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The Next One Will be Better
Whoever does a wrong to another man is not doing it to him alone. He does it also to himself. The nature of the means used will help to predetermine the nature of the end reached. Even though mixed with some good, an evil means cannot lead to a good end, but only to one of its own kind. When it is sought, the truth comes, but is found only when we are ready. This is why the aspirant must take himself in hand, must improve his character and discipline his emotions. There is to be nothing in himself to impede the intuitive power. Moral nobility is not the sole possession of either the rich or the poor, the education or the ignorant. Spencer deplored not only poor laws, but also state-supported education, sanitary supervision other than the suppression of nuisances, regulation of housing conditions, and even state protection of the ignorant medical quacks. He likewise opposed tariffs, state banking, and governmental postal systems. Accused of brutality in his application of biological concepts to social principles, Spenser was compelled to insist repeatedly that he was not opposed to voluntary private charity to the unfit, since it had an elevating effect on the character of the donors and hastened the development of altruism; he opposed only compulsory poor laws and other state measures. Spencer traces the parallels between the growth, differentiation, and integration of society and of animal bodies. Although the purpose of a social organism is different from those of an animal organism, he maintained that there is no difference in their laws of organization. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Among socities as among organisms, there is a struggle for existence. Since it made possible successive consolidation of small groups into large ones and stimulated the earliest forms of social cooperation, this struggle was one indispensable to social evolution. It was assumed that in the future these intersocial struggles would lose their utility and die out. The conflict between lower and higher values, between the false and the true interpretation of life, goes on all the time within all men. However, he who brings it into the open and looks it in the face is the man who had gained more than a little wisdom from the impact of experience. The very process of social consolidation brought about by struggles and conquest eliminates the necessity for continued conflict. Society then passes from its barbarous or militant phase into an industrial phase. In the militant phase, society is organized chiefly for survival. It bristles with military weapons, trains its people for warfare, relies upon a despotic state, submerges the individual, and imposes a vast amount of compulsory cooperation. In contest among such societies those best exemplifying these militant traits will survive; and individuals best adapted to the militant community will be the dominating types. The creation of larger and larger social units through conquests by militant states widens the areas in which internal peace and application to the industrial arts become habitual. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The militant type now reaches the evolutionary stage of equilibration. There emerges the industrial type of society, a regime of contract rather than status, which unlike the older form is pacific, respectful of the individual, more heterogeneous and plastic, more inclined to abandon economic autonomy in favour of industrial cooperation with other states. Natural selection now works to produce a completely different individual character. Unless there is honest effort to apply practically the knowledge got and the understanding gained from this teaching, unless there is real striving after personal betterment and individual discipline, the interest shown is mere dabbling, not study. Industrial society requires security for life, liberty, and property; the character type most consonant with this society is accordingly peaceful, independent, kindly, and honestly. The emergence of a new human nature hastens the trend from egoism to altruism which will solve all ethical problems. The first moral slip is also the worst one. For the effort to cover it up involves further lapses. Then the road runs downhill from slip to slip. Small mentalities cannot comprehend big truths. Greedy mentalities cannot comprehend generous truths. Bigotry keeps vital facts outside the door of knowledge. This is why philosophic discipline is needed. In the interest of survival, cooperation in industrial society must be voluntary, not compulsory. State regulation of production and distribution, as proposed by socialist, is more akin to the organization of militant society, and would be fatal to the survival of the industrial community; it would penalize superior citizens and their offspring in favour of the inferior, and a society adopting such practices would be outstripped by others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Spencer was animated by the desire to foster a science of society that would puncture the illusions of legislative reformers who, he believed, generally operated on the assumption that social causes and effects are simple and easily calculable, and that project to relieve distress and remedy ills will always have the anticipated effect. A science of sociology, by teaching men to think of social causation scientifically, would awaken them to the enormous complexity of the social organism, and put an end to hasty legislative panaceas. Fortified by the Darwinian conception of gradual modification over long stretches of time, Spencer ridiculed schemes for quick social transformation. The great task of sociology is to chart the normal course of social evolution, to show how it will be affected by any given policy, and to condemn all types of behaviour that interfere with it. Social science is a practical instrument in a negative sense. Its purpose is not to guide the conscious control of societal evolution, but rather to show that such control is an absolute impossibility, and that the best that organized knowledge can do is to teach men to submit more readily to the dynamic factors in progress. This is the function of a true theory of society as a lubricant but not a motive power in progress: it can grease the wheels and prevent friction but cannot keep the engine moving. There cannot be better done than that of letting social progress go on unhindered; yet an immensity of mischief may be done in the way of disturbing, and distorting and repressing, by policies carried out in pursuit of erroneous conceptions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Man is called upon to reconcile spiritual aspirations with life’s demands. Too many people are willing to make an assault upon the outward effects of evil while leaving untouched the inward causes of evil. Those who want only to gratify bodily appetites and have no use for spiritual satisfactions may regard ideals as quite futile. They may find the only rational purpose in human action is to cast out all aims except selfish ones, subordinating all moral restraints to the realization of those aims in the process. However stubborn and intransigent his character may seem, let him never despair of himself. Even if he keeps making mistakes, let him pick himself up and try again. However slow and laborious such a procedure seems, it will still be effectual in the end. He must purify the will by abandoning error. What he does in his personal relations with others or in the way he meets events is no less a part of his spiritual life than his formal exercises in meditation. If the goals of life are not redefined on a higher plane, the status of life remains—hovers—between that of the animal and the human and does not become fully human. He needs to be war of his own animal self and its interfusion with his human self and its hostility to angelic self. A justly balanced picture would show every man to be good in some points, bad in other points. There is no exception to this. Therefore, there is necessity for the false pride of anyone who ignores his bad points. However, in the spiritual aspirant, such pride is not only unnecessary but also deathly to his progress. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The tyranny of negative thoughts and negative feelings can and must be broken. For this he can look for help from the best in him and the best in others. It is said that necessity shapes its own morality. This is often true. However, the exceptional man listens to a higher command. As if one were no longer identified with them, if repeated regularly, standing aside from one’s thoughts, observing their nature and results quite critically, becomes a means of self-betterment. It is tremendously important to safeguard the fruits of one’s studies by purification of character. On this Quest, the aspirant’s motives must necessarily be of the highest quality. Each should do what he or she can to prepare himself by learning how to recognize and eliminate weaknesses. It is equally essential to keep the thoughts, emotions, and actions on as high a level as possible. The discipline of self is a prerequisite to the enlightenment of self. It is true that most people realize that they do not yet come anywhere near such an ideal as philosophy proposes to them regarding their personal development. At least if they are aware of the ideal and if they accept it, they will find that practice can make quite a difference. When these first appear, the simple practice of holding back their own negative thoughts, holding back their own negative feelings and nipping them in the bud is the beginning of becoming their own master. If a man regrets his own conduct, be it a single action or a whole course of actions, he will feel some self-contempt and get depressed. This is a valuable moment, this turning of the ego against itself. If he takes advantage of it to ferret out the cause in his own character, in his own person as it got built up through its reincarnations in Jesus as the Christ, he may remold it in a more satisfactory way. This inner work is accomplished by a series of creative and optimistic prayers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The experience I have had with my clients causes me profoundly to disagree with the notion that the individual is no more than a link between a series of complex causes and their inevitable and predetermined effects. When I think of the explanation in which Skinner concurs as to his presence at the conference, I cannot make it apply to human events as I know them. When I try to tell myself, for example, that a Freedom Rider did not choose to expose himself to danger, did not voluntarily risk his life for a right which he valued, and had, as a person, no part in his behaviour, my judgment rebels. When I try to tell myself that behaved in this way, went into a dangerous situation, accepted a brutal beating, served a jail sentence, simply because his genetic constitution and his individual and cultural conditioning caused him to move in certain geographical directions, emit certain sounds when beaten, and further vocalizations when arrested, and that all those behaviours were emitted because he had been conditioned to find them rewarding—this seems to me a most inadequate and degrading view of man. He becomes a meaningless phenomenon in a World which has no sense. If I object to the concept of man as a meaningless molecule in an equation which he had no part in writing, I must be willing to define what I mean when I speak of freedom, when I say that I have observed in others, and have experienced in myself, the process of learning to be free. This may seem especially difficult since, as a behavioural scientist, I agree as much in the psychological as in the physical World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Freedom is essentially an inner thing, something which exists in the living person, quite aside from any of the outward choices of alternatives which we so often think of as constituting freedom. Freedom is a quality where everything—possessions, identity, choice—is taken away from one. However, even months and years in a hostile environment will prove that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. It is this inner, subjective, existential freedom which I have observed. It is the realization that “I can live myself, here and now by my own choice. It is the quality of courage which enables a person to step into the uncertainty of the unknown as he chooses himself. It is the discovery of meaning from within oneself, meaning which comes from listening sensitively and openly to the complexities of what one is experiencing. It is the burden of being responsible for the self one chooses to be. It is the recognition by the person that he is an emerging process not a static product. The individual who is thus deeply and courageously thinking his own thoughts, becoming his own thoughts, becoming his own uniqueness, responsibly choosing himself, may be fortunate in having hundreds of objective outer alternatives from which to choose, or he may be unfortunate in having none, but his freedom exists regardless. So, we are speaking of something which exists within the individual, of something phenomenological rather than objective, but to be prized. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
In defining this experience of freedom is that it exists not as contradiction to the picture of the psychological universe as a sequence of cause and effect, but as a complement to such a universe. Freedom, rightly understood, is a fulfillment, by the person, of the ordered sequence of his life. The free man…believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of him. He moves out voluntarily, freely, repsonsibly, to play his significant part in the World whose determined events move through his spontaneous choice and will. He who forgets all that is caused and makes decisions out of the depths…is a free man, and destiny confronts him as the counterpart of his freedom. It is not his boundary but his fulfillment. This is the answer of the modern philosopher to the prevailing view that man is no more than the sum of his condition. Even more is no more than the sum of his conditioning. Even more convincing than the intellectual answer is the experience of one client after another, as he moves in therapy toward an acceptance of the realities of the World outside and inside himself, and moves toward becoming a responsible agent in this real World. We are speaking then, of a freedom which exist in the subjective person, a freedom which he courageously uses to live his potentialities. We are speaking of a freedom in which the individual chooses to fulfill herself by playing a responsible and voluntary part in brining about the destined events of his World. This experience of freedom is for my clinets a most meaningful development, one which assists them in becoming human, in relating to others, in being a person. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Contemporary industrial man has undergone an intellectual development to which we do not yet see any limits. Simultaneously he tends to emphasize those sensations and feeling experiences which he shares with the animal: desires for pleasures of the flesh, aggression, fright, hunger, and thirst. The decisive question is, Are there any emotional experiences which are specifically human and which do not correspond to what we know as being rooted in the lower brain? The view is often voiced that the tremendous development of the neocortex has made it possible for man to arrive at an ever-increasing intellectual capacity but that his lower brain is hardly different from that of his primate ancestors and hence that, emotionally speaking, he has not developed and can at best deal with his “drives” only by repression or control. There are specifically human experiences which are neither of an intellectual character nor identical with those feeling experiences which by and large are like those of the animal. Not being competent in the field of neurophysiology, I can only guess that relations between the large neocortex and the old brain are the basis for these specifically human feelings. There are reasons to speculate that the specifically human affective experiences like love, tenderness, compassion, and all affects which do not serve the function of survival are based on the interaction between the new and the old brain; hence, that man is not distinguished from the animal only by his intellect, but by new affective qualities which result from the interaction between the neocortex and the base of animal emotionality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The student of human nature can observe these specifically human affects empirically and he cannot be deterred by the fact that neurophysiology has not yet demonstrated the demonstrated the neurophysiological basis for this sector of experiences. As with many other fundamental problems of human nature, the student of the science of man cannot be placed in the position of neglecting his observations because neurophysiology has not yet given the green light. Each science, neurophysiology as well as psychology, has its own method and necessarily will deal with such problems as it can handle at a given point in its scientific development. It is the task of the psychologist to challenge the neurophysiologist, urging him to confirm or deny his findings, just as it is his task to be aware of neurophysiological conclusions and to be stimulated and challenged by them. Both sciences, psychology and neurophysiology, are young and very much at their inception. They must develop relatively independently and yet remain in close touch with each other, mutually challenging and stimulating. As far as the “drives” which function for the sake of survival are concerned, it does not sound implausible that a computer could be developed which would parallel this whole aspect of feeling sensations, but as far as the specifically human feeling aspect, which does not serve survival purposes, is concerned it seems difficult to imagine that a computer could be constructed with nonsurvivial functions. One might even say that the “humane experience” could be negatively defined as one which cannot completely duplicated by a machine. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Seeing alienation as a pathological phenomenon must not obscure the fact that Hegel and Marx considered it a necessary phenomenon, on which is inherent in human evolution. This is true regarding the alienation of reason as well as of love. Only when I can distinguish between the World outside becomes an object, can I grasp it and make it my World, become one with it again. The infant, from whom the World is not yet conceived as “object,” can also not grasp it with his reason and reunite himself with it. Man must become alienated to overcome this split in the activity of his reason. The same holds true for love. If the infant has not separated himself from the World outside, he is still part of it, and hence cannot love. To love, the “other” must become a stranger, and in the act of love, the stranger ceases to be a stranger and becomes me. Love presupposes alienation—and at the same time overcomes it. The same idea is to be found in the prophetic concept of the Messianic Time and Marx’s concept of socialism. In Paradise man still is one with nature, but not yet aware of himself as separate from nature and his fellowman. By his act of disobedience man acquires self-awarteness, the World becomes estranged from him. In the process of history, according to the prophetic concept, man develops his human powers so fully that eventually he will acquire a new harmony with men and nature. Socialism, in Marx’s sense, can only come, once man has become completely alienated and thus is able to reunite himself with men and nature without sacrificing his integrity and individuality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Returning to our case study of Clare, while she was going over her association of a memory, it occurred to her in connection with the “foreign city” of the dream she had. Once when she was in a foreign city, she had lost her way to the station; since she did not know the language, she could not ask directions and thus she missed her train. As she thought of this incident it occurred to her that she had behaved in a silly manner. She might have bought a dictionary, or she might have gone into any great hotel and asked the porter. However, apparently, she had been too timid and too helpless to ask. Then it suddenly struck her that this very timidity had played a part also in the disappointment with Peter. Instead of expressing her wish to have him back for the weekend she had encouraged him to see a friend in the country so that he could have some rest. An early memory emerged of her doll Emily, whom she loved most tenderly. Emily had only one flaw: she had only a cheap wig. Clare deeply wanted for her a wig of real hair, which could ne combed and braided. She often stood before a toy shop and looked at dollars with real hair. One day she was with her mother in the toy shop, and the mother, who was generous in giving presents, asked her whether she would like to have a wig with real hair. However, Clare declined. The wig was expensive, and she knew that the mother was short of money. And she never got it, a memory which even now moved her almost to tears. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
She was disappointed to realize that she had still not overcome her reluctance in expressing her wishes, despite the work on this problem during her analytical treatment, but at the same time she felt tremendously relieved. This remaining timidity appeared to be the solution to her distress of the previous days. She merely had to be franker with Peter and let him know her wishes. Clare’s interpretation illustrates how an only partially accurate analysis can miss the essential point and blur the issue involved. It also demonstrates that a feeling of relief does not in itself prove that the solution found is the real one. The relief resulted from the fact that by hitting upon a pseudo solution Clare succeeded, temporarily, in circumventing the crucial problem. If she had not been unconsciously determined to find an easy way out of her disturbance, she would probably have paid more attention to the association. The memory was not just one more example of her lack of assertiveness. It clearly indicated a compulsion to give first importance to her mother’s needs to avoid becoming the object of even vague resentment. The same tendency applied to the present situation. She had been too timid in expressing her wish, but this inhibition arose less from timidity than from unconscious design. Peter was an aloof person, hypersensitive to any demands upon him. At that time Clare was not fully aware, but she sensed it sufficiently to hold back any direct wishes concerning his time, just as she refrained from ever mentioning the possibility of marriage, though she often thought of it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
