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You, Sir, Had a Mild Heart Attack Last Night!
Each of us has our own difficult journeys in the “wilderness.” Some journeys are so difficult that it might even seem unbearable at times. The man you are about to meet, not only were his conversations battles, life itself was a battle—a battle he almost lost before finding his core. His biggest disappointment in life was that his father had not been killed in the war. Charles was born in 1942, into a World turned upside down; a World of women who worked in factories while their men went to far-off countries to fight. Charles’ mother was a pale, weak woman who worked too hard and had not the strength to survive his birth. A judge put Charles into the care of his Aunt Selma, a wealthy spinster who had nothing else to do but pamper the baby, whom she considered a gift sent from Heaven to fill and delight her lonely days. The first three years of Charles’ life were as much a delight to him as they were to his aunt. His every demand was filled as quickly as the woman could get to it. He did as he pleased and Clare’s only responses were kisses, pats, hugs, and praise. However, then the way was over—and for Charles, the nightmare began. His father came home. His father had a skill which was rare among men in those days: he could type. So instead of shouldering a rifle, he sat at a typewriter in Maryland. At war’s end, he returned uninjured, but had to face two gigantic problems: unemployment and fatherhood. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The first problem he was able to solve simply by taking the lowest-paying job available. However, the second problem had no simple solutions. It never would. Charles’s nightmare because real when his father took him away from Aunt Clare and moved him into a cramped apartment in St. Louis. In their first few months together, Charles’ father was unemployed. Unsure of what he ought to allow the little boy to do, he decided the safest course was to let him do nothing which could lead to trouble. Thus, Charles heard, “Do not touch that!” and “Bad boy!” for the first time in his life. And to the extent three-year-old boys are able, Charles began to feel progressively irritated, annoyed and resentful of his father’s restrictiveness. His father eventually found a job as a clerk in a brewery and every morning left Charles in the care of an overwrought woman who had six children of her own. As the boy grew to young manhood, his resentment of his father grew to a full-blown hatred. They squabbled over everything and nothing Charles did was quite good enough for his father’s liking. In return, Charles found a little to admire in the stranger who called himself his father. The man worked hard, but was not able to rise above the position of senior bookkeeper. He had no zest for living, few friends, no accomplishments to be proud of. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
As Charles matured, he also lost much of his zest for living. He too found difficulty making friends, mainly because he argued about nearly everything. However, he did have accomplishments to be proud of. He was extremely bright and had a natural ability with numbers. In college, he majored in accounting and graduated first in his class. He accepted an offer from a huge company in New York, with a starting salary higher than the salary his father had worked twenty years to attain. The job did not last. Despite his youth and inexperience, Charles refused to follow the orders for his supervisors. He always had a better way to do things. Even when he was show to be in error, he would argue his position rather than back down. The final straw came when his supervisor overheard him advising a department head to account for supplies in a manner different from the standard. He was told to resign, but he insisted he be fired, despite the damage this would do to his record. Then Charles began taking a series of jobs in different cities, each with companies of lesser and lesser prestige. The pattern he set in his first job repeated itself. At last, even the worst companies would not have him. More from necessity than choice, he decided to go into solo practice. So he got an office, advertised a little, and business trickled in. His clients, though miffed by his heavy-handedness, saw his ability. His business grew, but his constant bickering made them throw up their hands and seek another accountant. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
With the constant turnover in clientele, Charles found that he had to work punishingly hard to make a living. He was at his desk from morning until late in the evening, doing all the work himself. The tiresome schedule appealed to him. He had no social life and his only hobby was psychology, in which he was getting a Master’s degree at night. Ultimately the strain of too much work, too little sleep, and junk food took its toll. As he sat at his desk one evening, he felt a small twinge of pain just above his stomach. Indigestion, he thought, probably the result of the cheeseburger he had eaten earlier. He glanced at his watch and noted it was nine-thirty. He tried to ease the pain by breathing deeply, but his breaths came only in painful gasps. He felts a sudden chill, despite the fact that he was sweating a great deal, his shirt having become soaked in a few seconds. Frightened, Charles decided to take an Alka-Seltzer, but when he tried to rise and push his chair back, he could not. His strength was gone. He tried again, got halfway up and the World went black. When he awoke, he was laying on the floor. He glanced at his watch again: almost ten o’clock. He had been out a half-hour. However, on getting up, he felt fine. Nevertheless, he closed the books and went home. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The next day, Charles went to a doctor, thinking that he might have the beginnings of an ulcer. Not so. “Your blood enzyme test bothers me,” the doctor said with an ominously wrinkled brow. “Just to be sure, I’m going to do an EKG.” “What the heck’s that?” “Electrocardiogram. Heart test.” When the test results came back, the doctor seemed pleased with himself. “Just as I suspected. You, sir, had a mild heart attack last night. It was one of the few moments in his life that Charles could think of nothing to say. “I know what you’re thinking,” the doctor went on. “You’re only thirty-five years old, too young to have a heart attack. But I’ll be you work too hard and don’t exercise. Probably haven’t eaten a decent meal outside a restaurant in a year. Am I right so far?” One thing Charles could not do was admit someone else was right, no matter what the circumstances. “Say no more,” the doctor said, chickling. Then he turned serious. “Here it is, straight: You’re going to the hospital now. After a few days of observation, you can home—if we don’t find anything more disturbing. When you get out, no more junk food. No more sixteen-hour days. No more coffee. Get a lot of sleep, try not to get upset. This bum ticker of yours is a fact. You’re stuck with it, so you might as well live with it. There’s nothing else you can do.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Five days later, Charles left the hospital feeling a mixture of frustration and anger. The thought of taking orders from the medical man infuriated him. Yet he could not afford to do things his own way. Not with this. In this game, someone else held all the cards. That afternoon, he closed his office obediently at five, went home and fixed a salad, ate it slowly, and took a nap before going to class. For the past few weeks, the class had been discussing psychosomatic illnesses, a subject which interested Charles little. However, on this evening, he listened very, very closely. The professor was lecturing about the forms of psychosomatic illness: “The most obvious type is, of course, ulcers. People now recognize that stress, worry and overwork may give one an ulcer. However, psychologists are discovering that many other illnesses may have psychosomatic origins. People are unwilling to accept that such aliments as cancer, asthma, heart trouble and the like have their roots in psyche. One patient of mine, for example, Charles froze at the mention of the words “heart trouble.” Could his hear problem be “all in his head”? During the next few days, the thought came up repeatedly. Every time it did, it frightened him—not because he thought the condition serious, but because there was apparently nothing he could do about it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
All his life, Charles had felt able to control whatever came up. He had always been able to do something about everything. Yet in this case, there was nothing he could do. This bothered him most. The next week, Charles asked the professor a hypothetical question about a “friend” who had heart trouble and was wondering if it might be psychosomatic. The old psychologist saw through the deception and suggested Charles try therapy. He referred him to me. One of the deepest learnings in mu previous clinical work had been the tremendous pull exerted in the client by the satisfaction of learning one’s self. No matter how external the concern initially expressed by the client—the problem of his wife’s behaviour, or the choice of a vocational goal—once he had experienced the bitter-sweet satisfaction of self-exploration, this inevitably became the focus of therapy. I do not find this to be true with our schizophrenic clients. Even when we have established a relationship, even when the individual experiences some new facet of himself, and understands himself a bit more clearly, he does not necessarily continue along this line. For reasons I am not sure I understand, he does not find himself, except very occasionally, drawn to the exploring and experience of self. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Instead, he is more likely to continue to externalize his problems, to refuse to own his feelings. Is this due to the nature of the schizophrenic reaction to life? Is it primarily characteristic of the chronically hospitalized person? Is it due to the low socio-educational status of our group? Is it simply that very few of our clients have reached the level of inner development where self-exploration is satisfying? I cannot be sure. Counseling center clients, on the average, show a significantly greater depth of self-exploration than our schizophrenic clients. This was based on a new measure of intrapersonal exploration, developed out of our Process Scale and its derivatives. It was also found, in accordance with expectation, that the more successful cases showed an increase in degree of self-exploration over time, while the less successful cases—both neurotic and psychotic—showed actually less intrapersonal exploration later in therapy than they did early in therapy. However, the surprising finding was that the more successful schizophrenic cases showed the greatest increase in depth of self-exploration from early to late, greater even than the successful neurotic cases. This is both pleasing and surprising. It means that in those schizophrenics who do show marked improvement on objective tests, this improvement is preceded by the spontaneous and feelingful expression of personally relevant material, by an active, struggling, fearful exploration of self. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
It appears in our sample that when a schizophrenic improves it is because he has entered into “therapy” as we have customarily understood it. Another simple observation. Our schizophrenics tend to be either massively silent, or to engage in continuous (and not very revealing) conversation. It has been found that half of our schizophrenics, in their second interviews, show either less than 1 percent silence mor more than 40 percent silence. This is sharply different from clinic clients. Our schizophrenic individuals tend to fend off a relationship either by an almost complete silence—often extending over many interviews—or by a flood of over-talk which is equally effective in preventing a real encounter. Parents everywhere are the same in regard to illusions. If the child believes they are magicians, it is partly because they believe it themselves. There is no actual or conceivable parent who has not somehow conveyed to his offspring: “If you do what I tell you, everything will come out all right.” To the child, this means: “If I do what they tell me, I will be protected by magic, and all my best dreams will come true.” He believes this so firmly that it is almost impossible to shake his faith. If he does not make it, it is not because the magic has gone, but because he has broken the rules. And if he defies or abandons the parental directives, it does not mean the he had lost his belief in his illusions. It may only mean that he cannot stand the requirements any longer, or does not think he will ever meet them. Hence the envy and derision which some people direct at those who follow the rules. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The inner Child still believes in Santa Claus, but the rebels are saying, “I can het if from him wholesale” (drugs or revolution), while the futilists cry: “Who needs his sour grapes? The grapes of death are sweeter.” However, as they get older, a few people are able to give up the illusion themselves, and they seem to do so without the envy or derision of those who have not. The Parental precept, at best, reads: “Do right and no harm can befall you!” a motto which has been the basis of ethical systems in every country throughout recorded history, starting with the oldest known written instructions by Ptahhotep, in ancient Egypt, five thousand years ago. At worst it reads: “If you kill certain people, the World will be a better place, and in that way, you will attain immortality, become omnipotent, and acquire irresistible power.” Oddly enough, from the Child’s point of view, both of these are slogans of love, for they are both based on the same Parental promise: “If you do as I tell you, I will love and protect you, and without me you are nothing.” This shows up clearly when the promise is given in writing. In the first case, it is the Lord who will love and protect you, as it is written in the Christian Bible and Book of Mormon, and in the second it is Mr. Hitler, as it is written in Mein Kampf and other productions. Mr. Hitler promised the thousand-year Reich, which is practical immortality, and his followers did indeed acquire omnipotence and irresistible power over the Poles, Gypsies, Jews, painters, musicians, writers, and politicians whom they imprisoned in their extermination camps. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
While this was going on, however, reality took over in the Napoleonic form of infantry, artillery, and air support, and millions of Mr. Hitler’s followers became mortal, impotent, and resistible. It takes enormous power to shatter these primal illusions, and this occurs most commonly in wartime. When Tolstoy’s Count goes into battle, he cries in outage: “Why are they firing at me? Everybody likes me (=I am irresistible).” The most horrifying example of smashing this almost universal belief by force is shown in the notorious picture of a little boy about nine years old standing in the middle of a street in Poland, alone and friendless despite the onlookers who line the sidewalk, while an armed Death’s Head Trooper stand over him. The expression on his face says very plainly: “But mother told me fi I was a good boy, everything would be all right.” The most brutal psychological blow that any human being can sustain is proof that his good mother deceived him, and that is the devastating torture which the German soldier is inflicting on the little boy he has concerned. When everything is permitted and the law passes away, the history of contemporary nihilism really begins. The romantic rebellion did not go so far. It limited itself to saying, in short, that everything was not permitted, but that, through insolence, it allowed itself to do what was forbidden. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
With the Karamazovs, on the contrary, the logic of indignation turned rebellion against itself and confronted it with a desperate contradiction. The essential difference is that the romantics allowed themselves moments of complacence, while Ivan compelled himself to do evil so as to be coherent. He would not allow himself to be good. Nihilism is not only despair and negation but, above all, the desire to negate. The same man who so violently took the part of innocence, who trembled at the suffering of a child, who wanted to see “with his own eyes” the lamb lie down with the lion, the victim embrace his murderer, from the moment that he rejects divine coherence and tries to discover his own rule of life, recognized the legitimacy of murder. Ivan rebels against a murderous God; but from the moment that he begins to rationalize his rebellion, he deduced the law of murder. If all is permitted, he can kill his father or at least allow him to be killed. Long reflection on the condition of mankind as people sentenced to death only leads to the justification of crime. Ivan simultaneously hates the death penalty (describing an execution, he says furiously: “His head fell, in the name of divine grace”) and condones crime, in principle. Every indulgence is allowed the murderer, none is allowed the executioner. This contradiction, which Sade swallowed with ease, chokes Ivan Karamazov. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
He pretends to reason, in fact, as though immortality did not exist, while he only goes so far as to say that he would refuse it even if it did exit. In order to protest against evil and death, he deliberately chooses to say that virtue exists no more than does immortality and to allow his father to be killed. He consciously accepts his dilemma; to be virtuous and illogical, or logical and criminal. His prototype, the devil, is right when he whispers: “You are going to commit a virtuous act and yet you do not believe in virtue; that is what angers and torments you.” The question that Ivan finally poses, the question that constitutes the real progress achieved by Dostoievsky in the history of rebellion, is the only one in which we are interested here: can one live and stand one’s ground in a state of rebellion? Ivan allows us to guess his answer: one can live in a state of rebellion only by pursuing it to the bitter end. What is the bitter end of metaphysical rebellion? Metaphysical revolution. The master of the World, after his legitimacy has been contested, must be overthrown. Man must occupy his place. “As God and immortality do not exist, the new man is permitted to become God.” However, what does becoming God mean? It means, in fact, reorganizing that everything is permitted and refusing to reorganize any other law but one’s own. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Without it being necessary to develop the intervening arguments, we can see that to become God is to accept crime (a favourite idea of Dostoievsky’s intellectuals). Ivan’s personal problem is, then, to know if he will be faithful to his logic and if, on the grounds of an indignant protest against innocent suffering, he will accept the murder of his father with the indifference of man-god. We know his solution: Ivan allows his father to be killed. Too proud to be satisfied with appearance, too sensitive to perform the deed himself, he is content to allow it to be done. However, he goes mad. The man who could not understand how one could love one’s neighbour cannot understand either how one can kill him. Studying counterintelligence is one way to understand how intelligence can be lowered. Counter-intelligence incessantly seeks old fact about other hives. Counter-intelligence continuously search for maps, blueprints, plans about intra-hive activity—in spite of the fact that nothing of genetic importance occurs within hives. Counter-intelligence feverishly construct apparatuses, devices, networks to limit our intelligence. Counter-intelligence bureaucracies, which includes the CIA, Senate investigating committees, and the old Soviet KGB lower intelligence and makes us more stupid with time tested techniques. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Anyone who keeps secrets from you is your Essence Enemy—acting to lower your most precious asset—your intelligence. If intelligence is the ultimate good then secrecy is the ultimate crime. Censorship is the imposition of secrets. Counter-intelligence makes us stupid. Disinformation—false facts obviously increase stupidity. When Richard Helms lied under oath about CIA involvement in Chile, he was acting to keep the Senate and the American people stupid. When Dick Gregory and Mark Lane invented Kennedy conspiracy facts, they are lowering the National intelligence index. Secrecy is the most obvious and blatant technique for inhibiting intelligence and always designed to increase stupidity. Even simple human ethics, let alone divinely given commandments, tell us to treat others as we wish them to treat ourselves. Whoever looks for the negative aspects of others should also remember that there are usually some beneficial ones also and that in fairness he ought to recognize them too. If anyone or anything, a man or a book, can contribute to free us from the resentments towards others or the bitterness towards life which poison feelings, thoughts, and health, he has rendered us a great service or the book has proved its worth. His virtue is not cold and selfish and self-admiring, although it may seem so to those who have insufficient knowledge of these matters. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Conformity has its uses, its merits, its place and time. Given these, it is quite acceptable. Ill-mannered people mistake invective for argument. The insatiable curiosity whose satisfaction fills so many columns of personal gossip in newspapers, is reflected in those who intrusively ask private questions where they have no right and no encouragement to do so. It is a breach of good manners, a blow at personal rights. It is a lack of respect for human dignity and independence. Being different from the crowd may mean being lonely but it also means being inspired, protected, blessed. Jesus Christ was not holier in essence than he is, only that man had manifested all this holiness, whereas he has hardly begun to do so. The task is to reflect the attributes of divinity in the conduct of humanity, involving the bringing-in of his metaphysics and his mysticism to actuate his conduct. Emotional expression is an aspect of communication. If we share a common upbringing and cultural heritage, we will not have difficult in understanding the subtleties and nuances of emotion that are conveyed by the flare of a nostril, the narrowing of eyelids, or the ripple of muscle along the jawline as a person suppresses rage. When we enter another culture, however, such as happens when an American from New York visits a Southern state or another English-speaking country, we frequently do not recognize when our speech and actions are angering or amusing the local people. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Indeed, it may take years to learn the perspective, expectations, and evaluative norms of the natives, and until that happens, a visitor may feel lonely and out of touch. Many students have had the experience of joy and relief at encountering someone from their home when they were abroad. Understanding one another’s feelings is usually immediate between people who know one another. There are occasions, however, when the emotional disclosure of someone well known becomes unintelligible; we cannot comprehend why a friend is terrified, angry, or sexually aroused. This is the case with so-called schizophrenic and neurotic people; their emotionality does not appear to make sense, even to members of their families. Yet, because they are human, it must be assumed that the emotional experience of such sufferers makes sense to them, in the light of their perspective upon the World. If someone is terrified, it is because the person experiences imminent danger; if someone is enraged, it is because someone else has violated that person’s space and integrity. All emotion makes sense when we have imaginatively grasped the perspective of the person who is feeling it. It is such empathy, and the willingness to encounter and enter into dialogue with someone with a different perspective, which is so important for therapists, teachers of children, parents, and those who seek to live and work in another country. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The Sacramento Fire Department’s mission is to ensure safety and well-being for residents and visitors through firefighting, public education, enforcement of fire codes, and efficient emergency response resources. “You see a lot in this profession. There was a truck driver driving this tractor-trailer through Sacramento one afternoon, he crossed the highway divider. He hit a Honda head on and crushed it, also a pickup truck with three construction workers in it. We didn’t even see the girl who was driving the Hunda until we got a big tow truck to get the tractor-trailer off her car. She was just jelly. We had to cut her out with the jaws of life. The three construction workers were coming home from work. They didn’t make it. They were crushed inside the truck. The saddest thing is to see an innocent person dying. We had several medical calls recently to a young boy who was extremely sick, and every once in a while he would stop breathing. That was a very painful thin for his parents, and it drew a lot of compassion from firemen. You’ve got to live with these things. When we come back to the situation, I talked about these things with one of the guys I work with. But the traditional male machoism keeps some guys from expressing their true feelings or even talking about it. This guy now has a master’s degree in psychology. He does seminars in Texas on postincident stress reduction, helping firefighters deal with injuries and deaths, mass deaths like in plane crashes. You go out there and do what you have to do, yet a lot of it sets in and affects you. You’ve got to learn to overcome it, to release it instead of bottling it up inside. So we’re learning to do that.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The Sacramento Fire Department recognizes that they face unique challenges in keeping pace with the changing World in which they live and work. They will not forget the traditions of those that came before them. However, they have adapted and progressed so that they can remain successful. “We are a family of individuals committed to serving others. We will always provide for the welfare of our personnel through a health and rewarding work environment. We are dedicated to respect, integrity, compassion, and leadership amongst ourselves so that we may proudly serve others. The Sacramento Fire Department strives to sustain and improve the health, safety, convenience, and welfare of the citizens of Sacramento and to plan for the future development of the community. You can help save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember parents, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus, respect law and others, treat others with dignity and respect, and remind them of the importance of education. To help America survive the global recession and bring manufacturing jobs back to America and to get American wages at pace with inflation, it is important to buy America cars, American meat, American produce and other American made goods and services. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. Our Father, our King, be gracious unto us and answer us, for we are wanting in good deeds; deal with us in charity and lovingkindness, and please save us. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
The Winchester Mystery House
There is only one week left until our Friday the 13th Flashlight Tour 🔦
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to explore the mansion in full darkness on this eerie night 🌔
Please 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/
Morally Outraged Citizens
You have more choices and more opportunities than ever before. Like so many things in life, this is both a blessing and a curse. Too many choices and the fear of making bad decisions often lead to decision paralysis, which is one of the challenges of your generation. Only when the gathering of Earthly gains seems futile, and the gains themselves mere dross, will he stop bartering his precious years for them. When a desire lurks hidden in the heart, it may sway actions or influence thoughts without resistance. However, when it rises to the surface and is seen for what it is, then it can be fought and conquered. As his desires quieten, he finds to his surprise that many things hitherto thought indispensable to existence, he can do well without. He who submits his emotions and passions to reason, and his reason to intuition, will save himself from many regrets. So long as he is buffeted between his passionate desire and his self-hating guilt, so long will a distressing tension be sustained. So far they distract the mind and disturb its peace, the struggle against the passions must go on. If he is willing to be instructed–when passion, uncontrollable and blind, irrational and violent, is behind action, the consequences may be harmful to its owner but they may also be instructive. For life is an educational process, which everybody has to undergo whether the pupils like it or not. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
We are not always the same person. At one period of life, a desire may almost enslave us which has no power over us at a later period. The World can be overcome only to the extent that we overcome ourselves, our endless desires and snaring ambitions, our passions and habits. He has not only to deal with his tendencies but also with his compulsions. However, passion is an insurgent, a rebel against reason whose counterbalance it fears and avoids. Even such normal factors as curiosity and ambition become disturbing when they become excessive, unbalanced, and drive the enslaved mind. As the heart opens to this call of the inner self, the demand comes to the will for a more austere habit of living. It is the difference between gentle austerity and harsh asceticism. We continuously try to “read” our own and others’ motives. The most common bases employed for inferring the intentions, feelings, and need of the other people are observation of facial expression, tone of voice, and gestures, which generally disclose what the person is feeling; and observation of the person’s actions and its consequences, from which we try to infer what he or she is up to. Ordinarily, we can check our inferences about the other person’s motives by asking a direct question. When are we justified in assuming that our own or another person’s motives are unconscious? #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
We can never be absolutely certain, but we can entertain the hypothesis of unconscious motivation when the person acts in ways that produce consequences he or she denies intending to produce; when the person shows many signs of emotion without admitting he or she is experiencing strong feeling; and when there are obvious inconsistencies in action at different times, for example, kindness and brutality, intelligent and stupid behaviour. In addition to these general signs of unconscious motivation, there are other more subtle indicators that a person is not conscious of real influences upon his or her behaviour. These include: Dream content that seems bizarre and incomprehensible to the dreamer. Daydreams that surprise the daydreamer. Errors and “slips” in speech and writing. Body postures and evidence of bodily tensions. The forgetting of intentions, and of the names of people and places. Accidents of all kinds. Performance on certain projective tests of personality. When I am surrounded by pretending people, I sometimes feel so swamped by meaningless two-dimensional cardboard characters that I feel I may be on my way to the madness that is recognized in madness. I think that this may be the way that some of it comes about. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Nothing has to come about in one way only, and the discovery of one way eliminates others because then they are not explored. That does not put them out of existence—just out of mind, like all the other possible approached to bodily illness which the American Medical Association will not admit. I think that when we have found one way, we should use it tentatively, as the best that we have latched onto at this time, and at the same time should go on exploring other ways—with the same tentativeness. It sometimes seems to me that madness that is called insanity may sometimes be a reaction produced by the madness (as I see it) that is called sanity, or “realism.” A patent in a mental hospital told a therapist, “You want me to come into your World, but I lived there for twenty-three years and I don’t like it.” The patient was a very mixed up person, but I don’t think that he was mixed up about that. The more mentally ill a person is, the more they are caught in egocentricity, selfishness and uselessness. As for a “schizophrenic person”—there is no such thing. A person scared out of his wits is not person at all. The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information in personnel matters relating to the fire service; provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information; to advocate for the fire service in public matters; promote a modern fire; develop general improvement in fire services throughout that state and encourage a fraternal friendship among firefighters and their families. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
“When the alarm came in at nine-thirty that Wednesday morning, we were in class about the enhanced 911 system. All we knew was it was a baby trapped down a well. We were all told to go back to our stations and wait. Only our captain, X, was taken out there, possibly because he’s a small-boned man, yet real aggressive at whatever he does. We just got bits and pieces of what was going on out there during the rest of the day and through the night. We kept calling the dispatcher and asking is they needed relief people, and they never would let us go over there. I got to bed at the station at about two A.M. and got up at seven, so I had five hours’ sleep. Thursday was supposed to be my day off, when I was going to take care of our youngest child. But my wife, Y, got him ready and took him to the sitter’s. The more I thought about the baby in the well, the more I though I should be out there: I’m skinny, and they’re going down holes, and I can fit down holes. So I loaded up and told the dispatcher they probably needed a paramedic, and he agreed. I just went over there on my own. You could say I volunteered myself. This was about eight-thirty Thursday morning. I had to park two blocks away because all the cars and trucks. There were a could of hundred people there, trying to help. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
“The news people were starting to come in. The well was in the backyard of a house in the middle of the block. Z was already there, standing by the air cascade system they were using to send oxygen down to the trapped baby. The battalion chief and the EMS chief and everybody else were listening to the microphone they had lowered down the well. I saw the hole they had drilled down the day before, about five and a half feet from the well, and they were sending guys down there to drill horizontally across to the well. The well itself was just a metal casing sticking up about two or three inches above ground. It was about eight inches in diameter. They had a yellow tent over it like workers use over manholes in the streets. A fire captain was guarding the air house, a real Mr. By-the-book type guy, who just broke out and started jumping all over anyone who came close to it. Actually, he did a good job. Police officers A and Officer B did all the monitoring of the hole. The baby in the well” (will remained unknow and be called “C” for privacy). “Her parents lived out in the country, and this well was in the backyard of her sister’s house, where she was operating an unlicensed day care center. There were five or six kids in the backyard when C went down the well. The older kids were playing by themselves, and the younger kids were playing by themselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
“There was supposed to be a rock over the hole, and I saw some big rocks near there. Then we heard that there was a potted plant sitting on it, and I observed a bucker with what looked like a cactus plant in it that had been turned over and pushed out of the way. They couldn’t tell exactly how far down the well the baby had fallen, because the other small children threw stuff in after her, foliage from the yard. So we could only seen down eighteen feet and lower the mike that far. They were afraid to disturb the plant material, for fear they would make more stuff fall on C. They had lowered flashlights, and when I looked down I saw the lights shining on the green foliage stuff. I listened at the mike and could hear her moaning. That was the last time I looked down the well, but I kept going and checking with the officers on what they were hearing. Supposedly the night before she had slept for about three hours because they didn’t hear noises from her in that time. I don’t know why the kids threw the stuff down the well after her. They were so young they didn’t know the gravity of the situation. Perhaps they were just being playful. There was a story that two older kids put the baby in there, or she might have been pushed. But from the position in which I found her, I feel that she stepped in with one foot, lost her balance, and went down, because one foot was down and one was up. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
“My captain, X, had twice been down digging and hard worked for a day and a night, and he had been ordered to go home because he looked exhausted. He could have kept going, he’s in excellent condition, but they felt they had to order him to leave. Chief K of the fire department and Chief D of the police department were pretty much in control of the whole operation. The drilling engineer, Mr. L, was in charge of the digging. And Captain E was a coordinator. There was talk that the first person to reach the baby should take her out. But because there might have been serious injuries to the baby’s neck and back, we thought it should be a paramedic. We talked to the doctors there, and Dr. F and Dr. H, and Dr. I talked to the chiefs for us, and it was agreed it would be a paramedic who would bring the baby out. The only exception would be if, when they broke through to her, she just kind of grabbed somebody and she looked good and healthy, then they could bring her out. We had the smallest backboard all ready, cut down still further in size. The hole they drilled straight down was about thirty inches wide, a pretty good-sized shaft, big enough for two small, skinny guys like Z and myself to stand in it side by side. The tunnel they were digging across to the well was much narrower, but some pretty big guys were doing the drilling. One guy had a forty-six-inch chest, so we figured we shouldn’t have any trouble at all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
“They were digging through hard rock to a point in the well below where the baby was wedged, then coming up vertically beside her, and a window between the two was being chopped out to get to her. They put a sort of bubble or inflated air bag below her to protect her from the drilling. It wasn’t until one o’clock on Friday that the drillers told us they were ready for us to go down. We went over to the hole. Any time we moved toward it, the media went crazy, thinking the rescue was coming up. But the chiefs made us go back to the ambulance. We were brought over to Chief D’s motor home for a last conference, Z and myself and this other guy, J, who was a rapeller, a rope man. Then we went down. I went in first. I was real apprehensive. I don’t go into caves a lot. I’ve been in tight places, but usually by choice, not by need. I’m real cautious, aggressive but cautious. I try to evaluate everything before I do it. Mr. L was still in the hole. He took the bubble out and talked to me for a minute. Then I went into the tunnel. I had no room at all. I had to decide whether to go on my stomach or my back. My shoulders were pressed on both sides. I had to position the light so it would shine up into the well. I got my first look at her. But I couldn’t touch her. To get my arm in there, I had to crawl back out and start back in with my arm ahead of me. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
“The width of the tunnel was probably fifteen to sixteen inches, and its height was no more than twelve to fourteen inches. I had no headroom. When my head was at the back of the tunnel was the only time I could see up into the well. I got scratched all over my forearm and elbow forcing my arm up into the well. I though, ‘Oh, God, how am I going to do this?’ All I saw dangling down was her left foot. So first off, I started an evaluation of her physically. How is she doing? What can she move? What can’t she move? People had told us they thought she was horizontal in some kind of widening of the shaft. So I couldn’t just start pulling because I was afraid I would snap her back or her neck. They had said I could reach her. But reaching up with my right arm, I could feel her left leg and her buttocks, and that was it. I couldn’t reach any higher or find her right leg or anything else. She was conscious. Not crying, but moaning. I got her to move her left foot for me. She did that. I told her to move her upper body, and I could feel her move somewhat. It looked like she was trying. I told her to push as hard as she could with her right foot, and it seemed that she went up a little bit. I communicated all this to the doctor by the phone line they had down there. They gave me a wedge made of a two-by-four and a round piece of plywood on top, supposedly to push her up and feel around her. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
“I was able to push her no more than three inches. It sounded like she was throwing up. I told her to turn her head to the side and spit it up. I didn’t want her strangling on her own throw-up. I determined that we couldn’t get her out right then. I didn’t know what position she was in, and I didn’t have enough room. So I told her we’d be back. To me, on God’s green Earth, that’s the hardest thing I ever did in my life, leave that little girl in the well that first time. I came back out. We went into conference, and all the chiefs and doctors were there. And every time I would get close to talking about having to leave her there, I would get teary-eyed, and my voice would crack. The doctors took this as a sign of emotional instability or whatever. It was the first time I had been in a situation like that, and with me, the first time I go into something, as a paramedic or firefighter, I always get real emotional. When we got out of the hole, Z was first, and his face was so solemn that people thought it meant that the baby was dead. This big water drill had been there since early in the morning, but they hadn’t put it in use because Mr. L thought it was too dangerous. They had flown it from Memphis to Huston on a United Parcel 747. It took a place that size to carry it. So Chief A and Chief D insisted that Mr. L use the water drill. So they took it down there, and they really did a good job with it. Meanwhile, the doctors were talking to the chief, expressing their concern about whether I was emotionally and physically able to go back down in. #RadolphHarris 10 of 17
