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Legend of The Winchester Mystery House
It is well-know that my mansion is haunted. In all of the valley, not one person of unbiased mind entertains a doubt of it. I was sitting in the chair. It seemed I had been asleep forever, but I had not been sleeping at all. The day was sunny and cool. The grass greening all the expanse in its front seemed to grow with a natural and joyous exuberance, and the flowers blossomed in a lovely fashion. Full of charming lights and shadows and populous with pleasant-voiced birds, the well-manicured evergreen trees no longer struggled to run away, but bent reverently beneath their blessings of sun and song. Even the stained-glass windows were an expression of peace and contentment, due to the light within. Over the fruit orchards, the visible heat danced with a lively tremor incompatible with the gravity which is an attribute of the supernatural. Ghosts bridge the past to the present; they speak across the seemingly insurmountable barriers of death and time, connecting us to what was lost. They often give us hope for a life beyond death and because of this help us to cope with loss and grief. Their presence is the promise that we do not have to say goodbye to our loved ones right away and that what was left undone in one’s life might yet be finished. However, Llanada Villa was horribly haunted. A haunted house is a memory palace come to life—a physical space that retains memories that might otherwise be forgotten. Many ghost sighting and other mysterious incidents revolve around the stair cast to the ceiling. Many of my guest have confided that they get dizzy, have trouble breathing, and feel a pressing need to leave the house. Death lingers in the air. The walls are shrouds, enfolding every space in exquisite darkness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
While sitting in the parlor, enjoying a cup of tea, a bone chilling, piercing hold took hold of me. Suddenly rain fell steadily, splashing on the ground beneath the window and lying in pools upon the sodden grass. Except for an occasional glimpse of bare branches gliding through the mist, there was nothing to be seen beyond the window, but grey, swirling vapour; I looked up more than once from the pages of John Bunyan’s narrative and felt the hair rise on the back of my neck before the warmth of the fire brought me back to The Pilgrim’s Progress. Every now and then the Heavens were torn asunder by vivid lightning. The blackness of the storm had become merged in darkness of the night, and the weird sounds of a wolf echoed around the estate. There was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it gave me a turn and made me feel quite faint. Halloween was the night, according to the belief of millions of people, when the devil was abroad, graves were opened, and the dead came forth and walked. When evil things of Earth and air and water held revel. The floor shook as though thousands of horses thundered across it. A flash of forked lightning lit up the whole expanse of the Heavens. I heard a mingling of dreadful sound, and the air seemed reverberant with the howling of wolves. The last sight that I remembered was a vague, white, moving mass, as all of the souls killed by the Winchester Rifle sent out the phantoms, and that they were closing in on me through a white cloudiness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Gradually there came a sort of vague beginning of consciousness, then a sense of weariness that was dreadful. For a time I remembered nothing, but solely my sense returned. My feet seemed absolutely racked with pain, yet I could not move them. They seemed to be numbed. There was an icy feeling down my spine. It was a nightmare—a physical nightmare, if one may use such an expression—for some heavy weight on my chest made it difficult for me to breathe. This period of semi-lethargy seemed to remain a long time, and as it faded away I must have slept or swooned. Then came a sort of loathing, like the first stage of sea-sickness, and a while desire to be free from something—I knew not what. A vast stillness enveloped me, as though all the World were asleep or dead. For another spell of time, I was powerless. Lights and shadows moved in the mansion. There were dark whispers. I was white as a sheet and shaking so that I could hardly stand. The agony clawed at my innermost soul. Dazed and frightened, this is a deathly place; I have never felt so cold. Shadows darted along the walls. Coals glowed in the fireplace nearby. Though the fire had been burning for hours, it made little impression upon the deathly chill of the gallery. My footsteps reverberated as I there were a dozen people pacing in the gallery. The floor creaked. I was not aware of any draught, yet every so often the flames would sway in unison, as if someone had passed along the floor below. The heat of the fire was diminishing perceptibly. Every sound—the creak of a chair, the crackling of the coals—seemed an intrusion upon the deathly stillness of the gallery. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
The light strengthened and changed, darkening from yellow to orange to a fiery blood-red glow. As it did so, I became aware of a low, vibrant humming, like the sound of bees swarming; I could not tell where it was coming from. A voice said, “Do not move, upon your lives.” Dazzling white light filled the gallery, followed by an instant later by a thunderclap that shook the whole house and left me blinded and deafened, with diamond patterns of the leadlighting etched upon my vision. As the after-image faced I realized that all of the candles had gone out; beyond the faint glow of the fire at my side, the darkness was absolute. Then came the sound of hurrying feet from the library. A shaft of light spilled across the floor; the connecting door flew open. The lights all went out and I was plunged into impenetrable darkness. A misty pillar of light hovered for a moment in the void and then opened, with a movement like the unfurling of wings, into a shimmering figure that detached itself from the chandelier—now dimly visible in the glow—and glided toward me. It had no face, no form, only a veil of light floating over emptiness. I could not move, could not breathe. I heard the sound of the library door opening, and footsteps approaching. The apparition shimmered to a halt. “Will you speak to me?” I cried. “I may…not stay”—the voice, though faint and indistinct said “but will you not shake hands…” growing fainter with each word—“for friendship’s sake?” The footsteps came closer; the dim outline of a man passed between me and the apparition. Light swirled; a glowing armed appeared, but there was no hand, only an empty sleeve, and when I tried to grasp the arm, my own hand passed straight through it! #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
With a cry of despair, I flung both arms around the apparition. For an instant, man and spirit were united; then darkness engulfed them, and I knew no more. When I came to my sense, the coals were crackling in a grate nearby. I was lying, I realized, where I had fallen on the gallery floor, but with a cushion beneath my head. I have had a terrible dream, I thought, turning my head away from the glare. “Mrs. Winchester,” Elizabeth the housemaid said, “I am truly sorry. I should have never left you alone, but I was scared.” “I do not understand,” I said to Elizabeth. “Did you mesmerize me? Did I dream the lightening?” “No, Mrs. Winchester,” she replied. “Everything happened exactly as your perceived.” Lights were burning along the walls, but the floor I where I was laying was still in near darkness. I took Elizabeth’s arm and rose unsteadily to my feet. I straightened my hair and brushed the dust from my cloak. “You feasted on my soul and cast a spell over me!,” I said. The moon rose high. I was very weak, and my heart was beating so slowly that I was almost like a woman fainting. Slowly I turned my head, but Elizabeth was not there. Fear seized me suddenly, a fear unspeakable and unknown. The hour dragged themselves through the twilight and darkness and moonrise. But in the chilly dawn, I lay as one half dead upon my bed. Then came the fear, the awful nameless, panic, the mortal horror that guards the confines of the World we see not, neither know of as we know of other things, but which we feel when its icy chill freezes our bones and stirs our hair with the touch of a ghostly hand. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Some houses are more haunted than others. If you account the sheer number of sightings at The Winchester Mystery House, it is one of the busiest places in the World! The phantoms sometimes look like normal, living, breathing human beings. However, then some of these specters abruptly evaporate, without leaving a trace. Sometimes it is hard to believe in ghost even when you have seen them with your own eyes. But at The Winchester Mystery House, spirits come calling down those miles of twisting hallways, and after a visit, there will never be a such thing as a simple tour of a Victorian Mansion. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Consciousness is the Creature of Rhythm
My immediate environment had undergone a radical and significant change. Slowly I looked up. There was someone reflected in the mirror—a lone figure, it seemed. With a start I looked over my shoulder. No one there. And then back again to the dim and shadowy glass. A man was gazing out from the immaterial realm beyond it, and as I studied him, the alchemy in my blood flowed with great vigor and my senses sharped, his image grew brighter and clearer, until he was vividly and undeniably a young man of pale complexion and dark brown eyes, staring angrily and malevolently and unmistakably down at me. At last, the image reached its fullest potency. And it was so brilliant, dreamy and romatic. It seemed a mortal man had hidden himself in a chamber behind the mirror, and having removed the glass was peering at me from the empty frame. Never in all my years at Llanada Villa had I seen an apparition so exquisitely realized. The man appeared to be perhaps thirty years of age; his skin was deliberately flawless, yet carefully coloured, with a blush to the cheeks and a faint paling beneath the eyes. His attire was very aristocratic, a blue crushed velvet suit, with an upturned white collar and rich silk tie. His hair was wavy, and ever so slightly unkempt, as if he had only just run his fingers through it. The mouth was very delicate and youthful. The blue eyes glittered like diamonds. His left forearm appeared to rest in his lap; he moved his pieces with right hand, which seemed disproportionately long. I had shrunk back and now stood a little to one side of the doorway and in shadow. Something forbade me either to enter or retire, a feeling—I know not how it came—that I was in the presence of an imminent tragedy. With a scarcely conscious rebellion against the indelicacy of the act I remained. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
The wind had now gone down, but I heard, at lessening intervals and progressively louder, the rumble and roll of thunder. In the pauses between I now became conscious of a low humming or buzzing which, like thunder, grew momentarily louder and more distinct. However, before I had time for much conjecture as to its nature my attention was taken by the strange motions of the apparition itself. It shook like a man with palsy or an ague chill, and the motion augmented every moment until the entire figure was in violent agitation. Suddenly something shot from the frame across the table and chair. The hands of this horrible thing closed upon the butler’s throat, his own clutch its wrists. Then the table was overturned, the candle thrown to the floor and was extinguished, and all was black dark. However, the noise of the struggle was dreadfully distinct, and most terrible of all were the raucous, squawking sounds made by the strangled man’s efforts to breathe. I sprang to the rescue of the butler, but had hardly taken a stride in the darkness when the whole room blazed with a blinding white light that burned into my brain and heart and memory a vivid picture of the combatants on the floor, Daughtry underneath, his throat still in the clutch of those iron hands, his head forced backward, his eyes protruding, his mouth wide open and his tongue thrust out; and—horrible contrast!—upon the painted face of his assassin an expression of tranquil and profound thought, as in the solution of a problem in chess! This I observed, then all was blackness and silence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Three days later I recovered consciousness in my bedroom. As the memory of that tragic night slowly evolved in my ailing brain I recognized in my attendant my niece Daisy. Responding to a look she approached, smiling. “Tell me about it,” I managed to say, faintly—“all about it.” “Certainly,” she said; “you were carried unconscious from the dining room.” “And Daughtry?” “Buried yesterday—what was left of him.” Apparently this reticent apparition could materialize on occasion. My perceptions would never be the same and I knew that dread would always follow me now, would be with me like some brake medical condition newly and devastatingly diagnosed. I did not dwell on it. I had to push it all away from me. I had to think practically. I had to do that to preserve my sanity. And my practical problems, right now, were considerable. I had Daisy draw me a bath. I took my clothes off and walked into the cool, clear water. I crouched in the tub and felt the water flowing over my skin and hair. And when I emerged from the tub, cleansed, I felt the temptation extended by the warm Earth and wild flower smell of the bright day to believe that what had happened had been only some dark turmoil of the mind. It was much easier to consider it all no more than a lurid dream. And I might have surrendered to that temptation, if the floor all about, in the Grand Ballroom has not revealed signs of a struggle. As tears came to my eyes, I thought of howe Daisy and I used to sing duets sometimes. Her voice, so sweet, so true, so dear. But now there was a rubble where the piano ought to have been. Strange forebodings came into my mind. I was angry with myself for giving way to melancholy thoughts. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
