THE MOST HAUNTED HOUSE IN OHIO?

The True Story of Franklin Castle

In the middle 1990s, when I began writing about ghosts and hauntings across the Midwest, there was one house that I was frequently referred to by people in Ohio – Franklin Castle. Officially known as the Tiedemann mansion, the unusual structure had long been called the most haunted house in the state. During its long and rather odd history, the ghosts became an integral part of its lore. For years, tales were told of doors that exploded off their hinges, lights that spun around on their own, electrical circuits that behaved erratically, the inexplicable sounds of a baby crying, and even a woman in black who had been spotted staring forlornly from a small window in the front tower room.

According to local tales, there have always been ghosts in this house. And this should come as no surprise considering the dark deeds, murders, and diabolical events that have been linked to this place. But how many of those stories are true, and how many are merely the stuff of legend? 

Hannes Tiedemann
At the edge of Franklin Boulevard in Cleveland, you’ll find the castle – a place where it is hard to separate fact from fiction. It’s an eerie and forbidding stone structure that has long been considered a spooky place by history buffs, architects, and the general public alike. Rising high above the street, its stone tower looms over the property. The exterior is adorned with menacing gargoyles and for decades, its windows were dark and filled with shadows. There were originally over thirty rooms in the house and intricate carvings filled the interior. The entire third floor was a grand ballroom and the top floor offered sweeping views of the city and Lake Erie.  

And, of course, there were the rumors. Secret passageways, it was said, honeycombed the house and sliding panels were used to hide the entrances to these hidden corridors. It was claimed that a young girl was once murdered in one of these hallways by her uncle, because he believed her to be insane. In the front tower, a gruesome ax murder had once taken place and it was in that tower that one of the former owners found a secret cabinet that contained human bones. Cleveland’s Deputy Coroner, Dr. Lester Adelson, examined the bones in January 1975 and stated that they were very old, and definitely human. Many believed that the forgotten bones had been left there by the house’s original owner, a successful banker with a penchant for evil.

Hannes Tiedemann was a German immigrant to Cleveland, who started out as a barrel-maker and a wholesale grocer. He later turned to banking and founded the Euclid Avenue Savings & Trust, which made him very successful and very wealthy. He decided that he wanted a grand home that befit his newly acquired social status and hired the famed Cleveland architectural firm of Cuddell and Richardson to build it for him. When the house was designed in the late nineteenth century, Franklin Boulevard was one of the most upscale residential areas in Cleveland, perhaps second only to Euclid Avenue’s so-called “Millionaire’s Row.”

The house was built over the period of 1881-1883 and it was meant to not only provide an upscale residence for his family, but also to provide a temporary place for friends, family, and others emigrating from Germany to stay when they first arrived in Cleveland. The house replaced an earlier house on the property, which was torn down during the construction of the castle. Hannes moved into the house with his wife, Louise; his mother, Wiebeka; their children, August, Emma, and Dora; and several servants. More children were born, but the stories say that life in the castle was never happy. By 1891, it had turned tragic.

In January 1891, Tiedemman’s mother and his daughter, Emma, died within weeks of one another. Although Wiebeka’s death was from natural causes, Emma died from diabetes. In those days, death from the disease came as a horrible, lingering starvation for which there was no cure. Over the next three years, the Tiedemann family would bury three more children, one of them just 11 days old. It truly seemed as though the family was cursed.  

To take his wife’s mind off the tragedies, Tiedemann began extensive renovations on the house. It was during this expansion that the ballroom was added to the third floor, as well as the turrets and gargoyles on the exterior, giving the house a more castle-like appearance. Gas lighting was also installed throughout the house and, the legends say, so were the secret passages, concealed rooms, and hidden doors. Unfortunately, though, the hidden passageways and secret chambers in the house have vanished with time – if they existed at all. No trace of them can be found today, other than a small stairway that was used by the servants to get from the kitchen to the front door, which were commonly found in large homes of the era.

Of course, the absence of such mysterious passages tends to cast doubt on some of the more heinous stories of the house – that Hannes Tiedemann used the tunnels for his sexual indiscretions and even to commit murder. In one tunnel, leading away from the ballroom, Tiedemann was supposed to have murdered his niece by hanging her from a rafter. She was insane, it has been said, and he did it to put her out of her misery. He is also supposed to have murdered a young servant girl on her wedding day because she spurned his advances. Another version of this story claims the murdered woman was actually Tiedemman’s mistress, killed because she wanted to marry another man. Some say she is the woman in black who haunts the tower room. But, if there are no “secret passages” in the house, do the stories of the murders committed in them – stories that seem to form the foundation for the ghost stories in the house – have any truth to them at all?

Even without them, however, there was still plenty of death and tragedy linked to the house. On March 24, 1895, Louise Tiedemann died at the age of 57 from liver failure. Hannes remarried a short time later, leading many to speculate about the circumstances of Louise’s death. Soon after, Tiedemann sold the castle to a local brewing family named Mullhauser and moved to a grander home on Lake Road. His second marriage did not last long. He divorced her after only a year, leaving her with nothing. 

By 1908, Tiedemann’s entire family, including his son, August, and his grandsons, had passed away. There was no one left to inherit his fortune or to comfort him in his old age. Tiedemann died later that same year, suffering a massive stroke while walking in the park one day. Had the curse been lifted from the house, or was more tragedy coming?

The “Haunted House”
In 1913, the Mullhauser family sold the castle to the local German Socialist Party, who officially used the house for meetings and parties. Rumors quickly spread, though, that the Socialists were actually using the place as a headquarters for spy efforts during World War I. Years later, a German shortwave radio was allegedly found hidden in the rafters. The infamous “secret passages” were claimed to be the scene of a brutal murder during the Germans Socialist occupation of the house.