“He took me aside. He said, ‘We don’t need any macho trips. There’s no shame. If you can’t go down in, just tell me, just be honest with me.’ I told him, ‘Chief, I can go down one more time. If we don’t get her out this time, there is no way I can go down again. I would be mentally, emotionally, and physically wiped out.’ So he understood that, and he backed me. Assistant Chief M backed me. Evidently Chief D did, too. And N, the EMS chief, really backed me. He said I was the one to do it. They had confidence in me. We had plenty of guys in the department who were willing to go down, so they really had to feel good about me or they wouldn’t have let me. We went down a second time. I’m not really sure of the time, I know it was still daylight, six-thirty or seven. We had done a lot of sitting around, waiting. Everybody was saying, this is our last chance. Nobody said it to me personally, but the word was, if we had to break bones, break bones. Whatever we had to do to get her out. J, the rope man, came up with a device I could lift her with, a tripod pole maybe an inch wide, with the tape on the top. He was the guy who did all the rigging in the hole. He helped us a lot. Down in the tunnel, Mr. L said, “This is it, O. This is the best it’s going to get.” They had chipped away with the water drill and give me some headroom and more shoulder room. So he went to the surface, and Z came down with the stuff we thought we were going to need. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
“I had the tripod pole with me. I went into the hole and talked to baby C. I tried to lift her with the tripod pole, and it was too short. So Z got J on the phone, and he found me a longer tripod pole. This one had a rubber stopper on the tip of it. I tried to push the baby with it, and I couldn’t move her at all. I was lying there trying to figure out what to do. Looking at the tripod pole, I saw that the other end of it had a rubberized point that couldn’t hurt anybody. So I used it as a probe to see if I could figure out the position of her body. I poked it up the wall of the well shaft along her spine. I knew if I encountered anything solid, that would give me some indication of what body part was where. I ran it up along her spine past her head, and air rushed down at me from the well above her. That meant she was in a vertical position. Her back was straight up and down. I did the same thing with the pole at the side of the shaft where the right leg should be. It went all the way up, and air rushed through again. So I knew her right foot was up by her head somewhere. I went all the way around her body with the pole. Then I knew that she wasn’t in any crevice or bubble-shaped position. The metal casing I had seen at the top of the well didn’t go very far down, and the rest of the well was lined with a sticky petroleum-type substance. It was like glue or tar. I had it all over my hands. If you got into the stuff, you just stuck to it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
So then I knew she wasn’t lying down and I could pull on her without breaking her back or injuring anything. I talked to Dr. P and the female pediatrician, Dr. Q, and I called for the K-Y jelly. They sent down some baby forceps that they use at childbirth, but they were useless in this tunnel. Earlier I had tried to use goggles to keep stuff from falling in my eyes, but they fogged up immediately. It was real warm and humid down there. I was down there close to an hour and a half. All activity above the hole had totally ceased. Z opened the K-Y jelly and gave it to me, but there was a seal that had to be broken, so I had to throw it back to him to break that. This whole time he was doing great. He was having to deal with those at the top on the phone, and he was having to deal with me, because when I wanted something I wanted it two seconds ago, not later. And his legs were cramping real bad at the same time, and I didn’t know it. I smeared the K-Y jelly over the walls of the well all the way up to the baby’s bottom. Now I needed paper towels because I’ve got this stuff all over the place. I told Z that is the paper towels hit him on the head and knocked him out, I was going to kill him. My attempted at a joke. Now came the pulling time. I was totally confident. I felt we were going to get her out, no matter what it took. And I wasn’t going to some out of that hole without her, unless they came and dragged me out. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
“She had on snap-on pants. They had come undone from the left leg, and I was using them to pull on. She was stuck to the walls, and she was crying and whining. I would pull as hard as I could, and she would tense up; then as soon as she would relax, I would pull again. The first couple of inches were the hardest to get her to move. They were really pressuring us from the top. I had Z tell them we had moved her a quarter of an inch, to get them to leave us alone for a while. I was pulling as hard as I could, and she kept tensing up. Both of my arms were exhausted. My right arm went numb two or three times. Once I got her started in the K-Y jelly, I was able to move her a half inch at a time, and she would tense up again. I knew she was coming down. Z got the backboard ready. When I got her all the way into the K-Y jelly, I had no more problems. I got her out of the hole and turned over on my stomach. I reached for the backboard, but there wasn’t room for it, because her right leg was beside the right side of her head. All the time I was telling her to stay calm, that we were going to get her out, we weren’t going to leave her again. When I got her in the K-Y jelly, she was quieter, because it wasn’t hurting her anymore. She didn’t say a word. Of course, she was only eighteen months old. She made different sounds, but nothing I could understand. She knew someone was there trying to help her. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
“I couldn’t get her out on the board, so I pulled her onto my right arm, supporting her back and neck. The light hit her left pupil and she reacted, which was great. It was a good sign. I pulled her right leg in far enough so I could get her on the backboard. Z was getting stuffy out of the way, and while I was waiting, I said something like ‘Great’ or ‘Fantastic.’ I said it too loud, and she jumped a little bit. To me that was a good sign, too. But all she was doing was lying on the board, just looking around, real relaxed. I slipped her out, supporting her with my legs, and Z wrapped her waist to her chest. We used a Velcro strap across her chest to make sure she stayed on the board. Z put a towel on her neck, because the cervical collar was too small. I took white surgical tape and went all around the board and around the towel. Her hands were welded to her temples by the sticky substance. We left her right hand where it was. We didn’t try to straighten out any limbs. We finished getting her strapped. Then Z stood in the shaft holding her. I secured her to him with seat belt straps. I secured them both to the tether line of the back board, and I attached him to the main cable of the rig. So he went up with her. The only thing that fell down from her was a pair of toy binoculars and a few twigs. When I first got her, there was a big twig between her right arm and her chest. I thought it was embedded, but when I moved her arm I saw that it wasn’t, so I threw it out of the way. Nothing else, none of the green stuff. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
“I heard them yell and scream up top, everybody was just ecstatic. I was yelling, too. Nobody could hear me, but I didn’t care. I was totally calm. As a matter of fact, I was totally exhausted, mentally and emotionally. I was light-headed, I was having a hard time focusing. I just felt I needed oxygen. So I was trying to get stuff together, and the chief said, ‘Come out now.’ He meant now, and he said it a couple of times. So I said, ‘The heck with this stuff.’ They brought me out, and I shook the chief’s hand. He’s a big man, and I just laid my head on his shoulder for a minute. I did see little C and her parents at the hospital. She looked a lot different, a lot better. She looked somewhat swollen, and I hadn’t realized that mark on her forehead was such a bad scrape. They planted a tree in that backyard that will live as long as she does. And we’re going to put a plaque on that backboard and put it in our museum. It was great to be part of it. The next time I might not be so lucky. I know that the job I do is well worth all the time and all the nonsense we go through, and the good times and the bad times. If I end up dying of cancer because of the smoke, or if I end up dying in a fire, I never think about that. I know it can happen, but that’s my job, and I love doing it. I’ve thought in the past about switching, but this guy’s going to be there until they run me off. Until I can’t do it anymore.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
The Sacramento Fire Department provides the citizens of Sacramento with the ability to create safer communities; they assist and support the fire service community and the protection of life and property; and they promote and enhance firefighter safety; the Sacramento Fire Department also provides a fire service leadership presence in the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security in order to direct policy and legislation on all fire related matters. Their core values are innovation, inclusivity, dedication, courageousness, excellence, ethicality, professionalism, and transparency. You can help save lives by making a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. In an effort to keep the country cohesive, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ and buy American cars and other American goods and services. As along, respect law and order, and treat others with kindness and respect. And to ensure you have a bright future, please take your education seriously. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains majesties above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on three, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern, impassioned stress, a thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flow, confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years, Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea! God never gave us express allowance, only He gave us reason, charity, nature and good example to bear us out. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
The Winchester Mystery House
Our exclusive Flashlight Tour is back for one night only this December, Friday the 13th! 🔦🌙
Venture through the dark, winding halls of the mansion at night—armed only with a flashlight and your courage. And when the lights go out… there’s no turning back! (link in bio)
Please 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/
If I Do Not Look Away Soon
Every now and then, we would have someone disappear. There was ample reason for the frightening events to take place. The breeze coming in the window suddenly turned slightly cool and smelled of the sea. The door near the porch atop the stairs would not stay closed, the door seemingly unlocked itself, and Zip would freeze when approaching the staircase leading to the second floor. As if recently painted with blood, the walls dripped. I doubt I could ever remove the blood stains. This Victorian structure was a monument to things long dead. As if seeking a victim, its windows, like malevolent eyes, leer out at the quiet evening. Peering at them, people often wondered what lurked inside. I felt a chill creep up my spine. Although I had come to terms with my ESP faculty and was no longer frightened by it, I knew if I did not look away soon that a dim, ghastly face would appear at one of the windows. A moment later, I slipped away. I sudden found myself staring at the farther attic window. A bone chilling cold have crept up my spine. The skin on the back of my neck felt tight and tingly. At the far end of the room is a tower. It has a witch’s cap. As I looked down on the floor, I discovered the skeleton of a hand and a foot and scraps of scalp placed there in a perfect triangle. Looking at what I knew were human remains, I screamed running quickly out of the room, and up the spiral stairs. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Slowly, I regained control of myself. The knot of fear in my stomach had loosened. When I saw the tall, dark, man, I screamed and cowered. His face was obscured by a long, brown beard, and a large, black hat. However, nothing could obscure the fact that his eyes flashed red in the blackness of the night. He observed me, smiling from a cruel-looking mouth, his voice harsh and malevolent. “Now,” he commanded, “Mrs. Winchester, come with me.” There was nothing I wanted less than to be led through my home by the tall, dark man. However, I felt that I had no choice, so I went with him. My anxiety was not was not eased when the door to the attic flew open on its own accord, trembling on its hinges. And when we walked out of the room, the door slammed shut behind us so hard that the noise echoed throughout the house. Then before I could move, my body was compelled forward and I was swept away into the night. The journey through my labyrinth took hours. Bats flitted above us in great numbers, and at the end of the hallway, there were hundreds of shadows. Everything was so terrifying; I wish I had stayed unconscious longer. As we journeyed along the forbidden East wing of the mansion, I could hear hounds of hell malevolently howling into the darkness of the night. The souls of the dead cry out for its blood. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Not a ray of light came from the high windows. When I arrived at the altar room, I was left alone. Directly in front of me was a huge, wooden door. Very slowly, the door creaked open. I felt like I was walking down a dark street, stalked by stealthy footsteps, afraid of what I might find sneaking up on me if I should dare to glance over my shoulder. I had to look. I searched the windows. Though nothing showed through their blackness, my skin went tight and crawly. Suddenly, I broke into a run. I raced down the hallway and around the corner. I had seen something. Awful, desperate feelings built up and tears blurred my vision as I struggled to get away. I ran into the bathroom and tripped over the end of the bathtub. Falling toward the water, I noticed it was red. An unclothed maiden was reclining in the bath, with her arms stretched out. Her wrists were crossed-hatched with slashes and eyes wide, gazing toward the ceiling. Her face was contorted with pain and horror. Her shredded gown, a white the had gone red. The tatters covered little more than her bosom and loins. The exposed flesh, from neck to thighs, was punctured and stripped with raw wounds. Bright crimson sheathed her body. Goosebumps scurried up my skin. Then there was a sound which froze my blood. Knocking a chair to the floor, I listened in terror. It was a low, sweet rippled of laughter. The laughter of the ghouls. I built this house with blood money. Blood comes of blood. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The house was searched from attic to basement. They found more torn, chewed bodies of more victims on the second floor. And the most horrific sight was reserved for the third floor. Two bodies lay facedown between the mahogany beds. Their bloody nightshirts were ripped to shreds, and so was their skin. In despair, I made a long, exhausting journey back to the Daisy Bedroom. I collapsed on the bed and looked out at my estate. For as long as I lived (which did not look as if it was going to be very long) I would never, ever forget the gruesome horrors I witnessed. It must have been the middle of the night when I awoke with a jolt. I had a feeling of a presence in the room. I looked around and at the foot of my bed stood a woman dressed in pioneer clothes. Her figure was completely white and as I looked at her, she seemed to fade away slowly. Deciding that I was dreaming, I turned over and went back to sleep. A moment later when I was still not fully asleep, I heard sounds by the side of my bed. It sounded as if an animal were passing by. I turned and to my horror, saw the perfect imprints of a bear’s pawprints on the side of the bed. I screamed. His warm breath on my face smelled of the Earth and wild, uninhabited forests. He lay his hands upon my shoulders. Claws bit into me. I stood before the demon, helpless with fear and wonder. Sobbing loudly, I pressed one hand across my eyes. My other hand shook. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Petrified of what was going to happen to me, and jumping in fright at even the tiniest sound. I realized that I was all alone. I never felt so desolate in my life, knowing that I had been left here as a porcelain doll for the terror feast of demons, ghosts, and ghouls! I knew I had to escape, but it would ultimately be fatal. It broke my heart to know that I would never see my beloved William or Annie again, or perhaps this was the moment our souls would be reunited. I must have drifted off, because some hours later I woke up. I gave a little cry of fright. I could not see anything, but I could sense that someone was in the room. I peered into the darkness with dread, my heart thumping, and my forehead damp with perspiration. “Is anyone there?” I said. There was a short silence, and then a noise, a sort of scary, rustling noise, just inches away from my bed. Whole body began to tremble. There was such a terrible wind outside and something sinter in the air. I fled my bedroom in panic, frequently falling over furniture. I continued on. The horror of this began to oppress me as never before, and I could not keep from thinking of my maddening dreams, of the frightful legends which lay behind my fortune. I did not know how long or how far—or indeed, in just what direction—I had walked. However, I knew there would be rooms opening on the right, and at the farther end of stairs that wound down to still lower depths. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
I questioned how did I know that there was a level far underground? How did I know that the path leading to the Observational Tower should have been behind me? How did I know the secret passage to the Crystal Bedroom ought to lie on the left level above me? How did I know that the room of rare antiquities, and the rightward-leading passageway to the central library, ought to lie two levels below? How did I know that there would be one of those horrible, metal-banded trap-doors at the very bottom, four levels down? Bewildered by the frightful atmosphere, I found myself shaking and bathed in a cold perspiration. My home was fraught with infinite suggestions of knighted mystery. As if in the clutch of some compelling fate, I seemed to move almost automatically. I felt dim memories tugging at my mind. A figure leaned toward me, a blackened shape whose features for the moment remained unseen. I cringed inward, my body tightening, shrinking. Nothing was ever lost from Llanada Villa’s labyrinth vaults: although traumas may be hidden, perhaps placated, not all can be laid to rest; some merely lie low in anticipation of future arousal. I could see an energy field that was frantically moving about. It suddenly moved quickly towards me, and I tried to move out of its path just as quickly. It stopped, and then moved back to a door near the end of the hall, flittering back and forth. I felt an overwhelming vibration of anxiety in the atmosphere. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
I took a deep breath and walked to the door where the energy seemed to concentrate its activity. I felt a terrible dread consume me as I stepped forward. Then I froze, for I saw this image of a woman, and she was throwing herself at this door. I could hear a crash as she would hit it. And then I was overcome with information that there was great danger for her family. After the spirit in the hallway had demonstrated such an incredible explosion of energy, it was suddenly gone. In the stillness, the creaking of door sounded as loud as a scream. With infinite reluctance, I climbed down thirteen steps and entered a clandestine room. My heart raced and pounded, and I peered into the night, anxiously waiting for the horrible approach of what might be making a horrible approach. I waited for ages. It seemed to get colder and darker. I signed deeply, the breath sounding like the wind sweeping autumn leaves along the pavement. There was a hammering at the front door. Treading cautiously, glass crunching beneath my boots, I made my way to the front door and peeped through the window. Clearly standing on the veranda was a young boy and I could see the posts through him! I was not sure I could believe my eyes and when I turned around, he was gone. Then everything in the room was thrown about and smashed. Tables were lifted and overturned, chairs smashed to pieces, bookcases upset, and heavy settees thrown over. There was no one there. Confused thoughts and troubled emotions ran through my mind. I lay in the darkness, remembering the look and feel and voice of William #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
A GIVEAWAY SO GOOD IT’S SCARY!!!! 😈
For the first time ever, @thespinafarmspumpkinpatch and @winchestermysteryhouse has joined forces to bring you the spookiest giveaway of the season! One lucky winner will receive 4 SPINA FARMS PARK PASSES and 4 WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE UNHINGED: HOTEL TICKETS! Rules and info below! Best of luck! We’re dying to see y’all soon! 🧟♂️🖤
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🎃🏨Follow both @thespinafarmspumpkinpatch AND @winchestermysteryhouse
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Closes Monday 10/21/24 at noon!