If she had asked him to be back for the weekend, he would have complied, but with resentment. Clare could not have recognized this fact, however, without a dawning realization of the limitations within Peter, and this was still impossible for her. She preferred to see primarily her own share in the matter, and to see that part of it which she felt confident of overcoming. It should be remembered, too, that it was an old pattern of Clare’s to preserve a difficult relationship by taking all the blame on herself. This was essentially the way in which she had dealt with her mother. The result of Clare’s attributing the whole distress to her own timidity was that she lost—at least consciously—her resentment toward Peter, and looked forward to seeing him again. This happened the next evening. However, a new disappointment was in store for her. Peter not only was late for the appointment but looked tired and did not express any spontaneous joy at seeing her. As a result, she became self-conscious. He was quick to notice her freezing up and, was apparently his habit, he took the offensive, asking her whether she had been angry at his not coming home for the weekend. She answered with a weak denial but on further pressure admitted that she had resented it. She could not tell him of the pathetic effort she had made not to resent it. He scolded her for being childish and for considering only her own wishes. Clare was miserable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
While a person must be aware of the usual type of hypnosis, covert hypnosis is a thing done to you, and you are unaware of what is happening. If you have been covertly hypnotized or not, you may never know. Chances are though that you have experienced things then later wondered why in the World you participated in that thing or acted the way you did. Those who seek to use covert hypnosis on you to get you to do what they want, generally will not want to let you in on what they did to you. It is not like they must use a pocket watch to put you under their spell. Often, the reasons to hypnotize you are to get you to darker things than you normally would. Other times, it may be used to distract you from something so they can get away with what they have done. Whatever the reason is, you can bet it is never a good one. If it was, then the hypnotist would be happy to let you in on what they are doing to you. We live in the Age of Anxiety. Certainly, we have much to be anxious about and worried. Uncertainty is perhaps the greatest stimulus to anxiety, and at the present time we are confronted by a universal uncertainty as to the future of our World that has an urgency and immediacy surpassing that of any previous period of history. We are faced with the imminent possibility of cataclysmic destruction of the World through nuclear war. Insofar as all peoples of the World know this uncertainty, they share for the first time in a universal anxiety. However, the fact of a common and heavy anxiety does not mean obviously that ours is a more anxious World than ever before. Uncertainty is a condition of life; anxiety has been experienced by all men in all periods. Civilization is the process whereby men change what it is they fear. However, ultimate uncertainties have always been coupled with immediate dangers to make men anxious. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
If this is the Age of Anxiety, it is not so simply as a function of absolute increase in the things about which man is fearful. Rather it is so because we have taught man to be anxious about his anxiety. We have attributed to anxiety and to the efforts of escape anxiety all of man’s neurotic ills. We have sensitized ourselves to recognize the signs of anxiety, and we have been taught that the signs of anxiety are symptoms. We have been encouraged to the fallacious values of a total avoidance of anxiety as a goal of life; we have been led to believe that complete freedom from anxiety would be the distinguishing characteristic of an adjusted life. Many people are unaware that the psychopathology of a significant portion of psychiatric patients (the so-called psychopaths and character disorders) is attributed by some authorities to a pathological incapacity to experience anxiety. Much of what we have learned about psychopathology, and especially about the etiology of neuroses, has come through an understanding of the effects of severe anxiety and of the mechanisms by which the individual copes with anxiety. It is essential to the aims of mental health education that the importance and role of anxiety be understood by everyone. However, in this endeavour, there has been a failure to distinguish between normal and pathological anxiety. If a person were totally incapable of experiencing pain, his life would be seriously jeopardized. The experiencing of continual pain is abnormal and signals the need for efforts to correct that cause of the pain. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
However, it would be inimical to the welfare of a normal person to drug him so that this pain sensitivity was continuously reduced or absence. Medical literature contains fascinating accounts of injuries and illnesses (and abnormal complications thereof) of persons apparently suffering a congenital defect in their neurological system for the sensation of pain. The capacity to experience pain is normal, and the sensation of pain is normal under certain conditions. Likewise, anxiety is a normal experience when present to certain degrees in appropriate situations. When taking an examination, when applying for a job, when getting married, when being prepared for surgery, when making a speech, it is normal to be anxious. When facing any new situation or demand for which there is an uncertain outcome, it is normal to experience much anxiety. The signs of anxiety (such as increased heart rate, dry throat, perspiring hands) are indications that one’s physiological apparatus is in a state of readiness for special effort. One could interpret these experiences as signs that one is keyed up and “ready to go.” Or one can interpret these as symptoms of anxiety, and become anxious about them—and this may have a disrupting effect on performance. It is an unfortunate result of the massive attention which has been given to anxiety that people have been led to view all experiences of the signs of “nervousness” as symptoms of pathological anxiety. Once the arrive at this orientation they are potential candidates for psychotherapy, and in presenting their complaints of incapacitating anxiety, it may not be immediately clear to the therapist that their symptoms represent the circular, autocatalytic effects of being “anxious about anxiety.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The limited resources for expert psychotherapy should not be dissipated upon individuals who have inappropriate attitudes and expectations. Mental health educators must make a concerted effort to teach the public about normal anxiety and its necessary role in adjustment. They must teach that physiological changes under stress are signs of normal functioning, not symptoms of pathology. The adult public must be helped to correct its currently predominant and unhealthy tendency to overinterpret and be fearful of normal anxiety. In the instruction and rearing of children we have the opportunity both to teach them the biological utility of anxiety and to assist them in the progressive development of tolerance for it. Being a firefighter is a job where one must deal with a lot of anxiety. “I can still remember the day the Sacramento Fire Department called me. I was so happy. That was the place I wanted to work. I had just taken the fire exam in San Francisco, where I had gone to high school and where my parents still lived. I really didn’t want to go back there. I was back in San Francsico about a week, when somebody from the city personnel department called, saying, ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days. Where have you been? We want you to come in and talk to us.’ The exam process consisted of an initial interview with a personnel staff member, covering general stuff like, ‘Why do you want to be a firefighter? Why do you think you’re qualified for this work? Do you get along well with people?’ Then there was an interview with one of the department’s chief officers that was a lot more specific. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
‘If you passed the interview, you were given a physical agility examination, where you ran a dash of, I’m not sure how many hundred yards, you had to walk a balance beam and climb a fifty-foot ladder up to the department’s drill tower. Once on top of the tower, you had to lift a hose bundle. That was 150 feet of inch-and-a-half hose tied into a bundle, with a rope tied to it that went up over a hose roll at the top of the grill tower. You had to pull that up, hand over hand, to the top, and then set it back down again. You wore a doughnut roll like a backpack for a couple of sessions and had to climb a ladder to the third floor and back down. You had to take a twenty-four-foot ladder off the side of a pumper, set it down, then put it back on. All this was timed. Then there was a mechanical aptitude test, where you had a series of nuts and bolts you had to assemble. That was the exam at the time. It was funny because the hose bundle pull was the thing I was most concerned about. I had been running for a long time and felt good about my heart, lungs, and legs, but having been a student, I wasn’t pumping iron, and my arms weren’t real strong. I had a summer job managing a gymnasium for San Francisco parks department. We had a rope that went up to the ceiling, and the test for the fire department then was a rope climb, so I spent the whole summer climbing the rope and did it with no problem. Then I returned to Sacramento, and my friends in the fire department said, ‘They changed the test. There’s no longer a rope climb. Now you’ve got to pull a bundle up, hand over hand.’ Anyway, I wound up passing the test without any trouble, and came to work a few weeks after that. Please keep the Sacramento Fire Department in your heart and donate to ensure they receive all the resources they need. 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. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The Most Dangerous Job in the World
Evil must die ultimately as the weaker element, in the struggle with good. The persistence of force, manifested in the forms of matter and motion, is the stuff of human inquiry, the material with which philosophy must build. Everywhere in the Universe man observes the incessant redistribution of matter and motion, rhythmically apportioned between evolution and dissolution. Evolution is the progressive integration of matter accompanied by dissipation of motion; dissolution is the disorganization of matter accompanied by the absorption of motion. The life process is essentially evolutionary, embodying a continuous change from incoherent homogeneity, illustrated by the lowly protozoa, to coherent heterogeneity, manifested in man and the higher animals. From the persistence of force, anything which is homogeneous is inherently unstable, since the different effects of persistent force upon its various parts must cause differences to arise in their future development. Thus the homogeneous will inevitably develop into the heterogeneous. Here is the key to Universal evolution. This progress from homogeneity to heterogeneity–in the formation of the Earth from a nebular mass, in the evolution of higher, complex species from lower and simpler ones, in the embryological development of the individual from a uniform mass of cells, in the growth of the human mind, and in progress of human societies–is the principle at work in everything man can know. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
No amount of description, regardless of how carefully it is presented, can convey an adequate impression of exactly what is involved in the process of reaching an understanding of oneself. The grown-up individual is not a child, and to talk about the child in him, or “his” unconsciousness, is using a topological language which does not do justice to the complexity of the facts. The neurotic, grown-up individual is an alienated human being; he does not feel strong, he is frightened and inhibited because he does not experience himself as the subject onto whom he projects all his own human qualities: his love, intelligence, courage, etcetera. By submitting to this object of transference, he feels in touch with this own qualities; he feels strong, wise, courageous, and secure. This mechanism, idolatric worship of an object, based on the fact of the individual’s alienation, is the central dynamism of transference, that which gives transference its strength and intensity. The less alienated person may also transfer some of his infantile experience to another persons, but there would be little intensity in it. The alienated individual, in search for and in need of an idol, finds the analyst and usually endows him with the qualities of his father and mother as the two powerful persons he knew as a child. Thus the content of transference is usually related to infantile patterns while its intensity is the result of the individual’s alienation. Needless to add that the transference phenomenon is not restricted to the analytic situation. It is to be found in all forms of idolization of authority figure, in political, religious, and social life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Transference is not only the phenomenon of psychopathology which can be understood as an expression of alienation. Indeed, it is not accidental that alien, in French and alienado in Spanish, are older words for the psychotic, and the English “alienist” refers to a doctor who cares for the insane, the absolutely alienated person. Alienation as a sickness of the self can be considered to be the core of the psychopathology of modern man even in those forms which are less extreme than psychosis. Some clinical examples may serve to illustrate the process. The most frequent and obvious case of alienation is perhaps the false “great love.” A man has fallen enthusiastically in love with a woman; after she had responded at first, she is beset by increasing doubts and breaks off the relationship. He is overcome by a depression which brings him close to suicide. Life, he feels, has no more meaning to him. Consciously he explains the situation as a logical result of what happened. He believes that for the first time he has experienced what real love is, that with this woman, and only with her, could be experience love and happiness. If she leaves him, there will never be anyone else who can arouse the same response in him. Losing her, so he feels, he has lost his one chance to love. Hence it is better to die. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
While all this is convincing to himself, his friends may ask some questions: Why is it that a man who thus far seemed less capable of loving than the average person is now so completely in love he seems to be unwilling to make any concessions, to give up certain demands which conflict with those of the woman he loves? Why is it that while he spears of his loss, he mainly speaks relatively little interest in the feelings of the woman he loves so much? If one speaks to the unhappy man himself, at greater length, one need not be surprised to hear him in fact as if he had left his heart with the girl he lost. If he can understand the meaning of his own statement, he can understand that his predicament is one of alienation. He never was capable of loving actively, of leaving the magic circle of his own ego, and of reaching out to becoming one with another human being. What he did was to transfer his longings for love to the girl and to feel that being with her he experiences his “loving” when he really experiences only the illusion of loving. The more he endows her not only with his longing for love but also for aliveness, happiness, and so on, the poorer he becomes, and the emptier he feels if he is separated from her. When actually he had made the woman into an idol, the goddess of love, and believed that by being united with her he experienced love, he was under the illusion of loving. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
He had been able to initiate a response in her but he had not been able to overcome his own inner muteness. Losing her is not, as he thinks, losing the person he loves, but losing himself as a potentially loving person. Alienation of thought is not different from alienation of the heart. Often one believes he was thought through something, that his idea is the result of his own thinking activity; the fact is that he has transferred his brain to the idols of public opinion, the newspapers, the government or a political leader. He believes that they express his thoughts while in reality he accepts their thoughts as his own, because he has chosen them as his idols, his gods of wisdom and knowledge. Precisely for this reason he is dependent on his idols and incapable of giving up his worship. He is their slave because he has deposited his brain with them. An involuntary and in a deeper sense unwarranted dependency upon another person is a problem known to nearly everyone. Most of us deal with one or another aspect of it at one or another period of our lives, often not truly recognizing its existence and screening it instead behind such exquisite terms as “love” or “loyalty.” This dependency is so frequently because it seems to be a convenient and promising solution for many troubles we all have. It puts grave obstacles, however, in the way of our becoming mature, strong, independent people; and its promise of happiness is mostly fictitious. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Therefore a delving into some of its unconscious implications may be interesting and helpful, even apart from the question of self-analysis to anyone who regards self-reliance and good relationships with others as desirable goals. After several months of not very productive efforts at self-analysis Clare awoke one Sunday morning with an intense irritation at an author who failed to keep his promise to send an article for the magazine she edited. This was the second time he had left her in the lurch. It was intolerable that people should be so unreliable. Soon after it struck her that her anger was out of proportion. The whole matter was scarcely of sufficient importance to wake her up at five in the morning. The mere recognition of a discrepancy between anger and alleged provocation made her see the real reason for the anger. The real reason also concerned unreliability, but in a matter more close to her heart. Her friend Peter, who had been out of town on business, had not returned for the weekend as he had promised. To be exact, he had not given a definite promise, but he had said that he would probably be back by Saturday. He was never definite in anything, she told herself; he always aroused her hopes and then disappointed her. The fatigue she had felt the night before, which she had attributed to having worked too hard, must have been a reaction to her disappointment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
She had hoped for an evening with Peter, and then, when he did not show up, she had gone to a movie instead. She could never make engagements because Peter hated to make definite dates in advance. The result was that she left as many evenings free as she possibly could, always harbouring the disquieting thought, would he or would he not be with her? While thinking of this situation two memories occurred to her simultaneously. One was an incident that her friend Eileen had told her years before. Eileen, during a passionate but rather unhappy relationship with a man, had fallen seriously ill with pneumonia. When she recovered from the fever she found to her surprise that her feelings for the man had died. He tried to continue the relationship, but he no longer meant anything to her. Clare’s other memory concerned a particular scene in a novel, a scene that had deeply impressed her when she was an adolescent. The first husband of the novel’s heroine returned from war, expecting to find his wife overjoyed at his return. Actually the marriage had been torn by conflicts. During the husband’s absence the wife’s feelings had changed. She did not look forward to his coming. He had become a stranger to her. All she felt was indignation that he could be so presumptuous as to expect love just because he chose to want her–as if she and her feelings did not count at all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Clare could not help realizing that these two associations pointed to a wish to be able to break away from Peter, a wish that she referred to the momentary anger. However, she argued, I would never do it because I love him too much. With that thought ths fell asleep again. Clare made a correct interpretation of her anger when she saw it as caused by Peter rather than by the author, and her interpretation of the two associations was right. However, despite this correctness the interpretations, as it were, lacked depth. There was no feeling whatever for the force of the resentment she harboured against Peter. Consequently she regarded the whole outburst as only a transient grievance, and thus discarded much too lightly the wish to tear loose from him. Retrospectively it is clear that at that time she was far too dependent on Peter to dare to recognize either resentment or a wish for separation. However, she had not the slightest awareness of any dependency. She ascribed the apparent ease with which she overcame the anger to her “love” for her friend. This is a good example of the fact that one will get no more out of association than one can stand at the time, even though, as in this instance, they speak an almost unmistakable language. Clare’s basic resistance against the import of her associations explains why she did not raise certain questions that they suggested. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It is significant, for example, that both of them, while connoting a general way a wish to break off, indicated a very special form of breaking off: in both instances the woman’s feelings faded out while the man still wanted her. This was the only ending of a painful relationship that Clare could visualize. To break away from Peter on her own initiative was unthinkable because of her dependency upon him. The idea that he could break away from her would have aroused sheer panic though there are good reasons to infer that she felt deep down that he did not really want her while she hung on to him. Her anxiety on this score was so deep that it took ger considerable time to realize the mere fact that she was afraid. It was so great that even when she discovered her fear of desertion, she still closed her eyes to the rather obvious fact that Peter wanted a separation. In thinking of incidents in which the woman herself was in a position to reject the man Clare revealed not only a wish to be free but also a desire for revenge, both deeply buried and both referring to a bondage which was itself unrecognized. Here lies the connection between beauty and truth. Beauty is not the opposite of the “ugly,” but of the “false”; it is the sensory statement of the suchness of a thing or a person. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