The house was mainly unoccupied during this time, but it’s possible that they may have rented out at least portions of it. During an interview in the 1970s, a Cleveland nurse recalled that she had cared for an ailing attorney in the castle in the 1930s. She remembered being often terrified at night by the sound of a small child crying. More than 40 years later, she told a reporter that she "would never set foot in that house again."

In January 1968, the German Socialist group sold the house to James Romano. Romano, his wife, and their six children, soon moved into the mansion, a place that Mrs. Romano had always been fascinated with. They planned to open a restaurant in the house, but soon changed their minds. On the very day that the family moved in, she sent her children upstairs to play. A little while later, they came back downstairs and asked if they could have a cookie for their new friend, a little girl who was upstairs crying. Mrs. Romano followed the children back upstairs, but found no little girl. 

Mrs. Romano also reported hearing organ music coming from different parts of the house, footsteps in the hallways and on the stairs, disembodied voices, and the sounds of people coming from the former ballroom. The Romanos consulted a Catholic priest, who declined to do an exorcism, but told them that he sensed a bad presence in the house. He advised them to leave. Instead, they turned to the now-defunct Northeast Ohio Psychical Research Group, who decided to investigate the castle. If the stories are to be believed, one of the ghost hunters actually ran screaming from the house in the middle of the investigation.  

After enduring years of ghostly activity, the Romanos had reached their limit by 1974, and sold the house to Sam Muscatello, who was eager to cash in on the castle’s eerie reputation. He began offering guided tours of the house and making notes about alleged encounters by visitors with the woman in black, strange sounds, vanishing objects, and cold spots in the castle. He also used the media to generate publicity and once, during a live segment on Cleveland radio, host John Webster had a tape recorder pulled off his shoulder and thrown down a staircase. Webster later recalled, "I just stood there holding the microphone as I watched the tape recorder go flying down to the bottom of the stairs, where it broke into pieces."

Another time, during a television piece, crew member Ted Ocepec witnessed a hanging ceiling light that suddenly began turning in circular motions. Someone suggested that perhaps traffic vibrations on the street outside had caused the movement of the light. Ocepec didn’t think so. "I just don’t know," he said, "but there’s something in that house."

Muscatello began searching for the alleged secret passages in the house and that was when he found a pile of human bones behind a panel in the tower. Although few deny that real human bones were removed from the castle, whom they belonged to and how they ended up there has been debated. Some took the bones as proof that Hannes Tiedemann was the murderer that legend claimed him to be, but others, however, believe that Muscatello stashed the bones there as “evidence” behind the haunting at Franklin Castle. 

Unable to make the castle into the tourist attraction that he had hoped it would be, Muscatello eventually decided to sell the place. It was purchased by a doctor, who later sold the house – for the same price he paid for it – to Cleveland’s Police Chief Richard Hongisto. The chief and his wife declared that the mansion would be the perfect place to live but then, less than a year later, they abruptly sold the house to George Mirceta, who knew nothing of the mansion’s reputation at the time. He bought the castle because of its gothic architecture, but soon learned that it was alleged to be haunted. Following in the footsteps of the Sam Mustatello, he started offering tours of the place.

Mirceta lived alone in the house, but had many visitors. During his tours, he asked his visitors to record any of their strange experiences in a guest book before they left. Some claimed to see a woman in white, others a woman in black. Some told of hearing babies crying, or seeing things move about. One woman even claimed that she felt like she was being choked in the tower room. Mirceta admitted that he couldn’t explain all of his experiences in the house, but he maintained that it was not haunted. If it was, he told a reporter, he would too scared to live there. "There has to be a logical explanation for everything," he told an interviewer.

To the Present Day
In 1984, the house was sold again. It was purchased by Michael DeVinko, who almost immediately began making major renovations to the house. DeVinko, whose stage name was Mickey Dean and who was the last husband of singer and actress Judy Garland, spent close to $1 million restoring the house over the next decade. He claimed to have no problems with the resident ghosts, but surmised that it may have been because he was taking care of the old place again. He successfully tracked down the original blueprints to the house, some of the Tiedemann furniture, and even the original key to the front door, which still worked. Despite all this, DeVinko still decided to move out and put the house up for sale in 1994. 

The castle was sold again in 1999, but was torched by an arsonist soon after, causing substantial damage to the place. The new owner spent a large sum of money in repairs but was never able to complete the restoration of the house. During the time that he worked on the house, the owner stated that he was unsure if it was haunted, or whether he believed in ghosts at all. However, he did say that many of his friends and family had odd experiences in the castle. He added that it was not a scary place, but it was a little creepy, especially in the middle of the night. He said, “I've heard strange sounds and hoped to see something or hear something that would prove to me that ghosts exist, but so far it hasn't happened. So far it's been no spookier than sleeping alone in any old house that creaks in the wind or has rattling pipes."

In 2003, the house was sold once more and the new owner, a local land developer, announced hopes of renovating the mansion and turning it into the Franklin Castle Club, with a restricted membership. But three years later, it was discovered that there was no truth to the “plan.” No repairs had been made and photographs that had been publicized were either close-ups of individual pieces of architecture, or were older pictures from other sources. No work had been done, no memberships sold, and there were even claims that the house had been used a location for filming pornography. The owners were no longer permitted to allow anyone on the property.

Five more years passed and in July 2011, it was announced that the castle had been rezoned to allow it to become a three-family dwelling, and a sale was pending. It was purchased later that year by a European tapestry artist named Chiara Dona dale Rose. A permit was granted for residential exterior alterations in 2012 and local news sources reported that it was to be converted into a multiple-unit property. Renovations have been made, but it remains a work in progress, and closed to the public.

