This is part of our Haunted House series for the month of October – Halloween month. Note: This house is NOT for sale.
Considered to be the “most haunted house in Ohio,” Franklin Castle in Cleveland, Ohio, may well deserve that label ….. or perhaps not. The imposing stone Queen Anne Victorian was built in 1881-1883 by the successful Cudell and Richardson architectural for Hannes Tiedemann, a German immigrant and founder of the Euclid Ave Savings and Trust. Located at Franklin Boulevard and West 44th Street, the four-story, 20-room mansion was located on one of the most prestigious streets in the city at the time.
According to different accounts, Tiedemann was either a saint who built his upscale house not only for his family, but also to share with friends, family and others emigrating from Germany to stay when they first arrived in Cleveland, or a cruel, vindictive man who took pleasure abusing others. When a string of mysterious deaths in the Tiedemann family occurred, rumors circulated that Tiedemann’s dark side was his true personality.
Deaths
Daughter Emma died from diabetes at the age of 15 in 1881. Soon after, Tiedemann’s elderly mother, Wiebeka, died. Tiedemann and his wife Louise would bury three more young children over the years, giving rise to rumors that there was more to their deaths than met the eye. As a distraction for his wife from these terrible events, Tiedemann hired a firm to begin extensive construction on the home, adding a ballroom, turrets and gargoyles. Louise Tiedemann, however, died from a liver disease in 1895, at the age of 57, and the following year, Hannes sold the house to the Mullhauser family. That was not before speculation that he had murdered a niece named Karen, a servant girl named Rachel and a mistress while living in the Franklin Boulevard castle. By 1908, the entire Tiedemann nuclear family were dead, leaving no direct heirs to inherit Hannes’ significant personal wealth.