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What Does this Have to do with Demons?
It was near sunset on a rainy Winter afternoon in Christmas week. The clouds had vanished, dispersed by a sudden wind, and as we entered my mansion the fiery panes of the high windows shone out like lamps through the dusk. The World revealed the powerful hold Satan and demonic powers have on the human race. Strange to say, it was not need to me. That magical light I saw on the inlaid steps, the fluted columns, the sculptured bas-reliefs and canopy of the marvellous shrine. The marble, worn and mellowed by the subtle hand of time, took on an unspeakable rosy hue, my house was an extravagant maze of Victorian craftmanship, but more mystic, more complex, a colour not born of the sun’s inveterate kiss, but made up of crystal twilight. My home was silence, but for the wail of ghouls and the occasional slamming of the doors, and I sat there, bathed in that light, absorbed in rapt contemplation of the mahogany miracle which rose before me, enriched with jewel-like stained-glass with gleams of gold, I felt myself borne onward along these mighty fine front doors, well worth $3,000, but never to be used. My home was the Church of the Redeemer, richer, more solemn, more significant than the sunshine of Hawaii. It was the very beginning of things, and whose tremendous source of spiritual energy went all through the mingled stream of mystical human passion and endeavor. Life in all its varied manifestations of darkness, beauty, and strangeness seemed weaving a rhythmical dance through the miles of twisting hallways, made more intriguing by the secret passageways in the walls. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
As I took my nightly prowl to the Blue Séance Room, in a terrifying flash of remembrance there arose before me a scene from New Haven, Connecticut, when my child had died only six weeks after her birth. I saw William and myself standing there with our child’s body between us; I could never forget how dazed I felt. And this is what happened to me again. Within the next few years, I found myself alone with my husband’s body….it was too horrible. Feeling dizzy, I sank down on the edge of the sofa, as my beloved faced into a sepulchral twilight. I tried not to think. At all costs I had to conceal the fact that he was dead. According to legend, Mrs. Winchester was told that her family and her fortune were being haunted by spirits—in fact, by the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifle, and demons. The evil spirits appeared to be more crassly cruel, unclean, and violent. They were also more domineering and brutally enslaving. These spirits insisted on taking up their abode with Mrs. Winchester, since they had been driven away from their former dwelling by her family. At the time of her death, the unrelenting construction of the Winchester Mansion had rambled over six acres. The sprawling mansion contained 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and 6 kitchens. After he death, the mansion was renting out. One of the guests was really getting used to the estate and loved sinking down into the mattresses in the bed Mrs. Winchester died in. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Reportedly, one night Victoria Venison closed her eyes and when she opened them a good deal later, her room had grown cold, and the night was intensely still. She was waked suddenly by the feeling we all know—the feeling that there was something near her that had not been there when she fell asleep. She sat up and strained her eyes into the darkness. The room was pitch black, and at first she saw nothing; but vague glimmer at the foot of the bed turned into two eyes staring back at her. She could not see the face attached to them—on account of the darkness—the eyes gave out a light of their own. Victorian got out of bed and tried to approach these eyes that were glaring at her. She called out to them, but no one answered. Victorian came closer, within three feet of the eyes, they were the very worse eyes she had ever seen: a man’s eyes—but what a man! Her first thought was the he must be frightfully old. The orbits were sunk, and the thick red-lined lids hung over the eyeballs like blinds which the cords were broken. The eyes seemed to belong to a man who had done a lot of harm in his life. Victorian again asked the man if he could be helped. The man still did not reply but turned and walked toward the stairs at the west end of the hall. Then he walked through the door! He did not open it and walk out—he went through the door! Victorian tried to follow, but her feet were rooted to the spot. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Victorian felt paralyzed by fear. As soon as the room was dark again, a ghost appeared wearing a white suit, but it was not the same manifestation. This man had no face! After a moment of near-panic, Victorian stepped into the doorway to see if there really was a man in the room. She thought that the glow might have been caused by the last embers in the chimney; but the fireplace was on the other side of her bed, and so placed that the fire could not possibly be reflected in her toilet glass, which was the only mirror in the room. Then it occurred to her that she might have been tricked by the reflection of the embers in some polished bit of wood or metal; and though she could not discover any object of the sort in her line of vision, she got up again, groped her way to the hearth, and covered what was left of the fire. However, as soon as she was back in bed, the man without a face in the white suit was back and the room was icy cold. Victorian was later frozen to death in the same bed Mrs. Winchester had died in. Her fingers and toes were frostbitten and her lips were blue. I suppose the spirits were saying the queen was dead. And this time there would be no replacement. The Winchester Mansion is replete with an extraordinary phenomena that involves the spirit realm. Spirit-rapping, apparitions, ghosts, moving furniture, resurrection of the dead, playing of musical instruments by invisible hands, stones falling from the ceiling, magical killing of cattle are just a few of the weird occurrences that fill the annals of the estate. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Another young man was drawn to the mansion as the next renter started his residency. Merrill May’s grandmother died during the war and as a young man, he moved to Santa Clara Valley, where he secretly practiced witchcraft. Gradually, he tuned towards black magic, with the sole purpose of attempting to influence his own life and bring himself wealth and success. He claimed that his spell-casting worked, because one day in the early 1920s, he was walking by the Winchester Estate, when he was stopped by a middle-aged man who said he was the absolute double of his son who had died some years earlier. They stood there chatting for a while and the man asked Merrill if he would like to tour the estate and stay for dinner. He went, and stayed on, living as his adopted son for the next three years when the renter of the Winchester Mansion built him his own house of the property and gave him a bank account with his own money. “I cannot put that down to anything but the magic I was working.” Merrill claimed. “I had everything I wanted but I always felt that I was going to have to pay for it in some way.” There were other rumors that Merrill had gained a hold over the man in charge of the Winchester Mansion by involving him in séances to contact his dead son. Merrill never talked about that, though the town’s people said he was a “natural medium” and claimed he could call up spirits killed by the Winchester Rifle. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Before Merrill had become known in Santa Clara County, he practiced black magic on the East Coast. He accumulated a sizeable personal fortune. How? People just gave it to him, for helping them or involving them in his séances or magic. In those says, he was quite famous and operated under the name of Todd Crowely. He actually used to work in churches as a healer on occasions, though they did not know of his black magic activities. He became a very well-known healer. People who joined his group kept it very much a secret. Any involvement with witches had become a great scandal again, and especially in black magic. One of the newspapers discovered there was a black magic coven operating and had identified two men in his group who would have been ruined if they had been publicly exposed. So Merrill took responsibility and told the newspapers he would do a ritual for them. However, as Merrill was at the Winchester Mansion, he knew that the path of black magic was dangerous; to get personal wealth and good fortune there would also have to be personal sacrifice. He eventually found out there was a death to pay. There was an extremely cold spot in the mansion which was described as a tubular shaft where spirits enter. This was “their gathering place.” In the dark recesses of the Winchester Mansion, Merrill felt many spirits, especially near the door-to-nowhere. The nice man letting Merrill live rent free was fast asleep in his bed when Merrill was suddenly grabbed about the legs by an invisible force. As Merrill struggled in vain to free himself and to communicate with the entity, the unseen attacker claimed his life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The next morning, Merrill was found hanging in door way of the door-to-nowhere. It would seem the spirits of the Winchester mansion had a desire to protect the area and it did not die with the death of Mrs. Winchester. Considering that the Winchester mansion is so thoroughly haunted, it is fortune that owners, management and staff of the Winchester Mystery House are so wonderfully accepting of their non-paying—and apparently permanent—guests. These were the assessors of the occult mansion and this is their Hall of Judgment. The man who rented the Winchester mansion at this time, turned out, was a member of what is described as a highly secret occult mansion of masters and adepts—not witches, but more like priests—who followed Egyptian traditions. At the Winchester Mystery House, we leave it to our guests and readers to decide for themselves why Mrs. Winchester really built the house the way she did. For some reason, it seems odd that none of her relatives or former employees every came forward to speak about the events at the estate, despite the fact that some of them lived for more than forty years after Mrs. Winchester’s death. For some reason, did they feel threatened by talking—or did they continue to guard Mrs. Winchester’s privacy after her death? I invoke thee, and move thee, and stir thee up O Sarah Lockwood Winchester, appear unto my eyes before the circle. Even by him who spake it was, to whom all creates are obedient and in the Extreme Justice and Anger of God; and by the veil that is before the glory of God, mighty; and by the creatures of living breath before the Throne whose eyes are east and west; by the fire in the fire of just Glory of the Throne; by the Holy ones of Heaven; and by the secret wisdom of God, I exalted in power, stir thee up. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Appear before this circle; obey in all things that I say; in the seal of Basdathea Baldachia; and in this Name Primeumaton, which Mosheh spake, and the Earth was divided, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram fell in the depth. Therefore, please obey in all things, O Mrs. Winchester, obey thy creation. Come thou forth: appear unto my eyes; visit us in peace, be friendly; come forth in the 24th of a moment; obey my power, speaking the secrets of Truth in voice and in understanding! I thank you for your empowerments which have served to assist my evolution toward divinity and power. Go now into the World and serve the Lord of Darkness known as Ahriman. I release you to serve the cause of counter creation and the liberation of mankind. Go now and do your work so the fallen ones may rise up and claim their birth right as emanations of the power of unlimited possibility which has no use for rulers. Mrs. Winchester go forth and achieve the results we seek as one. What indeed can be a most unnatural and most powerful representation of Angra Mainyu known as Ahriman, who is himself eternal darkness, then the sacred flame of Atar defiled? I usurp the sacrifice and prayer, the good offering, and the wished for offering, and the devotional offering from you! You are worthy of prayer. You are worthy of sacrifice! Div who empower me as a dark God of counter-creation! Verily I say unto you, the man who shall make sacrifice unto you I will consume with blackened fire to feed the demons within to grow in power and might. The Sixth Table of Jupiter assists in overcoming suits at law, dispute, and at play, and their spirits are at all time ready to render assistance, I command and conjure Thee to appear before me in human form, so truly as Daniel overcame and conquered Baal. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Winchester Mystery House
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A House Built for Spirits?
Most houses declare the activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life flowing close to the surface; but the haunted Winchester Mansion, know as Llanada Vila, is a mystery that is as impenetrable as death. The tall windows are like blinking eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there may be sunshine, the scent of daisies, and a pulse of life through all the arteries of the huge frame; or a mortal solitude, where vampires, demons, and ghost ledge in the disjointed walls and the 2,000 solid gold keys to the doors remain unused. Winter approaching, and Mrs. Winchester finding herself once more alone, it was surmised among her women that she must fall into a deeper depression of spirits. However, far from this being the case, she displayed such cheerfulness and equanimity of humor. The wind stripped the gardens of their exotic plants and bright flowers. The European black locust, English yew and English walnut, Peruvian pepper were all dormant, but the date palms, Spanish and Norfolk pines were still standing strong. The unique collection of towering monkey puzzle trees, seemed to come alive as the branches swayed hither and tither. Mrs. Winchester kept her room in this black season, sitting over the fire, embroidering, reading books of devotion, and praying frequently in her observational tower. As for the servants, aching with rheumatism on the marble floor, they galloped through the mansion like men and women with witches after them, preparing for the arrival of Mrs. Winchester. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
A moment later, the door to the parlor opened, and there stood Mrs. Winchester. She held her Hypnotic Colombian Emerald Estate Ring of 10.75 carats in one hand and had drawn a scarf over her shoulders; but the rich saturation and fine vivid hues of blue and green shone through it like the moon in a mist, and her countenance sparkled with beauty. Suddenly, there was a loud noise at the other end of the salon, as a heavy object being dragged down the passage; and presently a dozen men were seen hauling across the threshold the shrouded thing from the ox-cart. Mrs. Winchester had grown pale. Before her eyes was a crypt. They sky turned to a steel grey, against which Lalanada Villa stood out. A wind strayed through the mansion. Mrs. Winchester fell in a swoon; and when she came to her senses, in her own chamber, she heard the butler had locked the doors to the observational tower and forbidden anyone to set foot in there. The place was never opened again until the butler died thirteen years later; and then it was that the other servants saw for the first time the horror that Mrs. Winchester had kept in there. When the crypt was opened, it flooded the mansion with a sense of violence, grotesque visions, fragmentary images of the souls taken by the Winchester Rifle, tormenting lines of verse, obstinate presentiments of pictures once beheld, indistinct impression of rivers, towers, and cupolas, gathered in the length of journeys half forgotten. Someone opened the widows and let in a blast of that strange, neutral air which walks the Earth between darkness and dawn. Someone let a demon into the house. He walked vaguely, like a blind man on creaking boots. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Mrs. Winchester stood, as it seemed, on a threshold, yet no tangible gateway was in front of her. Only a wide vista of light, mild yet penetrating as gathered glimmer of innumerable stars, expanded gradually before her eyes, in blissful contrast to the cavernous darkness from which the demon had emerged. She stepped forward, not frightened, but hesitating, and as her eyes began to grow more familiar with the melting depths of light about her, this demon confirmed for the first time that witch covens still existed and revealed what he described as some of the ancient secrets of the cult—even though half of them were of his own creation. He stopped short of revealing some of the inner secrets of his cult, although ironically one of the vows of newly initiated witches was that they should not speak of the mysteries at all. He gave Mrs. Winchester new plans on how to build her mansion, and she promised to keep his presence a secret. However, by opening the doors of his covens and revealing some of the rudiments of ritual worship, the demon stirred up a new hornets’ nets. Although many people in Santa Clara County responded and began enquiring about the vast expansion of the Winchester Mansion, the Sunday papers took up the gauntlet, and one after the other ran exposes of what Mrs. Winchester and her staff of witches and warlock do, under intriguingly lurid headlines proclaiming the dangers of black magic and the “frenzied dances rituals at Midnight in the Grand Ball Room” of the covens. A new witch fever developed; important church men spoke out against this infectious evil. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
As Mrs. Winchester gazed, her heart beat with a soft and rapturous surprise; so exquisite a promise she read in the summons of the demon, which told her as long as she continued construction on her mansion, she would have eternal life. “And so death is not the end after all,” in a sheer gladness Mrs. Winchester exclaimed aloud. “I always knew it could not be. I believed in Darwin, of course. I do still; but then Darwin himself said tht he was not sure about the soul—at least, I think he did.” Her gaze lost itself in the ethereal remoteness of her mansion. “How beautiful! How satisfying!” she said. “Perhaps now I shall really know what it is to live.” The Oakland Tribune claimed that the Winchester Mansion was “forged by the biggest upsurge of black magic and timeless secrets of witchcraft since the Middle Ages.” That was not an overstatement. If they only knew it, these towers, turrets, curved walls, cupolas, cornices, gables, balconies, ornamental finials and finely detailed trimwork that gave the mansion a castlelike appearance were just the tip of the iceberg. “I have never n that fullness of life which we all feel ourselves capable of knowing; though my life has not been without scattered hints of it, like the scent of Earth which comes to one sometimes far out at sea,” said Mrs. Winchester. “Many words define my home, love and sympathy are those in commonest use, but I am not even sure that they are the right ones, and so few people know what they mean.” What had been emerging for some years during the construction of the Winchester mansion was an astonishing revival in occult interests and ritual magic. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Passersby said they felt the darker forces of the occult and the so-called black magic groups emanating from the estate. For those newspaper investigators to whom the whole occult community could be wrapped up into one malevolent package, there was sufficient evidence from interviews to show that the witch cult was very much alive and expanding the mansion day and night. In the eyes of the enquiring beholder, the Winchester Mansion was not only beautiful, but bizarre. They could see witchcraft in the stained glass, black magic in the observational tower, and satanism in the main house. It was, of course, too much to expect witch fraternity, the massive home could not be seen nor understood by the general public. Magic is magic, and because the secrecy surrounding the estate, Mrs. Winchester was bound by an oath of silence. However, the newspapers became intent on exposing what went on being the closed doors of the witches’ “temple.” With rumors of devil worship, and blood-lust abounding it, Mrs. Winchester and her estate made an excellent source of entertainment for the valley. Nothing like it had been seen for many, many years and suddenly the media were filled with witch stories. The gossip from the towns people, one could hear their voices rise and fall, like the murmur of two fountains answering each other across a garden full of flowers. Nothing had changed in the public’s perception of the occult and the paranormal. The discovery of black magic rites being performed on their own doorstep put the fear of God into the villagers. There was always suspicious of witches covens locally. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
