Franklin Castle

Looming over Franklin Boulevard on Cleveland's near west side is a house that can only be described as a castle. Legend says it is the most haunted house in Cleveland. Franklin Castle was built for wholesale grocer Hannes Tiedemann. The Tiedemann family resided at this address from 1866 through 1895, but this house was not built until 1881. It was designed by the architectural firm Cudell & Richardson, the most prominent firm in Cleveland at the time, and is the only private residence the firm ever designed. This massive sandstone Queen Anne – style home, complete with a corner tower, a fourth-floor ballroom, a wine cellar and about thirty rooms, was home to Hannes; his wife, Luise; his mother; and the rest of his growing family from 1881 through 1895.

Hannes Tiedemann was a partner in the wholesale grocery Weideman & Tiedemann beginning in 1864. He sold out in 1871, and in 1883, he became founder and vice-president of the Savings Loan & Trust Company.

The Tiedemanns enjoyed the first few years in the house, and their family began to grow. They had a son, August, and a daughter, Emma. They lost three other children in infancy. Tragedy struck on January 15, 1891, when they lost Emma; she is believed to have died due to complications with diabetes. Hannes's mother, Wiebeka, passed away shortly after Emma, and it is believed she died of natural causes. During this time, Luise Tiedemann was understandably grief-stricken, and Hannes began to add hidden rooms to the home and other decorating touches to help alleviate his wife's grief, although there are others who say that Mrs. Tiedemann began to concentrate on the house and add hidden rooms and passages so she could avoid her overbearing husband.

Rumors ran rampant that Hannes was not going to win the husband of the year award. It was common knowledge that Hannes carried on with the servants and possibly other ladies with shady pasts. There were even stories that Hannes strangled one of the servants when she informed him she was going to be married. The servant girl was believed to be named Rachel, and she is the spirit that people have heard choking in the turret room. She is also referred to as the "Lady in Black." It is also said that Hannes hung a girl in the rafters of the ballroom for sexual promiscuity. Rumor had it that Hannes caught the young girl in bed with his grandson. Another story of this incident is that the young lady had some mental issues, and Hannes felt he should put her out of her misery.

When Luise passed away from liver trouble in 1895, Hannes was left all alone in this magnificent home. He sold the house in 1896 and moved to another grand home on Lake Road with his new bride, Henriette, a young waitress he had met at a German resort. The marriage did not last long. They divorced, and Hannes Tiedemann passed away alone after suffering a massive stroke in 1908.

The house was sold to the Mulhauser family and was then sold again and became the headquarters to the German American League of Culture. There are rumors that this group was not what it seemed and that it actually murdered some members in one of the hidden rooms, although there is no proof of this occurring. There are no stories of paranormal happenings at this time.

In 1968, the Romano family purchased the house with a view to turning it into a bed-and-breakfast. Their tenure in the house only lasted until 1974, and this is when the stories of strange happenings started. Sam Muscatello bought the castle with the dream of turning it into a church. Sam became aware of the house's history and began to take people on tours of the house. He sold the house to a doctor, who in turn sold it to Cleveland police chief Richard Hongisto. Hongisto and his wife only lasted in the castle for one year before selling it to George Micerta. Micerta had not heard of the house's haunted history; he bought it just because he fell in love with its architecture. He became aware of the strange stories about his home shortly after he moved in, and he also began conducting tours of the house and encouraged people to write down in a journal any strange occurrences they encountered while in the house. In March 1982, Franklin Castle was put on the National Register of Historic Places. The amazing history and architecture of Franklin Castle was to be preserved.

Micerta claimed he had no encounters in the house, but in 1984, he sold it to Michael "Mickey" DeVinko. Mickey DeVinko, Judy Garland's fifth husband, began restoration of the house, going so far as to find the original blueprints and front door key, which still worked. He even located some of the original furniture. DeVinko was very comfortable in the house; he felt that none of the spirits bothered him because he was restoring the house for them. He put the house back on the market, and it was sold in 1999. The new owner, Michelle Heimberger, continued to work on the house, but unfortunately, there was a fire that caused extensive damage to the ballroom and roof.

For a time after that, a developer tried to continue the restoration with the idea of turning the castle into a private club called the Franklin Castle Club. This idea eventually died out when the carriage house caught on fire in March 2011. The house was again put on the market and sold to a woman interested in living in the ballroom and turning the lower floors into an art gallery, according to the rumor mill. There has been extensive work done and hopefully more to follow.

There are no reports of ghost activity until 1968, when the Romano family took over the house. Those reports began almost immediately, with the children asking their mother if they could take a cookie upstairs to the little girl, who some say is Emma, because they felt bad she was crying so hard. Mrs. Romano heard organ music in the house, even though the organ had been removed years before. She heard conversations taking place in empty rooms, perhaps echoes of long-ago occupants of the house? Finally, the Romano's parish priest convinced them to leave, as he felt there was something wrong in the house. He felt that most of the activity was directed at Mrs. Romano, that maybe Luise Tiedemann was reaching out to her, and he felt it was better for the family if they left.

During one of the many renovation periods, it was reported that human bones, those of a baby, were found in one of the hidden rooms, which, to some, confirmed the reports of a baby's cry being heard in the house. It also brought into question the doctor who had once lived in the house. Almost immediately, he became a sinister figure in the history of the house, with people speculating that he had been performing unspeakable experiments there.

When tours were being done in the house during the 1970s,...