from the standpoint of human values, he is less crippled than the kind of normal person who has lost his individuality altogether. Needless to say there are persons who are not neurotic and yet have not drowned their individuality in the process of adaptation. However, if we think of neurotic in terms of social efficiency, the stigma attached to the neurotic person seems to us to be unfounded and justified. As for a whole society, if its members did not function socially, the term neurotic cannot be applied in this latter sense, since a society could not exist. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
From a standpoint of human values, however, a society could be called neurotic in the sense that its members are crippled in the growth of their personality. Since the term neurotic is so often used to denote lack of social functioning, we would prefer not to speak of society in terms of its being neurotic, but rather in terms of its being adverse to human happiness and self-realization. Once the primary bond which gave security to the individual are served, once the individual faces the World outside of himself as a completely separate entity, two courses are open to him since he has to overcome the unbearable state of powerlessness and aloneness. By one course he can progress to “positive freedom”; he can relate himself spontaneously to the World in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous, and intellectual capacities; he can thus become one again with man, nature, and himself, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self. The other course open to him is to fall back, to give up his freedom, and to try to overcome his aloneness by eliminating the gap that has arisen between his individual self and the World. This second course never reunites him with the World in the way he was related to it before he merged as an “individual,” for the fact of his separateness cannot be reversed; if it were prolonged, it is an escape from an unbearable situation which would make life impossible. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
This course of escape, therefore, is characterized by its compulsive character, like every escape from threatless complete surrender of individuality and the integrity of the self. This it is not a solution which leads to happiness and positive freedom; it is, in principle, a solution which is to be found in all neurotic phenomena. It assuages an unbearable anxiety and makes life possible by avoiding panic; yet it does not solve the underlying problem and is paid for by a kind of life that often consists only of automatic or compulsive activities. Some of these mechanisms of escape are of relatively small social import; they are to be found in any marked degree only in individuals with severe mental and emotional disturbances. It may be said that the Holy Spirit dwelling in the regenerate human spirit energizes and works through the faculties of the soul and the members of the body only in and with the active cooperation of the WILL of the believer. In other words, God, though in the spirit of man, does not use the man’s hand apart from the “I will use my hand” of the man himself. Life is a mixture of essence and existence, of actualized potentiality and existential distortions, of being and estrangement. Since the process of actualization is ontological, life is a universal concept applicable to all real beings, organic and inorganic, stars and rocks, animals and men. Life can be considered from the viewpoints of its two constitutive factors, essence and existence. Essentially, life exhibits a unity amid diversity described as the multidimensional unity of life. Existentially, life is ambiguous. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
The metaphor “dimension” should replace “level” in depicting the diversity of life, for levels so divide life into watertight compartments that its essential unity is destroyed. A plurality of dimensions reflects the difference in life, but, because dimensions can meet in a point without excluding one another, they accurately express the essential unity of life. Since life is the gradual actualization of potentialities, some dimensions are called “realms.” In this sense one speaks of the vegetable realm or the animal realm or the historical realm. In all of them, all dimensions are potentially present, and some of them are actualized. However, in man all dimensions, especially the spiritual and historical, are actual; in him is found the fullness of the essential multidimensional unity of life. Life as the actualization of potential being is a process, a movement out and away from a center and then back toward it. Thus, the life-process is made up of three basic functions. The circular movement of self-integration I the actualization of the ontological polarity of individualization and participation. Secondly, the horizontal direction of life is self-creativity, which is the actualization of the dynamics-form polarity. Thirdly, the vertical movement toward the ultimate and infinite is self-transcendence which actualizes the polarity of freedom-destiny. Although these functions of life in themselves are unified and harmonized, they are subject to the disruptions that follow upon existential estrangement. When separation becomes actual, their negative effects come into play, and ambiguity sets in. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
