Randolph Harris II International Institute

The land on which Llanada Villa is constructed is naturally cheerful. Sun and sky are bright, and the shade is enough. A spring gurgles; there is firewood at hand from the mahogany tree. However, the thing most people will remember about Llanada Villa is not the enormous lobby and dinning room, nor the elaborately carved mahogany woodwork framing the library, nor the men and women of the estate themselves, with their bright eyes and pale faces. The thing they will remember most is that behind the dark brocade curtains hang so heavily that there is little wonder that this fortress shelters a number of extremely active phantoms. For years, inhabitants of my mansion have claimed to see numerous ghostly reenactments of tragedies that have saturated the psychic ether of the environment. On this night, I lay sleepless in an unfamiliar bed. With a fire a blaze in the fireplace, I lay with my eyes open, thinking of absurd, disjointed things, wondering now why I had not pushed away this trivial bout of anxiety. Instead, I felt utterly alone, crippled by uncertainty and susceptible to fear. Suddenly I was frightened: it seemed to me quite possible that a panic attack might come on. It was a cold night and, of course, apart from the occasional noise from the house settling, very quiet. Then, there was a terrible scream. It seemed to come from downstairs. It was spine-chilling. It crescendoed for some seconds and then stopped suddenly. I can only liken it to the shriek I once heard when a cat was killed by a fox; this was also in the night. I thought to myself, “Somebody’s been killed.” I summoned one of the chambermaids and told of what I heard. She told me that she had heard it several times during her ten years’ service, but it was better to forget it. I still was not satisfied. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

I walked down the hall towards the stairs. I passed by an old room which was being sealed off from the main house. Suddenly I was aware of a hand and arm stretched out from the room to bar my passage. Being scared, I jumped, and for a moment turned by back to the room. On looking around, I saw a man dressed in dark clothes, walking back to the wall. He was wearing no hat when he reached the wall, and seemed to walk right into it. I could hear no sound of steps, and on close investigation after he disappeared, I could see no man and no hole in the wall. He vanished. I felt him vanish. I felt the warmth and the sudden movement in the air. It was as if something has been sucked away, and the chandeliers swung violently. 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 and continued to move along the wall, silent, as I heard learned to do in many a night. I hugged the wall, so that floor boards would not creak. A gust of cool air fanned my rosy cheek, and I put out a hand and found the edge of an open door. Mr. Hansen had told me a history regarding cupboard in this room. According to what he related, this young woman’s spirt comes out of this cupboard: but I do not fully recollect the matter. Not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, a farmer feloniously, willfully, and of malice made an assault and with a certain knife value a penny throat of one of the housemaids then and there did cut, of which the housemaid then and there did die, and the body of the housemaid was cast into a certain pond of water situate on this estate. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

As I was recalling this history of this misfortune, footsteps that came downstairs sounded light and active, like a small, spry man. For an instant of horror, I feared there was no next room. My backward-groping foot could not find a floor to stand on, and only a quick, noiseless grab for the door-jamb kept me from falling. Then my foot stretched lower and touched solid woof. Another stairway here, going down—I painfully descended another step, another. I groped around a turn in the stairs and to a door below tightly closed. For long minutes I waited, hand on latch. I lifted the latch, slipped through, and closed the door behind me. There were noises in the distance. I became certain that I was hearing words in a tribal dialect that I did not understand carried on the wind of the inky winter nights. I knew that somewhere in this corridor resides a secret room in which a monster resides. For generations of servants have sworn that they have heard its shuffling feet and hideous half-human cries as it emerges for its nocturnal prowlings. According to my butler Herr Enderlin, in 1888, the spirits compelled the carpenters to built a ghastly chamber deep within the wall to hide a secret transmitted from the past, which is only know to three persons. When one of the triumvirates dies, the survivors are compelled by a terrible oath to elect a successor. According to legend, because of the family curse, a demon was incarnated. It was a half-human monster, misshapen, and was found to be a grotesque monstrosity, and the brutish creature was hidden away in this secret room. For decades, three people have been selected to care and look after the monsters. I was determined to discover the location of the secret room and view the monster for myself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