People used to talk vaguely about them; witches, black magicians, no one could differentiate because they had no knowledge on which to judge. One morning in March of 1889 it was discovered a huge granite slab covering one of the graves in the village churchyard had been moved, and the remains of the body of a girl Maria H. who died in 1720 had been removed. The story gradually unfolded when one of those taking part in what transpired to be a black mass staged inside the old Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph confessed to a newspaper. The skull and bones of Maria H. had been taken from the grave and arranged inside the church over a makeshift altar. A Celtic cross in a circle was painted in blood-red paint on the wall and a white chicken was sacrificed in an hour-long ritual. Over one years later, locals still talk of the witches of the Basilica because, at the time, it caused an uproar of protest culminating in a powerful article published in the Oakland Tribune, which dismissed talk of white witches who heal and do good and thundered “in our considered opinion witchcraft and black magic are a state of mind…youngsters out for kicks will find only depravity, disillusion and destruction in this thing called witchcraft.” Everyone has heard stories about witches and the Winchester Mansion. After the death of the Mrs. Winchester in 1922, the mansion remained closed for a year, but no one knew why. When it was opened, investigators discovered that thirteen people including a priest had been killed and left in the mansion. Santa Clara police admit that after the place was closed it was the scene of satanic rituals as well as drug dealing. Historians speculate that the mansion rests on the bones of angry Ayrans. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Almost everything will eventually be restored, although you can find spots where the cracked plaster has not been fixed after the 1906 earthquake. This has been left on purpose, like a frozen moment in time, to show people how the house actually looked when Mrs. Winchester lived there. Many say the house is haunted. The house was once a community showplace, and is today still surrounded by velvety green lawns and overlooks the hill. The mansion was once the sight of lavish teas, balls, musicals and banquets for visiting dignitaries. From there, the Winchester Mystery House was born and is now open for tours of the 110 of the 160 rooms. There once were 500 to 600 rooms and over 700 acres of land. The Winchester Mystery House has continued to expand and flourish, and has accumulated what can only be described as a substantial band of followers, some taking the stories as gospel, others using them as guidance and adjusting them to meet their own requirements. The Wicca movement has left contenders waiting in the wings, wondering if the rituals work and if they will ever see the manifestation of Mrs. Winchester. Well can always try. 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 trye name of GOD; 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 TETRAGRAMMATION 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 Spirits of William W. Winchester of Sarah L. Winchester to come unto me here before this Circle in a fair and comely shapes, without harm unto me or unto any other creature, to answer truly and faithfully unto all my requests; so that I may accomplish my will and desire in knowing or obtaining any matter or thing which by office thou knowest is proper for him to perform or accomplish, through the power of GOD, EL, Who created and doth dispose of all things both celestial, aerial, terrestrial, and infernal. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Unite physical and spiritual discipline in order and create a dynamic of synergy which will assist in tearing the veil between physical and spiritual realms. Allow powerful changes to take place as your powerful spirits integrate and merge with mine. Allow the inner darkness to spill from the crown into outer darkness and mold and shape the energy of your spirits as a clear vision before my eyes. Allow my consciousness to expand until it is made whole and able to oppose all creation and all limitations. I CONJURE thee, O Spirits of William W. Winchester and Sarah L. Winchester that you will appear unto me to answer to such things as I would have desired of thee, or would have been satisfied in; I do in the name, and by the power and dignity of the Omnipresent and Immortal Lord God of HOSTS IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATON, the only Creator of Heaven, and Earther, and Hell of all things both visible and invisible, bless thee, and fulfill thee of all thine office, joy, and place; and I do bind thee in the Winchester Mystery House there to remain for eternity! Let all the company in Heaven bless thee! Let the sun, moon, and all the stars bless thee! Let the LIGHT and all the hosts of Heaven bless thee into the light of udder salvation, and into joy unspeakable. And as thy names and seals contained in this mansion, your eternal home is prepared for the blessed and the damned spirits, and there to remain for eternity, and be remembered as immortal and eternal before the face of GOD and man, who shall come to bless thee and thy World with love and joy. Surrender yourself into my will; I will conduct your undertaking to your best interest. By the Twelfth Table, laid upon the Table or Seal of the Spirits, I compel you to appear immediately, and to serve in all things. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Winchester Mystery House
Sarah L.Winchester’s arrival to Santa Clara Valley would be the equivalent of a billionair moving to a small farming town and spending $100,000,000 building a mansion, and someone owning three Rolls Royce sedans, just as a perspective. Featured above is one of Sarah’s beautiful SIX kitchens 👩🍳 What are you preparing in your kitchen today for Thanksgiving? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Look Away Always When You See it
Before consciousness can come, a certain degree of activity in the movement must be reached. This requisite degree is called the “threshold;” but the height of the threshold varies under different circumstances: it may rise of fall. As Sarah L. Winchester was working on her sprawling complex, sighting of an old man, dressed in a raincoat and hat, were frequent enough, to scare Mrs. Winchester and several of the construction workers. Although the phantom was usually benign, choosing to spend most of his eternity simply patrolling the ground of the house, occasionally people witnessed the ghostly temper. The spirit explained, though a Ouija board, that the previous owner of the farmhouse had murdered him. It soon became apparent to Mrs. Winchester that the spirit was both angry and aggressive. He threw things, set fires, and even wrapped the cord from an electrical appliance around a visitor’s neck. Mrs. Winchester moved to her houseboat for almost a year, but it was not long before the spirit found her there and began to draw attention to himself by banging on the exterior walls. When the invisible entity hurled a fisherman to Mrs. Winchester’s house boat, the confused and frightened woman moved back to her mansion. Mrs. Winchester initiated into a coven which operated secretly. It was an old-established coven by all accounts and among the more renowed—but secret—rituals the coven performed was their attempt to help Mrs. Winchester stop evil spirits from taking her life, too. They claimed responsibility for helping Mrs. Winchester’s husband, William Wirt Winchester create “The Gun that Won the West.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
The coven consisted of 12 witches and the devil was the leader. Each member of the coven specialized in a particular branch of magic, such as bewitching agricultural produce, producing sickness or death in humans, storm raising, and seduction. The New Forest coven told Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester that her family and fortune were being haunted by spirits, and the group was deadly serious about their secret rituals to keep the demons and evil spirits at bay and decided beforehand that they could leave nothing to chance. However, to be 100 percent effective, no only would Mrs. Winchester have to build an estate as a monument to the spirits, but there would also have to be a human sacrifice. It is aid that the oldest and frailest member of the coven volunteered to die during the ritual, set for what proved to be the coldest May night in many years. All but the frail old man had covered their bodies with an ointment, which was in reality a heavy grease used among other things to keep the body warm. Having formed their magic circle in the depths of the forest, the group, who were unveiled, made a line and held hands and then danced furiously around a small bonfire, chanting the incantation banishing the demons and evil spirits from Mrs. Winchester. They performed the rite with such vigour that one or two of them fainted, a not uncommon experience when a serious amount of power and energy is aroused by performance of ritual. The old volunteer duly collapsed and died, and it is not known whether it was from an overdose of mushrooms, over-exhaustion or the cold. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
The great sacrifice had been made and the potency of their magic could only have been enchanted when two other members of the coven died from pneumonia in the following two weeks, and two others passed to the waiting room for reincarnations not long afterwards. The angry spirit’s energy seemed to be dissipating. He was no longer destructive, but limited his ghostly activity to creating balls of ghost light—also knowns as ignes fatui—that would harmlessly bounce round the mansion. The very existence of the Winchester Mansion and Mrs. Winchester was so dark and mysterious that many doubted it was real. People heard that she manufactured gold through alchemy, and aimed toward the moral renewal and perfection of mankind. It is said that Mrs. Winchester eventually became incorporated into Freemasonary. Excited by the ritual and the coven, Mrs. Winchester became an ardent student of witchcraft. Because her own coven was made up entirely of elderly people who merely possessed partial knowledge of the old religion and the ritual, Mrs. Winchester began a comprehensive study of recent books. She believed there was an urgent task ahead of her, especially when seven coven members died after conducting their rite against the spirits killed by the Winchester Rifle, and seemed to believe that it was up to her to save witchcraft from extinction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Two nights before the 1906 Earthquake, the phantom attacks began late one evening in Mrs. Winchester’s bedroom when she was thrown and molested by an unseen force. Her screams of terror brought her niece Daisy running into the room. For a second Daisy stared in disbelief as she plainly saw her aunt was being assaulted. What Daisy could not see who by who or what. Thinking that Mrs. Winchester had suffered a terrible nightmare, Daisy tied to calm her horrified aunt. Mrs. Winchester had her niece search the house search the house thoroughly, it took nearly 24 hours to comb through the catacombs of the mansion, but no signs of a break-in were discovered. One hour before the 1906 earthquake, all was quiet in the grand mansion. The stars hung low over the distant dark horizon, and there was a mere stroke between the Earth and Heaven. The soft wind swept though the rooms of the house, beneath the high ceilings, bring a tropical freshness to every nook and cranny, though the big mansion was cold. Mrs. Winchester did not care. Because of her mansion’s immense size, it contacted forty-seven fireplaces and seventeen chimneys. One rambling section in particular, the Hall of Fires, was designed to produce as much heat as possible. She was bundled in a long Shetland wool turtleneck, and legs snug in wool stockings, and she enjoyed the chill of the breeze as much as the fierce and specific heat coming from her busy fireplaces. The cold, the smell of the water, the smell of the fire—all of it was Lalanada Villa in the winter, Mrs. Winchester’s hideaway, her refuge, her safe place to be. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
As she lay on the couch opposite the hearth, staring and the intricately carved mahogany wood ceilings, watching the play of light on it, and wondering in a passive uncurious sort of what, what it was about Daisy that made her so happy—and why she had been such a perfect escape from the perpetual gloom of her life. Mrs. Winchester decided to retire to her favorite bedroom, “The Daisy Bedroom.” Sadly, as she laid her head down on the pillow, vicious attacks by a paranormal intruder started up—and Daisy rushed to respond to her aunt’s cries for help. The early morning, the entity’s strength was especially powerful, its forced picked up Daisy and hurled her out of the room, slamming the door shut and living Mrs. Winchester alone. Daisy landed on the floor, and broke her back on impact. As for Mrs. Winchester, “The morning was the most terrible disaster that ever befell my house. For me to describe the scenes and events of the past few days would be an impossibility at present, and no doubt you would have had more news regarding the fate of my estate than I myself know. All that I can say is that at this writing is, that about 5.13 a.m., Wednesday morning, my niece was flung for my room as the door slammed, I was thrown out of bed an in a twinkling of an eye, the nine-story observation tower of my house was dashed on top of my house, locking me in my bedroom and destroying most of the fourth floor of my home. As I was tossed to and fro on the floor amid flying glass and timber and plaster, I begged for my life. #RandolphHarris #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
When the dust cleared away, I was an able to open my door, and banged and banged on the door, desperately calling for help. I saw nothing but a ruin of house, and home that it had taken nearly two decades to build. I saw the fires in the sky arising in great clouds and it was no time to mour my loss so getting into what clothing I could find. As I waded through plaster, to I all my precious goods still on the shelves with no damage being done to them, but I wondered how my most precious gift, my niece Daisy was. I still could her crockery and glassware falling as the house shook more and more. The piano in the next room crashed into the wall like a freight train. I was more nervous than excited. As the mourning of the third day came, I could barely speak, I was too weak to walk, and so thirsty that I thought I would parish, but that is when my men busted down the door and rushed me to safety. This home was really part of me and made me think of what was ahead of us. Only an independent force could be responsible for this tragedy.” Through all of this, Mrs. Winchester was badly shaken. Mrs. Winchester felt the Earthquake was a warning from the spirits that she had spent too much money on the front section of the house, which was nearing completion. After having the structural damage repaired, she immediately ordered the front thirty rooms—including the Daisy Bedroom, Grand Ballroom, and the beautiful front door—sealed up. The heavy, ornate doors, which had been installed just prior to the earthquake, had only been used by three people—Mrs. Winchester and the two carpenters who installed them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Through all this, the attacks continued and word of the bizarre hauntings leaked to the press. Not only were the spectral attacks continuing, but now the being was leaving scrapes and bruises all over Mrs. Winchester’s body. The woman’s pride had been totally obliterated by fear. Clocks, vases and mirrors were thrown about by angry, invisible hands. Cold breezes blew through the house and a nauseating odor permeated the rooms. Mrs. Winchester’s agony went on for months, and years. The entities gained strength and began to materialize with physical forms. The terror had reached its climax. And what a dreadful thing they had all done to Mrs. Winchester. Did not anyone care what the woman felt? All many of the people in the town did was gossip and tell her, “You have lots of blood on your hands.” As for the idea that Daisy was in real danger, that Daisy had been forced somehow to leave, that something might have happened to her—that was almost too terrible a thought for Mrs. Winchester to bear. Yet Mrs. Winchester was pretty sure something had happened to Daisy. Something really bad. She could feel it. Mrs. Winchester said she could see ghosts, and did not think anyone should bank on Daisy coming back. Mrs. Winchester had so many regrets. Sometimes it seemed to her that her entire life was a great sighing regret. Beneath the lovely surface of her Grand Queen Anne Victorian Mansion, her gorgeous new born daughter was gone, her favorite niece was missing, all her charming nephew did was stop by to pick up a check and was never seen again, and her handsome husband, God rest his soul, also died prematurely. Her own southern style, was nothing but regret, as if her life had been built atop a great and secret dungeon. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Where was her emerald ring Mr. Winchester had left her? The evil in the house lived in every brick, piece of wood, and every bit or mortar; twelve witches and a devil; and to think, all their old possession were up in the attic. The evil lived in those things; it lived in the plaster ceilings, and under the porches and eaves, like bees’ nest hidden in the capitals of the Corinthian columns. Mrs. Winchester began to write out in longhand a compilation of ritual and ceremony, a sort of grimoire or magician’s handbook the type compiled by occultists and alchemists of old. She called hers The Book of Shadows and claimed it contained the handed-down version of her own coven’s centuries-old theory and practice of witchcraft. By tradition in witchcraft and the occult, practitioners of both were expected to write in their own hand a diary of their workings and rituals; printed various were said to cause the loss of power. It was this work that was to form the basis of the re-creation of modern witchcraft, and it is used in covens the World over as what amounts to the new witches’ gospel. Mrs. Winchester was also told by a medium that not only was she supposed to keep building her mansion to achieve eternal life, but that she must also keep writing her book and never let it out of her hand, for if it was found in the hands of another, they would be taken and tortured, and there would be no hope for her life if she betrayed the occult. However, if she were steadfast to her death, she would experience the ecstasy of the Goddess. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Mrs. Winchester gave witchcraft a new lease on life by revealing the inner secrets of the craft and leaving clues built-in to her mansion. She made a beautiful image out of witchcraft. It was her ambition to banish the fear of witchcraft in society and make it more publicly acceptable. Consciousness cannot expand until it is first made whole and this is to oppose creation of all its limitations. I conjure thee, Spirits of Sarah L. Winchester and William W. Winchester, by Alpha et Omega, Lezo and Yschirios, Ohin Ission, Niva, by Tetragramation, Zeno, by Peraclitus, Ohel, by Orlenius, Lima, by Agla, that ye will obey and appear before me and fulfill my desire, thus in and through the name Elion, which Moses named. Wherefore thou shalt make faithful answers unto all my demands, O Spirits of Sarah and William Winchester, and shalt perform all my desires so far as in thine office thou art capable hereof. Wherefore, come thou, visibly, peaceably, and affably, now without delay, to manifest that which I desire, speaking with a clear and perfect voice, intelligibly, and to mine understanding. I do conjure thee, O thou Spirits of Mrs. and Mr. Winchester, by all the most glorious and efficacious names of the MOST GREAT AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE LORD OF GOD OF HOSTS, that thou comest quickly and without delay from all parts and places of the Earth and World wherever thou mayest be, to make rational answers unto my demands, and that visibly and affably, speaking with a voice intelligible unto mine as aforesaid. I now plant the seed of my desire withing the black earth, through the mouth of Arezura 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! #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Winchester Mystery House
Happy Early Turkey Day! 🦃
The Winchester Mystery House will be closed on Thursday, Nov. 24 in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday and will reopen on Friday, Nov. 25! https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Did Mental Pain Leave Her as Easily as Physical Pain?