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Guilt Goes Away, Being Dead Does Not
The skies were more greyer than gold. As I walked back along the hallway, I was aware of the vapor of my own breath. It must have been 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Closing the door behind me, I paused for a moment and listened. There were voices coming from somewhere. Hushed voices, little more than whispers. “Daisy?” I said softly. “Mr. Hansen?” Silence now. I went to other doors, looked in, searching. They were all empty. I climbed the stairs, taking the opposite direction to one of my favourite bedrooms when I reached the corridor. I stopped outside Daisy’s bedroom and knocked softly. There was no response. I called her name, but still no reply came. I went further along to mount a narrow set of stairs that twisted round to the floor above. In the distant past, the rooms up there had been occupied by my servants, but this was now where my aunt had her living quarters. There were several doors along the rough-boarded corridor, and I tapped on each one. Again, I received no answer. I stood there for a while, in that shadowy place, mystified. Apart from myself, the house appeared to be empty. When I returned to the ground floor, on the last step I came to a halt. I listened intently. One voice this time. A tune being hummed. I took the last step into the hall and walked to its center where I slowly turned a full circle in an attempt to get a bearing on the sound. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The basement door was ajar. The voice drifted up from its depths. Although my footsteps were soft as I approached the open doorway, the faint humming stopped. I bent close to the gap, waiting, listening, a draft chilling my face. Nothing. I pushed the door further open and felt inside for the light switch I knew was at the top of the basement stairs. The light was poorer than before, casting even deeper shadows. I descended the cement steps. Once at the bottom, I took in the broad, bricked chamber with covered furniture and broken statues scattered here and there. “Daisy, are you down here?” My voice was controlled. It sounded hollow within the confines of the basement. Only silence greeted me. Somehow the silence was mocking. I shivered, feeling the bitter cold. Then I stiffened when I heard footsteps from. They grew louder, descending the steps. Darkness silvered the window and gave me nothing to look at but my own image, but it seemed appropriate to my line of thought. How many people were enemies of that face, of the eyes, of the nose, of the mouth that was soft in relaxation. How many enemies? I mused. A few I could name, others I could guess. Suddenly I was depressed. When I called out to whomever was in the room, I received no reply. Finally, I thought this was odd and went further into the basement, and there, in a hair, I found a man dead. His face appeared to be sinking into a nest of flesh. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The account had given men a strange chill. It suddenly occurred to me how little I knew about my own home. However, the icy hush that had settled over me was broken when I let go of the chair and turned toward the stairs. Needless to say, I had no visitors from the flesh-and-blood World. The man that was dead in the basement was a carpenter. He came to Llanada Villa to do so building, and someone accidentally killed him and left him in the freezing cold basement. The next morning, my eyes red with exhaustion, I discussed this experience with my niece Daisy. Until now I had been reluctant to draw her into these matters, but the impression had been so overpowering that I just had to tell someone. To my surprise, Daisy was not very upset. Instead, she told me of an account she had. The night before, the figure of a lady in white had appeared to Daisy in a dream, telling her to pack, for she would seen be taking her away! When Daisy had concluded her report, I calmed her as best I could and reminded her that some dreams are merely expressions of unconscious fears. Later that evening, I noticed a bouncing light at the top of the stairs as I was about to go to bed. The light followed me to my room as if it had a mind of its own. When I entered my room the light left, but the room felt icy. I was disturbed by this, but nevertheless went to be and soon had forgotten all about it as sleep came to me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Suddenly, in the middle of the night, I woke and sat up in bed. There were footsteps in the rafters over my bedroom. They came across the ceiling from one side of the room to the other. At the head of my bed, I saw a man who was “beige-coloured.” As I stared at the apparition it went away, again leaving the room very chilly. Some restless spirit, freed from the shackles of the body, finally enjoyed his unobstructed power to roam the house and do whatever he pleased. And perhaps he now even enjoyed the vicarious thrill of frightening me, and becoming the stronger party in the house. Without question we were faced with the remains of an unknown civilization older than any dreamed of before, and forming a basis for legends. As a psychic, I can tell you these apparitions are so ancient they frightened me. Discomfort and expectancy were oddly mingled in myself and the servants at lengthen as the days drew on. I felt I had entered the realm of utter desolation. A certain absolute terror grew on me—a terror of course abetted by the fact that my disturbing dreams and pseudo-memories still best me with unabated force. There was a distinct trace of evil—and my hands trembled as I recognize the diabolic scheme through years of tormenting nightmare and baffling research. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
The deeper—and the farther north and east—we expanded my estate, the more apparitions we found; through we still failed to discover any trace of their source. Mr. Hasen was appalled at the measureless number of the spirits and how the caused the walls to curve and floors to slant. We also found traces of symbols which fitted darkly into certain medieval legends of infinite antiquity. They affected me queerly and disagreeably. They seemed, after a fashion, to dovetail horribly with something which I had dreamed or read, but which I could no longer remember. There was a terrible pseudo-familiarity about them—which somehow made me look furtively and apprehensively over the abominable, sterile terrain toward the north and northeast wings of the mansion. I developed an unaccountable set of mixed emotions about that general northeasterly region. There was horror, and there was curiosity—but more than that, there was a persistent and perplexing illusion of memory. I tried all sorts of psychological expedients to get these notions out of my head, but met with no success. Sleeplessness also gained upon me, but I almost welcomed this because of the resultant shortening of my dream-periods. I acquired the habit of taking long, lone walks through my labyrinth late at night—usually to the north or northeast, whither the sum of my strange new impulses seemed subtly to pull me. Sometimes, on these walks, I would stumble unto nearly hidden rooms of ancient masonry. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Fog spread over throughout the air in a thick paste, casting a dank pallor over the sprawling hallways and legion of rooms. My home was terrorized by a mysterious society known as “The Goats.” These wretches met at night in a secret room, and partook in the most hideous festivities, which included paying of divine honours to Satan and other demons of the Sabbat, they donned masks fashioned to imitate goats’ heads, cloaked themselves with long disguise mantles, and sallied forth in bands. This is typically when the fog rolled in. Through the mansion, we would often see people wearing hideous black masks with huge horns which it is death for the uninitiated to see. The Devil started up himself in the Pulpit like a mickle black man, and calling the row, everyone answered here. The first thing he demanded was whether they had been good servants, and what they had done since the last time they convened. The witches adored Satan, or the Master of the Sabbat who presided in place of Satan. In solemn bows and seemly courtesies, the worshippers of the Demon approached him awkwardly, with mops and mows, sometimes straddling sideways, sometimes walking backwards. The witches who resorted to the Sabbat approach the throne with their backs turned, and worship him…and then, as a sign of their homage, they kissed his fundament. An indication of my poor nervous health was caused as a response to these odd discoveries which I made on my nocturnal rambles. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Often times, I would run for safety at top speed. It was a wholly unconscious and irrational flight, and only when I felt I was close a healing room did I fully realize why I had run. Then it came to me. The queer dark ceremonies were something which I had dreamed and read about, and which was linked with the uttermost horror of the aeon-old legendary. Things festered in Llanada Villa’s nether abysses and against whose wind-like, invisible forces the trapdoors were sealed. I remained awake all that night, but by dawn I realized how silly I had been to let the shadow of a Sabbat upset me. One night, after a windy day, I retired early but could not sleep. Rising shortly before midnight and afflicted as usual with that strange feeling regarding the northeastward wing of the mansion, I set out on one of my typical nocturnal walks. The moon, slightly past full, shone through the skylights and drenched the hallways with a radiance which seemed to me somehow infinitely evil. There was no longer any wind. “Tonight,” whispered an apparition, “all the evil in the World will be let loose. You will be at the mercy of forces you never dreamed existed.” I screamed in terror. “Mrs. Winchester,” she said, “for the sake of your soul always continue building this fortress.” “I will,” I said in a quiet voice. Although I shivered, I told myself that such fears were merely absurd superstitions. At about 3.30 A.M., a violent wind blew, waking everyone in the mansion. The sky was unclouded, and the fireplaces still blazed. And yet, everyone seemed to feel something sinister in the air. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
A family ghost, built up through generations of psychic reconstruction, can almost become an independent mental mechanism. Whether the ghost actually whispered, or Mrs. Winchester’s heightened psychic sensitivity allowed her to feel the presence of the ghost prior to its actual materialization makes for interesting speculation.
Please 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/
Gladiators’ School
When we see the effect one person can have, it is perhaps no wonder that the Lord reminded us, “Remember the worth of souls.” Evolutionary agents chart the path to the future. They prefabricate future visions, build new hives, custom make plan-its, encourage migration, and teach scientific mastery of the nervous system as an instrument to decode atomic, molecular and subnuclear processes so as to attain immortality, cloning, and extraterrestrial existence. Evolutionary agents study history because understanding out roots is important. We cannot navigate into the future with any confidence unless we understand the rhythms and coherence of past voyages. A philosopher demonstrates understanding of the past by the accuracy of predictions about the future. After we trace our roots backward—back East—it is necessary to move westward into The Future. The time has come to catch the coming waves rolling into the future. They are going to be big ones. The evolution of intelligence involves three great change processes employed by deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The DNA change processes: Mutation—A species getting smarter. Metamorphosis—Individuals getting smarter. Migration—Individuals moving to a new space to better live out new capacities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Every time you improve, every time you change, every time a challenge increases your intelligence, you have to migrate to find a new space to live out your new capacity, to custom-make your new vision. Mobility is the classic stimulus for Intelligence Increase. Learn to be comfortable with the idea of change. Understanding how our intelligence has evolved reveals who we are. The strategy of evolution is to raise the intelligence of species. Do not let others scare you about change. We each pass through at least twelve volatile and dramatic changes during our lifetimes. Each of us possesses within our nervous systems twelve primitive brains that emerge in sequence as we develop—evolve if you will—from infancy to adult maturity. Cryptography decoding of the DNA helix suggest that each of us has twelve post-terrestrial brains scheduled to activate in sequence as we move into a prefabricate the post-hive future! Terrestrial theologians recognize the supernatural and otherworldly powers of great Evolutionary Agents like Jesus Christ that separate them in time and potency from the hive reality. “Supernatural” is jargon to describe anything beyond hive-platitude. Often Evolutionary Agents must endure long periods of quiescence and obscurity. These can be times of grave peril, obstruction or hive-disgrace. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Evolutionary Agents, also known as Out-Castes, have been selected on the basis of their capacity to face and survive experiences that would be judged unendurable by terrestrials. Agents’ childhoods abound in anecdotes of precocious sagacity, strength, and independence from hive-mortals. The scandalous escapades of Jesus Christ, the prowess of Hercules, the boyish wisdom of Einstein, the early verbal cleverness of the Galileo, and the patience of Robert Goddard are a few examples. Human beings, pre-selected from each gene pool, are having their neural circuits activated—usually without their awareness—to fabricate future realities as well as future gene pools. These individuals are genetically tempted to live much of the time in the future. They are, to a large extent, alienated from current hive realities. Unaware of their genetic assignment, many Agents feel agonizingly out of step. Some are shunned and even locked up by the gene pools they serve. Those who are lucky enough to recognize their post-human genetic caste attain a level of great prescience and humorous insight. They understand that they are time travelers, literally walking around in past civilizations—a most entertaining and effective role to play. While they have little power to change the ripples of history or the waves of evolution, they surf them with increasing skill. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
As out-castes they are cast out, thrown forward, pushed up, above and beyond, contemporary hive realities. Such Evolutionary Agents are best described as Out-Castes. They are cast out, thrown forward, pushed up, above and beyond, contemporary give realities. As evolution accelerates increasing numbers of Evolutionary Agents are emerging. In the 1960s every gene pool cast out its Futique Agents. We are now learning to identify these out-castes and how to benefit from their contribution to the species. The word “Agent” has been in well-deserved ill-repute, especially in political, diplomatic and showbiz circles. It suggests an unscrupulous bureaucratic scoundrel devoid of creativity, aesthetics, principles or talent who, by virtue of shameless cunning, places himself in central positions of power and control. The raison d’etre of the agent is, of course, the deal. The deal involves the alchemy of link-up, package and connection. The agent’s tools are persuasion, negotiation, bluff, manipulation, and salesmanship. The Agent Caste has existed throughout human history, dating back to the Neolithic period when artifacts, abstract-concepts, symbols, intertribal barter systems, and paperwork began to replace direct face-to-face interactions within tribe exchanges. As left-hemisphere technological society emerged, each gene pool produced Agents to represent the assets and interests of the sperm-egg collective in dealing with other gene-colonies. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
In Feudal times, agents represented the Crown of the Lord in dealing with serfs, peasants, tenants, traders and the agents of other Lords. The sordid odor attributed to agents probably dates back to their role as ruthless tax-collectors, dishonest traders, not to forget the many incidents in which agents betrayed their masters to seize power. The Caste of Agents took on more importance and a more attractive appearance during the emergence of democratic societies when agents became political representatives of the various classes, castes, guilds, brotherhoods, and gene pools which sought to share power in a democratic tradition. The history of civilization is the history of agentry, which is to be expected since agents cunningly arrange for the publication of the history books. Wars are won and lost by generals, but when the smoke clears and the bodies are dragged off the battlefield, the real bottom-line stuff happens—the peace treaties, the Councils of Nice, Trent, Versailles, Vienna, Geneva—all managed by agents. When the autobiographies are written and generals from both sides peddle their memoirs, it is the gents who make the deals. The high-points in the annals of agentry have always come at moments of species mutation. Who has not marveled at the astuteness of Algy Plankton, the renowned Paleozoic agent who put together the first oxygen commercial which led to shoreline migration? #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
In every act of rebellion, the rebel simultaneously experiences a feeling of revulsion at the infringement of his rights and a complete and spontaneous loyalty to certain aspects of himself. Thus, he implicitly brings into play a standard of values so far from being gratuitous that he is prepared to support it no matter what the risks. Up to this point he has at least remained silent and has abandoned himself to the form of despair in which a condition is accepted even though it is considered unjust. To remain silent is to give the impression that one has no opinions, that one wants nothing, and in certain cases it really amounts to wanting nothing. Despair, like the absurd, has opinions and desires about everything in general and nothing in particular. Silence expresses this attitude very well. However, from the moment that the rebel finds his voice—even though he says nothing but “no”—he begins to desire and to judge. The rebel, in the etymological sense, does a complete turnabout. He acted under the lash of his master’s whip. Suddenly he turns and faces him. He opposes what is preferable to what is not. Not every value entails rebellion, but every act of rebellion tacitly invokes a value. Or is it really a question of values? Awareness, no matter how confused it may be, develops from every act of rebellion: the sudden dazzling perception that there is something in man with which he can identify himself, even if only for a moment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Rebellion can sometimes lead to trouble and incarceration. New prisoners generally remain in the Reception Center for an average of six weeks. After psychological testing, observation, and case worker interviews a decision is made as to the long-term prison. Usually, the counselors are the deciding voice. Sometimes, the government likes to throw the book at drug cases. The prison administration can deal with armed robbers, murderers, and normal criminals but not the defiant, guiltless, long-haired dopers. The guards say armed robbers and murderers have guts. Drug users are cowardly escapists. Each inmate had a file called “The Jacket.” Every unusual action by the prisoner is entered in The Jacket. However, the case worker’s recommendation is the key. I found out about the network of the California prison system, listening to sad vacation discussion about the selection of prisons continually reviewing the escape possibilities. Tehachapi Prison is in the mountains. Fresh air, no smog, new buildings. Too remote for visitors. They send young cons there. There are guns in the towers. It is escape-proof. The California Institute for Men, abbreviated CIM, offers colour TV, a golf course, a swimming pool. No Wall. They will never send you there with a ten-year federal hold. CIM is treatment oriented. They call you mister. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
San Quentin is the Monte Carlo glamour, pleasures of the flesh, dope prison of the system. Near San Francisco. Plenty of action. Gambling, educational courses, and special visitors from San Francisco. They might 7send you to Quentin, making an example out of you. There is no escape from Quentin. Then there is Folsom Prison. The best joint is Folsom; any experienced confidence man will tell you that. No kids there. You do you time quietly. Then there is Soledad. Dread pit of solitude for the toughest gunsel muscle benders. They call it the “Gladiators’ School.” When you check in there, they issue you a sword and a garbage can lid. A continual fight to prove how tough you are. Homosexual rape of soft kids. Soledad. The name itself sends a chill through every spine. CMC East—California Men’s Colony, San Luis Obispo is the science-fiction prison. Four separate quads, TV monitors. Big brother eyes watch every move. It is called medium security, but do not believe it. Huey Newton was there. Gun towers with sharpshooters guards can kill at a mile range. No one escapes. CMC West—California Men’s, Colony, San Luis Obispo is the old man’s home. They send professional long-term prisoners there. It is a country club for elite confidence men. The best prison in the World. It is an easy escape. No wall. The highway runs nearby. They send only nonviolent prisoners there. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
