FRANKEN CASTLE
Location: Located just out of view at the end of a winding driveway off Highway 225, Franken Castle is situated near Germantown, a small community ten miles south of Dayton, Ohio. The restaurant in the castle is open Tuesday through Friday except on Holidays while the museum is open only from September through May with reservations only during the summer.
Description of Place: Visually stunning as the image of what most people think of a castle, and surrounded by stone and brick walls, topiary gardens, turrets, mounts, statues, towers, twelve chimneys with twenty-two fireplaces and a reflecting pool around a multi-layered courtyard and veranda overlooking the Ohio Valley and nearby Twin River, the castle has a definite Medieval atmosphere including stained-glass windows, arch ways, parquet floors, a mix of German, French and British decor as well as modern extravagances on five alternating floors. The ground floor has high ceilings and long galleries in addition to wide open halls highlighted by European objects du art, such as suits of armor and Renaissance tapestries. A lot of creative imagination as well as theoretical research went into the completion and addition of the original castle. The second, third and fourth floors are a maze of interconnected stairways, walkways, exterior balconies, concealed doors and hidden passageways. It is quite easy to get lost in the extravagant network of corridors. Wax figure displays are located in the north wing perched over a steep hill along with a imitation torture chamber in the catacombs. Part of the foundation rests atop former limestone caves which might explain part of the sounds heard in the castle.
Ghostly Manifestations: When motorists drive on Highway 225 near Cleveland, Ohio, they are probably going to slow and take another look at the sight of what looks like the peaked tower of a Bavarian Castle just barely poking over the treetops of the nearby hills. It might just be an optical illusion, a sign that someone is seeing things, but it is a quite real fixture in the American Heartland. Franken Castle was the dream of one man, and despite a convoluted and detailed history, it remains an odd landmark in both this world and the next. Whispering voices, footsteps from empty halls, fleeting shadows and moving objects suggest that the transplanted castle still plays home for people who are unaware that they have passed on.
Truthfully, rumors of the castle being haunted actually predate the actual reports of ghosts in the storied edifice which leads one to wonder if there is any merit to the claims of shadowy figures dancing around the concrete ramparts or the sightings of a woman in white coming down the drive. The first "actually" confirmed and documented record of a ghost in the structure comes from the time the castle was used as a warehouse for several stores in town. Several area shop-owners used the castle to hold excess merchandise for their stores. Multiple entrances and stairways were used as loading docks, and it was not unusual for trucks and vans to come from the castle even in the middle of the night. In 1933, a state trooper giving a speeding ticket to a speeder heard the sound of a woman screaming her head off from the castle. It sounded as if someone was being murdered in one of the open top floor bedrooms. Unsure what to think and calling for assistance, the officer sped up the winding drive with his lights on his patrol car eerily flashing through the trees and then his voice calling for the injured woman from the courtyard. Resulting cars soon filled the courtyard and officers inched through crates of boxes pushed to the walls and lining hallways for the harried woman. Although it is unsure if the entirety of the castle was searched, no living person was found and it was believed whoever had been there had escaped out another entrance.
By far, one of the most interesting ghosts involves the ghost of a woman in white traveling down the driveway. Similar to Chicago's Resurrection Mary, a few drivers have stopped to give her a lift or have glimpsed her through the trees on approach to the driveway. Described as petite with long flowing light blonde hair and bright blue eyes, she exhibits a bright ethereal glow as she comes down the cobblestone drive. Like Resurrection Mary and numerous other highway ghosts, she likes to take rides from strangers, either from the castle or elsewhere, later arriving to the castle and vanishing into nothingness as she departs, forcing her good Samaritans to realize they have shared their vehicle with a ghost. However, none of these such stories can be confirmed. In March 1954, however, a group of teens driving by the castle testified that they had indeed seen her and reported her to the police department. In their statement, they were driving East toward Dayton after midnight from Camden and were just coming upon the castle when they just casually noticed the white figure of a woman on the side of the road near them. Realizing slowly that they were seeing the supposed ghost, they slowed to get a better look at her. Her long white dress was almost solid, like long nearly transparent layers of silk and her long blonde hair was waist length. Practically luminescent, she pretty much looked like a real person. As they got a better look back upon her next to their car, the driver hit the gas as he passed her and started speeding away from her with his friends screaming. Where her face was supposed to be was nothing but a black void.
Today, the castle serves as a restaurant and museum, but among the museum pieces is a collection of wax figures discarded from the former "Hollywood Wax," a now closed Cleveland wax museum. Recognizable figures of film stars such as Marilyn Monroe and James Dean highlight upstairs rooms while the basement and catacombs represent a "Chamber of Horrors" popular with so many patrons. Figures of John Carradine's Dracula in a coffin, a Frankenstein Monster on a table and the Wolf-Man before a fake moonlit window among others scare both adults and youngsters, however, it is something about these figures that add to the seeming paranormal occurrences in the castle. In the dark, the unmoving statues become a bit more frightening and seemingly take on a life of their own. Their shadows reach and move into other rooms, the fixed positions sometimes vary by as much a foot and employees get a feeling of being watched.