To create beauty presupposes a state of mind in which one has emptied oneself in order to fill oneself with what one portrays so that one becomes it. “Beautiful” and “ugly” are merely conventional categories which vary from culture to culture. A good example of our failure to comprehend beauty is the average person’s tendency to cite a “sunset” as an example of the beautiful, as if rain or fog were not just as beautiful, although sometimes less pleasant for the body. All great art is by its very essence in conflict with society with which it coexists. It expressed the truth about existence regardless of whether this truth serves or hinders the survival purposes of a given society. All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society. Even an artist who is a political reactionary is more revolutionary–if he is a great artist–than the artists of “socialist realism” who only mirror the particular form of their society with its contradictions. It is an astonish fact that art has not been forbidden throughout history by the powers that were and are. There are perhaps several reasons for this. One is that without art man is starved and perhaps not even useful for the practical purposes of his society. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Another is that by his particular form and perfection of the great artist was an “outsider” and hence while he stimulated and gave life, he was not dangerous because he did not translate his art into political terms. Besides that, art usually reached only the educated or politically less dangerous classes of society. The artists have been the court jesters of all past history. They were permitted to say the truth because they presented it in its particular but socially restricted artistic form. A self-initiated process of learning to be free is composed of movement from as well as movement toward. From being persons driven by inner forces they do not understand, fearful and distrustful of these deeper feelings and of themselves, living by values they have taken over from others, they move significantly. They move toward being persons who accept and even enjoy their own feelings, who value and trust the deeper layers of their nature, who find strength in being their own uniqueness, who live by values they experience. This learning, this movement, enables them to live as more individuated, more creative, more responsive, and more responsible persons. People are often sharply away of such directions in themselves, as they move with fearfulness toward being freely themselves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
It is a painful paradox of civilization that so many of our major discoveries seem to contribute almost equally to the solution of one problem and the creation of another. Dynamite is perhaps the most often noted example, but there are many others. Our discoveries seems to extricate us from an old set of limitations only to burden us with new frustrations. Happily, there seems to be a period of relatively unadulterated enjoyment of each new technological advance. However, sooner or later, its “fringe” limitations come to equal or even surpass its benefits. Thanks to the invention of the Ultimate Driving Machine we have had a marvelous mobility and a great expansion of our “living space,” and now we have an increasingly serious problem of what to do with out cars when they are not in use. Discovery of nuclear fission may have helped to end one way, but now we are threatened by a way of total annihilation. The industrial revolution which enormously increased the supply of goods has been augmented by scientific advances in the twenty-first century that threaten to poison the air we breathe, pollute the water we drink and the food we eat. Automation of industry has made possible better control of processes and more efficient production with fewer workers, and it is as yet uncertain whether we shall be able successfully to absorb the displaced and unneeded labour force as our industries become increasingly places of auto-facture rather than manufacture. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Medical science and modern technology have added significantly to longevity. Each year our population receives a sizable increment of persons who have been retired from the productive community and who may live another five or ten years; we find we must cope directly with the problem of supplying meaning to these “golden years.” In light of the ageless struggles to maintain and extend biological life against the assaults of famine and pestilence, in light of the individual struggle to protect health and preserve life, it is a poignant paradox that we must search out ways to help the retired warrior to cope with a life that is now secure, comfortable, and certain. It is an important fact to which all psychotherapists should be fully sensitive that for very many persons when the steadily recurrent daily problems of work–of earning, of building, of planning, of saving–are over, the problem of meaning comes promptly pressingly to the fore. Enjoyment of existence does not come naturally to the person whose earlier life has given neither time nor stimulus to question ultimate purpose or to explore for meanings that superscribe the orientation provided by inescapable basic demands for effort. Thus, paradoxically, each new freedom brings the possibility of new entrapments. We may wonder whether the pace of discovery may soon achieve so many solutions that the problems created by those solutions will surpass our problem-solving capacities! #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
At any place along the road of life, one may turn one’s back on ignorant habits and seek to create better ones. If society find him an odd creature, if it laughs at his peculiarities of belief or frowns at his departures from convention, then he must not blame society. He must accept the situation as inescapable and submit to its unpleasantness as being better than the littleness of surrender. The quest is carried on always under silent and continual pressure. The earnest aspirant will strive to love well where formerly he lived ill, will keep looking for better ideals. As if it were enforced by outside authority, few are ready to impose such a discipline upon themselves; but if they applied what they know, many more could to a little better. Some temptations come on slowly, but others suddenly and before he fully realizes what is happening to him. Whatever the way they come–and this depends partly on his personal temperament, partly on the nature of the temptation–he should prepare himself in advance by fortifying the weaker places in his character. The negative quality can be rubbed away gradually by brining counter qualities into the field against it. He is expected to put forth the effort needed to dispel a negative emotion or to destroy a negative thought, since such will not go away of itself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
When the mind is sufficiently purified, it receives intuitions more easily and nurtures aspirations more warmly. Tread firmly on negative thoughts, eject them from the mind as soon as they appear, and give them no chance to grow. Spite, envy, moroseness, despondency and denigrating criticism should all be denied entry. A prompt and decisive “No!” to the suggestion or impulse as soon as it appears, prevents it from gathering strength and becoming uncontrollable. The quickness with which an impulse moves him to action may hide its beginning in him. However, the moment is there: by self-training it may be perceived in time, and inhibition or control applied with more and more success. His intellectual clarity must be deep and his emotional tolerance broad. It is always a pity when thinkers are not equal to their own thoughts. The gain of building an equable character and evenness of mind is not only a spiritual one, it is also a contribution to person happiness. He will not agree to act under threat. Every such attempt to intimidate him makes him only more determined to resist it and to reject the desired action. The power which man spends in the passions and emotions of his lower nature will, when governed and directed upward in aspiration to his higher nature, give him the knowledge and bliss of the Overself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
It is not enough to follow a wholesome diet and a healthy way of life. The seeker after a better existence must match with these advanced his thoughts and emotion. By focusing national attention on the numbers and needs of the thousands of patients who suffer incapacitating emotional illness, the mental health movement has served to arouse attention and to mobilize efforts in their behalf. It has won increased expenditures to provide better facilities, more personnel, more and better treatment for the hospitalized patient. It has stimulated the founding of clinics so that milder disturbances may come to early diagnosis and it has encouraged the provision of resources for early outpatient therapy so that developing symptoms can be halted in their first stages and prevented from progression into complete disruption of the personality. The mental health movement has achieved a significant increase in public enlightenment in regard to mental illness. There has been a reduction in the older attitudes of fear and distrust of the mentally ill. Each year fewer and fewer persons remain who hold to an archaic attitude of shame toward any implication of mental illness in themselves or their families. The public has been effectively educated to recognize symptoms of personality disorder and has been encouraged to seek professional consultation for emotional problems. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
One has to live for praise and blame, not for other people, but for one’s higher self. As we will see, being a firefighter is a lot of responsibility. “As soon as I got out of high school, I put in my application to the Sacramento Fire Department. The written exam was easy. The physical exam was challenging. I knew it was very demanding because my brother had gone through it three years earlier. I was a short, stocky kid, only five-eight. But I knew how to train, and I trained harder than anybody else. All I did was run stairs. I did well on the tests, but there were about twelve hundred people taking the test, and I was kind of downhearted. I heard the results the same day I was taking my final exam for my EMT classes. I was flying high, I was ecstatic, it was a lifelong dream come true for me. But it was scary, too. My dad had never talked to me about the job until I put my application in. Then he was telling me, it’s the most dangerous job in the World, you’ve got to watch yourself, every day you go to work you could get killed. I know that now. We had a grass fire in our backyard, and my wife got to talking to a couple of the firefighters out there. She had heard me talking about wanting to join the fire department. And one of the firemen said, ‘Yeah, we’re looking for a couple of guys here.’ It just kind of went from there. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“I put in an application at City Hall, and about a week later they called me. There wasn’t any kind of written test. I tool the physical, and a small oral test there with the captain. The first thing he asked me was how my driving record was. He wanted to know if I had points on my license or any kind of bad record. If I did, there would have been almost no kind of chance of my getting on. To me it was a chance to serve the community.” The Sacramento Fire Department works hard and risks their lives everyday to protect us. Please be kind and make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. 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. Do you desire life and seek length of days? Then keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from deceit. Depart from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it. Keep the commandment of your father, and forsake not the teaching of your mother. Keep them continually in your heart so that they may lead you in the right path. When you lie down, they shall watch over you, and when you awaken, they shall talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp, yea, the Word of God is a light. Get knowkedge and understanding; turn not away from wisdom. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
A series of remarkable occurrences, which caused great excitement, are said to have taken place in September 1888 at The Winchester Mystery House. As dusk was closing in, Mrs. Winchester was about to get ready for tea. The cups and saucer had been arranged on the table, and one of them fell to the floor and smashed. Of course Mrs. Winchester was a little surprised at this; but directly afterwards when she saw the table partially turned over, apparently without being touched, and all the cups fall, she was thoroughly frightened. A small timepiece which stood on the mantelshelf was thrown on the floor. As a servant was getting a number of articles out of the house, a large kitchen table followed him to the door, and it would have probably gone further if the width of the door would have allowed it. Meanwhile things in the parlour continued the same course. Mrs. Winchester’s volume of the Pilgrim’s Progress came flying though the parlour door and out to the walk opposite the front door; whence, after laying there a short time, it jumped up on the windowsill! To this very day, mysterious affairs take place at The Winchester Mystery House.
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/
We Pay So Much Attention to Where We Live, So Little to When
The individual who wants the spiritual prizes of life must elevate one’s thoughts and ennoble one’s impulses. One will prudently look ahead not only to the consequences of one’s actions but also of one’s thoughts. One must be prepared to spend a whole lifetime in making this passage from aspiration to realization. Petal-by-petal the bud of one’s growing virtues will open as the years pass. One’s character will be transformed. The old Adam will become a new man. The progressing disciple who reaches an advanced state will find that one’s powers of mind and will develop accordingly. Where they are not accompanied by sufficient self-purification, they may become dangerous to oneself and hurtful to others. One’s vigilance over thought and feeling must become greater accordingly. To dwell upon thoughts which belong to a lower level out of which one has climbed may open up a pitfall in one’s path; to hold bitter feelings against another person may throw discord into that person’s life. One’s outer conduct should be brought into agreement with the soaring aspiration of one’s inner life. When the one is antithetical to the other, the result will be chaos. That individual has attained mastery whose body yields to the commands of reason and whose tongue obeys the orders of prudence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
When the body’s appetites and the intellect’s curiosity get an excessive grip on an individual, they throw an air of unreality on aspiration which soars beyond both. This makes intuitive feeling and metaphysical thinking seem irksome or trivial. Those who do not have the strength of will to translate into practice the ideals which they accept in thought need not despair. It can be got by degrees. Part of the purpose of ascetic exercises is to lead to its possession. There is knowledge available, based on ancient and modern ascetic experiences, which can be applied to liberate the moral nature from its weakness. One who puts one’s lower nature under control puts oneself in possession of forces, gifts, possibilities, and satisfactions that most other humans lack. If a person’s inner life is repeatedly wasted by passion, one will know no assured peace and attain no enduring goal. One must govern oneself, rule one’s passions, and discipline one’s emotions. One must strengthen one’s higher will at the expense of one’s lower one. For the first promotes one’s spiritual evolution whereas the second inflames one’s animal nature. Faith is needed to make the basic change in one’s thinking, the change which takes one out of the past’s grip. If one takes up new thoughts, a new life is possible. If one lets compromise with the World, or lapses from the right moral standard, slip beyond a certain mark, one will pay commensurately for it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Man’s drives inasmuch as they are trans-utilitarian, are an expression of a fundamental and specifically human need: the need to be related to man and nature and to confirm oneself in this relatedness. These two forms of human existence, that of food gathering for the purpose of survival in a narrow or broader sense and that of free and spontaneous activity expressing man’s faculties and seeking for meaning beyond utilitarian work, are inherent in man’s existence. Each society and each man has it own particular rhythm in which these two forms of living make their appearance. What matters is the relative strength which each of the two have and which one dominates the other. It is not only a matter of self-betterment but also of self-respect for an honourable man. The man whom he has looked upon as himself must be left behind; the New man, who he is to become, must be continually with him in thought, aspiration, will, and deed. This it is to be truly human for it brings man into a more perfect state. To sneer at the philosophic ideal as being inhuman is really to sneer at it for rejecting the evils and weaknesses and deformities of the Worldly ideal. The moment a negative idea appears, repudiate it automatically by the use of counter-affirmations and imagination, which is the gate to creative subconscious mind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Such negative thoughts as animosity and jealousy must be rooted out like weeds as fast as they spring up. This is both the easier and more effective way in the end. The man who has not learned to control himself is still only a fractional man, certainly not the true man that Nature is trying to produce. When he cannot live with his negative side any longer, illumination will come and stay. Character is tested by afflictions more than by prosperity. The first stage is to expunge the evil in his heart and to raise the good in it to the highest possible octave. If he holds these as ideals, a personal character which will be beautiful, a way of life which will be the best, a man is more likely to come by them. When allowing thoughts to enter his mind, as when allowing strangers to enter his home, he needs to be as fastidious. If a man lives in mental and emotional negativity, the removal of his physical residence to another place will in the end benefit him less than if he removes himself from the negativity. The building-up of character naturally brings a better sense of proportion in one’s dealings and outlook. Be seeing good in all persons, you become good, but if you see evil, the evil in you will augment. People seem not to see that their opinion of the World is also a confession of character. We can only see what we are. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
He must become thoroughly sick of his mistakes and sins before he will take the trouble to develop by self-training his discriminatory faculties and moral ideals. We can combat feat by remembering that the Overself is always with us. The power of such thinking is its rightness and its constructiveness. It is right bvecause the Overself is the real source of strength and courage so that recalling its ever-presence in us helps to tap that source. It is constructive because it uses up the energy that would otherwise have gone into the fear-thoughts. Both action and thought share in the double nature of this polarity. Activity on the level of survival is what one usually calls work. Activeness on the trans-survival level is what one calls play, or all those activities related to cult, ritual, and art. Thought also appears in two forms, one serving the function of survival and one serving the function of knowledge in the sense of understanding and intuiting. This distinction of survival and trans-survival thought is very important for the understanding of consciousness and the so-called unconscious. Our conscious thought is that type of thinking, linked with language, which follows the social categories of thought imprinted in our thinking from early childhood. Our consciousness is essentially the awareness of such phenomena which the social filter composed of language, logic, and taboos permits us to become aware of. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Those phenomena which cannot pass the social filter remain unconscious or, more accurately speaking, we are unaware of everything that cannot penetrate to our consciousness because the social filter blocks its entry. This is the reason why consciosuness is determined by the structure of society. However, this statement is only descrptive. Inasmuch as man has to work within a given society, his need for survival tends to make him accept the social conceptualizations and hence to repress that which he would be aware of had his consciousness been imprinted with different schemata. If he studies other cultures, this is not difficult for the reader to find in his own example. The categories of thought in the industrial age are that of quantification, abstraction and comparison, of profit and loss, of efficiency and inefficiency. The member of a consumer society of the present day, for example, is encouraged, but not required to repress pleasures of the flesh because so many people are Worldly and pleasures of the flesh seems to be the number one past time for many by the schemata in the age of information. The member of the middle class of the nineteenth century who was busy accumulating capital and investing it rather than consuming it, had to repress pleasures of the flesh because they did not fit into the acquisitive and hoarding mood of his society, or, more correctly, of middle classes. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If we think of medieval or Greek society or of such cultures as the Pueblo Indians’ we can easily recognize that they were very conscious of different aspects of life to which their social filter granted entry into consciousness while others were tabooed. The most eminent case in which man does not have to accept the social categories of his society is when he is asleep. Sleep is that state of being in which man is free from the need to take care of his survival. While he is awake, he is largely determined by the survival function; while he is asleep, he is a free man. As a result, his thinking is not subject to the thought of categories of his society and shows that peculiar creativity which we find in dreams. In dreams, man creates symbols and has insights into the nature of life and of his own personality which he is incapable of having while he is the creature busy with food gathering and defense. Often, indeed, this lack of contact with social reality can cause him to have experiences and thoughts which are archaic, primitive, malignant, but even those are authentic and represent him rather than the thought patterns of his society. In dreams, the individual transcends the narrow boundaries of his society and becomes fully human. That is why Dr. Freud’s discovery of dream interpretation, even though he looked basically for the repressed instinct for pleasures of the flesh, has paved the way for the understanding of the uncensored humanity which is in all of us. (Sometimes children, before they have been sufficiently indoctrinated by the process of education, and psychotics who have served all relationships to the social World manifest insights and creative artistic possibilities which the adapted adult cannot recover.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