Eight o’clock Sunday afternoon, I questioned Daisy about the French maid and those other two servants who had died within three years. “They were poor, feeble creatures,” Daisy told me. “They were too much, and they were lazy. They died of luxury and idleness. Aunt Sarah, you were much too kind to them. They had nothing to do; and so they took to fancy things; fancying the air didn’t suit them, that they could not sleep. How have you been sleeping?” “I sleep well enough,” I replied “but I have had a strange dream several times since that incident.” “Ah, aunt Sarah, you had better not begin to think about dreams, or you will be like your servants. They were dreamers—and they dreamt themselves into the cemetery.” The dream troubled me a little, not because it was a ghastly or frightening dream, but on account of sensations which I had never felt before in sleep—a whirring of wheels that went around in my brain, a great noise like a whirlwind, but rhythmical like the ricking of a gigantic clock: and then in the midst of this uproar as of winds and waves I seemed to sink into a gulf of unconsciousness, out of sleep info far deeper sleep—total extinction. And then, after that black interval, there had come sounds of voices, and then again the whirr of wheels, louder and louder—and again the black—and then I awoke, feeling languid and oppressed. I told Dr. Wayland of my dream one day, on the only occasion when I wanted his professional advice. I had suffered rather severely from the mosquitoes before Christmas—and had been almost frightened at finding a wound upon my arm which I could only attribute to the venomous sting of one of these torturers. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
Dr. Wayland put on his glasses, and scrutinized the angry mark on my slender, white arm, with my sleeve rolled up. “Yes, that’s rather more than a joke,” he said; “he has caught you on the top of a vein. What a vampire! However, there’s no harm done, Mrs. Winchester, nothing that a little dressing of mine won’t heal. You must always show me any bite of this nature. It might be dangerous if neglected. These creature feed on poison and disseminate it.” “And to think that such tiny creature can bite like this,” I said; “my arm looks as if it had been cut by a knife.” “If I were to show you a mosquito’s sting under my microscope you wouldn’t be surprised at that,” replied Dr. Wayland. I had to put up with the mosquito bites, even when they came on the top of a vein, and produced that ugly wound. The wound recurred now and then at longish intervals, and I found Dr. Wayland’s dressing a speedy cure. If he were the quack his enemies called him, he had at least a light hand and a delicate touch in performing this small operation. However, I was not as strong as when I used to trudge to San Francisco to buy half a pound of tea. Indeed, and indeed, I am not ill. I am only a little tired. As I gazed out the window, I watched the haze that crept down the vastness of the valley, nearer and nearer, and noted how the wind grew in strength moment by moment. Far away on the left I saw a line of dark bulks—wild hogs perhaps, galloping down my estate. There was an uneasiness of the horses. And then I saw first one and then a second great white ball, a great shining white ball like a gigantic head of thistledown, that drove before the wind athwart path. These balls soared high in the air, and dropped and rose again and caught for a moment, and hurried on and passed, but at the sight of them the restlessness of the horses increased. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
The squealing grew louder. Athwart the path a huge boar rushed, as I starred into the thickening haze that was coming upon Llanada Villa. But now a big globe came drifting past within a score of yards of my mansion. It was really not an even sphere at all, but a vast, soft, ragged, filmy thing, a sheet gathered by the corners, an aerial jellyfish, as it were, but rolling over and over as it advanced, and trailing long, cobwebby threads and streamers that floated in its wake. I stepped out onto the balcony, the air was full of it. An advancing multitude of floating masses. They came on before the wind with a sort of smooth swiftness, rising and falling noiselessly, sinking to Earth, rebounding high, soaring—all with a perfect unanimity, with a still, deliberate assurance. The pioneers of this strange army passed. At one that rolled along the ground, breaking shapelessly and trailing out reluctantly into long grappling ribbons and band. A long and clinging thread fell across one of the horses, a gray streamer dropped about his mane, some big, active thing with many legs ran down the back of its head. The horse snorted, and whined, shaking its head from side to side, as one of those gray masses anchored as it were above him by these things and flapping out ends as a sail flaps when a boat comes about—but noiselessly. The clouds were full of big spiders. The farmers grabbed their Winchesters and shot at them. I starred down at red things that had exploded. Around my estate, it was like a fog bank torn to rags. The horses ran in a dozen places trying to escape, but they could not escape the cobweb masses. The tentacles of gray masses had entangled themselves on the roofs, and slowly sank to cover the gardens. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
There were great spiders upon my home, and all over the land. Gun fire rung out like the battle of Gettysburg. It went on for hours and hours until the estate was covered in red silk. The body of these spired were the size of a man’s head. I fell into deep thought. And I thought about all the dangers I had been through. “Spiders,” I said over and over again. “Spiders! Well, well, I must spin a web of my own.” A quarter to twelve had sounded, and I had begun to doze, when I was awakened by the sound of a key turning in a lock. Though my window was in shadow, it was bright moonlight outside. I opened my door a little and saw the housemaid Clara wrapped in what appeared to be a dark cloak, pass the entrance to the corridor in the direction of the landing, shielding the flame of her candle was her hand. Her expression made me wonder if she was walking in her sleep. The lights along the passage had been extinguished, and so I was able to follow her as far as the landing without risk of being seen. Clara snuffed her candle and continued on, all the way to the gallery, where she passed through the open doors and out of sight. I remained where I was, about forty paces away, looking over the black pit of the stairwell. Faint sounds, as of someone moving about in stockinged feet, came from the gallery. The shuffling ceases; I held my breath, straining to make out another, even fainter sound; a muffled creaking of hinges, as of a door being slowly and stealthily opened. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
The scream that followed seemed to explode inside of my head; a prolonged shriek of terror and repulsion that roe to an intolerable pitch, reverberating up and down the stairwell in a cacophony of echoes. For several seconds I stood paralyzed, until the sounds of opening doors and hurrying feet brought me to my senses. I was the first to enter the gallery. I found Clara sprawled on the floor between the round table and the suit of armour, stone dead, her eyes open and her features contorted in an expression of the utmost horror. Two maids ran in as I was kneeling beside the body, followed a few moments later by the butler Alan and some of the other servants. Mr. Hansen had gone out for a stroll in the moonlight; he heard the scream from two hundred yards away, and came running back to the house. He, therefore, did not arrive at the gallery for some minutes after myself. Clara’s body was then carried to the basement, where Dr. Wayland made the examination. He found no trace of injury; on every indicated, she had died of heart failure induced by shock. However, what had caused her shock? A search of the gallery and library revealed nothing untoward; the movements of everyone in the mansion had been accounted for. Dr. Wayland waited until first light before dispatching a messenger to the telegraph office, and the household retired for a few hours’ uneasy sleep. At around nine thirty the next morning, Alan returned from the telegraph office with the news that he could not find a doctor willing to attend; at had said, upon hearing that a physician was already at the mansion, that he could perfectly well sign the certificate himself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Dr. Wayland, therefore, despite considerable misgivings, certified the immediate cause as heart failure brought on by shock, with advanced heart disease as a contributing cause. It was quite possible, as I had observed, that Clara had indeed been walking in her sleep, and that the fatal spasm had been precipitated by the shock of finding herself in the gallery. An undertaker and his men arrived a few hours later to collect the body and conveyed it directly to a distinguished pathologist for examination. I decided to close up that portion of the mansion. Dozens of servants were huddled there, the women were crying, then men doing what they could to calm them. Everyone soaked and shivering and quite at a loss. The lights flicked on for a second, a violent slash of lighting signaled their final failure. When an upstairs window suddenly burst in a shower of glittering shards, panic broke out once more. Thunder rolled over the rooftops, and the lightning laid bare the whole garden hideously in an instant, with its balustrades and towering camellias, and spired webs draped over so many skeletal black iron chairs. Everything was helplessly thrashing in the wind. And as I rushed towards the door, I glimpsed a man standing motionless and stiff, as it were, in a great cluster of evergreen trees. As I drew closer, I glanced to the right, and into the man’s face. It was the spirit, visible to me once more, though for what reason under God I had no idea. My heart raced dangerously, and I felt a momentary dizziness and tightening in my temples as if the circulation of my blood were being choked off. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
He presented the same figure he had before; I saw the unmistakable glint of brown hair and brown eyes, and dim unremarkable clothing save for its primness and a certain vagueness about the whole. Yet the raindrops glistened as they struck his shoulders and his lapels. They glistened in his hair. However, it was the face of the being which held me enthralled. It was monstrously transfigured by anguish, and his cheeks were wet with soundless crying as he looked into my eyes. “Oh heaven, speak if you can,” I cried. And as frustrated as I was by all I had seen, I lunged at him, seeking to grab hold of him by the shoulders and make him answer if I could. He vanished. Only this time I felt him vanish. I felt the warmth and the sudden movement in the air. It was as if something had been sucked away, and the evergreen trees swayed violently. However, then the wind and the rain were knocking them about. And suddenly I did not know what I had seen, or what I had felt. My heart was skipping dangerously. I felt another wave of dizziness. Nothing I had ever seen had affected me so strangely as this unfamiliar and unaccountable phenomenon, yet I am able to recall my fear. Mr. Hansen thought it would be a good idea to remove a few of the trees. He snatched an axe an exclaimed, “I care not whether it be a tree of beloved goddess herself, it should come down.” So he lifted the axe, and the Monkey pine seemed to shudder and utter a groan. When the first blow fell upon the trunk, blood flowed from the wound. All the bystanders were horror-struck and one of them ventured to remonstrate and hold back the fatal axe. From that moment on, everyone knew my estate was certainly beautiful, surely bizarre, and very much alive. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Perhaps by some fortuitous circumstances, many have witnessed some playful and fearful maneuvers of another form of intelligence that shares our planet at The Winchester Mystery House. Many psychical researchers suggest that the orbs, those darting globs of light seen at the scene of so many hauntings in the mansion, are the paraphysical vehicles by which spirits move about between their dimension of being and ours. Elicit paranormal activity and contact with ghosts and souls that physically trapped in The Winchester Mansion is a common occurrence. While hearing a ghostly voice talk back to you in a haunted place may be terrifying, if a supernatural experience is what you are seeking, come swing by for a spell. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
A Wealthy Widow—a Spiritualist
The night was stormy. The California winter was on, and the incessant rain plashed in the deserted streets, or, lifted by irregular gusts was hurled against the house with incredible fury. Several trees were moaning and groaning in the torment of the tempest, and they appeared to be trying to escape from their loving environment and take the chance of finding a better one. A touch of colour flared in the sky. A voice barely audible whispered, “You can have anything in this World you want.” The staircase was dimly lighted by a single gas-jet at the top of the second flight. I managed to reach the landing without disaster and entered by an open door into the turret of the witches cap. The rain was still falling in torrents. Tomorrow night are planning to summon a spirit. It takes a good deal more courage to try it during a storm. But that is how science advances. And if we succeed—if there is genuinely something in this business of the portal—then my dreams will become a reality. The air of the great hall was deathly cold, as always. I turned the corner of the house. I saw the black cable, the rusty stain like blood running down the wall behind it. Tears sprang to my eyes. I had a vision—saw an apparition—which foretold of death of someone in my mansion, though not who, where, when or how this person would die. The visitations are a curse, an affliction; it was my longing to be rid of them. Something has attracted my attention; something dark, moving in the shadow of the hall. A door creaked behind me. There came a fateful night. I had retired early and fallen into such sleep as was still possible to me. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
In the middle of the night something—some malign power bent upon the wrecking of my peace forever—caused me to open my eyes and sit up, wide awake and listening intently for I knew not what. Then I thought I heard a faint tapping on the wall—the mere ghost of the familiar signal. In a few moments it repeated: one, two, three—no louder than before, but addressing a sense alter and strained to receive it. I was about to reply when the Adversary of Peace again intervened in my affairs. Its baleful influence spread like a faint and poisonous fog across the room. This pervasive feeling of unease was its lasting legacy. I rose from my bed and went to unlock and opened the door. The handle shifted when I tried to turn it, but the door did not budge even a fraction in its frame. I blinked, incredulous. However, when I opened by eyes, the key was still there. The door was on balanced hinges. It opened inwards with a sigh as soon as the key released the lock. The hallway was larger than it was before just hours ago, the tower bigger. The windows were also much bigger. And they were set at a curious height. They were set about nine feet from the floor, and so impossible for anyone to look through. There was the drifting insinuation of music. Stride organ and a cracked voice played under the heavy needle of an antique gramophone. My heart began to beat faster in my chest. I could feel the hairs on my neck stiffen with fear. I was very frightened. I was truly afraid. The hardwood floors were dusty, as if the housemaids had been on vacation. Beethoven’s Fur Elise drifted up from below. There was very little light. It was almost fully dark. And then something moved in the mirror. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