To the degree in which this disruption is real, self-integration is countered by disintegration, self-creation is countered by destruction, self-transcendence is countered by profanization. In the life process these positive and negative elements are inseparably entwined, for life is neither essential nor existential but ambiguous. China, borrowing Communist ideology and economic and social methods from Soviet Russia, has become the first colonial country to make spectacular economic gains, beginning to transform herself into one of the great World powers and trying by example, persuasion, and economic help to become the leader of the colonial revolution in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. While after 1923 the Soviet Union had definitely given up the hope for a workers’ revolution in the West and, in fact, sought to contain all Western revolutionary movements since then, she had hoped for support from the nationalist revolutions in the East. Now, however, having herself become one of the “have” states, she feels threated by the growing onslaught of the underdeveloped countries under China’s leadership, and seeks an understanding with the United States of America, without, however, turning this understanding into an alliance against China. Any description of the basic trends of Western history in the last four hundred and eighty years would be lacking in an essential element unless it took account of a profound spiritual chance. While the influence of Christian theological thinking was waning from the seventeenth century onward, the same spiritual reality which was expressed earlier in the concepts of this theology found now a new expression in philosophical, historical, and political formulations. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The philosophers of the eighteenth century were, as Carl Becker has pointed out, no less men of faith than were the theologian of the thirteenth century. They just expressed their experience in a different conceptual framework. With the explosive growth of wealth and technical capacities in the nineteenth century, there occurred a fundamental change in man’s attitude. Not only, as Mr. Nietzsche put it, “God was dead,” but the humanism that was common to the theologians of the thirteenth, and to the philosophers of the eighteenth centuries, slowly died too; the formulae and ideologies, both of religion and of humanism, continued to be used, but the authentic experience became increasingly thinner, to the point of unreality. It was as if man had become drunk with his own power, and had transformed material production, once a means to the end of a more dignified life, into an end in itself. Large-scale enterprise, state intervention, emphasis on control of—rather than ownership of—property in the means of production, are characteristic of all industrial systems today. The Wester capitalist system, while it has many features of nineteenth-century capitalism, has incorporated enough of the new features to constitute a very different system from the former. The three forms of socialism current today, have broken much more drastically with the continuity of the former economic stage, show the new trends in different degrees and emphasis: a) Khrushchevism, a system of complete centralized planning and state ownership of industry and agriculture. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
B ) Chinese communism, especially since 1958, a system of total mobilization of its most important capital asset, 1.4 billion people, and the complete manipulation of their currency, physical and emotional energy and thoughts without regard to their individuality; c ) humanistic socialism, which aims at the blending of a necessary minimum of centralization, state intervention, and bureaucracy with the possible maximum of decentralization, individualism, and freedom. This third type of socialism is represented by various forms from Scandinavia to Yugoslavia, Burma, and India. It makes sense because without some form of communism, the people hold all the natural resources which they can sell as they please, while the government only takes in tax revenue. However, as LCDs (less developed countries) are now rising, the American government needs to take some control of production of goods and services to ensure it does not lose its role as World power. If the corporations and the people in the United States of America can no longer afford to own farms, make cars, and produce, poultry, dairy, wood, steel, and other raw materials, they will have to important everything, which send wealth out of the United States of America to other nations. Therefore, the government has two choices. They can make laws that allow them to compete with private firms, or subsidize American farms, automakers, and other companies that produce goods and services so they remain affordable and are purchased by Americans as well as other nations. It would also be wise to offer huge tax incentives to people who purchase American cars. If a person, for example, could get a $5,000 tax credit on any American car, they would not only be popular because of style, but also because there is more incentive to purchase one. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Russian under control of President Vladimir Putin’s leadership, is a conservative, state-controlled, industrial managerialism, not a revolutionary system; she is interested in law and order and anxious to defend herself against the onslaught of the revolution of the “have-not” nations. For the reason Mr. Putin seeks an understanding with the United States of America, the ending of USA involvement with Ukraine. He neither needs nor wants another war. Mr. Putin cannot, however, give up his Communist-revolutionary ideology, nor can he turn against China, without undermining his own system. Hence he has to maneuver carefully to preserve his ideological hold on the Russian people and to defend himself against both his opponents within Russian and against China and her potential allies outside. If he fails in his attempt to end the United States of America’s involvement with Ukraine, he (or his successor) will be forced into a close alliance with China and into a policy which would leave little hope for peace. The development of the former colonial peoples will not follow the capitalist development, because for psychological, social, and economic reasons this system is neither feasible nor attractive to them. The question is not whether they will join the communist or the capitalist systems. The real alternative is whether they will accept the Chinese or Russian form of communism, thus becoming closely allied with either of these two countries, or whether they will adopt one of the various forms of democratic, decentralized socialism and become allied with the neutral bloc. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The United States of America is, therefore, confronted with the following alternative: either a continued fight against communism together with the continuation of the arms race—hence the probability of nuclear war—or a political understanding on the basis of the status quo with Russia, and the support of neutral democratic-socialist regimes in the colonial World. It is a fact that two systems represented By Russia-China and by the United States of America—Western Europe are competing with each other in the World today and the race is only heating up and getting more intense. Any attempt of either one to defeat the other system through the use of military power will not only fail, but will lead to the destruction of both—or the World. There is only one way in which the United States of America can compete with communism: that is by demonstrating that it is possible to raise the standard of living in America and influence LCDs to follow this method, without using forces of coercive regimentation. However, many people are not convinced that America is heading in the right direction because their leaders are displaying a lack of competence, a lack of law and order, a loss of family values, and it even seems to some that hardworking Americans, who believe in the capitalist dream, are given less consideration than people who enter America illegally. While there are over 5 million homeless people (many are not counted as homeless because they are subletting, living with family, or not on a rental lease where they are being housed) in America, people entering the country without passing background checks and without documents are put up in hotel rooms and given cash assistance. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
You will hear critics say that there are so many people homeless in America because they are mentally ill and that there is a shortage of houses. However, let us be real, many of you know people who are mentally ill and should have been fired who are gainfully employed. It is so bad that several of their coworkers display the same level of dysfunction. Furthermore, there are currently sixteen million homes currently sitting vacant across the United States of America. In fact, in every state across the country, any homes remain empty while hundreds of thousands of Americans face homelessness. The existence of a multicentered World depends on the acceptance of the present status quo by all powers and on effective universal disarmament. The tension and suspicious of the nuclear arms race do not permit a political understanding; the unsettled political situation does not permit disarmament. If peace is to be preserved, both disarmament and political understanding are necessary. If and when the economy improves and the arms race ends, only then will massive economic assistance—food, capital and technical assistance—to the LCDs be possible. Also, efforts to education LCDs about family planning and birth control should also be a goal. Because when there is food on the table, and people do not have to work for it, they usually continue to have babies. Some babies are even born starving because people have no idea about birth control and family planning nor access to it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Also, in conquering poverty and achieving wealth, the United States of America, like the rest of the West (and Russia), has accepted a spiritual of materialism under which production and consumption have become ends in themselves, rather than means to a more human, creative life. These and other institutional, secondary goals and values have become indistinguishable to most people from the primary aims of life. Quite aside from all dangers from without, our inner emptiness and deep-rooted lack of hope will eventually lead to the fall