Franklin Castle: The Tragic Gilded Age Deaths That Created Ohio’s Most Haunted House Part 1

0:00 Speaker 1: Dear listener, Before the word haunted ever touched this house,

0:04 Speaker 1: before paranormal investigators pointed infrared cameras at its turrets, before

0:09 Speaker 1: cable television declared it cursed, Franklin Castle was simply a

0:13 Speaker 1: headline in the society pages, and then slowly it became

0:19 Speaker 1: a headline in the obituary column. To understand how that

0:23 Speaker 1: transformation happened, we must step fully into Cleveland in eighteen

0:28 Speaker 1: eighty one. Cleveland in the early eighteen eighties was a

0:32 Speaker 1: city roaring with industrial confidence. Steel mills clanged, lake freighters

0:38 Speaker 1: moved iron ore like floating mountains. Railroad tracks stitched neighborhoods

0:43 Speaker 1: into commercial arteries. Immigrations swelled the population, and with it

0:48 Speaker 1: came churches, ethnic clubs, breweries, and banks. German immigrants, in particular,

0:53 Speaker 1: were reshaping the city's economic backbone. Among them stood Hannis Tiedemann, banker,

1:00 Speaker 1: respected citizen, ambitious patriarch. In eighteen eighty one, he commissioned

1:04 Speaker 1: what would become the most architecturally dramatic residence on Franklin Boulevard,

1:09 Speaker 1: built in Victorian Romanesque style, thick sandstone walls, heavy arches,

1:15 Speaker 1: carved grotesques, perched along the roofline. The structure rose like

1:19 Speaker 1: something transplanted from the Rhine Valley. The house did not

1:23 Speaker 1: resemble its neighbors. It resembled permanence. It resembled defiance against instability.

1:29 Speaker 1: The local press took notice.

1:32 Speaker 2: Mister H. Tiedemann, esteemed officer of the Savings Institution, has

1:36 Speaker 2: erected upon Franklin Boulevard a most extraordinary domicile of stone

1:42 Speaker 2: and ornament. The structure, castellated in form and bearing the

1:47 Speaker 2: features of European fortification, shall no doubt stand as one

1:52 Speaker 2: of the grandest private residences in our growing city.

1:57 Speaker 1: At that moment, the house symbolized triumph, immigrant success, crystallized

2:02 Speaker 1: in sandstone. But the Gilded Age, for all its wealth,

2:06 Speaker 1: rested on fragile foundations. Banks failed overnight, speculative bubbles burst,

2:12 Speaker 1: and medicine lagged decades behind prosperity. In eighteen eighty three,

2:18 Speaker 1: tragedy entered the castle quietly. Fifteen year old Emma Tideman

2:22 Speaker 1: fell ill. Today, historians cite complications of diabetes. In eighteen

2:29 Speaker 1: eighty three, diabetes was often described as wasting disease or

2:34 Speaker 1: saccharine affliction. Physicians could detect sugar in urine, but had

2:38 Speaker 1: little ability to treat the underlying condition Without insulin. Not

2:43 Speaker 1: discovered until nineteen twenty one, type one diabetes was nearly

2:47 Speaker 1: always fatal. Treatment regimens sometimes included near starvation diets in

2:52 Speaker 1: desperate attempts to prolong life. Imagine that in a house

2:56 Speaker 1: of abundance, a grand dining room downstairs, a daughter upstairs

3:01 Speaker 1: too weak to eat, the gas lamps burning through the

3:04 Speaker 1: night as her parents waited. When Emma died, it was

3:07 Speaker 1: not unusual in a statistical sense, but it was devastating

3:11 Speaker 1: in a personal one, and the newspapers recorded it.

3:15 Speaker 2: Miss Emma t beloved daughter of mister and Missus h.

3:19 Speaker 2: Tiedemann of Franklin Boulevard, departed this life on Tuesday last

3:25 Speaker 2: after a protracted illness born with Christian fortitude. The family,

3:30 Speaker 2: so recently established in their handsome new residence are plunged

3:35 Speaker 2: into deep mourning.

3:37 Speaker 1: Notice the phrasing protracted illness. Victorian obituaries rarely specified disease

3:44 Speaker 1: in detail. Illness was both medical and moral, something endured

3:49 Speaker 1: with fortitude, but in private grief compounded. Because Emma would

3:55 Speaker 1: not be the last. Between eighteen eighty three and the

3:59 Speaker 1: mid eighteen nineties, multiple members of the Tiedeman household died.

4:04 Speaker 1: An elderly mother passed, likely from natural causes common to

4:08 Speaker 1: age in that era. Several children died in infancy or

4:13 Speaker 1: early childhood. To modern ears, it sounds catastrophic, but let

4:18 Speaker 1: us anchor ourselves in demographic truth. In eighteen ninety America,

4:25 Speaker 1: infant mortality rates hovered around one hundred to two hundred

4:29 Speaker 1: deaths per one thousand live births. In urban areas, Diphtheria

4:34 Speaker 1: outbreaks could sweep through neighborhoods. Scarlet fever and measles frequently proved.