They will never send you to CMC West with two dimes hanging round your neck. There is a rule that with a federal hold, they cannot send you to minimum security. The State of California owes the Feds ten years of your life. The Vacaville main line is a mental hospital for violent maniacs. They might send you there to use your psychological training. It is maximum security. No one escapes from there. Then there are the Forestry Camps. That is ideal. You work up in the healthy mountains. There is plenty of dope, no fences, you work along the highway. It is simple to run away. Confidence men jump Forestry Camp all the time but they get caught. They always run back home. They get a Dear John letter from their wives or suspect their wives fooling around, they flip, take off, and hitchhike home. They walk in the door and bang the State Police are waiting. If you escape, the first thing they do is stake out your home. There is no chance they will send you to a Forestry Camp, not with all the time you brough here. They will take no chances with you. The Vacaville Prison is a bawdy sexual paradise for some. The beautiful queens of Vacaville dig the cells with mirrors. Before the salves rebel, they accept all the demands made upon them. Very often, they take orders, without reacting against them, which are far more conducive to insurrection than the one at which he balks. He accepted them patiently, though he may have protested inwardly, but in that he remained silent, he was more concerned with his own immediate interests than as yet aware of his own rights. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
However, with loss of patience—with impatience—a reaction begins which can extend to everything that he previously accepted, and which is almost always retroactive. They very moment a slave refuses to obey the humiliating orders of his master, he simultaneously rejects the condition of slavery. The act of rebellion carries him far beyond the point he had reached by simply refusing. He exceeds the bounds that he fixed for his antagonist, and now demands to be treated as an equal. What was at first the man’s obstinate resistance now becomes the whole man, who is identified with and summed up in this resistance. The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to life itself. It becomes for him the supreme good. Having up to now been willing to compromise, the slave suddenly adopts (“because this is how it must be…”) an attitude of All or Nothing. With rebellion, awareness is born. However, we can see that the knowledge gained is, at the same time, of an “all” that is still rather obscure and of a “nothing” that proclaims the possibility of sacrificing the rebel to this “All.” The rebel himself wants to be “all”—to identify himself completely with this good which he has suddenly become aware and by which he wants to be personally recognized and acknowledged—or “nothing”; in other words, to be completely destroyed by the force that dominates him. As a last resort, he is willing to accept the final defeat, which is death, rather than be deprived of the personal sacrament that he would call, for example, freedom. Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Writing as shorthand + for O.K. and – for not-O.K., the convictions read: I + or I – ; You + or You –. The possible assortments of these give the four basic positions from which games and scripts are played, and which program the person so that he has something to say after he says Hello. I + You +. This is the “healthy” position (or in treatment, the “get well” one), the best one for decent living, the position of genuine heroes and princes, and heroines and princesses. People in the other position have more or less frog in them, a losing streak put there by their parents, which will drag them down again and again unless they overcome it; if they are not rescued by a miracle of psychiatric or self-healing, in extreme cases, they will waste themselves. I + You + is what the hippies were trying to tell the policeman when they gave him a flower. However, the I + is genuine or merely a pious hope, and whether the policeman will accept the + or will prefer to be – on this particular scene, is always in doubt. I + You + is something the person either grows into in early life, or must learn by hard labour thereafter; it cannot be attained merely be an act of will. I + You –. I am a prince; you are a frog. This is the “get rid of” position. These are the people who play “Blemish” as a pastime, a game, or a deadly procedure. They are the ones who sneer at their spouses, send their children to juvenile hall, and times war, and sit in groups finding fault with their real or fire their friends and retainers. They start crusades and some-imagined inferiors or enemies. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
This is the “arrogant” position, at worst a killer’s, and at best a meddler’s for people who make it their business to help the “not-O.K. others” with things they do not want to be helped with. However, for the most part it is a position of mediocrities, and clinically it is paranoid. I – You +. This is psychologically the “depressive” position, politically and socially a self-abasement transmitted to the children. Occupationally, it leads people to live by choice on favours large and small and enjoy it with a vengeance, that being the poor satisfaction of making the other pay as much as possible for his O.K. stamp. These are melancholic suicides, losers who call themselves gamblers, people who get rid of themselves instead of others by isolating themselves in obscure rooming houses or canyons or by getting a ticket to prison or the psychiatric ward. It is the position of the “If Onlys” and “I Should Haves.” I – You –. This is the “futility” position of the Why Notters: Why not kill yourself, Why not go crazy. Clinically, it is schizoid or schizophrenic. These positions are universal among all mankind, because all mankind nurses at his mother’s breast or bottle and gets the message there, and later has it reinforced when he learns his manners, whether in the jungle, the slum, the condominium, or the ancestral halls. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Even in the small unlettered communities which anthropologists study for their “cultures,” where everyone is raised according to the same long-established rules, there are enough individual differences between mothers (and fathers) to yield the standard harvest. For winners, there are chiefs and medicine men, captains and capitalist who own a thousand head of cattle or are worth a hundred thousand yams. The losers can be found in the mental hospital at Papeete or Port Moresby or Dakar, or perhaps in Her Majesty’s Gaol at Suva. For each position already carries with it is own kind of script and its own kinds of endings. Even in this country, where there are ten thousand “cultures,” there are only a few endings, none different, really, from any other country’s. Because each person is the product of a million different moments, a thousand states of mind, a hundred adventures, and usually two different parents, a thorough investigation of his position will reveal many complexities and apparent contradictions. Nevertheless, there can usually be detected one basic position, sincere or insincere, inflexible or insecure, on which his life is staked, and from which he plays out his games and script. This is necessary so that he can feel that he has both feet on solid ground, and he will be as loath to give it up as he would the foundation of his house. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
To take one simple example, a woman who thinks it very important that she is poor while others are rich (I — They +) will not give this up merely because she acquires a lot of money. That does not make her rich in her own estimation; it merely makes her a poor person who happens to have some assets. Her classmate who thinks it is important to be rich, in contrast to the underprivileged poor (I + They -) will not abandon her position if she loses her money; this does not make her a poor person, but merely a rich person who is temporarily embarrassed financially. This tenacity, as we shall see later, accounts for the life led by Cinderella after she married her prince, and it also accounts for the fact that men in the first position (I + You +) make good leaders, for even in the utmost adversity they maintain their universal respect for themselves and those in their charge. Thus, the four basic positions, I + You + (success); I + You – (arrogant); I — You + (depressive); and I – You – (futility), can rarely be changed by external circumstances alone. Stable changes must come from within, either spontaneously or under some sort of “therapeutic” influence: professional treatment, or love, which is nature’s psychotherapy. However, there are those whose convictions lack convictions, so that they have options and alternations between one position and another; from I + You + to I — You —, or from I + You — to I — You +, for example. These are, as far as position is concerned, insecure or unstable personalities. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Secure or stable ones are those whose positions, good or deplorable, cannot be shaken. In order for the idea of positions to be of any practical use, it must not be defeated by the changes and instabilities of the insecure. The transactional approach—finding out what was actually said and done at a certain moment—takes care of that. If A behaves at noon as though he were in the first position (I + You +), then we say that “A is in the first position.” If he behaves at 6.00pm as though he were in the third position (I – You +), then we say “In the noon setup A is in the first position under 6pm circumstances he is in the third.” From this we can conclude that A is insecure in the first position, and that if he has symptoms, they occur under special conditions. If he behaves under all circumstances as through he were in the first position, then we say that “A is stable in the first position,” from which we predict that A is a winner, that if he has been in treatment, he is now cured, and that he is game free, or at least that he is not under compulsion to play games, but has social control—the option of deciding for himself at each moment whether or not he wants to play. If B behaves under all circumstances as though he were in the fourth position, we say that “B is stable in the fourth position” from which we predict that B is a loser, that it will be difficult to cure him, and that he will be unable to stop himself from playing those games which prove that life is futile. All this is done by careful analysis of actual transactions engaged by A and B. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Once the predictions are made, they are easily tested by more observation. If later behaviour does not confirm them, then either the analysis was faulty or the theory of position is wrong and will have to be changed. If it does confirm the predictions, then the theory is strengthened. The evidence so far supports it. Reality is what we take to be real. This, in turn, is powerfully influenced by what significant other people have told us is true, real, and important in the World. We are continuously told by newspapers, comics, friends, and family members, movies and television programs about the way things are. Sometimes this influence is subtle; someone merely describes some aspect of the World to us, and we find that this description impels us to see that World as we were told it is. One teacher played a classroom game; she asked the children to pretend that blonde, blue-eyed children were evil. In time, the black-haired children came to loathe the blondes, who in turn felt inferior. Other people, then, can so influence one’s ways of perceiving, and of attaching meaning and value, that one loses one’s own autonomous perspective. If other people are strong, with high status, they may invalidate one’s own perspective on reality; the weaker person accepts the perspective of the stronger. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
For example, when high school seniors in the minority are confronted by perceptions or judgments from a majority identified as college students, the high schoolers conform to the perceptions of the higher status college student. A person may need to disengage from other people and go into solitude, in order to separate other people’s perspectives on reality from one that is more truly individual. An excessive humility or a morbid self-depreciation may present a man from seeking outside help. This too is a manifestation of the ego, which cunningly uses such emotion to keep him away from a contract which threatens its rule. This quality of a continuous calmness—so highly prized by self-actualized Christians—is hard to come by but exceedingly precious when gained. He who possesses it, who is unfailingly one and the same not only toward others but also toward himself, becomes a rock of upholding strength in their crises, an oasis of hidden comfort in his own. This beautiful serenity makes many other qualities possible in his own development while leaving a benedictory afterglow of encouragement with all those who are still struggling with their own refractory emotions and passions. Emotion is an unreliable adviser but refined, purified, and liberated from egotism, it becomes transformed into intuition. As all worries and fears are aroused in the ego, they are lulled when, by meditation, the ego-thought is lulled and the mediator feels peace. However, when the ego is rooted out by the entire philosophic effort, they are then rooted out, too. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
The Sacramento Fire Department educates and prepares Sacramento County residents and visitors for all emergencies, through public education, community outreach, and training. “It was a hot summer night. I had to work the day tour the following morning, and the phone rang just as I was getting into bed. A friend called me and told me to turn on the radio. Two firefighters had been killed in a fire, and the names weren’t released pending notifications. I called my own firehouse, where the grapevine had carried the news. I found out who they were. I drove down to the bar, then. It was early morning, an hour or so past midnight. I was thinking of X’s children. He had eight of them, and was known as a great father. Y, one of the partners, was there. He was crying, and put his arms around me, connecting, I guess, to the brotherhood of the job. We decided to drive up to the firehouse. There were guys off duty there, he knew, and they would appreciate the company. It was a classy thing, I thought. We went up to the top floor of Rescue A. Z was there, and a bunch of firefighters who had driven in as soon as they heard the news. Z told us they had been on the roof of a five-story tenement. A young firefighter who had been working on the top floor, the fifth, had been separated from his boss, a lieutenant who happened to be B, my friend and one of the most decorated men in the department. A back room was lit up completely, and C was caught. He was at a windowsill, yelling, and Rescue A heard him. The fire was lapping up the side of the building, licking over the rooftop. D tied his own small, forty-foot, personal rope to a pipe, attached it to his safety harness, and went over the rooftop. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“He knew there was not much he could do, because the personal role could not take the weight of two men. The manuals said it was to be used for escape purposes only, and in extreme emergencies. But D just wanted to be with C. X stepped right up, and he went over the roof, six stories above the solid concrete of the backyard below. Z was looking down over the roof parapet. They lowered him down to where D and C were now framed by the fire. ‘I have him,” X said to D. C held fast around X’s neck, and they both became one, a kind of pendulum escaping the fire. Then something happened, no one knew what. It was an imperfect rope. It just snapped, and X and C fell. It was hard for D to tell the story, we all knew, but we also knew that it was all in the family. It was the straight stuff, because there’s no point in holding back from the family. After having some Lipton’s ice tea, the men were relaxed a little. There was not much for any of us to do. Rescue A would have to prepare for the funeral, and all those official investigations and reports. But now the men just wanted to regain their breath. Z and I worked for a long time with a man named F, who had been promoted out of Engine G, and who was a good friend of X. Z suggested I call him, rather than have him hear the news in the morning from a radio, the Internet, or TV reporter. I went to the phone to dial his number, and it then struck me. What if he’s not home? What would his wife H think about a phone call at three in the morning? What momentary pain would that cause? I wanted to hang up as the phone was answered. I heard her voice, and the first thing I said was “This has nothing to do with F.” It turns out he was working that night as a covering officer, and had listened to the alarms as they came over the department radio. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“Then I thought, who was going to ring the bell of X’s house this sad night? And, what extraordinary pain would the ringing of that bell bring to so many people?” The Sacramento Fire Department provide fire protection, rescue, and medical services to the community. They also ensure the safety and well-being of residents through their dedicated efforts. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. The Spirit of America is often found in a deep sense of patriotism, where people show enduring loyalty to their country and their fellow citizens. This love for one’s country goes beyond just celebrating national holidays; it is seen in how people treat each other and work for the community every day. Please raise your children to love America. When patriotic feelings are genuine and inclusive, they can transcend individual interests and foster a collective identity. It is also important to teach your children to love God and Jesus Christ. American almost universally view God as a loving parent. The desire to emulate God’s love moderates religious disagreements among the great majority of Americans. Also, buying a car is a huge expense, so it makes sense to support America and buy a car made in this county. Luckily, there are plenty of American cars worth buying, whether you are looking for something reliable for your small family, a truck to haul your trailer, or a sports car. Furthermore, as patriotic Americans, everyone must make a commitment to respect laws, legal authorities, legal signage and signals, and courts. Imagine if everyone in your community decided that they did not want to be bothered by traffic laws and signals, for example. The streets in your community would quickly become a chaotic and less safe place. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The young should honour their elders as “superiors in age and gifts. Contrary to the way of the World, we put a premium on age, not youth. We value the wisdom that comes from life experience. Seniors should strive to be worthy of such honour, walking in faith, love, and wisdom. And youth should remember to take their education seriously. It will help them achieve financial stability. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Children need to know that having faith in the Saviour and following Him will help them receive peace in this troubled World. We are grateful for the opportunities we have. Children need to experience the Light of Christ so they can choose light and resist the darkness. There are two kinds of inner peace. The first is somewhat like that which the ancient Stoics cultivated: the result of controlling emotions and disciplining thoughts, the result of will and effort applied to the mastery of self. It brings with it, at best, a contentment with what one has, as least, a resignation to one’s lot. The second is much deeper, for it comes out of God. It is the blessed result of Divine Grace liberating one from the craving for existence. To attain this inner equilibrium, the emotions need to be brought under control. It is not enough to repress them by will alone: they need also to be understood psychologically in a far deeper sense than the academic one. It is not enough to analyse their obvious surface causes and workings: their relationship to the real self at the centre of being must become quite clear. The “I” who experiences them must be sought. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
On occasion, caretakers are left alone in The Winchester Mystery House to close the mansion up. During the summer, it does not bother some of them because as they are closing the windows, they can hear sounds from the street and do not feel alone. However, when the chills of autumn set in, and the windows have to be closed to keep it out, one of the caretakers because gradually aware that he was not really alone on those lonely nights. One particular night, early in his employment at the house, he was alone and heard rapid, firm footsteps starting at the front door, inside the house, and coming through the parlor and the dining room, and finally approaching the room he was in down the hall. He leapt out into the hall, wondering with sheer terror what the intruder would do. However, no one came. More to calm himself than because he really believed it, the caretaker convinced himself that he must have been mistaken about those footsteps. It was probably someone in the street. With reassuring thoughts, he continued to lock up the mansion. The next day, he did not tell anyone about the nocturnal event. After all, he did not want them to think they hired a strange man! However, the footsteps returned, night after night, always at the same time and always stopping abruptly at the morning room. Rather than facing his employers with the allegation that he was working in a haunted house, he bravely decided to face the intruder and find out what this was all about.