It was darker here than upstairs. I knelt and touched a cement floor, then a cement wall. There was a big rectangular chamber, with double doors at the far end. These led to an entry from lower ground behind the house. The basement had been furnished with a long bench of dark wood along one wall. There was something of a horrible spirit lurking in the abyss. I felt as petrified as men who stalk deadly beasts through African jungles to photography them or study their habits. Half-paralysed with terror though I was, there was nevertheless fanned within me a blazing flame of awe and curiosity which triumphed in the end. However, I certainly did not mean to face what I feared—yet I will not deny that I may have had a lurking, unconscious wish to spy certain things from a hidden vantage-point. The sub-levels of my home perhaps embodied architectural marvels as yet unencountered by me. I reflected on how in these days, while I was being terrorized by ghosts, some people were having serious difficulties with finances, employee morale, yet we all managed to keep a spirit of camaraderie, of heartiness. Of course, it was the natural consequence of people in Victorian times. One simply could not resist, in such a context, the droll remark, the grateful laugh, the sense of cheerful complicity in even an unfortunate fate. How puzzling the human personality is, I thought, as I was preparing to enter the basement, moving uncharacteristically slowly, when with others there is a public self, alone there is a private self, and yet both are real…Both are experienced as real. A heavy echoing thump startled me. I heard the floor creak as I moved cautiously but purposefully toward the basement stairs. Whatever the lurking horror might be, I believed the direct avenue toward it was now plainly manifest. And yet, when I did venture down the stairs towards the dark basement, my first impression was one of anticlimax. The moon light beam from the skylight upstairs made a halo of radiance at the door. Light must have seeped at once through the cracks, for the shadows, halfway downstairs, paused. My heart was racing and my lip caught in my teeth, I tiptoed to the door and stood next to its hinges. A hand rattled the latch, lifted it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

The door was thrown open, screening me from the rest of the cellar. A specter appeared in my own resemblance, and she seemed to be habited in the same clothes and dress which I hath on at the same time. Revolver shots rang in the cellar like a bombardment. As I cleared the door, I darted up the stairs. I tripped on the top one, but kept my feet. Four mighty leaps carried me to the Grand Ball Room. I was taken up by the skirt of my doublet by this female demon, and carried a height into the air. I was soon missed by my servants, and after no news could be heard of me until at length (near half an hour later) I was heard singing and whistling in the fruit orchard where they found me in kind of a trance. I solemnly protested to them that the demon had carried me so high that my house seemed to me to be but as a sand castle, and during all that time I was in perfect sense, and prayed to Almighty God not to suffer the devil to destroy me; and I was then suddenly set down in the fruit orchard. The workmen found one shoe on the side of my house, and the other on the other side, and in the morning espied my hat hanging on the top of a tree; by which it appears I had been carried a considerable height, and that what I am telling is not a fiction. In the month of June, in a pond of water, with the throat cut: a knife belonging to a prisoner was found in that same water, and something dark came up out of the water at the edge of the pond farthest away from him, and so up the bank. And when it got to the top where he could see it plain against the sky, it stood up and flapped the arms up and down, and then run off very swiftly. And inside of Llanada Villa, it was also very noticeable what a silence the servants kept, and further (though this might not be otherwise than natural in that season of the year), what a darkness and obscurity there was in the mansion, lights being brought in not long after two o’ clock in the day, and yet no fog in town. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

The Winchester Myster House

On November 18, of the year of 2020, caretakers were decorating for the season. Suddenly, one man was startled by knocking sounds coming from behind the largest cupboard door in the house. He thought to himself, “there is someone hiding within, and I would know what she wants.” And with that he gave a sort of cry or a shout and ran out of the house into the dark, and another caretaker felt the cupboard door pushed out against her while she held it, but before she pressed to keep it shut as hard as she could, it was forced out against her, and she had to fall back. What came out? She could not see what it was: it fleeted very swiftly over the floor and out the door. What did it look like? It ran very low, and it was of a dark colour. She was daunted and made all the haste she could after it to the door that stood open. And she looked out, but it was dark and could see nothing. There were no tracks on the floor, but there was a voice heard without the house.

