A friend of mine, Chris, and his wife Brenda took a tour of Franklin Castle the other night. Chris took a lot of pictures, and I’ve spent the day perusing them for any signs of anything paranormal. So far, no luck. The tour sounded like a good time anyway… I’ll let him tell the story:

It was very interesting. But kinda uneventful. I used to get an uneasy feeling in my grandfathers basement and I really expected that there, but nothing. The house is in pretty bad shape, the fire caused a lot of smoke damage, which is still present. It was really cool. The guy that was doing the tour, I kinda expected to be all gothed-out and trying to be spooky, but he wasn’t. He was very knowledgeable of the history. He actually debunked a lot of the urban legend. They are putting $3 million dollars into it, and they are making it a social club memberships are $5000 a person though. It’s gonna be a non-profit preservation society with a hundred-year lease on the house from him and the woman Michelle who own it. She is the “California” lady, but she actually only lived in California for a short time. She was born here and moved back here. … I took 288 pics and there was only one questionable thing in the pics that I saw so far. I generally think that orbs are just dust, but there was a pretty bright spot on the wall on the 4th floor, and I took multiple pics of the same spot, but it only shows up in pic. One funny thing is as Brenda and I were going to the third floor, we saw this black flash, we later found out it was a bat, LOL! But for a couple of minutes we weren’t sure. It was pretty cool he took about 2 hours for the tour, and then he let you walk around the house for as long as you want, you can go anywhere you want unsupervised. The reason that he doesn’t want audio or video taken is that they are in the process of filming a documentary, and he doesn’t want a ton of video of his tour going out on the net and hurting the documentary sales. They are doing it to raise money for the restoration. He seemed genuinely interested in saving the house for future generations, not in hyping up the haunted part just for money.

Cool, huh? 288 pictures. Wanna see ’em? Check em out here.

– Chuck

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6 thoughts on “Franklin Castle Tour

  1. Went to see this house and by chance happened upon the current owner about to give a tour to a group. In spite of not having the cash to gate crash he let me in anyway. I was more interested in the architecture of the house than of the ghost stories and had traveled from neighboring Indiana to see it.

    I enjoyed the tour immensely and the house is beautiful even in its present ruined state. Ghosts? I can't say for sure. They said if you stood in a certain place and photographed the oval mirror above the fireplace in the servants quarters (first floor) you might get lucky and capture a ghostly image of a woman's reflection. I did that and no ghost. Oddly though, while photographing the first floor I kept back from the group and was able to get something very unusual but not on camera.

    The group went up to the second floor and my daughter followed. I brought up the rear. As I was stepping onto the landing halfway between the first and second floor I heard popping noises, like plastic being wrinkled and pulled across the ground. The sound was coming from the room with the oval mirror. It sounded like someone was in the room behind me moving things. My daughter also heard the sounds and turned to ask me if I was making them. I thought the owner, whom I had seen go up the stairs first, had somehow got past me and went back down to the main floor. In my complete surprise he was there on the second floor putting rope across the stairs after I ascended to the second floor hallway. He seemed surprised by my query for the possible reason for the sounds and subsequently blew it off and continued with the tour. Later at the end everyone had gone outside and I slipped back into the same room with the oval mirror. I again took several photos, with and without flash. Though I felt a little creeped out I was determined to catch something. But I guess I was not to be rewarded this night. I got nothing! Just the creepy sounds. This house has some definite vibes from outside the norm. I'm planning a return trip as soon as I can! It was worth the long ride!

  2. this house has freaked me out as much As it intrigues me when i am in cleveland i cant stop looking at it i Have a dream to one day own this house or a simular house.

  3. hey i visited the caslte 2 years ago and we got some pretty creepy pics and one of the girls were saying she dont believe in this stuff and she ended up sick in the hospital with no explination why. creepy enough for you you can check the pics out on my myspace under mommy's girl

  4. Hi,

    I am reading the pages about the "forgotten places in Ohio" with a lot of interest (even most of them were not updated for a loooong time), and IMHO it was said since years that there should be a club in the Franklin Castle.
    So is it once again "vapor" or are they really restoring it now?

    Regards from rainy Germany, Holger "Hollito"

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