One night he deliberately waited for the new familiar brisk footfalls. The clock struck nine, then nine-thirty. In the quiet of the night, he could hear his heart pounding in his chest. Then the footsteps came close, closer and closer, until they got to the entryway of the morning room. At this moment, he snapped on the light, and tore the door wide open. There was nobody there, and no retreating footsteps could be heard. He tried it again and again, but the invisible intruder never showed himself once the door was opened. The winter was bitterly cold, and they were in the habit of having two caretakers close up the house at night. One night the additional caretaker left the basement and said, “Why were you walking around in the freezing basement and didn’t answer when I called out to you?” Of course he had not been down in the basement, and told her as much. Then they discovered that she, too, had heard footsteps, but had thought it was him walking restlessly about the basement. She heard the footsteps whenever she was in the basement, and they would suddenly cease, but no one would be around. Since everything was always securely locked, and countless attempts to trap the ghost had failed, the caretakers shrugged and learned to live with this peculiar boarder. Gradually the steps became part of the atmosphere of the Victorian house, and the terror began to fade into the darkness of night.
Please 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/
The Devil Had Had Connection with them
“Yes, there at first, and then…” I waved my hand nonchalantly around the room,” here, there…several placed, actually.” Mr. Hansen straightened up, “Has she ever spoken? Have you ever tried to speak to her, Mrs. Winchester?” I frowned. “My dear boy, I do not make a habit of conducting conversations with ghosts. I consider just seeing the wretched thing queer enough.” Twitching my shoulders in a shiver. “I was sitting in the library in one of the big windows that had been opened to the night air. Suddenly my peaceful evening was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. I turned my head toward the door to see who was coming. However, no form was visible. The footsteps, however, came to the doors of the library, and ceased abruptly. Mystified, I waited for the someone to enter the room. Nothing happened. “Who’s there?” I asked. There was complete silence. Half-angry and half-puzzled, I got up to look around. There was no one in the dark hallway. I heard those footsteps plainly, but did not see a soul. Perhaps there was a secret entrance that I did not know about. There has to be some place where they can hide. These walls are deep enough to contain a secret passageway. When I returned to the library, I saw a girl in this room, although she was only a haze sort of form at first, not clear at all. Definitely a girl though, in her early twenties, I would say. I say her—it—again a few days—no, not days: nights—later, much clearer this time, almost as if her presence was growing in strength. I must admit, I felt quite weak at the sight of her.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
“That sometimes happens,” Mr. Hansen replied. “Manifestations of this kind seem to draw off psychic energy from their witnesses, using it to sap energy from the atmosphere, too—that’s why the temperature of a room may suddenly drop. Their presence has even been known to affect electricity.” “Extraordinary. However, you really are speaking of ghosts, Mr. Hansen.” “No, I’m still talking about unexplained phenomena. Please go with what you were telling me.” I began to pace. “I felt there was something terribly sad about this ‘presence’… as though she were searching, or perhaps just lost…my housemaid Eleanor also had an encounter. Is that not right, my darling?” “Yes, Mrs. Winchester I most certainly did,” replied Eleanor. “I came face-to-face with the phantom lady in the library.” “I’d be interested to hear,” said Mr. Hansen as he smiled at the question, not in the least perturbed. “The library is cold and rather unpleasant,” responded. “A girl. I’ve seen her lurking or hovering or whatever these bloody things do on several occasions. That first time, I’d come down for a book and there she was, over there watching me.” She pointed and shuddered as if for emphasis. “The sight made my blood run cold, I can tell you.” “Does she look like anyone you know? Have known?” “Of course not. In fact, that’s the horrible part of this affair.” Her features contorted in disgust. “There was something wrong with her face, her figure…something awful. She appeared…I don’t know—malformed. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupilless, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth disclosed themselves slowly to my view. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
“The white ghastly spectrum of teeth. Not a speck on their surface—not a shade of their enamel—not an indenture in their edges—but what that brief period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth!—the teeth!—they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against it. I felt her possession and thought I could never be restored to peace, given back reason. And the evening closed in upon me thus—and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went—and the day again dawned—and the mists of a second night were now gathering around—and still I sat motionless in this solitary room—and I still I sat buried in meditation—and still the phantasma made its terrible ascendancy, as, with the most vivid and hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow and pain. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
“I arose from my seat, and throwing open one of the doors of the library, fell to the floor. I’m usually able to see through the outward layer of ugliness that so many things have, and perceive the beauty within, but it was impossible. I’ve had to clean up blood in the kitchen. I was told not to ask questions because it was safer I didn’t know anything. So I didn’t ask.” Mr. Hansen looked up from the typewriter with his reading glasses balanced precariously on the end of his nose. His face was anxious. His hand suddenly shook as with ague, as with terror. Her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart, staringly changes were wrought in my mind. During the brightest days of unparalleled beauty, there were no towers in the land more time-honoured than those of Llanada Villa. Our line had been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars—in the character of the family mansion—in the frescos of the chief saloon—in the tapestries of the dormitories—in the chiseling of some buttresses in the armory—but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings—in the fashion of the library chamber—and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library’s contents—there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief. I did not fail to ponder, frequently and bitterly, upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. And now—now I shudder in her presence, and grew pale at her recital. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and, sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. After some time, I found myself alone in the library. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware, that my home was replete with horror—horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record of my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, intelligent recollections. And like the spirit of a departed soul, a shrill and piercing female voice seemed to be ringing in my ear among the whispering echoes of the chamber. I knew this was not in the physical dimension and I had to learn how past events served as a blueprint for the psychic atmosphere that made such phenomena possible. The following day, I was winding up an important meeting. Mr. Hansen walked in the room. “Mrs. Winchester,” he said excitedly. “Do you care if I break a window?” “Where?” I demanded. “What for?” There’s a window painted black down in the basement at the back of the house. I’ve finally found about a thirteen-foot discrepancy in my measurements between the outside and the inside of the basement. I’ll have to break the window to see what’s behind it. I’ll pay for putting the glass back.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
“Wait for me!” I ordered. “I will be out in a few moments.” We went down into the basement where Mr. Hansen showed me a sketch he had made to scale and pointed to the stained-glass window with a cobweb pattern and thirteen colourful orbs. From the basement floor it could only be reached by ladder, but it was only a little above ground level from the outside of the house. “I’ve got to see what’s behind it!” “What is so interesting about that? Can you not just remove it from the outside?” “I don’t want to,” he replied impatiently. “The outside wall of the house runs in a straight line but down here the basement is all cut up into these rooms. There’s about a thirteen-foot space from that window to the outside wall or my figures are off—and they can’t be!” He pulled a ladder up to the window and climbed up with a hammer in hand. I stepped out of range of falling glass as he smashed one of my most precious designs, then, working with gloves, removed the remaining pieces from the frame. He turned his lantern into the aperture and gave a sharp whistle. “Hey!” he yelled. “You’ve got to see this! You won’t believe it!” He scrambled down the ladder and handed me the lantern. Then he waited in obvious excitement for me to climb up.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
“Do you see that room?” he shouted. “Look across at that other window!” I saw it. The room looked like a vaulted crypt. It was small and unfurnished although what looked like an old altar cloth and books in the corner. Just opposite the window Mr. Hansen had broken was an identical one and this is what we had noticed from the outside of the house. It was, likewise, a stained-glass window with a spider web pattern and thirteen colourful orbs, and was a twin in its dimension of the one in the basement wall. This was the most careful job of camouflaging a secret room that one could imagine. Mr. Hansen’s excitement was contagious. Minutes later we both climbed down into the secret room. Care examination proved that there were no other windows and no other way of getting into the room. If there had been a door, it was certainly sealed over with concrete. The entire room was brick lined. There must have been a trap door in the kitchen floor above to the hiding place. However, a new floor had been laid, sealing it off completely. We left the room the way we found it. Eleanor had been loitering in the kitchen even thought it was now getting dark. “You got a new room, Mrs. Winchester. What good did it do?” Mr. Hansen and I looked at each other with perfect understanding. “No good at all, Eleanor,” I answered. “The room is useless to me. Tomorrow I will have Mr. Hasen seal it back up.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
After opening the secret room, Mrs. Winchester reported that she moved bodily among unknown entities, reading terrible books. There were horrible annals of other Worlds and other Universes, and of stirrings of formless life inside the mansion. There were records and chronicles of strange orders of beings which had people the World and frightful grotesque-bodied intelligence which people the World billions of years before the first human being. Many mornings afterward, she awakened in a fever and shivering at the mysteries her home concealed; trembling at the menaces the future would bring forth. She wrote endlessly of the hauntings that took place in Llanada Villa. However, these records, written on great sheets of a curiously tenacious cellulose fabric, were bound in leather, and sold at auction with all her belongings. Now, her history is store in vaults of someone’s private collection.