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November 15, 2023 4:02 pm

A rush of icy air swept across my skin. Goose bumps rose. Shivering, I blinked, trying to pierce the shifting darkness, a cold dark void with muted spots of blue light shrouded in a rising mist. I was freezing. My insides shivered with a new fear. I suddenly caught sight of a woman wearing a black cape standing in the center of the hallway near the Crystal Bedroom. I immediately stopped advancing down the hallway, thinking it was a vengeful spirit looking for trouble. To my amazement, as I hastily drew near her, the figure simply vanished. I walk through the hall and looked all around, but there was not the slightest sign of anybody, and nowhere where anyone could have gone. I walked toward the library and carried on, and when I drew near my desk, I saw the figure again. This visible spirit had been one of the more ominous ghosts I had ever beheld. I was so used to shadows, interior voices, and even possessions; but to see the seemingly solid form was terrifying. I started to approach her; I saw something walking across the room wearing a grey cloak. Standing in the doorway, I was utterly shattered. This was a little more than I could easily bear. The morning after I saw these apparitions I was in a state of terror, and could not bear to be left alone, daylight though it was. At this moment the unwonted sound of carriage wheels and many hoofs upon the road, arrested my attention. They seemed to be approaching from the high ground overlooking the fruit orchard, and very soon the equipage emerged from that point. The wild gallop of the horses came thundering toward my home with the speed of a hurricane. The excitement of the scene was made more painful by the clear, long-drawn screams of a woman’s voice from the carriage window. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

We all advanced in curiosity and horror. There appeared unto me the resemblance of an aged gentleman with a pole or staff in his hand, resembling that he was wont to carry when living to kill the moles withal. The spectrum approached near the young man, whom you may imagine not a little surprised at the appearance of one that he knew to be dead. This apparition, of the old man with the pole, was only the harbinger of more extraordinary events. At evening prayers, during the Psalms, the wood in my home seemed to become more chilly than usual. The whispering in my house was more persistent tonight. I seemed not to be rid of it in my room. I have not noticed this before. I was very much troubled in sleep. No definite image presented itself, but I was pursued by the very vivid impression that wet lips were whispering into my ear with great rapidity and emphasis for some time together. After thus, I supposed, I fell asleep, but was awakened with a start by a feeling as if a hand were laid on my shoulder. To my intense alarm I found myself standing at the top of the lowest flight of the first staircase. The moon was shining brightly enough through the large window to let me see that there was an apparition on the second or third step. I could make no comment. I crept up to be again, I do not know how. Yes, mine is a heavy burden. The morning of 26^th of November was cold and tempestuous. At an early hour the servants had occasion to go into the front hall of the residence. What was their horror upon observing the form of the butler, Otto Meckelburg, lying upon the landing of the principal staircase in an attitude which inspired the gravest fears. Assistance was procured, and a universal consternation was experienced upon the discovery that he had been the object of a brutal and murderous attack. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

The vertebral column was fractured in more than one place. This might have been the result of a fall: it appeared that the stair-carpet was loosed at one point. However, in addition to this, there were injuries inflicted upon the eyes, nose and mouth, as if by the agency of some savage animal, which, dreadful to relate, rendered those features unrecognizable. The vital spark was, it is needless to add, completely extinct, and had been so, upon the testimony of respectable medical authorities, for several hours. The author of authors of this mysterious outrage are alike buried in mystery, and the most active conjecture has hitherto failed to suggest a solution of the melancholy problem afford by this appalling occurrence. I could not overcome my anxiety. The rest of the day—the late afternoon reception, the dinner itself, the after-dinner gathering—passed easily, even routinely, but did not seem to me very real; it was not very convincing. The vision of Llanada Villa kept rising in my mind’s eye. How odd, how very beautiful the experience had been, yet there was no one to whom I might speak about it. The other did not notice my discomfort. In fact they claimed that I was looking well, they were delighted to see me and to shake my hand. Many were old acquaintances, men and women, but primarily women; a number of them wanted to be introduced to me and tour my lovely home. At dinner, though my voice was distracted, I spoke of the usual matters. Thought I had changed into a linen dress of pale blue, my mind kept drifting away from the others, from the new and handsome dark colonial dining room. I smiled at other, and laughed with the others. Though there were people who clearly wished to talk with me, I kept drifting back to the horrible events of earlier, and knew a night of insomnia awaited.  #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

