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Evils of Ignorance–Creation is the Beginning of the Fall
Public sentiment is a growing power the World over. In our country its influence is most marked. Here it creates law and repeals it. A law in violation of public sentiment is dead letter, and therefore demoralizing, for laws habitually violated tend to lawlessness. Reverence for law is a wholesome sentiment, which should be early implanted in the juvenile mind. Laws in reference alike to the support of schools or attendance upon them must depend largely upon public sentiment. Laws, just and right in themselves, and adapted, if sustained, to promote the greatest good of the greatest number, may yet fail utterly from the want of popular sympathy and support. The question, therefore, of the expediency of compulsory attendance at school in any given State depends on the enlightened public sentiment of the community. Wherever good schools have been so long maintained that the people generally regard them as essential to their individual thrift and happiness and to public security, morality, and prosperity, laws for the prevention of illiteracy may be wisely enacted. In those States where free public schools are still a novelty, or where illiteracy most abounds, where multitudes appreciate neither the advantages of education nor the evils of ignorance, compulsory attendance is considered impracticable. However, in those States where the traditions of the people from their earliest history have fostered the general appreciation of common-school education as their most precious heritage, as the source of their success and prosperity, as indispensable to their future growth, as essential to skilled industry, as the cheapest police-agency comes at length to be recognized as the universal right, duty, and interest of humans. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
If the State has a right to provide for any internal improvements, it has the right to provide for that education which is the condition of all progress. If the State may enforce regulations for the health of the body, it may do the same for the mind. If the State has a right to hang a criminal, it has a better right to prevent one’s crime by proper culture. The right to imprison and to execute implies the right to use the best means to prevent the need of either. What have to get this fatalistic idea out of people’s heads that we are on a downward spiral that cannot be stopped. The public school system in which the United States of America takes pride is one of the most paradoxical if not self-contradictory institutions in American life. On the other hand, it is completely socialized. No family pays directly for the education of those of its children who attend it; each family pays taxes more or less according to its ability, receives according to its need. All the children in the school share its services, expect where segregation and discrimination occur. The public high school in particular is the most cosmopolitan and equalitarian congregation of people in any community. Education is not merely available to all children, but compulsory during certain ages in each state. No child can be rejected as a pupil, save for reason of severe defect. The entire staff of the school—administrative, professional, and maintenance—is salaried. The whole roster of citizens in each community is eligible to participate in selecting members of its board of education and in affecting their policies. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
On the other hand, in the actual conduct of teaching and learning, conventional procedure is the incarnation of competitive individualism. The assignment of pupils to grades, rooms, and seats usually ignores the social ties among them. The marking systems rank each on the basis of rivalry with all. Beyond this marking system is the swarm of psychological test devised on the premise of an individualistic psychology to which few theorists remain willing to commit themselves. The tasks imposed on pupils are for the most part individual tasks, with no group decisions and no group responsibilities. To the extent that the problem of motivation is consciously considered at all, it is generally assumed sufficient to rely on the stimulation of rivalry for grades, and on parental interest in fostering the art of getting on in the World. Yet realistically, the spectacle is one of a majority sentenced to unfavourable comparisons and burdensome compulsions, from which they escape daily and yearly as fast as they can—5.3 percent dropouts in the high school years is still the rough national average; but California has a dropout rate of 10 percent. It would be redundant to recite here the long struggle between those who want the school to concentrate upon putting vocationally useful knowledge into children’s heads, and those who have declared their aim as the development of the entire personalities of children. The liberal educationalists tend to be those who emphasize the school’s functions in developing people for their responsibilities of citizenship; the vocationalists, those who emphasize training for economic competition. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Nevertheless, there occur numerous crossings for these lines. To further highlight this illustration, if one considers the method of examination employed in purely vocational schools run on a commercial basis, the pupil is usually passed on the achievement of a standard level of objective competence, rather than upon the calculation of a minimum numerical average maintained in competition with other pupils. As the scope of formal education comes to include adults and the very young, it is notable also that this new population in nursery schools and adult programs is not subjected to the usual competitive apparatus. Methods in adult education especially, where participation is completely voluntary, relay largely on noncompetitive motivation such as: group recognition, recruitment through friends, sociability, a degree of student choice of subject matter, choice of instructors, and design of methods. Forums, workshops, round table, committees, conferences, and seminars characterize adult methods. In public school extracurricular activities, it is obvious that only voluntary methods seem appropriate to induce participation, that motivation depends primarily upon the membership standing of a person in a group. Any teacher in a high school can give examples of seemingly dull, resistant, apathetic youths, who suddenly come alive in extracurricular activities, and exhibit prodigies of ability, energy, and ingenuity when given a responsible share in the tasks of a voluntary group. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Any teacher in a high school can give examples of seemingly dull, resistant, apathetic youths, who suddenly come alive in extracurricular activities, and exhibit prodigies of ability, energy, and ingenuity when given a responsible share in the tasks of a voluntary group. Not as many teachers have grasped the possibility of finding ways in which channels of motivation can be put to the service of serious learning. Since much of the best learning occurs in extracurricular activities, how could this be made to include more of the ordinary curriculum subject matter, thus making the child’s learning a art of one’s active involvement with one’s fellows? The evolution of policy within the school falls readily int our familiar three stages, although this may not be as readily apparent as with other types of family agencies. At the first stage, the intervals of spontaneous activity by pupil—recess, playground periods, assemblies, and singing—are regarded as concessions, as ways for children to let off steam, so they can return more seriously to the work of learning. At the second stage, extracurricular activities are recognized as having some values on their own account, more facilities and encouragement are provided, and these activities become more definitely and extensively organized on a group basis, but with a substantial element of adult guidance; counseling services grow, starting with health and going on to home visits and intensive testing. At the third stage which is far from being realized, the responsible self-governing group which is characteristic of many extracurricular activities permeates school activities, less as a concession to recreational demands, or as an attempt to supply social graces to children from limited home environments, but as a beneficial program of complete education. #RandophHarris 5 of 19
The parent-teacher associations connected with public schools are potentially the bodies through which all adult citizens may participate directly in the planning and evaluation of the educational programs in their communities. At present, however, the bords of education are too remote from ordinary citizens on the one hand, and the parent-teacher associations are too frail on the other. School boards, consisting of a handful of unpaid citizens elected for several years on a normally nonpartisan basis, tend to leave initiative and leadership to the salaried administrators. They are less governing boards than boards of audit and review. Their members are often so busy and exhausted that they have less intimate day-by-day knowledge of what goes on in the schoolrooms than do the parents of school children. Yet, in the hands of boards of education rests the ultimate power to modify what goes on in the schoolrooms day by day. Lacking any such power, parent-teacher associations normally operate (save in certain small school districts) under the handicap of seeming to be purely “social” organizations, where acquaintances may be made, tea drunk, and speeches heard. Biennial elections of school boards, and, in smaller places, annual school meeting to hear and accept reports, are usually pale and bloodless versions of what might be possible if the powers and functions of boards of education and parent-teacher associations could be fused in some workable manner. A few boards have made grouping efforts in this direction, of course, is not peculiar to public school systems. It is the characteristic shortcoming of local government in general. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The frequently heard suggestions for a revival of town meetings or their equivalent fail to appreciate the peculiarly modern nature of the problem—the frustration of citizenship in the city. So far no inventor of social procedures has suggested a solution which has worked as well as town meetings are reputed to have worked in their time. As it is universally admitted that the members of the human family must be prepared by instruction, and training, for the service which devolves upon them in this life, many are advocating for the maintenance of our public schools. Without education, each human must begin jut where one’s ancestors began, and however much wisdom or knowledge on obtains by one’s own efforts, one leaves none of it to one’s posterity when one dies; there is no opportunity for the advancement of one’s race. Humans, uneducated, are not prepared either to serve the World most effectively, or to enjoy the World most fully. The difference between a human who has been well instructed and trained from one’s youth, and what the same human would have been like if one had grown up untaught and untrained, is the difference, in some cases, between a civilized human and an uncultured human. The one may fulfill a noble mission, lead a life of high enjoyment, add to the happiness of one’s fellow humans, many of whom one never saw, and, when one dies, after a brief sojourn here, may leave the World better, richer, and more prosperous for one’s having lived in it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The other, in some cases, may become a burden to one’ fellow humans to oneself, while one adds nothing to the World’s wealth, and, at the best, renders no more service to one’s race than if one had been a horse or an ox. People in China are certainly preparing for the World of the future. China is breaking existing rules in three major ways. First, it combines participation in the resource development projects in Less Developed Counties (LDCs) with large-scale development assistance focused on the building of their infrastructure. The government is acting in tandem with resource companies, providing financial and organizational support. Western firms do not work together with their governments in this fashion and thus cannot offer similar packages. (To compete with China, Japan, and South Korea are starting to rapidly move in the same direction at this point.) Second, the development assistance China provides is, mostly, neither official development aid ( developing country itself, China does not want to bear donors’ responsibilities), nor purely commercial loans and investment. It is something in between: concessional loans (extended on better terms than commercial credit) and investment backed and subsidized by the state. China often extends resources-backed development loans, meaning that the borrowers pay its debt not in cash but with oil, cocoa beans, or metal ores. It is a mutually beneficial scheme. The Chinese side gets resources it needs, while cash-strapped loan recipients do not have to pay in precious hard currency. In the late 1970s, to build its own infrastructure, China obtained similar loans from Japan leveraging its coal, oil, and other resources. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Third, unlike the West and to its great embarrassment, China’s assistance is not conditioned on the recipient states’ record regarding democratization, human rights, economic liberalization, or anticorruption measures. To access natural resources, it does not hesitate to cooperate with the most dictatorial and abusive regimes in the World. In such countries it easily becomes a de facto monopolist as Western firms are prohibited from going there by law. Compared to the West, China provides its assistance quicker and more easily, without complicated screening procedures, and often on a larger scale. Let us pick up Africa as one of the major examples. Here, between 2004 and 2010, Beijing concluded agreements on the resource-backed loans with at least seven states for a total of nearly $14 billion. It extended the oil-backed loan o Angola with Chinese companies building roads, railways, hospitals, schools, and water systems. Nigeria got two loans to finance projects for utilization of gas to generate electricity. The hydropower project in the Congo was prepaid in oil and the one in Ghana in cocoa beans. The former also received a $3 billion copper-backed loan to build infrastructure, hospitals, and universities. In 2004, the Export-Important Bank of China extended three loans to the Angolan government at interest rates ranging from LIBOR plus 1.25 percent to LIBOR plus 1.75 percent, with generous grace periods and long repayment terms. Commercial lenders, such as Standard Chartered Bank, charged Angola LIBOR plus 2.5 percent or more, without any grace periods, and required faster repayment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
China’s $3 billion joint mining venture in the Congo gives the Congolese government a 32 percent stake, while in the joint ventures (JVs) with companies from other countries its share ranges from 7 percent to 25 percent. Also, China is starting to actively create and manage Special Trade and Economic Cooperation zones in Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Zambia, and so on, building infrastructure and facilities, especially with the aim of boosting low-cost manufacturing production and exports. This is exactly what African countries need to diversify and upgrade their industrial structure and to create jobs. In fact, the Chinese are replicating their own pattern of economic development at its earlier stages. The zones also serve as platforms for the entry by Chinese companies searching for new markets and lower costs. Encouraging the transfer of production of low-end and/or energy-intensive manufacturing items, the government subsidizes part of their start-up expenses. The $5 billion China-Africa Development Fund has acquired equity shares in three of the seven planned zones. In contrast, the U.S.A. Congress does not all the U.S.A. Agency of International Development to finance any activities leading to the relocation of Americans’ jobs overseas. Parties to an economic transaction can exploit their high-quality inside information using a relational contract, and a formal contract that must be based on lower-quality publicly verifiable information acts as a fallback in the event of cheating within their relationship. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Actions are costly to the agent, and observable only to oneself. The principal cares only about one’s own outcome minus one’s payment to the agent. The principal wants to motivate the agent’s actions, but there is some uncertainty so actions cannot be inferred precisely from the outcome. In the standard theory of the agency, the principal’s outcome is assumed to be verifiable, so outcome-based bonus or incentive payments can be designed and written into a contract that can be enforced in a court of law if necessary. However, in reality the principal’s true outcome is rarely verifiable to outsiders, even though the parties may have good information about. External, legally enforceable contracts then have to relay on some other performance measure that is an imperfect proxy for the principal’s outcome, and an even more imperfect proxy for the agent’s action. (The traditional economic theory of agency formulated the problem as a trade-off between giving the agent stronger incentives and making one bear more risk.) The simplest example of this situation is an employment contract, where the principal is the owner of a firm and the agent a manager or worker. However, it can also be interpreted in the context of a firm’s outsourcing decision. The principal firm buys from an agent firm a component that I an input to one of the principal’s final products. The principal firm’s ultimate objective is profit, but the contribution of the component to the final product, and indeed the contribution of the final product to the profit of the firm as a whole, are so thoroughly concealed in the account of the firm as to be unverifiable to a court of law. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Matters like the quantities and time of delivery of the component are recorded and easily verifiable; therefore a contract that specifies the firm’s payment to the component supplier as a function of these matters can be written and enforced by the government’s civil courts. However, the two firms may have a much better idea of other matters, such as the quality of the work, and can base a relational contract on such inside information. The finding that relational contract work best when the parties value the future highly and when the external performance measure is of very poor quality is surprising. However, one result is not so immediately obvious, and repays further thought. This is the finding that when the incentive constraint is binding and the relational contract yields a second best, a partial improvement in the external performance worsens the outcome of the relational contract. This reminds one of various “second-best” propositions in economics: when an economy has two or more distortions, a reduction in the size of one distortion may aggravate the overall distortion and reduce economic welfare. In this instance the explanation is tied to a general property of tacitly cooperative equilibria of repeated games. The harsher is the punishment that faces a deviator, the better the equilibrium that can be achieved. In this model, the punishment consists of having to fall back on the formal contract based on the external performance measure. The more accurate is that measure, the better is the payoff from the formal contract and therefore the weaker the punishment. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Similar results appear in other contexts. For example, Kranton (1996) models self-governing repeated interactions with well-matched partners, when the consequence of cheating is having to go to an anonymous arms-length market with inferior matching but enforceable contracts. A partial improvement in the quality of matching in the market then tightens the incentive constraint on self-governance and worsens its outcome. In Kranton’s context this leads to a cumulative process leading to an equilibrium where one or the other of the modes survives. More generally, one can argue that cooperation within a group is better sustained if the consequences of deviation are made worse, which requires worse outcomes from dealing with people outside the group. This is a trade-off: better within-group cooperation may require worse cross-group relations. In starker terms, a beneficial sense of “us” may be fostered only by sharpening the sense of “us versus them” hostility. In the economic context, the result has potentially serious implications of less-developed countries and transition economies that are attempting to install a formal system of contract law or to improve an existing one. The new institution of governance cannot be expected to leapfrog to perfection. The organizations and people are sure to need a period of trial and error, of experimentation and learning. The above results say tht the process of gradual improvement of state law may inflict an interim cost on the economy, by worsening the outcomes of the currently used relation-based system. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Therefore it is important to explore the results in greater depth, and look for empirical evidence bearing on it. In an established bilateral relationship it is the relationship itself that determines the degree of cooperation, regardless of whether the courts are effective. This is encouraging for the prospects of improving the courts gradually without causing short-term harm. However, the finding runs contrary to the theoretical result. If the theoretical model is broadly right, effectiveness of the courts would be irrelevant to the outcome of relational contract only if the parameters puts the equilibrium in a region that increases one’s temptation to renege on the relational contract. A second possibility is that the accuracy of the external measure is so poor that the alternative relational contract is not recourse to the courts but a total breakdown of the interaction. The third possibility, of course, is that the theoretical model is missing some key aspect of reality; that provides a challenge and an opportunity for future research. The upper-symbolic economy makes obsolete not only our concepts of unemployment but our concepts of work as well. To understand it and the power struggles that it triggers, we will even need a fresh vocabulary. Thus, even the division of the economy into such sectors as agriculture, manufacturing, and services today obscures rather than clarifies. Today’s high-speed change blur once-neat distinctions. Instead of clinging to the old classifications, we need to look behind the labels and ask what people in these companies actually do to create added value. Once we pose this question, we find that more and more of the work in all three sectors consists of symbolic processing, or “mind work.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Farmer now use computers to calculate grain feeds; steelworkers monitor consoles and video screens; investment bankers switch on their laptops as they model financial markets. In matter little whether economist choose to label these as agriculture, manufacturing, or service activities. Even occupational categories are breaking down. To label someone a stockroom attendant, a machine operator, or a sales representative conceals rather than reveals. It is a lot more useful today to group workers by the amount of symbolic processing or mind work they do as part of their jobs regardless of the label they wear or whether they happen to work in a store, a truck, a factory, a hospital, or a office. In what might be called the “mind-work spectrum” we have the research scientists, the financial analyst, the computer programmer or, for that matter, the traditional file clerk. We include file clerks and scientists in the same group because, while their functions obviously differ and they work at vastly different levels of abstraction, both—and millions like them—move information around or generate more information. That makes their work symbolic. In the middle of the mind-work spectrum we find a broad range of “mixed” jobs—tasks requiring the worker to perform physical labour but also handle information. The Federal Express or United Parcel Service driver also operates a computer at one’s side. In advanced factories the machine operator is a highly trained information worker. The hotel clerk, the nurse, and many others have to deal with people—but spend a considerable fraction of their time generating, getting, or giving out information. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Auto science engineers at BMW dealers, for example, may still have greasy hands, but they also use a computer system designed by Hewlett-Packard that provides them with an “expert system” to help them in trouble-shooting along with hundreds of gigabytes of technical drawings accessible via the Internet. The system asks them for data about the car they are repairing; it permits them to search through the masses of technical material intuitively; it makes inferences and then guides them through the repair steps. When they are interacting with this system, are they “auto science engineers” or “mind workers”? It is the purely manual jobs at the lower end of the spectrum that are disappearing. With fewer manual jobs in the economy, the “proletariat” is now a minority, replaced increasingly by a “cognitariat.” More accurately, as the super-symbolic economy unfolds, the proletariat becomes a cognitariat. The key questions about a person’s work today have to do with how much of the job entails information processing, how routine or programmable it is, what level of abstraction is involved, what access the person has to the central data bank and management information system and how much autonomy and responsibility the individual enjoys. We will continue more of this discussion in the upcoming days. The “voice of the devil” as an angel of light is more difficult to detect when it comes with wonderful strings of texts which makes it appear like the voice of the Holy Spirit. Voices from without, either as from God or angels, may be rejected, yet the believer may be deceived by “floods of texts” which one thinks are from God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Therefore, detection of the source of supernatural voices requires further inquiry: Does the believer rely upon these “texts” apart from the use of one’s mind or reason? This indicates passivity. Are these texts a prop to one, an undermining of one’s reliance on God Himself; weakening one’s power of decision and one’s (proper) self-reliance? Do these texts influence one and make one elated and puffed up as “specially guided by God,” or crush and condemn one, and throw one into despair and condemnation, instead of leading one to sober dealing with God Himself over the course of one’s life—with a keen and increasing knowledge of right and wrong obtained from the written Word by the light of the Holy Spirit? If these and other such-like results are the fruit of the “texts” given, they may be rejected as from the deceiving spirits, or at least an attitude of neutrality should be taken concerning them until proof of their source is obtained. The voice of the devil is also distinguishable from the voice of God by its purpose and outcome. If the outcome is not in accordance with the guidance given, then one definitely needs to check with fellow believers regarding its validity. For, obviously, if God speaks directly to a human, the human will then be infallibly correct with regard to the specific matter in question. Thus far, creation has been considered within the order proper to it, the essential order. However, man as the creature the exercises freedom brings us to the boundary line of the existential order of tragedy and dissolution. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
God as the creator is beyond the distinction of essence and existence. He does not depend upon essences or divine ideas which govern His creativity. His creative vision simultaneously embraces both the essence of a creature and each moment of its existence. However, created being does not lie buried within the divine life. It exists in the universe of reality, and its existence is different from its essence. Humans provide the clearest insight into creaturely existence because only they possess finite freedom. Humans, and analogously the rest of reality, is not only grounded in the creative ground of being, but they are also outside it inasmuch as one “stands upon” one’s self when one exercises one’s freedom. One can only actualize one’s essence, be a real human, by positing free acts which inevitably clash with one’s essential nature. Fully developed creatureliness is fallen creatureliness. At this pivotal point of freedom the doctrine of creation (the essential order) and the doctrine of the fall (the existential order) merge and become indistinguishable. Being a creature means both to be rooted in the creative ground of the divine life and to actualize one’s self through freedom. Creation I fulfilled in the creaturely self-realization which simultaneously is freedom and destiny. However, it is fulfilled through separation from the creative ground through a break between existence and essence. Creaturely freedom is the point at which creation and fall coincide. Creation is the beginning of the fall. One who feels in one’s heart genuine tie with the life of one’s people cannot possibly conceive of the existence of the Christian people apart from “Queen Sabbath.” We can say without exaggeration that more than America preserved the Sabbath, the Sabbath preserved America. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
If I were asked to single out one of the great historical institutions more essential for our preservation than all others, I would not hesitate to declare that it is the observance of the Sabbath. Without this, the home of the Church or Mormon Temple, the festivals and the holy days, the language and the history of our people, will gradually disappear. If the Sabbath will be maintained by those who have observed it and will be restored to those who have abandoned it, then the permanence of Christianity or Mormonism is assured. Every Christian or Mormon who has it within one’s power should assist in the effort to restore the Sabbath to the man from whom it has been taken away from. No deeds of charity or philanthropy, no sacrifices of tie or fortune made by anyone, equals in beneficent result the expenditure of time and money looking toward the re-establishment of the Sabbath among God’s people. No amounts of prating about morals will ever take the place of rooted habits ruthlessly plucked out. The observance of the Sabbath brings deep and abiding rewards to the Christian and Mormons. It re-creates one’s spirit as it regenerates one’s physical and nervous system. It brings one into communion and with God, links one with the profoundest aspirations of America, and draws one into the orbit of the Book of Mormon or the Christian Bible. It therefore follows inseparably that the failure to observe the Sabbath brings its penalties in the impoverishment of the spirit, the denudation of Christian and Mormon values and alienation from Christian and Mormon community, literally “that soul is cut off from its kinsmen.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Lay Bare the Secret You Keep from Each Other
It was a lie. A lie I would never forget for as long as I walked the Earth. He would tell us nothing of himself but that he was “a fool,” to be frightened by their talk, and that the rattle of a window, or the dropping of a pin was enough to scare him now. He was now asleep on the sofa. The candles were flaring, and there was a wavering shadow at the door that looked like the head of a man with a long neck, and a long, sharp nose, peeping and drawing back. The fugitive shadow seemed to be breaking up, rearranging itself oddly. I rose, and walking slowly to him, I stood over him and looked at him, at the blood that soaked his lace shirt and stained his face. He did not open his eyes. However, I felt his sorrow. I felt its immensity, and I wished I did not feel it, and for the moment I understood the gulf that divided us, and the gulf that divided his attempt to overpower me from my rather simple defense of myself. And with his eyes closed, and his hand open beside him, he appeared the abandoned offspring of time and supernatural accident, someone as miserable as myself. What had he done to become what he was? His family was ruined, I believe, in some civil wars, long ago. Through the hall door, I could see the moonlight was beautiful. As the night waned on, the young man recovered slowly from his brain fever, but not perfectly. He was not sufficiently strong to remove for change of scene and air, which were necessary for his complete restoration. In the dead of the night, Haze Austin was suddenly awakened. And in this broken child were centuries of evil and centuries of knowledge, and out of him there came no ignominious entreaty but merely the soft and bruised sense of what he was. Old, old evil, eyes that had seen dark ages of which I only dream. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
I shall never forget this sight, for he looked the perfect incarnation of hate. His green eyes blazed with lurid fire, and his white teeth seemed to almost shine through the blood which dabbled his mouth. Desperately he tried to vanquish what he did not comprehend. He was so exquisitely beautiful and so lost. “Is there a chill in the air, dear?” I said. “I almost shiver; have I been dreaming? You look ill, Mrs. Winchester; a little faint,” said Haze. “I am better now. How do you feel now, Haze?” I said. I was beginning to take alarm. Natural enough, was it not, that one of his own should take him away from Llanada Villa. “Papa would be grieved beyond measure,” he said. “If he thought we were inconveniencing you at all.” In a moment he was standing on his own feet. And then he walked drowsily beside me, my arm about his shoulder, bolstering him and steadying him, until we were moving towards his father’s cottage on my estate. I only half glanced at the figures passing us, until I saw a familiar shape under the trees. Somewhere far off in the darkened gardens, other were near. When he pushed open the door to his father’s home, he was laying dead upon the floor. His cravat was drawn halter-wise tight round his throat, and he had done its work well. The body was cold, and had been long dead. In due course the coroner held his inquest, and the jury pronounced that the deceased, Mac Austin, had died by his own hand, in a state of temporary insanity. However, Haze had his own opinion about his father’s death, though his lips were sealed, and he never spoke about it. He went and lived for the residue of his days in York, where there are still people who remember him, a taciturn and surly young man, who attended church regularly, and also drank a little, and was know to have saved some money. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
But there occurred that night an event which gave my thoughts quite a new turn, and seemed to even startle even Haze’s languid nature. When I returned to my drawing-room, and sat down to coffee and chocolate, Elizabeth joined me, and we had a little card party. When the game was over, Elizabeth and I sat down on the sofa, and I asked her, a little anxiously, whether she had heard from her mother since her arrival. She answered “No.” I then asked her whether she knew where a letter would reach her at present. “I cannot tell,” she answered, ambiguously, “but I have been thinking of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage to-morrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not tell you.” “But you must not dream such a thing,” I exclaimed. “I cannot afford to lose you so, and I will not consent to your leaving us, except under the care of your mother, who was so good as to consent to your remaining with us till she should herself return. I should be quite happy if I knew that you heard from her; but this evening the accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has invaded our community, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful guest, I do feel the responsibility, unaided by advice from your mother, very much. However, I shall do my best’ one thing is certain, that you must not think of leaving Llanada Villa without her distinct direction to that effect. We should suffer too much in parting from you to consent to it easily.” “Thank you, Mrs. Winchester, a thousand times for your hospitality,” Elizabeth answered, smiling bashfully. “You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful mansion, under your care, and in the society of your dear niece.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
I accompanied Elizabeth to her room, and sat and chatted with her while she was preparing for bed. She turned around, “Do you think that you will ever confide fully in me about your home?” “Now, Elizabeth, you are gong to talk your wild nonsense again,” I said hastily. “Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for your sake I’ll talk like a sage. Did you ever have a ball in the Grand Ballroom? What was it like? How charming it must be.” “I almost forget, it is years ago.” I laughed. “Mrs. Winchester, you are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet.” “I remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture, and made it colours faith I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here,” I touched my breast, “and never was the same since.” “Were you near dying?” “Yes, a very—cruel love—strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifices without blood. Let us go to sleep now; I feel lazy.” I bid her good-night, crept from the room with an uncomfortable sensation, locked her door and retired to my chambers. I was lying in bed, with my hands buried in my rich wavy hair, under my cheek, and my head upon the pillow. I often wondered whether my pretty guest ever said her prayers. I certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night she never left the drawing room to attend our brief evening prayers in the hall. Ever since the midnight invaders, I locked all the doors in the house at night, and my whimsical alarms about prowling assassins required me to have the servants search every room in the house to make sure there were no lurking assassins or robbers “ensconced.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
