Franklin Castle
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Franklin Castle (aka Hannes Tiedemann House)
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| Location | 4308 Franklin Boulevard Ohio City, Cleveland, Ohio United States |
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| Coordinates | 41°29′8″N 81°42′59″W / 41.48556°N 81.71639°WCoordinates: 41°29′8″N 81°42′59″W / 41.48556°N 81.71639°W |
| Built | 1881 |
| Architect | Cudell & Richardson |
| Architectural style | Queen Anne |
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| Added to NRHP | March 15, 1982 |
Franklin Castle (also known as the Hannes Tiedemann House) is a historical house located at 4308 Franklin Boulevard in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood. The building has four stories and more than twenty rooms. It is purported to be the most haunted house in Ohio.
On 15 March 1982, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The house was built in 1881 by architects Cudell & Richardson for Hannes Tiedemann, a German immigrant. On January 15, 1891, Tiedemann's fifteen-year-old daughter Emma succumbed to diabetes. The house saw its second death not long afterwards when Tiedemann's elderly mother, Wiebeka, died. During the next three years the Tiedemanns would bury three more children, giving rise to speculation that there was more to the deaths than met the eye.
To distract his wife, Luise, from these tragedies, Tiedemann began extensive construction on the home, adding a ballroom which runs the length of the house in the fourth floor of the manor. Also during this building, turrets and gargoyles were added to the edifice's facade, giving the house an even more pronounced "castle" appearance.
It is rumored that there were hidden rooms and passageways that were used for bootlegging during Prohibition. Though rumored, none of these rooms or passageways exist other than a small stairway used by servants from the kitchen to the front door.
Luise Tiedemann died from a liver disease on March 24, 1895, at the age of fifty-seven. Hannes sold the house to the Mullhauser family, and by 1908 he and the entire Tiedemann family were dead, leaving no one to inherit his considerable personal wealth.
Rumors of crimes committed in the house by Tiedemann (including sexual indiscretions and murder) have contributed to Franklin Castle's reputation as a haunted house.
The house remained largely unoccupied until January 1968, when James Romano, his wife, and six children settled in the long abandoned building. The Romano family reported several encounters with ghosts in their new home, and attempted exorcisms and even had a now defunct ghost-hunting group (the Northeast Ohio Psychical Research Society) investigate the castle. By 1974, the Romanos decided to leave the house, and sold it to Sam Muscatello, who planned to turn the castle into a church. To raise money for the church, tours and overnight stays at the castle were offered.
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Wikipedia