of Western civilization, unless a genuine renaissance of the Western spirit takes the place of the present complacency, resignation, and confusion. This renaissance must be precisely what the Renaissance of the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries was—an invigorating re-establishment of contact with the humanistic principles and aspirations of Western culture. What we are witnessing today is truly a World revolution in rapid advance, a revolution which began in the West four hundred and eighty years ago. It has led to a new system of production which at first made Europe and America the leaders of the World. It made the working masses in Europe beneficiaries of the system; and hence the revolution of the masses in Europe (with the exception of Russia) and in North America was peaceful. Now a new stage of the World revolution is developing, the revolution of the LCDs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. If the great industrial powers accept the historical trend and take the adequate anticipatory steps, will this revolution occur peacefully? Many think World War III is on the verge of breaking out, and that leaves little hope for peace and the survival of democracy. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
I pledge Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. The American, even though they are being driven from the land, will never surrender their love for it. The American literally transplanted Heaven into his very consciousness. He imagines that he continues to live in the land of his dreams. He might be living in the cold north or in the sunny south, yet he prays for rain or for dew when it is the season in America. He celebrated Thanksgiving, the blending of two cultures and sharing of food and traditions. He celebrated Columbus Day, the founding of America. He celebrated Christmas, the birth of the Saviour. He celebrated Earth Day, when the trees were beginning to blossom. And he proudly celebrated Independence Day. In whatever clime he lived, he and she were always believed that they were in their ancient home. We must not forget the many sacrifices and contributions that woman have made for America also. Without women, we would not be able to continue the human race. The Americans mourned for their ancient land as they have for the dead, and they believe it will rise again and experience the resurrection of the dead. If I forget thee, O America, let my right hand forget its cunning; let my tongue cleave to my mouth, if I remember thee not, if I set not America above my chiefest joy. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for unto thee I will give it. And be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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We See things with Different Eyes
My heart was full of music as I wandered the hours away by the bank of a brook, on my estate, watching the sun on the face of the chuckling water. A bird came to circle me, flew unafraid through the aura of gladness about me. The delicate tip of a wing brushed my wrist with the touch of the first secret kiss from my hands. The singing the filled me was part of the nature of laughing, the running of water, the sound of the wind in the reed by the edge of the stream. And as I spake, into my face there came light, as reflected from a silver flame; my long brown hair swelled ampler, in display full golden; in my eyes a brighter day dawned blue and full of love. This was a World without hatred. As it grew dark, I went home. Then retiring to my rooms, I sat down by the light of one lamp and devoured what I could of my century’s thinking, and at last I lay flat upon the bed, staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed by the vigor of the return to the classical, by the passionate enthusiasm for the old Greek and Roman poets, and by the faith in sensuality which this age seemed to hold. I enjoyed the beauty of the old handwritten codexes. Of course, this is why, even after the printing press was still established, my libraries boasted of handwritten books. While waiting for the servants to return from their hunt, I went to the library to catching up on a little reading. However, when the party failed to return by midnight, I began to fear the worst. I stumbled out of my quarters; my mouth was very dry, and my heart was thumping painfully. I descended the stairs. And while sitting alone at a table, from the corner of my eye, I saw the curtain twitch at an upper window. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Suddenly, men where shouting, canvas flapping, wheels rumbling, and I could hear horses neighing and pawing frantically. Overjoyed to hear them, I leapt to my feet just as the doors opened and the party entered. And although there was no wind at that hour of the night, one did arise not long afterward, but there was absolutely none then. Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge-mustard, grey and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the standing democrat-wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense, godless clam the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving. They were twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in convulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds; scratching impotently in the noxious air as if jerked by some alien and bodiless line of linkage with subterrene horrors writhing and struggling below the black roots. Not a man breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper darkness, I saw wriggling at that treetop height a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that came down on the apostles’ heads at Pentecost. It was a monstrous constellation of unnatural light, like a glutted swarm of corpse-fed fireflies dancing hellish sarabands over an accursed marsh; and its colour was a nameless intrusion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