Is Franklin Castle truly as haunted as the stories say, or are the legends of the house simply tall tales that were overblown by previous owners to get paying tourists in the door? At this point, no one can say for sure. As more of the incorrect history of the house has been debunked, the source of the ghost stories becomes harder to find. But if we dismiss the stories of Hannes Tiedemann as a brutal killer and the tales of secret passages and mysterious murders, does that mean the castle is not haunted at all? No, I don’t believe that it does. No matter what, the castle is a place that is marked by both tragedy and death and the events of the past may have certainly left an impression behind. As with other legendary spots, it may turn out that Franklin Castle is just as haunted as we have already heard that it is – just not for the reasons that myth and legends about the place like to claim.

By Troy Taylor / American Hauntings
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HAUNTED JACKSONVILLE: "THE CITY'S MOST DEADLY FIRE"

HAUNTINGS OF THE HOCKENHULL BUILDING

On January 15, 1966, seven people were killed when a fire raged through the apartments above Walgreen’s drug on the east side of Jacksonville, Illinois’ downtown square. This was, by all known accounts, the greatest loss of life from fire in the city’s history. Investigation later ruled that the fire had been an accident, started by a burning cigarette, but the eerie result was that it left a haunting in its wake – a chilling presence that still makes its presence known in the building today.

Warga’s (the name of the Walgreens store) in Jacksonville was still located on the downtown square in 1966. It was a remnant of what had once been a thriving shopping district during the heyday of the smaller, family-owned businesses that once dominated commerce in every American city. Jacksonville was no exception. Anything that you could possibly want could be purchased downtown during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. After World War II, a shift in where people shopped began to occur, but before that, you could buy everything from suits to dresses, furniture, tools and auto parts in downtown Jacksonville. Many locals purchased toiletries or had prescriptions filled at Walgreens, which was located in what was known as the Hockenhull Building.

 The Hockenhull Building on the downtown square.

John and Robert Hockenhull arrived in Jacksonville in 1839. Both men had been apothecaries in England and they opened a small drug store on the city square. They prospered and soon opened a dry goods store on East State Street. In 1866, Robert branched out further and with Raymond Kind and Edward Elliott, opened the Hockenhull, King and Elliott Bank. By this time, Robert had purchased a home on Grove Street and had become a trustee for Illinois College and for the All-Female Academy, that later became known as MacMurray College. He was one of the most important men in the city and one of the wealthiest. In 1891, he expanded his holdings with the construction of the Hockenhull Building on the east side of the square. The towering stone building still looms above the sidewalk today, although any business that would have been known to Robert Hockenhull has long since vanished from Jacksonville.

Warga’s was just one of the many businesses still operating during the fading days of the old square. Before its recent revitalization, the square declined for decades, much like most downtown business districts across the country. As new businesses opened along Morton Avenue, downtown Jacksonville slowly began to die. Many of the remaining stores had apartments over the shops, often cramped and dingy lofts that were as weary as the declining businesses below them. In the Hockenhull Building above Warga’s, there were apartments on the second and third floors – apartments that became death traps on a cold winter’s night in January 1966.

According to newspaper reports at the time, the scene at the fire was chaotic. Residents in the building frantically tried to escape the flames while firefighters were working to extinguish the blaze and save the tenants. One man, Robert Lee Brown, 18, who was sleeping with his family in one room of their four-room flat, was rescued by firefighters who used an aerial ladder truck to whisk five people from the upper part of the building within five minutes of their arrival on the scene. The only other member of the Brown family to escape death that night was one of Robert’s younger siblings. The rest of them perished from asphyxiation from the smoke.

The Warga's drug store on the lower floor of the Hockenhull Building on the night of the deadly fire in January 1966. 

John Yeager, his wife and two children were trapped in their third floor apartment, but remaining calm, he managed to get them out of a rear window and to a roof below. Tragically, an elderly couple, Alice Leggett and Charles Souza, who lived just on the other side of the Yeagers’ wall, were not so lucky.

Authorities believed that about a dozen people escaped from the apartments on the second and third floors, including Kathryn Wease, 19, and her two children, ages 13-months and 6-weeks. The janitor of the building, Virgil Duncan, managed to make it out with two unidentified tenants, who lived above Barney’s gift shop. Those who died in the blaze were Leota Mae Brown, 46; her four children, Ray, 15; Donna, 14; Rickey, 10; and Jimmy, 2; along with Leggett and Souza.

Elsie Brannan, 76, was the first to realize that something was wrong in the building around 1:30 a.m. Unable to sleep, she repeatedly thought she smelled smoke, opened her door and saw the flames in the hallway. Although elderly, Elsie reached a window transom, some six feet off the floor, and managed to pull herself up over the door and through the narrow opening. She dropped to the floor in the dense smoke and made her way through a storeroom above the drug store, breaking a window to reach the roof. Several people who escaped from the fire later told reporters that they heard someone yelling “in back, and ringing what sounded like a bell or someone banging on pans.”

Mrs. Brannan would later admit that she did what she could to rouse the other sleeping tenants. She then broke out a window at the rear of Birdsell’s tailor shop, making her way through the darkness to a window above East State Street, which she promptly shattered. Waving a piece of cloth from the tailor shop, she was eventually spotted by a motorist driving past.

Gary Strubbe, who was driving around the square a few moments later, saw Clara Davis, her daughter, Kathryn Wease, and her two young children frantically screaming for help from an upper floor. He went immediately to the police department and sounded the alarm. Within minutes, the fire department was on the scene. When firefighters arrived, Clara and Kathryn were each holding a child out of the apartment windows and rescue workers at first thought they might throw them from the second floor. Mrs. Davis later explained that they were holding the infants outside of the window to keep them out of the dense smoke. Firefighters used the aerial ladder to save the women, children and Robert Brown and then to work looking for other survivors.

Led by Assistant Fire Chief Alvin Smith, a crew equipped with oxygen masks groped their way through the smoke to the third floor. Meanwhile, other firefighters battled their way to the second floor, where they discovered the origin of the fire and quickly began trying to douse the flames that were roaring up the wall to the third floor. By this time, nearly 100 people had gathered in the square and many of the men assisted the firefighters in moving hose lines.