At the very edge of my vision, I just caught sight of a shape in the glass and stood and turned around to see what had been reflected. However, there was nothing there. I was at the center of the room. I turned back and lifted my eyes slowly to the mirror again. The heavy atmosphere of death lay over me, like flowers beside a coffin. They were behind me. There were three of them, three men in top hats and long black coats with silk mufflers draped around their necks. One of them wore a monocle. They were smiling at me and I could see that they were dead. The one at the center had a gold incisor that looked black in the absence of light. I closed my eyes to make the apparition go away. I opened my eyes again and saw that they were a step closer to me now. The ghost with the gold tooth was almost close enough to reach out and touch me. They seemed to be finding something funny, looking at me. Each wore an empty grin, mirth cavorting in their empty eyes, their dead expressions. I feld. I fell down the zig-zag stairs. And started running with a reckless panic, when I heard a scream from above so pained and tormented that it forced me into a questioning pause. There was silence. It was absolute. “Mrs. Winchester?” My leg was bleeding. I had gashed my knee falling down the stairs. I could feel the blood trickling down my shin into my sock, seeping into my shoe. “Mrs. Winchester?” I swallowed. It was a woman’s voice. I knew whose voice it was. “You must be brave now and try to help me, Mrs. Winchester.” Her voice was velvety. As if reading the thought, she cleared her throat. “Please wait for me.” I heard the staccato clack of high heels on wood as she stated to descend the stairs from above me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The footsteps sounded terribly loud. As they got closer, I heard wood splinter and groan under their impact. And I began to think whatever was coming down the stairs was certainly bearing its considerable weight on two legs. However, the thing climbing down to me was not on heels, it dawned on me, with horror. It was coming down on hooves. It screamed again, in anger and frustration, as I feld a second time. And now I did not pause or hesitate. I ran for my life, followed by whatever it was I had awoken and unwittingly antagonized. I could hear its bulk behind me as it marauded through my mansion and burst through doors in pursuit. I smelled its foul breath when it bellowed, closing, in my wake. I ran and ran through doorways, but when it opened the door that opened to a wall looking for me, it screamed with bestial fury and windows exploded from their pains. It did not follow. In the basement, as I lay bleeding and prone, I thought I heard it finally slouching to the basement. “Dear Heavens,” I said, my head in my hands. I thought from the pain I was in that I had broken a rib against the stairs. My hands were pretty badly cut and my injured knee was swelling. I had been very lucky. And I started to sob into my hands. And it was a long time before I was able to stop, as the terror and self-pity competed in me for ascendancy. When I came to, it was daylight and I saw I had slept in a foetal crouch on the basement floor. I was in shock. My body was hurt but my mind felt violated. I tried not to think about what had happened. I tried not to speculate on the state I would be in now if I had awoken in darkness and not bright morning sunshine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
I shed many tears, and spent many a melancholy hour on the balcony with yearning eyes look westward. I was sitting in my favourite spot, an angle at the eastern end of the balcony, a quiet little nook sheltered by orange trees, when I heard a couple of servants talking in the garden below. They were sitting on a bench against the wall of the house. I had no idea of listening to their talk, until the sound of my name attracted me, and then I listed without any thought of wrong-doing. They were talking no secrets—just casually discussing me. They were a housemaid and a butler I only knew by sight. A well-to-do spinster, and an Englishman who had wintered abroad for half his lifetime. “I have been working for Mrs. Winchester for the last ten years,” said the lady; “but have never found out her real age.” “I put her down at a hundred—not a year less,” replied the Englishman. “Her reminiscences all go back to the Mayflower. She was evidently then in her zenith; and I have heard her say things that showed she was in Parisian society when the First Empire was at its best.” “She doesn’t talk much now.” “No; there’s not much life left in her since the lost of her baby and husband. She is wise in keeping herself secluded. I only wonder that wicked old quack, Dr. Wayland, didn’t finish her off years ago.” “I should think it must be the other way, and that he keeps her alive.” “My Dear Miss Steiger, do you think foreign quackery ever kept anybody alive?” “Well, there she is—and she never goes anywhere without him. He certainly has an unpleasant countenance.” “Unpleasant,” echoed the man, “I don’t believe the foul fiend himself can beat him in ugliness. I pity Mrs. Winchester.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
“But Mrs. Winchester is very good to her companions.” “No doubt. She is very free with her cash; the other servant called her good Mrs. Winchester. She is a beautiful old woman, but she looks so young, and know she’ll never be able to get through her money, and doesn’t relish the idea of other people enjoying it when she is in her coffin. People who live to be as old as she is become slavishly attached to life. I daresay she’s generous to those poor girls—but she can’t make them happy. They die in her service.” “Don’t say that Mr. Wolstenholme; I know that one poor girl died at Llanada Villa last spring.” “Yes, and another poor girl died here three years ago. I was here at the time. They girl had ever comfort. The old woman was very liberal to her—but she died. I tell you, Mrs. Steiger, it is not good for any young woman to live with two such horrors and Mrs. Winchester and The Winchester Mansion.” They talked of other things—but I hardly heard them over the noise of construction. I sat motionless, and a cold wind seemed to come down upon me from the mountains and to creep up to me, till I shivered as I sat there in the sunshine, in the shelter of the orange trees in the midst of all that beauty and brightness. Yes, they were uncanny, certainly, the pair of them—she so like an aristocratic witch in her withered old age; and he of no particular age, with a face that was more like a waxen mask than any human countenance I had ever seen. What did it matter? Old age is venerable, and worthy of all reverence; and I had been very kind to her. Dr. Wayland was a harmless, inoffensive physician, who seldom looked up from the book he was reading. He had his private sitting-room, where he made experiments in chemistry and natural science—perhaps in alchemy. What could it matter to me? He had already been polite to me, in his far-off way. I could not be more happily placed than I was—in this palatial mansion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The Winchester Mystery House is massive, the towers and gables gaunt in relief against the blue sky. Acres of yellow wood are sculpted and contorted into steep symmetric descents above wrought iron gates. Many people do not expect it to be so huge. It the way its atmosphere extends outward, like a shadow, thickly cast. It is high, the house, five storeys from the front door, at the stop of flights of mahogany steps, to the attic rooms that so contort the roof to accommodate their windows. And there are several witches caps. From the street people have to crane their necks to take in its height and panorama. There are many windows and various types of glass in them. One can see the panes glowing faintly orange in the setting brightness of the sun. The staircases are mysterious and grand. Their spread, their dimension, suggests something truly opulent. There are many doors on every floor.
And in the evening, darkness steals out of the corners of the building and encroaches at a steady creep across the interior of the mansion. There are many doors, and tourist can see apparitions behind every one of them, if they allow their imagination into their rein. On the third landing, guests often hear music. It is sudden and undeniable and it withers them in terror with its loud proximity. One can hear the chords shake the wood on the very organ frame as its keys hammer against discordant strings. Many can identify the very room the sound is coming from. However, sometimes when they walk along the landing and open the door to it, there is only plaster and shadows. And silence of course. The silence of The Winchester Mystery House does not hold. Like a living threat, the silence of The Winchester Mystery House impends. The place is haunted. Many tour guides do not like to descend the staircase at night. They do not want to be there at night at all.
In 2009, on this night in particular, after closing, a tour guide was startled to hear shouting coming from the Grand Ballroom. He went to see what was going on. When he walked into the room, he started trembling and was very pale. When security guards asked him what had happened, he could only stammer the words “The Man! The Man!” Confused, because the room was empty, the guards reviewed the surveillance footage. A pale figure can be seen opened the door where the safe is located and is very upset to see it open and empty and starts shouting about gold, silver and diamonds. He can be seen walking across the room and confronting the tour guide, as he walks right through him and disappears. The tour guide said he would never enter that part of mansion on his own after his frightening experience. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Coming Soon!
I actually really heard this song “Give Me Tonight,” by Shannon for the first time. It is from the album Let the Music Play, which was released in 1984. The genres are Rhythm and Blues, Dance and Electronic. The Producers are Mark Liggett and Chris Barbosa, under the music label Mirage/Atco/Atlantic Records. The song is haunting, slightly morbid, very romantic and will make you want to play it more than once. It tells a very tragic story of a woman walking through the park at night and hearing the echo a lady trying to break up with her spouse, as he begs for one more night, and if it does not work out that he will just got get her. But he promises her that she will want to stay. This is fascinating because it could be several things. It could have been the echo of a murder, the classic scenario, “If I can’t have you, no one else can.” Or the reconciliation of a tumultuous relationship, or something else. But it certainly has a supernatural mysterious vibe.
However, whatever happened, the woman who hears this echo is haunted by the same spirit or apparition, and finds herself telling her spouse the same thing, as he begs for one more chance. It reminds me of a tragic situation, where a ghost possesses this other woman to replay the situation over and over again. Like a death echo. Many people wonder what Aaliayh is talking about on her single, “We Need a Resolution,” but the ballet could possibly be a follow up to “Give Me Tonight,” by Shannon.
Here are the lyrics to “Give Me Tonight,” by Shannon. “Walking sadly through the park. I hear crying in the darkness and though I act like I cannot hear, the situation is very clear. A girl who’s trying to tell her guy the time has come that they say goodbye. And his answer tears my heart apart. ‘Give me tonight. Baby if you don’t want to say, girl, I’ll just go get you. You’ll see I’m right. You won’t get to get away. Love ain’t gonna let you.’ Walking with you through the park. Now it’s my voice in the darkness. Just like a girl trying to tell her guy, I’m telling you we must say goodbye. I can’t believe when I hear once more, the words that were said before, comes from deep within your broken heart. Your voice echoes in the dark, your voice echoes in the dark. I give you one more night. I’ll give you one more night. His voice echoes in the darkness. ‘Give me tonight. Baby is you don’t want to stay, girl, I’ll just go get you. You’ll see I’m right. You won’t get to go away, love ain’t gonna let you.’”
And then the follow up by Aaliyah called “We Need a Resolution,” starts off with an eerie duet, “I’m tried of arguing, girl. I’m tried, I’m tried, I’m tired of arguing, girl.” Aaliyah replies, “Did you sleep on the wrong side? I’m catching a bad vibe and it’s contagious, what’s the latest? Speak your heart, don’t bite your tongue. Don’t get it twisted, don’t misuse. What’s your problem? Let’s resolve it. We can solve it, what’s the causes? It’s official, you got issues. I got issues (no, you got issues) but I know I miss you. Am I supposed to change? Are you supposed to change. Who should be hurt? Who should be blamed? Who should be hurt? Will we remain? Oh, ah. We need a resolution, we have so much confusion. I wanna know, where were you last night? I fell asleep on the couch, I thought we were going out. I wanna know, were your fingers broken? If you had let me know, I wouldn’t have put on my clothes. I wanna know, where’d you go instead? It was four in the morning, when you crept back in the bed, I wanna know, what was in your head?”
As you watch the two videos for these songs, you will see they are dark, very artistic and one foreshadows a tragedy, and both of the videos play on the myth of Adam and Eve. A few months later after “We Need a Resolution,” by Aaliyah is released, she dies in a play crash. Like she predicted her own death. Of course, this is all just purely coincidental, but in the days before her death, Aaliyah spoke of having a feeling of something dark haunting her and then being on another plane of existence. Her last film, “Queen of the Damned” released in 2002 is a horrible movie about a tragic relationship, which ends in Akasha’s (played by Aaliyah) death.