However, dreams are only a special case of that trans-survival life of man. Its main expression is in rituals, symbols, painting, poetry, drama, and music. Our utilitarian thinking has, quite logically, tried to interpret all these phenomena as serving the survival function (a vulgarized Marxism has sometimes allied itself in substance although not in form with this type of materialism). More profound observers like Lewis Mumford and others have emphasized the fact that the cave paintings in France and ornaments on primitive pottery, as well as more advanced forms of art, have no utilitarian purpose. One might say that their function is to help the survival of man’s spirit, but not that of man’s body. He has only to resolve that he will always be faithful to his higher self and the trick is done. However, alas! resolution is one thing, execution another. If he finds himself attacked by a strong temptation or about to be overcome by an old obsession, he should at once think of the master, of his name and picture, and call for his help. Whether you live as a labourer or a lord, it is your character that counts most in the end. It is the ego that gives way to moods of sulkiness, bad temper, irritability, and impatience. Remember that on the outcome of your efforts to control yourself, your faults and emotions, your speech and your actions, much will depend for your Worldly and spiritual frame. He who controls the mind controls the body, for the one acts upon and through the other. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
To yearn for something is to value. I have known this yearning “to be good” in all of us. No one is left out. I have known it in a British peer. I have known it in a man who hijacked a truck, got a Native American drunk and threw him off a moving truck, hit a burro and killed it, bashed in the radiator, and then drove the truck until the motor burned out and he landed in jail, while four small children were at home alone because their mother was in the hospital having a fifth one. I got him out of jail so that he could take care of his family, and he got me fired from my job. I also knew it in my best friend that killed himself. Before his suicide, I lived with knowing that he might kill my son and me, both of whom he loved, and that he might seriously injure other people, which he did not wish to do at all. It seemed to me that suicide might have seemed to him the only way to put an end to his hurting people, to doing what he did not want to do. Many people in America are hurting today. Everyone responds in terms of his own humanness, uncontaminated by all the phoney values with which we live. (The only exceptions were two very neurotic men and a few feeble-minded oldfolks who did not know what is going on.) In Hawaii during the week following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the military expected that the success of the attack would be followed by an invasion: they believed that when the Japanese planes reported to their carriers, then other ships would move in with troops like what was done to Mr. Hitler and Germany during World War II. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, fast forward to post 911 America. Currently in 2024, there is an invasion going on at our southern boarder, and as many as 20,000,000 unknown people have flooded into this country and have been committing major crimes. The leaders of industry have warned the government that this is a serious crisis and they suspected that these people who are invading America could be preparing for an attack larger than 911, but no one in a position of power is doing anything to track these people, nor stop them from invading the nation. The problem is not only a lack of God, but also a lack of love. Many people are cafeteria Americans. They fly the flag, pretend to be proud of the country, but all they care about is American money. They disrespect the land, disrespect the people, ignore the needs of America and bleed her dry. These posers forget that people have died and become severely disabled from serving their country, and are doing nothing to protect it, but supposedly are trying to instill democracy in other places, while America is becoming a hostile, communist nation. It is very difficult for me to go on writing this. Tears blur my vision, no matter how many times I wipe them away. I sob, and that shakes me so that I cannot use the typewriter very well. I feel, “Oh, what is the use? How can I possibly convey it?” Many of us are silent. Trying to show respect or trying to feel for someone else. When they are scared, people can do the most frightful things. People fear that they could be wiped out at any moment, and that there is onluy now to live. We pay so much attention to where we live, so little to when. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Alienation corrupts and perverts all human values. By making economic activities and the values inheret in them, like gain, work, thrift, and sobriety, the supreme value of life, man fails to develop the truly moral values of humanity, the riches of a good conscience, of virtue, etcetra, but how can I be virtuous if I am not aware of anything? In a state of alienation, each sphere of life, the economic and the moral, is independent from the other, “each is concentrated upon a specific area of alienated activity and is itself alienated from the other. The needs of man in an alienated society are preverted into true weakness. Every man speculates upon creating a new need in another in order to force him to sacrifice, to place him in a new dependence, and to entice him into a new kind of pleasure and thereby into economic ruin. Everyone tries to establish over others an alien power in order to find there the satisfaction of his own egoistic need. With the mass of objects, therefore, there also increases the realm of alien entities to which man is subjected. Every new product is a new potentiality of mutual deceit and robbery. Man becomes increasingly poor as a man; he has increasing need of money in order to take possession of the hostile being. The power of money diminishes directly with the growth of the quantity of production, id est, his need increases with the increasing power of money. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The need for money is therefore the real need created by the modern economy, and the only need which it creates. The quantity of money becomes increasingly its only important quality. Just as it reduces every entity to its abstraction, so it reduces itself in its own development to a quantitative entity. Excess and immoderation become its true standard. This is shown subjectively, partly in the fact that the expansion of production and of needs becomes an ingenious and always calculating subservience to inhuman, depraved, unnatural, and imaginary apopetities. Americans are blessed with private property, but they do not know how to change crude need into human need; their idealism is fantasy, caprice and fancy. No eunch flatters his tyrant more shamefully or seeks by more infamous means to stimulate his jaded appetite, in order to gain some favour, than does the eunch of industry, the entrepreneur, in order to acquire a few silver coins or to charm the gold from the purse of his dearly beloved neighbour. Every produce is a bait by means of which the individual tries to entice the essence of the other person, his money. Every real or potential need is a weakness which will draw the bird into China’s pockets. As every imperfection of man is bound with Heaven, a point at which his heart is accessible to the priest, so every want is an opportunity for approaching one’s neighbour with the air of friendship, saying, “Dear Friend, I will give you what you need, but you know the conditio sine qua non. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“You know what the ink you must use in sining yourself over to me. I shall swindle you while providing your enjoyment.” All this constitues a universal exploitation of human commual life. The entrepreneur accedes to the most depraved fancies of his neighbour, plays the role of pander between him and his needs, awakens unhealthy appetities in him, and watched for every weakness in order, later, to claim the remuneration of this labour of love. The man who has thus become subject to his alienated needs is a mentally and physically dehumanized being…the self-conscious and self-acting commodity. This commodity-man knows only one way of relating himself to the World outside, by having it and by consuming (using) it. The more alienated he is, the more the sense of having and using constitutes his relationship to the World. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being. You have to listen hard to spot a liar. Often they shift from past to present tense. Moving from the past tense to the present means the person is getting into their brain–reliving the story they have made up to cover up what they have done. People will often tell a story as if they see it because in their minds, they see the story they have made up. It take a keen ear to pick up on the change in tense and why a person would do such a thing. When people are telling the truth, especially a breach of national security, they tend to stick with the most important details and speak in the past tense, since it already happened. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Sometimes when it comes to self-analysis, the analytical work at oneself will recede into the background. One will still observe one or another striking reaction and try to understand it, thus continuing the process of self-recognition, but in distinctly diminished intensity. One may be absorbed in personal work or in group activities; one may be engaged in a battle with external hardships; one may be concentrated on establishing one or another relationship; one may simply feel less harassed by one’s psychic troubles. At this time the mere process of living is more important than analysis, and it contributes in its own way to one’s development. The method in self-analysis is no different from that in work with an analyst, the technique being free associations. Whereas in working with an analyst the patient reports whatever comes into his mind, in working alone he begins by merely taking note of his associations. Whether he only notes them mentally or write them down is a matter of individual preference. Some people can concentrate better when they write; others find their attention distracted by writing. There are undoubtedly certain advantages in writing down one’s associations. For one thing, if he makes it a rule to put down a short note, a catchword, of every association, almost everything one will find that his thoughts do not wander off on a tangent so easily. At any rate he will notice the wandering more quickly. It may be, too, when it is all down on paper that the temptation to skip a thought or feeling as irrelevant is lessened. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
However, the greatest advantage of writing is that it affords the possibility of going over the notes afterward. Frequently when he lets his mind dwell on his notes, a person will miss the significance of a connection at first sight, but will notice it later. Findings or unanswered questions that are not well entrenched are often forgotten, and a return to them may revive them. Or he may see the old findings in a different light. Or he may discover that he has made no noticeable headway, but is essentially still at the same point where he was several months ago. These two latter reasons make it advisable to jot down findings, and the main paths leading up to them, even though they may have been arrived at without taking notes. The main difficulty in writing, the fact that thoughts are quicker than the pen, can be remedied by putting own only catchwords. If most of the work is done in writing a comparison with diary-keeping is almost unavoidable, and an elaboration of this comparison may serve also to highlight certain characteristics of analytical work. If the latter is not a simple report of factual occurrences but is written with the further intention of truthfully recording one’s emotions experiences and motivations, the similarity with a diary suggests itself particularly. However, there are differences. A diary, at its very best, is an honest recording of conscious feelings, thoughts, and motivations. The revealing character it may have concerns emotional experiences unknown to the outside World rather than experiences unknown to the writer himself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
When Rousseau, in his Confessions, boasted of his honesty in exposing his masochistic experiences, he did not uncover any fact of which he himself was unaware; he merely reported something that is usually kept secret. Furthermore, in a diary, if there is any search for motivations, this does not reach beyond one or another loose surmise that carries little if any weight. Usually no attempt is made to penetrate beneath the conscious level. Culberston, for instance, in The Strange Lives of One Man, frankly reported his irritation and moodiness toward his wife but gave no hint as to possible reasons. These remarks do not implay a criticism of diaries or autobiographies. They have their value, but they are intrinsically different from an exploration of self. No one can produce a narrative about himself and at the same time let his mind run in free associations. There is still another difference which it is of practical importance to mention: a diary often glances with one eye toward a future reader, whether that reader be the writer at a future time or a wider audience. Any such side glance at posterity, however, inevitably detracts from pristine honesty. Deliberately or inadvertently the writer is bound, then, to do some retouching. He will omit certain factors entirely, minimize his shortcomings or blame them on others, protect other people from exposure. If he takes the least squint at admiring audience or at the idea of creating a master piece of unique value, when he writes down his associations, the same will happen. He will them commit all those sins that undermine the value of free associations. Whatever he sets down on paper should serve one purpose only, that of recognizing himself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The mental hygiene movement has had a very significant beneficial impact on the problem of mental illness. There can be little doubt that it has contributed to an enhanced general level of mental health in our country. Certainly it has achieved marked improvement in public attitudes toward mental illness. As a perhaps unavoidable consequence of its educational effort it has created new and greater demands for psychotherapy and not all of the increased demand is fully appropriate. The pattern of psychotherapeutic practice in America is seriously unbalanced in that too many of the ablest, most experienced psychiatrists spend most of their time with patients who need them least. This has been unfortunate, though probably inevitable, consequence of the concept of mental illness as personal malfunctioning which in itself represents a gain in understanding. The trouble is that this view makes it impossible to draw the line, so that many persons who are showing essentially normal responses to the wear and tear of life or who are unhappy for reasons other than personal malfunctioning see themselves–and are seen by others–as proper candidates for psychotherapy. Philosophy is that disease for which it should be the cure. The mental hygiene movement has inadvertently added to the problem which it intended to reduce. It is time for the leaders of the mental health movement to put their minds to a touch philosophical analysis of problems which psychiatry and psychology have tended to neglect: to criteria of mental health, to delimitation of the meanings and forms of mental illness, to specification of precisely what are and what are not psychiatric problems. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
It would be a beneficial contribution for mental health educators to develop ways of communicating to the public on such questions as: “When not to go to the psychiatrist,” or “What to do before you see a psychiatrist”; “What psychotherapy cannot do for you”; “Ten sources of helpful conversation”; “Problems which do not make you a ‘Mental Case.'” He who controls the mind controls the body, for the one acts upon and through the other. It is not enough to overcome the jealousy which begrudges other people’s having advantages denied us: we must also take the next step and overcome the envy which feels discontented at not having those advantages and continues to desire them for itself. Jealousy would go out of its way to hurt those others by depriving them of their possessions, but envy would not fall so low. When they oppose emotion and passion, once he forms this resolve to follow the bidding of intuition and reason, he will find it both a safeguard and a test. If at any time he should temporarily weaken from this resolve, he may become uncertain as to the correct course to pursue when at the crossroads. A willing discipline of the character by one’s own self may often take the place of an unwanted and unwilling discipline by outer events. He is to become an exemplar to the aspiring, a pattern-setter for those who would ennoble themselves. He must establish, for and over himself, an emotional discipline and intellectual control. He cannot successfully do this all at once, of course. Emotional tendencies and mental habits engendered by years of materialism cannot be overturned and eliminate in a single night. However, the goal must be there and must be kept in view. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
A firefighter we will call Helmut share his experience about becoming a fireman. “When I got out of the military, I had the opportunity to get into the trucking industry. I was in it for ten years. I started out as an assistant to a dispatcher and worked up to operations manager. I trained people coming into the industry. I was doing pretty good, and I enjoyed it. The problem was that there was no real job security, and though the pay was good I was putting in too many hours. I was missing a lot of time with my family. I had to do it, though because I needed the job. Then I heard that the Sacramento Fire Department was giving a test. Up to that point, I’d actually thought about becoming a policeman. I was an MP in the military, and I thought maybe it would be a good field to get into. So I went down to City Hall and filled out the fire department application. I didn’t do it reluctantly, I just did it with a little bit of skepticism. I said to my wife, ‘Oh, I don’t really think anything is going to come of this, because I don’t think I’m going to make it.’ I knew that the cutoff age was thirty-six years, and at the time I was thirty-five, and I thought I really had to get in on this first class, otherwise I’m not going to make it. So they scheduled the test, and I studied hard for it while I was still doing trucking. And I was fortunate to have the ten-point veteran’s preference, so that added ten points to whatever score I got on the test. But I was concerned because so many people had taken the test. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“My sister called and told me, ‘Twenty-six thousand people took the test, so your changes of getting on are small.’ That depressed me, but I felt I’d done good because I did study hard and the test wasn’t that difficult. So my brother called me the next day and said, ‘Six thousand people walked out halfway through the test.’ So that lowered the odds. I thought, well, twenty thousand, that’s starting to sound better all the time. I kept calling, and some months later I was notified that I had aced the test, I was number six on the list. I was ecstatic, I thought, now I’ve got to be in first class. As it turned out, I was. And from then on, everything has been running smoothly. Everything has been great.” To make sure the Sacramento Fire Department is receiving all of the required resources, please make a donation. 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. The ideal man that he wants to be should be evoked, pictured, and adored daily. If greater wisdom brings an immunity to other men’s negative thoughts, it also brings the responsibility to stifle one’s own. When all malice and all envy are resolutely cast out of his nature, not only will he be the gainer by it in improved character and pleasanter blessings, but also those others who would have suffered as victims of his barbed words or ugly thoughts. The past is beyond recall, but the present is at our command. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
Farewell Week is here! The last day to experience our Walk With Spirits Tour is April 14, 2024!
