Franklin Castle

Hannes Tiedemann came to Cleveland from Germany, prospered as a wholesale grocer and in 1883 helped found one of Ohio’s first trust companies. Between 1881 and 1883 he built a four-story Queen Anne mansion of rock-faced sandstone on Franklin Boulevard, designed by the leading local firm Cudell & Richardson, with a round corner tower, more than 20 rooms and some 80 windows. He lived there with his wife Louise and their two surviving children until 1896, a year after Louise died of liver disease. The family had suffered real losses: three infant children died of disease between 1863 and 1873, and their daughter Emma died of diabetes at 15 in January 1881. Hannes died in 1908.

From 1921 to 1968 the house belonged to a German-American cultural society and singing club. Then a family moved in, and by the late 1960s the stories had begun – ghost tales that, as Cleveland’s historians note, do not seem to predate about 1965. The family said the house was haunted and that they had been warned it was evil; they left in 1974. A later owner offered public “haunted castle” tours, and in 1975 human bones were reported found in a closet – remains that the house’s chroniclers believe were planted to drum up publicity.

Legend did the rest. Writers told of children murdered in hidden rooms, a servant girl killed in a secret passage, Tiedemann’s affairs and family killings, and bootleggers’ tunnels. None of it fits the record: none of the Tiedemann children died in the house – Emma died before it was finished, and the infants years earlier – and the only secret passage is a narrow servants’ stair. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History calls the stories spurious.

The house itself has had a hard life: an arsonist set it on fire in 1999, soon after it was sold by Michael DeVinko, Judy Garland’s last husband, who had spent years restoring it, and later owners have worked to repair it. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, it remains a private residence. Its reputation has brought Ghost Adventures, Paranormal Lockdown and The Holzer Files to its door, and in late 2022 the owners began offering occasional overnight stays.

Popular accounts describe a woman in black at a window, a child crying, organ music, voices, footsteps and cold spots – claims that trace mainly to residents of the late 1960s and 1970s, later tour visitors and TV investigators.

The tower rooms and upper floors, a ballroom on the top floor, the servants’ stair and the basement; most stories are set at night.

Franklin Castle appears in Weird Ohio and many “most haunted” lists, and on Paranormal Lockdown (2016), Ghost Adventures (2020) and The Holzer Files (2020). It is a landmark of Ohio City’s Victorian streetscape.