After these measures were taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, ad which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with. Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. However, dreams come through walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exists and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths. I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony. I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep. However, I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed, precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its furniture just as I had seen it last, except tht it was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. However, I soon saw that it was a sooty-black figure that resembled a man. He appeared to me about five or six feet tall, he floated around the room hither and tither with the lithe sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you ay supposed, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and I could see it was Haze. He looked at me with centuries of evil blazing in his eyes, but there was not the slightest stir or respiration. And I felt a shudder. My heart expanded slightly, against my will. “I curse you,” he said. As I stared at him, I felt danger again, terrible danger. Then he appeared to have changed his place, and was now nearer to the door; then, close to it, the door opened, and he vanished. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
It would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with which, even now, I recall he occurrence of that night. It seemed to deepen by time, and communicated itself to the room and the very furniture that had encompassed the apparition. Later that day, I had another strange experience; I walked into the parlor that afternoon where Daisy and Elizabeth had been sitting, and a saw Haze upon the sofa. However, then I realized that he was invisible to the others. He got up and walked toward me—I was not afraid—and then—seemed to dissolve into the air. And so I wondered…whether I might have fallen into a trance. I clasped my hands and struggled to control my breathing. We know that, in the mesmeric trance, a subject may acquire unusual mental powers; The Frenchman Didier, who could read minds, play cards blindfolded, and identify the contents of sealed containers with great accuracy, is one of the best-known instances. Ancient houses, it has always seemed to me, are like Leyden jars, quietly accumulating the influences of the past…and my home is a special case. I lay awake into the small hours, worrying over these anxieties as they became more and more nightmarish until I sank into a troubled sleep. Sleeping had become so difficult one night that I wandered through this vast mansion, searching for a precious jewel William had given me. The jewel had been lost; I did not know how, but I knew that my own carelessness was to blame. To make matter worse, I could not remember what kind of stone it was, for as I went from room to room, a voice kept chanting, “Emerald, sapphire, ruby, diamond,” over and over, and none of them seemed right, because the lost stone was a different, a more beautiful colour than any of those, and I knew I ought to be able to picture it, and thus recall its name, but I could not. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The mansion was absolutely silent; the light throughout, even in corridors was a pale, uniform grey like that of an overcast sky. The rooms were modestly furnished; each one seemed to have its own miniature flight of stairs, up or down two or three steps, and the corridors kept changing levels in similar fashion. Though the house itself was not especially sinister, my anxiety over the fate of the jewel grew steadily more acute until it had risen to an unbearable pitch. Then it occurred to me that I still had not searched the Venetian Dining Room. The thought precipitated a vertiginous change of scene; the light sank to a dim, murky brown, and I was standing in the doorway of the room where we had dined that night. The curtains were drawn, the candles snuffed; the room seemed to be empty, but as I crept toward the table, I saw, above the back of the chair in which I usually sat, the dark outline of a head. There was time to slip away quietly; but perhaps the jewel had fallen into the lining of my chair, and if I were to tiptoe forward, I might be able to see it. I was within two feet of the motionless figure when a voice spoke from the doorway behind me, a word that rang like a loud gong, louder and louder until it became my own cry of “No!” and I woke in grey dawn light to find myself standing at the head of the stairs. And then I thought I caught sight of a shape, dak in space and light, through the door in one of the bedrooms. There was a tall figure in what I could have sworn was a black top hat, staring directly back at me. The figure was dressed formally in black morning suit. And then, with a movement so spasmodic and sudden, the man turned and stated to walk eastward, out of sight. I dismissed it, as one of the Winchester’s passing enigmas. There was much about the curse of the Winchester Mansion that I did not understand. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Spirits of Llanada Villa, I awaken the powers of darkness which dwell within you by the power of the blood of the three heeded Dragon Zohak that you may serve to empower Mrs. Winchester’s great work! Through serving the greater cause of dark magick which break the shackles that bind the Blackened Fire of Spirit, may you be uplifted and liberated! Awaken and empower the forbidden rites of Angra Mainyu! Awaken to empower the Mrs. Winchester’s great work of counter creation as an Apostle of the Lord of Darkness eternal and as a warrior of the path of the Lemegeton. I adjure thee, Emperor Lucifer, as the agent of the strong living God, of His beloved Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and by the power of the Great ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM, to appear instantly, or to send thy Messenger Astarot, forcing thee to forsake thy hiding-place, wheresoever it may be. Aeshma, Div of wrath and fury! He who wields the bloody mace! Aeshma who is demon of the wounding spear I call you forth into this temple of counter creation! Through devotion to my becoming on this path, your spiritual weapon has been made manifest in this corporeal World through my will and counter creative power so you may fill it with your essence and might! Empower it so that it may serve me here upon the corporeal plane! May it serve as a key to the realms above and below unlocking the power and wisdom for the spirits of the Winchester’s glory and ascent! Fill this weapon with your powers of wrath and fury that it may seek out spiritual attacks made and render them useless and impotent! #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
One Halloween, a tour guide saw a little boy who was no more than six years old. He was dressed in a black hood, and long black robe, and it looked like he did not have a face, as he had a black, opaque nylon covering the opening in the hood. The tour guide asked him who he was supposed to be, and the little boy said, “I’m the Angel of Life.” The tour guide then asked him who the Angel of Life is. The boy replied, “The Angel of Life is someone who comes to talk to you. He tells you things about your life.” The conviction on the little boy’s face and the non-hesitant way in which he explained who he was made the tour guide think that the boy had some knowledge of what he was talking about. Shortly after, objects in the gift shop started floating about, and glimpses of a shadowy figure were spotted in the basement. In the café, according to a female patron, she had been sitting at a table in a back corner of the room when a man suddenly appeared in a chair across the table from her. The man stared straight ahead and refused to react in any way. The female patron looked away to get the waitress’s attention and when she looked back, the man was gone. The woman related that the elusive figure was wearing old-fashioned clothes. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Return in the Darkening Twilight
Llanada Villa is a prime example of Victorian architecture. Its exterior is stately, refined, with a touch of Gothic elegance. Its front doors welcome, even as it seems to be hiding something. Inside the floors creak without warning, without any sense of someone there. The wood is thick with the humidity, as if the walls and floor breathe. Through the years, guest have reported feeling cold spots, or seeing strange, wispy streaks of light. The sense of the uncanny cries out for an explanation. Ghosts bridge the past to the present; they speak across the seemingly insurmountable barriers of death and time, connecting us to what we thought was lost. The townsfolk whispered tales of its dark history, of unspeakable horrors that occurred within the walls of my homes. As I climbed the grand staircase, each step seemed to release a flurry of hidden memories. Voices whispered incantations that send shivers down my spine. I must not faint, I told myself, and summoning all my resolve, made my way to the safety of the back parlour. There I collapsed into a couch, with my head already beginning to throb. The pain soon became so excruciating that I lost all sense of time until someone, I could not tell who, brought me a sleeping draught, and I sank at last into merciful oblivion. Next morning, I was at first bewildered to find myself fully dressed upon the parlour sofa. The parlourmaid, Trinity, brought me a cup of tea. She had set my skin crawling with fear. At this moment the unwonted sound of carriage wheels and many hoofs upon the road, arrested out attention. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
I was haunted with a terror of robbers. My house was robbed once, and two servants murdered, so I always lock my door. It had become a habit. Still, it was a fine autumnal sunset, and melancholy lights and long shadows spread their peculiar effects over the landscape. I was looking out of one of the long drawing-room windows, when there entered the court-yard, a figure of a wanderer who I knew very well. He used to come by twice a year asking to tour my home. He was a tall man, with sharp learn features. He wore a pointed black bread, and he was smiling from ear to ear, showing his white fangs. He was dressed in buff, black, and scarlet, and crossed with more straps and belts than I could count, from which hung all manner of things. Behind, he carried a magic-lantern, and two boxes, which I well knew, in one of which was a salamander, and in the other a mandrake. These monsters used to my Mr. Hansen laugh. They were compounded of parts of monkeys, parrots, squirrels, fish, and hedgehogs, dried and stitched together with great neatness and startling effect. He had a fiddle, a box conjuring apparatus, a pair of foils and masks attached to his belt, several other mysterious cases dangling about him, and a black staff with copper ferrules in his hand. His companion was a rough spare dog, that followed at his heels, but stopped short, suspiciously at the front gate, and in a little while began to howl dismally. In the meantime, the mountebank, standing in the midst of the court-yard, raised his grotesque hat, and made us a very ceremonious bow, paying his compliments very volubly in execrable French, and German not much better. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Then, disengaging his fiddle, he began to scrape a lively air, to which he sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and activity, that made me laugh, in spite of the dog’s howling. Then he advanced to the window with many smiles and salutations, and his hat in his left hand, his fiddle under his arm, and with a fluency that never took breath, he gabbled a long advertisement of all his accomplishments, and the resources of the various arts which he placed at our service, and the curiosities and entertainments which it was in his power, at my bidding to display. “Will your ladyship be pleased to buy an amulet against the oupire, which is going like the wolf, I hear, through these woods,” he said, dropping his hat on the floor. “They are dying of it right and left, and here is a charm that never fails; only pinned to the pillow, and you may laugh in his face.” These charms consisted of oblong slips of vellum, with cabalistic ciphers and diagrams upon them. I instantly purchased one. He was looking up, and I was smiling down at him, amused. His piercing black eye, as he looked up in my face, seemed to detect something that fixed for a moment his curiosity. “I told you that I am charmed with you in the most particulars,” he said. “You are slender, and wonderfully graceful. Your complexion is rich and brilliant; your features are small and beautifully formed; your eyes large, dark, and lustrous; your hair is quite wonderful, I never saw hair so magnificently think and long when it is down about your shoulder. It is exquisitely fine and soft, and in colour a rich very dark brown, with something of gold.” “Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you,” I replied. And so he walked on, and I heard no more. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Within the space of a week, my colour had returned, and I was sleeping so soundly that I was scarcely aware of my dreams. I walked miles on my estate each day, and I began to see it with new eyes. Every field, every path, even every hedgerow had its own name and its own history. I considered the amulet I purchased as an omen of good luck—and placed in beneath my pillow, to guard against further visitation. That evening, as I reached the top of the stairs, I heard a peculiar flickering sound. Entering my dressing room in the darkness, I made my way to the familiar dressing table on the right side of the room. Now the noise was even more pronounced. It sounded to me as if someone were turning the pages of book, a sound for which there was no rational source. Move over, I suddenly became away of a clammy, cold feeling around me. Since it was a warm evening, this too surprised me. In the dark, I could not be sure if there were not someone else in the dressing room. I quickly existed the room and went to bed. But this night, I was awakened by a violent shaking of my bed. I could see, in the very imperfect light, two figures at the foot oof it, holding each a bedpost. A voice said, “We’ll hang you!” Trembling, I climbed over to the footboard; and saw the figure at the other side, little more than a black shadow, begin also to scale the bed; and there was instantly a dreadful confusion and uproar in the room, and such a gabbling and laughing; I could not catch the words. I found myself on the floor. The phantoms and clamour were gone, but a crash and ringing of fragments was in my ears. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The great china bowl, from which for generations the Winchester had been baptized, had fallen from the mantelpiece, and was smashed on the hearthstone. I warned the servants not to disregard oaths and curses. A mourning coach drove up, and two gentlemen in black cloaks, and with crape to their hats, got out, and without looking to the right or the left, went up the steps to the Winchester mansion. Mr. Hansen followed them slowly. The carriage had, he supposed, gone round to the yard, for, when he reached the door, it was no longer there. So he followed the two mourners into the house. In the hall he found a fellow servant, who said he had seen two gentlemen, in black cloak, pass through the hall, and go up the stair without removing their hats, or asking leave of anyone. This was very odd, Mr. Hansen thought, and a great liberty; so upstairs he went to make them out. But he could not find them then, nor ever. And from that hour the house was troubled. In a little time there was not one of the servants who had not something to tel. Step and voices followed them sometimes in the passages, and tittering whispers, always minatory, scared them at the corners of the galleries, or from dark recesses; so that they would return panic-stricken. I, myself, had also heard these voices, and with this formidable aggravation, they came always when I said my prayers. I was scared at such moments by dropping words and sentences, which grew, as I persisted, into threats and blasphemies. These voices were not always in the room. They called, as I fancied, through the walls, very thick in this house, from the neighbouring rooms, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other; sometimes they seemed to holla from distant lobbies, and came muffled, but threateningly, through the long paneled passages. As they approached they grew furious, as if several voices were speaking together. Whenever I applied myself to my devotions, these horrible sentences came hurrying towards the door, and, in panic, I would start from my knees, and all then would subside except the thumping of my heart against my stays, and the dreadful tremours of my nerves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
What these voices said, I never could quite remember one minute after they had ceased speaking; one sentence chased another away; gibe and menace and impious denunciation, each hideously articulate, were lost as soon as heard. And this added to the effect of these terrifying mockeries and invectives, that I could not, by any effort, retain their exact import, although their horrible character remained vividly present to my mind. Camile who acted as a housemaid, would not sleep in the house, but walked home, in trepidation, to her father’s, under the escort of her little brother, every night. Mrs. Rendell, the kitchenmaid, endured the nightly terrors. Mr. Hansen was testy and captious about these stories. He was already uncomfortable enough by reason of the entrance of tow muffled figures into the house, about which there could be no mistake. His own eyes had seen them. He refused to credit the stories of the servants. I made a decision not to fuel the stories of the ghost to keep the servants. “If you see ghosts here, it is no place for you, and it is time you should pack,” I would say. Here has been the cook with the kitchenmaid, as white as pipeclay, all in a row, to tell me I must have a parson to sleep among them, and preach down the devil! Upon my soul, I would not allow my home to fall into utter chaos and disarray. “Mrs. Winchester, I know you are no fool,” said the cook. “But supposed there was a such thing as a ghost here, don’t you see, it ain’t just women telling stories.” “I will not dignify such ideas,” I replied. The women left the kitchen, the cook and the butler went down, not altogether unused to such condescension in the household. The fire had gone down and I was chilled. The candles were expiring in the socket and threw on the white all long shadows, that danced up and down from the ceiling to the ground, and their black outlines I fancied resembled the two men in cloaks, whom I remembered with profound horror. I took the candle, with all the haste I could, getting along the passage, on whose walls the same dance of black shadows was continued, very anxious to reach my room before the light should go out. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
On night in 1990, there was an unusual buzzing sound in The Winchester Mystery House, one of the staff encountered a dark, hooded figure standing at the door-to-nowhere. In the dim light issuing through the stained glass windows from an outside light, he could see that the intruder, who looked very much like a cowled monk, was waving his arms in a particular manner. Interpreting his movement as threatening, he approached the man and asked him to leave. At the very moment, the employee says he never felt so weak and helpless.