A cheer went up as survivors were brought to safety, but then a hush fell over the crowd when someone called out that there were still people trapped on the third floor. By this time, though, the crew led by Assistant Chief Smith had reached the victims and were carrying the bodies out onto a roof at the rear of the building. The departure of several ambulances without their emergency lights bore mute witness to the fact that some of the people trapped in the building had not escaped with their lives. “On Saturday morning,” one news reporter wrote, “Jacksonville asked why and how?”

Fire Chief Dale Bond attempted to answer the questions. The fire, he stated, had started in the second-floor apartment, occupied by a woman named Alice McCausland. She had been found semi-conscious in a lower floor hallway between Warga’s and Edward’s jewelry store. When Police Officer John Irlam asked her at the scene how she escaped the fire, she reportedly told him, “There’s no fire up there, I put it out.”

According to Chief Bond, the fire spread from McCausland’s bedroom up the wall. The intense heat shattered a transom window and spread up the hallway wall to the third floor. Damage to the building was estimated in excess of $50,000.

Later that month, at a coroner’s inquest, Chief Bond testified that, during two separate interrogations, McCausland confessed that she had dropped a lighted cigarette in bed, which caught fire, starting the blaze. Bond stated, “She said ‘I dropped a cigarette in bed, and when I found it, smoke was coming from the covers. Then I put it out.’” Bond then said that he asked her what she did next and she replied, “'went to bed.’”

During later questioning, the chief said that McCausland would not repeat her earlier confession and firmly told him that she made it a rule not to smoke in bed. According to Charles Runkel, the police chief at the time, no charges were ever filed against McCausland for the deaths of the seven people killed in the fire. Officially, the blaze was listed as accidental.

But accident or not, seven people, including four children, died that night in the rundown apartments above the drug store. According to scores of people who have experienced the haunting that lingers in the Hockenhull Building, those who perished in the fire do not rest in peace.

In the middle 1990s, life began to return to the downtown square. Old buildings saw new activity as coffee shops, art galleries and small shops began seeking out the nostalgia of yesterday in the brick buildings and ornate structures from Jacksonville’s past. The lower portion of the Hockenhull Building was opened as a pet store and later, an art gallery – although the upper floors remained as jarring reminders of the building’s tragic past. Evidence of the fire remained starkly visible, from burned floors and walls to even charred clothing that still hung in the closets.

And it wasn’t just physical reminders of the past that could still be found. Stories soon circulated of strange shadows, footsteps, laughter and the eerie voices of children – perhaps the same children who died in January 1966. The artists on the first floor had their own experiences, speaking of cold chills, lights that turned on and off by themselves, office equipment that operated on its own and the smell of cigarettes when no one was smoking in the building.

My friend Loren Hamilton, who leads American Hauntings ghost hunts in the building, has had more than his share of strange experiences at the Hockenhull. Guests who have accompanied him for these outings have witnessed and recorded many strange things, from disembodied voices, unexplained knocks, unknown shadows, apparitions and more.

To this day, the Hockenhull Building remains one of Jacksonville’s most notorious sites. It is a place where the past truly comes back to life and where the dead are unafraid of making their presence known to the living.

The Hockenhull Building is just one of the many stops on the Haunted Jacksonville Tour, which returns in May 2014 to the American Hauntings roster of tours. Click Here to see More about the Tour!

"THE BLACK GHOST"

THE DECATUR GHOST SCARE OF 1903

A recent blog delved into the mystery of the phantom that preyed on the people of O’Donnell Heights, a neighborhood in Baltimore, in 1951. [click here to see the “Horror of the Heights”] I’ve always had an affinity for weird stories of “phantom attackers,” which arrive to terrorize a neighborhood or community and then abruptly vanish without a trace. It’s possible that my fascination with such tales stems from stories that I heard about the “Mad Gasser of Mattoon” when I was growing up. Mattoon, Illinois was less than an hour away from me and the story was once from the not so distant past. But the “Mad Gasser” was not the only phantom attacker from my neck of the woods. Even my hometown of Decatur had its own mysterious figure, who wreaked havoc for one week of sheer terror in November 1903.

Downtown Decatur, Illinois in the early 1900s

It began on November 13, and for the next week; fear gripped the city of Decatur, Illinois. According to reports, a chilling apparition in a black robe, with a veil covering its face and “awful eyes that burned like fire” began terrorizing the residents of the city’s west side. Some claimed the unknown monster it was a man dressed in women’s clothing while others swore that it was a demon from hell. Whatever the creature was, it generated a panic in Decatur like nothing that had ever occurred before.

The first sighting occurred on Tuesday night. A young lady was walking alone along West Wood Street when a black-shrouded phantom appeared from between two houses near Union Street. The “black ghost,” as it was later dubbed, came quickly toward her and she began to scream. Just at that moment, a carriage drove out of a nearby barn and the creature fled. The young woman reported the incident to the police, who assumed that it was nothing more than a prank – until more sightings began to be reported on the West Side. More black ghost appearances were noted, on West Main Street, West Wood and along Pine Street. Who, or what, this specter might be was unknown, but it terrified people as it lurched from the shadows and then vanished without a trace.

News of the ghost quickly spread throughout the city. Sightings were reported in the newspapers and the phantom became a heated topic of conversation in restaurants, saloons, barbershops, billiard halls and schools. The police admitted to being perplexed by the weird sightings and the average people in the city were intrigued – and a little unnerved.