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Friends Gathered to Have Séances in Secrecy Together
A warming, clear night had been followed by a morning of drenching fog. At about the middle of the afternoon of the preceding day a little whiff of light vapour—a mere thickening of the atmosphere, the ghost of a cloud—had been observed clinging to the Observational Tower. It was so thin, so diaphanous, so like a fancy made visible, that one would have said: “look quickly! in a moment it will be gone.” Spirits could move anywhere, over long distances, with the speed of light for spirits are free and powerful over there, perhaps. Strolling amongst the trees, under the branches of an enormous pine tree lay the dead body of a man. The body lay upon its back, the legs wide apart. One arm was thrust upward, the other outward; but the latter was bent acutely, and the had was near the throat. Both hands were tightly clenched. The whole attitude was that of desperate but ineffectual resistance to—what? Nearby lay a shotgun and a game bag through the meshes of which was seen the plumage of shot birds. All about were evidences of a furious struggle; a great pile of pine fronds were pushed into heaps and ridges on both sides of the legs by the action of other feet than theirs; alongside the hips were unmistakable impressions of human knees. The nature of the struggle was made clear by a glace at the dead man’s throat and face. While breast and hands were white, those were purple—almost black. The shoulders lay upon a low mound, and the head was turned back at an angle otherwise impossible, the expanded eyes staring blankly backward in a direction opposite to that of the feet. From the froth filling the open mouth the tongue protruded, black and swollen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The throat showed horrible contusions; not mere finger marks, but bruises and lacerations wrought by two strong hands that must have buried themselves in the yielding flesh, maintaining their terrible grasp until long after death. Breast, throat, face, were wet: the clothing was saturated: drops of water condensed from the fog, studded the hair and mustache. Poor child, he had a round deal. A heavy rain started—it was almost a cyclone—and I had to rush inside. As I listened to the wind moaning from the outside, I heard first the scratch, scratch, scratch of some limb, no doubt, against the wall—sounding, or so it seemed in my feverish unrest, like someone penning an indictment against me with a worn, rusty pen. And then, the storm growing worse, and in a fit of irritation and self-contempt at my own nervousness, I had gone to the window, but just as lightning struck a branch of the tree nearest the window and so very near me, too—as though someone, something, was seeking to strike me, and as though I had been lured by that scratching. God! I had retreated, feeling that it was meant for me. However, that big, bloody hand painted on the ceiling was huge, knotted, rough, the fingers extended as if tense and like a pen—an old, long-handled pen—to match that scratch, scratch, scratch. Enthralled by some mysterious spell, I stood in the light gloom of the bedeviled room. “Agnus,” I had inquired of the housemaid in the morning to bring me fresh water and open the shutters, “what does that look like to you up there—that crimson patch on the ceiling?” #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
I wanted to reassure myself as to the character of the thing I saw—that it might not be a creation of my own imagination. “Mrs. Winchester,” she said, “it look like a bi blood soaked hand. I think you are being followed about by vile, evil spirits and those spirits’ only have one purposes or desire in this World. Horrible!” “In all my life, I have seen just one evil spirit, Agnus. Think of that. It was following a certain man all the time, at his left elbow—a dark, evil, red-eyed thing, until finally that man had been killed in a quarrel.” “Mrs. Winchester, if you want this ole place to hang together, you best get some repairing done mighty quick now. I have never seen that before,” cried Agnus. There a came to us out of a fog—the sound of a laugh, a low, deliberate, soulless laugh, which had no more joy than that of a hyena night-prowling in the desert; a laugh that rose by slow gradation, louder, and louder, clearer, and more distinct, and more terrible, until it seemed to be in the room with us; a laugh so unnatural, so unhuman, so devilish, that it filled the mansion with a sense of dread unspeakable! We did not move. That sound had grown out of silence, so now it died away; from a culminating shout which had seemed almost in our ears, it drew itself away into the distance, until its failing notes, joyless and mechanical to the last, sank to silence at a measureless remove. This was some sort of clairaudience. Hearing what cannot be heard with material ears, or ghosts. I got up and let. However, in my room upstairs I meditated on it, standing before my mirror. Suddenly—would I ever forget it—as I was taking off my mink coat, I heard a queer tap, tap, tap, right on my dressing table or under it. This was the sound ghost make when table-rapping in answer to a call, or to give warning of their presence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Then something said to me, almost as clearly as if I heard it: This is me, Chief Little Fawn, come back at last to get you! The body was just an excuse to let you know I was coming, and that blood dripping handprint, it was mine! I will be with you from now on. Don’t think I will ever leave you! It had frightened and made me half sick, so wrought up was I. For the first time I felt cold shills run up and down my spine—the creeps. I felt as if someone were standing over me—Chief Little Fawn, of course—only I could not see or hear a thing, just that faint tap at first, growing louder a little later, and quite angry when I tried to ignore it. How about that for a coincidence, picking up the magazine with that disturbing article about psychic materialization in Italy, and later in Berne, Switzerland, where the scientists were gathered to investigate that sort of thing? And just when I was trying to rid myself finally of the notion that any such thing could be. A thing as big as a washtub at first, something like smoke or a shadow in a black room moving about over the bed and everywhere. Then, as I lay there, gazing spellbound, it condensed slowly, and I began to feel it. It was now a hand of normal size—there was no doubt of it in the World—going over me softly, without force, as a ghostly hand must, having no real physical strength, but all the time with a strange, electric, secretive something about it, as if it were not quite sure of itself, and not quite sure that it was really there. I had taken to sleeping with the lights on, only tying a handkerchief over my eyes to keep out some of the glare. Even then I could see them—queer, misshapen things, for all the World like wavy, stringy jellyfish or coils of thick, yellowish black smoke, moving about, changing in form at times, yet always looking dirty or vile, somehow, and with those queer, dim, reddish or greenish glows for eyes. It was sickening! #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
My fellow friends gathered to have séances in secrecy together. They were passionate with need to see The Winchester Mansion for themselves, to explore rooms with their own hands and feet and eyes, to solve its mysteries, to wallow in its atmosphere, to raise its reluctant ghosts. It started off as luminous hands glowing slightly, and now has manifested into this terror. “I’ll choke you yet!” The words seemed to float from somewhere in an angry, savage tone. “You can’t escape! You may think you’ll die a natural death, but you won’t and that’s why I’m poisoning your food to weaken you. You can’t escape! I’ll get you, sick or well, when you can’t help yourself, when you’re sleeping. I’ll choke you. Build trap doors, endless hallways, and mazes, but I’m not alone. I’ve nearly had you many a time already, only you have managed to wriggle out so far, jumping up, but some day you won’t be able to—see? Then—” The voice seemed to die away at times, even in the middle of a sentence, but at other times—often, often—I could hear it completing the full thought. Sometimes I would turn to the thing and say, “Oh, go to the devil!” or “Let me alone!” even in a closed room and all alone, such remarks seemed strange to me, addressed to a ghost; but I could not resist at times, annoyed as I was. Only I took good care not to talk if anyone was about. Rain was falling, and the darkness was intense. I had shrunk back and now stood a little to one side of the doorway and in shadow. I concealed myself in the dark dressing-room that opened up to the chamber, in which a candle was burning. I aw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, across the floor. For a few moments I had stood petrified. I cannot describe to you all that passed on that horrible night. The whole house was up and stirring. The specter was gone. It this solitude, upon my mysterious case—in this haunted spot, I comprehended the reason of the extraordinary precautions taken for my safety during sleep. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
On Halloween night 1989, a frightened and astonished tour guide saw three entities change shape, glow in the dark, and materialize and dematerialize right in front of her. Some researchers have theorized that such spirit entities might be angels. Although angels are frequently called spirits, it is often implied in the Christian Bibles that they can possess corporeal bodies when seen on Earth. Even though angels throughout history have often been mistaken for ordinary humans when judged by their appearance alone, those individuals who have confronted them have often felt the physical effects of the beings’ other-Worldly powers. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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An Artifact from Another Level of Being
The silence closed in. Something was building in Llanada Villa. Something was happening in the very air itself. Something changed in the golden glow of a late autumn afternoon. And as I heard the music, a long stab of terror drove through my heart. I assented to the window. As I looked out, I saw a handsome old-fashioned carriage, with a troop of couriers and footmen. I saw the slim figure of the pale gentleman in black, as he held a thick velvet cloak. He looked about him at the others as he went on, his voice ringing clear in the silence. “Never such a place as this has existed before. A place where demons have been invented by aggrieved souls. I wondered if Mrs. Winchester was perhaps a member of the Freemasons, or some other secret society. Maybe she holds some exalted rank.” I felt a great shudder pass through me at these words. However, there had been a conviction in those appalling words. Secret societies were very fashionable just then. Secret societies and psychiatry were the contrasting en vogue activities of the moment. I folded my arms and leaned against the frame of the door, obscuring for the moment the light behind me. I had an urge to venture outside, to walk in silence amongst the trees. However, the fruit orchard was dark enough even in daylight; by moonlight it would be all too easy to imagine terrors—as I keep imagining I can hear soft footsteps moving across the floor above my head. But when I sit on the sofa to listen, I hear only the beating of my heart. I walked for hours examining the trees and the splendid fruit that would be harvested. Before long, I was overtaken by night while still in the fruit orchard. Utterly bewildered and overcome with fatigue, I had lain down near the root of a large plumb tree and fallen into a dreamless sleep. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
It was hours later, in the very middle of the night, that one of God’s mysterious messengers, gliding ahead pronounced the awakening word in my ear. Waking from a deep sleep at night in the midst of what seemed like a forest, front among the tree on either side I caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strong tongue which I partly understood. They seemed to me fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy against my body and soul. It was now long after nightfall, yet the interminable fruit orchard through which I journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lamination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old well met my eye with a crimson gleam. I stooped and plunged my hand into it. It stained by fingers; it was blood! Blood, I then observed, was about me everywhere. The fallen fruit showed blots and splashes of blood. The girds of the orchards were pitted and spattered as with red rain. Defiling the trunks of the trees were broad maculations of crimson, and blood dripped like dew from their foliage. All this I observed with a terror which seemed not incompatible with the fulfillment of a natural expectation. It seemed to me that it was all in expiation of some crime. So frightful was the situation—the mysterious light burned with so silent and awful a menace; the noxious plants, the trees that by common consent are invested with a melancholy or baleful character, so openly in my sight conspired against my peace; from overhead and all about came so audible and startling whispers and the sighs of creatures so obviously not of Earth—that I could endure no longer, and with a great effort to break some malign spell that bound my faculties to silence and inaction, I screamed with the full strength of my lungs! #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
My voice was broken, it seemed, into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, went babbling and stammering away into the distant reaches of the orchard, died into silence, and all was as before. Despair succeeded hope. Gratitude gave place to curse. As I preceded down the path, sobbing quietly to myself, in the misery of fear, the stern light of the Observational Tower became a tiny speck, yellower but scarcely bigger than some of the stars, which here and there shone between the clouds. Nearly twenty minutes passed, and my fatigue began to change to exhaustion. The overpowering sense of the inevitable pressed upon me. With the weariness came a strange comfort. On, and on I went through the thicket of trees. I knew of my probable presence in the spirit World. The moon, then in her third quarter, pushed out from behind the concealing clouds and shed a pale, soft glitter upon my mansion. My last appeal had been heard. I made it home. About half an hour after getting home, I still felt energized but I began to feel a sensation around my forehead as I have many times since. I suddenly felt weak. I went in and sat at the foot of my bed and passed out. I have never been given to fainting or passing-out spells, but I did not fall asleep—I passed out cold. When I woke up, I had no concept of time. When I woke up, a low, wild peal of laughter broke out at a measuresless distance away, and growing even louder, seemed approaching ever nearer; a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous laugh, like that of loon; a laugh which culminated an unearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that uttered it had withing over the verge of the World whence it had come. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Sitting here in my temple of a house, I felt trapped and compromised, and even terrified. I got a feeling that the presence was still nearby and had not moved. A strange sensation began slowly to take possession of my body and my mind. I could not say which, if any, of my sense were affected; I felt it rather as a consciousness—a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence—some supernatural malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about me, and superior to them in power. I knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching me; from what direction I did not know—dated not conjecture. All my former fears were forgotten and merged in the gigantic terror that now held me in thrall. Powers were traversing my haunted mansion. My senses were heightened as I found myself starting into the sharply dawn face and blank, dead eyes of my own mother, standing white and silent in the garments of the grave! The apparition confronting me—the thing so like, yet so unlike my mother—was horrible! It stirred no lover nor longing in my heart; it came unattended with pleasant memories of a golden past—inspired no sentiment of any kind; all the finer emotions were swallowed up in fear. I turned to turn and run from before it, but my legs were as lead; I was unable to life my feet from the floor. My arms hung helpless at my sides; of my eyes only I retained controlled, and these I dared not remove from the lusterless orbs of the apparition, which I knew was not a soul without a body, but that most dreadful of all existences infesting my haunted mansion—a body without a soul! #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
In its blank state was neither love, nor pity, nor intelligence—nothing to which to address an appeal for mercy. For a time, which seemed so long that the World grew gray with age and sin, and the haunted forest, having fulfilled its purpose in this monstrous culmination of its terrors, vanished out of my consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding me with a mindless malevolence of wild brute; then thrust its hand forward and sprang upon me with appalling ferocity! The act released my physical energies without an unfettering my will; my mind was still spellbound, but my powerful body was and agile limbs, endowed with a blind, insensate life of their own, resisted stoutly and well. For an instant I seemed to see this unnatural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator. Despite my struggles—despite my strength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, I felt the cold fingers close upon my throat. Brorne backward to the floor, I saw above me the dead and drawn face within a hands breadth of my own. Its eyes were shallow to the point of blankness, and then all was black. Until I awoke, the passage outside my room had been pitch dark. Now the gasoliers illuminated the hall, but the glass was so blackened that they yielded only a dim, murky light. The air was stale and close. Expecting at every turn to find a housemaid awaiting me with a smile, I made my way through the gloom to the landing. The double doors to the gallery stood open. Along each wall, a row of wavering light receded. Transom windows shone with a faint cold light; higher still, the ceiling was shrouded in darkness. Some twenty feet away from me, candles burned upon a small round table, lighting of the face of the pale man and Mrs. Haas. “Ah, there you are, my dear,” said he, just as if he had last seen my five minutes—rather than several days—ago. I moved reluctantly to join them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Mrs. Haas, resplendent in crimson silk and displaying a large expanse of white bosom, greeted me with disdain. Behind them, the wall at the far end of my gallery was dominated by the immense fireplace, and the armour towering in the shadows beside it. The sword glittered beneath its gloved hand; in the shifting light it seemed alert, alive, watchful. Within the fireplace was a massive chest of dark metal. “Dr. Cottam was about to tell us,” said Mrs. Haas impatiently, “of a discovery he had made amongst your late husband’s papers.” He spoke as if I had kept them waiting. “Indeed I was.” His tone was as cordial as ever, but with an edge of anticipation. His teeth caught the light as he smiled; the pupils of his eyes shone like twin flames. “Now, in going through his study the other day, I found a page of notes you must have missed after relocating from New Haven—scrawled in haste, and sometimes quite impenetrable—which had slipped behind a row of books.” On the table was a crumpled sheet of paper. “I shall not weary you with the tale of my efforts to decipher this. He believed that if he were inside the armour when lighting struck, he would pass unharmed into the next World, jut as the risen body, according to Scripture, will ascend to Heaven upon the day of judgement.” “Oh dear Heavens,” cried Mrs. Haas. “Mrs. Winchester, I have been dying for a grand tour of your estate. My companion Dr. Cottam is rather a bore with such foolish tales of science fiction!” “There is a theory, you know, that the basis of spirit may be electrical. For spirits to communicate with the living,” expressed Dr. Cottam, the man with the very pale face. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
“Dr. Cottom, I have begun to wonder whether your obsession with William Winchester is not, perhaps, quite as mad as I assumed,” explained Mrs. Haas, “but I do wish to get on with this tour. Mrs. Winchester has already delayed us several hours after he invitation, and I am growing quit weary.” “Well, Mrs. Haas, as I do recall, Gods are often said to wield lightening; and whilst this represents primitive awe at the power of nature, it may also shroud a genuine intuition. The same applies to the spiritualist practice of linking hands around a table. Ghosts and spirits are generally depicted as emanations of light; one thinks of St. Elmo’s fire or the very rare phenomenon of ball lightning…a far fetched analogy, you may say, but just as a magnetic field will cause a heap of iron filings to arrange themselves into a complex pattern, so the soul, the vital principle—call it what you will—animates the Earthly body. Might it not be that the vital principle is electrical, perhaps in some subtler form that science has not yet grasped?” said Dr. Cottam. “Dr. Cottam, while your theories are very fascinating, I fear Mrs. Haas is growing impatient and I should like to give her a tour now,” I explained. I liked Mrs. Haas more and more every minute. Her gossip, without being ill-natured, was extremely diverting to me, who had been so long out of the great World. I thought what life she would give to my sometimes-lonely evenings at home. There was a ball going on in the Grand Ballroom, this house seemed to run itself sometimes, which would not be over until the morning sun had almost reached the horizon. It pleased the Grand Duke to dance till then, so loyal people could not go away, or think of bed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
We had just got through a crowded parlor, when Dr. Cottam asked me what had become of Mrs. Haas. I though she had been by his side, and he fancied she was by mine. The fact was, we had lost her. All my efforts to find her were in vain. I feared that she had mistaken, in the confusion of the momentary separation from us, other people for her new friends, and had, possibly, pursued and lost them in the extensive grounds which were thrown open to us. Morning broke. It was clear daylight before I gave up my search. It was not till near two o’clock next day that we heard anything of Mrs. Haas. At about that time a servant knocked at my door, to say that he had been earnestly requested by a young, who appeared to be in great distress, to make out where she could find Mrs. Winchester and Dr. Cottam. There could be no doubt, notwithstanding the slight inaccuracy that my friend had turned up. I had a housemaid go to the guest room and summon Dr. Cottam. I went down to the parlor and reunited with Mrs. Haas. She told me a story to account for having failed to recover us for so long. Very late, she said, she made a detour and wandered around, not before long becoming afraid and getting lost. She got into the Crystal Bedroom in despair of finding us, and had then fallen into a deep sleep which, long as it was, had hardly sufficed to recruit her strength after the fatigues of the ball. It the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of far more urgent kind presented itself. My dear friend began to lose her looks and health, and that in manner so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
People, since as long ago as the 1800s, have reported a vast array of unexplained events, experiences, and sightings at what is now known as The Winchester Mystery House. Over the years, people have reported bone-chilling sightings ghosts, angels, demons, fairies, giants, orbs, lights, mist, vampires, witches, warlocks and werewolves. In 2007, a man was attending Santa Clara University, and he was lucky enough to get hired as a tour guide at The Winchester Mystery House. He had no sooner moved into his apartment and had the telephone installed when he received a call warning him never to return to Sacramento again. During a later call, a woman with a high-pitched voice informed “G” that he was being kept under surveillance by a group who felt that he had acted unjustly in the past by not returning things to their proper owners. G emphasized that he had led a very quiet life as an undergraduate.