Please 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 isn’t a Soul in Here
I was returning home late one stormy night. The loud claps of thunder rattled among the house. The lighting quivered about the pinnacles of Llanada Villa, and shed flickering gleams over roof top. There was an evil influence hanging over me; an evil genius or spirit seeking to ensnare me and ensure my perdition. One afternoon I was lying down on the bed with a book trying to rest. Before long I was asleep. Suddenly, I awoke with a feeling of horror that seemed to start at my feet and gradually work its way up throughout my entire body and mind. The room seemed to be permeated with something terribly evil. I could neither see nor hear anything, but I had the feeling that there was a presence there and that it was very strong and about to overcome me. A succession of vivid flashes of lightning revealed it more distinctly. The scenes of blood which followed shocked my sensitive nature, disgusted me with society and the World, and I shut myself up in a Llanada Villa where I pursed my favour speculations. Sometimes I spent hours in my great library, the catacombs of departed authors, in quest of knowledge. I have seen ghosts a few times. In various parts of the house. And in the garden by the Cupid fountain. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
These apparitions are the desolate souls of those unfortunates who have left their Earthly bodies in traumatic, or perhaps even tragic circumstances. Something must have created a power vortex—the whirlwind of negative and terrible emotions that act now as a magnet for unseen entities. Maybe there are more of them than I realize. The following morning, the housemaid laid my plate before me (scrambled eggs, bacon, and mushrooms). As I sat, casting my eyes down at my own half-eaten breakfast, I contemplated the situation. In the past, I was inclined to believe the someone had been smitten with the worth of a wealth widow; or rather a marauding Tarquin, had stolen into my home to violate my purse, and rifle my strong box, when all the house should be asleep. However, now I am prepared to believe that emotions of certain distressed people can be so strong at the moment of death, whether through pain, unhappiness, or shock, that an impression is left behind. An after image that can take years, maybe centuries, to fade completely. In any event, after breakfast, I went to the library. There was a fire burning in the massive stone fireplace. As one can imagine, the crack and spark of the aromatic logs, as well as the heat itself, were very welcome. I placed myself beside the hearth and relaxed into the delicious heat. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
When I was sufficiently warmed, I made my way through the ground floor rooms without finding a living soul. Curiously, I had not dismissed the servants. I discovered a mincemeat pie on the kitchen table, and on the massive gas stove a teakettle blackened now because someone had left the flame on while all the water had evaporated. I turned offed the fire and almost seared my palm lifting the kettle to a cool spot. Now I was truly terrified. I heard it. The sound echoing eerily in the bowels of the house. Something was coming out of the shadows. The sound of its movements sent shock waves and terror running through me. I turned and ran from the room. “Oh, God,” I cried in despair, “what is going to happen to me?” There was nobody to protect me, nobody to save me. I flew down the hall and hurtled to the front door. It would not open no matter how hard I pulled and pushed. I ran into the parlour, ripped aside the heavy drapes and tried to open the window. It would not budge. I looked at the storm-swept night outside and found even that preferable to remaining in my home. In a fit of rage, I picked up a chair and threw in at the window, gasping in astonishment as the chair bounced off the pain of glass. I could not run away. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Within dreams I seemed gradually to acquire a greater and greater freedom of wandering. I floated through many rooms in Llanada Villa, going through secret passages. Sometimes I encountered those sealed trap-doors in the lowest level, around which such an aura of fear and forbiddingness clung. The next morning, as I was in the library, I looked up from my book and saw a shadow on the frosted glass of the door. When I rushed out into the hallways only to see the door across the hall closing, imagine my irritation. I walked over there, intending to knock, and find out who was in the room, but I saw a shadow withing the room, bent over a table. For some reason this stopped me, and I returned to the library. The next day the same thing happened. Then the day after that. I then refused to leave my desk. I would not chase a shadow; he would not use me in such a fashion. I soon discovered that when I did not go to the door, the shadow remained in my frosted glass all day long. He was standing outside my door all day long, every day. Once there were two shadows. That brought me to my feet immediately. However, when I snatched the door open, I discovered two housemaids busy shining chandeliers, polishing floors and furniture. Of course, after the two housemaids had left, the single shadow was back again. It was there until five. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
I am not usually given to emotion. However, the next day I lost my temper. I saw the shadow before the library door and in a fit of rage, I order him away from the door at the top of my voice. When three hours had passed and he still had not left, I began to weep. I pleaded with him. However, he was still there. I opened the door and went across the hall and was startled at what I found. Shadows moved intelligently around the room, getting books from shelves and taking them to great tables, or vice versa, and sometimes writing diligently with a peculiar rod gripped in their hands. Afterwards, I saw them everywhere through the mansion; swarming in all the great chambers and corridors; racing along the vast miles of hallways. I ceased to be afraid of them, for they seemed to form supremely natural parts of the house. Individual differences amongst them began to manifest, and a few appeared to be under some kind of restraint. Hours passed, and night fell. I stopped by a covered form, and pulled back a canvas tarpaulin. “This is my butler,” I said. His body had been dismembered. I looked at the left hand first, saw the thumb and two remaining fingers. His face, empty and expressionless. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
As for the other pieces—the torso, still joined to the upper right arm and thighs, the right forearm and hand, and the two disjointed feet and lower legs—I was not sure. Then he vanished before my eyes. Shortly after this incident, many of the servants began hearing the door-to-nowhere open by itself and close again. This was immediately followed by footsteps of someone walking through the hall. At first, they would get up to see who it was, but there was never anyone to be seen. Gradually, we realized that these were not the footsteps of a living person. The visitor would come at various times of the day or evening, and then stay away for several months. Then it would all resume. We became used to these sounds, and hardly looked up when they became audible. One day the steps continued and then we could clearly hear someone sit down in the baroque chair in the morning room! This did not bother me, but it bothered some of the servants who held less broadminded views of ghosts. However, it soon because apparent to everyone that the footsteps were not always the same: sometimes they were soft and light, as if made by a young person, while at other times they were heavy, almost clumsy steps of a big man. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
On January 16, 1892, two servants were in different parts of the mansion busy with their chores. Independently of each other, the two women saw the same figure of a man suddenly appear out of nowhere. At first, the Parlour maid saw him. He was a big man, about six feet in height, and heavy-set, dressed in black, and where his face should have been was just a black mass. However, unmistakably this was a human figure. A few moments later, he appeared to a Kitchen maid. She looked at him, and could see right through him into the other room! The women both had the impression that the man was looking at them. As he disappeared toward the rear of the house, they realized they had not heard a single sound. Since the appearance of the man in black, the footsteps were not heard again, but the door kept opening and closing as before. This too must by no means be passed over that certain servants being seduced by the illusions and phantasmal shows of demons firmly believe and openly profess that in the dead of the night, Satan assumes the shape of a man. Satan, in the form of a tall, dark man conveyed thither, and most often leaves the house by way of the chimney. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
The house had been vacant for many months, but people could not help visiting it, even though it was locked. They would go up to the front steps and peer in the windows. So many people were strangely attacked to the beautiful but bizarre Victorian house. Some say they were “called” by the house as if someone inside were beckoning to them. Over the months after the death of Mrs. Winchester, strangers who had passed by the house would speak of strange tales of music emanating from the empty house. Definite tunes, song after song played by skilled hands. Eventually the house taken possession of by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. However, Mrs. Winchester’s niece, Daisy, doubted that Mrs. Winchester would move out just because the house changed hands. She felt her presence, very much alive and wholly content to live in the house. In February of 1923, a stranger went to The Winchester Mansion and rang the doorbell. When the door opened and lights appeared, he claims that he had an opportunity of contemplating Mrs. Winchester, and was more than ever intoxicated by her beauty. Her face was pale, but of a dazzling fairness, set off by a profusion of raven hair that hung clustering about it. Her eyes were large and brilliant. As far as her black dress permitted her shape to be seen, it was of perfect symmetry. Her whole appearance was highly striking, though she was dressed in the simplest style.
The only thing approaching to an ornament which she wore, was a board black band round her neck, clasped by diamonds. He spoke to her, but received no reply. He advanced to greet her. On taking her hand, it was cold—there was no pulsation. Horrified and frantic, a scene of confusion ensued. The police were summoned. Because the house had been vacant for months, they are armed with guns. Once in the foyer, they switched on the lights. As they looked around, they saw no one. The police finally went back to where the man was standing, looking dejectedly at him. “There isn’t a soul in here,” they told him flatly. They tried to soothe him, but in vain. He was possessed with the frightful belief that an evil spirit had reanimated Mrs. Winchester’s body to ensnare him. He went distracted, and died in a mad-house. This was a fact not to be doubted. The best authority said that saw him in The Great Asylum for the Insane. Perhaps he saw a manifestation of some kind. A visual representation of Mrs. Winchester still lingering. With a house this old, it would be a little unusual is there was not a skeleton or two lurking in a cupboard somewhere.
Please 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/
The Property is a Most Desirable Residence
Sometimes certain things happen in Victorian houses that are hard to understand. Llanada Villa is one of those places. I am convinced that there is another level of consciousness or activity of some kind that occupies my home. A juxtaposition between entities in physical bodies and those in astral form. When I first purchased the original eighteen room farmhouse, there was the most peculiar thing outside. A large barn, to the south side of the house, and a stone in front of it that looked not quite natural. Upon close inspection, I wondered whether perhaps it was not an Indian tombstone, or perhaps an Indian altar of sorts. It looked far too regular to be completely shaped by nature. The original owner had no idea how it got into the garden, nor did he know anything particular about the history of the barn. All he knew was that the barn was old. Inside there was a passageway, or cave, tunnel, call it what you will, leading from one of the stables out to another part of the estate. It was shored up by four-by-fours on the side, but with very thing boards on the top; and dirt and water was trickling down these broken boards at the top. The tunnel was about seven feet tall. It was quite tall. I heard some noises and was afraid to have anyone go in. After I purchased the property and started to expand my estate, I simply had the carpenters fill it in and raze the barn. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
It was now long after nightfall, my home with lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lamination nothing cast a shadow. A strange sensation began slowly to take possession of my body and mind. However, I felt rather conscious with a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence, while some supernatural malevolence swarmed about me. A shallow pool on the floor reflected in the light, as from a spill, met my eye with a crimson gleam. I dipped my fingers into it. It stained them; it was blood! Blood, I then observed, was about me everywhere. Defiling the walls and were broad maculations of crimson, and blood dripped like dew from them. All of this I observed with terror. It seemed to me that it was all in expiation of some crime. To the menaces and mysteries of my surroundings the consciousness was an added horror. So frightful was the situation—the mysterious light burned with so silent and awful a menace. 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 it any longer, and with a great effort to break some malign spell that bound my faculties to silence and inaction, I screamed. My voice broke into echoes and fluttered away into the distant reaches of the labyrinth, then died into silence, and all was as before. This place becomes more queer at night. Often, I must persuade myself out of the notion that eyes are watching me. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
After that time, I often knew things before they really happened—such as who would be at the door before the butler answered it, or just before the telephone rang, who would be calling. From the very first night I moved into Llanada Villa, I felt right at home in it, as if I had always lived here. Even during expansion, if before me unknown horror or behind me, with heavy tread, something moved relentlessly upon me, driving me on and down; I found it easy to move along the stairs, and in the dark without the slightest accident or need to orient myself. It was almost as if the house, or someone in it, were guiding my steps. I was always acutely aware that the house was alive: There were strange noises and creaking boards, but there were also human footsteps, and there were those doors. The doors, in particular, puzzled me. The first time I noticed anything unusual about the doors in the house was when I was reading a book late one night. Suddenly, I heard footsteps on the ceiling above my bedroom. Then the door of the stairwell opened, steps reverberated on the stairs, then the door-to-nowhere opened, and a blast of cold air hit me. I looked up, and there was no one there. Annoyed, I rose and went to check the servant’s quarters. They were indeed fast asleep. Not satisfied and thinking that one of them must be playing tricks on me, I woke them one by one and questioned them. However, they had trouble waking up, and it was evident to me that I was on a fool’s errand; the servants had not been down those stairs. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
That was the beginning of a long succession of incidents involving the doors in the house. Occasionally, I would watch with fascination when a door opened quite by itself, without any logical cause, such as wind or draft; or to see a door for me just open as I was about to reach for the doorknob! At least, for now, whatever presence there was in the house was polite: It opened the door to a lady! However reassuring it was, it could also be frightening. One evening, I was reading in the library, and an intolerable discomfort overcame me. Through the thudding of my heart, I heard the stealthy footsteps of someone echoing in the distance. Then there was a sound behind one of the bookshelves that sounded like somebody suffering—making all kinds of noises. It hurled me into sufferings almost more than I could bared. I got up and started pulling books away from the shelves and that is when I discovered a panel. It was wide enough to be a passage, and the passageway itself was blocked with a piece of concrete; maybe thirty inches wide and forty inches long. Standing for a moment listening, I could hear a faint sound like a stumble from within. Although I was filled with curiosity to find out what was beyond the wall, it did not match the desire to tear the wall apart. I slipped noisily out of the library and flattened myself against the closed door. As the grandfather clock tick-tocked in a hollow monotone, I knew that somewhere in the thick darkness there was an apparition. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
For a time, which seemed so long that the World grew gray with age and sin, and my haunted mansion, having fulfilled its purpose in this monstrous culmination of its terrors, vanished out of my consciousness with all its sighs and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding me with the mindless malevolence of a wild brute; then thrust its hands forward and sprang upon me with appalling ferocity! The manifestation released my physical energies without unfettering my will; my mind was spellbound, but my body powerful and limbs agile. For an instant, I saw this unnatural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator—such fancies are in dreams; then I regained my identity almost as if by a leap forward into my body, and the straining automaton had a directing will as alert and fierce as that of its hideous antagonist. However, what moral can cope with a demon? Despite my strength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, I felt the cold fingers close upon my throat. Borne backward against the floor, I saw above me the dead and drawn face within a hand’s breadth of my own, and then all was black. Dazed with agony, I opened my eyes. The silence was stifling. And out of that unbroken silence crept slowly to my significance sharper than any outcry, the clock had stopped ticking. In my mind’s eye I could see the key in the clock door, and then slowly, soundlessly, I began to drift toward the clock. Six paces from it I caught the dim glint of a key in the clock—my eyes were now accustomed to the darkness—and then beneath my foot a board treacherously cried out in the stillness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
I stood there, holding my breath and as I stood, I saw the clock door slowly open, and two fingers slid round the edge of it! Lunging, I flung myself on the door. There was a strangled animal cry from within the case, the fingers jerked and vanished, and I banged the door tight and turned the key in the lock. I heard pounding on the stout mahogany door of the case as I ran to the wall switch and flooded the room with light. Blinking, I started at the tray of trinkets untouched in the window. Then appeared a gentleman, walking alone in the hallway. Thinking he was a servant, I was just about to have a word with him, when he vanished. Suddenly, a coffee cup rose from a side-table, nobody being nigh, and flew to the other side of the room, breaking itself against the wall; for my further confirmation, that it was neither the tricks of the wags nor the fancy of a servant, but the mad frolics of witches and demons. The front of the house was so haunted in all the room, that they stood empty for a long time. In the latter part of the autumn of 1887, after retiring to my bedroom about eleven o’clock, I thought I heard a peculiar moaning sound, and someone sobbing as if in great distress of mind. I listened very attentively, and still it continued; so I raised the gas in my bedroom, and then went to the window on the landing, drew the curtain aside, and there on the grass was a very beautiful young girl in a kneeling posture, before a soldier in a general’s uniform, sobbing and clasping her hands together, entreating for a pardon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
However, alas, he only waved her away. So much did I feel for the girl that I ran down the stairway that wound down into blackness to the door opening upon the lawn, and begged her to come in and tell me her sorrow. The figures then disappeared gradually, as in a dissolving view. Not in the least nervous did I feel then; went again into my bedroom, took a sheet of writing paper, and wrote down what I had seen. The following evening, a few steps from the living room to the rear section, which was the original portion of the house, a man suddenly appeared, striding towards me, and going in a direction opposite to mine. When first seen he was standing exactly in front of the fireplace which dominated the room. Young and ghastly pale, he was dressed in evening clothes, evidently made by a foreign tailor. Tall and slim, he walked with long measured strides noiselessly. A tall white had covered thickly with black crepe, and an eyeglass, completed the costume of this strange form. The moonbeams from the skylight falling on the corpse-like features revealed a face well known to me, that of a former butler. A housemaid was in the room with me. She stopped abruptly, as if spellbound, then rushing towards the man, she gazed intently and with horror unmistakable on his face, which was now upturned to the Heavens. She indulged in her strange contemplation but for a very few seconds, then with extraordinary and unexpected she ran away with a terrific shriek and tell. However, this woman never have I seen or heard of since, and I could not explain her presence, nor the man’s. A week after this event, I was in my bedroom reading my letters, and it was very, very late. News of the butler’s death reached me. Then suddenly, the door opened, and the butler stood there looking at me reproachfully. But, he had been dead for more than a week. I screamed and went under the covers. A housemaid rushed upstairs to see what was the matter. When she arrived, the door was wide open! #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
It is possible that events in The Winchester Mystery House can be charged with such powerful emotion that their traces linger in the setting where they occurred. That may at least be the explanation for the ubiquitous sighting of figures in the Grand Ballroom or gibbets upon which they have been hanged—unless of course popular superstition has attracted presumed ghosts to these localities.
Please 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/
The Haunting of Llanada Villa
The sun began its slow descent from the sky. The wind was blowing shrill and shrewd. As Llanada Villa settled, it started to rumble and grumble. The last glimmer of daylight died away. Everywhere, twilight released shadows. The night was bitterly cold and gloomy. As I sat by the fire, forms and faces from the past, from the grave appeared from a deep gulf. The wind was rumbling in the chimney and howling in the house. The footsteps in the dark from unseen entities were no longer as entertaining as they used to be. I had a feeling there was a tragic cloud hanging over the premises. Something must have happened long ago that left a very vivid psychic impression here…something very terrible. With more than $300 million at stake and not wanting to make light of the spirits, I discouraged any visits, especially those of thrill seekers. The walls and mirrors of Llanada Villa were draped in rose-coloured silk, and the mantles were decorated with poinsettia blossoms and lilies. In a doorway between the ballroom and the parlor, there was an umbrella covered with moss sprayed over with carnations with a fringe of gilded cypress cones. At the dinner table, however, I still kept a centerpiece of an old stain scarf border with blue plush and embroidered with begonia leaves to appease my spirit guests. Along the table were silver vases with roses and a tall silver candelabra. The names of some of the spirits guests were on cards painted with pink poppies. Llanada Villa itself had been readied to receive persons of wealth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Although I have been experiencing unforeseen difficulties for some time now, the spirits had become very real to me. I was getting used to having them around. Besides, some of them were less trouble than some people I knew. Along with the day-to-day difficulties of conducting any kind of business, I had to deal with “the way things are done in California.” One incident involved a monthly payment to be made to a “railroad superintendent” to ensure my rail cars and carriages made it safely to my estate. There had been several frightening attempts at extortion. The disgruntled renegade demanded a payment. He “needed the money.” I refused to pay him. He left my home, uttering and glaring. Shortly after, a letter arrived at my home.