Two additional black ghost encounters took place on November 14 when dozens of people were out looking for the monster. The first occurrence took place during the early evening hours when a young man called the police from a grocery store on the West Side, claiming that he had seen the black ghost. Although the caller never gave his name, the authorities took the call seriously and dispatched two officers to the store. The witness left before the officers arrived and a search of the neighborhood revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

Millikin University on Decatur's West Side in 1903

Henry Ray, a student at Millikin University, was out that evening, having taken a streetcar from the college to a downtown theater. He stayed late and the streetcars had stopped running before he needed to return to Millikin. Content to travel on foot, he had reached Haworth Avenue when he told police that he encountered the black ghost crouching in the shadows along the north side of the street. The creature appeared to have a club in its hands and when it saw Ray walking alone, it got up and started toward him. Ray said that he first thought he would confront the ghost, but then he changed his mind and began to run south on Haworth Avenue. He claimed that the creature had chased him as far as Dr. Lonergan’s home on West Decatur Street and then had disappeared.

The ghost returned again on November 15. Fred Travis and Dell Hooey, two young men who worked for the Chicago, Bloomington & Decatur freight house, encountered it on North Monroe Street, just north of the Cerro Gordo Street intersection. The two men were on their way home from the freight house around 8:30 p.m. They had just turned north from Cerro Gordo on the east side of Monroe and were about halfway to the railroad tracks when they met the specter. They were busy talking to one another when it appeared and startled them both.

“There it is,” Hooey shouted to his friend. “Let’s find out what it is!”

The young men’s description of the creature matched what had been reported by other witnesses. It was black from head to foot and was draped in apparel that was like that of a nun, except that the face was covered by a black veil. Its motion was not like that of a person walking, but rather a gliding movement, as if on wheels or rollers. Travis later stated that it seemed to have a shiny object, like a fork or small rake, in its right hand. Its other arm was folded across its chest, hunching the monster’s broad shoulders.

Both of the men gave chase to the ghost. Travis, who had recently placed for a semi-professional baseball team, was regarded as one of the fastest men in the city. Regardless, the ghost easily outpaced them. Travis had been carrying a board with him, which he planned to take home and burn in his stove, but when he saw the ghost was getting away, he hurled the board at it. He was sure that if the phantom had been a material being, the board would have hit it. Instead, it passed through the ghost and fell to the sidewalk. Moments later, he said, the specter disappeared.

Later that same night, a man named Theodore Fowler also encountered the black phantom, this time on West Decatur Street. He was in the 900 block, walking east on the north side of the street at about 10:30 p.m., when he saw a black-shrouded figure appear ahead of him. It glided along for about a half block and then abruptly vanished. This convinced him that the figure had been a ghost.

By this time, the stories of black ghost sightings were sweeping through the city and the people of the West End, especially women, were becoming terrified. Many of them were too scared to leave their homes at night but, unfortunately, even staying indoors was not enough to protect them from visitations from the ghost. The phantom appeared at the residence of Elmer Wood at 1120 West Macon Street on November 16. Three young women from Millikin University, who were boarding at the house for the school year, were talking and having a good time in the parlor. They heard a noise on the front porch and one of them went to the door to see who was there. When she looked through the glass, she let out a bloodcurdling scream. The black ghost was lurking on the front porch with its veiled face pressed to the glass of the front door. At the sound of the scream, the phantom fled from the porch and went straight across the street to a house on the other side. It rattled the doorknob with great ferocity and when the woman of the house came to the door, she saw it and ran away screaming. The black ghost vanished into the darkness.

Later that same night, Mrs. Jake Lehman was terrified by the creature near her home on West Macon Street. She had walked to a nearby store on an errand and was on her way back home when the ghost appeared from the shadows. She let out a scream and the creature chased her all of the way home. She burst through the door and fell down, much to the surprise of her family. “I was so badly frightened,” she later said, “that I was hardly able to tell what was the matter.” Someone looked out the window and saw the black ghost, which hurried past the house and then disappeared.

These were not the last sightings on this night. Edward Freemont spotted the black ghost sliding along North Monroe Street and then two young women, who were walking home from church in the 300 block of West Decatur Street, also saw the phantom. It was standing in a yard a short distance away from them and as they approached, it turned and floated around the corner of a house without a making a sound. Although it made no threatening gestures, or chased them, as it had so many others, the girls were terrified and immediately ran home and called the police.

By November 17, the city was in a frantic state. Plainclothes police officers were put on patrol on the West Side, looking for any sign of the black ghost. They didn’t track down the creature, but they did give stern words of warning to several pranksters, who thought it would be fun to dress up in a black overcoat and jump out and scare people. Unsure of what to make of the sightings that could not be explained away, police officials dismissed the ghost as a female “morphine fiend” who went crazy when she couldn’t obtain her drugs. Of course, this failed to explain the mysterious disappearances of the creature or how a board could be thrown at the “morphine fiend” and pass through her as if through thin air.

The people of Decatur were convinced that a real ghost was in their midst and search parties were organized to try and track the monster down. Early in the evenings, crowds of men and boys could be found in every part of the West End. Eldorado and Monroe streets were thoroughly searched. All of the search parties went armed with sticks and clubs, apparently hoping to thrash the ghost if they managed to catch it. They roamed the streets and alleys for most of the night, shouting and laughing to one another. The only thing these “ghost hunters” managed to find was trouble since sleeping residents began reporting their behavior to the police around midnight.

But not every ghost hunting party was made up of local ruffians and teenagers. Dr. L.E. Conradt and about twenty members of the respected Iroquois Club took up the search for the black ghost. They armed themselves with clubs and went all over the West Side of town, exploring behind signs, down fence rows, in orchards and down alleys. They searched for more than two hours but were unable to find anything that resembled the phantom.

No additional sightings of the black ghost occurred on November 18, although the search parties were still out on the hunt. The people of Decatur remained on edge and women were still terrified. In fact, they were so scared that talk of the ghost was blamed for two women almost burning themselves to death. A Mrs. M.M. McDonald of Stonington was spending the night of November 18 with her friend, Mrs. Gates, who lived at 531 North Monroe Street. The ladies were alone in the house, reading about the ghost sightings in the newspaper and talking about the mysterious creature, and had become very nervous by bedtime. When they retired, they placed a lighted lamp on a chair beside the bed so that they could see which way to run in case the ghost decided to call during the night.

