Do you have a ghost hunting bucket list? I definitely do!!! On my list is Franklin Castle (also known as the Tiedemann House) in Cleveland, Ohio. Ever heard of it? Have you ever been there?
Franklin Castle is an American Queen Anne style Victorian stone house. It has four stories and more than twenty rooms and eighty windows. Lots and lots of places for ghosts to be and plenty of windows for them to look out while you stand outside gawking at this beautiful structure.
The Tiedemann House was built in 1881-1883 for a prominent German immigrant, Hannes Tiedemann. It was predominantly called Franklin Castle due to being on Franklin Boulevard, which was one of the most prestigious residential avenues in Cleveland. Hannes Tiedemann lived in the house with his mother, Wiebeka, his wife, Louise, with whom they had six children.
Unfortunately, life in Franklin wasn't very happy. The Tiedemann's 15-year-old daughter, Emma, died in 1881 and shortly thereafter Wiebeka passed away. Over the next three years, they lost three more children. So Hannes and Louise have now lost four of their six children. I can't imagine losing one child, much less four. Sad to think if their souls did not move on from that house.
It's reported that Emma died of diabetes, but rumors started going around that Hannes had something to do with her death, some reporting that he was a harsh, mean person.
Louise obviously had a tough time with the loss of her children. Hannes thought he would cheer her by adding a ballroom in the house, which runs the length of the house on the fourth floor. It's also said that Louise distracted herself by adding secret rooms to the home. Also added were turrets and other oddities that can still be seen in the castle today.
Louise Tiedemann’s died from liver disease in 1895. Hannes quickly remarried, spurring rumors that he had murdered her in a rage. He was also accused of hanging his own (allegedly) mentally ill niece in the house and of killing his mistress, a servant girl named Rachel, his other children, and his illegitimate daughter. I was not able to find concrete evidence of any of that, but tales like that definitely help get the scare factor on. What good is a haunting if it doesn't involve someone who may have killed people in their home? Tragic? Yes. Spooky feeling? Absolutely!!!
So, Hannes remarries, moves out, and sold the house. Thirteen years late, he died of a stroke, reportedly while taking a walk in a park.
In 1913, the house was bought by the German Socialist Party, being used mostly for meetings and parties for the next 55 years.
James Romano bought the home in 1968 and lived there with his wife and six kids. The family reported many encounters with ghosts , attempted exorcisms, and had a ghost-hunting group of the time, Northeast Ohio Psychical Research Society, investigate the home. The Romanos left the home in 1974 and sold it to Sam Muscatello. He planned on turning the castle into a church. Sam offered haunted house tours and overnight stays in the home in order to raise money for turning the castle into the church. In 1975, human bones were found in a closet, but it is believed that they were planted by the new owner looking for publicity for the ghost tours.
Franklin Castle was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Who here loves the movie Wizard of Oz? If you do, you of course would remember Judy Garland? Who can forget Judy Garland??? Well, her fifth husband Michael DeVinko bought Franklin Castle in 1984. He immediately started making renovations to the home. Over the next ten years, he spent close to one million dollars on renovations, even tracking down some of the original furnishings of the castle. DeVinko ended up putting the house up for sale in 1994.
Franklin Castle ended up being empty from 1994 to 1999. Michelle Heimburger, one of Yahoo!'s early employees, purchased the castle and carriage house for $350,000 using her stock. Michelle wanted to restore the home, but a fire ended up badly damaging the home in 1999. Extensive repairs were done, but full restoration was not completed.
Rumors came about in 2004 stating that Franklin Castle would be completely renovated and turned into the Franklin Castle Club. In 2006, this was discovered to be false. No repairs had been made, no memberships had been sold, pictures on the website were either close up shots of architecture of the building or stolen from other websites. The exterior stone of the building was cleaned and the parapet on the left side was rebuilt according to the 18th-century design...but that's about all that was done.
In March 2011, a fire damaged the carriage house. I did not find any information as to what caused this fire...did the ghosts have anything to do with it?
In July 2011, the Franklin Castle had been rezoned to allow it to become a three-family dwelling.
Chiara Dona Dalle, a European tapestry artist, purchased the home in 2011 for $260,000.
