14

HIGH ASPIRATIONS

On December 22, 1978, Maryon Ruchelman sold the Franklin Castle to George J. Mirceta for the sum of $85,000. Mirceta had been viewing properties in the area with a real estate agent, and the house seemed ideal.

When Mirceta moved into the house, it was in a state of disrepair. The large room on the first floor that was once the servants’ dining room and parlor had been divided up and converted into apartments. Also, the motor for the dumbwaiter was missing. George planned to restore the house to its original condition. Seeing that a full restoration would be too costly, he tried to secure funding from the state but was turned down, as funding wasn’t available.

Around that time, George applied to have the house added to the National Register of Historic Places. The house’s background first needed to be reviewed.

In 1980, a familiar face returned to the Franklin Castle, that being the self-proclaimed psychic who’d once taken belly-dancing lessons with Connie Fleming on the fourth floor, Eleanora “Ellie” Bernstein. Ellie claimed to be the girl that appeared on packages of Sunbeam Bread, having won a contest as a child. This claim has never been proven. Regarding her psychic abilities, these she claimed stemmed from early childhood when she had a premonition of her father’s death, which occurred the following day.

Years before her involvement at the Franklin Castle, Ellie claimed to see a figure of a woman in one of the upstairs windows. She also said that she’d occasionally go into a trance in the middle of the night and wake up to find a story about a member of the Tiedemann family written on the paper in her typewriter. From there, she’d go to the courthouse and look up records on the family. Much to her astonishment, these records seemed to match up with what she had written, or so she claimed.

When Ellie Bernstein returned to the Franklin Castle, she was given a room and took on the duty of giving tours. She also continued to write about the early ownership of the house. It’s from these writings that many of the current legends about the house can be traced.

In an article that appeared in the Cleveland Press on March 27, 1980, Ellie claimed that the ghost of Hannes Tiedemann was telling her about his life in the Franklin Castle. She claimed that he passed through her room on many occasions and referred to her as Anita. All of this she was writing in a book she planned to call The Haunting of Franklin Castle.

In her journal, she told of how Tiedemann had gagged and tied his mistress, a girl named Rachel, to a bed. He later shot her the day she was to marry another man. Ellie claimed that the walls of the room still echoed with the sounds of Rachel being choked and many people reported seeing a slender woman dressed in black. She also mentioned a rafter in one of the passageways that surround the ballroom and claimed that Hannes Tiedemann hanged an illegitimate daughter named Karen after finding her in bed with one of his grandsons. Bernstein went on in the article to talk about the human bones that were discovered by Sam Muscatello; she was convinced that there were more in the backyard, where she planned to excavate later that spring. Needless to say, no further human remains have been found on the property.

George Mirceta and Eleanora Bernstein 1980. Bernstein is holding her book The Haunting of Franklin Castle. Photo by Tony Tomsic. Cleveland State University Library.

As near as anyone can find, Ellie Bernstein was the first person to accuse Hannes Tiedemann of murder, a falsehood that has endured to this day.

Other articles were written during that time. One quoted George as saying that if the house really was haunted, he wouldn’t be living there. Another stated that he heard a baby’s crying coming from within the walls of a third-floor bedroom. He never was very clear on his belief in the haunting and always left that as something of a mystery.

In 1981, a psychiatrist named Ron Balas opened a center in the house called Kids in Crisis, a program to help troubled teens that was funded primarily through donations. The program operated for about a year before Balas was asked to leave for not paying his rent.

It was also around that time that George met his wife, Helen. This occurred when she happened upon the house and took a tour. Looking back on the stories that were told about George hearing a baby’s crying, Helen never recalled hearing such a thing. She did, however, occasionally hear the sound of a window opening and slamming shut, followed by the sound of glass breaking. Fearing that vandals were damaging the houses that stood on either side of the Franklin Castle, she and George investigated one night to see if this was the origin of the noise. As it turned out, both neighboring houses were perfectly fine.

As far as any other disturbances went, Helen recalled that she’d see a short, stocky woman walking past her with her hair up in a bun and dressed in black. Helen further recalled being pushed a couple of times while coming down from the third floor, as well as many instances where items would move about on their own. Something would be put down, and by the next morning it would be somewhere else.

One night, George and Helen set up a tape recorder in an upstairs room and decided to let it run. They came back to retrieve the recorder and played back what it had captured. The results were incredible.

They heard the sound of an older man’s voice occasionally joined by that of a younger woman’s. They heard the sound of slaps, screams and the man occasionally yelling. One thing was certain. The language being shouted wasn’t English.