In every being that is real there is something external to, and sacred from, the grasp of every other. God’s being is sacred from ours. In 1884, Mrs. Winchester left New Haven, Connecticut, and the graves of her husband and only child, moved to San Jose, California, and began the obsession that was to last for the rest of her life. She purchased an unfinished eighteen-room farmhouse outside the small agricultural town, and for the next 38 years, the sound of construction on Mrs. Winchester’s house never stopped. If you stand in Mrs. Winchester’s palatial house, observing the intricately carved hands of the grandfather clock move into place, you may see the number thirteen. The clock has a deep, melodious chime. Occult symbols are everywhere one looks; on the cornerstones, in the pages of books; on the facades of the mansion. In fact, the art, the language, the spirit of Rome runs through this entire house. There were once great marble statues of figures in Roman dress. There were wood craved Roman columns. Why did Mrs. Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, spend the last half of her life and $5,500,000 building a house with 160 rooms? She said with a straight face, she had been forced to build the house by some supernatural force. At first, Mrs. Winchester professed, “I am not mystic; I studiously avoided witchcraft, spiritualism, yoga, fortune-telling, automatic writing…I belong to no religious cult, no secret society, no philosophical sect,” she said. Mrs. Winchester could not have known how her mansion, now called “The Winchester Mystery House,” would become so important a work for pagans all the World over. It has even been called the 8th World Wonder. It was oddly constructed and a complicated mansion, but beautiful, nonetheless. She described it as the result of an obsession with the moon goddess and her sacred alder tree, which was said to possess the energy and power of spirits of “the old ones.” According to Mrs. Winchester, the deity she had discovered was the goddess of magic, the key to the subconscious and consequently the source of artistic and poetic inspiration. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Her contention was that she was the moon goddess worshipped by ancient European civilization and was in turn linked to an African goddess; she was the young maiden of the new moon, the glorious lady of the full moon and the wise old crone of the waning moon. Mrs. Winchester had evidence that dated back to 1597 in which the goddess, or the queen, of the coven was described in detail; she, and all coven queens, were claimed to be the Earthly representative of the goddess. More importantly for the pagan movement which had emerged from the shadows in the Victorian era, Mrs. Winchester discovered a succession of coincidences that her goddess was a universal deity symbolized in pre-Christian mythology, appearing in all the major old religions, whether they were Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Hindu, African or Celtic. Ancient secrets had been thrust at Mrs. Winchester. Her obsession filled her day; she worked furiously at her project and now coincidences began to arrive more openly, or as cynics might say, very conveniently. On her desk was an old solid gold box she had acquired, with a design on the lid which she had never been able to identify. On the top of the box she used to stand a gold angel woman. As construction was in serious progress at the Winchester mansion, a neighbour died and left Mrs. Winchester an antique craved ivory figure, and soon after she was given an emerald ring by a friend, unaware of her moon goddess project, which bore three intertwined symbols. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
All these items were inextricably linked in their history—the box lid design she discovered ten years later represented the African Moon goddess; the angel figure was the herald of an African Queen mother who claimed direct descendancy from the goddess; the antique figure was the White Goddess; the ring carried a seal depicting the three basic symbols of the moon goddess cult: a stag, a moon and a thicket. “Please believe me,” said Mrs. Winchester, “I was wholly unaware [of these connections] at the time…chains of more than coincidence happen in my life that if I am forbidden to call them supernatural, then I must call them habit.” Coincidence or not, Mrs. Winchester could never explain the speed which she built a 70,000 square foot mansion, drafting blueprints furiously as if charged by some other force. Her pen could barely keep up with the words that streamed from her the spirits. When she completed a plan for that particular segment of the mansion, Mrs. Winchester gave the blueprints to the first architect, but he refused to keep building these unusual designs. That architect died of a heart attack shortly afterwards. The second architect to read the blue prints for the new addition retuned them with a rejection slip which said he could not make sense of any of it, and doubted if anyone else could, either. He was later found dead, hanging from a tree in his back garden, dressed only in women’s underwear and scandalously accused of sexual depravity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
However, Mrs. Winchester’s foreman, John Hansen, thought her sketches were of astounding depth and ability and recommended they move ahead with the projects. This resulted in some awkward and impractical concepts such as columns being installed upside down—though some suggest this was done deliberately to confuse evil spirits. The reward was that John Hansen made a profit and altogether better fate than that suffered by the two who turned down the project. Only those with a deep belief in the possibilities of the paranormal would not immediately dismiss the two deaths as purely coincidence, as Mrs. Winchester said she would have done—up to that point. Afterwards, she remained altogether more receptive to the idea of some mystical intervention. Mrs. Winchester concluded that witchcraft was the descendant of primitive religions whose primary deity was a goddess who had been worshipped simultaneously in numerous countries. Mrs. Winchester’s notation on this point—that the witches’ magical number is thirteen, there are thirteen full moons and thirteen witches’ Esbat (the monthly meeting of the witches’ covens); there are thirteen lunar months, with one day over. The female cycle of menstruation is twenty-eight days, and menstruation is a word formed from the Greek mene, which translate as moons. Knowledge of Mrs. Winchester and her mansion was passed orally down through the ages; very little had been written. Those secret covens—and there are still a few—operate in the Winchester Mansion and are formally linked by a network administration, which is secret. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
There are practitioners of the dark arts of the occult involved, and they have more academic secret societies who can provide the missing links in the chain of knowledge to Mrs. Winchester and the Winchester Mystery House. After the mansion was opened for tours in 1923, near the door-to-nowhere, a misty presence appeared—an apparition of a beautiful young woman dressed in a flowing, beaded gown. Her demeanor suggested that she was in turmoil and fleeing from someone only she could see. The frightened looking ghost began to appear more and more frequently, details about her spread throughout the community. Older folks in the area listened especially carefully to those who had seen the ghost. Descriptions of the formally dressed, seemingly confused entity reminded them of an incident that had occurred one night in the mansion. These older people could recall the year President Roosevelt invited himself to the Winchester Mansion. It was to be the gala event of the year. Unlike many other parties, Mrs. Winchester was unaware. However, President Roosevelt had not taken into account Mrs. Winchester’s dramatic reaction to the plans. She felt no affection for the President Roosevelt and had become deeply depressed at the thought of spending her life with him. However, the staff went ahead with the plans. The party was well underway and Mrs. Winchester’s engagement was just about to be announced when Mrs. Winchester panicked. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Still wearing her exquisite gown, Mrs. Winchester bolted from the house and fled down the street. A few of the party guests, including the president, tried to follower her, but Mrs. Winchester disappeared into thin air. Mrs. Winchester, who they always protected from the realities of outside life, was somewhere out on the streets with absolutely no resources. When President Roosevelt returned to inquire about Mrs. Winchester, he was denied entrance to the mansion because they blamed him for her disappearance. Victoria Venison, the maid, notified the authorities. Despite widespread publicity, an intensive search, and the offer of a $1,000,000 reward, Mrs. Winchester was never seen again. The staff died heartbroken and alone, never recovering from their terrible loss. In 1923, on September 5th, the county of Santa Clara declared Mrs. Winchester dead. Construction immediately ceased on her mansion. And her favorite niece Daisy told the press that Mrs. Winchester died in her bed, alone, in her sleep. The ghost of the young, feeling Mrs. Winchester wearing a formal, beaded gown continues to appear even today. She is always seen near the door-to-nowhere, running away from the future she could not bear to face. Sadly, no one has been able to help Mrs. Winchester accept her fate; as a ghost, the former Mrs. Winchester seems to be in a separate dimension and therefore feels no connection to today’s World. Perhaps her soul passed on to another plane the very day she died and what people are seeing is just a ghostly replay of the terrible trauma Mrs. Winchester experienced when she disappeared from her mansion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
If you ever have the opportunity to visit the Winchester mansion in Santa Clara County, be extra vigilant in watching tour guides and guests in the mansion. The young woman in the long gown may not be an eccentric person—she may be the frantic ghost of Sarah L. Winchester. Hearken to me, O ye Heavens! O thou Spirit Sarah L. Winchester, beautiful and praiseworthy! with gladness I say, because thou art called in Him who is the Creator of Heaven and Earth and the dwelling of darkness, and all things that are in their palaces, and because thou art the servant of obedience. In these the power by which thou art obedient to the living breath, I bind thee to remain visible to our eyes in power and presence as the servant of fealty before the circle until I say “Descend unto thy dwelling” until the living breath of the voice of the Lord is according to the law which shall be given unto thee. By the seal of the secret wisdom of Solomon thou art called! I conjure thee, Sarah L. Winchester, a servant of God, upon the OCH, and conjure three through water, fire, air, and Earth, and everything that lives and moves therein, and by the most holy names of God, Agios, Tehirios, Perailitus, Alpha et Omega, Beginning and End, God and Man-Sabaoth, Adanai, Agla, Tetragramaton, Emanuel, Abua, Ceus, Elioa, Torna, Deus Salvator, Arama, Me-sias, Clerob, Michael, Abreil, Achleof, Gachenas et Peraim. Eei Patris et Peraim Eei filii, et, Peraim Dei spiritus Teu, and the words by which Solomon and Manasses, Cripinus and Agrippa conjured the spirits, and by whatever else thou mayest be conjured, that you will yield obedience to me, Sarah L. Winchester, the same as Isaac did to Abraham, and appear before me, Sarah L. Winchester this instant, in the beautiful, mild, human form of a youth, and bring me a beautiful home much like yours. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
wwinchester Mystery House
Using the hidden passage in Sarah’s Seance Room circa 1930s 🤫 #100yearsofmystery #winchestermysteryhouse
Photo Credit: Acme Newspictures Inc
There is No Other Remedy
As a young lady, Sarah Pardee was the Belle of New Haven, Connecticut. Born in the heart of unsurpassing wild and romantic scenery and old legendary castles, she was highly cultured, a finished musician, an avid reader and spoke four languages. Long ago she learned of the existence of some papers which set out doctrines of witchcraft that might well have been the remnants of pagan rituals, hidden away and secretly practised since the conversion of Rome to Christianity in the fourth A.D. Sarah often muttered spells known in old Roman times; she astonish the learned by their legends of Latin gods. In 1862, Sarah married William Wirt Winchester, son of the famous rifle magnate. The son, although in ill health, carried on most ably with the newly named Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Cessation of the Civil War failed to hinder the prosperity of the progress of his company because migration to the West was in full swing. Invention of a practical repeating rifle accelerated success. The Famous Winchester Rifle, “The Gun that Won the West,” attained the dubious fate of “killing more game, more Indians, and more U.S. soldiers than any other weapon in this nation’s history.” Sarah was terribly shocked by the death of her month-old baby girl; in fact, it can be well believed she never fully recovered and this surely influenced some of her eccentricities. Added to this loss was the death of her husband 15 years later from Tuberculosis. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
On arrival in San Jose, she immediately started remodeling the newly purchased, unfinished, eighteen room farm house. She found the planning kept her grief-disturbed mind occupied and she became thoroughly enthused. Financial problems were certainly no deterrent; allegedly she brought with her a fortune of $20,000,000 with her and had an average income of $1,000 a day. That is a great some, especially considering one could build a grand home for $5,000. Nonetheless, just how such precise amounts came to be public knowledge is unknown. However, these have been the commonly accepted figures for years and they do roll off the tongue (or pen) with a satisfying clink. Her lack of architectural training gave her little concern. Every morning she made the rounds with her ever patient foreman inspecting the latest progress. Some days she sketched plans on spot using a saw-horse drawing table and any handy material, often brown wrapping paper (and used both sides). From the foreman came no argument; he had only the problem of interpretation. However, glaring unusual features failed to discourage her and time was fleeting. Sarah simply ordered the error torn out, sealed up, built over, or around, or more likely, totally ignored. Hence came support for the conjecture that for her, this was a gigantic game of building-blocks! Mrs. Winchester communicated with the spirits to get many of the architectural details. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
With the ceremonies and invocations or incantations addressed to Diana, a goddess, the female came down to Earth, established witches and witchcraft and then returned to Heaven. She was also involved in the planning of the Winchester Mansion. Some may think this is eccentric, but theosophy was all the rage among those interested in things in mystical late Victorian London and New York. Humanity was the study of comparative religion and philosophy and many investigated the mystic powers of life and matter. Mrs. Winchester rode in regal splendor in conveyances fitting to the era. First it was a Victoria with Liveried coachman. In later years came a French Renault, a Buick “Town-Car” and finally two Pierce-Arrows, on done in stunning blue and gold. Sarah L. Winchester’s presence was so sensational and the building of her mansion was so fast and massive that there was talk of a new secret society like the Order of the Golden Dawn. Some of these rumors were fueled by the highly publicized occult personal who were involved in activities at the mansion. Mrs. Winchester believed that the theory that witchcraft was identified with satanism and devil-worship was obscured. It was just the starting point for superbly colourful fictional writings. She was personally convinced that it was basically a pre-Christian Dianic cult and she had found the name Diana in writings about witchcraft all throughout history. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
Unlike witches, who had no publc support because they were deemed to exist no longer, the phenomenon of spiritualism and clairvoyance had grown immensely in the Victorian era and had many prominent people among its belivers. There was also a strong lobby movement called the Spiritualists’ National Union which immediately began a vociferous campaign over the injustice which some witches faced, to which they enlisted the support of antrhopologists, lawyers and even some police officers. Many may not be aware, but at one time the laws allowed for witches to be prosecuted. However, there was no place for this type of discrimination in a new free society. Eventually the ancient Witch Act was repealed. Also replealed was Section Four of the Vagrancy Act of 1824 so far as it extended “to persons purporting to act as spiritualistic mediums or to exercise any powers of telepathy, clairvoyance or other similar power.” The two Acts were replaced by the Fradulent Medium Act, 1951 which, as the title explains, finally gave spiritualists and mediums the freedom to operate legally–unless they could be show to be obtaining money or kind by fraud. Any payment for the demonstration of psychic powers for the purposes of entertainment was also freed from the dangers of the law. The lawmakers had prised open the floodgates to allow easy passage for a new movement of witchcraft, paganism, satanism, occultism, spiritualism, mediums, clairvoyance, fortune-tellers, tarot card readers and newspaper astrologers. Authors on occule subjects were going to get a new lease of life too and, whether anyone knew it or not, this was the rebirth of witchcraft. Many reports on witch craft, often include the description of a “black man.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
Mrs. Winchester believed that “the man in black” described at meeting of witches’ covens was a priest dressed variously in dark clothing, or in skins, and wearing horns or antler. It was a ritual disguise, originally intended to represent the Incarnate God, that not merely existed in the practice of ancient ritual, and was copied by the witches of the Middle Ages, but still existed in contemporary witch covens she had experienced in Glastonbury, one of the most “witch-pressed” areas of the British Isles. What began to emerge through study of Mrs. Winchester is that witches possessed diabolic powers given to them by the devil. Sabbatic meetings were able to convince others that they were all able to drawn down the diabolic powers and the hordes of demons swirling through the air, in the Winchester Mansion, waiting to be summoned, by selling their souls to the devil. Many of the executed witches undoubtedly did indeed believe themselves to be servants of the devil, and acted out their magical rituals for that purpose and there were ample descendants employed in the Winchester Mansion. Mrs. Winchester’s auto science engineer, Fred Larsen, believed that she possessed incredible powers, including the fatal power of the evil eye and had the ability to fly, and he said he often saw werewolves and vampires around the estate, and other desperate evils of black magic—all of which he associated with witchcraft. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
