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Ghostly Encounters
Time moved slowly in Llanada Villa, if at all. Footsteps echoed along the corridors and up stairwells, but the sound seemed muted and out of synch with any motion amidst the shadows. It was dark out when my eyes fluttered open. Evening sunlight slanted across the countryside in a blaze of copper. Llanada Villa was hidden by trees and set in large Victorian gardens, the elegant mansion could only be glimpsed by walkers. Red roses bloomed on the trellis by the from doors. A cool breeze stirred the leaves of the shrubbery. If beauty really went on decaying, as the ancients say, by this time there could be no beauty left. Those who had the powers to see beyond the beautiful flowers, trees and towers, the inviting lawns, or the richness of the interior, when the doors are thrown open, knew my home harboured a terrifying evil and those who lived within its walls faced unspeakable dangers. A sound pierced the stillness like a clap of thunder. My heart raced, but I walked through the downstairs parlour and up the stairs. At the top of the landing, I pushed open the door, and my eyes still adjusting from the darkness to the light, walked down the long halls, dark, wining hallway past several bedrooms, turned the corner and headed toward the Grand Ballroom. As I rounded the corner, I stumbled over something on the floor. Heinz Bongartz, one of the carpenters, lay face down on the mahogany floor, his whole body scratched and bruised, his skull smashed to pieces, and blood everywhere. Someone had taken this man straight to the Devil. No one—no one—could imagine my fear. I was struggling with my own conscience about what to do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Poor weather seemed to deepen my malaise: the winds that buffeted the house, shuddering the windows and ratting the doors, inflicted particular torment. If I was alone in the house, I did not know. I gingerly stepped around Heinz, and fled down the hallway, toward the front of the house, through the morning room. From the window, I could see huntsmen mounted on horses as black as the Devil, wrapped in black cloaks. Hoods drawn right over their faces. Eyes glowing red. They give me a scare causing me to shiver. I felt my heart pounding, felt the blood stirring in my body, and began shuffling away from the wind, deeper into a passage. I walked toward the glow and away from the light. That is when the screaming started. At first, it was so loud that I thought it was some strange, high-pitched thunder from the storm that was still darkening the sky beyond the windows. However, it was too high, too shrill, and lasted too long to be part of the storm, even though it sounded like nothing human. The noise seemed to come from above…from up the stairwell on the darkened third floor…but it seemed to echo from the walls, from down stairs, even from the pipes and metal radiator. It went on and on. I froe and turned toward the doorway and stared at it for a full moment after the terrible noise stopped, expecting the source of the scream to appear there. A dark shape appeared in the gloom of the doorway. When I narrowed my eyes to make out the visage, I gasped, for was this not the same countenance that I had seen in the mirror the previous morning, the reflection of my own late mother? My eyes were swelled with crying. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
It was so cold, forcing me to wrap a shawl more closely around my shoulders. I shivered and longed to return to the warmth of my bed. It was not Mother, of course, how could it be? The rain began almost immediately then, falling heavily, great drops tumbling on the roof. I shivered again; a ghost walked over my grave terrifying me into the depths of my very soul. I began to fear that I might not sleep this night, so certain was I that I was surrounded by the spirits of those who had left their corporeal form being but had not yet been admitted through the gates of Heaven and so were left to trawl through my home, crying aloud, desperate to be heard, causing disarray and torment wherever they went, uncertain when they would be released to the peace of the afterlife and the quiet promise of eternal rest. I was terrified at the horror I knew was sure to come my way. It was dark in the room and illuminated only by the glow of the reddened coals with the colour of the sporadic flames. I fell asleep quite soon after going to bed but it was a fitful and unhappy sleep. My dreams were supplanted by nightmares. I encountered spirits where I should have undertaken adventures. My landscape was dark graveyards and irregular vistas rather than mansions and castles. However, nevertheless I slept through the night, and when I woke, feeling groggy and out of sorts, the morning light was already coming through my curtains. I looked at my clock; it was almost half past seven and I cursed myself, knowing that I would certainly be late for breakfast. Plucking up all my courage, I put my bar feet out of bed. It was cold in the room. The chill seemed to have entered into my very bones. I pushed the covers aside. Very quietly, I cautiously tiptoed to the door in case the floorboards creak. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The morning fog was beginning to descend on the garden and a persistent wind was forcing its way down the chimney, tracking a path along the stonework. I gradually learned about the horrific murder of Heinz Bongartz. However, my heat bleed for this distressed, and the temptations I was exposed to. I resolved to tarry to see how things went. “Mrs. Winchester!” Millicent, the housemaid’s voice interrupted. As I made my way to the breakfast room, Millicent obediently stood next to the to the door. As Millicent opened the door, “Mrs. Winchester, you’re getting a late start. Maybe you need to stop consulting the spirits so late a night?” she said. “And so I am to be exposed, in my own house, and out of my house, to the whole World, by such a sauce-box as you?” I replied. “No, Mrs. Winchester, and I hope your honour won’t be angry with me; it is not I that exposed you, if I say nothing but the truth.” Millicent, I am very much displeased with the freedoms you have taken with my name.” Millicent silently went over to the table and delicately placed my meal before me. Then she went to put another log on the fire. Millicent, serve the tea, and then you can go. I will probably have a little rest after you leave, so you do not need to return until four.” Millicent bobbed a curtsy and went over to a table covered in burgundy velvet that was located near the door to pour my cup of she. She also removed a thick linen napkin, revealing a plate piled high with slices of ham, Swiss cheese, and soft rolls. Millicent signed, since she knew that even the tea would remain untouched by me as long as I was handling the delicate satin material, but she did appreciate the gesture. Thank goodness for the excellent breakfast served this morning. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Later that evening, a peculiar incident occurred. At about midnight, I heard a chanting ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house, there came a sudden gust of chill wind, and a faint obscure trembling of the earth which everyone noted. At the same time, Zip exhibited phenomenal traces of fright. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that I believed the house had been struck. Daisy and I rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Millicent met us at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on her face. She assured us that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. We paused, and looking through a window saw that she was indeed right; for the lightning flashed father and father off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out. A chill shot through me and threated to reduce me to the very state from which I was emerging. It was of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul. Ever since I had been in my home, I had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon me what it was. I just remember I got my chamber for I knew nothing further of the matter till afterwards; for I fell into a fit with my terror, and there I lay. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
The following day, I took a turn or two in the garden, but in sight of my home, for fear of the worst; and breathed upon my hand to dry my eyes, because I would not be too disobedient. Close upon this, there was a thundering and with it came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though the sunset was still an hour distant. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed from a paroxysm of a diabolic and hysterical laughter. I ran back into my home and was greeting by Daisy. We traversed up the stairs just in time to see a cryptic soul creep through an opening in the door to nowhere, as we glimpsed the frightful vista of the void beyond. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it. As it was, I was seized my niece in her arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed me. Even so, however, I was not quick enough to escape catching something myself which caused me to stagger dangerously with my burden. The cry had been evidently heard by others. Every minute, as it grew near, my terrors increased; and sometimes I had great courage, and sometimes none at all; and I thought I should faint. “Answer me then, I bid you!” I shouted. And it did. However, the voice had a depth and hollowness which I could not comprehend. “Aunt Sarah, all of this must be stopped or you will be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility!” In our tracks, however, I paused at the sounds which I heard proceeding from the now disused library. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled. For the fright of fainting, Daisy rushed me to the Crystal Bedroom. The strangeness was a poignant sensation, and almost clawed at my chest as I strove to see just what was wrong around me. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
It can happen to anyone: Ghost are, after all, people who had unfinished business on their minds when they passed on. Ghosts are not figments of the imagination. Those who have studied parapsychology have come to understand that human life does continue beyond what we commonly call death. Once in a while, there are extraordinary circumstances when death occurs, and these exceptional situations create what we popularly call ghost and haunted houses.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: 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/
There are Always Misunderstandings