Yet he probably received 30 or more telephone calls from anonymous voices advising him not to return to Sacramento. The voices reprimanded him for having taken something that did not belong to him. G said that he did not carry anything with him that was from Sacramento and did not often visit the beautiful city, and he seldom discussed his life with any but a few of his closet acquaintances. He wondered who could have possibly taken such a long-term interest in him? About the third year after working at The Winchester Mystery House, a guest unknown to him stopped to say hello. G knew that such an act was hardly unusual, since guests will often do this to find out interest facts about tour guides and secrets about Sarah L. Winchester’s mansion. However, he noticed the boy was strangely inquisitive. G was astonished when the teenager drew a design on a piece of paper that he had seen somewhere in the mansion. He smiled at G, then asked if he knew what the symbol meant.
When G pressed the boy, in turn for some answers, the guest threw away the design, laughed, and said that he was just fooling around, that he did not mean anything about it. G never saw the alleged guest again. He descried him to a could of tour guides, but no one was able to identify him. After several years of watching at The Winchester Mystery House, G graduated from University. He had not been in possession of his diploma for more than four days when someone rang his apartment and scolded him for taking things that did not belong to him. The voice told G that he should always leave things where they were. He reported to his supervisors that he kept receiving mysterious calls. On one occasion the voice told G that he has discovered a strange key to other dimensions, but the entities had long since reclaimed it. However, apparently, some spirit masqueraders were determined that he should never forget the day he came into contact with an artifact from another level of being. What is The Winchester Mystery House?
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What Do You Intend to Do with Me?
There came to me the blessed knowledge that every living soul was the subject of this celebration, of this infinite and ceaseless chorus, that every soul was loved as I was loved, know now as I was known. Not a single word was lost in the great mansion of love that surrounded me, this vast night was as bright as day. The grounds were thrown open, the trees hung with coloured lamps. There was such a display of fireworks as Paris itself had never witnessed. And such music—music, you know, is my weakness—such ravishing music! The finest instrumental band, perhaps in the World, and the finest singers who could be collected from all the great operas in Europe. As you wandered through the fantastically illuminated ground of Llanada Villa, the moon-lighted mansion throwing a rosy light from its long rows of windows, you would suddenly hear these ravishing voices stealing from the silence of the fruit orchard, or rising from upon the farmland. I felt myself, as I looked and listened, carried back into the romance and poetry of my early youth. When the firework were ended, and the ball beginning, we returned to the Grand Ballroom which was thrown open to the dancers. A masked ball, you know, is a beautiful sight; but so brilliant a spectacle of the kind I never saw before. It was a very aristocratic assembly. My dear niece Daisy was looking quite beautiful. She wore no mask. Her excitement and delight added an unspeakable charm to her features, always lovely. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
An old friend called me by name, opened a conversation with me, which piqued my curiosity a good deal. She referred to many scenes where she had met me—at Court, and at distinguished houses. She alluded to little incidents which I had long ceased to think of, but which, I found, had only lain in abeyance in my memory, for they instantly started into life at her touch. I became more and more curious to ascertain who she was, every moment. She parried my attempts to discover very adroitly and pleasantly. The knowledge she showed of many passages in my life seemed to me all but unaccountable; an she appeared to take a not unnatural pleasure in foiling my curiosity, and seeing me flounder, in my eager perplexity, from one conjecture to another. She was very witty and lively when she pleased, and after a time . In the meantime, availing myself of the license of a masquerade, I put not a few questions to the lady. “You have puzzled me utterly,” I said, laughing. “Is that not enough? will you, now, consent to stand on equal terms, and do me the kindness to remove your mask?” “Can any request be more unreasonable? And how do you know that a sight of my face would help you?” she said. “I should take chance for that,” I answered. “Mrs. Winchester, you have no mask to remove. You can offer me nothing in exchange.” “My petition is to your pity, to remove it,” I replied. “And mind to yours, to let it stay where it is,” she said. “Well, then, at least you will tell me whether you are French or German; you speak both languages so perfectly.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
“I don’t think I shall tell you that, Mrs. Winchester; you intend a surprise, and are meditating the particular point of attack.” “At all events, you will not deny this,” I said, “that being honoured by your permission to converse, I ought to know how to address you, Shall I say Mrs. Bertha Haas?” She laughed, and she would no doubt, have met with another evasion—if, indeed, I can treat any occurrence in an interview every circumstance of which was pre-arranged, as I now believe, with the profoundest cunning, as liable to be modified by accident. “As to that,” she began; but she was interrupted, almost as the opened her lips, by a gentleman, dressed in black, who looked particularly elegant and distinguished, with this drawback, that his face was the most deadly pale I ever saw, except in death. He was in no masquerade—in the plain evening dress of a gentleman; and he said, without a smile, but with a courtly and unusually low bow:–“Will Mrs. Haas permit me to say a very few words which may interest her?” The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in token of silence; she then said to me, “Keep my place for me, Mrs. Winchester; I shall return when I have said a few words.” And with this injunction, playfully given, she walked a little aside with the gentleman in black, and walked for some minutes, apparently very earnestly. They then walked away slowly together in the crowd, and I lost them for some minutes. A few moments she returned, accompanied by the pale man in black, who said: “Mrs. Winchester, please forgive me, but Mrs. Haas’s carriage is at the door.” They left in a hurry. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Darkness had fallen—I did not know what time it was. I was now on the first floor, about halfway down a passage which twists and turns so often that you cannot tell where you are. I had to go back and count three times to establish that there were twenty-two rooms on this corridor. The servants’ stairs are at the back of the house, with a door leading to the main part of the Hall at the front. The panelling had been scrubbed, and new carpets laid. The floor creaks wherever I move, no matter how softly I tread. There was folklore, while cloudy, evasive at best, which hinted at a hidden race of monstrous being which lurked someone among this passage way. These beings were seldomly glimpsed, but were said to wander in from deep in the fruit orchards, and the dark valleys where streams trickled from unknown sources. However, evidences of their presence was reported by those who had ventured father than usual into certain areas of the mansion that even I shunned. There were queer footprints or claw-prints on the floor and scratched on the walls. The rumors had several points in common; averring that the creatures were huge, black, and with two great batlike wings in the middle of their back. Once a specimen was seen flying—launching itself from the top of the observational tower, at night and vanishing in the sky after its great flapping wings had been silhouetted an instant against the full moon. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
These things seemed content, on the whole, to let the staff alone; though they were at times held responsible for the disappearance of servants—especially those venturesome individuals who went too far in the fruit orchards or who went lurking in the observational tower at night. People would look up at Llanada Villa with a shudder, even when not recalling how many servants had been lost. However, while according to the earliest legends the creatures would appear to have harmed only those trespassing on their privacy. They attempted to establish secret outpost in my home. There were tales of queer claw-prints seen around the mansion’s windows in the morning, and of occasional disappearances in regions obviously haunted. Tales, besides, of buzzing voices in imitation of human speech which made surprising offers to the servants, and of housemaids frightened out of their wits by things seen or heard in parts of the mansion we rarely used. There are other tales of servant who had undergone a repellent mental change shortly after being hired, and who were shunned and whispered about as people who had sold themselves to strange beings. As to what these beings were—I had not a clue. Many just called the “demons.” However, there was unanimous agreement that these creatures were not natural. I had asked myself endlessly whether, if someone had succeeded in mesmerizing the servants, or shrouded their perception. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
The next morning, I must have come down to breakfast first, though I did not recall dressing, or pinning up my hair, only—just as if I had been sleepwalking, and found myself suddenly wide awake at the breakfast table—seeing the housemaid at the sideboard. And I looked up fearfully. All evening I kept up the pretence that nothing had occurred; and when it came time to retire, I lay awake half the night, dreading the sound of something treading upon the stair, but the next morning it was the same. The housemaid gave her notice soon afterward, but if she had been forced to do so, she did not admit it to me. She had often spoke of lines and curves which pointed out directions leading through the walls of space to other spaces beyond, and had often implied that certain midnight meetings took places in these areas. She had also spoke of a large Black figure, then vanished. The darkness always teemed with unexplained sound—and I somethings shook with fear least the noises I heard should subside and allow me to hear certain other noises which I suspected were lurking in the walls. Life had become an insistent and almost unendurable cacophony, and there was that constant, terrifying impression of other sounds—perhaps from regions beyond life—trembling on the very brink of audibility. There were rumours, too, with a baffling and disconcerting amount of agreement. Witnesses said the Black shadowy figure had long hair, was sharp-toothed, was evilly human and had claws like a bear. Of all the bizarre monstrosities in the Word, nothing filled me with greater panic and nausea than this blasphemous beast haunting the hall of my mansion, and to think that there were several of them behooved me. A sense of impending crisis was as palpable as the ticking clock. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
The library and the old gallery from which one of the servants vanished from had been locked, for reasons of safety. And all of the rooms above this floor were closed, the stairs roped off and all the landing doors locked. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and a faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound. It is not a dream—it is not I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. There was thunder in the air one night, the pitiful throngs of the win shrieked and whined, as the unnamable horror descended upon Llanada Villa. This house swarmed with ghosts. However, people enough, first and last, had been in terror or apparitions, but who had ever before so turned the tables and become oneself, in the apparitional World, an incalculable terror? What habit and repetition had I 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 my dim luminary I could still wander on without it, pass into other rooms and, only known it was there behind me in case of need, see my way about, visually project for my purpose a comparative clearness. It made me feel, this acquired faculty, like some stealthy cat; I wondered if I would ever glare at these moments with large shining yellow eyes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
The moments I liked best were those of gathering dusk, of the short autumn twilight; this was the time of which, again and again, I found myself hoping most. Then I could most intimately wander and wait, linger and listen, feel my fine attention, never in my life before so fine, on the pulse of the great vague place: I preferred the lampless hour and only wished I might have prolonged each day the deep crepuscular spell. In the depths of the house, the mystical other World flourished. This night—I stood in the hall and looked up the staircase with certainty more intimate than any I had known. Then I realized there was a red-clad figure moving up there. The longer I watched, the clearer the figure became. The man was pacing back and forth at a rapidly increasing speed. His face carried a worried frown and suddenly he was running back and forth so fast that he levitated and bounced into the walls. I was shocked as the man continued back and forth, bouncing from wall to wall, until he actually touched the ceiling. I followed his progress upward and then he was gone. As I cast my eyes around my home, I saw that it was no longer empty. There were spectral people everywhere and they were watching me quietly. I had taken a number of steps to possess myself. The door between the rooms was open, and as I remembered, have all three upon a common corridor as well, but there was a fourth, beyond me, without issue save through the preceding. The house, withal, was immense, the scale of space again inordinate; the open rooms, to no one of which my eye deflected, gloomed in their shuttered state like mouths of caverns; only the high skylight that formed the crown in the deep well created for me a medium in which I could advance, but which might have been, for queerness of colour, some watery underworld. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
I tried to think of something noble, as Llanada Villa was really grand, a splendid possession; but this nobleness took the for of the clear delight with which I was finally to sacrifice it. They might come in now, the builders, the destroyers—they might come as soon as they would. At the end of two flights, I had dropped to another zone, and from the middle of the third, with only one more left, and I seemed to lose myself in the vague darkness. I let myself go on with the sense that here was at least something to meet, to touch, to take, to know—something all unnatural and dreadful. The penumbra, dense and dark, was the virtual screen of a figure which stood in it as still some image erect in a niche or as some black-vizored sentinel guarding a treasure. I was to know afterwards, was to recall and make out, the particular thing I had believed during the rest of my descent. I saw, in its great gray glimmering margin, the central vagueness diminish, and I had felt it to be taking the very form toward which, for so many days, the passion of my curiosity had yearned. It gloomed, it loomed, it was something, it was somebody, the prodigy of a personal presence. Rigid and conscious, spectral yet human, a man of substance and stature. Horror, with the sight, had leaped into my throat, gasping there in a sound I could not utter; for the bared identity was too hideous. My glare was the passion of the protest. The face, that face! It was unknown, inconceivable, awful, disconnected from any possibility. The presence before me was a presence, the horror of nights of grotesqueness. A thousand times as it came upon me nearer now—the face was the face of a stranger. The stranger, whoever he might be, evil, odious, blatant, vulgar, had advanced as for aggression, and I knew myself to give ground. Then harder pressed still, sick with the force of my shock, and falling back as my whole vision turned to darkness and my feet gave way. My head went round; I was going; I had gone. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Many of the ghosts of The Winchester Mystery House are associated with tragedy. For years, there have been stories that the security guards see a man walking along the fourth floor of the mansion. The man does not set off the motion sensors, but he is often seen hurrying along. He disappears when guards approach too near him. The guards consistently describe him as a man in work clothes from the 19th century. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Would Satan Have Found Companions without this Overpowering Craving?