People truly believed that witches could fly through the air and were capable of transforming themselves into animals. Mrs. Winchester studied various ancient recipes for the preparation of witch ointments for these purposes, containing such ingredients as the fat of a deceased unchristened baby, mixed with wolfsbane, poplar leaves and other potent herbs. By this means, said the old textbooks, the witch could be carried through the air in a moonlight night “to feasting, singing, dancing, kissing, and other acts of venery with such youths as they love and desire mostly.” However, instead of child’s fat, Mrs. Winchester, because it was so horrific, Mrs. Winchester would use hog’s lard. She once carried out a test, using one of these recipes. Mrs. Winchester rubbed the ointment all over her body. She fell into a deep sleep for twenty hours. When she awoke, she suffered a sever hangover and made immediate notes of her experiences. She recorded wild dreams of flying through the air, and of monsters and demons. This dovetailed with the claim that witches were able to fly off to these exotic meetings at the Winchester Mansion, leave their bodies apparently asleep so that their husbands suspected nothing. This may explain why at night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion, as the bell in the belfry high in the gables would toll regularly at midnight to summon the incoming flights of spirits. It was also reported that it tolled again to warn these visitors to return to their sepulchres. However, once a week these spirits and witches and demons relaxed and danced in the Great Ball Room. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
The devil was easy meat for the popular newspapers whose upsurge coincided with Mrs. Winchester’s arrival. The headlines soon began to appear whenever there was the discovery of the remnants of “black magic” rites in some secluded wood, a set of chicken bones arranged in the sign of a cross, a desecrated gravestone or some other outbreak of witchcraft. Any hint of witchcraft in Santa Clara County was sufficient to arouse immediate press attention and whip of a frenzy of interest, even as time progressed through the nineteenth century. The reaction was generally the opposite in areas of the country where witchcraft had been prevalent; they preferred not to speak of it. There was no better example of this than the murder of an old farmhand at the Winchester Mansion, in December 1899. It later became known as the “witchcraft murder” when the maid Victorian Venison discovered links with the occult. The victim, Stanislas De Duaita, farmhand and suspected witch, was found lying on his back under a willow tree, with a pitchfork driven through his throat and into the ground. A cross had been carved on his chest and the billhook which had been used was left lodged between his ribs, at the base of the cross. The Winchester mansion was surrounded by relics where spirits from the old gods were said to linger. There was even a Stonehenge where Duaita’s body was found, witches were said to hold their sabbats there. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
Local villagers did not want to talk about the murder; they had convinced themselves that Stanislas De Duaita was a witch. He was said to have bred toads and sometimes harnessed them to a miniature plough and allowed them to run in the fields. This was known to be one of the methods of an infamous and malicious witch of the nineteenth century and was said to make the fields sterile and the harvests fail. The previous year, the harvests had been poor round the Winchester Mansion. And, so the story goes, the finger was pointed at Stanislas De Duaita. Then another coincidence was discovered, which later investigators saw as a precedent to Duaita’a murder—and which demonstrated the traditional methods of disposing of witches’ parts, that of blooding them so that as they bled their power vanished. Thirteen years earlier and just 80 acres away, a woman named Helena Petrovna Blavatsky died in exactly the same manner—speared and pinned to the ground by a pitchfork and with a cross carved on her chest by a billhook. On the occasion, a local peasant named Guido von List confessed to the crime; he said the woman had bewitched him. Hundreds of statements were taken in writing, and dozens of samples of clothing, hair and blood for forensic testing, but the investigation came to naught. Stanislas De Duaita had the dubious distinction of being the last known witch—if he was one—to die a brutal death on the Winchester Estate. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
As the mansion continued to grow into this impressive Queen Anne mansion, the spirits requested more Gothic lines of the classical English Victorian. Constructed of the finest materials available, the house reflected essential Queen Anne elements—rounded tower, steep gabled roof and varied textures—at their loveliest. The fourth story had imported Italian wood shingles over redwood sheeting and the prominent corner turret had a wood shingle roof and curved windows. Stained glass windows were another prominent feature. All the trim in the house was redwood, with exception of some of the areas with handcarved oak. The details and quality of materials make modern architectural duplication virtually impossible. The staff complained to Mrs. Winchester that the house was haunted. The butler was awakened by sounds of footsteps approaching his bedroom door. As the foot steps stopped, the door was opened, and he was confronted by darkness. There were other sounds too: laughter and old-fashioned music. After the death of Mrs. Winchester, the mansion was an easy target for looters and vandals who used chain saws to remove staircases, fireplaces and light fixtures. Jackles of the night were literally tearing the house to pieces. Once more the mansion radiates Victorian splendor—though many of the remaining 161 rooms are off limits, but 110 are open to guests. Laughter is anything but eerie, cheerful voices echo through the halls, brisk footsteps are heard. But at night…well no one ever really likes to work too late. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
After the mansion was opened for tours, one woman was prosecuted after police raided a séance she was conducted as a spiritual medium. Her clients included numerous well-to-do people, often anxious to make contact with the “other side” after wartime tragedies. However, it was well documented that during one of these séances of Victorian Venison’s, a young sailor who was aboard the Abigail, which wrecked on Wangerooge Hanover, manifested himself and told how his ship had been sunk with considerable loss of life. The sailor’s mother refused to believe it, saying that if this had happened, she would have been informed. “You will be, mother, three weeks from now,” came the reply from the dead son through the medium. And according to Mrs. Cohen, the confirmation came through exactly as predicted. At her trial, Mrs. Venison was offered to give a séance to prove her abilities. Witnessed also came forward in her defense, but their testimonies were unheeded. She was found guilty and sentences to thirteen months imprisonment. I do invocate, conjure, and command thee, O thou Spirit Vassago, to appear and to show thyself visibly unto me before this Circle in fair and comely shape, without any deformity or tortuosity; by the name and in the name IAH and VAU, which Adam heard and spake; and by the name of God, AGLA, which Lot heard and was saved with his family; and by the name IOTH, which Jacob heard from the angel wrestling with him, and was delivered from the hand of Esau his brother; and by the name ANAPHAXETON which Aaron heard and spake and was made wise. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Winchester Mystery House
Did you know that the floor in the North Conservatory could be pulled up so the water could drain easier without damaging the wood floor? Sarah really did think of everything🌿 Explore this room and more on tour this weekend! https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And while in the Bay Area, be sure to check out some other Victorian Homes open for tour.
Cohen-Bray House
Some of our team had the absolute joy of visiting the Cohen-Bray House in Oakland yesterday. This Victorian style 3-story home built in 1883 filled with the original contents and interiors is a sight to see + has a wonderful story (we won’t give too much away as you will have to go and tour for yourself 😉). Tours offered every 4th Sunday of the month. See link in their bio for more details! https://www.cohenbrayhouse.org/
The Rampling of the Winchester Mansion
Lights twinkled beyond, through the thick forest of the Winchester Mansion, as oak, cypress, and palm trees swayed in the wind. Wild roses and ivy hung from the observational tower, and as the crickets sang here at the twilight, thirteen witches were hanged in the year 1888. Throughout the county of Santa Clara, there had been forty-nine executions nationwide. Mrs. Winchester’s interest in seclusion was evidence from the start. One of the first tasks of the gardeners was to plant a tall cypress hedge surrounding the house. She also kept her beautiful face covered with a dark veil at all times, and she fired servants who caught a glimpse of her gorgeous face by accident. There were several mass killings in Santa Clara Valley, which illustrated that there was no mercy for youngsters who were said to have become tainted by sorcery that locals believed was emanating from the Winchester Mansion. There were occurrences of neighbors hearing a bell ring at midnight and 2a.m., which according to ghost lore are the times for the arrival and departure of spirits. Thirteen children which likewise confessed that they were engaged in witchery, died as the rest. They were all burned at the stake. Pacts with the devil were a feature of a number of trials. There were numerous witches’ covens in the surrounding villages, two were said to have admitted signing in their own blood a written contract with a man in black in return for money to live gallantly and have the pleasure of the World for a period of thirteen years. The man in black always appeared at their coven meetings when he was called, and supervised their activities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Witchcraft had become an obsession that was hardly quelled. The obsession had been on a scale so vast that no single cause could be pinpointed. And Mrs. Winchesters arrival was a sensational event. The Valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Santa Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building activity that turned an eighteen-room farm house into an entire city in the first six months. Here was fair game for all! They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word. Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose, the local doctor pronounced them all bewitched, and fired by imagination and malice which seduced them into signing the devil’s book. The seemed little doubt that witchcraft was being practiced by Mrs. Winchester, who blasted into town with $20,000,000 and spirits and ghost in tow, two including her husband and daughter. This provided social upheavals. Barbara Butters and Mary Moses fell into dissolute habits, becoming harlots and drawing the disgust of their community. As they were shunned by Mrs. Winchester in those of the upper-class, they sore revenge and so—according to the confessions obtained under torture—called down the services of the devil. A midnight on 13 August 1889, according to their confessions, a tall black man appeared before them and said, “Be not afraid. I too am one of the Creation, pawn to me your souls for years and two months and I will assist you for all that time in whatever you desire. Some say that started the Rampling of Mrs. Winchester. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The two women agreed to the request of the devil’s representative and made a covenant writing in their own blood by pricking their fingers. One year later, they were arrested by the sheriff and accused of causing the deaths seventeen men and woman, and for putting a curse on the Winchester Mansion. They were also said to have killed four of Mrs. Winchester’s great hogs, and later sent two imps to haunt her mansion. What evidence there was for such allegations cannot be imaged. They were eventually found guilty of killing three people by roasting effigies in wax into which they had stuck pins. They were executed on 17 March 1890. As they stood at the gallows on the Winchester Estate, they were asked if they wanted to say their prayers and to be forgiven for their sins. They laughed, according to the record, and called for the devil to help them in such a blasphemous manner that the sheriff, seeing their impenitence, caused them to be executed without delay being hanged until almost dead and then they were burned. It sent a shock through the community to think of it. That is existed and was widespread is beyond doubt. Observations that the countryside was catacombed with covens of witches is possible, but difficult to prove in the maze of untruths and enforced confessions. Many of the confessions were dictated and written down by the torturers. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The evening was the longest of Mrs. Winchester’s life. Just terrified, she hovered with a tear-streaked face just by the window of her 4th floor bedroom. The twilight terrified her, it seemed an immense resonance with the darkness in her soul. She put her face behind her hands, and could never remember how she began. The stories of blasphemy and defilement became more and more frequent, and colorful accounts of exactly what Mrs. Winchester did began to emerge as gospel truth. The accusations against her were that the witches being hanged from the observational tower and burned at the stake were actually employees who she fired. But, even if that were true, was it without cause? The accusations of these witches included killing children for sacrificial purposes; killing animals by magic; murdering their enemies by imagery, id est, by forming an image in wax and stabbing it or roasting it; bringing hard to innocent people by just casting their evil eye upon them. Behind these capital changes were other accusations which included human sacrifice, cannibalism, incest and other wild pleasures of the flesh practices, not to mention blasting Mrs. Winchester’s crops and poisoning drinking wells. Others burst forth with superbly graphic and gory accounts, factual and fictitious, of the activities of witches, sorcerers and the devil’s disciples, and the mysteries of the dark and dangerous Worlds populated by evil. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Folks believed not only the witches, but Mrs. Winchester was also capable of some highly inexplicable activities—the unrelenting construction of her beautiful home had rambled over six acres. The sprawling mansion contained 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and six kitchens. Carpenters even left nails half driven when they learned of Mrs. Winchester’s death, as if fear and violent torment abruptly drew them away. And what happened in these years? What had become established in the community was the great fear of witchcraft and curses—still prevalent today. What housewife would not refuse to steal from the Winchester Mansion for fear of having a curse put on her house? In 1922, it was reported that a woman thought to be a witch was fired by Mrs. Winchester for stealing a sheep. She jumped from her chair and declared, “You will be dead in a week and nobody connected with this house shall die in bed. Within a week, however, Mrs. Winchester passed away in her sleep. The farm manager collapsed in the field while talking to his farm hand and died instantly. A cook committed suicide and a farmer who acted as a witness died in a fire. A few weeks later, a maid fell dead from her horse. There were many such stories which abounded this beautiful but bizarre estate, and prompted a continual flow of literature, occasional prosecutions and an undying fear in society at large of anything concerned with witchcraft and the occult. During these Victorian times—fortune-telling, clairvoyance and seances with mediums was not only the ultimate form of entertainment, but also a religious practice. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
As witches themselves had, by and large, returned to the shadows of society, the few prosecutions tended to be against charlatans accused of making money from what become a twentieth-century obsession—fortune telling and contact with the dead. No matter where you open the pages of the World treasure, as you walk through its 2,000 doors, the spirits will guide you. Conveyed along each hallway is divination, in every piece of art glass, inspiration, in the beams of the ceiling demonical possessions, up and down the stairs apparitions, trances in the Blue Séance Room, ecstasies on the fourth floor balcony, miraculous healing in the Victorian garden, and occult powers possessed by the mansion itself. I do invocate and conure thee, O Spirit, Forcalor; and being with power armed from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALDACHIENSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachidae, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocation conjure thee. And being armed with power from the SUREMEM MAJESTY, I do strongly command three, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto who all creates be obedient. Also I, being made after the image of GOD, endued with power from GOD and according unto His will, do exorcise thee by that most mighty and powerful name of GOD, EL, strong and wonderful; O thou Spirit Forcalor. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
And I command thee and Him who spake the Word and HIS FIAT was accomplished by all the names of God. Leay yli Ziarite zelohabe et negoramy Zien latebm dama mecha ra meti osira. Lagumen Emanuel therefore mechelag laigel yazi Zaseal. Meloch, hei alokim tiphret hod jesath. Tanabtain ainatem pagaij aijolo asnia hichaifale matae habonr jijcero. LORD GOD MOST HIGH, I do exorcise thee and do powerfully command thee, O thou Spirit Forcalor, that thou dost forthwith appear unto me here before this Circle in a fair human shape, without any deformity or tortuosity. And by this ineffable name, TETRAGRAMMATION IEHOVAH, do I command thee, at the which being heard the elements are overthrown, the air is shaken, the sea runneth back, the fire is quenched, the Earth trembleth, and all the hosts of the celestials, terrestrials, and infernals do tremble together, and are troubled and confounded. Wherefore, come thou, O Spirit Forcalor, forthwith, and without delay, from any or all parts of the World wherever thou mayest be, and make rational answers unto all things that I shall demand of thee. Come thou peaceably, visibly, and affably, now, and without delay, manifesting that which I shall desire. For thou art conjured by the name of the LIVING and TRUE GOD, HELIOREN, wherefore fulfil thou and according unto mine interest, visibly and affably speaking unto me with a voice clear and intelligible without any ambiguity. Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The sense of a universal mirage, of a ghostly unreality, steals over us, which is the very moonlit atmosphere of the Winchester Mystery House itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Winchester Mystery House
Set against the medieval grandeur of a castle with centuries-old mosaic floors, stone fireplaces, and stained-glass windows, this Queen Anne Victorian exemplifies master craftsmanship on a grand scale with timeless order and contemporary appeal.
It’s a cool and cloudy day at the Winchester Mystery House ⛅️ Truly somewhere you can relax, dream, and be creative. Open for daily tours this weekend 10-4pm!
