America’s Not-So Famous Haunted Houses
Supernatural literature is filled with accounts from some of the “Most Haunted Houses in America.” Time and again, we have seen the lists of places that every ghost enthusiast is supposed to visit – the Lemp Mansion, Winchester Mansion, Whaley House, Myrtles Plantation, and the list goes on. But what about those houses that are not so widely-known? Perhaps they are only local haunts, or places that are off-the-beaten-path, but many of them are just as haunted – or even more so – than the American haunts that have become so famous. What follows is a look at just a few of the lesser-known haunted houses that dot the American landscape. There will definitely be more to come, so if the reader has a location that they would like to see featured, let us know, and we’ll include some of them in a future list!
NEMACOLIN CASTLE
BROWNSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA
Looking out over the Monongahela River in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, is Nemacolin Castle, which was once a famous site on the old National Road. The three-story mansion, with is ramparts and turret, actually pre-dates the town and was built on the site of Fort Burd, a garrison from the days of the French and Indian War. The Castle was built by Jacob Bowman, a local businessman, who owned a nail factory and a paper mill, and was later a postmaster, justice of the peace, and bank president in Brownsville. As his wealth grew, so did his family. After he fathered nine children with his wife, Isabella, he decided to build the mansion, which was completed in the early 1800s. In the years that followed, the house was not only a family home, but also a stop on the Underground Railroad. It remained in the Bowman family until it was eventually donated to the local historical society, which maintains it today.
Over the last few decades, the house has gained a reputation as one of the most haunted spots in Southwest Pennsylvania. Staff members and visitors to the Castle have reported strange happenings, from heavy, disembodied footsteps to slamming doors, the erratic behavior of lights, and full-bodied apparitions. The ghost of a little girl, who is normally seen in the middle part of the house, has been reported at least a dozen times over the past decade. Others have sighted a small boy, a stern-looking older woman, a ghostly little dog, and even an older man who is believed to be Jacob Bowman himself.
TINKER COTTAGE
ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS
The Tinker Swiss Cottage in Rockford, Illinois, stands today as one of the most unusual homes in the state. It was built by Robert Tinker, an unusual man in his own right. Born on December 31, 1836 in Honolulu, Hawaii to missionary parents, Robert came to Rockford in 1856. He was employed as an accountant by Mary Dorr Manny, the wealthy widow of John H. Manny of the Manny Reaper Works. His inspiration for his amazing cottage came during his tour of Europe in 1862, where he fell in love with the architecture of Switzerland.
In 1865, after returning to Illinois, he began building his 27-room Swiss-style cottage on a limestone bluff overlooking Kent Creek. He surrounded his Swiss Cottage with over 27 acres of trees, vines, winding pathways, flowerbeds, and gardens. A three-story Swiss-inspired barn was added to the property which housed cows, chickens, and horses. In 1870, Robert and Mary Manny were married and became one of Rockford's most influential couples. Tinker became mayor of Rockford in 1875, was a founding member of the Rockford Park District and the CEO of the Northwest and IC Railroad lines. Mary Tinker died in 1901 and Robert later remarried her niece, Jesse Dorr Hurd. When Robert died in 1924, Jessie created a partnership with the Rockford Park District, allowing her to remain in the house until her death. After her death in 1942, the park district acquired the property and opened the home as a museum in 1943.
Over the years, visitors and staff members alike have experienced the hauntings here first-hand, from the sound of footsteps in the hallways and on the stairs, to voices, songs being hummed, and the eerie laughter of children. A home for terminally ill children was located nearby for more than 30 years and often, the children were allowed to play at the cottage. Could some of them linger behind at the place where they found happiness? Even skeptical staff members have been convinced of the haunting as they hear things they cannot explain and have seen objects move by something other than earthly hands.
MCCUNE MANSION
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
Located in the Capitol Hill section of Salt Lake City, Utah, is the McCune Mansion, built by Utah South Railroad and business tycoon Alfred McCune in 1900 at a cost of over $1 million. Born to a British Army officer and his wife in Calcutta, India, McCune immigrated with them to Utah Territory after they joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). By the time that he was 21, McCune had become a highly successful railroad builder and was connected to other millionaires of the era. He was a partner in the Peruvian Cerro de Pasco mines along with J. P. Morgan, William Randolph Hearst, and Frederick William Vanderbilt. He owned business interests throughout Utah and in parts of Montana, British Columbia, and South America. He and his wife, Elizabeth, traveled widely and at one point, Elizabeth was entertained by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle.
McCune wanted his home to be an extravagant display of his wealth and financed a two-year tour of Europe for architect S.C. Dallas, so that he could obtain design ideas. The new home towered over the surrounding streets and no expense was spared. It was constructed from red Utah sandstone, but other materials and furnishings were imported from all over the world. McCune and his wife lived in the home until 1920. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, they donated it to the LDS Church and it became the McCune School of Music. In the early 1950s, the mansion became the Brigham Young University Salt Lake City Center, until 1972 when it was moved to a larger location. It was sold in 1973 and became the Virginia Tanner Modern Dance School. Since then, the building has been privately owned, often used for wedding receptions and other short-term rentals.