The extraordinary powers of the TV news media threaten the civil rights and health of all humans because it is like a constant signal of unbalanced propaganda being fed through a tube into minds of people who may not be aware that the news media often lies, and the some of their stories are engineered and totally untrue. If smoking cigarettes comes with a warning, because they can be hazardous to your health, then so should the TV news media. Stories presented over the air can be dangerous, especially to young, influential minds. For instance, a TV news program explained to viewers how they could barbeque meant in the oven by placing it on the rack. However, they did not explain that underneath the rack there should be a drip pan to catch any liquids that come from the meat, so they do not drip on the heating elements, which could cause a fire. And that may not be common sense to all people, which the TV director probably assumed. Therefore, all TV new media should contain a warning, letting the audience know that the story, even if it has some facts in it, is based on an opinion and may not be the full truth, so viewers know to use discretion and do further research of themselves. In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all aspects essential to mutual progress. The economic structure of a society in determining the mode of life of the individual operates as condition for personality development. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
These economic conditions are entirely different from subjective economic motives, such as the desire for material wealth which was looked upon by many writers, from the Renaissance on up to certain Marxist authors who failed to understand Mr. Marx’s basic concepts, as the dominant motive of human behaviour. As a matter of fact, the all-absorbing wish for material wealth is a need peculiar only to certain cultures, and different economic condition can create personality trait which abhor material wealth or are indifferent to it. The physiologically conditioned needs are not the only imperative part of man’s nature. There is another part just as compelling, one which is not rooted in bodily processes but in the very essence of the human mode and practice of life: the need to be related to the World outside oneself, the need to avoid aloneness. To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death. This relatedness to others is not identical with physical contact. An individual may be alone in a physical sense for many years and he may be related to ideas, values, or at least social patterns that give him a feeling of communion and “belonging.” On the other hand, he may live among people and yet be overcome with an utter feeling of isolation, the outcome of which, if it transcends a certain limit, is the state of insanity which schizophrenic disturbances represent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
This lack of relatedness to values, symbols, patterns, we may call moral aloneness and state that moral aloneness is as intolerable as the physical isolation, or rather that physical seclusion becomes unbearable only if it implies also moral lonesomeness. The spiritual relatedness to the World can assume many forms; the self-actualized in his cell who believes in God and the political prisoner kept in isolation who feels one with his fellow fighters are not alone morally. Neither is the English gentleman who wears his dinner jacket in the most exotic surroundings nor the petty bourgeois who, though being deeply isolated from one’s fellow men, feels one with one’s nation of its symbols. The kind of relatedness to the World may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone. Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with other, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation. The compelling need to avoid moral isolation is a deep concern However, learn one thing, impress it upon your mind which is still so malleable: man has a horror for aloneness And of all kind of aloneness, moral seclusion is the most terrible. The first hermits lived with God, they inhabited the World which is most populated, the World of spirits. The first thought of man, be he a leper or a prisoner, a sinner or an invalid, is: to have a companion of one’s fate. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
In order to satisfy this drive which is life itself, man applies all his strength, all his power, the energy of his whole life. Would Satan have found companions without this overpowering craving? On this theme one could write a whole epic. Any attempt to answer the question why the fear of isolation is so powerful in man would lead us far away from the main road we are following in this report. However, in order not to give the reader the impression that the need to feel one with others has some mysterious quality. One important element is the fact that men cannot live without some sort of co-operation with other. In any conceivable kind of culture man needs to co-operate with others if he wants to survive, whether for the purpose of defending himself against enemies or dangers of nature, or in order that he may be able to work and produce. Even Robinson Crusoe was accompanied by his man Friday; without him he would probably not have become insane but would have actually died. Each person experiences this need for the help of others very drastically as a child. On account of the factual inability of the human child to take care of itself with regard to all-important functions, communication with others is a matter of life and death for the child. The possibility of being left alone is necessarily the most serious threat to the child’s whole existence. There is another element, however, which makes the need to “belong” so compelling: the fact of subjective self-consciousness, of the faculty of thinking by which man is aware of himself as an individual entity, different from nature and other people. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Although the degree of this awareness varies. Its existence confronts man with a problem which is essentially human: by being aware of himself as distinct from nature and other people, by being aware—even very dimly—of death, sickness, aging, he necessarily feels his insignificance and smallness in comparison with the Universe and all others who are not “he.” Unless he belonged somewhere, unless his life had some meaning and direction, he would feel like a particle of dust and be overcome by his individual insignificance. He would not be able to relate himself to any system which would give meaning and direction to his life, he would be filled with doubt, and this doubt eventually would paralyze his ability to act—that is, to live. Human nature is neither a biologically fixed and innate sum total of drives nor is it a lifeless shadow of cultural patterns to which it adapts itself smoothly; it is the product of human evolution, but it also has certain inherent mechanisms and laws. There are certain factors in man’s nature which are fixed and unchangeable: the necessity to satisfy the physiologically conditioned drives and the necessity to avoid isolation and moral aloneness. We have seen that the individual has to accept the mode of life rooted in the system of production and distribution peculiar for any given society. In the process of dynamic adaptation to culture, a number of powerful drives develop which motivate the actions and feelings of the individual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The individual may or may not be conscious of these drives, but in any case they are forceful and demand satisfaction once they have developed. They become effective in molding the social process. How economic, psychological, and ideological factors interact and what further general conclusion concerning this interaction one can make are things for future discussion that deals with the reformation and of fascism. Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an “individual,” has no choice but to unite himself with the World in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the World as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self. However, the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads to some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interest are most nearly touched,–criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led,–this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the Americans receives by outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before, manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable loss,–a loss of that peculiarly valuable education which a group receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders. The way in which this is done is at once the most elementary and nicest problem of social growth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
History is but the record of such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character! And of all yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character! And of all types and kinds, what can be more instructive than the leadership of a group within a group?—that curious double movement where real progress may be negative and actual advancement where real progress may be negative and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this is the social student’s inspiration and despair. Nonetheless, the spirit of play can and does invade every department of culture. Every kind of work has its counterpart in play. Crafts include recreational forms which represent the categories of serious economic activity all the way from hunting and fishing, which have their counterparts in extractive industries, through fabrication and construction, distribution and communication, to services and consumption. Although such activities, as distinguished from the work the represent, are engaged in for their own sake, they all involve practice in the intelligence adaptation of physical means to envisaged ends. Thus “industrial” play is distinguished from physical play in being directed toward the exploration and manipulation of the physical environment rather than toward the exercise of the body. While some product or service of economic value may result from engaging in crafts, this is not primary objective. The distinction between work and play is perhaps less obvious where crafts are concerned than any other type of play. Also, any hobby which is pursued as recreation may also be undertaken as a livelihood, just as every hobby is in a direct sense an imitation of a serious occupation. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Even though work merges into play and there are no hard and fast margins between the two, it is yet useful to make some polar contrast between them. Work seems to be performed in response to the routine obligations. In the economic sense it provides the goods and services to maintain a customary standard of living. Play—including economic play—is a break in routine. It is free, not required. It explores new possibilities and potentialities, so that invention and discovery bear the closet relation to it. Treating familiar pursuits as play permits their idealization. Work is most fully work when it evokes no free release of energy and when it is all drudgery and chores, making demands for a minimum, not an optimum performance. Play is most fully play when it is spontaneous, unrestrained and unforced. To look upon play as a childish preparation for adult activity is therefore to run the risk of making it work. The ambiguities of play are at their liveliest in crafts, which makes sketchy resort to common sense in defining them a less futile strategy than attempts to define them with more precision. In economic activity, as in sport, chance can according to taste play a great or a small part; or economic activity can entirely be reduces to pure chance, as in gambling. Likewise with competition, though of course competition in economic life is different from competition in sport. Competition in sport is most zestful and fair when it occurs between equals, or when rules and devices, such as handicapping, are employed to simulate equality between competitors. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Rivalry between teams is perpetuated through this balancing of powers. In business, by contrast, the effort of each competitor is to enlarge rather than to diminish the advantages one possesses, with the ultimate effect of eliminating competitors. To be sure, there are many similarities between the two kinds of competition, for example, competition between business institutions is often, as in sport, invoked simply as an added stimulus to effort. Certain large organizations in particular, which have largely lost their external competitors, encourage a nondestructive sort of sporting competition among their internal units for the sake of the gains in motivation it brings. Perhaps it is not too crude a simplification of economic evolution to suggest that as the one type of competition in business runs its course, the other which emphasizes competition within, rather than between, organizations may take its place. A significant distinction is made by farmers between regular kinds of work known as chores and the work that different from day to day. The latter kind is for many farmers very close to play, just as the work of some professions gives such scope and variety to the expression of capacities that they continue to be absorbing. It is evident that the skilled practitioner of every kind of play can change from amateur to professional status, and that many people have found their vocations by this route. Happy is the person who can make one’s living by getting paid for what one loves to do. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
In other kind of play is the shift from amateur to professional status of such broad social significance as in crafts, because in the possibility of conducting industry as the crafts are conducted lies—as thinkers like William Morris foresaw long ago—the means of restoring joy to work, and of ending the alienation from work which plagues so many contemporary occupations. The democratic revolution which has been abolishing the division of society into leisure and working classes may be completed when work and play, vocation and avocation, are merged in economic activity itself. This extreme polarization in conceptual analysis may therefore frustrate the full understanding of their interrelation. With minor exceptions, state socialism led not to affluence, equality, and freedom, but to a one-party political system, a massive bureaucracy, heavy-handed secret police, government control of the media, secrecy and the repression of intellectual and artistic freedom. Setting aside the oceans of spurting blood needed to prop it up, a close look at this system reveals that every one of these elements is not just a way of organizing people but also—and more profoundly—a particular way of organizing, channeling and controlling knowledge. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
A one-party political system is designed to control political communication. Since no other party exists, it restricts the diversity of political information flowing through the society, blocking feedback and thus blinding those in power to the full complexity of their problems. With very narrowly defined information flowing upward through the approved channel and commands directed downward, it becomes very difficult for the system to detect errors and correct them. In fact, top-down control in the socialist countries was based increasingly on lies and misinformation since reporting bad news up the line was often risky. The decision to run a one-party system is a decision, above all, about knowledge. The overpowering bureaucracy that socialism created in every sphere of life was also a knowledge-restricting device, forcing knowledge into pre-defined compartments of cubbyholes and restricting communication to “official channels,” whole delegitimating informal communication and organization. The secret police apparatus, state control of the media, the intimidation of intellectuals and the repression of artistic freedom all represent further attempts to limit and control information flows. In fact, behind each of these elements we find a single obsolete assumption about knowledge: the arrogant belief that those in command—whether of the party or of the state—should decide what others should know. These features of all the state socialist nations guaranteed economic stupidity and derived from the concept of the precybernetic machine as applied to society and life itself. Second Wave machines for the most part operated without any feedback. Plug in the power, start the motor, and they run irrespective of what is happening in the outside environment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Third Wave machines, by contrast, are intelligent. They have sensors that such in information from the environment, detect changes and adapt the operation of the machine accordingly. They are self-regulating. The technological difference is revolutionary. However, Marxist theoreticians remained stuck in the Second Wave past, as even their language suggests. Thus for Marxian socialists the class struggle was the “locomotive of history.” A key task was to capture the “state machine.” And society itself, being machine-like, could be preset to deliver abundance and freedom. Mr. Lenin, on capturing control of Russia in 1917, became the supreme mechanic. A brilliant intellectual, Mr. Lenin understood the importance of ideas. However, for him, symbolic production—the mind itself—could be programmed. Mr. Marx wrote of freedom, but Mr. Lenin, on taking power, undertook to engineer knowledge. Thus he insisted that all art, culture, science, journalism and symbolic activity in general be placed at the service of a master plan for society. In time each branch of learning would be neatly organized into an “academy” with fixed bureaucratic departments and ranks all subject to party and state control. “Cultural workers” would be employed by institutions controlled by a Ministry of Culture. Publishing and broadcasting would be monopolies of the state. Knowledge, in effect, would be made part of the state machine. This constipated approach to knowledge blocked economic development even in intermediate, smokestack economies; it is diametrically opposed to the principles needed for economic advancement in the age of the computer. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