All the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting bright and brighter, brining to my mind a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image my conscious mind could form. It was no longer shining out, it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow directly into the sky. The shivering men walked to the front door. However, to my consternation they made no sound and passed straight through the furniture and walls. That is when I noticed the growing luminosity of the trees. With the moments the shining of the trees increased, while their restless branches seemed to strain more and more toward verticality. The wood of the well-sweep was shining now. The phosphorescence had begun to pervade the entire mansion. It glowed on the broad-planked floor and the carpet, and shimmered over the sashes of the stained-glass windows. It ran up and down the exposed corner-post, coruscated about the shelf and mantel, and infected the very doors and the furniture. Each minute saw it strengthened. I walked and stumbled as in a dream. All of Llanada Villa was shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour; trees, buildings, and even such grass and herbage as had not been wholly changed to lethal grey brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues of foul light. Then without warning the hideous thing shot vertically up toward the sky like a meteor, leaving behind no trail and disappearing through a round and curiously regular hole in the clouds before I could grasp or cry out. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I could not forget that sight, as I stared blankly at the stars of Cygnus, Deneb twinkling above the other, where the unknown colour had melted into the Milky Way. However, my gaze was the next moment called swiftly to Earth by the crackling in the valley. It was just that. Only a wooden ripping and crackling, as so many others in the valley vowed. Yet the outcome was the same, for in one feverish, kaleidoscopic instant there burst up from Llanada Villa a gleamingly eruptive cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance; blurring the glace of the few who saw it, and sending forth to the zenith a bombarding cloudburst of such coloured and fantastic fragments as our Universe must needs disown. Through quickly re-closing vapours, I flowed the great morbidity that had vanished, and in another second they had vanished too. Behind and below was only a darkness to which I dared not return, and all about was a mounting wind which seemed to sweep down in black, frore gusts from interstellar space. It shrieked and howled, and lashed the fields and distorted the fruit orchards in a mad cosmic frenzy. Later I was to learn that the hunting party had been ambushed and killed. Now on the 16th of January, the anniversary of the hunt, the ghostly party can be seen riding toward Llanada Villa. Apart from this, a housemaid’s ghost in a blue dress haunts the mansion, gliding silently along the corridors, while the spirit of Dieter Hulsmann, my butler haunts the Observational Tower where he starved to death, after learning of the death of the housemaid, whom he was fondly in love with. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
A group called the European Mission Society accused me of using the “arts of the Devil” and of being in league with “demonic forces” with which I supposedly intended “to perplex humanity.” With this added shock, I was crushed forever with a brooding fear I dared not even mention for many years to come. And from inside of the mansion, I had seen something feebly rise, only to sink down again upon the place from which the great shapeless horror had shot into the sky. I believe there must be an older race than man, spawned from ancient seed in times before ours, perhaps on planets that have gone to dust, and so horrible to humans that when they are discovered the discoverers keep still about it—forget them again as quickly as they can. And they go back to time immemorial. I saw things—and knew things—horrible, wild things I cannot quite remember—visited unbelievable places, looked backward through my memory of creatures that have manifested in the walls of my home. Sometimes gloominess falls upon me like a material pall. What writhing souls, what terrors, what unrest, what madness roams these halls! If only I would have been spared! Something had cast an immediate spell of depression over me. The air of the room grew heavy and close. The open casement and the out-of-doors seemed to beckon me. I walked to the window, thrust the curtain aside, stood there. I am not addicted to nocturnal strolls or late meanderings before my bed; yet now, curiously enough I wanted to leave my home and walk the darkened fields. I paced the room nervously. The clock on the mantel pushed its ticks slowly through the quiet. It was a brilliant moonlight night. The great chimes of the Observational Tower were sounding midnight. Trying as I could to erase from my memory the queer experience which I just had, but I could see shadows of men lurking on the grounds. How long I sat there in the quiet, I do not know. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
