Cleveland’s Haunted Castle
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Written by Nicole Wloszek-Therens
A look into the legend and lore entwined in one of Cleveland’s most infamous homes.
Next time you find yourself in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland, keep an eye out for the towering stone house on Franklin Boulevard. Its roof juts out among the treetops, which seem planted to shield it from the questioning stares of passersby. The iron fence has a heavy lock and chain that reinforce the theory. Don’t look for too long, though – you might think you saw someone standing in the upstairs window.
Maybe you did.
The 142-year-old house, known as Franklin Castle, is considered one of the most notoriously haunted homes in the country. For more than a century, legends and lore have swirled about what happened within its walls. Many have their own theories, from mass murder and secret passageways to ghosts possessing the spirits of children after stepping foot inside. Most of these are tall tales passed down in a century-long game of telephone, but some might be true.
History
According to the book “The Haunted Franklin Castle” by authors William G. Krejci and John W. Myers, Franklin Castle was constructed sometime between late 1881 and early 1883 for Hannes Tiedemann, a German immigrant who became one of the most well-respected bankers in Cleveland. Tiedemann had been living with his family in a separate home on the Franklin Boulevard property prior to Franklin Castle’s construction.
He and his wife Louisa lost three of their six children while living in the first house on the property. Two had died in infancy and the eldest, Emma, passed away from diabetes in 1881.
In 1883, three of the children’s remains were exhumed and reburied at Riverside Cemetery behind the family monument. Since they were reburied, the three children have the same burial date. “The Haunted Franklin Castle” reports that this led to rumors that they passed in some sinister way, some speculating at the hands of their father. In reality, all children died in separate and natural circumstances.
Tiedemann sold Franklin Castle in 1897, two years after his wife passed away.
Since then, the house has been passed like a hot potato through the hands of various owners. It became a singing club, secretly serving up alcohol during prohibition, spent some time as a family home once more, hosted ghost tours in the 70s and was used as a set for video and film productions. Franklin Castle was also owned by Mickey Deans, the last husband of actress Judy Garland, before an arsonist caused significant damage to the property in 1999. It has since been restored.
A Haunted House
According to “The Haunted Franklin Castle,” Dee Dee and Jimmy Romano, who moved into the house with their parents in 1968, recalled the time they saw a little girl sitting on the steps of the house crying. She would reappear, and Jimmy Romano said, “She was a lot like having an imaginary friend, only she wasn’t imagined.” As they grew older, they became increasingly frightened when they saw her. Eventually, she stopped appearing altogether.
The house was first publicly reported as having “strange incidents” in a September 1968 issue of the Cleveland Press, prompting its notoriety as the haunted Franklin Castle.
Franklin Castle has made its way into both local and national stories of haunted places in Ohio and beyond. It was featured on a 2016 episode of Paranormal Lockdown and a 2020 episode of Ghost Adventures, two series that attempt to investigate and capture evidence of paranormal phenomena. One thing has remained the same throughout Franklin Castle’s history: the stories of strange happenings have persisted.
William Krejci
William Krejci, Cleveland native and author of “The Haunted Franklin Castle,” remembers driving past the house on the scenic route home from his grandmother’s when he was just five years old. His dad pointed it out and told him it was truly haunted, striking an interest that would last well beyond Krejci’s childhood.
“Dad said, ‘Hey kids, look, that’s a real haunted house,’” Krejci said. “I was like, ‘That’s real.’ I mean, he never said anything that profound.”
That’s when Krejci decided he wanted to live in Franklin Castle.
“My parents said, ‘Yeah, let us know when you hit the lottery,’” Krejci said. “They were really surprised when I called them and told them I was moving into Franklin Castle.”
In 2015, the then-owners of Franklin Castle were excavating the backyard when they ran into a wall buried beneath the earth. They wanted to know if this wall was a part of a larger structure earlier in the home’s history, and if so, what that structure was. The owners contacted a local historian who referred them to William Krejci.
Krejci was able to determine the origin of the wall and ended up giving the owners a tour of their own house based on what he knew from his years of research on the Franklin Castle. The owners invited Krejci to stay in the home as a live-in point of historical reference.
In the six years that Krejci spent living in Franklin Castle, he kept a running account of all the paranormal things he experienced. They were all written in a small notebook with “Handbook for the Recently Deceased,” an homage to the film “Beetlejuice.”