In November 1969, a group of kids in a van became intrigued by the castle attraction and stopped by to check out the place, only to be trapped inside by a rainstorm for almost two hours. This was during the remodeling as the castle stopped being a warehouse and was being converted into a restraunt and museum attraction. Many of the figures at the time had been stored in the basement until it was decided where they would be located. The caretaker at the time was Robert Oakley, who was a former actor. No one is quite sure where he was at the time, but the four kids and their Great Dane had unsupervised access to the place. When Oakley finally appeared and discovered the four inside, they asked about the multiple statues on different floors, suggesting somehow that Franken Castle had multiple "Dracula" and "Wolf-Man" wax figures. It seemed from the question that the four involuntary trespassers had seen the same figures somehow showing up more than once in the location as if they were moving around.
In addition to the seemingly restless statutes, employees have heard suits of armor shiver. Three of them are genuine, while the rest are aluminum reconstructions, and it is the genuine articles that seem to house real spirits. One set of armor weighs almost two hundred pounds and contains the top half of a former wax figure, but it is supported by iron rods. Several patrons have commented that they have smelled a scent of sulfur or "brimstone" from the figure. Others have heard it creaking as if the head piece is turning to watch the employees carrying dinner orders to the dining room or watching young ladies head to the ladies room.
One of the other original suits of armor stands on guard at the end of the long second floor hallway, know as Renaissance Hall, and it is in this hall that employees have seen things. Smoky wisps of fog pass through this hall fleeting from room to room and extra shadows depart and empty rooms. One assistant manager asked a waiter to accompany up to her office because she felt someone was up there. One housekeeper saw the brief image of women in old-fashioned dress crossing the landing to a tower.
In the Spirits Room (actually a downstairs pub below the dining room), female guests have felt someone blowing on the backs of their necks. Girlfriends look to boyfriends, wives beam romantically to their spouses and single ladies often slap the poor confused guy standing behind them. It is on the steps down to the pub that several guests have felt a cold spot on the center step. No one knows what is causing it, but a spirit in Colonial dress has been seen here. A number of guests, a few employees and even one Dayton Police officer working as a security guard has seen the figure of a British gentleman in a tri-corner hat standing and watching confused from that sixth step. during the day, both guests and patrons sometimes feel someone or something crowding them, or even giving them a hand through that staircase.
Objects sometimes move about, bric-a-brac flip off mantles and furniture moves about. A Jew's harp on display in the British Room has turned up everywhere on the premises and in the darndest places, such as atop books in the library or in the restraunt cooler. At closing, stools are set up on the counters and all the candles and ashtrays are collected. One morning, Victoria Chaney-Price, the owner and manager, came in early to look for water leaking in from a recent rain shower and discovered a solitary burning candle at the bar in the Spirits Room with all the stools left on the floor. Asking who overlooked the candle and stools, she didn't get much of a response, but both her assistant managers testified that it had happened before. Thinking a former employee was slipping in or that an unknown party was living on the premises from an unused room, Price had security cameras installed, but the cameras didn't want to work all the time. Electricians and security experts checked the cameras repeatedly, but they always seemed to operate correctly only when the expert camera technician was around. it was almost as if whatever was in the castle did not want to be seen or caught on film.
Despite the cameras, whenever someone had to be here after dark, they sometimes heard footsteps, especially from rooms with wax figures. Mostly it sounds like a solitary male figure wandering the location, his hard soled boots scuffing and echoing through the otherwise carpeted Renaissance Hall or coming down the wood steps in the tower to the Dining Room. Whispering noises have been heard from empty rooms along with laughter and distant sounds of people in chorus, sounding as if they were coming from another world. In 1989, two employees changing the clothes on one of the wax torture figures heard steps coming toward them from an exterior room, seemingly cross by them and then echo through an archway. During the whole incident, they never saw a single thing.
It was about a month after that in the Victorian Room that the Marilyn Monroe figure garbed in Victorian dress was repositioned near the window by persons unknown. At first, Mrs. Price thought it was a strange blonde woman in the castle, but rushing up to the room she discovered the figure moved to look out the window. Leaving the wax figures near sunlight isn't good for them, but it happened a number of times over eight months and Marilyn was moved to the company of the Veronica Lake figure in the Tower Room which is constant shadow.
