Paranormal Encounters

  It started out with a conversation during an all-night card game. We discussed the supposed hauntings at the Franklin Castle. One of the card players followed up and found out that you could spend the night at Franklin Castle for $12 per person. That was quite a bit of money in 1974, but we decided to make the arrangements to spend the night after these guys performed a musical performance at Lakeland Community College.

     We had heard the rumors of hangings, mass murders during prohibition, and Nazi party meetings. We heard of apparitions, a mysterious cold room on the third floor, unexplained voices and noises, and other strange phenomena. We were all set to explore the house with the understanding that we would take pictures of anything which made us feel uncomfortable.

     The people spending the night were Joel LaRiccia, Dan Sewell, Jon Parilak, Jeff Cokewell, and Carl Ziek. We arrived at Franklin Castle at about 11:00 P.M. and set up shop. We stayed in the second floor living area in sleeping bags on the floor. We set up a reel-to-reel recorder there and set up microphones in different rooms around the house, most notably on the third-floor cold room at the back of the house.

     Around 12:30 A.M., I felt uncomfortable while looking at a portrait hanging above the fireplace in the room where we were camping. I snapped a few pictures of the portrait. The camera I was using was an old camera which used film, so I would have no idea what the pictures would look like until the film got developed. Shortly after 1 A.M., we saw the VU meters on the reel-to reel recorder spiking violently on the third-floor cold room, and we set out to explore the third floor. We got to the staircase and one of my friends, Dan Sewell, shouted that something was coming up the stairs. I thought he was pranking me, so I held the camera out pointing down the stairs, mockingly, and started taking several pictures. It was then that I started convulsing, like holding onto an electric cord. I had had enough of the experience and was headed down the stairs towards the door. My friend caught up with me and convinced me to have a cup of coffee at the watchman’s area on the first floor. I reluctantly agreed to stay the night as long as the exploring was over. Didn’t sleep at all that night.

     In the morning, we packed up our gear and left. We couldn’t wait to get the film developed and to listen to the recordings from the cold room. We all got together and examined our findings. My photographs of the portrait had a white line crossing it, sort of resembling a lightning bolt but without jagged lines. The pictures coming up the staircase resembled fairly thick smoke on a couple of them and three where the negatives were totally clear. There were no pictures to view. The recordings from the cold room didn’t have much intelligible sound, but we could make out in a loud whisper, the words witch Wanda.                                                                                                                                

We bought the original trailer on our PA property in1990.I am thinking it must have been maybe 1993 or 1994 when this happened. Brian, Kyle, and I were at the trailer and there was a big bee outside. So we went inside. It was an unusual looking bee. If recall correctly, it had larger or maybe even bulging eyes. It just was not a normal looking bee. What was also unusual is it literally followed me from window to window. The bee was outside but as I moved inside from the door, that had a big window, to the kitchen window on the side of the trailer, to the living room window around the back of the trailer, the bee appeared at each window. If I went back to another window, the bee would follow. It was the strangest thing. The bee was tracking me from outside as I moved around the various windows inside no matter the direction I went. I do not recall how it ended. I think the bee just flew away but it was a truly unusual experience and I have never seen a bee like that since then.