 Around 2:00 a.m., Mrs. McDonald awoke and found that her nightdress was on fire. The lamp had somehow tipped over and had set fire to the sheets. She screamed and awoke Mrs. Gates, who managed to get her into the bathroom, soak her with water, and put out the fire. Her friend’s sleeve had been burned away and her arm was badly scorched. Meanwhile, the bed itself was still on fire and Mrs. Gates managed to wrestle the bed covers into the bathtub and extinguish the flames. The fire department was summoned, but the blaze was already out. Dr. F.M. Anderson arrived to dress Mrs. McDonald’s wounds and pronounced that both women were very lucky. Needless to say, the whole incident was blamed on the black ghost.

The ghost might have been at the Gates house “in spirit,” so to speak, but it was certainly not making its presence known anywhere else. After the rash of ghost hunting parties, which started on November 17, no sightings of the ghost were ever reported again. Whoever, or whatever, the creature had been, it had apparently left Decatur for good, never to return. The excitement over the “ghost attacks” subsided and the wandering gangs of ghost hunters soon found other things to do. Eventually, the Decatur Ghost Scare was largely forgotten.

Who, or what, was this strange creature? Was the black ghost merely a prankster who entertained himself by scaring people on Decatur’s West Side and then decided to give up the joke when too many people started looking for him? Or was the specter really just that: a genuine supernatural being? It’s certain that we can blame at least some of the sightings on the hysteria that swept through the city that long ago November, but can we dismiss them all? How do we explain the rational accounts of a ghost that disappeared without explanation, or the thrown board that passed through it?

The mystery of the black ghost will likely never be solved, but it certainly managed to establish Decatur as a weird and haunted place, even back in 1903. 

Check out the Haunted Decatur Tours, now in our 21st season of the ghosts, hauntings, spirits, scandals and sins of Decatur, Illinois! Click Here!

Spirits in Stone

Ghosts of the Mansfield Reformatory

This date, December 31, was the supposed to be the official closing of the Ohio State Reformatory in 1986 but somehow, the ramshackle structure hung on until 1990. Better known to people today as the Mansfield Reformatory, the gloomy, gothic structure looms on the outskirts of a small Ohio town. Designed as a prison for criminals who were too old for the Boys Industrial School in Lancaster and not hardened enough for the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, the reformatory saw untold thousands of prisoners during its years of operations. Once applauded as a place that could humanely reform first-time offenders, the conditions deteriorated to the point that it became known more for abuse, torture and murder than for its early successes.

It’s been closed down now for many years, but those who cross the threshold of this place today can assure you that the prison is far from empty.

The campaign to build a prison in Mansfield began during the years of the Civil War but it was not until 1884 that the state legislature actually approved the creation of a prison that would serve as an “intermediate” place of incarceration for Ohio lawbreakers. Using land that had served as one of Mansfield’s two Civil War camps, the city raised $10,000 to purchase the land and the state acquired the more than 150 acres that adjoined it. The cornerstone of the prison was placed on November 4, 1886 and marked a day of great celebration in the city. A crowd of more than 15,000 turned out for the event and it featured a parade that started in Mansfield, which was decorated with flags and bunting, and ended at the new building site. A number of dignitaries were present for the celebration, including former President Rutherford B. Hayes, Senator John Sherman, Governor J.B. Foraker and General Roeliff Brinkerhoff, the man who led the drive to have a prison built in Mansfield. Cleveland architect Levi T. Scofield was hired to design the reformatory, which was expected to cost about $1.3 million to build. According to reports, he based his design on sketches of castles in Germany.

Numerous funding problems in the years that followed caused so many delays that the reformatory was not able to accept its first group of inmates until 1896, a full ten years after work at the site began. The prison officially opened on September 17 when 150 inmates were transferred to the news facility from the Ohio Penitentiary. The transfer drew almost as much attention as the original groundbreaking did. Large crowds turned out in Columbus to watch the inmates, dressed in prison stripes, march from the penitentiary to the train station. The prisoners, entertained by the attention, waved and made jokes to the crowds as they passed. Men along the route even passed out cigars to the inmates as they walked by them. The train was greeted by another large crowd when it stopped in Galion, before continuing on to Mansfield. People in town cheered as the men were unloaded at the northwest corner of the reformatory and were taken directly to their cells. The inmates were immediately set to work. The reformatory was still far from finished and the convicts were used to complete the sewer system and other parts of the structure. Construction was not fully completed until 1910.

An early photo of the Ohio State Reformatory

Because the reformatory was an intermediate prison, designed for young offenders, it had few famous inmates during its history. At least one of them went on to great notoriety, however, proving that reform was not always possible with some offenders. The most famous former inmate was Henry Baker, one of the men convicted of pulling off the famous Brink’s heist in 1950.

Some of the inmates at Mansfield didn’t just commit crimes to get into prison, or after they got out. Some of them actually carried on criminals operations while they were still incarcerated. On August 21, 1921, two reformatory inmates, King Williams, age 18, and John Kmetz, age 17, were charged with carrying on a counterfeiting operation while behind bars. The plot came to the attention of the U.S. Secret Service from the superintendent of the reformatory, who acted on a tip from a trusty. The two young men had apparently been creating counterfeit bills and passing them to reformatory guards, who circulated them throughout the area. Assistant Superintendent Rowe had actually caught Williams in the act, putting the finishing touches on a bogus $5 bill. Williams and Kmetz were paroled in late 1921 and were immediately re-arrested by federal authorities, who charged them with counterfeiting.