On October 13, 1993, a new cook named Christopher Ash wanting to see the ghosts got permission from Mrs. Price to stay over night to try and document the ghosts. Staying with him was two other employees, Danny Kurtwood and Rob Masterson, three close friends from outside the restaurant, and Assistant Manager Laura Stark. The group had camped out in the dining room on a Saturday night figuring it was the most likely spot to see anything, but they also crisscrossed the extensive castle with cameras, tape recorders and light meters. Shortly after two in the morning, Laura screamed out that the ghost of the woman in white was coming up the drive and was about to cross the wood bridge into the courtyard. Everyone rushed out to catch her on film, but no one saw a thing. Christopher and his girlfriend, Christina Kunis, meanwhile were still alone in the basement with cameras. While no one is exactly sure what happened that night, Christina seemingly "vanished" for almost two hours that night despite what seemed to be a thorough search of the premises. She later just suddenly reappeared later in the dining room sitting in a booth and sipping a soda with a lack distress and apparently unaware of the intensity of the situation.
"She was not the same person after that night." Ash later told Steve Barnette of the Collinsport Ghost Society. "We broke up a few days later and she cancelled her college plans to instead go into theatre. I never saw her again, but when I did see her again, she had picked up the British accent that now affects her voice. Now, maybe it was because of her acting classes or perhaps, just perhaps, she picked something else up that night, I don't know. I mean, things like that don't really happen, do they?"
By now, the rumors and secret stories of Franken Castle Restraunt and Museum had become more than just a little renowned. A film crew from the local Fox affiliate in Dayton had decided to run a five-part series called "The Ghosts of Ohio," and showed up at Franken Castle to interview staff, employees, guests and patrons. Christopher Ash and his friends recreated the events of their investigation without Kunis, who refused to come back. The segment was filmed, and it ran after the news on October 29. As staff and personnel watched the footage of themselves with hauntings conjured from special effects, they noticed something a bit extra in the footage. When greeter Grace Prepone described the story about the woman in white, there was a mirror reflection of a window behind the camera, and crossing outside was the figure of a woman in white.
In recent months, a representative from the Cable-TV series, "Celebrity Paranormal Project." asked for permission to film at the castle. Staff and employees were certainly eager to be a part of it, but Victoria Chaney-Price nixed the idea at the last minute.
History: In 1895, when retired Ohio State Senator William Henry Pratt departed on a traveling tour of Europe to search for his ancestral home in the land south of the Rhine, he instead came upon the ruined and forgotten Frank Castle in the thick brush and tall trees near Ingolstadt, Bavaria, now part of modern unified Germany. Believing this was the ancestral castle of his ancestors, he had it photographed and surveyed and had it shipped brick by brick, wall by wall, section by section, to the United States where he had it reconstructed, restored, completed and expanded with modern additions on similar undeveloped land outside Dayton, Ohio. Whether it was the home of his emigrated ancestors is speculative at best, but Pratt borrowed money from close friends and associates to carry out the endeavor. Despite all his work, it is sure that Pratt in his limited mastery of the German language had confused a Frank stronghold as "Franken Castle." In addition, American publications claimed the transplanted edifice had originated from Transylvania, a province of Romania. Partial German survey records from Heidelberg indicate the old edifice was constructed by Frank armies in the Eighth Century AD in the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire, but had fallen into disuse by the Holy Roman Empire.
Completed in 1904, Pratt and his wife lived there for only a short time, but after William died in 1917, she sold the property to pay off his investors, but no one wanted to live there. Rumors of ghosts started afterward. It was going to be a restaurant attraction, a local landmark or a historical society, but it really became used as a warehouse for several years. For a short time, it was a clubhouse for horror movie enthusiasts. An enterprising gentlemen during the Forties and Fifties billed it as the genuine Frankenstein Castle brought over from Europe in order to capitalize on the famous 1933 movie which had starred Boris Karloff, but by the 1960s, the castle was once more relegated to being just a warehouse. Leonard Chaney, Pratt's grandson, acquired the castle afterward to restore it and turn into a restraunt-museum attraction in which form it exists today under his daughter, Victoria Chaney-Price.
Identity of Ghosts: Many believe the ghosts are linked to the stones of the original castle, but then a majority of the furniture, furnishings and decor was donated or collected from the storerooms of museums who either sold the pieces or just hurriedly discarded them. It is theorized that the ghosts are the spirits of individuals connected and linked to these objects, and that they are upset over being so far removed from the lands of their birth and being trapped with other beings alien to their time periods and respective histories. A séance here in 1954 tried to make contact with the ghost of Senator Pratt believed to be haunting the location. When the audiotape of the séance was played back, a vague female voice was heard from the ambient noise on the tape saying, "Pratt is dead." Paranormal enthusiasts cannot agree if this confirms the late senator is haunting the location or not.
Source/Comments: "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" (Episode: A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts), Phenomenon based on the General Wayne Inn in Merion, Pennsylvania, Rock Castle in Hendersonville, Tennessee, Schwarz Castle in German Village, Ohio, Squire's Castle in Cleveland, Ohio and Tiedemann Castle on Franklin Castle in Cleveland, Ohio.