4:39 Speaker 1: Fatal Tuberculosis claimed entire families. Even affluent households were vulnerable.

4:46 Speaker 1: Wealth bought architecture, not immunity, and yet repetition creates suspicion.

4:53 Speaker 1: By eighteen ninety five, when Luisa Tiedemann died reportedly of

4:57 Speaker 1: liver disease, the optics had changed. The castle, only fourteen

5:02 Speaker 1: years old, had already seen multiple funerals. The press language

5:06 Speaker 1: subtly shifted.

5:08 Speaker 2: Missus Louisa Tiedemann, consort of the well known banker, expired

5:13 Speaker 2: at the family residence upon Franklin Boulevard. It is remarked

5:18 Speaker 2: by some that the household has endured, an uncommon measure

5:21 Speaker 2: of bereavement these recent years, though friends insist providence alone

5:27 Speaker 2: governs such matters.

5:29 Speaker 1: Read between the lines an uncommon measure of bereavement. Victorian

5:34 Speaker 1: newspapers often flirted with implication without accusation. The public began

5:40 Speaker 1: to count children, mother wife in less than two decades,

5:46 Speaker 1: and the castle's silhouette did not help. Because architecture shapes narrative.

5:51 Speaker 1: The turrets looked watchful, the narrow windows looked secretive. The

5:55 Speaker 1: carved wood interiors dark oak and heavy drapery felt shab

6:00 Speaker 1: even at midday. In an era fascinated by Gothic literature

6:04 Speaker 1: by Edgar Allan Poe by serialized penny dreadfuls, a castle

6:09 Speaker 1: with repeated funerals was combustible material. Now we enter the

6:15 Speaker 1: psychological transformation. When tragedy strikes repeatedly, humans seek patterns, and

6:21 Speaker 1: late nineteenth century America was saturated with sensational crime reporting.

6:26 Speaker 1: Poisoning cases captivated the public. Female poisoners were discussed in

6:31 Speaker 1: lurid detail. Urban legends traveled quickly via print. If multiple

6:36 Speaker 1: children died in one home, there were only two explanations

6:40 Speaker 1: in the public imagination, God's mysterious will, human agency, and

6:46 Speaker 1: human agency makes better headlines. Rumors emerged that Hannas had

6:50 Speaker 1: grown unstable, that grief unhinged him, that a child was

6:54 Speaker 1: hidden in an attic room, that a servant disappeared. There

6:58 Speaker 1: is no documented night eighteenth century court case proving homicide

7:02 Speaker 1: within the castle during his ownership, but that absence of

7:06 Speaker 1: record does not silence rumor, because the house itself seemed

7:10 Speaker 1: designed to host secrets. Hidden corridors did exist, narrow structural

7:15 Speaker 1: spaces and servant pathways common in large Victorian homes, but

7:19 Speaker 1: to a public primed for intrigue, hidden architecture equalled hidden crime.

7:25 Speaker 2: Whispers abound upon Franklin Boulevard concerning the stone residence of

7:30 Speaker 2: mister t While no formal accusation stands, it is said

7:35 Speaker 2: in certain quarters that sorrow has dwelt too long within

7:39 Speaker 2: those walls to be accounted for by natural cause alone.

7:44 Speaker 1: That is how myth begins, not with proof, with suggestion.

7:50 Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety seven, Hannas Tiedemann sold the house. One

7:54 Speaker 1: must imagine the emotional toll. A home meant to embody

7:58 Speaker 1: prosperity had become synonyms with mourning, he relocated elsewhere in Cleveland.

8:03 Speaker 1: In nineteen oh one, he died of natural causes. No

8:07 Speaker 1: scandal erupted upon his death, No sealed confession emerged. If

8:12 Speaker 1: he had been a murderer, he left no verified evidence,

8:16 Speaker 1: But by then it did not matter, because Franklin Castle

8:19 Speaker 1: had crossed a threshold. It was no longer simply a building.

8:24 Speaker 1: It was a story container, and Cleveland was ready to

8:27 Speaker 1: fill it. Dear listener, what we have uncovered here is

8:31 Speaker 1: not proof of horror, but proof of how grief, architecture, medicine,

8:36 Speaker 1: and media intertwine. The late eighteen hundreds were medically brutal,

8:42 Speaker 1: child mortality was common, urban rumor was rampant, and newspapers

8:47 Speaker 1: thrived on implication. Franklin Castle did not need a ghost,

8:52 Speaker 1: It needed repetition, and repetition it had. In Part two,

8:56 Speaker 1: we move into the twentieth century, where the mad doc

9:00 Speaker 1: narrative forms. Bones are rumored in walls, religious groups gather

9:05 Speaker 1: inside darkened rooms, and the modern appetite for hauntings cements

9:09 Speaker 1: the Castle's reputation forever. Because sometimes history does not haunt

9:14 Speaker 1: a house, sometimes people do. So move on to Part

9:17 Speaker 1: two and join us in exploring the oddities around Franklin Castle,