Beginning today, all guests who participate will have the opportunity to sign a special guest book that will be preserved in our archives which will become a part of Winchester Mystery House history. And as a bonus, enjoy 13% off our upcoming Halfway to Halloween Flashlight Tours.
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/
Intrepid Delver into the Forbidden
Tuesday afternoon came and waned to the twilight. It was a peculiar time; something new was astir, something that was quite unlike the tranquility of the past, something that was very strange indeed, but was felt everywhere. The unknown things had begun to close in on me with a whole new degree of determination. I knew all too well of the things which must be lurking nearby. I began to fear that I might not sleep tonight, so certain was I that I was surrounded by the tortured spirits of those who had not yet been allowed to cross the veil to the other side. Here they remained, crying aloud, desperate to be heard, causing disarray and torment in my home as they longed to be released to the peace of eternal rest. I wore a pale expression. Staring at the floor beneath me, there were myriads of claw-prints in the hallway, with human prints among them. Clutching a bloody handkerchief, I was half afraid for myself. Sorcery from the Middle Ages has been violently unmaksed in Llanada Villa and the whole craft has been exposed in its darkest colours and most abominable manifestations. I had indeed been cursed, but it had been carefully hidden and scrupulously concealed. Trembling, I was terrified at the horror I knew was sure to come my way. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
I fell asleep quite soon after going to bed, but it was a fitful and unhappy sleep. My dreams were full of nightmares of dark debaucheries. There were foul and hideous mysteries of lust which neither human intercourse nor the employ of a mechanical property can explain. Howbeit, I am fully aware what unspeakable horror lurked in the blackness beyond. When I rose up and wandered along the gallery, I was hopeless. I tried to estimate how long I had been asleep, but all I knew was that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not be, for my candles were not gone yet. I was cruelly tired. I sat down and fastened my candle to the wall. I turned on the lights and walked toward the kitchen. Although my home was quite empty, I had an eerie sensation of not being alone. Hurriedly, I walked to the front door. Glancing backward into the dark recesses of my home, upon which I saw an apparition of a man, staring at me with piercing black eyes. He wore a wool shirt. He seemed to smile at me, and I called, “I beg your pardon, but who are you?” However, the figure never moved or reacted. “What are you doing here?” I demanded, all the while looking at him. There was no answer, and suddenly my courage left me, as the icy touch of an unseen hand caressed my cheek. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I ran down the central hallway, until abruptly stopping at the end. Tenderly, my fingers ran over the brass trim on the heavy mahogany door. Nervously turning the handle, I reluctantly pushed open the door and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. As the door swung inward, there was a rush of bone chilling air. Stepping inside, I heard a crying baby. Immediately recognizing the cry of my own child. Standing alone in the pitch-black room, I turned toward where the sounds were coming from. Every step felt as if I was walking in cold tar. A sense of desperation took hold of me, as I struggled to find the child. However, the closer I seemed to get, the more distant the sound became. A sense of desperation overcame me, as the cries faded, and dark shadows began swiftly darting around the room. I found myself quietly walking back downstairs. To my right was the stair railing which went around the top of the stairs at a turn in the hallways which led to an interior-opening balcony space, overlooking the front door at the downstairs hall, with a view of the beautiful chandelier hanging over the foyer. As I walked down the stairs, I was fearful that something would happen. That is when I heard a terrible shriek. The bloodcurdling sound was that of a lunatic. The atmosphere within my home changed, the walls came alive. Its appetite whetted by the taste of human blood. The horror overcame me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
In stark loneliness of night, hurtling between somber, darkened rooms that quivered with unknown, invisible life. I could see some horror lurking in my mind’s eye. Perhaps my clairvoyant sense assisted me, but in these great halls, along the long corridors, in the gloomy cold there was an ancient and lingering pain. The wind whistled and shrieked and moaned, as if the dead had collected to fight the battle of their race. I was being pursued, the forced of hell were gathering against me. It was cold in the echoing corridors. I hurried along them, trying out doors on each side. The handles were covered in thick dust. Each one I tried seemed to be locked, so I made my way to another floor. There were hundreds more doors to try. After an hour, I sat down on the top step and closed my eyes. For some minutes I sat motionless, listening to my own heartbeat. With my head full of thoughts, I went through a doorway. Finding myself in a luxurious suite of rooms, with walls of dark mahogany panels, filled with exquisite antique furniture and paintings. Thick dust covered everything, and enormous cobwebs were suspended from every corner. The silence of centuries now hung in the air. I sat down on a soft, velvet-covered couch, and for some reason started feeling very sleepy. It was as if there were some curious force in the room—a force which was impossible to resist. I lay back on the couch, and went into a sort of trance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
When I came to, the room was darkened. Within its shadowy depths, I saw the white blur of a man’s face and hands; and in a moment I had crossed to greet the figure who had tried to speak. Dim though the light was, I perceived that this was a very sick man. There was a touch of the pitiful in the limp, lifeless way his lean hands rested in his lap. He had on a loose dressing-gown, and was swathed around the head and high around the neck with a vivid yellow scarf or hood. And then I saw that he was trying to talk in a hacking whisper. It was a hard whisper to catch at first, since the grey moustache concealed all movements and the lips, something in its timbre disturbed me greatly. I was also trying to ignore certain shadowy, indistinct shapes that might have been living creatures; I was trying to ignore my mounting fear. I realized that the man before me, what appeared to be a human figure—was it? A man? A tall, stiff-poised man? Or was it an apparition? Along this desolate gallery. I felt a stab of fear as I made a swift decision to run—not to turn back but to increase my speed and pass the mysterious brooding figure. Even though I saw that this figure was acutely aware of me, I had dismissed him as a dream. Touched with horror, yet empowered by it, by a rush of adrenaline like a flame through my veins, I did not slacken my speed, and veered through hallways and rooms until I was safe. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
I climbed the stairs to the third floor, my heart pounding violently in my chest not in warning, not in caution but urging me on! And so, opening the door to the Celestial Bedroom, and so stepping breathless inside that room, I dared to switch on a light; a dim, yellow bulb in a bedside lamp; I stood beside my enormous, canopied bed. On my pillow there was the heavy imprint of a head, a concave shadow. I stared, not certain what I saw. My hand reached out; groping; I dared to touch the figure—pushing gently at the smooth, naked shoulder that, with the attached torso, fell away from the shadowed lower body, and from the neck and head; the head, a bald, blank head, rolled to one side on the pillow; one of the limbs, the shapely left leg, had fallen away from the body, as if its joints had become brittle with time, and lay at a grotesque angle perpendicular to the thigh. I saw clearly that the thing was not human and was not alive. Objects seemed to move across the room like conscious entities; the sounds of their footfalls having something about it like a loose, hard-surfaced clattering. Running to the drawing room, I summoned Zip. My precious darling was always here to comfort me. I decided that it may be a good idea to get some fresh air. Wagging his tail, he was more than happy to oblige. May was in its full beauty. The evenings were exquisite. The wild cherry was in flower. Zip and I walked every evening in the garden and we would sit till nightfall in the arbour, as I poured out my thoughts and feelings to him. We had poetic moments. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The Winchester Mystery House
A real nightmare occurs when you experience a frightening encounter with something strange and unknown, and you know without question that you are not asleep, that you are not dreaming. You know with every ounce of your being that the chilling encounter is real. The events that were described were actual experiences and encounters and were not legends and folklore. One must clearly understand and fully realize the shuddering horror and heart-sick dismay that exists when there is any sort of commerce between human beings and evil spirits, which is the very core and kernel of Witchcraft. All too often, nowadays, the orthodox doctrine of the Powers of Darkness are forgotten or ignored. In the first place, the name Devil is commonly given to the fallen angels, who are also called demons.
The chief of the demons is called the Devil. The Devil and other demons were created by God naturally good; but they themselves became evil. It is also remarkable that for an account of the Fall of the angels, which happened before the creation of the World, we must turn to the last book in the Bible, the Apocalypse of St. John. “And there was a great battle in Heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil, and Satan, who seduceth the whole World; and he was cast down unto the Earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Apocalypse xxi. 7-9). Once you open the door to the unknown, it may be hard to close again.
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/
People Do Not Like Old Graves Disturbed
It was one of those nights when the moon gives a faint glimmer of light through the thick black clouds of a lowering sky. Hope and native courage urged me to push forward, but at the length the increasing darkness and fatigue of body and mind was overcoming me. As the moon sank beneath a black cloud, the hallways were darker than ever. All was silent. All was still as death. My blood was chilled, Across the hall, upon the grand staircase, a pale bluish apparition cast a dismal gleam of light around. Summoning forth my courage, I quickly advanced toward it. Terror impelled me to make some hasty steps. I came to the foot of the stairs, and after a moment’s deliberation ascended. I went slowly up, the apparition retiring before me, until I came to a wide gallery. The apparition proceeded along it, and I followed in silent horror, treading lightly, for the echoes of my footsteps startled me. It led me to the foot of another staircase, and then vanished. At the same instant toll sounded from the belfry—I felt it strike upon my heart. I was now in total darkness, and with my arms extended, began to ascend the second staircase. A dead cold hand met my left hand and firmly grasped it, drawing me forcibly forwards—I endeavoured to disengage myself, but could not—I made a furious blow with my revolver, and instantly a loud shriek pierced my ears, and the dead hand was left powerless in mine. I dropped it, and rushed towards with a desperate valour. The stairs were narrow and winding, and interrupted by frequent breaches. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The staircase grew narrower and narrower and at length terminated in to wall. I pushed the wall opened, its hinges creaked loudly-it led to an intricate winding passage, just large enough to admit myself. A faint glimmer of light served to show the nature of the place. I entered. A deep hollow groan resounded from a distance through the vault. I went forwards, and proceeding beyond the first turning, I discerned the same blue apparition. I flowed it. The vault, at length, suddenly opened into a lofty gallery, in which the midst of which a figure appeared, completely armed, thrusting forwards the bloody stump of an arm, with a terrible frown and menacing gesture, brandishing a pistol in his hand. I undauntedly sprang forwards and aimed a fierce blow at the figure; it vanished, letting fall a massy iron key. The apparition now rested upon a pair of ample wooden doors at the end of the gallery. I went up to it, and applied the key to a brazen lock—with difficulty I turned the bolt—instantly the doors flew open and discovered a large apartment. There was soft music playing, it was the most magnificent room I had ever seen, lighted with innumerable tapers in lustres of pure crystal. Then suddenly the piercing shrikes of a person in distress arrested my speed; I stopped and, listening attentively, heard shrill, melancholy cries repeated at interval through my mansion, which gradually became more distant, grew faint and died away. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
As I traversed further in this new section of the mansion, there was a chandelier of bronze, hung down from the middle of the ceiling. Then, at one end of the hall, was a great fireplace, as long as the size of a county house; and by it were heavy, old-fashioned sofas. At the opposite end of the hall, to the left as I went it—on the western side—was an organ built into the wall, and so large that it filled up the best part of that end. Beyond it, on the same side, was a door. As I went through the door, I froze in fear. There was a solider in one of the bedrooms. He was dark and had a noose around the neck; the rope of cut and his faced seemed almost luminous. I tried to collect my thoughts. My first sensation was like that of a very young child badly hurt, when it catches it breath before crying out. The emotional climate of Llanada Villa was uncanny, as if an unseen force was always present. From the blank darkness outside came in, through the aperture that served for a window, all the ever unfamiliar noises of night in the wilderness—the long, nameless note of a distant coyote; the stilly pulsing thrill of tireless insects in trees; strange cries of night birds, so different from those of the birds of the day; the drone of great blundering beetles, and all that mysterious chorus of small sounds that seem always to have been but half hard when they have suddenly ceased, as if conscious of an indiscretion. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
I crept to an open door; the organ broke out with a blare. A dazzling light filled the mansion, blotting the chandelier from my eyes. The soldier faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare, and I saw the black stars hanging in the Heavens. I shivered. The air was suddenly cold. I told myself I was just scared, because I was. I sat there plunged in the profoundest grief that can come to the human soul, for in all other agony hope flickers, however forlornly. Then I saw something. I saw a little white face with eyes so scared and wishful that they seemed as if they might eat a hole in anybody’s heart. It was a dreadful little face, with something about it which made it different from any other face on Earth, but it was so pitiful that somehow it did away a good deal of dreadfulness. And there were two little hands spotted blue with the cold. And a darling little echo of a voice said, “I can’t find my mommy.” “For Heaven’s sake,” I said, “who are you?” Then the little voice said: “I can’t find my mommy.” All the time I could smell the cold that was clinging to her as if she had come out of some deadly cold place. She was dressed in a white nightgown, very long, quite covering her feet, and I could see dimly through her thin body mottled blue with the cold. Her face did not look so cold; that was a clear waxen white. Her hair was dark, but it looked as if she it might by dark only because it was so damp, almost wet, and might really be fair coloured hair. As the child descended further into the room, the ceiling returned and no longer visible were the stars. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Well, I was so dumfounded that I did not know what to do, and I could not make sense at first that it was anything supernatural. Then I tried to catch hold of the child, for I thought in spite of what I saw that perhaps I was nervous and she was a real child. I went to put my shawl around her, but the minute I moved toward the child, there was no longer a child there; there was only that little voice seeming to come from nothing, saying, “I can’t find my mommy,” and presently that died away. That feeling I had, the current in my stomach, my temples, my fingertips—it remained with me for quite a while. It rose and fell with the memory of that girl’s words. The air was still. As I gazed out the window, the silvery vapour hung serenely on the far horizon, and the frosty stars blinked brightly. Everyone knows the effect of such a scene on a mind already saddened. Fancies and regrets floats delicately in the mind, and the scene affected me with a strange sense of memory and anticipation, like some sweet old air heard in the distance. There was something of the unearthly and spectral within these walls whose direct connection was with a necromancy even older than the Salem witchcraft could not be doubted. A hideous traffic was going on among nightmare ghouls. Sometimes, looking at the past can have consequences for the present. It is best graves should be left well alone. We do not need to pull all the pieces together of things that are better left to rest. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
Of all the myths which have come down to us from ancient times and of all creations, the personality of evil has the strongest attraction for the mind of man. The Devil is the greatest enigma that has ever confronted the human intelligence. So large a place has Satan taken in our imagination, and we might also say in our heart, that his expulsion therefrom, no matter what philosophy may tech us, must forever remain an impossibility. The Devil advanced with the progress of civilization, because he is what men make him. I talked to caretakers of The Winchester Mystery House about apparitions they may have seen in Mrs. Winchester’s mansion. Some of them had never seen anything unusual. However, there was a man, who always liked to take tour of The Winchester Mystery House of Friday the 13th. When queried about his insistence on that day, the man freely admitted it was because on that day he could see “her”—the “her” being a female wraith who appeared at the mansion to listen to the guests, and then disappeared at midnight. On that day, he could always be next to her! I pressed more caretakers about any personal experienced. Finally, he thought that he had seen something like a figure in white out of the corner of one eye, a figure that passed, and quickly disappeared.
