Joslyn Castle

George Joslyn left a Vermont farm with an eighth-grade education and came to Omaha in 1880 to run a branch of a printing firm. By 1896 he owned the business, renamed it the Western Newspaper Union and built it into the country’s largest supplier of pre-printed “ready-print” newspaper pages. In 1903 he and his wife Sarah, also from Vermont, moved into a Scottish baronial mansion designed by Omaha architect John McDonald, set in grounds later shaped by landscape architect Jens Jensen. Their adopted daughter Violet was married in the house in 1913.

George died in 1916. Sarah, a founder of Omaha’s Board of Charities, spent much of her widowhood building a memorial to him – the Joslyn Memorial, now the Joslyn Art Museum, begun in 1931 – and died in 1940 at 88. From 1944 the house was the headquarters of Omaha Public Schools, which added an office annex and stayed until 1989. The State of Nebraska then owned it until 2010, when it was sold to the Joslyn Castle Trust, which runs it today. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.

The ghost stories date from the school-district years, when staff working late spoke of voices, piano music and footsteps in empty corridors. Since the house reopened to the public, the reports have multiplied: a bride-to-be said she saw a woman in white come down the main staircase and vanish at the bottom; a rental coordinator described a tug on her hair while she was alone; a docent’s photograph of the stairs is said to show a woman in blue; and sounds are reported from the Music Room. No one can say who, if anyone, these figures are, though stories usually hint at Sarah Joslyn.

The trust has embraced the lore with care, pairing talks by local historians about the Joslyns and Gilded Age Omaha with short after-hours investigations each October.

A woman in white descending the main staircase, a woman in blue in a photograph, piano music and voices from empty rooms, footsteps in corridors and the feeling of a tug on the hair – reported by school-district staff, wedding guests, docents and paranormal groups.

The main staircase and reception hall, the Music Room and upstairs corridors; usually in the evening or during events.

Joslyn Castle runs public tours, weddings and October paranormal evenings with local tour company Midwest Paranormal History Tours, and is a fixture of Visit Omaha’s Halloween guides. Its history is told in the Arcadia books Joslyn Castle.