And to my holy sacrifice invite, the power who reigns in deepest hell and night; I call Einodian Hecate, lovely dame, of Earthly, water, and celestial frame, sepulchral, in a saffron veil arrayed, pleased with dark ghosts that wander thru the shade. Have I not reason, beldams as you are, saucy and overbold? How did you dare to trade and traffic with Macbeth in riddles and affairs of death; and I, the mistress of your charms, the close contriver of all harms, was never called to bear my part, or show the glory of our art? And, which is worse, all you have done hath been but for a wayward son, spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do, loves for his own ends, not for you. But make amends now: get you gone, and at the pit of Acheron meet me i’ the morning: thither he will come to know his destiny: your vessels and your spells provide, your charms, and every thing beside. I am for th’ air; this night I’ll spend unto a dismal and a fatal end: great business must be wrought ere noon: upon the corner of the moon, there hangs a vaporous drop profound; I’ll catch it ere it come to ground: and that, distill’d by magic sleights, shall raise such artificial sprites, as, by the strength of their illusion, shall draw him on to his confusion: he shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear his hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear; and you all know security is mortals’ chiefest enemy. Hark! I am call’d; my little spirit see, sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me. Come, let’s make haste; she’ll soon be back again. And we fairies, that do run by the triple Hecate’s team from the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Although The Winchester Mystery House is usually closed at 1.00am, police officers and passersby say that someone or something walks around in the mansion at night and often turns on all the lights. Numerous individuals have seen the image of a man hanging from a scaffold on the east side of the mansion. According to legend, 20 years before Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester purchased the home, an outlaw was hanged on the land. The site where the hanging allegedly took place was built over. One of the tour guides was badly shaken by something he had seen on the upper floor, but he refused to discuss it. The ghost of the outlaw haunted the mansion with dreadful shrikes. As such, a priest was brought in to exorcise the ghost, which he did with the help of a large black bible which he left in the mansion. However, years later, after the ghost had been long forgotten, the bible was taken away for repair and immediately the shrieking resumed. The bible was hastily returned, and the fearful shrieking ceased. The outlaw’s ghost still haunts the mansion, his broken neck and limp arm by his side as he stalks the lonely depths of the second floor.
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They Told Me this Because this Town was Full of Witch Legends
I was feeling extraordinary confusion and pain. It was not because of anything that could be seen or heard or handled, but because of something imagined. The place is not good for the imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. I thought I had awakened to a room full of darkness and moonlight and moving shadows, for the nearer moon was racing through the sky and everything in the mansion endued with a restless life in the dark. And something…some nameless, unthinkable thing…was coiled about my throat…something like a soft snake, wet and warm. It lay loose and light about my neck…and it was moving gently, very gently, with a soft, caressive pressure that sent little thrills of delight through every nerve and fiber of me, a perilous delight—beyond physical pleasure, deeper than joy of the mind. That warm softness was caressing the very roots of my soul with a terrible intimacy. The ecstasy of it left me weak, and yet I knew—in a flash of knowledge born of this impossible dream—that the soul should not be handled…And with that knowledge a horror broke upon me, turning the pleasure into a rapture of revulsion, hateful, horrible—but still most foully sweet. I tried to lift my hands and tear the dream-monstrosity from my throat—tried but half-heartedly; for though my soul was revolted to its very deeps, yet the delight of my body was so great that my hands all but refused the attempt. However, when at last I tried to life my arms a cold shock went over me and I found that I could not stir…my body lay stony as marble beneath the blankets, a living marble that shuddered with a dreadful delight through every ridig vein. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The revulsion grew strong upon me as I struggled against the paralyzing dream—a struggle of soul against sluggish body—titanically, until the moving dark was streaked with blankness that clouded and closed about me at last and I sank back into the oblivion from which I had awakened. Next morning, when the bright sunlight shinning through the daisy stained-glass windows awakened me. I could feel the welcoming warmth of the sun, which reminded me of the bench by the cherry tree and the smell of its forgotten blossom. I lay for a while trying to remember. The dream had been more vivid than reality, but I could not now quite recall…only that it had been more sweet and horrible than anything else in life. I lay puzzling for a while, until a soft sound from the corner aroused me from my thoughts and I sat up to see the chambermaid entering my room. “Morning,” I said. “I have just had the devil of a dream…” I stretched and yawned, dismissing the nightmare temporarily from my mind. “What am I going to do with you, Mrs. Winchester?” she replied. “I am leaving here in a day or two and I will miss you dearly.” “Child, do not worry yourself about me,” I cried. “You have enough of your own business.” The memory of last night’s extraordinary dream was slipping from me, as such memories do, any by the time I reached the morning room, all of yesterday’s happenings were blotted out by the sharp necessities of the present. Again the intricate business of the day claimed my attention. I must have spent two hours at least idling over blueprints, watching with sleepy, colourless eyes, the towers and gables that were to be built. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I made my rounds around the mansion, consuming many cups of tea in the course of the day and engaging in conversations with carpenters. I passed the day quite profitably, and it was not until late evening, when I returned to my office. I found myself alone when I reached the door. No matter. It was too late now to retreat or prevarication. I pushed on but, on this occasion, I found the door firmly locked. The disappointment melted away. And I felt I was floating on air. I turned away and then stood at the window, looking out over the moonlit landscape. Walking to the Venetian Dining Room, I cast a puzzled glance on the roast beef. It had been a while since I had a hot meal. However, a tiny, creeping fear was arising. From deeps of sound sleep I awoke much later. I awoke suddenly and completely, and with that inner excitement that presages something momentous. I awoke to brilliant moonlight, turning the room so bright that I could see the daisies from the window reflecting on the wall. And some warning instinct crawled coldly up my spine. There was a presentiment of something horrible stirring in my brain, inexplicably. I felt as thought soon the World would be consumed by floods, or split in two. That Planet Earth would be obliterated. That stars would collide, and parts of their bodies would fall to Earth, setting off a chain reaction to destroy the World. Traces of old ones can still be found amidst my estate, and some of them doubtless linger. The dark woods of the fruit orchards and the secrets of the strange days are one with the deep’s secrets; one with the hidden lore of Llanada Villa, and the mystery of primal Earth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
When the nine story Observational Tower was complete and I went to survey it, they told me this place was evil. They told me this because this town was full of witch legends. I thought the evil must be something which grandmas had whispered to children through centuries. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew thickly, and their trunks were big. And still there was beauty in it—an awful, shuddering beauty. The Winchester Mansion was insidious, promising, caressing, alluring, sweeter than honey; and the Observational Tower was clear and like the depths of a jewel—all beauty and terror, all horror and delight, in the infinite darkness upon which its windows opened, paned with emerald glass. It blended indistinguishably with the silence of the plush landscape—very softly, very passionately. It was then that I heard the story, and as the rambling voice scraped and whispered on I shivered again and again despite the summer day. When the spirits were done, the stars came out above me in the open. There had been no wild legends at all since the witch trials, but some believed this tower was where the devil held court beside a curious stone altar older than the Indians. There were not always haunted woods. And the sprawling ranch where I built my home was amid some of the valley’s most fertile gardens and orchards. However, something was creeping and creeping inside and waiting to be seen and felt and heard. Some of the rooms were deadly cold and during the summer guest would visibly shiver. As I climbed the winding staircase to the attic, it was very close and noisome up there, and no sound could be heard from any direction. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