He collapsed in a heap backward onto the floor. He remembered that he actually began to weep in fear and confusion. He was completely at the mercy of whoever or whatever was standing at the door. It was then that the hooded being spoke. “Don’t be afraid,” it said in a quiet whisper. “We won’t hurt you.” And the next thing he knew, the morning sunlight was making him squint into wakefulness. As he reflected on the incident, he became more and more convinced that an actual visitation had occurred and that some kind of entity had come into the mansion. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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My Soul to Nothingness, but I Will Strive
Many persons accustomed to travelling the old country side were sure so fair a place was never seen. Of all that charmed the romantic eye, it seemed an emerald through the clouds of fleecy white, and cerulean sky. As the sun crowned its lawny crest, smiling upon the flowers and trees, bright eyes reflected the majesty of Llanada Villa. The lively and robust body of this remarkable house contrasts its physicality against the darkness, secrets, and void of the dense ancient elms. Tall ornamental hedges maintain the privacy of the dwelling. The fruit orchard much like an enchanted forest, in which the bluebirds returning to their nest, guard the fruit from pests, as the straggling deer who peep from beneath the branches, do not startle the natural and undisturbed dominion. Heightened by euphoria, delightful shapes of mystery and fear clear in youthful bloom of its immortal spirit. On stormy nights, as the guard described, one can hear the doors clapping inside, and the howl and sobbing of the wind through it ornate galleries. I carried with me some blessings and a good many curses. I was woken in the early morning, by hearing my name called softly. I rose and went to my door in my nightgown, but there was no one in the passage. The voice sounded like my niece Daisy’s, but when I came to her door, it was closed. All was silent; the bathroom door stood slightly open; there was the morning room beyond; then the landing and the staircase. I heard my name called again, only this time the voice boomed like a gong inside my head; the light failed, as if a candle had been snuffed, and something rushed at me out of the gloom. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
I screamed and struggled until the light came back with the sound of running feet and I realized that the demon who had seized me was, in fact, a Welsh priest. A fornight or so later—certainly, after the doctor had pronounced me well on the way to recovery—I was sitting up in bed reading when my grandmother came into the room and sat down in the chair beside me, looking exactly as he had when we first met: the same calf length frock coat, double-breasted vet, and wool trousers, with his hair parted on the left and neatly combed to the side, the same familiar scent of alone wood, orange flower, musk and spices. The chair creaked as he settled himself in it, smiled at me and took up his work, just as if he had only been gone for five minutes, rather than resting in the Evergreen Cemetery for nine years. I was vaguely aware that my husband was supposed to be dead, but somehow this did not matter; his presence at my bedside seemed entirely natural and comforting. And though my own tranquil acceptance of the visit would later seem, to me, as strange as the visit itself, we sat in companionable silence for an indefinite interval until my husband gathered up his work, smiled once more at me and went slowly from the room. Daisy came in so soon after that I thought they must have passed each other in the hall, so I asked, “Did you see your uncle William?” I saw from her look of consternation that I had best not pursue the subject, and agreed that I must have been dreaming. As with the strange radiance of William’s appearance was followed by one of the worst headaches I had ever endured. But I felt certain I had been wide awake. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Even after the strangeness of the experience had become fully apparent to me, I found I could not think of my visitant as a ghost. My reading in sensational literature had enhanced an already vivid imagination of how ghosts ought to conduct themselves: a hint of transparency and one or two bloodcurdling groans was surely the least that could be expected, whereas William had been—well, just my husband. And though nothing like this had ever happened to me before, I had not felt in the slightest afraid. Dr. Wayland had declared me well enough to get up, and the memory of my husband’s visit had faded to the point where I could almost believe it had been a dream, when one evening after dinner I saw my father-in-law crossing the hall ahead of me. He was no more than ten paces away, I heard the floor creak under his tread. Looking neither right nor left, he entered his study and closed the door behind him, just as he would have done in life. Again I felt no fear; only an overwhelming impulse to go up to the door and knock. When there was no answer, I tried the handle. The door opened readily, but there was no one there, only the familiar cracked brown leather armchairs on the worn Persian rug, the elaborate desk with its feet carved into the fierce face carved into faces of angels, the bookshelves crammed with Blue Book and army lists and regimental histories and accounts of gun dealers, the lingering faint scent of timber, leather and bindings. I remained in the doorway for a long time, lost in a trance of recollection. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
I picked up one of Willian’s old letters and went out into the garden and sat down on a charming bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees. The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendour being the horizon, and the fountains wound through a group of noble trees, almost at my feet, reflecting in their current the fading crimson of the sky. His letter was extraordinary. So much so that I read it twice over—the second time to the spirits. It said, “I miss you my darling wife, for as such I love you. During these last days of my illness, I was too weak to write you. Before then I had no idea of the danger. I will soon no longer be with you. Thank you for the hospitality. Thank you for receiving me into your heart, gaiety, and for being a charming companion. Heaven! I devote my remaining days to the gleaming light that you cast upon my heart. I hope you may accomplish your merciful purpose. I curse my conceited incredulity for unduly leaving you to mourn my absence. If only I could live for eternity, I would remain by your side. Farewell. I love you, my beloved.” My eyes filled with tears at his passion and intelligence. The sun had now set, and it was twilight by the time gone back inside. It was a soft evening, and I loitered, speculating upon seeing him again. I could hear his voice in animated dialogue and recall how proud he was to be a father, and turned about to admire the beautiful scene. The glade which I had just walked lay before. At the left narrow of the path wound away under the clumps of lordly trees, and was lost to sight amid the thickening forest. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
At the right of the path stands the Observational Tower, which guarded the estate. Over the grounds, a thin film of mist was stealing, like smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil; and here and there I could see the fountains flashing in the moonlight. No softer, sweeter scene could be imagined. I enjoyed the picturesque, and I, stood looking silence over the expanse beneath me. Standing a little way behind me, discoursed upon the scene, and were upon the eloquent moon. When the moon shone with a light so intense it is well known that it indicates a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy is manifold. It acts on dreams, it acts on lunacy, it acts on nervous people; it has a marvellous physical influence connected with life. One of the carpenters, having taken a nap on the balcony on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side. The moon, this night, is full of odylic and magnetic influences—and when one looks behind at the front of the mansion, how all its windows flash and twinkle with that silvery splendour, as if unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive fairy guests. There are indolent states of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears; and I gazed on, pleased with the tinkle of the stars. But I felt as is some great misfortune were hanging over me. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
O THOU great, powerful, and mighty KING AMAIMON, who bearest rule by the power of the SUPREME GOD EL over all spirits both superior and inferior of the Infernal Orders in the Dominion of the East; I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of God; and by they Thou Worshippest; and by the Seal of thy creation; and by the most mighty and powerful name of GOD, IEHOVAH TETEAGRAMMATON who cast thee out of Heaven with all other infernal spirits; and by all the most powerful and great names of God who created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all things in them contained; and by their power and virtue; and by the name PRIMEUMATON who commandeth the whole host of Heave; that thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel the Spirit Murmus—The Fifty-fourth Spirit and His 30 Legions of Spirits, Lord of darkness and liberation come forth! Murmus awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the God of limitation Ahura Mazda! Murmus, Zairich, and Tairich, unholy fever and thirst come forth! Murmus awaken! Tairich awaken! Zairich awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Amardad! Akiman, demon of evil mind come forth! Akoman awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Vohuman! Naikiyas, Div or rebellion and discontent come forth! Naikiyas awake! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Spandarmad! #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Andar, Div of antinomian fire come forth! Andar awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fllen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Arwahist! Taromat, beautiful Div of rebellion come forth! Taromat awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Spandarmad! Aeshma, wielder of the bloody mace! Demon of the wounding spear and bringer of wrath come forth! Aeshma awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Srosh! Sovar, merciless leader of Divs come forth! Sovar awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel shahrewar! I stand alone as the embodiment of the Adversary known as Ahriman, the Black Dragon of Chaos and becoming! I devour the natural order of stasis brought forth by Ahura Mazda and forge my destiny through the power of the Black Sun! By the figurative mystery of this holy mansion, I will clothe it with the armour of salvation in the strength of the Most High, ANCOR, AMICAR, AMIDES, THEDONIAS, ANITOR, that so the end which I desire may be effected, O ADONAI, through Thy strength, to whom be praise and glory for ever and ever. I adjure thee, Emperor Lucifer, as the agent of the strong living God, of His beloved Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and by the power of the Great ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM, to appear instantly, or to send thy Messenger Astarot, forcing thee to forsake thy hiding-place, wheresoever it may be, an warning thee that it thou didst not manifest this moment, I still straightway smite thee and all thy race with the Blasting Rod of the great ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
In 2007, while closing up The Winchester Mystery House, Jeff kept catching sight of a shadow moving. He would turn quickly to see if it was a person, but nothing was there. It unnerved him, not knowing what was taking place. The activity picked up when they started to decorate for the Christmas season. Finally, he consulted one of the guests about the strange occurrences. He was very talkative, and would relate experiences about a ghost. During one conversation with the guest, Jeff related that he heard people upstairs laughing and thumping around in the Grand Ballroom, almost like they were dancing country-western style. When he investigated, he would find nothing out of place and no living person upstairs. When opening the mansion in the morning, they found linen that had been neatly arranged, laying on the floor, yet no one had been in the mansion since he had closed it the night before.
One morning he found an entire display sitting at the foot of the stairs. Everything had been moved during the night. His first thoughts were that someone had broken into the place, but there were no signs of an intruder. Early another morning, Jeff and a few other employees heard a music box playing. They went deep in the mansion to find the source. After searching for hours, they found nothing in the mansion, until they went up the dark stairs to the fourth floor. The stairs were steep, and when Jeff got to the top, he snapped a picture down the stairway. He took the picture at that moment because he had a strange feeling. After the investigated the fourth floor, Jeff said he felt a cold draft come by him, as though it was rushing past them down the stairs. The resulting picture was a tragic and forlorn figure dressed in nineteenth century clothes. People have reported seeing her figure walking toward doors that lead to parts of the mansion that are off limits to guest and that she passes unimpeded through locked doors. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Is this Not a Marvelous Tale?
It began with a fall, soon after my birthday, though I recall nothing between going to bed as usual and waking as if from a long, dreamless sleep. I was found, early on a Winter’s morning, lying at the foot of the stairs in my nightgown, and was carried back to my room, where I lay unconscious, scarcely breathing, for the rest of that day and all of the following night, until I woke to find Dr. Clyde Wayland being over me. His head was surrounded by the most extraordinary halo of light, suffused with all the colours of the rainbow, a radiance so subtle and yet so vibrant as to make me feel I had never seen colour before. I lay entranced by the beauty of it, too absorbed to follow what he was saying. And for a while longer—minutes, hours, I did not know—everyone who came to my bedside was bathed in paradisial light, as if my housemaids Trinity and Elsa had stepped from the pages of an old manuscript book I had once seen. For each of them the light was subtly different, the colours shimmering and changing as they move and spoke. A verse kept running through my mind: “Glory is like a circle in the water, which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, till, by broad spreading, it disperse to naught.” However, then my head began to ache, worse and worse until I was forced to close my eyes and wait for the sleeping draught to take effect, and when I woke again, the radiance had gone. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Everyone assumed that I had fallen whilst sleepwalking, which I had done often enough as a child. Since the death of my husband and my daughter in infancy, I had become prone to nightmares, as well as sleepwalking. As I continued to expand my mansion, the nightmare became more frequent and oppressive. There was one in particular, which recurred many times, of a vast, echoing in my house, as I had never seen it before. It was not much like Llanada Villa in its current state, there was a high tower projecting from the fourth floor, another five stores in the air, and the forth floor had been greatly expanded, adding a fifth floor to the mansion. It is dream, I was always alone, acutely aware of the silence, feeling that the house itself was alive, watchful, aware of my presence. The ceilings were immensely high, with dark-paneled mahogany walls, and other walls that flickered so there were made of gold and diamonds, as the sunlight transmitted its subtle sophistry of passion with a golden crown of enchantment. And the windows had a gemlike brilliancy of diamonds, emeralds and rubies sparkled from bouquets in the garden. I was inhabiting a castle so marvelously beautiful. However, this dream also made a terrible impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has been effaced. I was in a large cylinder room in the upper story of the castle, with a steep mahogany roof. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Looking round the room from my bed, I failed to see the chambermaid. I thought myself alone. I was not frightened. Feeling neglected, to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from the hands under the coverlet. She was lovely as the dawn and gorgeous as the sunset; but what especially distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her breath—richer than a garden of Persian roses. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; her eyes conveyed a holy secret from the depth of one soul into the depths of mine, as if it were too sacred to be whispered by the way. I felt immediately delightfully soothed. I was awakened by a sense of pain. There was a sense of a burning and tingling agony, as if two needle ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and the slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hide herself under the bed. Now, for the first time, I was frightened, and I yelled with all my might and main. The chambermaid and butler came running in, and hearing my story, they made light of it, soothing me all she could meanwhile. However, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the bed, and about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards; and the chambermaid whispered to the butler; “Lay your hand along that hollow in the bed; someone did lie there, so sure as you did not; the place is still warm.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I remember the chambermaid petting me, and both of them examining my chest, where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing that there was no sign visible that any such thing had happened to me. The chambermaid and two other servants who were on duty remained sitting up all night; and from that time a servant always sat up in my chamber. I was very nervous for a long time after this. Dr. Wayland was called in. How well I remember his long saturnine face, and his chestnut hair. For a good while, every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated. The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and could not bear to be left alone, daylight thought it was, for a moment. I remember Mr. Hansen coming up and standing at the bedside, and talking cheerfully, and asking the doctor a number of questions, and laughing very heartily at one of the answers; and patting me on the shoulder, and telling me not to be frightened, that it was nothing but a dream and could not hurt me. However, I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was not a dream; and I was awfully frightened. In the course of that day, a venerable old man, in a black cassock, came into the room; his face was sweet and gentle, he had white hair, as he stood in my room, amongst the three-hundred-year-old furniture. His eyes, gazing down afar, at me. “Accursed one!” he cried, with venomous scorn and anger. “I beg your pardon, dear sir?” I said turning my large, bright eyes upon his face. The force of his words had not found its way into my mind; I was merely thunderstuck. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
“Yes, poisonous thing!” he repeated, beside himself with passion. His rage broke forth from his sullen gloom like a lightening flash out of a dark cloud. “Thou hast done it! Thou hast blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins with poison! Thou has made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself—a World’s wonder of hideous monstrosity! Now, if our breath be happily as fatal to ourselves as to all others, let us join our lips in one kiss of unutterable hatred, and so die!” “What has be fallen me?” I murmured, with a low moan out of my heart. “Holy Virgin, putt me, a poor heartbroken child!” Thou—dost thou pray?” cried the man, still with the same fiendish scorn. “Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, tain the atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray!” “You are certainly no gentleman,” I said, camply, for my grief was beyond passion, “why dost thou join thyself with me thus in those terrible words? I, it is true, am the horrible thing thou namest me for I am heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune.” His passion had exhausted itself in its outburst from his lips. There now came across him a sense, mournful, and not without tenderness. “Does thou pretend ignorance?” he asked, scowling upon me. This selfish, and unworthy spirit, could dream no Earthly happiness had been so bitterly wronged, and I could feel his pain as I too pass heavily, with that broken heart, across the borders of time—I must bathe my hurts in some fount of paradise, and forget my grief, as I was the cause of their suffering. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
“My dear, sir,” I said feebly, and still as I spoke I kept my hand upon my heart, “wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable doom upon me?” “Miserable!” exclaimed the man. “What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvelous gifts against which no power nor strength could avail an enemy—misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a breath—misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?” His wrath and despair had been so fierce that he could have desired nothing so much as to wither me by a glance. I grew white as marble. “I would fain have been loved, not feared,” I murmured, sinking down upon the ground. “But now it matters not. I am cursed by evil to be haunted by vengeful spirits for all of eternity.” The angry apparition started to fade right before my eyes, vanishing into thin air. Several ghosts haunted this spectacular mansion, including a dark and menacing spectral figure holding an axe who wanders around the grounds at night, and a ghostly black monk who walks from the castle kitchen toward the Observational Tower in the late afternoons. Servants often spoke of ghostly woman holding a gray lantern near the front gates as well as two children who have been sighted playing in the basement. There are also others various apparitions who seem to wander aimlessly through the hallways. Because of this, I was compelled to move from one room to the next, fearful and yet powerless to stop. Sometime after midnight, there would be some malignant being hovering at my window; my heart would begin to pound until I feared it would tear itself out of my breast, and I would run, my heart still beating violently. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
hester Mystery House is full of recollections of the delicate and benign power of Mrs. Winchester’s feminine nature, which so often envelops guests in a religious calm; recollections of many a holy and passionate outgush of her heart are noticeable, from the pure fountain and their pools of water, and the estate in the midst of which grew shrubs, flowers, and trees that bare gemlike blossoms. Several guests have been affrightened at the eager enjoyment—the appetite, as it is—with which they find themselves inhaling the fragrance of the flowers. The date the original house was built is unknown. When Mrs. Winchester purchased the 18-room farmhouse in 1886, she expanded it into a 600-room mansion with a nine-story tower.
Today, the mansion stands at 4 stories high and has 161 room, of which 110 are open for guest to explore. According to legend, one dark and stormy night a hundred years ago, a group of teenagers crept into the mansion to explore its empty hallways, but one of them never came out. All that was left of the young lady was her bloody handkerchief at the bottom of the fourth-floor staircase. Ever since that girl met her mysterious fate in the mansion, people have seen an eerie light in the upstairs window and heard cries and moans issuing from the dark interior. In September of 1991, one of the tour guides stated that there was not a shred of evidence to support the spooky tale of the young woman who disappeared, leaving only a bloody handkerchief and a few drops of blood behind.