Though it’s unclear why, the haunting in the house began soon after the McCunes moved out. Since then, the list of strange reports has continued to grow. Under the stairs is a room that was once used for music practice and although this is no longer its purpose, instrumental music is still heard coming from within. Two apparitions have been seen in the house- -- a man in a long, black coat and a little girl who resembles one of the portraits that hangs in the house. The young girl has been seen walking in and out of a mirror in the west end of the mansion. Another odd report involves phantom footsteps that begin and end in the center of rooms. There are also reports of items being moved about, furniture rearranged, lights turning on and off, and doors that unlock themselves, even after being secured for the night and double-checked. The identity of the house’s lingering spirits remains a mystery.
TALIESIN
SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN
Located in Spring Green, Wisconsin is Taliesin, a former summer home that belonged to its designer, Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s become famous as one of the finest examples of his signature “prairie-style” architecture, but what most people don’t know is that it was also the scene of a heinous crime in 1914 that left a haunting in its wake. Wright began building the house in 1911, soon after leaving his first wife and six children. He had been involved in a scandalous affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the wife of one of his clients. She left her husband to move to Spring Green while Taliesin was still under construction. Although Mamah did not have primary custody of her two children, they were spending the day with her on August 15, 1914. Wright was in Chicago, supervising the construction of another project. While Mamah and her children were eating lunch with several workmen in the dining room, a servant named Julian Carlton (who had been fired earlier that day) locked them in the house, poured gasoline under the door, and set the house on fire. As the people trapped inside tried frantically to escape, Carlton attacked them with a hatchet, killing seven people, including Mamah and her children. The tragedy destroyed the majority of Taliesin and most of the records of Wright’s early work. Wright received a telegraph in Chicago and rushed to Wisconsin, only to find the mansion, and his life, in ruins.
Determined not to defeated by this terrible turn of events, he rebuilt Taliesin in Mamah’s honor. But bizarrely, the second house also met with tragedy. In April 1925, a lightning storm started a fire in the house’s telephone lines and it burned to the ground. Defiant against the forces of nature, Wright built a third incarnation of Taliesin on the same site and it has survived to this day.
Taliesin is one of the most visited of Wright’s home in the country – and the most haunted. After the murderous events of 1914, the bodies of the victims were taken to a cottage on the property called Tan-Y-Deri. It is in and around this cottage where Mamah’s ghost has been reported over the years. She is usually dressed in a long, white gown and while she is a peaceful presence, she is obviously restless and lost. It is also said that doors and windows open and close by themselves within the cottage and light sometimes turn on and off. Witnesses say that they sometimes close the place for the night, only to return the following day to find everything wide open. The events of the past have truly marked the house as a haunted place that will be forever linked to a tragedy of long ago.
PROSPECT PLACE
TRINWAY, OHIO
The unique mansion known as Prospect Place, in the tiny town of Trinway, was built by George W. Adams, who came to Ohio from Virginia in 1808. Already wealthy, Adams had inherited his grandfather’s plantation but had freed all of the slaves his family owned before selling the farm. Adams hated slavery and chose Ohio as his new home because it was a free state. Within two decades, he was one of the wealthiest men in the region. He owned two flour mills, built bridges and canals, and helped develop the town of Dresden. In addition, he provided free grain for the poor and offered his home as a safe house for slaves who escaped the south using the Underground Railroad.
He built the Greek Revival-style Prospect Place in 1856. It was the first house in the state to have indoor plumbing and was fitted with a cupola on top of the house where a signal light could alert runaway slaves that the place offered food and shelter. Injured, sick, or wounded slaves who did not survive their journey to freedom are among the spirits still believed to linger in the house.
George Adams lived long enough to see slavery abolished in America before he died in 1879. He left his vast estate to his children, but over the years, relatives squandered it and by the middle 1950s, the house was abandoned. It was later sold to the Cox Gravel Co., which offered tours of the mansion, but it steadily declined. By the 1980s, time and vandals had reduced the place almost to ruins and it was slated for destruction. If not for the attention paid to the house by the famous Longaberger Basket Co. of Ohio, it might have been lost. Company founder Dave Longaberger had recently purchased and renovated a number of historic buildings in the area and he wanted to restore Prospect Place. Unfortunately, he passed away before work could be completed. But the house was rescued again, this time by George W. Adams – the great, great grandson of the original owner. Work to restore and preserve the mansion is ongoing today.
Prospect Place has long been regarded as the local “haunted house” by those who live in the area. The stories of the haunting date back many years and if even a portion of them are true, it is one of the most haunted houses in the state. In addition to the spirits of former slaves who linger in the house, there are also the ghosts of train accident victims who haunt the basement. After an accident on a nearly rail line, the wounded were brought to Prospect Place and the basement was turned into a temporary hospital. Their ghosts are now believed to haunt the underground rooms. Another ghost is believed to be that of a young girl who died in an accident at the house. Her ghost has been seen playing inside and outside of the mansion, and her girlish laughter has been frequently reported. A ghost who has been seen near a staircase on an upper floor is thought to be George W. Adams himself, or perhaps the spirit of William Cox, Adam’s son-in-law, who mysteriously vanished in 1886 after absconding with a large part of his wife’s inheritance. Some believe that he has been forced in death to return to the place where he carried out his betrayal.
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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