Franklin Castle

Hannes Tiedemann commissioned a four-story stone mansion at 4308 Franklin Boulevard in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland, designed by Cudell & Richardson and built between 1881 and 1883. The sources name its style differently, American Queen Anne in Wikipedia and High Victorian Eclectic in HauntBound, but agree on the corner turrets, gables and ornamental ironwork. The building has more than twenty rooms and eighty windows. Hannes Tiedemann, a German immigrant who, Ghostwalks.com says, was only 13 when his mother Wiebeka brought the family from Germany to New York City in 1848, commissioned the house after establishing himself in Cleveland first as a wholesale grocer and later as a banker. He was the co-founder of Union Banking & Savings Co.

The Tiedemann family’s years at the castle were marked by repeated loss. Their fifteen-year-old daughter Emma died of diabetes on January 15, 1881, and Hannes’s elderly mother, Wiebeka, died not long after. The accounts of the other children differ: All That’s Interesting says the couple buried three more children between 1886 and 1888, while HauntBound says the house wasn’t finished when Emma died, so she didn’t die there, and that the other children died young in earlier years. Wikipedia says Hannes began adding a ballroom running the length of the fourth floor, along with turrets and gargoyles, to distract Louise from these losses. HauntBound, though, refers to “the third-floor ballroom” as one of the rooms most often tied to reported phantom music. Hannes’s wife, Louise Tiedemann, was fifty-seven when liver disease killed her on March 24, 1895. By 1908, Ghostwalks.com says, all the Tiedemanns were gone, and Hannes, at 75, had to witness his mother, wife and all six kids die.

The year after Louise died, Hannes sold the house to the Mullhauser family. Beginning in 1921, it served as a meeting place for German organizations including the German-American League of Culture and the Bildungsverein Eintracht club, and at one time held the largest German socialist library in the United States. Its reputation shifted dramatically in 1968 when James Romano purchased the property with his six children, intending to convert it into a restaurant.

The Romanos said paranormal activity began immediately. On move-in day, two of their children reported encountering a crying girl dressed in white on the third floor and later asked for an extra cookie “for the sad girl upstairs”. The family described hearing organ music, heavy footfalls, and faint music drifting from the empty ballroom above. Mrs. Romano awoke one night screaming on her bedroom floor beside what she described as an unseen presence also screaming. The Romanos brought in a priest, who suggested they leave. They moved out in 1974.

The new owner Sam Muscatello invited local media to investigate. Cleveland radio host John Webster reported that something snatched his tape recorder and threw it down the stairs where it shattered. Muscatello also reportedly found human bones, though the sources disagree on where and why. Wikipedia says they turned up in a closet in 1975 and are believed to have been planted by the new owner to publicize his ghost tours. Ghostwalks.com says he came across them in a passageway, that they were real, and that they may have come from the Monroe Street Cemetery when Hannes had three of his children moved to the family plot in Riverside.

Michael DeVinko, known as Mickey Deans and the last husband of Judy Garland, bought the castle next, in early 1984 according to Wikipedia and in 1985 according to Ghostwalks.com, and spent nearly one million dollars on renovations over the following decade. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 15, 1982. The property was purchased by European artist Chiara Dona Dalle in 2011 for $260,000, and extensive restoration followed.

Cleveland author William G. Krejci, who wrote “Haunted Franklin Castle,” has stated that none of the recorded deaths show evidence of foul play and that contemporary sources describe the Tiedemanns as generous people. He still had some strange experiences when he visited the house himself: “Footsteps, voices and/or the radio turning on, on my phone. Things like that. It’s kind of cool, actually.”

Today Franklin Castle is a private residence operated as a hospitality venue. The general public can view it from the exterior; scheduled historical tours led by Krejci take visitors inside. Overnight stays are available for guests twenty-one and older at approximately $260 per night for a suite or $1,200 for a full-castle rental. The building has appeared on television programs including Paranormal Lockdown, Ghost Adventures, and The Holzer Files. HauntBound calls it one of Ohio’s most photographed haunted houses.