So...how about them hauntings??? According to an article on hauntedhouses.com, on the mild side, doors have been seen flying off their hinges without any visible help. Lights freely go on and off by themselves, chandeliers twirl with no help from air currents, mirrors fog up without a logical reason and murmuring voices can be clearly heard in visibly empty rooms. The one man to stay at the Castle during the thirties was ill, and needed the care of a nurse. She was scared out of her job one night when she heard the loud, mournful crying of a child, long dead.
In 1968, the large, unsuspecting Romano family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Romano and their 6 children, moved into what they thought was their new home, with plans to open a restaurant. They learned that they had unpleasant company as fellow housemates on the day they moved in. Busy with unpacking, the parents sent their twin 2 year olds and twin 3 year olds upstairs to play. They came down and told their puzzled parents about how they found a sad little girl in a long dress, and asked for a cookie to try to cheer her up. After a search of the upstairs no such child was found. This scenario happened several times.
Next, Mrs. Romano heard organ music coming from a non-existent organ. She also heard heavy footfalls, described as tramping/marching up on the third floor, as if telling the living to stay away from the third floor. Feeling that unfriendly presence(s) had claimed the third and fourth floors, and the living were unwelcome, the children were no longer allowed to play on those floors, and that the adults would no longer be going there alone.
Mrs. Romano’s instincts were proven to be correct, when three friends came to visit them. The three friends decided to take a look at the third floor. As they went up the stairs to get there, they were surprised to see an eerie, “vaporous blanket of fog” materialize right in front of them. One brave soul walked toward this vaporous thing to investigate what it was.
Before she could get close, she began to lose her eyesight, and her friends pulled her free from this insidious entity, before she fainted. After this scary incident, the third floor was searched and no possible physical explanation for this cloud could be found.
Whatever was occupying the top two floors, wasn’t satisfied with only having half the floor space. On Halloween, the phone rang around 12:00 am, waking up Mrs. Romano. On the other end of the phone, a voice which sounded like it came from the grave asked her, “Can I sleep with you tonight?” Perhaps it was one of the ghosts of the dead children, wanting some comfort. Mrs. Romano screamed, and threw the phone. She vowed never to answer another phone call in the middle of the night. About a week later, Mrs. Romano awoke from a deep sleep and found herself in the middle of the bedroom floor, screaming so loud that she had lost her voice. Some unseen presence was screaming with her. In another occurrence, some unknown presence pulled the covers off the beds of the two oldest boys.
After consulting a psychic Catholic priest, Mrs. Romano learned that the main culprit that was tormenting her was Luise Franklin, and that at times she was actually possessed or taken over by Luise. He also identified the entity that was racing up and down the stairs and slamming the doors, as that of the 15 year old, Emma. The priest advised the family to move out because he felt evil presences that didn’t accept them as owners of the mansion, and wanted them to leave. In 1974, the Romano family sold Franklin Castle because Mrs. Romano had become physically ill, and the house was “getting the best of her.”
After a couple of other owners. Franklin Castle wound up in the hands of George Mirceta who lived there alone during the week, and gave tours on the weekends. After each 2 hour tour, George passed out cards and asked his visitors to write down if they saw anything unusual. Some spotted a woman in black in the tower room, a woman in white, some felt temporarily paralyzed, and some found themselves “Babbling incoherently.”
George himself had heard babies crying, but he claimed he didn’t believe in ghosts, and wouldn’t be living there if he did. He rationalized everything that had happened there, must have logical explanations, even if he didn’t know what they were.
Finally, George Mirceta admitted that the mansion was haunted, and visitors who took his weekend tours still experienced strange phenomena, saw apparitions and felt presences, as he had written down everything reported to him in a log.
The next owner, Samuel Muscatello turned Franklin Castle into a church, and gave tours to raise money. One photographer, while sitting downstairs with the owner, heard a woman call his name. When he bounded up the stairs, no one was there.
A disc Jockey who took a tour, saw something that shook him up, but he wouldn’t share what happened. When John Webster, who came to the castle to get info for a radio program on hauntings, something ripped the large tape recorder from his shoulder, and threw it down the stairs, smashing it into pieces.
Muscatello sold Franklin Castle when the church idea didn’t work out.
Who haunts Franklin Castle? Is it the Tiedemann family? Is it something that was on the land before the castle was even built? Not sure we will ever know, but according to many, the Franklin Castle is definitely haunted...by something.
-- Audre
crypticplanet.com
Sources:
hauntedhouses.com
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