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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Randolph Harris II International Institute 