He had heard all the stories about people seeing lights on in the mansion and hearing and seeing strange things to support the legend. He himself was surprised one night to see a single light in the fourth-floor window. After a careful examination, he concluded that the source of illumination must have been light escaping from the skylight. Tour guides often hear people saying that they “feel something” within its walls. Some people have sent pictures they took, when photography was allowed, that purport to show something passing in front of the camera, like an apparition. Perhaps the expectations of hundreds of people over the years have created a spirit and a mysterious light at The Winchester Mystery House, and these same expectations have kept the “ghost” alive for more than 100 years by feeding it with their collective psychic energy. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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The Haunted Winchester of America
There were times when I slept in a different bedroom just to be someplace completely different, and I have a favorite room, The Daisy Bedroom. I marveled at it, and enjoyed it. I did not care whether it was literal or sophisticated, mystical or pedestrian. It was gorgeous, it was gleaming, and it comforted me to be in it. I had no family. I had no one. I was no one. I had grown unused to company. I found myself thinking of Annie and William as I had not done in years, and of the great darkness of spirit tht had followed their deaths. I thought of the home I was building, The Winchester Mansion, and of how, in my efforts to outflank the inhibition—or curse, that I had inherited. The room seem suddenly darker; I noticed that one of the candles had sunk to thin blue flame. Falling silent, contemplating the dying fire, I found myself trying to summon the dead. As you may have heard, my home is haunted. Dy after day I walked to the greenhouse under a dazzling blue sky, wishing that my spirits would rise accordingly. Until one hot and airless morning, I emerged to find the sky already overcast. My anxiety grew until, early in the afternoon, against the walls and windows of the house the wind had roused itself with a shuddering, uncertain violence. The shadows themselves spread and encroached. Gravel was sprayed against the windowpanes as if in antic glee. Still, all afternoon the heat pressed down and the barometer continued to drop, until darkness fell without a breath of wind. Too restless to read, I sat out in the garden, staring into the night. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
Then away on the horizon came the first faint flicker of lightning, branching and multiplying in dumb show until the air began to stir, and the distant muttering of thunder rose above the shrilling of the insects. The storm, approaching gradually at first, seemed to gather pace as it came nearer, until the sky to the south was a searing tapestry of light. Soaked from the heavy rain, fear took me. I felt loquacious, verbose. I found myself descending the cellar steps. The truth is, the basement had always unnerved me. It was cold, and there was a starkness about the shadows and the light. There was the feeling I always had of being followed. I wondered sometimes had my professional life had not been some sort of reaction to, or compensation for, the fears I felt to plagued by. Maybe. And maybe not. There were plenty of other people rightfully prone to night terrors of their own. Now, in the basement, amid my stores and stashes of secret collusive things, something shifted softly over by the shelves against the far wall. I saw an alien face looking at me. His face had somehow melted and twisted. His mouth had melded together, but there was a hole in his cheek that he could make no sound through. His features were badly distorted and he was hideously deformed—even his hands were burned and melted. However, the worst thing was that his puckered, melted flesh had taken on a slight greenish tinge. Terribly frightened, I grabbed the book I was looking for and took the elevator back upstairs. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
I sat up long after lightning had ceased and the wind had died away, listening to the steady patter of rain on the leaves outside. Whatever I ought to have done, it was too late now. Nevertheless, I was early in my study the next day, and spent most of the morning pacing up and down my room, peering out at the rainswept garden. Ten minutes later, the rain had all but ceased, but grey, swirling cloud hung low over the sodden landscape. Despite the fire, the chill seeped into my bones, slowing my thoughts to a dull trance of apprehension until I sank into a dream in which I seemed to be conscious of every creak and rattle in my mansion, yet I felt safe and warm at my own fireside, only to walk, half-frozen, in the gloom isolation. The mansion was shrouded in vapour, the lighting robs all but concealed in the mist that swirled above the rooftop. The pounding of my own heart seemed unnaturally loud as I approached the entrance to the library. The doors would not budge, and the key would not enter the lock. I hammered on the door, again, with no result but a fusillade of echoes. I drew off a little and threw my full weight against the door, expecting the panel to fracture; instead the door burst open with a rending crash, pitching me across the threshold as lock and bolts tore from their sockets. There was no on in the study. Along the wall another door stood open, concealing whatever lay beyond. I moved uneasily toward the other door. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
Shuddering as if I had seen a serpent, I burst onto the landing, with the sound of my footsteps reverberating around me. I heard a cry from the darkness below. There are some credulous people who pretend to have seen this ghost. Huntsmen and woodcutters say they have met him by the large oak on the cross path. That is supposed to be the spot he inclines most to haunt, for the tree was planted in remembrance of the man who fell there. My Heavens my home was an interesting spot. The apparitions of imprisoned damsels who never reappeared, the storming of the observational tower, the death of the knight, the nightly wanderings of his spirit round the old oak, and lastly, the architecture, the indescribable curiosity that draws so many hither. That is when I noticed there were sounds of muffled sixteenth-century music emanating from the empty Grand Ballroom, while ghostly sounds of battle came from outside. I made my way towards the music and saw a blue light emanating from the room. The brilliantly lighted room gave a full view of a stranger. He was a man about forty, tall, and extremely thin. His features could not be termed uninteresting—there lay in them something bold and daring—but the expression was on the whole anything but benevolent. There were contempt and sarcasm in the cold grey eyes, whose glance, however, was at times so piercing that I could not endure it long. His complexion was even more peculiar than his features: it could not be called pale; it was an olive colour; and was rendered still more remarkable by the intense blackness of his short-cropped hair. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
As I was going to supper, it was only natural to invite the stranger to partake of it; he complied, however, only in so far that he seated himself at the table, for he ate no morsel. The housemaid, with some surprise inquired the reason. “For a long time past I have accustomed myself never to eat at night,” he replied with a strange smile. “My digestion is quite unused to solids, and indeed would scarcely confront them. I live entirely on liquids.” “Oh, then we can have a cup of lemonade together,” I cried. “Thanks; but I neither drink lemonade nor any cold beverage,” replied the other; and his tone was full of mockery. It appeared as if there was some amusing association connected with the idea. “Then I will order you a cup of hippocras”—a warm drink composed of herbs—“it shall by ready immediately,” I said. “Many thanks, fair lady; not at present,” replied the other. “But if I refuse the beverage you offer men now, you may be assured that as soon as I require it—perhaps very soon—I will request that, or some other of you.” The housemaids Trinity and Harriette thought the man had something inexpressibly repulsive in his whole manner, and they had no inclination to engage him in conversation. I begged his pardon and asked his name. “It has now been in hour that we have known each other—-” “And I have not yet told you my name, although you would gladly know it. I am called Johann von Hahn and I live at Rozafa Castle.” “What bring you to my home?” I asked. “You see, my dear lady,” he continued, “Mrs. Winchester, there are a variety of strange whims in the World. As I have already said, I love what is peculiar and uncommon. It is wrong in the main to be astonished at anything, for, viewed in one light, all things are alike; even life and death, this side of the grave and the other, have more resemblance than you would imagine. You perhaps consider me rather touched a little in my mind?” #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
“I understand you: I know how to vale your ideas, if no one else does,” I cried eagerly. “The humdrum, everyday life of the generality of men is repulsive to you; you have tasted the joys and pleasures of life, at least what are so called, and you have found them tame and hollow. How soon one tires of things one sees all around! Life consists in change. Only in what is new, uncommon, and peculiar, do the flowers of the spirit bloom and give forth scent. Even pain may become pleasure if it saves one from the shallow monotony of everyday life—a thing I shall hate till the hour of my death.” “Right, Mrs. Winchester—quite right! Remain in this mind: this was always my opinion, and the one from which I have derived the highest reward, caried Johann; and his fierce eyes sparkled more intensely than ever. “I am doubly pleased to have found in you a person who shares my ideas,” I said. As Johann spoke in a cold tone of politeness, taking leave before the table was cleared. When the stranger had departed, many were the remarks made on his appearance and general department. The following morning I lay longer than usual in bed. When the housemaid came to my room, fearful lest I should be ill, she found me pale and exhausted. I had passed a very bad night; the stranger must have excited me greatly, for I felt quite feverish and exhausted, and a strange dream, too, had worried me, which was evidently a consequence of the evening’s conversation. “At least let me here this wonderful dream, Mrs. Winchester,” Henrietta cried. To her surprise, I was a length of time refused to do so. “Come, tell me,” inquired Henrietta, “what can possibly present you from relating a dream—a mere dream? I might almost think it credible.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
“This whimsical stranger was fascinating, but I must not say,” I replied. “Strange, Mrs. Winchester,” cried Henrietta. “I cannot comprehend the almost magic influence which this man, so repulsive, exercises over you.” “Perhaps the very reason I take his part, may be that you are all so prejudiced against him,” I remarked. “But that dream, Mrs. Winchester?” said Henrietta, easily appeased. “Now tell it to me. You know how I delight in hearing anything of the kind.” “Well, I will, as a sort of compensation for my peevishness towards you,” I said. “Now, listen! I had walked up and down my room for a long time; I was excited—out of spirits—I do not know exactly what. It was almost midnight ere I lay down, but I could not sleep. I tossed about, and at length it was only from sheer exhaustion that I dropped off. However, what a sleep it was! An inward fear ran through me perpetually. I saw a number of pictures before me, as I used to in childish sickness.. I do not know whether I was asleep or half awake. Then I dreamed, but as clearly as if I had been wide awake, that a sort of mist filled the room, and out of it stepped the knight Johann. He gazed at me for a time, and then letting himself slowly down on one knee, imprinted a kiss on my throat. Long did his lips rest there; and I felt a slight pain, which always increased, until I could bear it no more. With all my strength I tried to force the vision from me, but succeeded only a long struggle. No doubt I uttered a scream, for that awoke me from my trance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
“When I came a little to my senses, I felt a sort of superstitious fear creeping over me—how great you may imagine when I tell you that, with my eyes open and awake, it appeared to me as if Johann’s figure were still by my bed, and then disappearing gradually into the mist, vanished at the door.” “You must have dreamed very heavily, Mrs. Winchester,” began Henrietta, but with a sudden pause. She gazed with surprise at my throat. “Why is that?” I cried. “Just look: how extraordinary—a red streak on your throat!” Several weeks passed. I daily became thinner, more sickly and exhausted, and at the same time so pale, that in a space of a month not a tinge of red was perceptible on my once glowing cheek. The ravishes of my fever filled the housemaids with alarm. It was on the morning of the following day; the sun had not risen above an hour, and the dew still lay like a veil of pearls on the grass or dripped from the petals of the flowers swaying in the early breeze. Someone opened the gates to my private interest to the garden. He walked along several obscure passages, and finally undid a door, through which, as it was opened, there came the sight and sound of rustling leaves, with the broken sunshine glimmering among them. He stepped forth, and, forcing himself through the entanglement of a shrub that wreathed its tendrils over the hidden entrance, stood the open area of my garden. How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate! #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
Fate delights to thwart us thus. Passion will choose his own time to rush upon the scene, and lingers sluggishly behind when an appropriate adjustment of events would seem to summon his appearance. My pulses had throbbed with feverish blood at the idea of someone standing in this very garden, basking in the Victorian sunshine of my beauty, and snatching me from my full gaze the mystery which I deemed the riddle of my own existence. The fields turned into a gloomy path. The doctors who attended me say I only grew rose. I had always bloomed like a rose, but for some months I had been getting so thin and wasted, and without any satisfactory reason: they tried every means to restore me, but in vain. One evening, an old Sclavonian—who had made many voyages to Turkey and Greece, and had never seen the New World—and I were sitting over our wine. We chatted for about an hour, and I drank a glass of wine. As soon as I had, in some degree, I astonishingly started to recover. It was a gradual recovery, but fortune favored me. My health had been so severely shaken, that it was long ere and my strength was restored at to allow me of being considered out of danger. However, my character underwent a great change in the interval. Its former strength was, perhaps, in some degree diminished, but in place of that, I had acquired a benevolent softness, which brought out all my best qualities. I continued expanding my mansion, and treated my fortune as a joy and blessing, and allowed this beauty to be expressed in the creative design. Many people were surprised by my generosity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
A few weeks after my recovery, I was conversing with the housemaid, and she told me a story of a stonemason who had recently died on the estate. This man, had been abroad in the fruit orchards on the afternoon of the great storm. At any rate, he had missed his way, and wandered until he came to the Observational Tower. Oppressed by the airless heat, he lay down to rest a little way from the entrance, fell into a deep sleep, and woke in pitch darkness. The storm had not yet broken, but with the stars entirely obscured, he dared not move; he could not see his hand in front of his face. Then a spark of light appeared in the blackness, flickering amongst the trees as it came toward him. He thought of calling out for help, but—though he was not a local man, and knew nothing of Llanada Villa’s reputation—something about its silent, purposeful approach unnerved him. As it came closer still, he could make out a human figure-whether a man or a woman he could not tell—with a lantern in its hand. Again he was out to call out, when he saw that the figure was shrouded, not in a greatcoat but a monk’s habit, with the hood drawn over its head. Now he feared for his soul and would have fled blindly into the fruit orchard, but his limbs were frozen with dread. Twigs crackled beneath its feet as the figure passed within a few yards of him; it was tall, he said, too tall for a mortal man, and as it went by he caught a glimpse of dead-white flesh—or was it bone?—beneath the hood. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
It did not pause, but went straight up to the tower’s door. He heard the scrape of a key, the rasp and snap of a lock, and then a creaking of hinges as the door swung inward and the figure passed into the Observational Tower, closing the door behind it. The glow of the lantern shone out through a barred window at the side. Now was his chance to flee; he knew that if the figure emerged again, it would see him. However, he could move only as far as the light from the window would guide him, for fear of falling and having the creature rush upon him. He began to creep around the side of the tower, keeping the edge of the dim semicircle of light. Then he saw that the glass had gone from the window, leaving only four rusty bar between himself and the scene within. The hooded figure stoon with it back to him, facing a stone coffin by the opposite wall: the lantern hung upon a bracket overhead. Even as he watched, it leaned forward and raised the lid of the sarcophagus with a grinding of stone on stone. Again his limbs failed him; he could only watch as the creature took down its lantern, slipped over the edge, and in one swirling movement lay down within the tomb, lowering the lid as it went, until only a thing line of yellow light remained. A moment later, that, too, was extinguished, and he was plunged once more into absolute darkness. Then his nerve gave way altogether and he fled blindly into the wood, stumbling and rebounding from one obstacle to another until he ran headfirst into a tree trunk, to be roused an indefinite time later by a gigantic crash of thunder. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
Even beneath the trees he was drenched to the kin, and when he finally stumbled out of the fruit orchard the next morning, he was in a worse case than I had been. He was taken to the infirmary, where he survived the first bout of fever, and was able to relate his strange tale to Dr. Montgomery, but his lungs never recovered, and another infection carried him off within the month. Dr. Montgomery, though he thought it picturesque enough to be worth relating, naturally dismissed the unfortunate man’s story as a delirious dream. Of course the housemaid agreed with him, but it reminded me of an uncomfortably of the old superstition about the Mansion, and the image of the shrouded figure with the lantern troubled my imagination for many months to come. I summoned up all my powers of mind and body, went towards the Observational Tower, and sank on my knees before the altar in quiet prayer. A sort of twilight reigned in the nine-story tower, and everything around was so still and peaceful, that I felt more calm. However, I knew myself to be in terrible danger, of what kind I could not guess: in an agony that threatened to rob me of my senses. I began to lose consciousness. I wished to hasten away, but staggered; and mechanically grasping at something to save myself by, seized the corner of the coffin, and sank fainting beside it on the floor. A quarter of an hour might have elapsed when I again opened my eyes. I looked around me. Above was the starry sky, and the moon, which shed my cold light on the ruins and on the tops of the palm trees. My shoulder was wet, my throat, my hand…my hand was full of blood. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
The Winchester Mystery House is best known for its architecture and lovely gardens, but some customers believe the mansion is haunted. Some say that they have seen a dark shadow following them into the place; still others say they hear things in the house—things like silverware moving about with an odd tinkling sound. Several years ago, a woman witnessed a cup levitate and fly across the room smashing against the wall. There is a persistent cold in the Daisy Bedroom even on a hot day. Could this cold spot be evidence of a ghost? Some believe that phantoms are the spirits of the carpenters, checking back at the place they worked so hard to build. So many people have so many good times at the Winchester Mystery House, they return now that they are in spirit. “The Daisy Bedroom and the front lobby seemed to me to be haunted. There was also a strange feeling in the Witches Cap, as well. If you go there, keep an eye out for moving shadows. People are usually so busy looking for ghost that they miss them!” https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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And the Skulls were Partially Digested!