How beautiful it is to wake with the dusk, when the silver webs of night begin to form, frost and ice, on everything. My house tinseled and shining with this magic substance, each window glittering. Oh, and the sky, thick as a daisy-filed with the white stars. Llanada Villa is a marvelous sight, but beneath the surface were things far greater and more terrible than one can imagine. It was a quest amid black and black and forbidden realms of the unknown, in which I had hoped to never uncover; my home had a secret life of perpetual animation. I encounter the most ghastly obstacles. Every since I broke ground, I had felt a brooding menace. I half felt that I was followed—a psychological delusion of shaken nerves, enhanced by the undeniably disturbing fact that something supernatural was alive—a frightful carnivorous gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. During construction, I kept track of all the deaths and their circumstances with systematic care. However, surreptitious and ill-conducted bouts among the carpenters were common, and occasionally professional talent of low grade was imported, which is why I had rooms torn down, built over and sealed up. Upon the fourth floor is a biting chill like a pane of ghostly vitreous. Sounds transmitted through the flawless silence and amplifications of the Observational tower, scatter through countless miles of the labyrinth, where they are taken for the shrieks of malign invisible devils, tiny as bats, and armed with the barbed sting of scorpions. There are always misunderstandings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The wind tears through the skin and hair to gnaw the bones. To weep with cold earns no compassion of the cold. The night is full of lashing whips of when, and when the fireplaces in the Hall of Fires are lit, they are as white as snow itself, its flames giving nothing. In the winter, it seems possible that never again will there be a summer in the World. Crowds of frightened foreigners gather to watch towers and gables rise and the house mushroom from a farmhouse into a Grand Queen Anne Victorian mansion. Then villagers tell an odd story, about Llanada Villa, besieged by a huge flock, a menace of winged vampires, and how I waited in vain for my husband William to save us. But it seems there was a cruse on William, who on the very night our infant daughter was lost. And soon after he went mad, and himself stole out one night, and let the winged fiends into our castle, so all here perished. Horror was upon the whole pitiful crowd. They suspected that I was holding something back, and perhaps suspected graver things; but I could not tell them the truth because they would not have believed it. They knew, indeed, that Llanada Villa had been connected with activities beyond the credence of ordinary men. During the excavation of the basement, the workmen had struck some exceedingly ancient masonry; undoubtedly connected with the old burying-ground, yet far too deep to correspond with any known sepulcher therein. After a number of calculations, the carpenters decided that it represented some secret chamber beneath a tomb, where the last interment had been made in 1523. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
They studied the nitrous, dipping walls laid bare by the spades and mattocks of men, and were prepared for a gruesome thrill which would attend the uncovering of ancient grave-secrets; but my respect for the dead was more powerful than their curiosity. I ordered the men to leave the masonry intact and they plastered over it. Hours later, something fearsome happened. In the wee hours of the morning, a menacing military figure with a blueish face which was partially eaten away appeared. Most healthy men would drop dead from fright and disgust. He trampled, and bit every carpenter that did not flee; killing three. However, by the time help could be hailed, every trace of the men and the beast had vanished. This thin, misty line between life and death, it has been breached at certain times and in certain places. Many men have related hideous things, not mentioned in print, which have happened on the battlefields of Gettysburg. Some of these apparitions have made me faint, others have convulsed me with devastating nausea, while still others have made me tremble and look behind me in the dark; yet despite the worst of them I believe I can myself relate the most hideous thing of all—the shocking, the unnatural, the unbelievable horror from the shadows. Terror stalked me. A certain number of the servants had remained. However, one was in an asylum, while others had vanished. The ghost soon had achieved such strength that it could hand boards to the carpenters who were working on the house. I stepped in and forbade the carpenters to encourage such familiar interaction with the demon. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The phantasmal, unmentionable thing occurred one midnight late in December, 1887. I wonder even now if it could have been other than a demonic dream of delirium. As I was reading in bed last night, I found myself looking across the room every now and then. There was an effect as if someone kept peeping out between the curtains in one place or another, where there was no edge. The only other thing that troubled me was the wind. There was enough to sway my curtains and rustle them more than I wanted. Then I dozed, and then I woke, and bethought myself that my dog Zip, which ordinarily slept in my room, had not come upstairs with me. Then I though I was mistaken: for happening to move my hand which hung down off the bed within inches of the floor, I felt on the back of it just the slightest touch of a surface of hair, and stretching it out in that direction I stroked and patted a rounded something. But the feel of it, and still more the fact that instead of a responsive movement, absolute stillness greeting my touch, made me look at my arm. What I had been touching rose to meet me. It was a ghoulish thing crawling from the black shadows. There was about it so horrible an air of menace that as I bounded from bed and rushed from the room, I heard myself moaning with fear: and doubtless I did right to fly. As I dashed into the baize door that cut the passage in two, and—forgetting that it opened towards me—beat against it with all the force in me, I felt a soft ineffectual tearing at my back which, all the same, seemed to be growing in power, as if the hand, or whatever wore than a hand was there, were becoming more material as the pursuer’s rage was more concentrated. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Then I remembered the trick of the door—I got it open—I shut it behind me and gained another room. I flung away my candle at random, and, knowing I was near the window, I tore at the curtain and somehow let in enough light to be able to see. There was blood on the table. I walked a little closer. Looking at the floor, I noticed there had been blood smeared on into a wide, thin trail. I abruptly followed the blood trail through the doors. That is when I discovered the body of one of my carpenters Helmut Laux. I began to scream. It was a scream of utter terror. Helmut had marks of murderous violence upon him: the crime was so recently perpetrated, that the body still retained the warmth and pliancy observed in someone who has just died. He had two stab wounds, both in the area of the heart. He apparently was stretched out on the bed when he received them, and the hair had been plucked clear off his head. His throat was also severely cut: the razor with which the wounds had been inflicted was found on the bed. He had eaten breakfast maybe an hour or so before he died, and from our questioning that places the time of death at about ten o’clock. My brain became formless darkness. My eyes glared, seeing nothing. In an effort to warm myself up I turned to the fire; it was an unfortunate move, because it brought the ghost directly over the fire, which immediately was extinguished. A morbid and ghoulish curiosity and secret sense of charnel picturesqueness filled the atmosphere. This dreadful loss, the wort that has ever been or can be. Oh how cruel Death, Cold and Still. The shock was not just that of discovering a dead body; it was the horror of discovering someone had been murdered in my home. My first reaction was disbelief. In my agony of mind, I tried to revive him with hot-water, blankets, massage, brandy, and blessed water, but nothing could rouse him. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
We kept the body as long as we could, in the hope that Helmut could be revived. As the hour grew dangerously near to dawn, we dragged the body across the fruit orchards to a secluded neck of the woods and buried it there in the best sort of grave the froze ground would furnish. The grave was not very deep. The clock clanged out the hour of twelve. There was a sudden banging of doors. A blast of cold air swept through the halls. The Door to Nowhere flew open, in the light of our dark lanterns, a deathly white ghost appeared, retreating back into the abyss of darkness in the room. When the thing returned three nights later, it seemed to take out its anger on us. Then came the steady rattling at the back door. A stick of fire wood suddenly became animated. With red-ringed eyes and a lip that trembled, the butler fired his pistol at it, and we were astonished to see several drops of blood appear on the hearth. The firewood fell to the floor, and a trail of blood began to drip on the stairway as the wounded ghost retreated. The soul-shattering catastrophe held elements of the demonic which made me even doubt they reality of what I saw. Part of my fear came merely from knowing of the existence of such nameless monsters, while another part arose from apprehension of the bodily harm, they might under certain circumstances do. Their disappearance added horror to the situation. A phantom laughter echoed and rebounded, filling the dark mansion with a sound like laughing banshees or demons approving a particularly good jest. And when it struck me, the vibration running through my body was enough to knock me backwards. I was dragged back into the darkness. I screamed once more. Only once. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The Winchester Mystery House was built for many reasons. One purpose was to heighten the sense of religious experience. To produce a sort of mystical involvement which is the whole meaning of life. On Sunday 23 December 2007 a caretaker glimpsed the figure of a woman he had seen on previous occasion; she was standing in the hallway, wearing a blue scarf before disappearing through the forgotten door (the door that opens to a wall).