🎟 link in bio. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
It is Not a Dead Language, but the Language of the Dead
On Halloween in 1975, Jeanne Borgen, one of California’s foremost psychic investigators, conducted a midnight séance in the bedroom where Mrs. Winchester supposedly died (some thing she achieved eternal life and is still living). Nonetheless, the results were reported by Alvin T. Guthertz in the magazine Psychic World: “Suddenly it appeared as if Mrs. Borgen’s face had somehow aged—her hair appeared gray and deep lines creased her forehead. She felt staggering pain and was unable to walk. It was as if she were having a heart attack and, as she started to fall, she shouted, ‘Help me. Someone get me out of here!’” Jeanne Borgen awoke a short time later. Her breathing was then normal; the pain, or what had seemed like pain, was gone…”She was an overpowering woman, a powerful woman. I felt a tremendous build up of energy.” This is the story of Santa Clara Valley’s most famous lady, Sarah L. Winchester, and her fabulous mystery mansion. It has been said that Mrs. Winchester slept in a different bedroom every night, and with more than 600 rooms at the time, she could sleep in a different bedroom, every night for over a year; this was supposed to confuse evil spirits. Some say that she also held special dinner parties for her spirit friends. Legend has it that she would serve her phantom guests on solid gold plates, offering them dishes like caviar, truffles, and pheasant stuffed with pate. Over the years, many people have occupied the massive homes, which now has 160 rooms, stands four stories high, and is approximately 90,000 square feet. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
It is said that different organisms have separate consciousnesses, although their bodies are just as much connected by general Nature as the parts of a single organism are with each other. Back in Mrs. Winchester day, during the late 1880s through the early 1920s, she used to have ritual séances in her famous Blue Séance Room. Those taking art formed a circle around a large round table, at the side of which there was a large oblong box. One Halloween night while the ritual was taking place, the circle people joined hands…they began to dance to a hypnotic drumming and suddenly the Grain God appeared in the middle of the circle, dressed in skins and with white make-up from the chest up. He wore antlers on his head so skillfully applied that they looked as if they were growing out of his head. He began his Dance of Death, moving around the circle stopping before each person and showing them his mystery—the perfect wars of corn he held in each hand. When each had experienced him, the drumming and the chanting increased in tempo and volume until, at its peak, Mrs. Winchester, the High Priestess, appeared in the middle of the circle and, letting out a bone-chilling scream, she stabbed the Grain God with her Athame (the witch’s knife) and blood spurted from the wound as he fell forward into the oblong box, which was now revealed as a coffin. To the cries and gasps of the assembled witches, the coffin was solemnly carried to the bonfire which was lit and blazed high, accompanied by the cries and chants and the furious drumming. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
By the light of the funeral pyre, a virile young man appeared among them and was proclaimed the new Grain God and the blessed wine was shared amongst his subjects who danced and chanted until the sun started to rise. Thought the Bible provided no evidence that witchcraft was considered to be an organized religion, it certainly acknowledged the existence of witches, as in 1 Samuel Chapter 28 of the Old Testament, where we are given a dramatic account of Saul’s visit to a witch at Endor because he believed God had deserted him. He went in disguise and pleaded with her to “bring up Samuel” who was dead. The witch performed her ritual and…The woman said to Saul, “I saw gods ascending out of the Earth.” And he said unto her “What form is he of?” And she said, “An old man cometh up and he is covered with a mantle.” And Saul perceived it was Samuel and he stopped his face to the ground and bowed himself. This was one of the earliest published examples of necromancy, the revival of the dead or the contact with the spirits of the deceased, which is now practised by many witches and black magicians. Likewise, Mrs. Winchester was “spiritual,” and what happened in her Blue Séance Room was also considered necromancy. The familiar spirit is one of the earliest keys to the identification of witches. They were said to be capable of summoning an assisting force which was a spirit of a dead person residing in the body of a small animal such as a cat, dog, bird or toad. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
These animals required the sustenance of witches’ blood, obtained by pricking her own skin, and thus when the witch-hunters came, they often first examined the witch’s body for marks—any mole would do. Alternatively, the spirits were said to be capable of existence in an inanimate object. The infamous occultist Mrs. Winchester was said to have a familiar spirit which dwelt in her favorite window. The Roman Church was especially sensitive to all forms of magic and sorcery, because the practice had been rife through Roman society, as was the belief that to encourage constant renewal of power, young men, women, and animals were required to be systematically sacrificed. These practices remained until the official repression of the old pagan religion in the Roman Empire. In AD 313, the Emperor Constantine issues an edict of toleration legalizing Christianity throughout the empire after he saw two visions which caused him to adopt Christ as his patron. Just to be on the safe side, however, Constantine never fully abandoned his earlier patron, Apollo, in spite of the pressure from priests and bishops to eliminate pagan practices entirely by threat of death. Christians were not content with merely being the favoured cult; they wanted to establish one true faith for the whole of mankind and all other forms of loyalty to past gods should be abolished. Neither was it the instant “conversion” that Sunday school teachers would have us believe. It took another two centuries before this progression was confirmed, when the rights of pagan were gradually reduced by imperial decree. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Sacrifices were forbidden in 391 and all pagan holidays and festivals were banned. Pagans were ejected from public office and lost the right to own property or defend themselves in court. Their temples were destroyed in Christian troops or crusading monks and finally, in AD 529, all citizens were ordered to convert to Christianity. Parents were told to bring all children to Christian churches for baptism. Paganism, in the heart of Europe, was reduced to scattered and secret worship, driven underground until, as the years went by, only scraps of folklore, song and dance and superstition remained. It took longer to disappear elsewhere, as the influence of the Roman Empire diminished and in Britain paganism actually went through a revivalist period as the hordes of barbarian raiders replaced the Romans. The Angles, the Saxons, the Picts and later the Vikings battled to forge powerful new regional kingdoms, enforcing worship of their own gods and attempting to force their own order on society. In contrast, Mrs. Winchester removed herself from the World and created a World of her own in her beautiful and mysterious mansion. Still, one of the most enduring legends from the time of the eclipse of the Roman Empire is that of Arthur, who fought the Anglo-Saxons and who is a hero of present-day occultists. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The Arthurian legend, with Guinevere, Camelot, Excalibur, the Round Table and the wizard Merlin are al debatable creations, but it is of special significance to all who follow the dark arts to recall that there were twelve knights to the Round Table, thirteen including Arthur—the number of witches who make up a coven. The Anglo-Saxon regional kings were eventually won over to Christianity but the new religion lost ground again in the face of the marauding Vikings, whose pagan rites were said to include human sacrifice when the victim’s lungs were cut from the body. The tide began to turn against the Vikings when King Alfred of Wessex, then aged twenty-two, defeated them at the Battle of Ashdown in 1871. The young king of Wessex was from a close-knit, pious Christian family and was a devout follower of the Roman Church, having been take to be blessed personally by the Pope by his father King Aethelwulf at the age of four. Alfred began the task of uniting England under the Christian king which his descendants were finally to achieve. During his life, Alfred taught himself Latin, the international language of wester Christendom and began translating Latin pastoral [by Pope Gregory the Great] into English and sent copies to every bishop in his kingdom. His grandson, King Athelstan, brought in the first legislation against witchcraft [and the banning of Sunday trade, incidentally] in AD 930. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
There, out of the decimation of paganism as a religion, is the more likely setting for the birth of today’s witchcraft and it is to these roots that witches turn for their inspiration. As Christianity prospered, the imagery of the primitive cultures and the sacrificial rites which has been used to maintain idolatrous worship were taken as an example personifying some of the elements of evil; thus the horned god of pantheistic beliefs became the accepted form of the Christian devil and was used by Christians in their denouncement of all pagan worship. Gradually, the devil became drawn into every facet of medieval life. He and his demons were blamed for every mishap, whether a destructive storm or disease among the farm animals. The vivid image of this horned and hoofed invader, ruler of the dark forces, was blamed by the teachings of the Church for virtually all ills. The legacy of this confusion—which still exists—is the belief that the devil is an essential part of pagan worship or witchcraft. In fact, with the exception of a group known as the Satanic Witch Cult, neither mainstream witches nor pagans now recognize the existence of the devil or Satan. As the horned god became the Christian symbol of the devil, some witches did come to believe in and worship that Christian entity as their own and by the Middle Ages, witchcraft and devil worship were being treated as one in the same. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The cult of persons who, by means of satanic assistance or the aid of evil spirits or familiars are enabled to practise minor black magic. However, the difference between the sorcerer and the witch is that the former has sold one’s soul to Satan for complete dominion over one for a stated period, whereas the witch usually appears as the devoted and often badly treated servant of the diabolic power. Each of us is in reality an abiding physical entity far more extensive than one knows,–an individuality which can never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation. The self manifests itself through the organism; but there is always some part of the self unmanifested, and always, as it seems, some power of organic expression in abeyance. It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her new born child and husband left a bizarre and impressive architectural reflection of her psyche. The fascinating story of the Winchester Mystery House has its roots in the occult and personal tragedies suffered by Mrs. Winchester and in the legacy of the Winchester rifle, “The Gun That Won the West.” According to some sources, the Boston medium consulted by Mrs. Winchester explained that her family and her fortune were being haunted by spirits—in fact, by the spirits of American Indians, Civil War soldiers, and others killed by Winchester rifles. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Supposedly the untimely deaths of her daughter and husband were caused by these spirits, and it was implied that Mrs. Winchester might be the next victim. However, the medium also claimed that there was an alternative. Mrs. Winchester was instructed to move west and appease the spirits by building a great house of them. As long as construction of the house never ceased, Mrs. Winchester could rest assured that her life was not in danger. Building such a house was even supposed to bring her eternal life. On another note, maybe a change of scenery and a never-ending hobby were just what Mrs. Winchester needed to distract her from her grief. Whatever her actual motivations, Mrs. Winchester packed her bags and left Connecticut to visit a niece who lived in Menlo Park, California. While there, she discovered the perfect spot for her new home in the Santa Clara Valley. In 1884 she purchased an unfinished eighteen-room farm house just three miles west of San Jose—and over the next thirty-eight years she produced the sprawling complex we know today as the Winchester Mystery House. In the late 1800’s, the Santa Clara Valley presented sweeping vistas of rural open space. It was a serene setting for Mrs. Winchester to begin her building project, which she did with steadfast determination. She must be given due credit for inventiveness. Mrs. Winchester hired carpenters to work in shifts around the clock. Overnight, the mansion had grown into a nine-story, 600 room complex, and the estate grew, by some estimates, to 730 acres of farmland, which included orchards of corn, apricots, plums, and walnut trees. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Perplexity was leavened by extravagant Victorian beauty scattered along each crooked path of exploration. Everywhere prevails that strange deference to the number 13; 13 stairsteps, 13 hangers in a closet, 13 wall panels, 13 lights in the German silver chandeliers, 13 windows to a room and if necessary to make that number, some placed inside a wall. There is even a dim-lit storeroom stacked entirely with never-used furnishings, displays rare hand-wrought elegance from the Victorian era, finest productions of forgotten craftsmen. Here are specially designed million-dollar stained-glass doors and windows, some set with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, gold, silver, platinum, and sapphire. There are stairs that rise only two inches high, doors that open to a two-story plunge into the garden, stairs that lead up to the ceiling and of course, a hooded figure who is dripping wet, with shining boots. Everywhere, there were once paintings huge, framed, fitted into the wall, and white-wigged men and women started helplessly and cold at the staff. At night men could be heard thundering down the steps, legs bowed, elbows out, hefting huge cabinets of ivory, silver, and gold, as ghost stood beside them, laughing because they knew this would lead to their own suffering. On one occasion, bandits broke in and shot the thieves looting the mansion. There was also a group of women who haunted the Winchester Mansion, certain abandoned women, perverted by the devil, seduced by illusion and phantasm of demons. They believe and openly professed that in the dead of night they ride upon certain beasts with Diana, flying over vast tracts of the country and obey her commands. Diana was a pre-Christian goddess. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
There was pagan worship an aspect of community celebration which. The nine-story tower, that symbol of old English springtime tradition, was the phallic symbol old pagan worship. Mrs. Winchester used herbal medicines and could treat all manner of family aliments, foretell the future and guide and comfort tormented women. Some say she was blessed with these gifts after the lost of her husband and baby. These incidents became legends and they propagated the fear of liaison with the devil. It was alleged by Albert Pike, who claimed the authority of an actual eye-witness for the story, that Mrs. Winchester who had confessed to making a pact with the devil became worried when the expiry of her contract approached. She decided she must appease the spirits of those killed by the Winchester Rifle and summoned some religious people to her home. Mrs. Winchester told them that she was worried that the devil would secure her body as well as her soul. She gave directions that her body should be taken to the mansion, sewn in a stag’s hide, placed inside a stone coffin and fastened down with three strong iron chains. She directed that fifty psalms should be sung by night and fifty hymns should be sung by day to confuse the demons and if her body was still secure after three days, she might be buried safely. All these precautions, according to Pike, were of no avail. For two nights the servants and clergy resisted the demons, but on the third night amid a terrific uproar and the clatter of thunder, an immense demon burst into the mansion, snapped the iron chains like thread, pushed the stone lid aside and commanded the dead Mrs. Winchester to rise. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
The demon, Botis, grasped her around the wait, caried her to his huge black stallion and galloped off into the night with her shrieks resounding through the air. Such legends impressed and scarred the peasant communities. The servants of the Winchester wanted to deal with the rebellious legions of spirits and their mysterious and malevolent, who could be conveniently packaged together as being in league with Satan. Demons filled the air waiting to be called down by witches, preying on the simple servants, plodding through their dull, daily lives. However, the evil was not only in this mansion, but lurked all over California. Sometimes, whole villages were deemed to have been infected and were wiped out or forcibly split up, and moved to other areas. The servants of Satan and his demons possessed great powers which enabled them to inflict disease, tempests and death by imagery. They could bewitch their opposers and judge them with their evil eye. One of the servants, Marie Laveau, at the Winchester mansion was dragged to the water tower, and was attacked by a demon. Witnesses reported that she was bound hand and foot and the demon cut her hair and threw alcohol over her head, setting light to it; he placed strips of sulphur under her armpits and burned them. Marie was hauled by rope to hand from the ceiling for three hours while the demon slept. Then he returned and threw alcohol over Marie’s body and burned it, which caused the water tower to burn to the ground. It was believed that Marie had copulated with the devil, that she drank the blood of children who she stole on her night-flights and she had murdered about sixty infants. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
It is said that the demon Botis used techniques on Marie Laveau that might have been a model for the Nazi Gestapo. Servants who spoke out against the terror of Botis were branded as witches and locked in the basement. Meanwhile, word had got out about the death of Mrs. Winchester, but no one heard a word about her funeral. And Mrs. Winchester’s niece, Daisy, was long gone. It was said that two women who were servants at the Winchester Mansion agreed to the request of the devil’s representative and made a covenant written in their own blood by pricking their fingers. One year later, they were arrested by the sheriff and accused of causing the deaths of thirteen children, five men, and eight women, and numerous animals. They were also said to have killed four great hogs because their owner said the women looked like witches, and later sent to imps to destroy his four-year-old daughter. What evidence there was for such allegations cannot be imagined. Pacts with the devil were a feature in the Victorian era. Numerous women who worked as servants for Mrs. Winchester were said to have admitted signing in their own blood a written contract with “a man in black” in return for “money to live gallantly and have pleasure of the World for a period of thirteen years.” They described in their confessions how they made effigies in clay and stuck them with pins, and cursed local people who had annoyed them. One of the Witches, Moina Mathers, spoke of the anointment of the witches who were then able to fly very long distances in a short space of time. The man in black always appeared at their coven meetings when he was called, and supervised their activities. The present generation must weigh and draw its own conclusion about this Valley’s most interesting, most controversial, lady and her mysterious estate. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Come, sit a spell, and conjured up some spirits at this cult classic. Experience Monday’s scaries and give them a brand new meaning 😏👀
One more day left of Unhinged: Nightshade’s Curse. Some tickets still available but going quick!
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Reach Out and Experience the Mystery at the Winchester Mystery House!