He recorded the date and time of day anything "unexplainable and possibly paranormal” occurred, to see if there was any kind of discernible pattern. “There wasn’t,” Krejci said.
Krejci experienced an array of encounters while living in Franklin Castle, from being awoken by the apparition of an unfamiliar ghastly figure to hearing children running up and down the stairs when he was alone in the house.
An incident that particularly stuck out to Krejci was when he and his brother went out for a cigarette on Franklin Castle’s balcony during an evening of watching Netflix. As the smoke swirled in ghastly figures and drifted off into the night, they noticed the sound of voices coming from the room they had just been in.
“We can hear the TV unpause itself,” Krejci said. “My brother’s getting upset, like, ‘I’ll take it back and exchange it,’ thinking there’s a problem with the TV. We open the door, walk in, everything we hear stops, and the TV is paused exactly where we left it.”
In 2022, Krejci moved out of Franklin Castle, but the strange happenings didn’t follow him. As for the theory that the house is haunted, Krejci said yes.
“When I moved out in 2022 and someone asked me if it was haunted, I said, ‘Yep, it’s haunted.’ Which I’m never really that definite about,” Krejci said. “Nothing evil or malicious; I’d almost say enchanted. There certainly is activity that can be construed as paranormal, ghostly, or otherworldly.”
Zac Webb
Zac Webb, a 31-year-old artist from Cleveland, said he was mostly unaware of the haunted history when he first started staying at Franklin Castle in 2019. He was introduced to the owner of the house, who later took notice of Webb’s knack for painting and offered him the opportunity to move in as part of an artist residency.
“I thought it was interesting,” Webb said. “I didn’t know what I was getting into.”
On weekends, Webb would retreat to a room upstairs filled with his canvases, paints and works in progress, locking himself away to focus on his art.
“It was a cool opportunity; I had to take advantage of it,” Webb said. “Half the time, I wouldn’t leave. I’d kind of just lock myself upstairs for the entire weekend and try to work on some things.”
The work Webb created during this time displays the distinct influence Franklin Castle had on his style.
“There’s a lot of creative energy in here; you’ve got to be careful,” Webb said. “I totally got too sucked into it for a while, and I just started painting different styles. I switched my style up over the years, but you can tell what I did when I was here.”
In October of 2019, Webb’s residency wrapped up, and the paintings he created during his weekends at Franklin Castle were exhibited inside the home. Some of his works were later displayed in London at a gallery of notorious haunted art pieces.
One piece in particular has yet to be exhibited, and Webb said it likely never will.
Webb’s residency was coming to an end when he returned to one of the first pieces he started in Franklin Castle.
“I don’t know what happened, but I just started working on this painting,” Webb said, “and it’s definitely a creepy piece.”
Shortly after the exhibition, Webb invited a friend to stay the night at Franklin Castle. The next morning, Webb’s friend described having a vivid dream of a figure sitting next to him in the bed.
“I found the picture of the painting,” Webb said, “and he was like ‘Oh man, that’s exactly what I saw.’ He had never even seen this painting before. It was really weird.”
The painting stayed in storage in Webb’s apartment, which caught fire while he was moving out – “right where I had the painting,” Webb said. “I was like, ‘Something’s off about this.’”
The piece survived the fire and has been kept in storage ever since.
After his residency, he stayed for three years, incidentally moving into Franklin Castle on Halloween of 2019 and out on Halloween of 2022.
“I swear I didn’t plan it; it just happened like that,” Webb said.
Webb recalled multiple incidents of hearing unexplained noises and having strange dreams, but after years spent inside the historical house, he still doesn’t know what it all means.
“The place sticks with you,” Webb said. “I don’t know if it's good or bad.”
Now, Webb works as an event coordinator and social media manager for Franklin Castle as they continue with an effort to run it as a business, hosting events and offering rooms for nightly stays.
If any spirits are indeed present, Webb might consider them his coworkers, keeping him company in the lofty walls of the old Victorian home as he ushers in yet another new phase of the infamous Franklin Castle.
“I’m kind of hoping the house likes me,” Webb said. “You know, it hasn’t scared me away yet.”
More spooky images of Franklin Castle provided by Nicole Wloszek-Therens.