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/
It is Not Always the Same Time Here
It was a wet November afternoon, rather windy, rather warm. Outside the window great trees were stirring and weeping. Between them were stretched of green and yellow country, and blue hills far off, veiled with rain. Up above was a very restless and hopeless movement of low clouds travelling north-west. If you call it work—I had suspected my work—for some minutes to stand at the window and look at these things, and at the greenhouse roof on the right with the water sliding off it, and the nine story Observational Tower. It was all in favour of my going steadily on; no likelihood of a clearing up for hours to come. I, therefore, returned to my desk. By this time, I was somewhat tried. The clock struck four, and it really was four, for in 1889 there was no saving of daylight. So, I settled myself in the Hall of Fires. And first I glanced over some of the blueprints for additions to Llanada Villa. The clock struck five. This, I knew, meant tea. I lifted myself out of the deep chair, and went to the parlour. As I sat down in my favourite chair, the housemaid, Engrid Sebald, poured my tea. When I pick the cup up, she witnessed it fly out of my hand as it smashed at her feet. She glanced out of the window and saw what appeared to be a man’s face. It was unspeakably evil. There was something curious and ghastly about the way the sun began to sink into the west. The long shadows of the trees obscured the face from sight. Engrid was blanching with fright, as I was in a misery of fear. A considerable degree of darkness came on. I managed to calm Engrid by suggesting she had seen some sort of shadow, but the incessant barking of Zip, for no apparent reason, made matters worse. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
As the blackened darkness reigned, and all was silent. The perfect stillness was interrupted only by the mutterings of distant thunder. Without saying another word, the young lady went crept up the stairs trembling to her room. Shortly after, her things all packed she came down again to say goodbye. Under intolerable distress, I was once again without help. The adventure of the day mightily tormented my dreams that night. As I lay in the early morning recalling the incidents of the pervious night, it seemed curiously subdued and far away—as if it had happened in another World, or in a time long gone by. A few days later, a new housemaid arrived. Her name was Atina Kossert. A simple and quite unimaginative person, she had put no stock into all the tales of goings-on she had heard and was quite willing to prove her point. On going to her room, she found nothing out of order. On the next night, Atina complained of a shuffling or scraping noise in her bedroom. It sounded to her as if the chair was being moved, or as if someone was shuffling across the floor in slippers. She removed the chair from the room. When she turned the light off, however, she herself heard the sound. She turned on the light, and the noise stopped. She turned off the light, and the sound of scraping began again. The phenomena soon increased in intensity. A chest of drawers moved approximately thirteen inches from the wall. Atina pushed it back again. When she turned away the chest of drawer moved out again, and proved impossible to return to its original position. The drawers in the chest also came out, and could not be moved. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Atina, now thoroughly alarmed, changed her tune. “Someone is watching me,” she complained. She complained of things flying off the shelves seemingly by their own volition and of the chest of drawers moving and the drawers opening as if someone were looking for something or other. She wanted to leave, but Atina simply could not afford to, things were difficult enough in the physical World to allow the unseen forces to add to her problems. Atina when on to complain about noisy children in the halls. When she was informed that there were no children running about unattended, she became annoyed. Setting about to prove she was not going crazy, she was determined to catch one of these shouting, squealing, laughing kids who was disturbing her sleep. One night, Atina was extremely frustrated. She heard the kids in the hallway and rushed from her bed and nearly grabbed one of the little rascals, but was astonished to see the child disappeared before her eyes. Amid the chaos taking place, a rumbling sound began in Atina’s bedroom. The sound intensified, and as it did it took on a physical manner, moving out from under the bed towards the center of the room. The floorboards vibrated as the spirit rolled under the floor. The spirit made its way across the room, went out the door and disappeared into the hall. Terrified beyond reason, Atina found her voice and began to pray. She found herself looking over her shoulder, certain someone was there with her, only to see no one. Atina started putting thing back in place. As she was facing the fireplace, he heard a soft rapping at her door. She rushed over to open the door, there was a young man, about six foot, three inches with a hole in his head, signaling that he had been shot. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Atina quickly slammed the door and jumped into bed, shivering with fear. A flush of warmth cascaded over her, and the room turned fuzzy. She tried to regain her equilibrium. As if invisible fingers caressed her hair, Atina’s scalp tingled. Then an inescapable sensation took her breath away. The room seemed infused with a new, unfathomable energy—she had become sensitized to a dimension just beyond the range of normal. Light from the chandelier sparkled, and the tall, stained-glass windows created kaleidoscopic pools throughout the room. Atina wiped the moisture from her eyes, drew a deep breath, and cried herself to sleep. In the following days, Atina became frail and listless. Her once beautiful features became waxy and pale, her gorgeous brown eyes no longer sparkled. She began to believe that the house itself was dangerous prolonged life in it could only destroy those who remain in it. On an early Wednesday morning, Atina saw a form cross from the window, over her bed, and then down the stairs. This brought her out screaming and demanding to know what was going on. The light from the apparition was so intense they it hurt her eyes. She felt an icy chill as the form passed her. “Atina, my dear,” I said. “I insist it was only lightning.” However, instead of triumph, I found terror, and my talk with Atina boasted not of victory but a plea for help and advice in saving both myself and the World from horror beyond all human conception or calculation. I slipped out of the room so quietly that no one had seen me depart or knew that I had gone. I had gone upstairs, where a bit of my fear must has surged back; for I was heard to cry out in a highly terrified fashion upon entering the library, afterward trailing off into a kind of choking grasp. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
When, however, the butler had come to inquire what the troubles was, I appeared at the door with a great show of boldness, and had silently gestured the man away in a matter that terrified him unaccountably. After a time, the shadows began to gather, and the sunset cheer gave place to a vague growing terror which flew shadow-like before the night. Something frightful and unholy seemed to haunt. About the middle of January, a queer nocturnal incident occurred. In the early evening, there had been some noise and thumping in the sewing room upstairs, and I was on the point of investigating when it suddenly quieted down. Meanwhile, although she was more frightened than ever, Atina grew very curious about the mansion. She inspected the walls of her bedroom and found hollow spots. A bookcase turned out to be a false front. She discovered hidden passages. Of course, the house was honeycombed with areas not visible to the casual observer. Atina also discovered that the front portion of the wall seemed to block off another room beyond it, not accounted for when measuring the outside walls. When she managed to pry it open, she found a stairwell, narrow though it was, where apparently a flight of stairs had once been. As she treaded the stairs, the air became still, as a winged demon emerged. He looked like a monstrous gargoyle with large horns curling inward on his head, and he had razor sharp talons; perfect for ripping prey apart. He had two, vampire-like fangs that were bigger than the rest of his teeth and resembled a wolf’s, and his eyes shimmer crimson-red. Atina’s blood went cold. “Demon! He’s a demon.” “Witch!” The demon’s voice shook the walls, his voice deeper and louder than Atina’s. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Atina jumped away as the demon stared at her. Red welt covered her torso and legs, the angular shapes of ancient letters and symbols. “Go home, Witch! Go back to your house and pray to you God.” Smoke rose from where the demon was standing, and he vanished. It was a terror too profound and real, and in conjunction with what Atina already knew evoked too vivid hints of monstrosities from beyond time and space to permit of any sensible explanation. That midnight, after the household had retired, the butler was locking the back door when according to his statement Atina appeared somewhat blunderingly and uncertainly at the foot of the stairs with a large suitcase and made signs that she wised egress. The young lady spoke no word, but the worthy butler caught one sight of her fevered eyes and trembled causelessly. He opened the door and young Atina went out, but in the morning, she presented her resignation to me. There was, she said, something unholy in the glance butler had fixed on her. It was no way for a man to look at an honest woman, and she could not possibly stay another night. I allowed the woman to depart, but I did not value her statement highly. To fancy my butler in a savage state that night was quite ridiculous, for as long as I had remained awake, I had heard faint sounds from the room above; sounds as if of sobbing and pacing, and of a sighing which told only of his despair’s profoundest depths. I had grown used to listening for sounds in the night, and could often hear he was. There were nameless horrors in my home; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought to stand prepared for any sort of action at any time. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
In 2010, while clean the basement, a ghost of a boy appeared a caretaker, he appeared to be four of five years old. “Mrs. Winchester is dead…but not dead forever,” he said in a faint voice. In terms of psychic research, a ghost appears to be a surviving emotional memory of someone who has died traumatically, and usually tragically, but is unaware of his or her death. Ghosts, then, in the overwhelming majority, do not realize that they have died. Those who do know they are “dead” are confused as to where they are and why they do not feel quite as they used to feel. When death occurs unexpectedly or unacceptably, or when a person has become very attached to a place he or she has lived in for a very long time, sudden, unexpected death may come as a shock. Unwilling to part with the physical World, such human personalities then continue to stay on in the very sport where their tragedy or their emotional attachment had existed prior to physical death.
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/
Ghostly Encounters
Time moved slowly in Llanada Villa, if at all. Footsteps echoed along the corridors and up stairwells, but the sound seemed muted and out of synch with any motion amidst the shadows. It was dark out when my eyes fluttered open. Evening sunlight slanted across the countryside in a blaze of copper. Llanada Villa was hidden by trees and set in large Victorian gardens, the elegant mansion could only be glimpsed by walkers. Red roses bloomed on the trellis by the from doors. A cool breeze stirred the leaves of the shrubbery. If beauty really went on decaying, as the ancients say, by this time there could be no beauty left. Those who had the powers to see beyond the beautiful flowers, trees and towers, the inviting lawns, or the richness of the interior, when the doors are thrown open, knew my home harboured a terrifying evil and those who lived within its walls faced unspeakable dangers. A sound pierced the stillness like a clap of thunder. My heart raced, but I walked through the downstairs parlour and up the stairs. At the top of the landing, I pushed open the door, and my eyes still adjusting from the darkness to the light, walked down the long halls, dark, wining hallway past several bedrooms, turned the corner and headed toward the Grand Ballroom. As I rounded the corner, I stumbled over something on the floor. Heinz Bongartz, one of the carpenters, lay face down on the mahogany floor, his whole body scratched and bruised, his skull smashed to pieces, and blood everywhere. Someone had taken this man straight to the Devil. No one—no one—could imagine my fear. I was struggling with my own conscience about what to do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Poor weather seemed to deepen my malaise: the winds that buffeted the house, shuddering the windows and ratting the doors, inflicted particular torment. If I was alone in the house, I did not know. I gingerly stepped around Heinz, and fled down the hallway, toward the front of the house, through the morning room. From the window, I could see huntsmen mounted on horses as black as the Devil, wrapped in black cloaks. Hoods drawn right over their faces. Eyes glowing red. They give me a scare causing me to shiver. I felt my heart pounding, felt the blood stirring in my body, and began shuffling away from the wind, deeper into a passage. I walked toward the glow and away from the light. That is when the screaming started. At first, it was so loud that I thought it was some strange, high-pitched thunder from the storm that was still darkening the sky beyond the windows. However, it was too high, too shrill, and lasted too long to be part of the storm, even though it sounded like nothing human. The noise seemed to come from above…from up the stairwell on the darkened third floor…but it seemed to echo from the walls, from down stairs, even from the pipes and metal radiator. It went on and on. I froe and turned toward the doorway and stared at it for a full moment after the terrible noise stopped, expecting the source of the scream to appear there. A dark shape appeared in the gloom of the doorway. When I narrowed my eyes to make out the visage, I gasped, for was this not the same countenance that I had seen in the mirror the previous morning, the reflection of my own late mother? My eyes were swelled with crying. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
It was so cold, forcing me to wrap a shawl more closely around my shoulders. I shivered and longed to return to the warmth of my bed. It was not Mother, of course, how could it be? The rain began almost immediately then, falling heavily, great drops tumbling on the roof. I shivered again; a ghost walked over my grave terrifying me into the depths of my very soul. I began to fear that I might not sleep this night, so certain was I that I was surrounded by the spirits of those who had left their corporeal form being but had not yet been admitted through the gates of Heaven and so were left to trawl through my home, crying aloud, desperate to be heard, causing disarray and torment wherever they went, uncertain when they would be released to the peace of the afterlife and the quiet promise of eternal rest. I was terrified at the horror I knew was sure to come my way. It was dark in the room and illuminated only by the glow of the reddened coals with the colour of the sporadic flames. I fell asleep quite soon after going to bed but it was a fitful and unhappy sleep. My dreams were supplanted by nightmares. I encountered spirits where I should have undertaken adventures. My landscape was dark graveyards and irregular vistas rather than mansions and castles. However, nevertheless I slept through the night, and when I woke, feeling groggy and out of sorts, the morning light was already coming through my curtains. I looked at my clock; it was almost half past seven and I cursed myself, knowing that I would certainly be late for breakfast. Plucking up all my courage, I put my bar feet out of bed. It was cold in the room. The chill seemed to have entered into my very bones. I pushed the covers aside. Very quietly, I cautiously tiptoed to the door in case the floorboards creak. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The morning fog was beginning to descend on the garden and a persistent wind was forcing its way down the chimney, tracking a path along the stonework. I gradually learned about the horrific murder of Heinz Bongartz. However, my heat bleed for this distressed, and the temptations I was exposed to. I resolved to tarry to see how things went. “Mrs. Winchester!” Millicent, the housemaid’s voice interrupted. As I made my way to the breakfast room, Millicent obediently stood next to the to the door. As Millicent opened the door, “Mrs. Winchester, you’re getting a late start. Maybe you need to stop consulting the spirits so late a night?” she said. “And so I am to be exposed, in my own house, and out of my house, to the whole World, by such a sauce-box as you?” I replied. “No, Mrs. Winchester, and I hope your honour won’t be angry with me; it is not I that exposed you, if I say nothing but the truth.” Millicent, I am very much displeased with the freedoms you have taken with my name.” Millicent silently went over to the table and delicately placed my meal before me. Then she went to put another log on the fire. Millicent, serve the tea, and then you can go. I will probably have a little rest after you leave, so you do not need to return until four.” Millicent bobbed a curtsy and went over to a table covered in burgundy velvet that was located near the door to pour my cup of she. She also removed a thick linen napkin, revealing a plate piled high with slices of ham, Swiss cheese, and soft rolls. Millicent signed, since she knew that even the tea would remain untouched by me as long as I was handling the delicate satin material, but she did appreciate the gesture. Thank goodness for the excellent breakfast served this morning. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Later that evening, a peculiar incident occurred. At about midnight, I heard a chanting ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house, there came a sudden gust of chill wind, and a faint obscure trembling of the earth which everyone noted. At the same time, Zip exhibited phenomenal traces of fright. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that I believed the house had been struck. Daisy and I rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Millicent met us at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on her face. She assured us that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. We paused, and looking through a window saw that she was indeed right; for the lightning flashed father and father off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out. A chill shot through me and threated to reduce me to the very state from which I was emerging. It was of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul. Ever since I had been in my home, I had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon me what it was. I just remember I got my chamber for I knew nothing further of the matter till afterwards; for I fell into a fit with my terror, and there I lay. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
The following day, I took a turn or two in the garden, but in sight of my home, for fear of the worst; and breathed upon my hand to dry my eyes, because I would not be too disobedient. Close upon this, there was a thundering and with it came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though the sunset was still an hour distant. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed from a paroxysm of a diabolic and hysterical laughter. I ran back into my home and was greeting by Daisy. We traversed up the stairs just in time to see a cryptic soul creep through an opening in the door to nowhere, as we glimpsed the frightful vista of the void beyond. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it. As it was, I was seized my niece in her arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed me. Even so, however, I was not quick enough to escape catching something myself which caused me to stagger dangerously with my burden. The cry had been evidently heard by others. Every minute, as it grew near, my terrors increased; and sometimes I had great courage, and sometimes none at all; and I thought I should faint. “Answer me then, I bid you!” I shouted. And it did. However, the voice had a depth and hollowness which I could not comprehend. “Aunt Sarah, all of this must be stopped or you will be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility!” In our tracks, however, I paused at the sounds which I heard proceeding from the now disused library. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled. For the fright of fainting, Daisy rushed me to the Crystal Bedroom. The strangeness was a poignant sensation, and almost clawed at my chest as I strove to see just what was wrong around me. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
It can happen to anyone: Ghost are, after all, people who had unfinished business on their minds when they passed on. Ghosts are not figments of the imagination. Those who have studied parapsychology have come to understand that human life does continue beyond what we commonly call death. Once in a while, there are extraordinary circumstances when death occurs, and these exceptional situations create what we popularly call ghost and haunted houses.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Pursued by the Ghost of Several Generations