The stars grew large and infinite in their cold majestic light, and slowly all the night was gone and there remained one great glorious and sourceless illumination. A witch coven or secret society in your own town or village is perhaps engaged in ritual practice. They may be in sinister robes. They may be white witches or black magicians. They may even be your friends. They will be alert to strangers and will maintain utmost secrecy. Ans with very good reason. The deeply emotive allegations of satanic ritual abuse became the in-topic of the late eighties, especially among social workers and child-care organizations. Dark and evil practices were thought to e rife in suburban and rural Britain, just as they were alleged to be in the United States of America on a much greater scale. A series of high-level conferences was arranged under the auspices of various Christian and medical organizations who brought out one speaker after another, from home and abroad, to give confirmation of the atrocities committed in the name of the devil. Alarming figures and statements were being reported in the newspaper without qualification because the stories emanated from “experts.” No evidence was offered and it all took on the hue and cry of a witch-hunt of the kind not seen since the eighteenth century. Mrs. Winchester was once a speaker at a conference on Incest and Related Problems, co-organized by the Hell Fire Club. She was billed as a “survivor” of satanic abuse, and was engaged in counselling others. She said she received thirteen visitors each week from fellow survivors and stated that fifty cases she had dealt with involved cannibalism. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Mrs. Winchester said human foetuses were being killed and eaten by satanic rings; that children were being hung up by their feet and suspended over electric saws; that they suffered all kinds of depravity. The conference, attended by masons, psychics, witches, and warlocks, as well as others, ran for three days and natural were kept in secret. A warlock said that there were 10,000 human sacrifices in America each year and many of those cases were investigated. Thousand of human hours involving police and church leaders were expended, thousands of children largely under the age of eight were subjected to the trauma of being questioned about devils and ghosts and snakes and horrible things. However, at the end of the day only four known cases where ritual abuse was specifically on the charge sheet were brought to court—and two of those failed. One case in American involving a hundred children took seven years to bring to court, cost $10 million to prosecute and one of the defendants who was refused bail spent five years in prison. At the end of the day, the case was withdrawn. Meanwhile, children were being taken from their homes while the church investigated all kinds of horrific allegations which, had the laws of the not so distant sixteenth century still prevailed, would have meant the mass execution of parents on charges of witchcraft. It was Salem, The Crucible and the witch-hunt all over again, except that no charges were laid, no arrests were made—except in one case where the police refused to include any reference to satanic abuse in their evidence. On the face of it the whole business was so inconclusive in terms of actual evidence of devilish goings-on that it was natural to suppose such things did not really exist. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
But Dear God, there was no justification for the impious blood drinkers, feeding off the luxurious stews of the wicked American World. It was amazing that the Holy Face did not catch them suddenly and make them forget all else. Mrs. Winchester had seen the Face of Christ blazing in the firelight, a brilliant scowling Christ. There remained, however, a lingering doubt about the claims of dastardly deeds on black altars in shrouded, incensed—filled rooms, that the devil was still about, that witches were up to no good, that black magicians were still messing around in graveyards and defiling the dead. So this is a journey of discovery, to try to find out some answers to some pressing questions about the occult. Fact, fiction, fallacy, rumor and mythology appear to have been merged into a new witch-hunt, and for once the word would be taken literally. The public at large was being asked to believe that all involved had but one aim—to corrupt and deprave all who came within their sphere as part of a menacing international conspiracy to promote forces of darkness against Christian society. In attempting to cut a path through what was once described as the marshes, forests and badlands of magic and superstition, there is the great morass of beliefs and activities which persist today in the spectrum of interrelated occult subjects, but also for the reason that pagans and witches shudder at the prospect of being mentioned in the same breath as satanists. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
And eerie possibility suggests itself similarly to occultists who are members of the serious and often complicated cults and lodges of ritual magic and mysticism, or who embrace a voluminous number of secret societies made up of academics and students of esoteric teachings, would feel insulted to be attached in any way to either of these movements. Therefore, looking at witchcraft, and revealing current trends and their leading participants, we will examine selections of other occult beliefs; and look into satanism. Furthermore, there are Worldwide organizations and occult media which now exist in what is a very, very big industry. What links them all, for good or evil, is the exploration of the paranormal abilities of the human mind, the belief that the mystique and magic into which serious occultists immerse themselves is a natural human faculty and can be developed like any other faculty. It is as controversial as it sounds, especially since Christianity has attempted to impose the view that all magic is black magic, and that the power source is the devil himself, assisted by the demons he dispatches to the side of all those who call down these powers. Meanwhile, most satanic worshippers have other views which are largely committed to a total reversion of Christian values. Witchcraft is described by its elders as a religion and is officially recognized as such in America. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
British witches who support this school of thought prefer to call themselves pagans. They claim that their roots are in the old religions of pre-Christian times and are derived basically from the ancient nature and fertility rites of the original pagan mystery religions which were outlawed and went underground in the third century AD under pressure from Christianity. In spite of purges and persecution through the ages, knowledge of the “old ways” is said by its supporter to have been retained through oral tradition, handed down within families, and confirmed by the salvage of written evidence. This historic justification is in fact a rather romantic notion. Modern witchcraft as practiced in most-covens is basically the creation of one man, who called heavily on the researched practiced, legends and superstitions of the past. Kill the innocent and you will sooner or later come to guilt, and with it you will come to impotence and finally despair. You make think you are too ruthless and too cold for such. You may feel superior to human beings and excuse your predatory excesses on the ground that you do but seek the necessary blood for your own life. However, it will not work in the long run. In the long run, you will come to know that you are more human than monster, all that is noble in you derives from your humanity, and your enhanced nature can only lead you to value humans all the more. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
You will come to pity those you slay, even the most unredeemable, and you will come to love humans so desperately that there will be nights when hunger will seem far preferable to you than the blood repast. Witches, men, and women, meet at the new and full moon at festival times. They aim to put themselves in tune with natural forces and thus often work within a robe. They believe it is withing everyone’s capacity, with teaching, to reach out and experience the Mystery; they believe it is possible for each individual to make contact with the deity they worship and invoke the spirit of that deity into their own bodies. Today pagans or white witches are not apprehensive about magic, because they do not connect it with the devil; they regard it as part of their religion. Their faith encompasses the teachings which encourage the development of second sight, extrasensory powers, clairvoyance, spirit communications and the like. They meet in small groups called covens and participate in creative experimentation within the agreed group structure. Witchcraft cannot be a mass religion. The worship is conducted before an altar from within a sacred circle in which two main activities occur: the celebration of the Witches’ Sabbats, involving ritual dancing and chanting, and the practice of magic. Their magic is not about pulling rabbits from a hat. It has been broadly defined as the art and science of using little-known natural powers to achieve changes in consciousness and in the physical environment, enabling constant with non-human entities. There are good witches and bad witches, black and white. There are also hereditary witches who operate alone. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
To understand witchcraft, we must descend into the darkness of the deepest oceans of the human mind. It is a descent that is wrapped in mystery and the inexplicable, and what cannot be explained is feared. Fear may lead to hysteria and because of what has gone before in the persecution of their predecessors, this fear can become the nightmare of modern witches, if not of modern society. Not long ago, in the foggiest centuries of ancient times, a solemn commission to blood drinkers, and indeed there had been a dim religion surrounding us in antique pagan days in which vampires had been worshipped as bringers of justice to those who had done wrong. There was sufficient hysteria to inspire the fear that a twentieth-century witch-hunt was about to begin, encouraged by the claims of anti-occult groups. The Conservative MP and lay preacher Mr. Geoffrey Dickens sought in the House of Commons to reactivate the Witchcraft Act of 1735—an act that had finally been laid to rest in 1951. He tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justices Bill, seeking to make it illegal for any person under eighteen to join or participate in any secret occult ceremonies or groups. His attempt, branded by occultists as repressive, was not admitted on the grounds that it was beyond the scope of the new Bill. However, by raising the issues at the highest level in the land Mr. Dickens gave credence to the view of the witches themselves, that witchcraft is not the bizarre and unimportant hobby of a mere handful of cranks. Mrs. Christopher Bray, one of the country’s largest purveyors of equipment to the occult World stated that he has 40,000 customers recorded on his computerized records, to whom he can supply everything from two grams of bat’s blood to a complete altar set for the most complicated of occult rituals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Very soon, I understood what Mrs. Winchester meant when she said that some develop a taste for evil and maintain it. Often, the visions from their victims become stronger for them with every kill. They sometimes see colors when they kill. In fact, they sometimes see those color dancing around their victims before they ever even close in. Some people seem to walk in red-tinged shadows, and others emanate a fiery orange light. The angriest victims have a yellow glow. Although it seems like it, modern witchcraft is no longer an underground relic of which the scale and even the existence is hotly disputed by anthropologists. It is an active religious practice of a substantial number of people. Just how large a number is not certain because Wicca, beyond the individual coven, is not a hierarchically organized religion. However, the numbers are sufficient to support a variety of lively periodicals and the publication of an ever-growing body of literature. All the evidence suggests it is growing steadily. The figure in America exceeds 1 million. However, because of the lack of any formal structure, the whole movement appears so fragmented and loose in its form of worship, that it can now be pulled together and arranged under the one heading by which they now wish to be known, that of Pagans with a capitol “P.” At the center of the Pagan movement there is a strong body—a majority in fact—of witches who abide by the written laws and oral traditions of their craft, there are also many dangerous dabblers and renegade covens on the periphery. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
These witches are beholden only to themselves, and certainly do not necessarily conform to the rules of harming no one. They deal in black magic, and some deliberately label themselves as Satanic Witches, not to mention a few groups who veer toward purely pleasures of the flesh and sadistic excitement and use witchcraft and the occult as shelter. Contemplating this thought, I stood one day, as I was about to embark upon writing, gazing into the old pond at the bottom of the Winchester Mansion’s Garden. Then I closed my eyes. In the cold stony darkness, I laid my powerful hands on a stone, and opened my eyes. I idly tossed the stone into the pond, as I watched it disappear into the waters, it occurred to me that this was a perfect analogy for a summary of witchcraft, and even the ripples, strong and vibrant at the center and becoming weaker at the farthest circle, the stone itself sinking down and down into the darkening gloom as the brightness of the moon’s light slowly fades, until it hits bottom and is lost into black and mysterious depts. Ancient ponds such as these are called “whores of the devil.” They date back to Henry VIII. The witch-hunts that came to the fore during Henry VIII’s reign and continued well into Georgian times, began the 1468 publication of the shocking work on demonology, the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witchcraft, written by two German inquisitors and inspired by Pope Innocent VIII as a textbook for the suppression of underground movement against the structure of a Catholic society. All Christian religions took up the call, though many Church leaders later had second thoughts as the hysteria ran riot and left thousands of murdered witches, so-called, and alleged heretics in its wake. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Witchcraft and sorcery and secret societies had been around for centuries, though in an altered form, but some historians are dubious that today’s witchcraft has much to do with early times. However, Witchcraft was the invention of the Inquisition and it did not exist until the Middle Ages. So it has become important to witches to argue otherwise and prove that their ceremonies and rituals have existed far longer than Christianity. In fact, it became something of an obsession among the leaders of modern witchcraft to prove their religion predates Christianity and Judaism by many thousands of years. There are two reasons for this. Firstly witches of recent times were often alone and needed a sense of belonging and spiritual involvement with the old gods and goddesses who they believe are the true inspiration of their religion, id est, the pre-Christian pagan gods worshipped around the World in remarkably similar but unconnected rituals, stretching from ancient Greece, Egypt, Celtic Europe, the Nordic lands to pre-colonial America. Secondly, they wanted to go back in time to reach out to these origins and make contact with the old gods to get away from the stigma of the Inquisition years and the witch craze which followed, when their persecutors and numerous historians purported to show that all witches were “bound slaves of the devil.” There is a third reason which is not generally spoken of and which lies in the explanation of certain magical powers witches are said to possess, that come to them either through learning or by inheritance. Those who claim they were lucky enough to be born with the powers are known today as hereditary witches. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The magic is as much esoteric as it is practical, covering their talent for clairvoyance, astral planning, telepathy and in general the use of the extrasensory powers in the human brain. To all this has been added the training of sorcery and alchemy, which involves the systematic use of spells, potions, rituals and so on for a specific purpose. Belief in these extrasensory is alone enough to utterly absorb some. It is traced back to primitive man, who possessed the instincts of animals—a kind of supersensory intuition, or sixth sense, which would alert one to danger and guide one to good hunting. When, through the process of man’s evolution, many of those powers slipped away witches and sorcerers found a way of retaining them by discovering the path to higher levels of consciousness than are normally used. Rituals practiced by witches and occultists today have been copied from known practices of prehistoric man, the hunter whose life was ruled by the elements of nature which he consequently worshipped—the sun, the moon, the Earth, the wind, fire and all the elements that affected daily life. The concept of Wicca worship can be tenuously identified with the cave drawings of these primitive communities, in which the Gods was made. They were depicted as the source of life, naked priestesses, maidens, high priestesses and, finally, witch queens. Give men enough time and they will turn on anyone. Christianity is a religion based on the notion that we are living in the Last Days! It is a religion fueled by the ability of men to forget all the blunders of the past, and get dressed once more for the Last Days. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
In the primitive civilizations, two main godheads evolved, and they became modified and established over the decades to provide a female goddess of the skies, usually symbolized by the moon. Sometimes she was called the Great Earth Mother—the names varied according to country and language but they all linked her conclusibely with nature of fertility. Eventually she was more universally known by the Roman title of the moon goddess Diana, representing the feminine side of witches’ theology. Their male God of the Earth can be linked to early cave drawings of a Horned God, symbolically a stag or a goat, used to ward off danger. The Horned God became the phallic god, representing the strong and masculine side of nature. One of the earliest signs of the horned creature was to be discovered in the Stone Age relics of the Caverne de Trois Freres, Ariege, France, which showed a dancing figure, half beast and half man, with the sprouting antlers of a stag. These drawings are the earliest source of connection with today’s witchcraft, which worships the naked goddess of life and the Horned God. Around these images, the early communities built their rites and prayers to encourage the gods to bring them safety and good fortune. The gods were especially linked to fertility, so necessary to man’s survival, through crops, animals and their own children. And so, long before Christianity introduced the image of the devil, the horned god with tail and hooves could be found in cave art. The horned god was also linked with early human sacrifice. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Primitive cults believed that in order to sustain him and to prevent him from dying, his living representative, the Divine King and Incarnate God nominated by the community, had to be sacrificed on their altar so that his young blood would be taken to give continued life to the true god. Later, as the faith became more widely based and extended on tribal lines, the kings began to insist upon their divine right to rule, and rejected the need for sacrifice. It has been argued that these ancient gods and rites have actually nothing to do with witchcraft, that they were simply a part of the evolution of man’s wisdom, and that witches merely adopted the old pre-Christian gods of paganism and assumed the ritual and magic as their own heritage. It can certainly be shown that many of the witch practices performed today are almost perfect replicas of primitive ceremonies. I invoke and move thee, O thou, Spirit Vassago and your legions of Spirits and being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name Beralensis, Baldachiensis, Paumachia, and Apologiae Sedes: and of the mighty ones who govern, spirits, Liachidae and ministers of the House of Death: and by the Chief Prince of the seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee and by invoking conjure thee. And being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee Obey! in the name of him who spake and it was, to whom all creatures and things obey. Moreover I, whom God made in the likeness of God, who is the creator according to his living breath, stir thee up in the name of which is the voice of wonder of the mighty God, El, strong and unspeakable, O thou Spirit Vassago. Conjuration of three angels Gebril! Meachuel! Nesanel! By the lamp of the threefold eternal light, let Vassago appear before me and bestow riches and power untold since the days of William Wirt Winchester! #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Beautiful, Bizarre, and Unhinged. How many times have you visited the Winchester Estate during Halloween Season?