In international economic affairs, the most controversial component of the indigenous innovation policy is China’s government procedure system. According to the government organizations, with a few exceptions, have to be limited to domestically made products. In May 2007, “Measures for Administration of Government Procurement Budgets for Indigenous Innovation Products” prescribed governments at all levels to compile indigenous innovation procurement plans. In December of the same years, the Ministry of Finance issues “Measures for the Administration of Government Procurement of Imported Products.” To purchase imported goods, government entities were obliged to get an approval from a board of experts. Among foreign suppliers, they were recommended to favour those who transfer technologies and train Chinese personnel. Next, in November 2009, the “Circular on Carrying Out the Work on Accreditation of National Indigenous Innovation Products” announced the creation of a new national level catalog of high-tech indigenous innovation products (in the areas of computers and communication, office equipment, software, energy devices, and so on) that were eligible for preferential treatment in government procurement. An indigenous innovation product was defined as the one that has intellectual property rights (IPR) owned by a Chinese company and a commercial trademark initially registered inside China. A month later the government produced a catalog of 240 types of equipment whose production by domestic companies would be encouraged in order to upgrade the country’s manufacturing base. Along with a priority status as indigenous innovation products suppliers, their makers were promised tax incentives and R&D subsidies. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Western government procurement system as it effectively deprived foreign companies of the access to this very substantial augment of the Chinese market. In April 2010, the Circular was reversed. The requirements about IPR ownership by a Chinese company and initial registration of the trademark in China were dropped. Also, the Chinese side proclaimed that preferential treatment of and incentives for procedures of indigenous innovation products were fully applicable to foreign-owned companies operating in China. The government procurement system was modified to prioritize domestically designed and manufactured goods (meaning that the value created inside China exceeds a certain percentage of the total value—normally 50 percent) including those designed and manufactured by foreign-invested firms. From the very start of the market reforms, China’s message to foreign companies has been “Better produce in China than export to China.” This time it added a new message of similar character: “Better innovate in China (and share your technologies) than in your home country or anywhere else.” It looked almost like an ultimatum: Unless you innovate and produce inside China you will not be allowed to sell to the government. The West protested. In January 2011, President Hu Jintao promised President Obama to cancel the rule requiring foreign companies to design and manufacture inside the country the products they wanted to sell to Chinese government entities. In May the same year, at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue it was reportedly confirmed that the Chinese government would not buy indigenous innovation products on a preferential basis. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
However, at the time of writing Western businessmen working in China are still complaining that procurement practices have not changed and provincial authorities appear or pretend to have heard nothing about the promises made by the central government. It is just a familiar bureaucratic muddle and incoherence or a new way of pursuing the old policy? At this point it is still to early to give an accurate answer. However, there is little doubt that China will continue to press foreign companies hard not only to bring in advanced technologies and products, but also, more and more, to develop them within its borders—even though they are already doing it at a rapidly growing scale on their own initiative. Given the advantages of direct reciprocity when it comes to sustaining cooperation, we should expect that traders will try to sustain good bilateral relationships, and that is indeed the case. For instance, when we surveyed firms in the transition economy of Romania, and gave weighted scores to the importance these respondents attached to various mechanisms that support their transactions, almost 56 percent of the weight was on bilateral mechanisms (“personal relationships and trust,” and “relying on each other’s own incentives”). However, in many economic situations, each member of a group plays the dilemma game against different others at different ties. For example, a seller may meet different buyers at different times, and any one buyer of a durable good does not meet the same seller at all frequently. Thus almost half of the weight in our survey went to non-bilateral mechanisms, and in turn half of that was on the kinds of non-state mechanisms that are the focus of this essay (third-party social or business relationships” and “using private dispute-resolution services”). #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Psychopathological offenders can also counterfeit conduct disorder, by causing some apparent manifestation of the psychopathological nature in one’s life. Mature believers should be able to tell whether such a manifestation really is conduct disorder from the old nature or a manifestation from psychopathological offenders. The purpose in the latter case is to get the self-actualized to take what comes from them as from oneself, for whatever is accepted from the psychopathological offenders gives them power. When a self-actualized individuals knows the cross and one’s position of death to conduct disorder, and one’s will and practice rejects unflinchingly all known conduct disorder, if a “manifestation” of personal conduct disorder takes place one should at once take a position of neutrality to it until one know the source. If one calls it conduct disorder from oneself when it is not, one believes a lie just as much as in any other way; and if one “confesses” conduct disorder that did not come from oneself, one brings the power of the enemy upon one—power to drive one into the conduct disorder which one has confessed as one’s own. Many believers are thus held down by supposed “besetting conduct disorder” which they believe is theirs, and which no “confessing to the ultimate concern” removes, but from which they would find liberty if they attributed them to their right cause. There is no danger of “minimizing conduct disorder” in the recognition of these facts, because, in either case, the self-actualized desires to be rid of the conduct disorder or one would not trouble oneself about it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
We have developed a positive doctrine of God as the ground and power of being, a God whose sustaining and vitalizing activity constantly touches every corner of the Universe and penetrates to the deepest level of every creature, its very being. With this positive conception we replace the divinity of the supranaturalists and deists, a God so remote from the World that He is irrelevant once His creative push has set the wheels of time in motion. God is not at the farther fringe of our Universe as the last, desperate answer when the natural sources of knowledge have run dry for people. The danger is that, as man’s circle of knowledge widens, God recedes father and father from the center of one’s life. For example, is it not true that, in the minds of most people, evolution dispenses with, or greatly diminishes, God’s role in the creation of man? A theology for an adult World places God at the hub of human activity as the wellspring of man’s strength, love, accomplishments, and hopes, instead of establishing Him as an oracle that sends answers from the darkness beyond the frontier of science. By this ontological approach, we bring God into the heart of the cosmos, for there is nothing closer to beings, nothing more fundamental than the structure of being and its ground. In more human terms, the interplay of anxiety (non-being) and courage (being) is the very stuff of life. Love, power, and justice—the profoundest beneficial motivations of human behaviour—are rooted in God as being-itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The divine power is a thoroughly biblical doctrine, and I believe in God the Father almighty. In our age of power—nuclear, electronic, ballistic, to cite examples only of physical power—the God who is power-itself is especially apropos. By finding God at the depth of life and not at its fringes, we are paying the way for our close union of religion and culture. However, this is possible only if creation is essentially good, it there is no independent negative power which escapes the divine dominion. Non-being is a dialectical notion, that is, it is dependent upon being and helps to explain the positive power of being and the negative weakness of finite beings, but it is not a self-sufficient evil power. While, admittedly, there may be obscurities, perhaps even deficiencies, in this principle, but the divine and demonic are two aspects of the same creative surge from the abyss of being. The difference is that, in the demonic, the destructive aspect predominates over the creative, while, in the divine, creativity controls the destructive tendency. However, even in the latter cause destructivity is not entirely absent, for the old form has to be broken and cast off so that the new creation can come to be. Consequently, it is hard to see how the divine and the demonic constitute a dualism in the pejorative sense any more than do being and nonbeing. A symbol, then, is a door which opens into a religious experience and which opens out to communicate it. In both cases the pivotal hinge is analogy, the participation of the symbol in the ground of being. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
However, the symbol primarily mediates and communicates the experience of God, not conceptual knowledge about him. Symbols yield knowledge of God only in the biblical sense of knowledge, that is, an existential relationship which enkindle the fire of love. When theology comes along with its conceptual, rational apparatus, its task is to show the relevance of the Christian symbols to the human situation, not to discover propositions which contain “revealed knowledge.” It is evident that the center of our symbolism is the religious experience of ultimacy. The “point” of immediate awareness of the unconditional which is empty but unconditionally certain; and the “breadth” of a concrete concern which is full of content but has the conditional certainty of venturing faith. Theology deals with the second element, while presupposing the first and measuring every theological statement by the standard of the ultimacy of the ultimate concern. Studying and wandering, thinking and enduring, learning and suffering, fill long periods of time. Thinking is as characteristic a trait of the Christians as suffering, or, to be more exact, thinking rendered suffering possible For it was our thinkers who prevented the wandering nation, this true “wandering Christian” from sinking to the level of brutalized vagrants, or vagabonds. The Word of God is compared to water, it cleanses man from what is debasing in life. The Word of God is compared to spirits, time cannot render it useless; yea, time increases its power. The Word of God is compared to oil, it mixes not with other elements but preserves its own distinctiveness. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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We are Here to Practise Magic, After All
I heard the softest, loveliest singing when I opened my eyes. And as sound can often do, even in the most precious fragments, it took me back to life with William, to some Winter night when we were conversating among the blazing candles, the sensual smell of the incense. There was plainly something on his mind which he did not choose to divulge. “William, darling, will you tell me this?” said I, suddenly laying my hand on his arm, and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his face. “Perhaps, my love,” he answered, smoothing my hair caressingly over my eyes. “Does the doctor think you are very ills?” “No, dear; he thinks, if the right steps are taken, I will be quite well again, at least on the high road to complete recovery,” he answered, a little drily. “But do tell me William,” I insisted, “what does he think is the matter with you?” “Nothing; you must not plague me with questions,” he answered, with more irritation that I ever remember him to have displayed before; and seeing that I looked wounded, I suppose, he kissed me, and added, “I shall know all about it in a few days, all that I know. In the meantime, you are not to trouble your head about it.” He turned and left the room. In the seat of the sofa was a blood-soaked handkerchief, but he came back before I had done wondering and puzzling over the oddity of all this; he put it back as carefully as he could into his jacket pocket, where its bluk rested reasonably discreetly, just about hidden by the flap. Still, there was a bit of blood on his shirt. I pretended not to notice. It was about ten months since that incident; but William had sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appearance. He had grown thinner; something of gloom and anxiety had taken the place of that cordial serenity which used to characterise his features. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
His dark blue eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under his eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually includes, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share in brining it about. William began to talk, with his usual soldierly directness, of the bereavement, as he termed it, which we had sustained in the death of our beloved infant daughter; and he then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, inveighing against the “hellish arts” to which he believed she had fallen victim, and expressing with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of lust and malignity of hell. I was curious to find out what was the meaning of this, but the question of “evil” hours in this old home had already become too grave for him. The shadows in the room had lengthened and grown dense and the light had darkened, concealing the blood stain on his shirt. And he could not connect at all to the wretchedness of the death of our baby girl. He needed to think. There is no escape, it made me think. And the thought was not entirely idle. Nor was it altogether comfortable. “I have a small problem of my own, concerning blood and steel,” William said. “The cut on the flesh of my thumb has become infected and swollen. It leaks fluid, which has a sweetish smell, like decay. I have disinfected and bandaged it, but I think I have a slight fever now and am concerned about infection. Beyond that minor worry, I have to confess to a more general and far greater uneasiness. I have something strange to tell you.” I looked at William again, but this time not with a glace of suspicion—with an eye, rather, of keen intelligence and alarm. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