Mrs. Sarah L Winchester:
We’ve investigated you and know you can pay. We want $67,588 in hundred-dollar bills—and we want it soon so get it together and we’ll contact you again. If you go to the constable, we are going to blow up your whole house with everybody in it—and take care of your family too. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
I disregarded his warning. This, after all, was a clear and present danger, not ghostly footfalls on the path or in the hallways. The constable agreed to work on the case. I told them about the dissatisfied client. They only succeeded in letting the renegade know that the authorities were after him. I was livid! Now that my extortionist knew I had made contact with law enforcement, he would probably carry out the rest of his threats. I had an army of bodyguards and vicious dogs guarding my estate. I refused to fan the fires of anybody’s superstitions, but there was always a guard just waiting inside the mansion with a cocked Winchester. “Well, Mrs. Winchester,” the butler said, mollified, “I’m glad you’re takin’ the serious. This could be trouble. We’ll take some axes and cut us a supply of firewood while it’s still dry.” “Very well,” I said. It was good that they wasted no time, for the rain began well before nightfall. There was a chill, driving wind, and the horses and mules took shelter in a stand of pines that were on the estate. The chimneys drew well, and roar fires did well to life the spirit of the house. I lit a candle and went over the long halls thoroughly, finding nothing. However, a careful examination of the floor revealed nothing except a reddish-brown stain that might have been blood, long since dried. The storm raged on, unabated. There was a crash of thunder that shook the house that immediately frightened the servants. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Then, on the heels of a clap of thunder, like an echo, came the unmistakable bark of a Winchester. Three of the deadly weapons added their voices to the fury of the storm, and taken by surprise, the guards fought back with their Winchester’s. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the fuselage ended. The thunder had diminished, and in the lightning flashes there were revealed three huddled bodies. With trembling hands, I stepped out the door and stood on the veranda, staring grimly into the rain-swept darkness. I marveled at how rapidly events could take a turn for the worse. We were suddenly free of any threat of the troublesome band of renegades, but three of them lay grievously wounded. There were sinister shapes in the shadows. The Observational Tower alone, rising toward the dark rolling clouds, was eerie enough with its deep apertures suggesting the chilly blackness that lay within. I did not envy the butler who had to climb those stairs in the dead of the night to make sure it was secure. When he had entered the nine-story tower, he found every item of furniture smashed or upset. Blood had been smeared over the walls and holy pictures. The tables had been overturned. Every gasolier has been ignited. However, he had come upon no intruder. Whoever—or whatever—had been in the tower had vanished, leaving behind only more wrecked furniture. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
If the butler had not been so obsessed with the idea of “demonic possession,” then perhaps the local constabulary would have become involved. There was someone out there, someone moving through the garden. Using a good deal of stealth, too. And headed for the tower. I sat near the back of the darkened library, screen partly by a mahogany pillar. The only light came from the high stained-glass windows each time night clouds slid from the face of the moon. My hands were tucked deep inside my overcoat pockets. I shivered. Then heard a sound somewhere in the darkness. A breeze flickered against my face. A door had bene opened. And there it was, a black form, somehow misshapen, moving among the shadows. I kept still, curious to see that the intruder would do. A match was struck, the sound harsh in the cavernous mansion. A candle was lit. Then another. The figure moved—glided, it almost seemed—around the table, lighting more. That area of the mansion grew brighter and I sank down in my seat, even though I was still in the shadow, for now the intruder’s true shape was more discernible. It was bent, as if hunched back, and it wore some kind of robe, the head covered by a large cowl. I now understood why the figure had appeared crooked, for now it was lifting something. Something heavy. As I watched, the intruder raised the container and began to pour liquid over the table. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
I waited by the door and only when the figure I had been watching had disappeared from view did I enter. My teeth clenched tight when the door groaned on its hinges. I hurried through. I reached the other side of the room and peered round. There was no sign of the person I had been watching. A noise to my right caught my attention. There it was, a shape dodging around the hallways. However, it was headed to an exit. My eyes narrowed. Christ, the thought of it all made my skin crawl. It was cruel. I was as jumpy as a bear scenting humans. A wind went whistling through the room. The room had darkened more, and I clearly heard footsteps. There was a heavy and gloomy shadow gathering. It turned colder, too. There was a chill and a dismal feeling in the air. I took a lantern and went on, through the long, dark passages. As the gloom and shadow thickened behind me, in that place where it had been gathered so darkly. The glimpses themselves were at first merely strange than horrible, but it took me by surprise to see a ghastly cold, and colourless face dressed in a gloomy nightgown, motionless without a sound. Then I noticed there were multiple levels of black vaults below, and never-opened trapdoors. I seemed to be a prisoner, and horror hung broodingly over everything I saw. My home seemed so limitless. There were almost endless leagues of rooms two hundred feet wide. They differed greatly in aspect. Many of these rooms seemed so limitless that they must have a frontage of several thousand feet, while there were stairs that shot up to the steamy heavens. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
I could not resolve this impression into details. In certain places I beheld enormous dark cylindrical towers which climbed far above any of the other structures. They were built of a completely bizarre masonry, and tapered slightly toward their rounded tops. Nowhere in this part of Llanada Villa could I find traces of windows or other apertures save huge oak doors be found. My omnipresent home was almost terrifying in its strangeness, with bizarre and unfamiliar architecture. Abnormally, this night, my home had grown curiously. Through the countless miles of this haunting city there were French reception rooms in Renaissance and Louis VX taste. The spirit may not have been here to harm me, but were showing me how to build. Vivid blossoms embossed in the windows. Terrance and roof-top gardens to suggest artificial breeding. Here and there enormous domes and arches. Certainly, many persons have dreamed intrinsically stranger things. For some time, I accepted the visions as natural, even though I had never before been an extravagant dreamer. In the course of some months, however, these elements came to life. Carpenters worked day and night to unfailingly create my dreams with accumulating force. My home reflected the curious impressions regarding time, the sense of an exchange with my personality, and, considerably later, the inexplicable emotional grip of these spirits. It disturbed me so vastly to find that my dreams had been so closely duplicated; especially since the ideas came from apparitions. Many of those accounts supplied with detailed explanations. This despite the fact that I was and still am ignorant of the languages involved in the creation, which appeared to be a fairly consistent mixture of myth and hallucination whose scope and wildness left me utterly dazed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
This excessive, if not bizarre home of Sarah L. Winchester combined with Victorian and Gothic styles, at one time contained as many as 600 rooms. Building and furnishing the home consumed approximately $5 million. The house now contains 161 rooms. The vast mansion required employment of about one hundred servants, including chefs, cooks, maids, housekeepers, maintenance workers, carriage men and hostlers. Its unique floor plan resulted in operational efficiencies and many unusual features.
“One occasion, I heard a door open and heavy footstep slowly walking through the house. I checked on the lowest level of the house a door which is never opened—it was nevertheless fully open. Evidently, the ghost knew I was coming.” -Caretaker 5
Please 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/
The History of Horrors
One night, soon after I was in bed, I fell asleep and dreamed that I was returning to Llanada Villa. I thought that it would not be too much out of my way to go through San Francisco. Accordingly, I set out but remembered nothing that happened by the way till I came to my house; I went to the front door and tried to open it; but found it fast. Then I went to the back door, which I opened and went in; but finding all the servants were in bed, I crossed the rooms only, went upstairs, and entered the chamber where my butler, Frau, and his wife Tilly Heroldsbach, were in bed. As I went by the side of the bed on which Frau lay, I found him asleep, or thought he was so; then I went to the other side, and having just turned the foot of the bed, I found Tilly awake to whom I said these words: “Tilly, I am returning from a long journey, and wish to let you know I am home.” Upon which she answered in fright, “Oh dear Mrs. Winchester, thou are dead!” With this I awoke, and took no notice of it more than a common dream, except that it appeared to me very perfect. For some odd reason, I found that Frau and Tilly were no longer on my staff anymore. Claus, one of the carpenters told me that, “they have become frightened to set foot inside the place. It seems they believe demons have taken charge.” I grinned, unable to help myself. “Claus,” I said, “Naturally something like this could make me look pretty silly.” “Mrs. Winchester,” he replied, “this so-called ‘possession’ has become common knowledge in the town. Some of the townsfolk are enjoying the fun of it, while others are quite frightened.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
In a few days after, as soon as a letter could reach me, I received one by post from Frau; upon the receipt of which I was a little surprised, and concluded something extraordinary must have happened, as it was but a short time before I had a letter from him. Upon opening it I was more surprised still for my former butler addressed me as though I were dead, desiring me, if alive, or whose ever hands the letter might fall into, to write immediately; but id the letter should find me living, they could concluded I should not live long, and gave me the reason of their fears. That on a certain night, naming it, after they were in bed, my butler asleep and his wife awake, she heard somebody try to open the front door; but finding it fast, the person went to the back door, which one opened, came in, and came directly through the servants rooms upstairs, and she perfectly knew it to be my step; but I came to her beside, and spoke to her these word, “Tilly, I am returning from a long journey, and wish to let you know that I am home.” Upon which she answered me in a fright, “Oh, dear Mrs. Winchester, thou are dead!”—which were the circumstances and words of my dream. However, she heard nothing more; neither did I in my dream. Much alarmed she woke her husband, and told him what had occurred; but he endeavoured to appease her, persuading her that it was only a dream. She insisted it was no dream, for that she was as perfectly awake as she ever was, and had not the least inclination to sleep since she was in bed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
From these circumstances I am inclined to think it was at the very same instant when my dream happened, though the distance between us was about one hundred miles; but of this I cannot speak absolutely. I do know that it was cooler inside of my house than outside. Was my home always this cold? Spiritual warmth was one thing, but there was no physical warmth here. Blood had been smeared on the walls and statues. Furniture soaked with it. I arrived one morning to find the fountain filled with blood. People who break into my home with malicious intent like to defile it in the foulest way possible. Hebe and Demeter had been marked. I, myself, scrubbed them clean of the more obscene and diabolic disfigurations. My organ in the Grand Ball Room had been battered beyond repair. The carvings had been chipped, there were scratches in the wood that resembled claw marks. The side door looked like it had been attacked with an ax. It was the same with the front doors. However, the marks were on the inside. They were not made by someone trying to gain entry. The only sound I heard that night was the toll of a single bell. There was, too, a feeling of profound and inexplicable horror concerning myself. I developed a queer fear of seeing my own form, as if my eyes would find it something utterly alien and inconceivably abhorrent. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
With a blinding flash and a violent crack, a storm erupted. Then, very suddenly, thought, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavour to comprehend my true state. There I suffered, while I strove to imagine where and what I could be. I longed, yet not dared to employ my vision. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. For a moment, did I suppose myself actually dead? A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and for a brief period, I lapsed into insensibility. There is something, some mysterious horror, that holds me here as surely as if I were bound with fetters. I wanted my soul to be in harmony with other souls. I sank down onto the cold floor, my arms wrapped around my knees as I stared straight ahead. A hundred terrible objects seemed to haunt me. The next day, I rose from my bed ill in health and humiliated in mind. I was ashamed of myself for feeling the desire to escape from my haunted home. However, with some haste, I made my way to the balcony to seek in open air some relief to my nervous system, shaken as it were by this horrible encounter by visitors from another World. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Night after night, demons wonder the halls to kill young children of my servants for their hideous rituals, either by strangulation or more often by piercing their throats with a sharp dagger and letting the hot blood stream into the chalice as they cry: “Astaroth, Asmodee, je vous conjure d’accepter le sacrifice que je vous presente! They have heaped curses on me and trampled underfoot and spat upon holy images and artifacts in my home. In return the demon promises that he will at all times afford them prompt assistance; that he will accomplish all their desires in this World and make them eternally happy after their death. The whole question is, perhaps, one of the most dark and difficult connected with Witchcraft and magic, and the details of these hideous connections are such—for as the Saints attain to the purity of angels, so, on the other hand, will the bond slaves of Satan defile themselves with every kind of lewdness. These relations, far from being untrue, bear the strongest marks of authenticity which can be given them by official proceedings regulated and approved with the caution and judgment brought to bear upon them by enlightened and conscientious magistrates who, throughout all ages, have been in a position to test plain facts. It seems to me that if unshaken evidence means anything at all, if the authority of the ablest and acutest intellects of all ages in all countries is not count for merest vapourings and fairy fantasies, the possibility—I do not, thank God, say the frequency—of these demonical connections is not to be denied. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Evil spirits have appeared in my home in the shape of a man, a woman, or even some animal. This is either a real and actual presence, or the effect of imagination. They decide that this sin incurs particular guilt which must be specifically confessed, to with an evil superstition whereof the essence is a compact with the Devil. The inquiry is made whether a demon may thus attack a man or woman, whose obsession would be suffered if the subject were wholly bent upon obtaining perfection and walking the highest paths of contemplation. One night, as the moon-beams came through two deep and narrow windows, and showed the spacious chamber, richly furnished in an antique fashion, the shadow of the diamond panes were thrown upon the floor; the ghostly light through the other slept upon a bed, falling between the heavy silken curtains, and illuminating the face of one of the housemaid’s. However, how quietly the slumberer lay; now pale her features; and how like a shroud the sheet was wound about her frame! Yes, it was a corpse in burial clothes. Suddenly, the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion. Strange fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain, waving betwixt the dead face and the moonlight, as the door opened. Why, then, should the soul be satisfied with the house—the body—in which it lived? Would it not want to change the curtains, as it were. And the paintwork. And perhaps even build a new window? #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
In certain places around Llanda Villa, the spirits encouraged me to build enormous dark cylindrical towers which climbed far above any of the other structures. So they would appear to be of a totally unique nature. They hovered an inexplicable aura of menace and concentrated fear. There were colossal round windows and high arched doors, and pedestals or tables. Vast shelves of dark wood lined the walls, holding what seemed to be volumes of immense size with strange occult symbols on their backs. The windows glazed with fine artwork, though I dared not peer out of them. There were stairs that led to passageways never meant to be opened. Some of the structures towered toward the sky. Multiple levels of black vaults below and never-opened trapdoors, sealed down with metal bands and holding dim suggestions of some special peril. I seemed to be a prisoner. The skies were almost always moist and cloudy, and sometimes I would seem to witness tremendous rains. We could summon to our side the spirits of those whom we have so fondly cherished and converse with them of things holy and eternal, we could learn wisdom from their fuller knowledge, and be assured in their own sweet accents of their fadeless love, as we were comforted with the sight of their well-known faces, the touch of their hands upon ours. Was it God’s will that Spiritism be a most blessed and sacred thing, consolation to the afflicted, succour to the distressed, a shining light upon Earth’s dark ways, a ready to help us all? #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
There are sometimes instances of sudden and solitary visions, which to others might deem to be hallucinations. This gentleman, walking alone in a certain hallway at The Winchester Mystery House, met a casual acquaintance, a well-known local businessman and was just shaking hands with him, when the guy vanished. Nothing in particular happened to either of them; the businessman was not in the caretaker’s mind at that moment. These appearances, frequent and well attested, might be described as the ghosts of the living. There are reports of figures, seen momentarily before disappearing, that seem to emanate evil and malevolence; the seer is then confronted by the living person months or even years later.
Please 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/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 