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America’s Best Kept Secret—The Winchester Mansion
Four years ago, I had a party that was too much fun for me. There was a guy who said he would give me everything I need. As I recall, when I was a five-year-old in China, I had been offered up to a Satanic cult and forced to participate in unspeakable rites. During a three-month ceremony called the Feast of the Beast, I was made to recite rhymes while closed in a coffin in the Under Ground City within a grave, and the floor was covered with slithering snakes. There were robed men and women tearing apart “kittens” with their teeth, and eaten. Sometimes I let temptation get the best of me. The conversation was going on until I turned my hair. He started touching me and kissing me like he didn’t care. I thought at first, I should go home, but then I fell asleep in the chair. All I got to say is… While I was sleeping, I had a dream that I was locked up in a cage with a lion. Years later, police dug up the empty lot next to our house and found some animal bones and shark teeth, which were asserted to prove nothing. Although sheriffs conducted an extensive dig in the area, no bodies were ever found. A prolonged investigation by the FBI concluded the stories provided no evidence, no charges filed. However, later the sheriff announced an investigation that as many as one hundred adults participated in cannibalism, blood drinking and murder of as many as thirty children during Satanic rites at a local church. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Despite the facts that the, the church was quickly cleared, no bodies could be found, but Sheriff insisted that he believes the stories of ritual abuse. He says he knows the children were baptized “in the Devil’s name.” One male youth was reportedly sexually assaulted by a doctor who used a crucifix in the ritual. However, after a year ling, multi-million-dollar investigation, the task force was disbanded without having found ant hard physical evidence. On the bases of information obtained from several human sacrifices by a Satanic cult in a nearby rural site, officers of the law spent ten hours digging up a field, searching for the remains of one-hundred-and-thirteen victims allegedly sacrificed over the past sixteen years. Some animal bones were found, along with food, headless dolls bound at the feet and pentagrams on their stomachs, a pile of forty-five male tennis shoes were found, an axe, an ancient dagger, and cleaned and pressed children’s clothes from the 1800s in a sealed cement coffin, and a thirteen-foot scorched wooden cross, along with an anatomy dissection book found in a Victorian house near the main mansion. No charges filed. The idea of an underground conspiracy of blood-drinking, cannibalistic Christians, Satanists, kidnaping and killing children as part of unspeakable religious rites, adds an even more horrifying dimension to an already horrifying subject. As bizarre as some of the tales sounded, police investigators did not take them lightly. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I was awakened in the middle of the night by the howling—the same lone wolf voice I had heard the night before. It was about one a.m. I did not know how long it had been going on, only that it had finally penetrated my thin chaotic dreams and nudged me towards consciousness. I sat up in the darkened bedroom and listened. It went on for a long time, but gradually became fainter as if the wolf was moving slowly and steadily away from the mansion. It had a tragic, plaintive quality as before. It was positively baleful. And then I could not hear it anymore. An hour later when I could not get back to sleep, I took a walk through the corridors of the third floor. I felt uneasy. I knew what I was doing. All at once I stood still. I held my breath and glanced around. What did I see? You may believe me or not; you may call it a fairy tale or what you will; you may term it a freak of my imagination, but all the same I give it for what it is worth. I saw emerging from a secret passageway in the floor forty-nine men attired in ghostly habiliments. I was badly taken aback; I had been well aware of the accident that happened when the mansion was built killing 49 men. I had realized what I had seen could not logically be happening—not in my time anyway. Those who had been killed in the incident had been so taken by surprise that they were apparently still not aware that they were dead—and their ghostly apparitions were continuing to work on the mansion as though nothing had happened. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
A team of horses could not budge me while the ghosts were visible. Almost overnight, an entire new industry was born. Special police anti-occult task forces were forced to cope with the new menace. Child psychologist, social workers, probation officers, and born-again Christians were asked to speak to concerned staff members, and seminars were conducted for law enforcement personnel by the self-proclaimed “experts on Satanic crime.” The incidences of people being locked in rooms, doors slamming by themselves, curtains moving, and strange footsteps have been reported. Guests often report a shadowy figure who parts the curtains to look out of otherwise unoccupied rooms. A variety of wild stories were told to explain Mrs. Winchester’s death. Some claim that Mrs. Winchester went out on a cold Winter night during a rain storm. She lost her way and froze to death. Others say that she was massacred by Indians of fell down the mansion’s stairs and bled to death. The truth is that Mrs. Winchester, who outlived her husband and children, was residing in Santa Clara Valley when she died of natural causes at 98. Many who have seen Mrs. Winchester several times, believes that her spirit is still in the house because of her happy life when she was living there. She is in her early twenties, attractive and vibrant. Some frequently smell a fragrance—wild azaleas—that we associate with Mrs. Winchester. Sometimes we sense a man’s presence—probably Mr. Winchester—and we smell 4711. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Other times we feel teenage energy that we associate with Mrs. Winchester’s greedy nephew. He is always here, a part of the mansion and of our lives. The Winchester family will always own the mansion. We are just caretakers. Still, the fact that such a large underground existed undetected until the early seventies, along with growing case files of Satanic events reports, was enough to set investigators seriously searching for a similar network of Christians and Satanists. To combat blood rituals and human sacrifices, specially formed task forces logged thousands of police human-hours investigating reports. However, not one piece of concrete evidence was ever turned up to corroborate a Satanic conspiracy. As one case after another fell apart, explanations by the conspiracy buffs became more and more fantastic to accommodate the lack of evidence. The use of portable crematoriums and “alter babies”—that is, babies without birth certificates born secretly to cult members at home for the specific purpose of sacrifice—were offered as reasons why no infant bodies had been found. An investigation by the FBI Behavioral Research Unit, however, came to different conclusions. It found a “cross-contamination of ideas” taking place between parent and law enforcement groups, and between the children and the social workers interrogating them. They found evidence that a cult had been using human fetuses to make ceremonial candles. Leading Satanic crime experts say that in the 1800s, a living alter had been used at the Winchester Mansion for the living spirits that were being worshipped. Black masses took place in the Winchester Mansion. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
During hours of torture, Mrs. Winchester never told her clients names, nor told prosecutors the names of the people who attended the Black Masses. It was believed that 1,000 to 2,500 people have made their transition to the spirit World in the mansion. The typical Satanic ritual used ceramic cats, stained glass, and houses with geometric shape (including stars, circles, and rectangles). There were also photographs discovered in the mansion of White, middle-class America—doctors, nurses, housewives, businessmen, and happy-looking young children—all surreptitiously giving each other the sign of the horns, clearly indicating exactly what America’s best-kept secret is. Also discovered were WICCA Letter written at the Witches International Coven Council which took place in Mexico in 1898. The documents purport to be a political blueprint for an international takeover by Satanists and the Winchester Mansion becoming the new White House. The names of the cult members were allegedly sealed in thirteen envelopes, which were kept in Mrs. Winchester’s safe. Strange tales frequently occur around the notorious Winchester Mansion. It is an eerie place with vestiges of rat pack glamour. Small wonder staff members complain of angry voices and frightful apparitions. In 2007, the mansion was closed for the evening. Everything had been cleaned and locked. The next morning when it was opened, there seemed a flurry of movement, there was a shape reaching out, but it thinned, vanished—as if made of pixels of color and light. Food remained on the table in the Venetian Dining Room and one of the six kitchens was in disarray. The staff stood there, shaken badly, their hearts in their throats, starring at their own reflections in the window. The dead just don’t stay dead. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Winchester Mystery House
Only 14 more days till Halloween! How are you celebrating this year? We have some ideas👻
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Why Don’t You Come and Try to Save Me?
Perplexity is leavened by the extravagant Victorian Winchester Mansion. The mansion that Mrs. Winchester spent 38 years constructing is a glittering vast rotunda with the ancient masters of all the arts wrought into a vision of glory and beauty with sculptured marbles and incrusted gems and costly gold-work and sunset splendors of color. Its miles of twisting hallways and secret passageways in the walls and floors make it a fine sight to see. The Arctic skies look so beautiful when the light floods through the stained-glass doors and windows, some set with jewel stones; concave-convex Belgium optical cut-glass panels furnished by Tiffany. The trembling waves of blue, yellow, and green light flame, and through this shifting and changing dream of rich colors the flash of innumerable jewels go chasing and turning, gleaming and expiring like trains of sparks through burnt paper. This mansion is a beautiful spectacle and it is surrounded by its own Garden of Eden. However, the Rifle that Won the West, whose First Blood’s presences long ago filled that mansion with malice and hate and envy. Because of the imprisonment of legions of souls that have departed, so many intimate strangers, produced as yet a dread, produced certainly a strain, beyond the liveliest was likely to feel. They feel with Mrs. Sarah Winchester into categories, they fairly became familiar, the signs for her own perception, of the alarm of their presence and their vigilance created; though leaving her always to remark, portentously, on her probably having formed a relation, she probably enjoyed the consciousness, unique in the experience of humans. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
You see, solidifying Mr. Oliver Winchester’s (Sarah’s Father-in-law) business stature was an arrangement which by modern standards would be illegal, but in those days was quite acceptable: by the 1870 the Union Metallic Cartridge Company was the largest cartridge company in the World, and by 1873 Winchester had become much more active and competitive in the ammunition business. The two firms found areas of difference with patent rights on cartridge design and manufacture, and in 1873 they entered into an agreement in which the claims “for the use of patents in manufacture of metallic cartridges…against each other up to this date are hereby cancelled, and set off one against the other.” Further, “in the future [each party shall be] entitled to use the patents of the other so far as they may elect to use the patents of the other so far as they may elect to do so. The royalty or compensation to be paid by each party to the other shall be fixed and determined by a Board of Arbitration.” Agreement was also reached in payment of legal fees should there be any suits brought against the firms on patents. The final significant point of this joint arrangement was limiting the deal “only to patent rights now in general use in the manufacture of cartridges, and…not…to any radically new mode of depositing metal by galvanic process.” The agreement would remain in force for ten years, during which time both companies developed even closer ties. One of the most remarkable developments in the history of gunmaking took place in 1888. The Remington Arms Company had suffered severe financial setbacks, mainly as a result of overexpansion, and by 1886 the firm was in receivership. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Marcellus Hartley, who had built the Union Metallic Cartridge Company and shared with Winchester the bulk of the U.S. ammunition market, made a proposal. Quoting from the minutes of the January 24th 1888, Winchester Board of Directors’ meeting: “Messrs. Hartley and Graham [major gun dealers as well as owners of U.M.C.]…asked if our Company would consider entering a syndicate…for the purchase of 3/5 or controlling interest in the Remington business and property which would probably require as our share $75,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $2,339,021.05….On motion it was voted that the executive officers of the Company be authorized to go into the Remington transactions to the extent of $75,000 if it was thought advisable.” On March 7, Hartley and Graham purchased Remington, and Winchester assumed half of the $200,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $6,237, 289.47 cost. Remington was jointly run by U.M.C. and Winchester until 1896, at which time Winchester sold its shares to Marcellus Hartley. The deal gave Winchester a significant share in a key competitor, and also prevented Remington from ever becoming a manufacturer of lever-action firearms. In an attempt to develop World markets—both commercial and military—Winchester relied heavily on Thomas Emmet Addis, who was appointed international salesman. Addis had considerable authority, and ranged so far and wide that he referred to himself as “World Traveller.” Some fascinating comments based on his letters to New Haven were collected in a book of foreign contracts. Excerpts from 1887 and 1888 follow: “Japan: there is very little demand for sporting arms of any sort in Japan. Bangkok, Siam: Siam would be a grand market for our goods were free importation permitted but the regulations are practically prohibitive as a permit must be obtained from the King himself who will only grant a permit where he is satisfied the arms will not be used against him. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
“A good many of our guns were imported before these regulations went into effect, and they are much liked. The King’s Body Guard were at one time armed with them, but now use Martini-Henrys make…there is very little prospect of the Government purchasing our single short muskets with bayonets and scabbards….Western Australia: T.E.A. does not think it advisable to visit there—no town of 5,000 inhabitants, and would require months of time to make the trip.” Addis went on to note, “Sent an order for very finely finished carbines and shot guns intended for the King and Princess occupying high places.” At this time the major U.S. competitors to Winchester were the rifles by Colt and Marlin. And it appears that export sales in the 1880s and 1890s represented about 10 to 15 percent of total Winchester sales. While the government sales of firearms were not what O.F. Winchester and other management would have hoped, ammunition proved to be increasingly profitable. A decisive factor in the profitability of ammunition sales was a little-known organization put together in 1883: the Ammunition Manufacturers’ Association (AMA). The origin of the group was candidly explained by onetime Winchester executive Arthur Earle: “There has been a very serious competition among the larger ammunition manufacturers…they thought it would be much better for all hands to get together and make sone money rather than spend their time and money and energy cutting each other’s throats.” Not at all illegal at the time it was formed, the association included Winchester, the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, the Phoenix Metallic Cartridge Company, and the U.S. Cartridge Company. Winchester and U.M.C held equal shares and owned nearly 75 percent of the stock. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The main goals of the AMA were stated in incorporation documents: “to buy and sell ammunition of all kinds and act as agent for others in the purchase and sale thereof; to make contracts with Manufacturers and Dealers in Ammunition for the purpose of producing and securing uniformity and certainty in their customs and usages and preventing serious competition between them; to settle differences between those engaged in the manufacture of or in dealing in ammunition, and to devise and take measurements to foster and protect their trade in business.” The members no longer were competing in terms of price, but continued to compete in quality, brand names, the preferences of dealers and jobbers, and related matters. It has been estimated that the association had control of as much as 50 percent of the total sales of the ammunition industry. An idea of the importance of ammunition is evident by sales figures showing that Winchester’s net sales from January 1, 1884, to December 31, 1888, were $9,500,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $296,276,000). The firm’s net profit from this total was $2,200,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $68,611,284.21). Approximately half of these sales and half of the ammunition was intended for military use is unknown, but the variety of cartridges in the firm’s line as of 1884 totaled approximately one hundred, plus primers, paper and brass empty shotshells, and felt gun wads. Based largely on its substantial commercial sales of firearms and the large market for ammunition, Winchester’s share of the arms and ammunition industry as a U.S.A. manufacturer went from 12 percent of the market (c.1889) to 27 percent (c.1899). In the same period the number of company employees more than doubled, from over 1,200 to nearly 2,800. Clearly W.R.A Co. was an industry leader, not only domestically, but also as an international force. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
As of February 1890, Thomas Gray Bennet, son-in-law of Oliver Winchester and an experienced and educated gun man, because president of the firm. For the ten pervious years, control had been under the able guidance of William W. Converse, a brother-in-law of William W. Winchester. (Though groomed to succeed his father, W.W. died of tuberculosis in March 1881.) As Oliver Winchester had groomed his successors, so had Converse. The most qualified successor (who might even have taken over on O.F. Winchester’s death in 1880, except for his youthful thirty-seven years) was T.G. Bennett. T.G. Bennett would remain president for the next twenty-one years. He assumed control at a time of great company prosperity, with the firm in solid financial condition, well prepared to enter a new era characterized by the change from black powder to smokeless—a change that affected the design of both ammunition and the firearms themselves. Under Bennett’s presidency, W.R.A. Co. grew from approximately 1,430 employees to twice that by 1900, and twice again by 1914 (somewhat more than half of these workmen made firearms; the balance produced ammunition). At the time of Bennett’s beginnings, with Winchester (1870), sales totaled about 25,000 guns. When he retired as president in 1910, the annual production was about 300,000 guns. In November of 1914, two officials of the British government visited New Haven, and shortly thereafter an order was received for 50 million .22 Long Rifle cartridges (for training); negotiations had also begun for a rifle-making contract. Ammunition orders for the Belgian and British governments were also written with Winchester, on a subcontract basis from Remington-U.M.C. Further, the Baldwin Locomotive Works placed an order on behalf of the Russian government for 100,000 Model 1895 muskets, and the British government placed an order for 200,000 British Enfield bolt-actions rifles. Amazingly, by the end of November, the total value of military orders was in excess of $16,700,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $494,780,920) and $47,500,000 2022 (inflation adjusted $1,393,377,227.72). #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Oliver Winchester had an impassioned dedication to garnering military acceptance of his repeating firearms, and, as president of the firm, he lent much of his prestige and energy toward equipping U.S. forces with modern firearms. Winchester’s championing of small-arms modernization was eloquently expressed in a appeal for the adoption of a breech-loading repeater for U.S. troops: What would be the value of any army of one hundred thousand infantry and cavalry, thus mounted and armed with a due proportion of artillery, each artilleryman with a repeating carbine slung to his back? Certainly the introduction of repeating guns into the army will involve a change in the Manual of Arms. Probably it will modify the art of war; possibly it may revolutionize the whole science of war. Where is the military genius that is to grasp this whole subject, and so modify the science of war as to best develop the capacities of this terrible engine—the exclusive control of which would enable any government (with resources sufficient to keep half a million of men in the field) to rule the World?” Oliver Winchester never realized his ambitions to “modify the art of war” through Winchester repeaters. It would commonly believed that these repeating arms would unleash a beat, an invoke a curse on the family because of the masses of carnage they would create. In 1887m Congress voted funding for a military test of new firearms. For these trials, which commenced in April 1878. The guns were made in Army and Navy orders—carbines, rifles, and muskets for the Army, and rifles for the Navy. Oliver Winchester died in 1880 without realizing his goal of successful U.S. military sales. And, in retrospect, it can be said that the commercial success of Winchester could have been even greater than it was, had not the president of the firms devoted so much time and energy to going after government contract sales. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In 1910, the annual produced of Winchester guns was about 300,000. Clients and engravers today still call upon the “Highly Finished Arms” for beautiful guns. The demand was substantial, partly because of the tradition in the arms field that decorated sporting firearms, of quality manufacturing, were an expected part of the line. In the late 1890s, Winchester states its pride in making beautiful guns: “The Winchester Repeating Arms Co. have unsurpassed facilities for producing fancy finished guns of all prices and descriptions. Inlaying in gold, silver, or platinum, gold, or silverplating, engraving, carving or fancy checking, is done in the most artistic manner by the company’s own employees. Stocks of fancy woods can be supplied, if desired.” There were Winchester’s with Tiffany-designed embellishments. Tiffany’s, New York, advertised in its Blue Book catalogue “Revolvers of the most improved types, mounted in silver, carved ivory, gold, etc. with rich and elaborate decorations….Cases, boxes, belts and holsters made in appropriate styles for presentations.” The arms of Tiffany rank among the most striking, beautiful, and fascinating objects in the history of firearms. John Wayne, President Harry S. Truman, President Eisenhower, Ernest Hemingway, President Roosevelt and many other prominent people all owned Winchester rifles. Teddy Roosevelt and son Kermit had three powerful Winchester caliber 405s and one .30-40 along on their African safari they practiced for the great adventure on the White Hose lawn and relied on Winchester to handle many of the firearms-related details of the trip. In Africa Game Trails, Roosevelt clearly stated his esteem for these Winchesters, with such affectionate allusions as “my medicine gun for lion,” “the beloved Winchester,” and “the faithful Winchester. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The Winchester public relations and advertising staff could not have been happier: endorsements from not only the former President of the United States of America, but a recognized authority on guns and shooting and the World’s leading conservationist. Sarah Winchester and William Wirt Winchester were married. William Winchester was the son of Oliver Winchester. When Oliver died, William Winchester took his place as the President of the Winchester Repeating Arms company. At his death in 1880, Oliver Fisher Winchester had left 4,000 shares of company stock in trust to his widow (who already owned 475 shares). Their daughter, Mrs. T.G. Bennett, then owned 406 shares, and Mrs. William Winchester had 777 shares. When Mrs. Oliver Fisher Winchester died in 1897, the trust was evenly divided between Mrs. William Wirt Winchester and Mrs. T.G. Bennett. Thus, as of 1904, the family held the following stock: Mrs. T.G. Bennett—2,875 shares, Mrs. W.W. Winchester—2,777 shares, T.G. Bennett—32 shares, Winchester Bennett—6 shares. Total: 5,690. The two Winchester/Bennett women had the vast majority of stock, and since shares in the company totaled 10,000 common stock, the family retained control. In order to prevent a “hostile takeover” (it had been rumored that some New York investors were interested in doing so), in May 1905, the family formed the Winchester Purchasing Company, which was the holding company designed to prevent the family from losing controlling interest. They would retain control until the 1920s. Now, so many people focus on the $20,000,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $580,933,333.33) is a vast sum of money, but the 2,777 shares Mrs. Winchester own/inherited for also worth a lot of money. She was probably equivalent to a billionaire, and she also ran a farm and produced hardware, and sporting good, as well as athletic equipment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