As I was cultivating the garden, the most simple and innocent of human toils, the morning sun was shining with uncommon brilliancy, birds were singing in every tree and on every bush; so pleasant, so spirit-stirring, health-giving a morning, seldom I had seen. And the effect upon my spirits was great. This must have been like the same joy and labor of the unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of the present World? It was arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. I was redundant with life, health, and energy. Hours and hours past. As the night started closing it, I went to the parlor, and thought of the influence of the light of the morning that tends to rectify whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred during the sun’s decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the less wholesome glow of moonshine. My first movement, on starting from sleep, was to throw open the window and gaze down into the garden which my dreams had made so fertile of mysteries. I was surprised and a little ashamed to find how real and matter-of-fact an affair it proved to be in the first rays of the sun which gilded the dewdrops that hung upon leaf and blossom, and, while giving a brighter beauty to each rare flower, brought everything within the limits of ordinary experience. I rejoiced that I had the privilege of owning this estate which possessed such lovely and luxuriant vegetation. It served as a symbolic language to keep me in communion with Nature. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The ordinary little casualties of evil fortune had certainly from time to time in the shape of illness, and one thing or another, attacked the family of the Winchesters’ in common with every other family, but here suddenly had arisen a something at once terrible and inexplicable. I was in a deep and anxious thought when I heard a noise from the direction of the library: the sound of a key turning in a lock. My skin was crawling afresh. I blew out the candle, closed the book, and moved as quickly as I dared toward the main entrance. However, footsteps were already approaching the door from the library, and I knew that the landing doors could not be opened in a hurry without making a great deal of noise. Nor was there time to make it to the elevator. I could have hidden beneath the long table, but the thought of being discovered, and having to crawl ignominiously out to face the apparition…No; there was only one possible hiding-place. I stepped into the trap door, and I was plunged into absolute darkness. There was very little air, even at first, and it soon grew stifling hot. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I became aware of a faint glimmer. I could feel the dread and chill that the spirit brought. As I sat, I noticed there was a severed head facing away from me on the floor. The sides of the head were dark and bloody and the air there matted with gore where the ears had been sliced off. I only notice that after taking in the raw, red nakedness of his skull. However, he had been scalped, too. His lips were drawn back in a snarl of agony from his teeth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Worse, though, were his eyes. They were black, dismayed, lost as the life dimmed in them to the dawning consequence, of what his bartering with evil was going to mean for him in death. The secret passageway was vaulted, timbered in hardwood, the high dome spreading above a spacious circular room, flagged in smooth stone under strew rugs, opulently furnished in teak and ivory and marble and blood. The headless torso of this man lay in a thickening pool of gore, small and still at the carved feet. Shambolic and grotesque, much worse of a sight than anyone could imagine. Its skin was some greyish animal hide, scraped and seasoned, maybe the softened hides of boar or buffalo, crudely stitched over its stuffing in the rough shape and posture of a man Standing, it would have been about eight feet tall. It was a lifeless thing, an abomination slouched on its throne, with its cloven buffalo hooves for feet, with its hands taken from some slaughtered ape and clenched now, the fingernails black with rictus and crafty decay. It was an abomination, right enough, but crudely inanimate. I lite a torch and studied the head. It was large and pale and bald, sunken in placed in shallow depressions where the stuffing did not seem to be sufficient and gave it a deformed and almost sullen aspect. The eyes were blank discs of ivory perforated at their edges and stitched on to the fact. And the mouth under them was a black, leering gash. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I could not fathom what had been living in the walls of my home. Shaking my head in disbelief, I tuned my back on the thing. And felt the hairs rise on my neck in dread as I heard foot steps behind me. In my heart, I felt that demons were living within my home and was deeply afraid. It appears that someone had been dabbling with diabolical forces. Remorseful, ashamed, deepening terror, I felt my heart was going to explode out of my chest. I turned around, already squeezing the trigger of my revolver, and fired. I hit it with a burst, cutting the monstrosity in half. As a staggered through the secret caverns, I noticed other curious things, bits of gold, plaits of old rope, rags, coins, what looked like a couple dozen diamonds and five small human skulls. And the skulls were partially digested. The silence began to unnerve me. I was seized by a creeping, mortal dread. I wondered, “Am I awake? Have I my senses?” This was an inexpressibly terrible night. An impulsive movement, I drew my eyes to the window. There I beheld the beautiful head of a young man—rather a Grecian than an Italian head, with fair, regular features, and a glistening of gold among his ringlets—gazing down upon me like a being that hovered in mid-air. An incredible clear and calm overcame me. A doorway opened in the catacombs. I watched this angelic man walk through them as I followed. Back inside the mansion, he became light and insubstantial as a ghost, until he disappeared completely into thing air. It was midnight, and the door behind me vanished, leaving nothing but a solid mahogany wall behind. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Those who have never personally felt the demons storming over their home can have no conception of the reality. A number of wolves have also taken up their quarters in the fruit orchards and feed on wild birds, rabbits and such like. They are sky in the summer-time, and a boy of twelve might scare them; but when the birds migrate, and the rabbits are gone, they prowl about at night, and they are dangerous. They are the worst, however, on stormy nights, for then it is just as if the fiend himself possessed them: they are so mad and fierce that man and beast become alike their victims; and a party of them have been known even to attack the ferocious bears of the mountains, and, what is more, to come off victorious. Their howl is enough to scare the bravest man. As soon as it commences, the wind rises, and you will see their eyes gleaming among the trees. Your only plan for safety is to wrap your cloak around you, and lie down flat on the ground. If your home were but a few hundred yards off, you might lose your life in the attempt to reach it. Horses become unmanageable as the terror infects them. Grown men begin weeping with fear when their howling recommences and approaches nearer and nearer. As the moonbeams become dusky amongst the trees, from time to time a fierce howl arises from their center, and people know they are in great danger, as the wolves will very soon make a general attack. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
O THOU great, powerful, and mighty KING AMAIMON, who bearest rule by the power of the SUPREME GOD EL over all spirits both superior and inferior of the Infernal Orders in the Dominion of the East; I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of Lucifer; and by that God that Thou Worshippest; and by the Seal of thy creation; and by the most mighty and powerful name of God, IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATON who cast thee out of Heaven with all other infernal spirits; and by all the most powerful and great names of GOD who created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all things in them contained; and by their power and virtue; and by the name PRIMEUMATON who commandeth the whole host of Heaven; that thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel the Fifty-second Spirit Alloces and His 36 Legions of Spirits to come here before this Circle in a fair and comely shape, without hard unto me or unto any other creature. I awaken you and your powers of darkness which dwell within you by the power of the blood of Lucifer that you may serve to empower this great mansion! Through serving the greater cause of dark magick which breaks the shackles that bind the Blackened Fire of spirit, may you be uplifted and liberated! Awaken and empower the forbidden rites of Angra Mainyu! Awaken and empower our great work of counter creation as an Apostle of the Lord of Darkness eternal and as a warrior of the Path Satanachia. Herein receive such virtue that we may obtain by thee the perfect issue of all our desires, which also we seek to perform without evil, without deception, by God, the Creator of the Sun and the Angels. Amen. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
In 1994, a man stopped by The Winchester Mystery House for the Christmas Tree tour. Afterward, he went to the café for a cup of coffee. He brought his coffee and sat at a table, by the doors looking out onto the courtyard. He picked up a newspaper and started looking through it as he was sipping his coffee. There was no one else in the area, and he noticed just a few people outside waiting to tour the estate. One waiter was at the counter at the time, and there were a few other employees in the gift shop area. Very shortly, he noticed a man and a woman enter from the courtyard. They passed, looked around for a moment, then sat down in the back of the café. He could not help but notice them because of the way they were dressed and the way the looked. The man was dressed in a nice-looking black suit and wearing a tie, but his complexion was that of a very sick man. He was very pale and seemed to be sweating. The woman wore a Victorian type dress, black and long, very formal, it reached down to her ankles. She was carrying a large cloth type bag. They sat for a moment and the woman reached into her bag and withdrew a large towel of some kind and began wiping the man’s face, over and over again.
Then she put it back in the bag. They sat for a few more moments, apparently conversating, although he could not hear what they were saying. Then the man walked over to his table. He asked, “Do you have some money so I can get something to drink?” The sickly-looking man was so well dressed that he was surprised he asked for money. So he refused him. The sickly-looking man starred at him for a while and went and sat back down. He is his wife talked for a while, and walked towards him, they made a left and went toward the exist. Out of curiosity, he immediately got up to see where they were going, but they had vanished. He went outside and looked at the cars in the parking lot and all of them were empty. Upon revealing security footage, the manager determined that was William and Sarah Winchester, but before they reached the exist, the security tape got all fuzzy and distorted. “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares,” reports Hebrews 13.2. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Are We Dealing Here with Ghosts?
In the long darkness, I found myself roaming in my mansion. The moon was almost at the full, and there was something very odd going on. Something inexplicable in any terms I am familiar with. A fire of pine logs burned in several of the fireplaces on the top three floors of the house. The resin from the burning logs gave my home a sweet scent. Now and then the panes rattled in their frames, made fretful by the wind. The house was wooden and it groaned at the weather, and wind whistled and signed through the unfinished fourth floor above me. It seemed a degree or two colder on the third floor than it had on the stairs, in spite of the fires burning in their grate. You could see the temperate on this floor was sinister. The overhead lamps, deliberately dim, flickered. As I went deeper into the catacombs, I became away that the usual sounds of construction seemed strangely muted, and if there were carpenters afoot, they kept well out of sight. The conviction tht I had taken a wrong turning grew upon me until, without any warning, the path swerved around a gigantic staircase and emerged onto an expanse of rooms. On the far side of the mansion, perhaps fifty yards, I was horror-stricken to find there were eight corpses swung in their chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous and indistinguishable mass. A dwarf hurled his torch at them, clambered leisurely to the ceiling, and disappeared through the skylight. Almost catatonic as I was climbing the stairs, I thought I heard a bell toll. It tolled only once. However, it tolled louder than any bell as a right to in Llanada Villa. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Whatever else was lurking in my home waxed and waned in its power. The mansion seemed to be inching its way upward out of darkness. As the moon rose higher, the freezing darkness was just a few feet away. I stook listening to the creepings and rustlings from the thickets outside, the occasional hoot of an owl. After a hundred yards of stumbling in darkness, I knew that I was in the presence of a superior intelligence. There was a light; rather unnerving, I confess. People in these parts firmly believe my home is haunted, and that I am a necromancer. I suffered from a morbid fear of death, and I sometimes think this accounts for my having shut myself so much away from the World. It had certainly drawn me into strange paths of study; and in particular to the alchemists’ quest for the elixir of life; the potion which will supposedly confer immortality upon one who discovers the secret. As one enters the glary by the main doors, it is easy to see, at the far end of the room, an immense fireplace. However, no fire has burned in it for centuries; the space within is occupied by what at first appears to be an immense cabin trunk. It is in fact a Roman marble sarcophagus from the Dukes of Beaufort, decorated with forty human and animal figures carved in high relief with Dionysus seated on the panther. In the alcove between the fireplace and the library wall stands a massive suit of armour, curiously blacked as if by fire. You would think it the work of some mediaeval craftsman, but as you approach you see that, from the waist down, it resembles one of those Egyptian coffins in the shape of a man. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I was unable to explain to myself quite why the journey had taken so long. Many visitors found something oppressive, even sinister about the size of my home, to which I was drawn to build it for perhaps that very reason. However, if one finds this mansion gloomy, for the love of Heaven, then, take a tour of the Victorian garden, and one will see bright sunshine, various plants, with gigantic leaves, and, in some instances, flowers gorgeously magnificent. Every portion of the soil is peopled with plants and herbs, which, if less beautiful, still bares tokens of assiduous care, as if all their individual virtues, known to the scientific mind that foster them. Some are placed in urns, rich with old carving, and other in common garden pots; some creep serpentlike along the ground or climb on high, using whatever means of ascent offered them. One plant has wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which is thus quite veiled and shrouded in a drapery on hanging foliage, so happily arranged that it may have served a sculptor for a study. Nevertheless, there are so many ghosts at Llanada Villa that the entities often get together and hold dances in the Grand Ballroom. On one occasion, I watched a group of 15 to 20 ghosts having a dance in the third-floor ballroom. Walking among these malignant influences, savage beasts, deadly snakes, demons and evil spirits, the ghostly figures did not seem to mind the intrusion of my physical presence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Then with a sudden bound something dashed out of the Grand Ballroom. The concussion against me was so sudden and so utterly unexpected, as well as so tremendously violent, that I was thrown down, and in my fall, the light was fairly extinguished. All was darkness, save a dull reddish kind of light that now and then, from the nearly consumed Observational Tower in the immediate vicinity, came into the room. However, by that light, dim, uncertain, and flickering as it was, some one was seen to make for the window. Although nearly studded by my fall, I saw a figure, gigantic in height, which nearly reached from the floor to the ceiling. I screamed. The figure was about to pass out at the window which led to a kind of balcony, from whence there was an easy descent to the garden. Before it passed out, I caught a glance of the side-face, and I saw that the lower part of it and the lips were dabbled in blood. I saw, too, once of those fearful-looking, shining, metallic eyes which presented so terrible an appearance of unearthly ferocity. No wonder that for a moment a panic seized me, which paralyzed any exertion I might otherwise have made to detain that hideous form. Then I grabbed by revolver and fired at the figure, which then occupied the window, as if it were a gigantic figure set in a frame. The report was tremendous in that chamber, for the pistol was no toy weapon, but one made for actual service, and of sufficient length and bored of barrel to carry destruction along with the bullets that came from it. The tall form turned upon me, and when I got a full view of the face—that face was one never to be forgotten. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
It was hideously flushed with colour—the colour of fresh blood; the eyes had a savage and remarkable lustre; whereas, before, they had looked like polished tin—they now wore a ten times brighter aspect, and flashes of light seemed to dart from them. The mouth was open, as if, from the natural formation of the countenance, the lips receded much from the large canine-looking teeth. A strange, howling noise came from the throat of this monstrous figure, and it seemed upon the point of rushing upon me. Suddenly, then, as if some impulse had seized upon it, it uttered a wild terrible shrieking kind of laugh; and then turning, dashed through the window, and in one instance disappeared before my eyes as I felt nearly annihilated by its fearful presence. “God help me!” I said. I crossed the corridor, and could not but pause a moment to glance from a window as the face of nature. As is often the case, the terrific storm of the preceding evening had cleared the air, and rendered it deliciously invigorating and lifelike. The weather had been dull, and there had been for some days a certain heaviness in the atmosphere, which was now entirely removed. During an evening séance, 17 different entities declared their presence and provided a bit of their personal history. When a pretty kind of omen, Crispus Attucks, a soldier killed in the Revolutionary War, identified himself; he explained that most of the time he liked to stay down in the basement and that during the war, tribes squared off over disputed land. The skirmishes and ambushes escalated into attritional war. Wells were poisoned. Villages were burned. They found scorched villages and corpses, and dead beasts bloating and alive with maggots and blow flies. However, he was not the ghostly conjuration encountered that particular evening. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Gods of gods and Lord of lords, who hast created all things out of nothing, great king, very obedient Lucifer, I call upon your powers of light and the skies through the gates of Heaven. Powers of baneful darkness, I summon you to this holy mansion. I conjure you to enter here and guides the lives of my enemies into utter darkness. I now plant the seed of my desire within the black Earth, through the mouth of the black sun where the powers of sorcery and counter creation dwell. Through this gateway of darkness, I now shine the light and power of my will upon this World for the benefit of me and mine! O Thou great, powerful, and mighty King, who bearest rule by the power of the Heavens, Hell, Earth and the Universe, I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of God; and by that God that Thou Worshippest; and by the Seal of thy creation; and by the most mighty and powerful virtue thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel ADREALPHUS and His 30 Legions of Infernal Spirits, to come here before this Circle in a fair and comely shape, without harm unto me or unto any other creature, to fill us with your essence and might! Empower all endeavors that we undertake so that they may serve us here upon the corporeal plane! May your creation serve as a key to the realms above and below unlocking power and wisdom for our gory and ascent! Fill this mansion with your powers and seek any wrath and fury or spiritual attacks rendering them useless and impotent! Embrace us from the break of day to the setting of the sun, we thank you air, fire, water, earth, blessed be the one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