My butler Garth has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. I gather that there is very little hope that he can still be alive; but whether it is accident or design that carried him off, I cannot judge. The facts are these. On Monday the 6th, he went as usual shortly before six o’clock to gather the silverware for dinner; and the housemaid brought him a message, in response to which he set off to the east wing of the house. He paid visit to the Sunshine Room, and started his journey back to the Venetian Dining Room at about half past seven. This is the last that is known of him. The servants and myself are very much grieved at his loss; he had been here many years, and though, he was not the most genial of men, and had more than a little of the martinet in his composition, he seems to have been active in good works, and unsparing of trouble to himself. Poor Mrs. Kurlander, who was the housemaid who called him away is quite overcome: it seems like the end of the World to her. Naturally, the house has been searched, as well as the fruit orchards and acres of fields, and the ponds dragged without result. There can be no question of foul play amongst the servants, nor is there the shadow of a probability that they or any of them should have agreed to decoy poor Garth out in order that he might be attacked on out the outskirts of the estate. He left some money when he went away and one of the servants show him cross int the fruit orchards. He was dressed as he always was. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
I wandered around, and after a while I found myself in a long corridor where I had never been before. The walls were lined with portraits of our ancestors and the eyes of the stern-looking men and women seemed to watch me disapprovingly as I passed. I told myself it was just an optical illusion and that I should enjoy this opportunity to be alone, to really figure out my way around and to look at things that I might have felt self-consciously examining closely. As I passed the portraits, I was left in pitch darkness—such an absolute darkness as I have never before experienced. Suddenly, my eyes caught the glint of a light. At first it was but a lurid spark upon the mahogany floor. Then it lengthened out until it became a yellow line, and then, without any warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared, a white, almost womanly hand, which felt about in the center of the little area of light. For a minute or more the hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared, and all was dark again save the lurid spark which marked the opening of the trap door in the floor. As I continued down the corridor, everything on the instant grew dark. The floors creaked beneath my feet. There was something Satanic about this wing of the house. Then, there was one long, loud, shuddering scream, as I glanced to see where it came from, I found myself looking straight into the face of a large owl, which was seated on my window-sill, holding up its wings like two shrouded arms. I caught the fierce glace of its yellow eyes, and then it was gone. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
I repaired into a chamber at one end of the gallery. Having shut the door, I heard a strange noise, and on a sudden something was flung against the chamber door, with extraordinary violence, upon which the noise immediately ceased. Moments later, I went to go forth of the chamber door, but could by no means force it open. Behind me, a door opened in the darkness, and I felt a wave of night-air, cool and fragrant, come in against my neck. I had not known there was another door at the far end of the chamber, but I was out through it in a heartbeat. The connecting room was a soothing green. On one wall was a Monet. I was listening to the boom of my heart, and the noise from the storm outside. The wind had become louder, slamming the door against a wall. If it had just been the whine of the wind coming from below, no doubt my ambitions would have had me halfway down the stairs by now. However, there were other sound being carried on the back of the wind, some easy to interpret, others not so easy. I could hear the screech of bats, which was not too distressing. However, there were other species giving voice below. Looking at the doorway that led to the tower, I took a deep breath, and went out into the hallway. Reassuringly, the door had stopped slamming quite so hard. I took a deep breath, then headed down the flight. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
I suddenly sensed someone was there. Watching me. I looked up. And I saw him, standing on the landing encircling one of the towers that rose from the house. It was the guy I had seen at the library window. He was looking down at me. However, not as me. Once more I was sure I had seen him before—before I saw him outside the library. I stared at the gentleman long enough. Suddenly, I felt queer and faint, and bent over and grabbed my knees. When I looked up again, the man—or whatever he was—had vanished from the tower. I could not imagine how he had gotten down or, into my house. Judging by the different voices heard at odd times within, it must be accessible through secret passages beneath. There are whisperings and frenzied screams, coupled with curious chants or invocations. On this night, however, they assumed a very singular and terrible cast as they ran the gamut betwixt dronings of dull acquiescence and explosions of frantic pain or fury, rumblings of conversation and whines of entreaty, pantings of eagerness and shouts of protest. They appeared to be in different languages, whose rasping accents were frequently distinguishable in reply, reproof, or threatening. Sometimes it seemed that several persons must be in this wing of the house; certain captives, and the guards of those captives. There were voices of a sort that I had never heard before despite my wide knowledge of foreign parts, and many that I did place belonging to certain nationalities. It sounded as if a guard was extorting some sort of information from terrified or rebellious prisoners. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
However, besides a few ghoulish dialogues, most of the questions and answers I could understand were historical or scientific; pertaining to very remote places and ages. These ghosts were discussing a massacre in 1370. After a long pause of silence, there was a terrific shriek followed by silence and muttering and a bumping sound. The crack of a stick on the skulls had here a crushing sound as if the bone was giving way, and the victims quivered and kicked as the lay. The ghost wrung the neck of one of the victims, and if the choke or squeak which it gave were not real, I know nothing of reality. My home got perceptibly darked. I heard hard breathing and horrid muffled sound. Shortly after, a shadow was seen on the wall. Then faint cries and groans unmistakably came up from the solid mahogany floors. As I walked further down the gallery, I found an oaken door in a frame of heavy masonry, which was obviously an entrance into the caverns beneath my home. When or how these catacombs could have been constructed, I was unable to say. However, in the catacombs was poor Garth’s body, with a sack over the head, the throat horribly mangled. I cannot bring myself to describe the scene in greater detail. The events that attended the discovery bewildered me so completely that I needed what I could get of a night’s rest to enable me to face the situation at all. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Ancient philosophers suggested that the appearance of spirits is evidence that we are part of a larger community of intelligences, a universe of interrelated species, both physical and nonphysical. We might conclude, therefore, that corrupt stimuli cause objects to rise in the air or to be hurled about; create thundering noises, and violently slamming doors. If there are forms of energy that can indeed be responsible for this phenomenon, are we ready to deal with the powers of the dead?
Take pleasure in the antiques, the gardens and experience the homemaking of Victorian times. Enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café. 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/
Dreams Do Not Come While You’re Awake!
The places and spaces of the dead always maintain a deep connection with time. Always at nightfall, the halls were not exactly pitch-black, but in fear of discovering of other people in my house, in fear of ghosts, and whatever else I may find, I lock all of the doors. All of the windows were covered by heavy curtains. And although I had all six hundred rooms memorized, nothing was every laid out in the way I expected. Would you not think that a hall would eventually lead to a room? Nonetheless, some halls only led to other halls that right angled and doubled back. One evening in particular, I went up a winding staircase and down a corridor, then up a staircase, across a short bridge, and down another staircase. However, I could not tell how far I had come or what floor I was on. The distinct spaces and unique features became new epicenters or “auras” of the dead, as Llanada Villa itself became a haunting and haunted maze of corridors and rooms, miles of twisting hallways and winding staircases teeming with specters of the past, present, and even the future. As I proceeded to the fourth floor a spider web started to envelop me, as if some invisible force was trying to wrap me into a wet, cold silken sheet. When I touched the web, however, there was nothing to be seen or felt, and yet, the clammy, cold force was still with me. Doors that had been locked were now wide open, the locks turned by unseen hands. As I looked behind me, there was a man on the stairs. A big man, trying to pull himself up the stairs. His eyes were blazing red with pain as he tried to call out to me. Apparently, he had been hurt, for his britches were torn and his shirt covered with blood. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
“Oh, Heavens, it cannot be true,” I thought to myself as I continued down the hallway. When I dared to look behind me again, the man was still holding out his hands in a desperate attempt to get my attention. However, when I did not respond, he became upset and starting shouting. At that very moment, trembling with fear, I screamed, ran into a room and locked the door. The house had been secured, and I did not understand how anyone could have gained entrance. In this room was a row of chairs, which ringed the mirrored walls. In the middle of the floor was a gigantic pool tale. A giant cobweb covered half the table, and as the pale light from the skylight trickled in, I thought I saw something scurry through the webbing. After an hour, I backed out of the billiards room and headed down another hall, then up another flight of stairs very steep and narrow. When I reached the landing, I was immediately impressed by all the beautiful wainscot oak, and garlands-like foliage and fruit, and the lovely old gilding work on the coats of arms and the organ pipes. Still, I felt a brooding sense of oppression. This was a dreadful night. I got another fright; for I heard something rustling outside in the passage. Now to be sure I thought I was done when someone whispered outside the door. I could not see anything. Then right down in the shadow under a buttress I made out what I shall say was two spots of red—a dull red it was—nothing like a lamp or a fire, but just so as you could pick them out of the black shadow. I turned my head to make sure of it, and then looked back into the shadow for those two red things, and they were gone, and for all I peered about and stared, there was not a sign of them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
With the physical powers drawn from the living, apparitions play and continue to exist in a World which they are no longer a part of. The presence lets you know it is its house and not yet yours, and the disturbances to attract your attention to make sure you realize that you are never really alone—those are the earmarks of the Llanada Villa, and if you are only a little bit psychic, sooner or later you will come in contact with the spirits. The spirits of the Llanada Villa are so complex that they involved both the living and the dead in a mutually entwining relationship that cannot exist one without the other, and to ever arbitrarily that which nature has evidently ordained somehow, would be as wrong as not heeding the cry for help from those who desperately want help and release. Man’s inhumanity to man has created countless remnants of tragic events that persist in the areas of their demise and even the walls are able to talk and tell posterity what has happened in them. Emotions cling to the surroundings forever. If you step into my home today, or a century from now, the vortex of feelings will still be here and you may relieve the moments as if the time in between had never passed. I have stared death in the eye many times, and I was not afraid. I listened hard and sure enough, it was coming to the door of the Daisy Bedroom. I gently slid out of bed and turned on the light, waiting. The host was just outside the door. I looked at the door knob, and it was being turned slowly. I did not panic, but nothing further was heard. Later that night when I awoke from a deep sleep with the fearful feeling that I was not alone in my room. In the semi-darkness my eyes fell upon the left side of the pillow where I distinguished the outline of a man. Finally I overcame my fears, and sat up in bed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Before me stood my late husband, dressed in dark clothes, looking directly at me. Without saying a word, he left slowly and quietly. I heard the steps, but when he reached the stairs, he did not go down, but through a wall. Afterwards I went downstairs, and checked the doors, looked in closets, and there was no one there. Dense fog began wrap around me with a cold clammy embrace, so thick that I could not see where I was going. Doors started opening and closing by themselves and spectral figures could be seen flinting from room to room. As I made my way to the Crystal Bedroom, I saw a solider. He was dark and had a noose around the neck; the rope was cut and his face seemed almost luminous. Suddenly I found it hard to breathe. Something was gripping me by the throat. It I was lifted off the ground by an unseen force and was unable to move even so much as a finger! It felt as if someone were strangling me. It felt like man, because his hands were so big, and his breath smelled of decayed teeth. I tried to scream, but could not move my lips. I tried to see who it was, but could only see the cold, white mist. The pain shot through me, as I appeared to be floating in the air/ “Help me! Somebody, please save me!” I cried out. Moments later, I fell to the floor. Dizzy, and struggling to catch my breath, I tried to stand, but lost my balance and fell to my knees. Every part of my body felt battered and bruised. Then curious sounds seemed to overwhelm the mansion. There were voices everywhere, shouting and calling out words that I could not understand. And the whole time, there was the sound of heavy footsteps, pounding furiously against the floor. Then a deep, weird groaning filled my home. I was just able to see across the darkened room, dimly lit from a yellow glow of the lamps from outside. A cooling breeze drifted beside me. Echoes of angry shouting drifted down from the floors above. Horrified, I just stood there in the darkness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
It is a pleasant house. Often flooded with light. The afternoon sun poured through white lace curtains and sparkled beautiful colours in the stained-glass windows. The light gave a glow to the freshly polished wood floors, but frequently I hear strange raps at night, raps that did not come from the pipes or other natural sources. Whenever I heard those noises, I would simply turn to the wall and pretend I did not hear them. When one night I was awakened from deep sleep by the feeling of a presence in my room. I sat up in bed and looked out. There, right in front of my bed, was the kneeling figure of a man with extremely dark eyes in a place face. I rubbed my eyes and looked again, but the apparition was gone. Before long, I had accepted the phenomenon as simply a dream, but again I knew this was not so, and I was merely accommodating my sense of logic. However, who had the stranger been? My ears were growing sensitive to a preternatural and intolerable degree. The darkness always teemed with unexplained sound. I rose from my bed. As I sat by the fire, trying to gather my senses. I felt silly being so frightened. But again, I was disturbed when I heard clawing and scratching noises coming from the hallway. I was too afraid to move or turn on the light to see what was causing it. After what seemed to be hours, it stopped. The next morning, I found my precious Lincrusta-Walton wallpaper ripped to shreds and blood splattered on the walls. The plaster had claw marks in it, exposing the lath. My ornately carved Victorian chairs and several of the marble-topped tables were knocked over and laying on top of the oriental rugs. The carved rosewood settee had been completely destroyed. The servants were deeply concerned. However, they understood and fearfully accepted the situation when I told them what happened. The threatening aura of the house was scaring me, but I would not admit that to the servants. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
January 13, 1889, the east wing was finally completed. I spent one night in the Mahogany Bedroom. The first night I was very, very frightened—hearing walking up and down the halls, and I was the only one in the house! There was a pervasive feeling of eeriness and a feeling that there was someone in the house. There were footsteps in the hall outside my bedroom door. I could hear the door knob turning, but I could not see through the misty vapour. Owls hooted and frogs croaked. Every rustle in the grass of leaves moving on the trees made me think of creatures of prey. The howl of a wolf made me envision ghosts and ghouls outside of my window. Shuttering with revulsion, I could not calm the restless apprehension bedeviling me. In the morning, the beckoning aroma of fresh coffee freed me from my thoughts. I went into the kitchen and filled a white coffee up, as I was adding cream and sugar, the kitchen door opened itself and closed itself, without anyone being visible. I carried the cup in to the morning room, when I noticed the front doors did the same thing—opened and closed themselves. The smell of damp Earth became overwhelming. Then, along with the footsteps I heard things being dragged upstairs in the Cupid Bedroom, heavy objects, it seemed. My heart stopped, and I questioned, “What is this? What is going on?” So I got up and went up there to look. However, I did not see anyone and nothing was disarranged. Wait. Something moved in the corner, almost hidden in the encroaching darkness. It was more dense fog. The fog started growing and encroaching upon the room. My heart started pounding hard. Frozen, I stood, watching in horror as the fog took on the form of a large woman with porcelain cerulean eyes, in a long dress. She looked directly into my eyes, and started to glid across the floor towards me. I was terribly frightened. But then I felt a warm, calming presence enveloping me. The apparition smiled and psychically communicated with me. Although she did not move her lips, I could hear her voice inside of my head. “Sarah, don’t fear me. As long as you stay here and continue to build, I will protect you.” Then, suddenly she disappeared. Early the next morning the golden dawn of dawn faded to a bright blue. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
The next morning, I woke with a start and sat up in bed before I knew what had awakened me. The room was filled with the somber light of dawn, and I was astonished to see William standing near the foot of the bed. “William? What are you doing here? You are—” My voice broke off as though it had been cut by something sharp. It was not right, I realized. He was not right. I could see the curtains through him. A coldness grayer than the dawn seeped into my body, into my very bones, and I heard myself make an anguished sound when William seemed to reach out toward me, his handsome face tormented. “No,” I whispered. “Oh, no…” I reached my had out toward him, but even as I did so, he was gone. And I was alone in the stark down. As I made my way down stairs, I saw a man with auburn hair, and it was William. I stood frozen, and when our eyes met, I almost cried out. Then the door bell rang and I looked away. When I turned back around, William was gone. I stood there and rushed down the stairs, there was no sign of Willian. No. No, of course there was not. Because he is dead. Realizing that my legs were actually shaking, I took a seat. When the housemaids arrived, one of them asked, “Are you all right, Mrs. Winchester?” she returned with a steaming cup. “You look sort of upset.” “I am fine, my dear.” I managed a smile that I doubted was very reassuring, but it was enough to satisfy the young housemaid. Left along again, the housemaid went up into the attic to clean, taking Zip with her, while the other was preparing breakfast. Suddenly she dropped her cleaning supplies and screamed as if in pain. She said that Devil had grabbed her. And reported that there was a man, whose fingernails had been ripped off, eyes poked out, hung lifeless from his shackles, his buttocks had been removed, a stick was protruding from a gaping hole that had been drilled into the top of his skill, which had evidently been used to “stir” his brains. She also said that Zip was so frightened that he steadfastly refused to cross the threshold. However, upon inspection, I could find no evidence to substantiate these claims. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Not all of the Victorian ghosts live in the mansion. Some mysterious things have been seen in the gardens. Down Palm Lane, dancing lights are seen there at night. The flowers are sometimes seen shimmering. Do not believer such things can happen? Neither did two handymen employed at The Winchester Mystery House years ago. That changed when they swore that William Wirt Winchester’s regular stroll across the squeaky floors of the Daisy Bedroom ended when he climbed in the coffin. An amazing sight it must have been when one evening when Mr. Willliam Winchester clambered onto the verandah still mounted, pounded through the doorway, down the hall and through the wall. There are phantoms of several generations. Formal gardens enhance the grounds; stables were once filled with the swiftest horses, and elaborate dinner parties were helped for aristocracy. Come experience and admire the timeless beauty of centuries old architecture. Enjoy the antiques, the gardens and experience the homemaking of Victorian times. Enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café.