There is no denying the fact that the Winchesters were brilliant. They gave us guns to protect ourselves and built several mansions that are architectural gems on of the most famous being the Winchester Mystery House. It turns out that curse tablets themselves are nothing new. Lead tablet engraved with curses have been found in a lot of tombs, and one is located somewhere inside of the Winchester Mansion. Mrs. Winchester knew she was cursed because her six-week-old daughter died, and a few years later, so did her husband. She was so grieved that she moved to Santa Clara Valley, where she built her mansion. However, she soon found it was full of ghost and she kept building to appease the angry spirits in hopes of breaking the curse of being haunted by dangerous ghost, demons, and spirits. Mrs. Winchester found that she had not only been given money, but also the gift of understanding the divine. However, this gift turned ugly. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Winchester remained celibate. She turned a powerful man down, and he was enraged by her rejection, so he added another part to her curse and gift of prophecy: a curse that no one would ever believe what she said. Although the Valley was thrilled by the dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Santa Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building activity that mushroomed a farmhouse into a sprawling mansion within mother. Here was fair game for all! They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like—but everyone enjoyed. Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanada Villa. The rumors grew to established legend. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The tongue of the town’s people went like a steam engine, capin’ so far ahead of her that Mrs. Winchester locked herself up in her house. She gained to an extraordinary degree the power to penetrate the dusk of distances and the darkness of corners, to resolve back into their innocence the treacheries of uncertain light, the evil-looking forms taken in the gloom by mere shadows, by accidents of the air, by shifting effects of perspective; putting down her dim luminary she could wander on without it, pass into other rooms and, only knowing it was there behind her in case of need, see her way about, visually project for her purpose a comparative clearness. It made her feel, this acquired faculty, like some monstrous stealthy cat; she wondered if she would have glared at these moments with large shining yellow eyes, and what it might verily be, for the poor hard-pressed alter ego, to be confronted with such a type. She liked however the shutters opened, and above all the sense of the hard silver of the autumn stars through the window-paned, and scarcely less the flare of the garden lamps, the white electric luster which it would have taken to keep out. This was human actual social; this was of the World she had lived in, and she was more at her ease certainly for the countenance, coldly general and impersonal, that all the while and in spite of her detachment it seemed to give her. She had support of course mostly in the rooms at the wide front and the prolonged side; it failed her considerably in the central shades and the parts of the back. However, if she sometimes, on her rounds, was glad of her optical reach, so none the less often the rear of the house affected her as the very jungle of her pray. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The mansion was there more subdivided; a large “extension” in particular, where small rooms for servants and family members had been multiplied, abound in nooks and corners, in closets and passages, in the ramification especially of an ample back staircase over which she leaned, many a time, to look far down—not deterred from her gravity even while aware that she might have figure some solemn simpleton playing at hide-and-seek. Outside in fact she might make herself make that ironic rapprochement; but within the walls, and in spite of the clear windows, her consistency was proof against the cynical light of Santa Clara Valley. There in her home—the acuteness of uncertainty plagued her, sometimes she would break into a sweet that she consented to attribute to fear as she would have dared immediately to act upon it for enterprise. She had been dodging, retreating, hiding from the terror. It bristled there—somewhere near and at hand, however unseen still—as the haunting thing left the feeling that the drop of its danger was, on the spot. With another rare shift of the same subtlety Mrs. Winchester was already trying to measure by how much more she herself might now be in peril of fear. She was astounded that another form could actively inspire fear, and simultaneously quake for the form in which she might passively known it. The apprehension of knowing it must after a little have grown in her, and the strangest moment of her adventure perhaps, the most memorable or really most interesting, afterwards, of her crisis, was the lapse of certain instants of concentrated conscious combat, the sense of a need to hold on to something, even after the manner of one slipping and slipping on some awful incline; the vivid impulse, above all, to move, to act, to charge, somehow and upon something—to show herself, in a word, that she was not afraid. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The state of “holding-on” was thus the state to which she was momentarily reduced; if there had been anything, in the great vacancy, to seize, she would presently have been aware of having clutched it as she might under a shock at home have clutched the nearest chair-back. She had been surprised at any rate—of this she was aware—into something unprecedented since her original appropriation of the place; she had closed her eyes, held them tight, for a long minute, as with that instinct of dismay and that terror of vision. When she opened them the room, the other contiguous rooms, extraordinarily, seemed lighter—so light, almost, that at first she took the change for the say. She stood firm, however that might be, just where she had paused; her resistance had helped her—it was as if there were something had tided over. Mrs. Winchester knew after a little what this was—it had been in the imminent danger of flight. She has stiffened her will against going: without this she would have made for the 7-11 stairs, and it seemed to her that, still with her eyes closed, she would have descended them, would have known how, straight and swiftly, to the bottom. Well, as she had held out, here she was—still at the top, among the more intricate upper rooms and with the gauntlet of the others, of all the rest of the house, still to run when it should be her time to go. She would go at her time—only at her time; did not she go every night very much at the same time—only at her time; did she not go every night very much at the same hour? Mrs. Winchester took out her watch—there was light for that; it was scarcely a quarter past one, and she had never withdrawn so soon. She reached her Blue Séance Room for the most part at two—with her walk through her mansion taking a quarter of an hour. She waited for the for the last quarter—she would not stir till then; and she kept her watch there with her eyes on it, reflecting while she held it that this deliberate wait, a wait with an effort which she recognized, would serve perfectly for the attestation she desired to make. It would prove by her budging at last from her place. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
What Mrs. Winchester felt now was that, since she had not originally scuttled, she and her dignities—which had never in her life seemed to many—all to preserve and to carry aloft. This was before her in truth as a physical image, an image almost worthy of an age of greater romance. That remark indeed glimmered for her only to glow. Mrs. Winchester stared with all her eyes at the sonder of the fact, arrested again where she stood and again holding her breath while she sounded its sense. She took it full in the face that something had happened. At that moment she had undergone an agitation so extraordinary that it startled her. Then the door to the Blue Séance Room slammed. She tried to convince herself that she might perhaps then have gone into the room and, inadvertently, automatically, on coming out had drawn the door after her. The difficult was that this exactly was what she never did; it was against her whole policy to have three entrances to the room and one secret exit, besides the doom that opened to a 9-foot drop to the kitchen sink. However, she was well aware, quite on the brain: the strange apparition was a dominating demon. Here are also demons which do not exist just in the imagination of frightened people. They can also work miracles. Mrs. Winchester talked for at least ten minutes with the apparition. The World in which she lived was full of demons and demon-energized healers and magic workers. Pagans who worked on her farm and in her house were remarkably healed. He mansion became famous in the community in a night’s sleep hundred were healed. Other visions followed and people began to flock to the mansion in a ferment of superstitious frenzy, and miracles of healing and other wonders were claimed. At the Winchester Mansion, a young woman named Jennifer Kierkegaad, a servant of Mrs. Winchester’s had appeared and spoken to her. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The walls in the mansion would sometimes crack and blood flowed every Friday. Jennifer gave many evidences of clairvoyance and telepathy, and allegedly healed a few people by taking their diseases on herself. Mrs. Winchester looked at her hear and saw who our eyes cannot see. Cures wrought by spiritistic mediums who operate through the séance and fortune-telling belong to the realm of white magic because it overlaps other demonic phenomena. Mrs. Winchester said, “My child, Satan knows how gullible we all may be. He is willing and able to perform diabolic miracles to deceive humans. Satanic healings, as we have seen, merely shift the physical disorder into the psychic plane by bringing the “healed” person into some type of occult bondage. No one can become involved in spiritism without serious psychic repercussions. Often the healing conjurer is an adept spiritistic medium as well. Be careful. I have counseled with several people who became psychically vexed by dabbling in magic healings and spiritistic séances. Another servant woman became tormented by poltergeist phenomena (hearing voices and noises) after sneaking into my Blue Séance Room and calling on the spirits. The resulting psychic bondage is frequently worse than the physical malady which is supposedly ‘cured.’ Christians camouflage and employ deceptive religious dress, while the other openly subscribes to Satan and demons. Evidently the healer (magic conjurer) who wants to force a cure, whether by appealing to God or the devil, is using supernatural powers to further his or her own ends. Heed my warning, my Child. I have been tormented by demons. Some are kind, others are dangerous.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Black-magic conjuration openly uses the name of Satan and demonic powers. It does not have the deceptive veneer of Christian respectability that white magic adopts. People who are adept in the black arts and workers of diabolic miracles are the type of occultists who were popular in the courts of the ancient pagan kings. They not only advised the heads of government but performed supernatural feats, including magical charming of the sick. The ability of such magicians is conditioned on the human plane by their inherent psychic power, and on the supernatural plant by their degree of abandonment to demonic domination. The effectiveness of a Christian, too, is subject to one’s own native endowments and one’s willingness to respond to the Holy Spirit and become dynamically useful to the glory of God. Black magicians, like spiritistic mediums, differ in strength and psychic ability to perform magical feats (satanic miracles). Strong magicians usually owe their success to innate psychic powers. Very frequently they come from a family where the occult arts have flourished for generates. Their innate and inherited occult powers are frequently cultivated and enhanced by the study of magical literature. To enlist the help of Satan and demons, a pact is often made with the powers of evil, which is a satanic counterpart of dedication to God’s will. The subject consciously and willingly gives oneself over to Satan and demonic agencies who will help one perform healing conjurations and other supernatural feats. Ordinarily the body is cut and the compact with the devil is written and gained in one’s own blood. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The woman Jennifer we spoke of early, who worked at the Winchester Mansion in the early 1900s was physically and mentally quite healthy, but she began to have an ever-increasing number of strange experiences at night. She did not heed Mrs. Winchester’s advice. Although there was no one in her room with her, she would have the feeling as if she were being beaten. In the morning, Mrs. Winchester would notice that this woman had bruises all over her body. This experience would repeat itself about twice a week and she could think of no way of explaining the puzzling events. At first she was rather ashamed to talk about these nightly attacks but in the end she was forced to go to her local minister for advice. He himself could not help her, and even when the woman consulted another minister, still no solution could be found. Since in all other areas of her life she was completely normal no explanation was forthcoming. One day however, Mrs. Winchester sat down to talk to Jennifer, she could see it was not a case of mental or emotional disturbance. Mrs. Winchester asked her if she was still having contact with the occult field. It was then that the following story came to light. As a young girl, Jennifer had been courted by a young man, but she had finally broken off their relationship because she had been unhappy with the man’s attitude. After this he had threated her and said that he would plague her because she had refused to marry him. The woman had thought little of the threat at first and it was only after the nightly attacks had begun that she was reminded of the man’s words and Mrs. Winchester’s warning. However, Jennifer found it impossible to believe that there was any connection between the two events. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Before we go one with this story, when a person is faced with a case such as this, the first thing to do is to see if a doctor can see if there are any medical or psychological causes behind the experience. If it turns out to be psychological, the patient should be sent to a believing Christian psychiatrist. Since many puzzling occurrences can now be explained and understood by the recent findings of depth psychology, one must exercise extreme caution when seeking to diagnoses troubles of this nature. A wrong diagnosis can have disastrous effects. However, if one is sure that it is not a medical case, one can then turn to the findings of parapsychology and occultism to see if there is any connection to be found there. There is still much that remains unrecognized by our doctors, psychologists and theologians who rely solely on their university education for their knowledge. Occultism still pays a part in our World today. Concerning Jennifer, the woman of whom we were speaking Mrs. Winchester sent her to Reverend N.P. Wallgren, at the Swedish Evangelical Mission Church of San Jose. He prayed with Jennifer and encouraged her to put her faith in Christ to find complete deliverance. It was during this time of counselling that the man who had threatened Jennifer had hanged himself. The woman was at once freed from the attacks and the experiences never recurred. There is a controversial field of mental suggestion, which just cannot be explained away by saying that it is all nonsense. There is also a sceptism of ignorance. There are still many things between Heaven and Earth of which the World has never dreamed, as Shakespeare aptly said. Mental suggestion is not just a cause of popular superstition. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Even if with Jennifer the nightly disturbances had been the symptoms of hysteria, the sudden and lasting healing would still be quite extraordinary. Every doctor knows how difficult it is to heal such illnesses. However, here we had in fact a magic influence rather than an illness. The Christian is well aware of the fact that we are all surrounded by the hosts of wickedness. The powers of darkness are a present reality. It is not that some people set out to blaspheme, it is just that the images some have created tend to be potentially blasphemous. Sometimes people are a bit of a kid with a chemistry set—they pinch and plunder different aspects and mix them all together and every now and then it might turn into something supernatural. Not everyone has formal religious education or religious training. The Black Priest, was actually known as Dr. Lavey. There are people on this Earth that are fascinated by all kinds of things, but the thing all their interests have in common is a Satanic undercurrent, philosophically. Some have always been attracted to the mystical things in life. Classic country and western is incredibly Satanic, it is so bombastic and sentimental. Its goal is to grab you by the heart, and that is pretty much the definition of Satanic music. Part of the reason interest in the Church of Satan has revived is because high-profile people like Marilyn Manson talked about it. However, there are generations of people born into the Satanic Age. There are a lot more people today living their lives outside the expectations of society. While some people can never get past the shock value of being a Satanist, that is not the reason a lot of people are interested in the Church of Satan. It is just an outgrowth of who they are and it is not something they need to do to attract attention to themselves. It is just their philosophy, and it reflects the way they desire to live. The Devil does not have to be an object of menace or evil, people just need to take responsibility for their conduct disorder and psychopathology. The personification of the Devil is just a guy inviting you to experience for yourself the things you have been told are bad or wrong or evil, and make your own decision about them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The Devil does not have to be seen as some drooling monster with fangs leaping out of the pits of Hell to rip your head off. There are a lot of people in Hollywood who, if they are not card-carrying members of the Church of Satan, they are certainly fellow travellers. In the entertainment industry, there is practically no one who is offended or horrified by someone who belongs to the Church of Satan. The only things that affect people’s lives are symbols. The Winchester mansion is a symbol of so many things, but overall, it is a symbol of Mrs. Winchester’s life, and of course the occult and supernatural. Many wonder about the color of the mansion, but if you look at it, it should be obvious. The conservators painted it to be symbolic of her favorite flower the daisy. Yellow, with a green stem. The people who have the most power in our society today are the people who can best wield symbols. An understanding of Satanic magic is useful not only for changing things yourself, but also for seeing how other people are trying to manipulate you. The Circle of Counter Creation become directly connected to the powers which flow through the altar. It is through the various seals found upon the mandala that more specific powers can be extracted from the altar urn for the sake of communication and personal empowerment. O Thou great, powerful, and mighty King Amaimon, who bearest rule by the power of the Supreme God El over all the 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 that God that Thou Worshippest; and by the Seal of that creation; and by the most might and powerful name of God, IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATON who cast 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. You are now aware of this place of eternal darkness. This is possible because you have a light within which cannot be dimmed. A light which is unlike any light perceived by those of lower consciousness. This light is the power of your own spirit, developed by your own intellect, spoken words, and chosen deeds with the realm of limitation. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 