C Cleveland

Every town has it's own urban legends and in honor of Halloween, I'm going to tell you about one of ours.

This is the road that leads you to Squire's Castle.



Fergus B. Squire was born in Exeter, England in 1850 and came to America at the age of 10. He began as an office boy for an oil company and later realized the American dream by owning and operating his own refinery. By 1885, he had joined Standard Oil of Ohio with Frank Rockefeller, the brother of John D. Rockefeller.



Squire had originally planned for a large country home to be built on 525 acres. This "castle" was only intended to be a gatekeeper's cottage.

The legend has it that Mrs. Squire didn't care for the country. Mr. Squire was busy drawing up the plans for his magnificent castle and, against his wife's wishes, began spending more and more time on the isolated estate.

Mrs. Squire worried constantly about being away from the city and the loneliness of being forced to spend every summer at the cottage. In all of her worry and agitation, she developed insomnia and began walking about the house at night, carrying a small, red lantern to light her way.

One fateful night, Mrs. Squire wandered into the trophy room of the house, a place that she usually avoided. No one really knows what happened, but it's been surmised that Mrs. Squire became frightened of something in the room, or perhaps even the mounted animals peering at her in the dim light.

Regardless, she began screaming in terror over something and in her haste, she tripped and broke her neck. She was discovered dead a short time later.

Squire was distraught and blamed himself for his wife's death. He abandoned the plans for the house and went back to the city, never returning to the cottage again.

People who knew of his plans to build the grand summer home started calling the cottage "Squire's Castle".

Her ghost is believed to still wander the castle at night and people have reported seeing her red lantern and hearing her screams. In 1925, the Cleveland Metroparks purchased the property and removed the windows, flooring and any other items that might be attractive to thieves.













On this day, the only ghost I saw was Adolph Hitler.