But darker crimes have occurred in the history of the reformatory, as well. Two corrections officers have been murdered in the line of duty at the Ohio State Reformatory. On November 2, 1926, a paroled inmate named Phillip Orleck returned to the prison to try and help a friend escape. The attempt was unsuccessful but in the course of it, Orleck shot a guard named Urban Wilford outside the west gate. Wilford was killed and Orleck was arrested two months later. He died in the electric chair at the Ohio State Penitentiary the following year.

The second officer was Frank Hanger, who died after being beaten with an iron bar. Hanger tried to stop an escape attempt by a dozen prisoners in October 1932 and paid for it with his life. Two inmates, Merrill Chandler and Chester Probaski, were charged with the guard’s murder and were sent to the electric chair in 1935.

Perhaps the darkest days in the history of the Ohio State Reformatory came with the parole of two inmates, Robert Daniels and John West – who would forever be immortalized in newspapers as the “Mad Dog Killers.” In the summer of 1948, just days after being released from prison, the two young men went on a killing spree that ended with seven people dead, including a guard at the reformatory and his wife and daughter. They started the spree by killing a Columbus tavern owner named Earl Ambrose on July 10, followed by Frank Frech, an elderly tourist camp operator on July 11. After that, they drove straight to Mansfield and the Ohio State Reformatory. Robert Daniels, interviewed after he was captured stated that they had gone to the prison looking for a guard named “Red” Harris, but when they didn’t found him, they went to the home of another guard, John Niebel.

A newspaper featuring the “Mad Dog Killers” and their “13-Day Reign of Terror”

 Daniels and West arrived at the Niebel home around 1:30 a.m. and knocked on the door. When Niebel answered, they told him that their car had broken down and they wanted to use the telephone. He let them inside, but did not recognize the two men at first. It was not until Daniels pulled out a gun that Niebel realized the horror that he had allowed into his home. While West held a gun on Niebel, Daniels went upstairs forced Mrs. Nolana Niebel, and her 20-year-old daughter, Phyllis, to come downstairs. The family was forced into a light-gray automobile and was driven by Daniels and West through Mansfield, around Central Park, and then out of town to Flemings Falls Road. As they traveled, Daniels forced the Niebels to take off all of their clothes and throw them out the window.

Finally, the car was stopped and the family was forced out into the lonely cornfield that would become their death site. Daniels marched them through the knee-high corn and then, forcing them to stand in a line next to one another, shot each of them in the head with an old Mauser automatic.

Daniels and West fled the scene and abandoned the car they were driving. A few hours later, they were captured when they attempted to shoot it out with police and sheriff’s deputies at a roadblock north of Van Wert. The blockade was set up as part of what became one of the greatest manhunts in the state’s history. The newspapers called the killing spree a “13-Day Reign of Terror.” The killers claimed their last two victims just before they were caught, driving a stolen truck that was being used to haul four brand-new automobiles. James J. Smith, a newlywed farmer from Tiffin, was shot through the head when he refused to give up his driver’s license. Less than an hour later, the body of another man, Orville Taylor, a truck driver from Niles, Michigan, was found in a roadside park near Tiffin. Taylor was believed to be the driver of the automobile truck that the killers were driving when they were stopped. Shots were exchanged at the roadblock and Daniels and West managed to wound a Van Wert policeman named Leonard Conn and Frank Fremont, a conservation division employee, during the gunfight. It ended with West being shot dead and Daniels being taken into custody.  

 While in jail, Daniels bragged about his exploits and when he was bought outside to pose for news photographers, an angry mob gathered and demanded that he be turned over to them to be hanged. Officials managed to get him safely back indoors but not before Daniels cursed the police, the photographers and the crowd. He was later tried and convicted for the murders and took a well-deserved seat in the Ohio State Penitentiary electric chair in January 1949.

In other cases, inmates at the Ohio State Reformatory were killing each other – or themselves. In 1955, a guard discovered the body of an inmate who had hanged himself in his cell. A few years later, another inmate poured a can of turpentine over himself and lit a match, setting his clothing on fire. After a prison riot occurred at the reformatory in 1957, 120 prisoners were confined to a solitary confinement area known as “the hole.” This was a dank, pitch-dark place of confinement where it was rumored that several inmates had gone insane. Because there were only 20 rooms in the hole, many of the men had to be locked into the solitary cells together for 30 days. During this time, at least one prisoner was alleged to have been murdered, his body hidden by another inmate under some bedding for several days.

Some blamed the condition of the prison on the mental state of some of the inmates. By the early part of the 1930s, the reformatory was already being criticized for being overcrowded and offering inhumane living quarters for the prisoners. As the years went by, the facility deteriorated even more.

In the 1970s, the state declared that the Ohio State Reformatory no longer met the standards and guidelines for correctional institutes. Public outcry about the state of the prison was led by the Counsel for Human Dignity, a coalition of civic and church groups. In 1978, they filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the 2,200 inmates at the reformatory, claiming that the prisoners’ Constitutional rights were being violated because they were forced to live in “brutalizing and inhumane conditions.” The lawsuit was finally resolved in 1983 with the filing of a consent decree in which prison officials agreed to improve conditions while preparing to close the cellblocks by December 31, 1986. The closing date ended up being extended for a few years, but by 1990, the reformatory was closed for good.

During the final years of the prison, the only people who seemed to appreciate the crumbling prison were Hollywood moviemakers. While the reformatory was still in operation, two movies – Harry and Walter Go to New York in 1975 and Tango and Cash in 1989 – used the prison for some scenes. However, it was not until 1994, when the film crew for The Shawshank Redemption arrived, that film crews began to realize that the Ohio State Reformatory was the perfect setting for prison films. The facility was widely featured in the film with more than 30 scenes shot in the prison or on the grounds. Several years later, scenes from Air Force One were also filmed at the reformatory. In recent years, there have also been a number of music videos produced at the prison, as well.