In September 1998, a team of paranormal investigators told a story of being lifted off the ground and dropped by a ghost, and their accounts were backed up by the corroborating testimony of several witnesses. A teenager said that he had reached out to touch the phantom and had found the thing to be very cold. Observers had seen the ghost loitering in the Venetian dining room and strolling across the grounds. Other have seen the entity as a black cloud drifting across the yard, ranging from six to eight feet in height. Those who observed the thing in either guide affirm that it was a creature of habit. It always seemed to appear between 11.00 P.M. and 1.00 A.M., and usually followed the same routine from the dining room to a certain point on the grounds. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Dabbling in Dark, Cruel Possibilities of Magic
Winter rain. Rain of light that saturated every inch of my estate, every square inch of grass, drift of rain threading light through the empty darkness itself. I was weary of this night because I had met with such terrible misfortune not too long ago. All which apparently conspiring to heighten that superstitious melancholy that had seized upon my mansion. The more I thought, the more I was bewildered. Night passed on without rest. The sound of carriages broke upon my ear. The solemn tones of the old grandfather clock announced midnight—a strange death-like stillness pervades all nature all nature. Like the ominous calm which precedes some more than usually terrific outbreak of the elements, they seem to have paused in their ordinary fluctuations, to gather a terrific strength for the great effort. A faint pea of thunder now comes from far off. Like a signal gun for the battle of the winds to begin, it appeared to awaken them from their lethargy, and one awful, warring hurricane swept over a whole city, producing more devastation in the four or five minutes it lasted, than would half century of ordinary phenomena. Oh, how the storm raged! Hair—rain—wind. It was, in very truth, as awful night. There is an antique chamber in this ancient house. Curious and quaint carvings adorn the walls, and a large chimney-piece is a curiosity of itself. The ceiling is low, and a large bay window, from roof to floor, looks to the west. The window is latticed, and filled with curiously painted glass and rich stained pieces, which send in a strange, yet beautiful light, when sun or moon shines into the apartment. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
There is but one portrait in that room, although the walls are panelled for the express purpose of containing a series of pictures. The portrait is of William, as a young man, with his handsome pale face, stately brow, and a whimsical look about the eyes. There is a stately bed in this chamber, of carved walnut-wood is it made, rich in design and elaborate inexecution; one of those works of art which owe their existence to the Elizabethan era. It is hung with heavy silken and damask furnishing; nodding feathers are at its corners—covered with dust are they, and they lend a funeral aspect to the room. The floor is of polished oak. God! how the hail dashes on the old bay window! Like an occasional discharge of mimic musketry, it comes clashing, beating, and cracking upon the small panes; but they resist it—their small size saves them; the wind, the hail, the rain, expend their fury in vain. The turmoil of the elements wakes the senses, although it cannot entirely break the repose they have lapsed into. Oh, what a World of witchery. Was that lightning? Yes—an awful, vivid, terrifying flash—then a roaring peal of thunder, as if a thousand mountains were rolling one over the other in the blue vault of Heaven! Who sleeps now in that ancient city? Not one living soul. The dread trumpet of eternity could not more effectually have awakened anyone. The hail continues. The wind continues. The uproar of the elements seems at its height. I lay in bed waiting for sleep to come. However, I lay for a long time and it came only reluctantly. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Rain continued to whicker and spat on my bedroom window. There was a skittering sound. It could have the claws of some capering demon. I sat upon my bed and pressed my hands upon my eyes. Heavens! what a wild torrent of wind, and rain, and hail! The thunder likewise seems intent upon awakening sufficient echoes to last until the next flash of forked lightening should again produce the wild concussion of the air. I murmured a prayer—a prayer for those I love best; the names of those dear to my gentle hear come from my lips; and I weep and pray; I think then of what devastation the storm must surely produce, and to the great God of Heaven I pray for all living things. Another flash—a wild, blue, bewildering flash of lightning streams across that bay window, for an instant brining out every color in it with terrible distinctness. A shriek bursts from my lips, and then, with my eyes fixed upon that window, which, in another moment, is all darkness, and with such an expression of terror upon my face as it had never before known, I trembled, and the perspiration of intense fear stood upon my brow. “What—what was it?” I gasped; “real, or delusion? Oh, God, there are people in the World with hunger for power and influence enough to risk dabbling in dark, cruel possibilities of magic. Particular locations could infect individual people with what society termed evil. Those people are random victims of contagion. However, I had seen real ghouls. Now, a figure tall and gaunt, endeavoring from the outside to unclasp the window. I saw it. That flash of lightning revealed it to me. It stood at the whole length of the window.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
There is a lull of the wind. The hail is not falling so thickly—moreover, it now fell, what there is of it, straight, and yet a strange clattering sound came upon the glass of that long window. It could not be a delusion—I am awake, and I hear it. What can produce it? Another flash of lightning—another shriek—there can be now no delusion. The house is uncomfortably cold. A tall figure is standing on the ledge immediately outside the long window. It is its finger-nails upon the glass that produces the sound so like the hail, now that the hail has ceased. Intense fear paralyzed my limbs. That one shrike is all I can utter—with hands clasped, a face of marble, a heart beating so wildly in my bosom, that it moment it seems as if it would break its confines, eyes distended and fixed upon the window, I wait, froze with horror. The pattering and clattering of the nails continue. No word is spoken. I fancy I can trace the darker form of that figure against the window, and I can see the long arms moving to and fro, feeling for some mode of entrance. What strange light is that which now gradually creeps up into the air? red and terrible—brighter and brighter it grows. The light has set fire to the water tower, and the reflection of the rapidly consuming building falls upon that long window. There can be no mistake. The figure is there, still feeling for an entrance, and clattering against the glass with its long nail, that appear as if the growth of many years had been untouched. I try to scream again but a chocking sensation comes over me, and I cannot. It is too dreadful—I try to move—each limb seems weighed down by tons of lead—I can but in a hoarse faint whisper cry,–“Help—help—help—help!” #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Suddenly I was startled beyond belief when a small pane of glass is broken and the form from without introduces a long gaunt hand, which seems utterly destitute of flesh. The fastening is removed, and one-half of the window, which opens like folding doors, is swung wide open upon its hinges. My heart is running at that eternal rhythm, so many gradations. There is a look of terror upon my face, it is dreadful. The figure turns half rough, and the light falls upon the face. It is perfectly white—perfectly bloodless. The eyes look like polished tin; the lips are drawn back. It approaches the bed with a strange, gliding moment. It clashes together the long nails that literally appear to hand from the fingers. No sound comes from its lips. However, my eyes are fascinated. The glance of a serpent could not have produced a greater effect upon me than did the fixed gaze of those awful, metallic-looking eyes that were bent on my face. Crouching down so that the gigantic height was lost, and the horrible, protruding white face was the most prominent object, came on the figure. With a sudden rush that could not be foreseen—with a strange howling cry that was enough to awaken terror in every breast, the figure seized the long tresses of my hair, and twining them round his bony hands. I quivered with the agony of my soul. I crept into the Hall through the secret passage which led from the house to the Observational Tower. The house and the grounds were thoroughly searched, but the creature had vanished from the face of the Earth, all that was found was a clawlike finger nail. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The tale of the man in the dark cloak is well known to the staff of The Winchester Mystery House. On November 23, at 5.30 p.m., a tour guide was locking up, when he saw the man across the courtyard. He was going into the East Wing in what he thought was a dark coat. Thinking that it was a visitor still looking round, he waited outside for five minutes for the man to finish his tour, but still there was no sign of him. The tour guide went into the east wing to see what he was doing, and he saw a malignant face peering down at him from the stairs. In the long darkness that followed—haunted he was by the ravaged face. Four years would pass before anything happened to disturb his melancholy conviction. 🎟️ Tickets on sale now at link in bio! https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Look at those Big Bad Pimps—Americans Want to Pay for their Lunch!
Whenever a single wave of change predominates in any given society, the pattern of future development is relatively easy to discern. Writers, artists, journalists and others discover the “wave of the future.” Thus, in nineteenth-century Europe many thinkers, business leaders, politicians and ordinary people held a clear, basically correct image of the future. They sensed that history was moving toward the ultimate triumph of industrialism over premechanized agriculture, and they foresaw with considerable accuracy many of the changes that the Second Wave would bring with it: more powerful technologies, bigger cities, faster transport, mass education and the like. This clarity of vision had direct political effects. Parties and political movements were able to triangulate with respect to the future. Preindustrial agricultural interests organized a rearguard psychological action against encroaching industrialism, against “big business,” against “union bosses,” against “sinful cities.” Labor and management grappled for control of the main levers of the emergent industrial society. Ethnic and racial minorities, defining their rights in terms of an improved role in the industrial World, demanded access to jobs, corporate positions, urban housing, better wages and mass public education. This industrial vision of the future had important effects as well. The shared image of an industrial future tended to define options, to give individuals a sense not merely of who or what they were but of what they were likely to become. It provided a degree of stability and a sense of self, even in the midst of extreme social change. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
This industrial vision of the future had important psychological effects as well. The shared images of an industrial future tended to define options, to give individuals a sense not merely of who or what they were but of what they were likely to become. It provided a degree of stability and a sense of self, even in the midst of extreme social change. In contrast, when a society is struck by two or more giant waves of change and none is yet clearly dominant, the image of the future is fractured. It becomes extremely difficult to sort out the meaning of the changes and conflicts that arise. The collision of wave fronts creates a raging ocean full of clashing currents, eddies and maelstorms which conceal the deeper, more important historic tides. In the United States of America—and in many other countries—the collision of Second and Third Wave creates social tensions, dangerous conflicts and strange new political wave fronts that cut across the usual divisions of class, race, gender, or party. This collision makes a shambles of traditional political vocabularies and makes it very difficult to separate progressive from reactionaries, friends from enemies. All the old polarizations and coalitions break up. The apparent incoherence of political life is mirrored in personality disintegration. Psychotherapists and gurus do a land-office business, people wander aimlessly amid competing therapies. They slip into cultus and covens or, alternatively, into a pathological privatism, convinced that reality is absurd, insane or meaningless. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Life may indeed be absurd in some large, cosmic sense. However, this hardly proves that there is no pattern in today’s events. In fact, there is a distinct, hidden order the becomes detectable as soon as we learn to distinguish Third Wave changes from those associated with a diminishing Second Wave. The crosscurrents created by these waves of change are reflected in our work, family life, sexual attitudes and personal morality. They show up in life-styles and voting behavior. For in our personal lives and political acts, whether we know it or not, most of us in the rich countries are essentially Second Wave people committed to maintaining a dying order. Third Wave people constructing a radically different tomorrow or a confused, self-canceling mixture of the two. The conflict between Second and Third Wave groupings is, in fact, the central political tension cutting through our society today. The more basic political question, as we shall see, is not who controls the last days of industrial society but who shapes the new civilization rapidly rising to replace it. On one side are the partisans of the industrial past; on the other, growing millions who recognize that the most urgent problems of the World can no longer be resolved within the frame work of an industrial order. This conflict is the “super struggle” for tomorrow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
This confrontation between the vested interest of the Second Wave and the people of the Third Wave already runs like an electric current through the political life of every nation. Even in the nonindustrial counties of the World, all the old battle lines have been forcibly redrawn by the arrival of the Third Wave. The old war of agricultural, often feudal interests against industrializing elites, either capitalist or socialists, takes on a new dimension in light of the coming obsolescence of industrialism. Now that Third Wave civilization is making its appearance, does rapid industrialism imply liberation from neocolonialism and poverty, or does it, in fact, guarantee permanent dependency? It is only against this wide-screen background that we can begin to make sense of the headlines, to sort out our priorities, to frame sensible strategies for the control of change in our lives. Once we realize that a bitter struggle is now raging between those who seek to preserve industrialism and those who seek to supplant it, we have a new tool for changing that World. To use this tool, however, we must be able to distinguish clearly those changes that extend the old industrial civilization from those which facilitate the arrival of the new. We must, in short, understand both the old and the new, the Second Wave industrial system into which so many of us were born and the Third Wave civilization that we and our children have inhabited. America has a lot of structural problems. Almost all of them are similar to those faced by developing nations. However, they are more acute and visible to the World because of America’s unique status. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The list is well-known. We no longer manufacture a significant portion of products we use in our own country. Although we are technologically advanced, new technology is often not used in many buildings and infrastructure because older technology is more cost efficient. And there is a battle between polluting enterprises and green technology, both of which pose problems for the environment. There is high latent unemployment and underemployment in rural and urban areas. Large-scale migration to the cities overstrains their infrastructure causing a lot of ultra-urbanization pains. Obviously mismatch exists between the labor supply (and those willing to work for lower wages, tend to get most of the work). And so on, and so forth. Discussion of America’s present and future usually focuses on a gentlemanly set of problems. They are often looked upon as critical and posing a threat of abrupt and disruptive economic downturn, social and political turmoil or, in the extreme case, the country’s collapse. Such views do not look convincing. The gentlemanly set of problems is manageable, especially for America with its remarkable ability to address crucial issues a gradual, evolutionary, but persistent change. Let us have a loot at a conventional Problem List. Aging Population and Labor Shortages? Yes, population of the working age is apparently approaching its peak and will start to decline in the second half od this century. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
However, labor force constraints can and most likely will be offset by further gains in labor productivity. Also, there is still a lot of underused human resources in the countryside (about 40 percent of all American worker live in suburban areas) whose migration to the cities will continue to boost labor supply. However, many businesses are now leaving the decaying urban centers, for the suburbs, and many people are working from their electronic cottages. As a result, more businesses will move to the suburbs, which should decrease inner state traffic. As for the growing number and share of elderly people, America with its high migration rates, unhealthy public finance, extremely high social spending, and high dependency toward social safety nets in the future, is in a good position to address the population aging issues in a realistic and financially sustainable way. However, many senior citizens are now small business owners and in good health and are working and support their families, while their kids go to college to obtain degrees, and one day may take over the family business and expand it. Also, the genetic engineer and stem cell technology, we may be able to prevent and cure disabilities. Therefore, most of the population will be in the condition to work and pay taxes. One day, scientists may even find a cure for aging. So, there is a lot of hope for the future. Growing Income Gaps? Well, indeed, they are growing, but, on the other hand, low-income families are mostly elevating their earnings and consumption standards; social safety nets are improving; and, overall, today’s America provides a lot of opportunities to enhance revenues and life a better life to those who really want to make it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Intra-Regional Development Gaps Threatening the Country’s Integrity? Not at all. It is not a critical problem as less developed provinces are becoming the country’s major growth engines and the state has enough financial and other resources to support and amplify the trend. Environmental Damage Endangering the Very Basis of Human Life? No doubt, a whole lot of issues have become critical. However, America is more and more establishing the position of the World leaders in most areas of sustainable smokestack energy, as these companies like Standard Oil are starting to tackle the environmental problems in the same gradual, evolutionarily, but persistent manner it tackled the other ones. And, finally, is there a threat of a big political and social turmoil that may occur as people’s anger with the authoritarian Capitalist regime and democratic political system bursts out and they take to the streets again? Fringe groups of Americans have also been dissatisfied with law and order and hard work, and their anger with the regime is really strong and apparently growing, impacted by numerous cases of power abuse, rampant corruption, disrespect for law enforcement, abuse elder and contempt for leaders, and a lack of respect for patriots and Americana, and other violations of basic human rights. A fresh memory of mine…Some three or four years ago, during a reception in hour of a group of American professors visiting Africa, two of them approached me for a greeting and asked a tough question: “Sir, why don’t you write plainly the America’s present political system is outdated and has to be changed? It worked, but now it has ceased to work. For us it is kind of problematic to write such a thing. Why don’t you?” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