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/
Today We Begin the Harrowing Story
I have many beautiful art glass windows in my house, but the most expensive in the house was specially designed for me by Tiffany’s of New York. I originally installed it in an outside wall, but later added a series of rooms that blocked off all direct sunlight. There is a peculiar apparition that is seen in the window itself. The form seen is that of a figure dressed in white walking across the window. At first there was only one figure, and then thirteen appeared. The figures began to move across the window long before the carpenters noticed them. They did so as many as twenty or thirty times a day, and would stop shortly after noon. Of the three figures, one was a man, stone was a woman, and one was a child. the man was an average commonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy gray shepherd’s-check trousers, not over-clean black frock coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling down as an ornament. A frayed top hat and a faded brown overcoat with a wrinkled velvet collar. Altogether, look as I would, there was nothing remarkable about the man save his blazing red head and the expression of extreme chagrin and discontent upon his features. The woman was very distinct in appearance. She was tall and very graceful. The two-year-old boy showed signs of disturbed behaviour, laughed hysterically and talked of “funny drinks.” The order of the apparitions in the window had a slight variation: the mother came alone from the northside of the window, and having gone about halfway across, she would stop, turn around, and wave her arms towards the quarter whence she had come. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
This gesture was answered by the entry of the father with the child. Both parents then bent over the child, and seemed to bemoan his fate; but the mother was always the most endearing in her gestures. The father then moved towards the other side of the window, taking the child with him, leaving the mother in the center of the window, from which she gradually retired to the north corner, whence she had come, waving her hand, as though making signs of farewell, as she retreated. After some little time she again appeared, bending forward, and evidently anticipating the return of the father and son, who never failed to reappear from the south side of the window where they had disappeared. The same gestures of distress and despair were repeated, and then all three retired together to the north side of the window. One evening, about nine o’clock, I was at the south-west door with Mr. Hansen. As I was unlocking it, I said, “Did you ever find anybody locked in here by accident?” “Mrs. Winchester, twice I saw shadows moving in that beautiful window. What a noise they did make!” Mr. Hasen then waited, leaning against the pillar, and watched the light wavering along the length of the landing. Mr. Hansen said they were well worthy seeing. “I suppose,” he said, as we walked toward the steps to the third floor, “that you’re too much used to going about here at night to feel nervous—but you must get a start every now and then, don’t you, when a book falls down or a door swings to?” “No, Mr. Hansen, I can’t say I think much about noises, not nowadays: I’m much more afraid of finding an escape of gas or a burst in the stove pipes than anything else. Still there have been times, years ago. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
“If you have an have half an hour to spare, sir, when we get back down to the second floor, Mr. Hansen, I could tell you about a tomb that was unearthed. I will not begin now; it strikes cold here, and we do not want to be dawdling about all night.” “Of course, Mrs. Winchester, I should like to hear it immensely.” “Very well, sir, you shall. Now if I might put a question to you,” I went on, as we passed down the hallway of the third floor, “in my little local guide—and not only there, but in the little book on Llanada Villa in the series—you will find it stared that this portion of the mansion was erected previous to the twelfth century. Now of course I should be glad enough to take that view, but—mind your step, sir—but, I put it to you—doe the lay of the stone here in this portion of the wall (which I tapped with my key), does it to your eye carry the flavour of what you might call Saxon masonry? No, I thought not; no more it does to me: now, if you will believe me, I have said as much to the other carpenters. However, there it is, I suppose every one’s got their opinions.” The discussion of this peculiar trait of human nature occupied Mr. Hansen almost up to the moment when we returned to the second floor. Usually the apparitions appeared during musical performances in the Grand Ballroom, and especially during one long eight-line hymn, when—for the only occasion without the child—the two parents rushed on (in stage phrase) and remained during the whole hymn, making the most frantic gestures of despair. Indeed the louder the music in that hymn, the more carried away with their grief did they seem to be. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Nothing could be more emphatic than the individuality of the several figures; the manner of each had its own peculiarity. If the stained glass were removed, I do not doubt that a much plainer view would be obtained. I think so, because the nearer the center of the window, where the stained glass was thickest, there the less distinct were the forms. It was like catching glimpses of them through leaves. However, nearer the edge of the window, where the colours were less bright, they were perfectly distinct; and still more so on the pane of unstained glass at the edge. There they seemed most clear, and gave one the impression of being real persons, not shadows. Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of Mr. Hasen since working on this project had taken on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquired. While standing on the landing looking at the window, I noticed his respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so that no sounds above a whisper were possible. His skin had a morbid chill and dryness. Of course, we were witnessing the most remarkable and perplexing incident in the whole spectacle. When the father and the child had taken their departure, the mother waved her hands, and after walking slowly to the very edge of the window, turned round whilst on the pane of unstained glass and waved her arm towards the other two with what one would call a stage gesture, and then I most distinctly saw, and emphatically declare I did see, the arm bare nearly to the shoulder, with beautiful folds of drapery hanging from it like a picture of a Greek vase. Nothing could be plainer than the drag of the robes on the ground after the figures as they retired at the edge of the window, where the clear glass was, previous to going out. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
The impression produced was that one saw real persons in the air, for though the figures were seen on the window, yet they gave one the impression of walking past the window outside, and not moving upon the glass. I am not inclined to think that the trees outside the mansion at the east end can originate the appearance by any optical illusion produced by waving branches. I could see their leaves rustling in the air, and their movement was evidently unconnected with the appearance and movement of the figures. So I began making enquires on my estate. I discovered that several people had indeed seen the shapes upon the glass. One spoke of a female figure with a slightly skipping step. Another servant said he saw an ancient gravestone from the window. The belief that the tree beside the Tiffany window were somehow responsible for the optical illusion was soon dashed; the trees were cut down, but the figures appeared still. One correspondent wrote to me in the winter of 1889, explain that “as I have no faith in ghost, I have been most wishful to have the matter cleared up. On 25 March 1687, the land you now own was involved in a remarkable satanic horror story. A young girl came to the farmhouse for help, saying that she wanted to get away from a group of satanists who had threatened to kill her. She confessed to the owner that she had murdered her own baby in ‘frenzied ritual.” He befriended the girl, twenty-three-year-old Caludia, and allowed her to stay in his home. She kept telling him that she couldn’t stand hearing the screams of her children inside of her head. And on April 20th, 1687, she died from an overdose of Laudanum and postmortem examination revealed thirteen scars and burns on her body which he tended to and which supported her claims of having been involved in satanic ritual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
“Further, Claudia left a 13-page diary in which she said he had been involved with a satanic group since she was hired to work on a nearby farm at age thirteen and her writings went on to make incredible claims. She described how she went to coven meetings with a boy named Dorian whom she had met while living on the farm. The boy’s mother was a High Priestess and his father was The Master—a known satanic term for the leading member of the group. She described other practice which are known to be common in satanic altar initiations—that of having her armed pricked and blood drained into a chalice from which it was drunk. ‘Much sexual perversion went on that night…later I learned more of Satan and practiced my arts calling on my power of darkness. Satan had become my Lord and Master.’ Later she described how she aborted a baby she was expecting by Dorian then made the claim that Dorian himself was sacrificed by his own father in retribution, and how she was forced to watch as he was hung upside down. She claimed to have seen other sacrifices of many new born babies, stabbing them at orgies in which Laudanum was taken heavily. She also appeared to have had another child of her own which was also offered up for sacrifice. At her inquest of 13 May, the midwife recorded an open verdict after the she noted that Claudia’s body had signs which confirmed she had given birth at least once, and had been subject to sexual abuse. The constables took up the case, but no charges were brought and the investigation was closed without further action.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
I was shocked of these allegations which seemed to be more than enough to inspire the most lurid of headline writers, more than to testify to the credibility of all who were proffering these dramatic and barely believable accounts of satanic abuse. Everything these people said was being taken as gospel in the village because the allegations were coming from the mouths of so-called experts. However, there were claims of rampant satanic worship in Nova Albion at this time, which was documented by English charters led by Sir Francis Drake for England. There were horrifying claims that fifty women were suffering from the after-effects of cannibalism and an average of ten occult survivors a week were being sacrificed. Dr. Harley said he read of several cases recorded by Theodorous de Bry where children had been killed. There were, of course, also several stories concocted around these three figures in my home. Some said that they issued from the grave beside the east window. Other said that they were victims of the plague, and were burned outside where this window now stands. It may or may not be relevant that the figures seemed to appear when the sound of the organ and of voices raised in song. The case was thoroughly investigated in 1889 by Dr. Robert Radakovic of The Ghost Club, where it was revealed that Llanda Villa had been “haunted” for two or three hundred years by the same figure or figures. Optical tests on the possible patterns of light and reflection had come to no results. It was remarked that “the ghost has been seen from the inside while outside nothing was visible.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
The interior of Lalanda Villa was much altered in the late nineteenth century, and a complex of rooms was built behind this haunted window. However, no satisfactory explanation has ever been given for the strange phenomena reported here. While designing Lalanda Villa, I was gaining my tastes from the venerable town around me, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of my mansion. With the years, my devotion to ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of gothic architecture, furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from my sphere of interests. These tastes are important to remember for they outwardly concealed knowledge of bygone matters so that one would have fancied the they are literally transferred to a former age through some obscure short of autohypnosis. However, the true madness, I am certain, came with a later change; after the portrait and ancient papers of Saint Adalrich the Duke of Alsacre had been unearthed. Some terrible invocations being chanted under strange and secret circumstances; after certain answers to these invocations had been plainly indicated, and a frantic letter penned under agonizing and inexplicable conditions; after the wave of vampirism and the ominous legends of Neustria; and after the farmer’s memory commenced to exclude contemporary images whilst his voice failed and his physical aspect underwent the subtle modification so many subsequently noticed. He was later diagnosed with porphyria. And a final investigation resulted which virtually proved the authenticity of the papers and of their monstrous implications at the same time that those papers were borne forever from human knowledge. Loving antiquities so keenly, the papers and portrait were secretly concealed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Bedroom fashions changed dramatically over the Victorian years due to several factors. Early in the period, homes were heated by fireplaces and therefore could be uncomfortable in the colder mothers, although a heated bedroom was considered an indulgence and windows were left open during the winter. In reality, only the rich had fireplaces in their bedrooms. Still, one had to keep warm while asleep and bed drapery, consisting variously of canopies, tents, and other enclosures used to shut out drafts, was essential, as was heavy draper on windows. Even doors had decorative, but also functional, drapes called portieres that served to keep out drafts when covering the door.
Mrs. Winchester was wealthy and her wealth and prosperity were even envied among the elite. She had no less than 47 fireplaces in her home. By the end of the century, two things had changed that affected bedroom styles. First, coal and woodburning parlour stoves came into use, were more efficient at heating a house, and could be installed in any room. (Central heating, though available after the Civil War, was really only for the very rich.). Secondly, and more importantly, was an increased knowledge of diseases, germs, and bacteria and how to combat them. Plenty of fresh air with good circulation, and the elimination of materials such as bed draper that not only impeded air circulation but provided a place for dust and bacteria to collect were deemed essential. Since the bedroom served as the place where daily and weekly ablutions were performed (until bathrooms became separate entities), and as a birthing and maternity room, it was important that it have a healthy environment.
Styles of bedroom furniture were affected by this new found interest in and concern for prevention of illness and diseases. The classic English styles of Sheraton, Chippendale, and Hepplewhite migrated from the eighteenth century into the Victorian period. Tall, four-poster canopied beds enclosed the sleeper in heavy drapes of wool or lined damask of velvet, a carryover from the time when houses were built without corridors, and enclosures around the bed were needed for privacy, as well as warmth. By the time mid-century had arrived, the full enclosure had receded to the half-tester, or half-canopy, from which hung draperies that covered only the head and shoulders. Fully enclosed beds were now considered unhygienic, as they limited air circulation and the yards of fabric attracted dust. Dust ruffles and window valances were also discarded in the same house cleaning. In the southern climates, netting was still necessary to protect against insects, and its slightness did not impede air movement.
Gothic Revival furniture was the style into the 1840s and its massiveness was particularly suited to bedrooms. Closets were not an architectural feature at this time; clothing was stored in large cabinets called armories or wardrobes, usually with double, mirrored, and washstand, topped with marble or wood, were manufactured for middle-class homes in the cottage style. “Spool” beds were popular, nicknamed “Jenny Lind beds” because the Swedish Nightingale was rumoured to have slept in when she toured the United States of America. Made of less costly woods like maple or pine, the simple furniture could be elaborately painted with floral or foliage patterns. The well-to-do preferred the more opulent style of Rococo Revival or Renaissance Revival in woods or walnut, mahogany, or rosewood with carvings and applied moldings. As with other furniture in the house, golden oak, promoted by the Arts and Crafts Movement, was popular at the end of the century. Additional pieces of furniture found in the bedroom were writing desks, chaises, or other upholstered furniture.
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Randolph Harris II International 