One of the Reformatory’s Cell blocks – a popular place for both film makers and ghost hunters!

The reformatory continued to decline for a time after it closed but then, in an effort to save the place, the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society (MRPS) was formed. Today, steps are under way to restore the remaining structure to its original condition. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places and the reformatory’s six-tier east wing is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest free-standing steel cellblock. The MRPS continues its work today by offering guided tours and numerous events and they have received several awards for their efforts to save this piece of Ohio history.

Since the closing of the reformatory in 1990, stories have circulated that the prison is haunted by the tormented spirits of former inmates, guards and prison officials who have simply never left. According to the legends, they are trapped here behind these decaying stone walls and rusted iron bars by the violent and painful events of their individual pasts. The horror and death of years past seems to be replaying itself behind the gates of the Ohio State Reformatory. Visitors who come here today become quickly aware that the cellblocks and corridors of the prison are not as empty and silent as they first appear to be.

One of the most tragic events to occur at the reformatory took place on November 5, 1950, in the administration wing of the prison. One section of this wing contained the home and offices of Warden Arthur L. Glattke, his wife, Helen, and their sons, Arthur, Jr. and Teddy. On that Sunday morning, Mrs. Glattke was in her bedroom alone and was getting dressed to go out. It was believed that she reached up into a high shelf in her closet, trying to get her jewelry box, and moved a .32-caliber pistol out of her way. The gun had been placed in the residence for the family’s protection. Dr. P.A. Stoodt, the attending physician, believed that Helen may have dropped the pistol and as it slipped out of her hands and hit the floor, it went off. The bullet struck her in the chest and penetrated her left lung.

When Warden Glattke heard the shot, he ran to the bedroom and discovered Helen bleeding on the floor. He summoned the reformatory physician, Dr. J.V. Horst, who, unable to treat her on site, had Mrs. Glattke rushed to the General Hospital. She never regained consciousness and died during the early morning hours of Tuesday, November 7.

In 1959, Arthur Glattke died of a heart attack in his office. It is believed that the ghosts of both Mr. and Mrs. Glattke haunt the reformatory. At certain times, visitors have reported feeling cold rushes of air in the administration wing and equipment failures are also common here. The “pink bathroom” located in this wing is a spot where the ghost of Helen Glattke is said to make her presence known through the smell of perfume and the scent of fresh flowers. Mrs. Glattke may also be the ghost who has been seen in the old prison library. A number of psychics have experienced the vision of a woman in the prison and several visitors have also gotten a glimpse of her in this room.

The hospital’s infirmary is another area of the prison where strange experiences often occur. It was here that inmates were treated for influenza, tuberculosis and a legion of other ailments and diseases caused by the poor conditions and inadequate food and medical care offered to the prisoners. A number of men died of these illnesses during the years of the reformatory’s operation and some believe their ghosts may linger at the last place where they suffered during their lifetimes. It has often been reported that video cameras, recorders and electronic equipment behave erratically in this area and that shadows are often seen here, moving about in the dim light. It is a part of the prison where few want to venture alone. 

The prison’s chapel is located just above the infirmary and it has its own tales of ghosts and hauntings. The most commonly reported incidents there seem to involve a man who has been seen peeking around the doors and peering into the room. He always ducks away when someone notices him. At first, visitors believe this is a real person, or someone from their own group, hoping to play on trick on them. But when they check the other side of the door, they discover that no one is there.

The prison’s cellblocks have their own dark stories to tell. It was in these cells where the inmates lived, suffered and sometimes died. Prisoners committed suicide, mutilated themselves and committed horrific acts on one another. Beatings, stabbings and rapes were not uncommon and a brutal attack might be visited on another inmate for something as trivial as looking at someone the wrong way. Life in the reformatory could be agony, filled with hate, violence and insanity. Many of these men carried these emotions with them to the grave and their spirits, trapped within these walls, are still manifesting these feelings in death. The doors to the cellblocks may be standing open these days, but the spirits of the men who were once locked behind them remain imprisoned behind the rusted bars.

The lowest levels of the reformatory are perhaps the most frightening to visitors who come here today. The basement is a maze of dark, twisting hallways and rumors persist that inmates were sometimes brought here to be beaten and tortured by guards. A number of people claim to have seen the ghost of a young inmate, allegedly beaten to death, wandering the dark hallways of the basement. The boy always vanishes, or runs away, after he is noticed.

But perhaps the most sinister location in the old prison is the infamous “Hole.” There is no record of just how many prisoners were subjected to the terrifying conditions of this part of the prison, where they were jailed in total darkness and forced to sleep on bare, concrete floors – or how many of them may have been left behind as restless spirits. The Hole is a place that saw the darkest side of human nature and the most violent acts carried out within the reformatory’s walls. One does not need to have any psychic abilities to feel the intense energies of this area. Those who visit The Hole say they feel goosebumps, cold chills and, on many occasions, become violently sick to their stomachs. Is it merely their imagination, sent into an overactive state because of the bloody stories that are told about this place? Perhaps, but if so, how do we explain the strange cries that have been recorded in these cells, the tapping footsteps and the unshakeable feeling of being watched? The history that has been imprinted on the stone walls of The Hole seems to be making its presence known to a great many people who dare to come to this spot.

The Ohio State Reformatory can be a physically and mentally exhausting place. There are seemingly miles of rooms, offices, corridors and cell blocks to be explored and it’s not a place for the faint of heart. Unexplained occurrences are common here and give evidence to the fact that sometimes escape simply isn’t possible – even after death.

Want to spend the night at the Mansfield Reformatory with us? Join American Hauntings for two different PRIVATE dates in 2013! Click here to see more information about our overnight ghost hunts and we hope to see you in the coming year!

(Some photographs courtesy of Rob Johnson and Troy Taylor’s book DEAD MEN DO TELLTALES)