What could I say to this? For sure, democracy and human rights have a basic, universal value and are perhaps not less (or even more?) important than economic growth and rising living standards, but really all of that is intertwined. Generally speaking, people are disrespected because they do not have enough money, because the color of their skin, religion, physical appearance and what type of house they live in and the car they drive. However, as standards of living increases, through economic growth, people become more rational, better education, and have more money to defend themselves in a court of law, so people reconsider violating these peoples’ human rights because they know they may suffer dire financial and legal consequences as a result, which could impact their freedom and reputation. However, on a macro level, we are seeing people raging against the capitalistic regime and they are actually fighting to restrict freedoms and destroy human dignity; information block-outs are now occurring because a handful of corporations own the media outlets and are fighting to conceal the truth; as well as cynical politicians consorting with the World’s most dictatorial and criminal regimes, which often get a helping hand from Washington when the global community tries to do something to put an end to their brutalities (notably, America tends to mind its own business and condemns brutal regimes for massacres of all people or for developing weapons of mass destruction; it always repeats honest and genuine calls to resolve issues peacefully and not to interfere with internal affairs when possible), naturally, this causes resentment, anger, and indignation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It is a moral and historical obligation of all America and all honest people in the World who care about justice, the rule of law, mortality, and individual freedom to do their best to send the global leadership a clear message about it. On the other hand, values, ideals, and emotions are not the right starting point when your task is to analyze the logic of the evolution of the country’s political system. And there the truth is that America is approaching the task of changing its political system in the very same way it has approached the task of the economic reforms; gradual, evolutionary, but persistent. Its ruling elite is really trying to find workable answers to key and very difficult questions, while avoiding, by all means, any abrupt revolutionary change. At the dawn of 2020, President Trump proclaimed that everything which is good for a human being is capitalism, that is it not so important if you drive a Cadillac or BMW as long as it is made in America or Europe, and that there is no problem with some Americans becoming rich earlier than others. A variety of forms of ownership is encouraged to give a boost to private enterprise and less the burden on social programs. Many affluent people, this may come to a surprise to some, when they retire, it is funded 100 percent by private investments. Wealthy and upper-class Americans have always felt shameful to use government resources, that is why they believe in capitalism. They want to pay for their lunch. After his election, President Trump boosted the stock market to record highs, we saw property value soar (which is a good thing because it puts money in the banks of homeowners), and unemployment reach a historic low. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Also, although President Trump is a Republican, he is also a business owner. He fought to make sure each and every America, no matter if they pack income taxes or not, and every business received stimulus money. This helped avoid a depression that would have been much more severe than the Great Depression. Because people have hope, they did not jump from buildings to end their lives like they did during the great depression. President Trump also made sure all Americans has access to medical care, that they had food on the table and that fuel prices remained low so people could get back to work and school. He also told people that they have a right to tell authorities about their grievances, in a respectful manner, but that is they got out of line that the situation would be dealt with by using necessary force. He also told Congress and state and local leaders that they are to listen to what the people say, as long as they are respectful, and seek solutions for the issues they pose. Also, perhaps, America is the World leader in terms of the number of high-ranking officials executed for corruption-related crimes. The FBI prosecuted several government officials in Sacramento when they raided the state capitol. Again, any changes America makes will not be abrupt: from one party of rule to full-fledged multiparty politics, but evolutionary and very gradual, which is why it is very important to people to actually to research about political issues and politicians and vote accordingly. Many people used to vote democratic because they wanted high welfare benefits and more social programs, but as you see, many democrats are using the money to build sports complexes and remodel state buildings and put in bike lanes and resurface sidewalks, while affordable housing needs are ignored. So a Republican may be your best bet. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
As any business owner will tell you, if your employees cannot take care of themselves, they will not take good care of your business. Therefore, a business owner might make a better President, than a politician because they are used to dealing with human concerns. Citizens are being encouraged by federal law enforcement to stop criticizing the ruling party too strongly because otherwise they may face tough penalties—for example, for disturbing the social order or for being a public nuisance. President Trump was even in the works of making a government news broadcast channel, like FOX News or CNN, so you could get the information directly and unfiltered from the government. That way, private entities and special interest groups will not be able to distort the information for profit. In other words, the major trend is and will be a shift from an outdated communist dictatorship of the traditional type to a more sophisticated political system with a democratic base. This will make the information projected over the airwaves more legitimate in the eyes of World and public opinion or at least to argue that it is legitimate and that it cares about democracy. Look around you and you will see: America is one of the best countries in the World. Now, prostitution is an economic activity, and it is one many people turn to when they cannot feed their families, and this is why the government likes to keep social programs because no matter how rich a person is or what political party, they are part of, their kids could become involved in prostitution if they have no other way to survive. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The prostitutes-as-business-women and prostitutes-as-loving-partners identifications were made possible by a men-as-expense symbolic landscape where men were defined in relation to money because involvement with them was seen as necessitating payment in the form of “opportunity costs” (id est, vales which must be given up in order to achieve something) and “hidden costs” (id est values which are unknown at the time of calculation). The men-as-expense symbolic nexus was a construction of involvement with men in general rather than involvement with men in the context of engagement in prostitution. Hence, Sophie (aged 28) made the comment: “If you get involved with a man—ANY MAN—there’s always a price to pay. There’s always responsibility to give him money or something. You never can get away with it for free.” Throughout all the respondents’ talk there were differences drawn between the actual opportunity cost incurred by relationships with different categories of men. Involvement with pimps, boyfriends and the police were described as necessitating an opportunity cost in that the women understood involvement with all these men as providing them with “sanctuary” from prostitution or protection from prostitution-related risks, but at different and specific prices. “What I was left with was absolute fear and terror—a loneliness on a level I didn’t know existed. I didn’t feel like a human being anymore,” Michelle shares of her heartbreaking story of addiction—an addiction that eventually drove her to become a prostitute. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Most of the women spoke about boyfriends with whom they were or had been involved and who gave them sanctuary from prostitution through financially supporting them. However, the women described such involvement as costing them their independence and it was their unwillingness to pay this price that, they believed, lead to the break up of those relationships. Similarly, involvement with policemen was seen as offering the women protection from prostitution-related violence, especially against violence from pimps. In her moments of deepest darkness, Michelle began entertaining the idea that maybe God could help her, maybe He could provide hope and light like to one else could. “My World changed. You don’t life a life like that and then have things change overnight. It took some time,” she says. Indeed, two other women recalled that it was only after the intervention of the police that they were able to leave their pimps. However, here, the police did not arrest the pimps, rather they arrested the women and took them to hostels or other helping agencies. The price for this was understood as being both provision of information to the police, and more importantly being “indebted” to the particular policeman who provided the help. In one of her moments of desperation, Michelle heard a knock on the door. Two police officers were on her doorstep and wanted to share a message with her. “I needed to know that Heavenly Father loved me. Once I started to believe that—to believe that I was a child of God, that I want not the sum of my behavior, that I was not too broke and not too damaged. I was not unlovable. I was loveable and I was worth it, and He would send His police officers to knock on the door to make me feel loved that night.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Lastly, in relation in relation to pimps, more than half of the interviewees talked of making calculations about the quality of protection that pimps could offer them (against violence from johns or intimidation by other pimps) in exchange for the financial exploitation to which they would have to submit. This was most clearly seen in the women’s discussion of “big, bad pimps.” “Once they know who you’re working for and what status he’s got—like who’s the baddest, who’s got the gun and who hasn’t. You have only to mention his name and that was that. People leave you alone. Other [pimps] and other girls just leave you be. They don’t meddle because he’s psychotic! He’s notorious! He’s one very sick and twisted individual. People are afraid of him. (Anna, aged 36.) Of course, the obvious irony is that, although the women understood involvement with their pimps as a form of opportunity cost, providing them with protection, in reality, these pimps provided them with little protection and, in fact, exposed to them further violence and certainly to further financial exploitation. (I supposed they must have shorted him on his money.) In contrast, involvement with men as partners was described by the women as incurring “hidden costs.” In two cases, the hidden cost was initial entrance into prostitution. Both women talked about “having the knickers charmed off” them and being talked into engaging in prostitution. The cost was hidden because it only emerged after their relationships with these men were established. More commonly, however, was the woman’s understanding of the cost of maintaining their relationships as being their continued involvement in prostitution. As Anna (aged 36) stated: “There’s a lot of pressure. You have to do it, coz you need the money yourself. Then you get mixed up with someone and you have to do it again to help him, to keep a hold of him.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
A community committed to the optimal development of all its citizens will usually find—unless it is very small—that it has an array of all six types of agencies, both public and private. At the national level these are mostly grouped in the new Department of Health, Education and Welfare; at the local level, the city departments (plus some units of county and state) tend to cover the range, though very unevenly, and so do the councils of social agencies on the private side. Together they make up an impressive complement of personnel and machinery. From the administrative standpoint, not more machinery but its co-ordination to sever the family as a unit, appears to be the most pressing demand. From the standpoint of the citizen and family, however, the salient point is the effect achieved by the expenditure of resources; what matters is whether the agencies encourage dependency or foster development. Expressed in terms of values rather than functions, does the family agency attempt to define and achieve an optimal family, or does it avoid such responsibility, and merely seek to supply the most obvious and agreed-on deficiencies, as if these deficiencies were objective facts, not subject to different interpretations? In most parts of the United States of America, the hospital rather than the home is the place where babies are born and where patients with the more acute illnesses are cared for. Professional nurses and subordinate assistants have largely displaced kind relatives and helpful neighbors. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Yet while the hospitals have been taking over certain medical functions from the home, the biological scientists have been urging that greater responsibilities for nutrition, sanitation, and mental hygiene should fall upon the family itself. The vast and burdensome scale of mental disease in particular, which cannot possibly be reversed solely by psychiatric treatment at the point of breakdown, as well as an increased consciousness of the contribution of disturbed mental states to physical illness, have led physicians to expect more from the family than in the past. Nursing education steadily includes more social science. Likewise, the modern knowledge of bacterial and other origins of disease, and the biochemistry of healthful nutrition, have led to the elaboration of genuinely new functions, whereby the family may contribute to the physical competence of its members. Even if desirable, it would not be possible to have a psychiatrist, a bacteriologist, and a dietitian stand over every living unit of the community. If there is to be a rise in health along these lines, the members of each living unit must co-operate in supervising their own hygiene. It is not easy to think of a better institution for performing these functions than the competent family. There is a conspicuous problem for present families who attempt to cultivate the physical competence of their members. This is not really a medical problem at all but an economic one. It is the problem of hospital and doctor bills, and of spreading the risks of chronic or catastrophic illness. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The believer needing deliverance from the condition of passivity must first seek to understand what should be one’s normal or right condition, and then test or examine oneself in the light of it to discern if psychopathological offenders have been interfering. To do this, let one recollect a moment in one’s life which one would call one’s “best”—either in spirit, soul and body, or in one’s whole being—and then let one look upon this as one’s normal condition, one which one would want to be maintained, and never rest satisfied below it. Since the passivity has come about gradually it can only end gradually, as it is detected and destroyed. The full cooperation of the human is necessary for its removal—a major reason for the long period needed for deliverance. Deception and passivity can only be removed as the human understands, and cooperates by the use of one’s volition in the refusal of both the deception and the ground upon which it was based. It is important to keep perpetually in mind the standard of the normal condition, and should at any time the believer drop below it, to find out the cause, so as to have it removed. Whatever faculty or part of one’s being has been surrendered into passivity, and therefore lost for use, must be retaken by the active exercise of the will, and thus brought back into personal control. The ground which had been given—which caused the fall into bondage to the enemy—must be eliminated and then refuse persistently, in a steady resistance to the spirits of evil in their hold of it. Remember, the powers of psychopathological offenders will fight against the loss of any part of their kingdom in human, just as any Earthly government would fight to protect its own territory and subjects. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
However, the “Stronger than he” is the Conqueror, and will strengthen the believer for the battle and full recovery of the spoil. First of all, the method of correlation is seen in action, the posing of existential questions followed by theological answers in the form of Christian symbols. Up to now the method of correlation has not been explicitly operative; rather, we have synthesized the union of religion and culture. Second, God, the Christ, the church, history—corresponds to the major divisions of Systematic Theology, and so we gradually progress systematically and express a lifetime of theological endeavor. The existential question is the question of being, and the answer is God. Also treated is the problem of the natural-supernatural and the problem of symbolism, or the way to speak about God. Thus we probe into the depth-dimension which underlies theonomous cultural forms, the holy which shines through the secular, the ground of being which alone can command the ultimacy of an ultimate concern. God is the answer to the question implied in being. We are nominalist by birth. And as nominalist we are inclined to dissolve our World into things. However, the true ontological question does not try to describe the nature of beings, either in their universal, generic qualities, or in their individual, historical manifestation. It simply asks: What does it mean to be? The profundity and the seriousness of the question is realized only in a “metaphysical shock”—the shock of possible nonbeing. The question, “Why is there something, why not nothing” produces the shock by peering into the abyss of possible nothingness. However, the answer to the question is always in terms of being, which permits it to be posed again and again in infinite regression. Furthermore, nonbeing cannot answer it, for nonbeing depends upon being. Therefore, we cannot go beyond being in order to explain being. However, there could be something, a state, beyond being and nonbeing that we cannot comprehend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
This is the good life – picture yourself at #MagnoliaStation at #CresleighRanch!
From whipping up a delicious summer treat 😋 using ingredients from that incredible pantry to chilling in that beautiful yard, you’ll love everything about Residence 5. 😍
Residence 5 has an inviting covered entry and welcoming extended foyer reveal a spacious office and views to the expansive great room, casual dining area, and desirable covered patio beyond.
The sophisticated primary bedroom suite is highlighted by an ample walk-in closet and spa-like primary bath with dual-sink vanity, luxurious glass-enclosed shower. There is also a private water closet.
Magnolia Station will include 81 homesites and five distinct plans ranging from 2,200 – 3,700 square feet, with up to 7 bedrooms; including three single story plans!
Each plan has been thoughtfully designed to include features such as: Generations Suite, Optional Offices/Dens, Extended Great Rooms, and more! Contact us for your tour! https://cresleigh.com/magnolia-station/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 