“The House of Winchester,” he said, “had been long extinct: a hundred years at least. Our daughter descended from the Winchesters. But the name and title have long ceased to exit. The castle is abandoned; the village is deserted; it has been seventy years since the smoke of a chimney was there.” “I have heard a great deal about your family, now my family, but the name and fortune are thriving, William,” I said. “Sarah, my dear, you saw our child. No creature could have been more beautiful, and only fourteen years ago none more blooming,” he explained. “I was grieved and shocked more than I can tell you, my dear husband; it is the hardest ordeal either one of us have had to face,” I cried. He took my hand, and we exchanged a kind pressure. Tears gather in his eyes. He did not seek to conceal them. He said, “We have been in love for so long together. Our daughter had become an object of very dear interest to me, and rapid my care by an affection that cheered our home and made our lives happy. That is all gone. The years that remain to me on Earth may not be very long; but God’s mercy I hope to provide for you as best I can before I die, and to subserve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who have cursed and murdered our poor child in her first weeks of life and beauty!” Here he made me a gallant but melancholy bow. My unease returned, nonetheless, as the room darkened and the Winchester Manor assumed the appearance of a severed head and hand floating above the candle flame. A year later William died. As I reflected on this memory, to dined that night with a housemaid, but there was no talk of hauntings or seances, only of book and paintings, with much affectionate remembrance of William. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
For the first time since his death I felt almost at peace—though a little uneasy with myself for feeling so. I woke the following morning to find the sun, which we had scarcely see for weeks, streaming through the windows in the Daisy Bedroom. It was one of those rare, still January days when for a few brief hours the World is bathed in dazzling light, and you half-believe it will never be grey and wet again. The accustomed pain of waking was still there, but my grief had lost its raw, lacerating edge; or rather, I became aware that it has been imperceptibly dwindling for some time. I was sitting in the garden with my book upon my lap, not reading or even thinking, but simply absorbing the warmth of the sun, when a shadow fell across my chair. I looked up to find William standing a few feet away from me. “Forgive me,” he said, “I didn’t mean to startle you.” “You did not, I said.” The sun was in my eyes, so that I could not make out his expression, but my heart was suddenly beating much faster. “I love you; you are a woman of rare courage, intelligence, and beauty,” he said. “Oh, William, I love you with my whole hearts,” I cried before he fading away into a mist. I cried, and cried for hours. And I went to be with precious memories of him. Tossing and turning for hours, as it seemed, before drifting into uneasy dreams, of which I remember only the last. I woke—or dreamed I woke—at dawn, thinking I had heard Annie crying. I lay there listening for some time, but the call was not repeated. At last I got out of bed, went to the door in my nightgown and looked out. There was no sound of a baby in the passage, in which everything appeared to be just as in waking life, but I was suddenly seized by fearful apprehension. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
My heart began to pound, more and more loudly, until I became aware that I was dreaming—and found myself standing in pitch darkness, with no idea of where I was. I felt the mahogany floors beneath my bare feet. With my heart still thudding violently, I stretched out my hand until it struck something wooden—a post of some sort—then slid one foot forward until it passed over an edge into empty space. I had come within an inch of plunging headfirst down the stairs. I agonized over losing my family, but I knew in my heart that I did not try to throw myself down the stairs. I could not have been sleepwalking either. It became ever more clear that the appearance of William was not just another instance of a highly disturbed, tormented soul, it seems much, much more than that. However, the terror rose to a whole new level of bizarre when I began to levitate several feet above the for a quarter to the hour. Days after this incident, the evening began promisingly enough. I was in the librarying writing, the heavy doors gave at once. Screams. Dreadful dry screams curling upwards and the, I entered the dark hallway, two ragged figures dropped down in my path. I glimpse anguished faces for a moment. The little demons, their thin white limbs barely swathed in rags, their hair flying, those dreadful wails coming out of their mouths. They were rallying the others. The malice that surrounded was gaining force. I hurried deep into the shadowy archway, util I was near to the dim candles of the secret passageway. The hum of the voices became thin. They went on, but beyond it there was a hollow silence as if other voices had been withdrawn and only one or two remained now. I had known for months about the ceremonies and the sacrifice, we are here to practise magic, after all. Yet nothing could be more ancient, or more strictly bound by lore and ritual, than the black art that has brought me here. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
I would not allow myself to become the next victim of the sinister. I ran and ran and ran until I reached a huge dining hall, which reached through the library of the house. This hall was pallened in polished wood with a heavy and elaborate burr. Middle Ages décor and the opulent trappings of modernity. The music coming from the gramophone was another uneasy juxtaposition in this mansion. The music was staidly enough, emotional arias warbled throbbingly. Then, with the stead intoxication of the evening, it got dark and more mischievous. There were thirteen ghouls seated at the table having a blood banquet. Shortly after, the sacrificial was brought in for everyone to see. He was perhaps six or seven years old. He was undernourished. He looked confused and fearful, as though distrustful of the gaudy apparitions he was seeing. The assembled banqueters began to clap. I was filled with fear and compassion for the child and with heartfelt loathing for what they were here to do. All he could do was look around the room while having a feeling of terrible dread. The demonic laughter was undeniable, and suddenly I could not breathe because my chest was being so tightly squeezed. So tight that I could not utter a word. I swept the boy off the floor and made for the door and we were gone. His complexion was flushed and sweaty and his eyes still gleaming from witnessing the ghouls. We hid in my maze of a house until sunrise. I felt the evil lifted. There is no other way to describe the feeling. And I shivered and was well again. The boy stayed with us, the famers took him and taught him all about agriculture. The boy’s mother was a High Priestess and his father was The Master. He was born only to take part in a satanic altar initiation—that of having his arm pricked and blood drained into a chalice from which it was drunk. I could not be more terrified. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
I conjure thee, O Surgat, by all the names which are written in this book, to present thyself here before me, promptly and without delay, being ready to obey me in all things, or failing this, to dispatch me a Spirit with a stone which shall make me invisible to every one whensoever I carry it! And I conjure thee to be submitted in thine own person, or in the person of him or of those whom thou shalt send me, to do and accomplish my will, and all that I shall command, without hard to me or to anyone, so soon as I make known my intent. I devour the limits of the enemy Mazda and the Amesha Spenta from this mansion of sorcerous power! Perish now creation of stasis and imposed limitations! Rush away Spentas of Ahura Mazda for I exorcise thy limits which enslave! I now banish and tear the powers of spiritual limitation from imposing its limits upon this Winchester Mystery House, expelling them from the Winchester Mystery House in the name of eternal darkness and all of its power and glory! I command you, O all ye demons dwelling in these parts, or in what part of the World soever ye may be, by whatsoever power may have been given you by God and our holy Angels over this place, and by the powerful Principality of infernal abysses, as also by all your brethren, both general and special demons, whether dwelling in the East, West, South, or North, or in any side of the Earth, and, in like manner, by the power of God the Father, by the wisdom of God the Son, by the virtue of the Holy Ghost, and by the authority I derive from Lucifer. I conure you by the same authority, I exhort and call you, I constrain and command you, by all the powers of your superior demons, to come, obey, and reply positively to what I direct you in the name of Satan. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Ghostly manifestations, be they God’s angelic messengers or evil spirits, are not uncommon throughout history. The Winchester Mystery House is full of creatures who have strayed away from one unknow region of haunted woods and perilous wilds. They dress like us; pretend that they belong to mankind and profess to keep our laws and codes of morals. However, in the presence we are always aware that they are phantoms and that all their ideas and actions are out of key with the general pitch and tone of normal life. The Winchester Mystery House hosts several denizens of the dead.
Once a tour guide went into the Grand Ball Room while The Winchester Mystery House was closed during the day. He went to find some solitude but found something else entirely. As the young man sat in the empty, dark Grand Ball Room, a woman in a long white gown and a man in a black dress suit suddenly whirled onto the floor. They danced to music that the tour guide could not hear. As the man watched in shock, the dancing specters suddenly vanished. The fourth floor balcony of the Winchester Mystery House is haunted by a lady in white who glides gracefully across the balcony. She has also been seen in the Daisy Bedroom. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
It Could be Salem All Over Again
The undoubted good intent of those who seek to enliven public awareness to sadistic satanic practices can hardly be question. Tuanton State Hospital was founded as the State Lunatic Hospital in 1854. It operated for decades as a repository for individuals suffering from mental illness. It was the second state asylum in Massachusetts. Most of the original part of the facility was built in a unique and rare neo-classical style designed by architects Boyden & Ball. The Asylum had brushes with true evil not many other places can rival. Before its closure in the 1970, staff and other patients reported feeling uneasy in the lower levels of the hospital. After auditing the hospital’s records, a group of staff allegedly uncovered evidence that an inner circle of doctors and nurses were conducting experiments on patients in the basement of the hospital. Staff notes were reportedly found indicating that some patients were taken from the wards by certain doctors and not seen again. It was also reported that this hospital was the site of cult rituals and devil worship. Patients were used as guinea pigs, they were experimenting on with morphine and atropine just to see how different doses would affect them. Some of the staff also became fond of poisoning people. One mystery especially puzzling were the claims of patients who said that they had been taken into a secret tunnel where they had seen naked people cavorting before them, had foreign objects inserted in their bodies, and had witnessed devil worship and that patients were sacrificed to the devil through blood rituals. Some patients were reportedly dismembered. #RandolphHarris 1 of
Underground tunnels are a feature of many such cases, and it is a known practice of many occultists to seek deep and dark caverns underground which are said to provide spiritual energy for rituals. One of the city’s social workers admitted, “We had many telephone calls from other social workers seeking help. I told them that at first we did not believe what the patients were telling us, and then by sheer force of numbers we began to take the seriously.” A boy showed signed of disturbed behaviour, laughed hysterically and talked of “funny drinks.” Thereafter the social service department was involved in nine cases of ritual abuse, involving seventeen adults and a total of seventy-five patients. These cases have been shrouded in secrecy ever since, and many of the interviews were conducted by social workers from outside the area. No charged were every brought and the fate of the patients never made public. Other patients talked of witches and gave descriptions of what sounded like satanic rituals. They gave detailed and alarming description of human sacrifice, blood-drinking, and animal killings. The social workers questioning the patients seemed to uncover the allegations that people in dark robes had taken part in lewd and libidinous activities in night-time ceremonies between June and November. Patients were being forced into devil-worship and suffering sexual and physical abuse, and if anything, the scale of the problem had been underestimated. In 1999, the large dome towering the hospital’s administration building collapsed. Then, on the night of March 19, 2006, a massive fiver broke out in the center of the building, which included the administration and theater. #RandolphHarris 2 of 4
Sections damaged by fire were then leveled, leaving only the decaying wings of the Kirkbride Building. In May 2009, demolition of the remaining historic sections of the Kirkbride Building began. The facility had numerous architectural features that were salvaged and sold to individuals and companies throughout the United States of American, including architectural granite, bricks, timbers, iron gates, vintage plumbing and lighting fixture, furniture, and slate roofing tiles. (Not only to acquire the land, this is one reason many people like to condemn historical structures.) Two notable patients of the State Hospital, was an Italian-American serial killer called Anthony Santo (born circa 1894 in Italy – date of death unknow). He had confessed to murdering two of his cousins and another girl in the span of three months during his “mad spells.” He was eventually diagnosed as having hallucinations and sent to Taunton Lunatic Asylum, where he supposed died. Jane Toppan (born Honora Kelley; March 31, 1854 – August 17, 1938), nickednamed Jolly Jane, was an American serial killer who is known to have committed twelve murders in Massachusetts between 1895 and 1901; she confessed to a total of thirty-one murders. The killings were carried out in Ms. Toppan’s capacity as a nurse, targeting patients and their family members. Ms. Toppan, who admitted to have committed the murders to satisfy a sexual fetish, was quoted as saying that her ambition was “to have killed more people—helpless people—than any other man or woman who ever lived.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 4
It is not hard to believe that things like this can happen, especially when reports go uninvestigated. Not all people go into helping professions to help people. To further highlight this illustration, Dorothea Helen Puente (January 9, 1929 – March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. In the 1980, she ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California USA, and murdered various elderly and disabled borders before cashing their Social Security checks. Witnesses reported that Ms. Puente would drug people and steal from them. Ms. Puente’s total count reached nine murders; she was convicted of three and the jury hung on the other six. Newspapers dubbed Ms. Puente the “Death House Landlady.” Therefore, it is very important to investigate organizations that receive government funding to make sure they are handling their responsibilities and not abusing tenants and patients because their could lead to their deaths. Also, people who have no known relatives or relatives who want to do away with a family member to cash in on a life insurance policy could be victimized by these facilities. If you suspected someone is being abused and the agencies you are supposed to report to brush the claims off, it is always a good idea to reach out to others in the community or find an officer on the street and talk to them in person. Often times, an in-person meeting is much stronger than talking to a person over the phone or filing a crime report online. It is not usual that there is a nationwide conspiracy or anything going on, nor that a situation is becoming a national scandal. However, working closely with the police, if allegations of abuse are taking place, and they can be proven, it is not a problem securing a conviction. #RandolphHarris 4 of 4
Randolph Harris II International 