In that first moment, as the door opened, I sensed something very wrong. The room was darkened, and for a while I could see nothing, and the deep stirrings of ancestral memory awoke within me—ancient memories from ancestors far away. In a graven instant—a tangled flash of conflicting sensation before oblivion closed over me. For I remembered the dream—and knew it for nightmare reality now. The very roots of my soul were tickled with unnatural delight. So I stood, rigid as marble as helplessly stony as any of Medusa’s victims in ancient legends were. And it was truly dreadful. A weakness was flooding that grew deepened, as something in my soul sank wholly into a blazing darkness that was oblivion to all else but the devouring rapture. The apparition that appeared in the room was slim, fair and sleek, and like William, he had the look of cherubic innocence on his face, but it was wholly deceptive. He had the face of a fallen angel, without Lucifer’s majesty to redeem it. I slammed the door and set my back against it, pearl handled gun in my hand, although my flesh crawled—for I knew…. commending my descent of the stairs, I heard a thud below me. I even thought a scream had been suddenly chocked off, and recalled nervously the clammy vapour which had brushed by me in that frightful room above. What presence had my cry and entry started up? Halted by some vague fear, I heard still further sounds below. Indubitably there was a sort of heavy dragging, and a most detestable sticky noise as of some fiendish unclear species of suction. With an associative sense goaded to feverish heights, I thought unaccountably of what I had seen upstairs. Good god! What devil World is this into which I had blundered? I dared move neither backward nor forward, but stood there trembling at the staircase. Every trifle of the scene burned into my brain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The sounds, the sense of dread expectancy, the darkness, the steepness of the narrow steps—and merciful Heaven!…the faint but unmistakable luminosity of all the woodwork in sight; steps, sides exposed laths, and beams alike! A feeble scratching on the floor downstairs now sounded distinctly. Slowly nerving myself, I finished my descent and walked boldly toward the parlor. However, I did not complete the walk, because what I sought was no longer there. It had come to meet me, and it was still alive after a fashion. Whether it had crawled or whether it had been dragged by any external force, I could not say; but the death had been at it. Everything had happened in the last half-hour had caused my face to become deathly pale. I retreated to my room like a child in disgrace, and lay awake for hours, staring into the dark, until I gave up and lit my candle and paced about the floor in a torment of spirit worse than anything I had endured in my life. My mind was so clouded with fatigue and misery. Archly, languorously, my blood pounded hot. The room wheeled and whirled about me, and forces unimaginable flickered through me. Battling the World, enslaved and yet possessor of all. There was a moment of blind fumbling in emptiness. I felt something loop gently about my ankle and a shock of repulsive pleasure went through me, and then another coil, and another, wound about my feet…that caressive pressure on my legs was all I could feel, and the voice in my brain drowned out all other sounds, and my body obeyed me reluctantly—but somehow I gave one heave of tremendous effort and swung, stumbling, out of that nest of horror. It was evening. The crooked bending skyline drank the buoyance of the sun, dragged it down, sucking greedily. And then I lay down on the clean floor, and wept. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Lights go on and off. Voices are heard, as well as footsteps. One of the tour guides enjoyed the animated conversations with the guest. However, he could hardly wait until everyone had left so that he could be begin taking notes from the old books in the library. The evening of stimulating and delightful companionship had left him feeling exhilarated, and he felt as though he could work through the night. “Of the thirteen doors in sight, only one was locked, and on this I tried various keys. The Thirteenth key proved the right one, and after some fumbling, I threw open the mahogany door. I screamed, I thought a momentary cloud eclipsed the window, and a second later I felt myself brushed as if by some hateful current of vapour. Strange colours danced before my eyes. The room contained hundreds of sleeping knights with their horses. There was a sparkling casket in which a beautiful maiden lay sleeping. However, on each side of the maiden were serpents, one holding a sword or the horn as only one of them could awaken her. Fatefully, I chose the horn and blew it.
“Suddenly, the sleeping knights came to life and attacked me. As they did, the room began to swirl and I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness. As I did, the figure in white appeared taunting me with a voice that echoed inside my head, ‘Now shame on him who sounded a horn, and the knight who sheathed a sword.’ When I regained consciousness, I was lying in the Daisy Bedroom and from that day on I was determined to find the sleeping maiden again. I spent years searching he mansion for the room in which she had lain. It became an obsession as I searched every corner of the mansion. And yet, for all my determination I never again found the room in which she lay. Visitors and other staff alike have reported seeing her tragic figure although her presence is felt more often than not. Interestingly, the maiden is said to float above the zig zag stair case and their level has changed over the years.” Caretakers have had valid experiences of some kind or other and some express the opinion that they would not go out of their way to spend the night at The Winchester Mystery House because it is so “beautiful but bizarre.”
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 