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ONCE UPON A TIME

Many of us have read this story before, either while browsing the newspapers around Halloween or looking through books on local hauntings. Perhaps we’ve found ourselves driving through the Ohio City neighborhood on Cleveland’s west side and have caught ourselves admiring the many Victorian-era structures. Suddenly, we see a large and ominous sandstone home at the intersection of West 44th Street and Franklin Boulevard. It strikes us as very odd and out of place. We suddenly realize that this is the house we’ve read so much about. This is the legendary Franklin Castle.

Every time the story of the Franklin Castle has been told, it seems something new has been added to the legend. Still, the base tale is the same. When hearing the story, one conjures images of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. All the great gothic elements are in place for the perfect ghost story: a monstrous patriarch, incest, suicide, insanity, infanticide and murder. Later stories tell of Nazi spying and mass executions. For those unfamiliar with the legend of the Franklin Castle, it goes like this:

Back in 1860, a rich German immigrant named Hannes Tiedemann and his wife, Louise, built a large home on Franklin Boulevard in Cleveland. The Tiedemanns spared no expense building their home. Mr. Tiedemann, a bank executive, presided over his business with an iron fist. It was rumored that he governed his family in much the same way. In 1881, his daughter Emma died from diabetes, though it was whispered she was actually murdered by her abusive father. Stories also say that Emma was possibly insane or promiscuous—sometimes one in the same back in those days. Two months later, Hannes Tiedemann’s aged mother, Wiebeka, died at the Franklin Castle, likely of a broken heart.

In 1883, tragedy struck the family again with the deaths of three more children. All died within a week of one another and were buried at the family plot at Riverside Cemetery. It was whispered that Hannes had a hand in their demise. To deal with the grief, Louise busied herself by remodeling their home—adding secret passages, a turret and a ballroom on the fourth floor—and even had her children’s faces carved in stone and placed as guardians to watch over the front entrance. The house now resembled a castle.

During that time, Hannes Tiedemann took a mistress. Rachel, a servant girl in the house, became the object of Mr. Tiedemann’s affections. She remained so until another beau entered the picture. She and her new gentleman suitor were soon engaged, and on the day of her wedding, Rachel made the mistake of refusing Tiedemann’s advances. This she paid for with her life. Legend says that Hannes Tiedemann strangled her in a secret passage that surrounds the ballroom but made it look like a suicidal hanging.

Another story relates that Hannes Tiedemann caught his niece, a girl named Karen, in bed with his grandson. In a fit of rage, he drew a gun and shot the girl dead. This, too, he made to look like a suicide.

In 1895, Louise Tiedemann drank herself to death. Within the year, Hannes Tiedemann returned to Germany, became reacquainted with a waitress named Henriette and returned with her as his new bride. He abruptly sold the Franklin Castle and moved with Henriette to an identical home he’d built in Lakewood. The new marriage was a disaster, and Henriette divorced the overbearing man, leaving him to spend his remaining years alone. She’d inherit nothing from his estate.

In 1906, Hannes Tiedemann’s last surviving child, a son named August, died, leaving him without any heirs. Two years later, while walking in the park one Sunday morning in January, Hannes Tiedemann suddenly dropped dead. His death was from a stroke, but many suspected it was the hand of God himself that stuck down Hannes Tiedemann for the wicked deeds he’d committed in his long, horrible life.

The next owner of the Franklin Castle was a brewer from Buffalo named Muehlhauser. He rented the house to his widowed sister and her children, who lived there until 1921, when they sold it to the German Socialist Party.

During this next period, many wild stories emerged. Tales were told of Nazi spying during World War II and a giant radio antenna being placed atop the turret. Other stories told of illegal liquor production, rumrunning during Prohibition and a mass execution, with dozens gunned down in a secret room. Word also began to spread about hidden tunnels being discovered in the house. It was believed these tunnels were remnants of the Underground Railroad and were being used for smuggling liquor. The socialists owned the house until 1967, when it was sold to the Romano family.

Mrs. Romano and her husband purchased the house with the intention of turning it into a restaurant—though these hopes were soon dashed. On the day they moved in, two of the Romano children came down from the third floor and asked their mother if they could have a cookie for their friend, the little girl in white, who was crying upstairs. When Mrs. Romano investigated, she found nobody there.

Within a few weeks, the Romanos began noticing many more unusual events in the house. Objects moved around on their own, voices echoed from empty rooms and footsteps were heard running back and forth across the ballroom floor. Just two weeks after moving in, Mrs. Romano’s two grown sons from a previous marriage awoke one night when the blankets were ripped from their beds. They moved out the following day.

Eventually, the disturbances were so great that Mrs. Romano forbade her children from playing on the third and fourth floors. On occasion, Mrs. Romano saw a woman in a black gown standing in the turret on the third floor, whom she believed was Louise Tiedemann. Others in later years gave her the identity of Wiebeka Tiedemann, Rachel or Karen. As for the little girl in white, many speculate it’s the ghost of Emma Tiedemann. Word spread of what was occurring at the Franklin Castle, and soon the house drew reporters and curiosity seekers.

On one occasion, the house was visited by a radio personality named John Webster. While ascending the stairs, a recorder was ripped from his shoulders and smashed into dozens of pieces on the landing below. Another visit brought a writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer named Barbara Dreimiller. While visiting the house, Dreimiller was ascending the same stairwell that Mr. Webster had. As she reached the top of the third floor landing, a green vaporous mist drifted ahead of her. Without hesitation, she entered this mist, was overcome and fainted on the spot. She awoke later on a sofa on the first floor.

Eventually, the house drove Mrs. Romano mad. One day, she received a warning from a medium that one of her children would die if she didn’t move. That was the final straw. After just five years of living there, the Romanos sold the home and moved elsewhere, never to return. Incidentally, moving her family changed nothing. One of her children died anyway.

The next owner was Sam Muscatello. His plans were to turn the house into a church, but after a few weeks, these plans were abandoned as the disturbances continued. While Muscatello was doing renovations on the third floor, a gruesome discovery was made. A human skeleton was found sealed up in a space between the walls. No identification of the corpse could be made, though it’s suspected this was another victim of Hannes Tiedemann’s ruthlessness.

The home was eventually sold to Richard Hongisto, the new Cleveland police chief. It was perfect for the large parties that he and his wife loved to host. Unfortunately, he’d only own this house for a few weeks. The Hongistos abruptly sold the house, driven away by the disturbances.

Next came George Mirceta, who, like the Hongistos, only owned the house for a brief period. He sold the Franklin Castle to man named Michael DeVinko.

The Franklin Castle in 2006. Photo by William G. Krejci.

DeVinko was popularly known as Mickey Deans, Judy Garland’s last husband. He’d purchased the house to accommodate the grand parties that he, like the Hongistos, loved to host. DeVinko made many changes to the house, adding and dividing up rooms. He owned the house until 1999, when he sold it to Michelle Heimburger, an executive and co-founder of Yahoo!

That fall, the Franklin Castle nearly met its destruction, as an arsonist broke into the house and set it ablaze. After the fire, Heimburger saved the house by having the roof replaced, though she’d ultimately sell the home to a real estate developer named Charles Milsaps.

Milsaps planned to convert the home into the Franklin Castle Club, an exclusive club that planned to offer an extensive wine bar, overnight stays and elegant dinners to its members. Very few renovations were made during Milsaps’s time and the house was ultimately sold to a European artist, who planned to convert the structure into apartments.

The disturbances continue to this day.

All of this makes for a fantastic ghost story, and who doesn’t love a good ghost story?

There’s just one problem.

Hardly a word of this is true.