It was a soft clear evening, and I loitered in the garden, speculating upon the possible meanings of the apparitions. Llanada Villa was a marvelous and mystic beauty, and I almost forgot the sinister oppression with which its inhuman age and massiveness had chocked and weighed on my spirit. I had already walked nearly a mile before reaching my favourite tree, and by that time the moon was shining brilliantly. The moon was fully of idyllic and magnetic influence—and when I looked at the windows of Llanada Villa, they flashed and twinkled with that silvery splendour, as if unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive guests. Then for a moment, I felt sour fear. Sinister sculptures leered menacingly from the oppressive walls. As the night drew on, the housemaid’s head was thrust into a very strait place betwixt a bed’s head and a wall, and forced by the strength of men to be removed thence, and that not without being much hurt and bruised, so that much blood appeared about it: upon this it was advised that she should be bleeded, to prevent any ill-accident that might come of the bruise; after bleeding, the ligature or binder of her arm was removed from thence and conveyed about her middle, where it was strained with such violence that the girding had almost stopped her breath and killed her, being cut asunder it made a strange and dismal noise, so that the other servants were affrighted by it. At other times, housemaids had been in danger to be strangled with cravats and handkerchiefs that they had worn about their necks, which had been drawn so close that with the sudden violence they had near been choked to death, and hardly escaped death. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

After a steeply descending walk of about a mile through my home, one could tell there was something abnormal about the whole business—the strange things we had tried so hard to hid. The harpsichord music was something of a comfort, as Mozart always is, with his merriment, no matter what the composition, but nevertheless, I felt restless and unsafe in these warm rooms where I was accustomed to spend many hours in comfort alone. The specter had showed great offense at the periwigs which young male servants used to wear, for they were often torn from their heads after a very strange manner. The male servants would often find their periwigs removed from their boxes and rendered into many small parts and tatters. Hans Bogner, while lying in his chamber with his periwig on his head, to secure it from danger, within a little time it was town from him, and reduced into very small fragments. I felt confusion and guilt. I had to get my mind clear. Walking through the twisting corridors of my mansion, from a pitch-black room there burst the most appalling and demoniac succession of cries that I had ever heard. Not more unutterable could have been the chaos of hellish sound if the pit itself had opened to release the agony of the damned, for in one inconceivable cacophony was centered all the supernatural terror and unnatural despair of animate nature. Human it could not have been—it is not in man to make such sounds—and without a thought, I frantically ran until I was out of breath. Afterward I was not able to shake off the maddening sensation of being haunted and hunted. I had seen a good deal in the last few years, and was prepared to believe and keep silent about many appalling and incredible secrets of Llanada Villa. The black inner World, of whose existence we had not known before. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

The Winchester Mystery House

Many strange and fantastical things have been done by spirits or demons in The Winchester Mystery House. In 1911, a barrel of salt of considerable quantity had been observed to march from the kitchen to the dining room without any human assistance. As well, an unidentified ghost has been seen entering the mansion, vanishing as she enters the gate, while a figure suspected to be Mrs. Winchester has been seen in the mansion corridors at night, apparently knitting with white-hot needles, seething over the memory of her daughter Annie, who died as an infant. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase.  https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

November 7, 2023 2:46 pm

A million dollars could change your life, but it could also ruin it, depending on how you get it and what you do with it. Some may ask, “What is the difference whether you have twenty thousand dollars or sixty thousand dollars?” You can buy a few more things, but it is not enough to … Continue reading →

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October 30, 2023 9:17 am

Llanada Villa is as blissful and lovely as it can be; but it is just the busiest place you ever heard of. There are not any idle people here—after the first day. Singing hymns and the constant sound of hammers expanding my estate through all eternity is mighty pretty when you hear about it in … Continue reading →

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October 28, 2023 6:22 am