One story that George related to Helen, which occurred in the house before they’d met, was of a tour that had been given to a family one afternoon. Accompanying this family on the tour was their young daughter, who wandered off at some point early on. At the conclusion of the tour, the girl was nowhere to be seen. After searching the house, she was finally located sitting on the steps near the fourth floor with a blank expression on her face. Her parents, relieved that she’d been found, told her it was time to go, but the child would not move. The concerned parents finally picked her up and left.

After a few days, the family returned and explained to George that the little girl wouldn’t talk, eat or do anything at all. Believing that she was somehow traumatized by something from the house, the parents told George that he had better do something about it or face legal action. At this, a priest was called and a blessing performed on the child. Almost instantly, the child recovered. It’d later be related to Mirceta that the girl had witnessed a short and stocky woman stepping out of her body.

Something that fondly stuck out in Helen’s memory was the building of what she referred to as the “Berlin Wall.” George had unearthed a number of sandstone blocks in the backyard, likely left over from the house’s construction, and used these to build a large stone wall along the western border of the property. Part of this wall still exists today. Among the stones unearthed was a piece that had a face ornately carved into it. This matched the grotesques that are found on the front of the house but was slightly damaged. Most likely, it was to be a part of the original construction but was damaged while it was being carved and ended up being discarded with the rest of the leftover stones. The Mircetas took this stone with them when they ultimately moved out. Unfortunately, it was stolen some years later.

Finally, on March 15, 1982, the Franklin Castle received the prestigious recognition it deserved. On that date, the Hannes Tiedemann House was approved and added to the National Register of Historic Places as no. 82004417. It was added primarily because of its architectural significance, mostly to do with its builders Cudell & Richardson. Again, George Mirceta applied for a grant to help finance the renovations, but again, funds weren’t available and his request was denied.

Also, in 1982, the Franklin Castle made its big-screen debut. The Francis Ford Coppola film The Escape Artist, which starred Griffin O’Neal, Raúl Juliá, Desi Arnaz and Teri Garr, was being filmed in Cleveland. It should be noted that while the exterior of the Franklin Castle was used in this film, the scenes of what took place inside the castle were actually filmed in a Los Angeles studio.

After filming was complete, the landmarks commission added an inscription to the transom window above the main entrance that read “Franklin Castle, built 1860, Historic Landmark.” Unfortunately, the date was incorrect by more than twenty years.

Eventually, giving tours of the Franklin Castle got to be too much, and they soon came to an end, primarily due to people stealing items. Furthermore, George and Helen were now expecting a child, and the house didn’t feel like the right atmosphere for raising children. The Mircetas never got much peace living in the house. People would come in the middle of the night to ask if the house was haunted. Also, the carriage house had been broken into a few times, as had the front door of the castle itself. Helen’s car had been vandalized, and windows on the servants’ level of the home had been smashed out.

In short, it was time to move.

Looking back, Helen Mirceta felt that George truly loved the house. Both his heart and soul were in it, but it was time to move on.

On September 9, 1983, the Franklin Castle was sold to Richard J. Perez and his wife, Virginia. Perez was a Cleveland attorney who was already living in Ohio City on Franklin Boulevard. He’d tried to purchase the house from George Mirceta at least once before, though at the time, George wasn’t ready to part with it.

After moving in, Perez did very little to change the house, as George Mirceta had done such a nice job with his renovations. Mirceta also rewired the house during his tenure, just as James Romano had.

As had happened with previous owners, the Perez family was also visited by a number of people interested in the house. One of these visitors was Sam Muscatello. According to Perez, Sam used to hold séances in the house and approached him about possibly holding another. Also around that time, Perez was contacted by The Ghoul, a local late-night horror movie host, about filming an episode of his show there.

Being familiar with the stories about the Franklin Castle, Virginia Perez decided to investigate and find out for herself if any of these stories were true. She worked as a reporter and therefore had better access to historical records than most. Her findings proved that many of the legends about the home, especially those relating to the Tiedemanns, were not true.

In all regards, the period concerning the Perezes’ ownership of the house could be considered uneventful, though it’s probably best to look on that time and realize that the house was, in fact, serving its original function as a private residence. Be that as it were, the home did play host to many parties, as Mr. and Mrs. Perez held many gatherings there. So maybe it wasn’t such an uneventful period after all, just one that was more low-key than others.

Though they greatly enjoyed the home, the Perez family occupied the Franklin Castle for just over two years, selling it to a friend in November 1985.