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: 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/
Have You Heard Anybody?
I sat for a while in the East Turret, then decided to walk out, in the lovely garden of sunlight. Sitting under the orange tree, I noticed that the sky had lost it morning haze; the restless spirits moved up to the zenith, where their mocking shadows seemed on the point of settling into some bizarre pattern which they feared to make quite definite or conclusive. And at that same sky, as though to suggest that this was a World of perpetual twilight, teetering always on the edge of darkness and extinction, was a sun that was three-quarters eclipsed by an exquisitely rendered moon. It was so cunning, as it slid over the face of the day-star. For a moment, I grasped in admiration of the mansion’s unearthly cosmic beauty, and then vague horror, and then vague horror began to creep into my soul. Far from these shadowy walls, nothing could be seen of this forbidden catacomb—the highest peaks of the ceiling and evil in the abyss harbourered nameless horrors and secrets; shunned and prayed by those who feared its meaning; untrodden by strangers. Unholy primal legends hint evasively. One of Satan’s night-demons, which do torment us, had been captured and imprisoned in a beautiful chamber, the door of which for seventeen years had been locked. I looked at the cage cautiously, wondering what I would see. However, I saw only a heap of blackness like ravens, and then a tawny dazzle, torchlight on something like human skin. “Mrs. Winchester, you must go down and look,” said the housemaid protectively, as a carpenter pours about the cage. Someone pokes between the bars with a gemmed cane, trying to rouse the nightmare which lies quiescent there. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
“Oh, heavens. I must be spared from this!” I demanded. “The frightful amorphous entities have pushed their fetidly squirming way even to the topmost peaks of the house.” The wings of these demons spoke more than their wild orchestral voices. The they produced wind made sounds like an evil musical piping over a wide range. At least one of these creatures had been captured. His human audience, pleased, but afraid and squeamish, backs away, and asks each other for the two thousandth time if the cage is quite secure. The eyes of the beast are more black than red. He starred about He was, though captive, imperious. If he were a lion or a bull, they would admire this “nobility.” However, the fact is, he is too much like a man, which serves to point up his supernatural differences unbearably. This demon understands the gist of his plight. Enemies have him penned. He is a show for not, but ultimately to be killed, for with the intuition of the raptor he divines everything. He thought the sunlight would kill him, but that is a distant matter, now. And beyond all, the voices and the voices of the wings of his kindred beat the air outside this room. The demon continues to sing, or at least, this is how it seems to the rabid servants and all the people in the mansion gathered in the hall. It seems he sings. It is the great communing call of his kind, the art and science and religion of the winged demons, his means of telling them, or attempting to tell them, what they must be told before he dies. Generally, all these beasts died in flight, fallen angels spun down the gulches and enormous stairs of distant peaks, sing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
To the crowds of Llanada Villa, the song is merely that, a song, but how glorious. The dark silver voice, turning to bronze or gold, whitening in the higher registers. There seem to be words, but in some other tongue. This is how the planet sings, surely, or mysterious creatures of the sea. Everyone is bemused. They listen, astonished. There is an enchantment which prevents movement and coherent thought. In spite of the heat in the Hall of Fires, I shivered. I recalled that one night these demons often tore cattle apart, and ripped the flesh from cornered farmers. Some crawled away from Llanada Villa, trailing their bowels; one had been thrown up into the trees, and his corpse hung there, tongue lolling. Other lay sprawled in the grass in pools of blood. By the sight of all of this, I was terrified. I could not figure out what sort of monstrous struggle occurred down here in the dark. The hunters kept their distance, no doubt waiting for the demons to depart. To make matters worse, something stirred in the blackness of the far corner. Two eyes, green and phosphorescent, glowed at me. Shadows betwixt the walls of the hall. As I drew closer to the 9th floor the jutting peaks the wind’s strange piping again became manifest. I wish I had wax-stopped ears like Ulysses’ men off the Sirens’ coast to keep that disturbing wind-piping from my consciousness. Looking below, there were terrified couples clung to one another. This grisly massacre made it seem that there was no moral from one end of this World to the other. It would be possible to go on listing at great length the horrors and the spectacles of the scenes laid out on my estate this particular night of despair: the fields of flying demons, spectacles draped in mink coats, the spirits of gravesides rising behind every tree. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Of what had set me fleeing from the darkness in Llanada Villa after the 1906 Hellquake, I said nothing at all. If the fate which screened me was benign, that which gave me the half-glimpse was infinitely the opposite; for to that flash of semi-vision can be traced a full half of the horror which has ever since haunted me. I saw the heads of men flower into dark, monstrous shapes; demonic tails sprout from their backsides. After that experience, I had dropped my researches for some time. The situation was almost past management, and deaths ensued too frequently for the local undertakers to handle. Burials without embalming were made in rapid succession, and even Oak Hill Memorial Park’s receiving tomb was crammed with coffins of the unembalmed dead. Morticians were frightfully overworked, and the terrific mental and nervous strain made on my estate made everyone morbidly sad. It was as if I was living in a nebulous World or dimension without time, causation, or orientation. Llanada Villa had become a strange titanic mausoleum. The moonlight of midnight peered redly from the southern horizon through the strained-glass windows and skylights, and the terrible age and deadness of this nightmare maze seemed all the starker by contrast with such relatively known and accustomed things as the features of this Gothic mansion. There was not one portion of the estate that was not haunted by some bizarre sight or other. Even the clouds (innocent enough, surely) shat rains of evil on the place, and evacuated skulls in another. Demons cavorted unchallenged over the open sky, like dancer possessed by some symphony of Beethoven; other rose over the horizon, leering like emancipated jesters. It was as I was running up the colossal staircase that I first felt the terrible fatigue and short breath which the race through my labyrinth had produced; but not even the fear of collapse could make me pause before reaching my chamber. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Llanada Villa had neither irrelevance nor home-feeling. It had only horror, because I knew unerringly the monstrous nefandous entity possessing it. If the mists were thin enough, I had expected, upon looking back, to see a terrible and incredibly moving entity; but of that entity I formed a clear idea. What I did see—for the mists were indeed all too malignly thinned—was something altogether different, and immeasurably more hideous and detestable. Instinct alone must have carried me through—perhaps better than reason could have done; though if that was what saved me, I paid a high price. And now this had come, the scourge, grinning and lethal nightmare. The demon’s voice reverberated in falsetto echoes among the house; reverberated through the vaultings ahead, and through the empty vaultings behind. The thing in the cage opened its eyes, but only stared at the ceiling with a look of soul-petrifying horror before collapsing into an inertness from which nothing could rouse it. I knew they meant to butcher the winged man for the demonic fury his kind had unleashed. At the intimation of sunrise the black plague had lifted and gone away, and might never have been. The mansion full of men, women, and children emerged from the doors. The sky was measureless and bluely grey, with a cherry rift in the east. They moved through the dimly lightened garden as the last stars melted. Several servants refused to tell me what final horror made them scream out so insanely—a horror which, I feel sadly sure, is mainly responsible for their breakdowns. However, we all made pledges of secrecy. Certain things, we had agreed, were not for people to know and discuss lightly—and I would not speak of them at any cost. It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of Llanada Villa’s dark dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
It was a beautiful spring like day on Sunday September 5, 1926. A caretaker was standing alone in the foyer of the mansion, and the front doors were wide open. Suddenly they crashed shut with such force that the whole mansion seemed to shake. When there is no palpable reason, doors do not usually slam as if an express train had hit them. On November 5, 1926, a caretaker was preparing for tours, he tried to open the door-to-nowhere for some time, then gave it up hopeless; it was fixed tight. He walked away and came back to the room minutes later, and tried again. The influence had gone, and the door opened normally. All was quiet for thirteen years. Then in 1939, a caretaker reported another incident out of the ordinary. She and her daughter were busy decorating the interior of the mansion in preparation for Christmas. They had just placed some pink peonies in a vase, and had put it on a table while they were dusting; the caretaker and her daughter turned around to get some Christmas ornaments, when they turned around, they discovered that the flowers had been taken out of the case and placed neatly on the floor.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: 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/
Randolph Harris II International 