Akershus Castle, Norway

   Akershus Castle is a medieval castle in Oslo, Norway
Norway sports an abundance of supernatural legends and eerie ghost stories. For many years, parts of Akershus Festning served as a prison for some of Norway's most notorious criminals. The sentence often involved grueling physical labor, and the prison was notorious for using irons, chains, and prisoner isolation as disciplinary techniques.

Over the years, there’s been several reports of whispers and scratching along the fortress hallways, and several guards have noticed weird anomalies – like the sensation of being pushed – while alone on duty. The prison at Akershus Festning was closed in 1950. For 700 years, the castle has guarded the capitals inner harbor and has never in its history been breached by a foreign hostile force. This, however, does not mean that blood hasn’t been shed in its dim corridors and beyond the high walls. Slavery at Akershus was established quite quickly after the order was put into operation in 1730, already in 1739, but only after the fortress was taken out of active military use in 1815 it was extended to a major penal institution. From the 1820s, slavery took over several buildings and became the most important activity on the fortress.

Those who ended up at the slaves were prisoners who had been convicted of serious crimes but who had escaped the death penalty. Among the prisoners who sat at Akershus, there are many names that are known in the past, such as the masterpiece Ole Høiland, Gjest Baardsen and Lars Danger from the Kautokeino Revolution.

The prisoners were put to work hard on the fortress, or if they were sick or old to work in the workshop. Steinhoggeriet was an important workplace, and several of the prisoners became highly skilled rockers. Among other things, the lions on Løvebakken outside the parliament were made by a prisoner at Akershus. They could also be taken out of town to work, including roadworks. The prisoners were then hired by the city or private. Those who trusted could work with private individuals outside the fortress.

The laboratory kitchen was built as a lonely prison in 1836.
Prisoners lived in large dorms. From the 1840s, new thoughts came into the penalty system. The aim was to isolate the prisoners from each other so that they could not adversely affect each other. Such solutions were not implemented at Akershus, and in the second half of the 19th century, it was protested that young offenders were placed with hard-barked criminals who could teach them. A "lonely prison" was built in 1836, but these were punishment for prisoners who broke rules and not a common place for prisoners.

In 1854 the word slavery was abolished, and instead, the prison was called Akershus penal office. The large dorms were partly retained, but they began to take in primarily former convicts, while first-time sons ended up at the Botsfengsel or elsewhere. Work in the fortress continued as before, but it eventually stopped working outside the fortress area. Although still a military area, the Akershus Fortress is open to the public.

Update for Halloween

I wanted to let you all know I will be posting something this Halloween it might not be up until later on tomorrow, I'm saying this just in case. I've had a pretty bad case of the flu and It feels like I haven't slept for years. But I'll worry about that later, so hang in there and I promise to update soon. 

Update

Ok I'm going to try post a Halloween post but I can't make any promises. I have a very bad case of the flu everything aches and I much rather be sleeping lol. But I will try to do a quick post later on.
   thx to all of you who like my blog and for putting up with me being sick all of the time.

New Update soon

First off i wanted to say my new Chihuahua has been making so much progress I couldn't be happier with how far he's come. He went from not wanting to be picked up because he didn't understand and getting scared of kisses to getting excited when we come home playing with toys and the other dogs, he is finally starting to realize that he is never ever going to be put up for adoption again and that he finally has a forever home. I myself am trying to stay strong after losing my first fur baby it isn't easy to say goodbye.

     I also wanted to let you all know I'm currently working on a new post, and have also decided to refreshen some of my older post such as the ones about the states I really want to fix those and at least find top ten haunted places for each state and move on to cities in the U.K as well as others.

   I won't be posting them every day I'm hoping to do a post once or twice a week.

  Once again I wanted to remind you all that my other blog will be deleted as I simply find it boring and its hard to do something when your heart isn't in it,

Sorry

I had every intention of posting another blog update after my last one, however, my chihuahua & baby boy Willie passed away on July 3rd he would have been 13 on July 18th. To me he wasn't just my pet he was my whole world, my heart & soul, my son, and my best friend. I would talk to him all the time.

    When I first got him he was to young only 4 weeks old, I had to bottle feed him, and rocked him to sleep cause he would cry if I didn't. He was such a very sweet little guy.

    I have since rescued a new fur baby another Chihuahua I named Zeus, he is all white and 4 years old he is very skittish and scared of people moving around, throughout his 4 years of life he has never known what its like to be and feel loved, he came from a bad place and had about 20 other brothers and sisters, everyone who adopted his brothers and sisters have said it's taken them 8 to 9 months of hard work, just to get them use to being held and loved. I have also discovered that he is afraid of men whenever he hears a mans voice he starts to shake and gets a panic attack, although I don't know his backstory just his actions and what other people write about his brothers and sisters I have been able to piece together that he was abused most likely by a guy, as all his siblings are scared of men as well.
    I will post pictures of him soon.

And just so you all know I will be getting rid of my strange and unusual blog and write about something I find interesting its hard to write a blog if your heart isn't in it.                     

Franklin Castle

Is a Victorian stone house, built in the American Queen Anne style, located at 4308 Franklin Boulevard in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood. The building has four stories and more than twenty rooms and 80 windows. In the late nineteenth century, when it was built, Franklin Boulevard was one of the most prestigious residential avenues in Cleveland. It is purported to be the most haunted house in Ohio.

 

  Early History




The house was built in 1881-1883 by the famed architectural firm of Cudell & Richardson for Hannes Tiedemann, a prosperous German immigrant.
  On January 15, 1891, Tiedemann's fifteen-year-old daughter Emma succumbed to diabetes. The house saw its second death not long afterward when Tiedemann's elderly mother, Wiebeka, died. During the next three years, the Tiedemanns would bury three more children, giving rise to speculation that there was more to the deaths than met the eye.
    To distract his wife, Louise, from these tragedies, Tiedemann began extensive construction on the home, adding a ballroom which runs the length of the house on the fourth floor of the manor. Also during this building, turrets and gargoyles were added to the edifice's facade, giving the house an even more pronounced "castle" appearance.
  It is rumored that hidden rooms and passageways were used for bootlegging during Prohibition. Though rumored, none of these rooms or passageways exist other than a small stairway used by servants from the kitchen to the front door.
    Louise Tiedemann died from a liver disease on March 24, 1895, at the age of fifty-seven. The next year, Hannes sold the house to the Mullhauser family, and by 1908 he and the entire Tiedemann family were dead, leaving no one to inherit his considerable personal wealth.
    Rumors of crimes committed in the house by Tiedemann (including sexual indiscretions and murder) have contributed to Franklin Castle's reputation as a haunted house.




 Nazi Spies





Apparently the curse took some time off during the Mullhauser's stay at the Castle. But in 1913, it came back with a vengeance when Franklin Castle was sold to the German Socialist Party. Officially only used as a place for parties and meetings, rumors quickly started to spread that the Germans were actually using the Castle as a place to spy. It is even said that years later, a German shortwave radio would be found hidden up in the rafters. The infamous hidden passageways were said to have been used by an underground group of Nazis to machine-gun a large group of people. During Prohibition, a new tunnel was supposedly constructed that ran from either the basement of the castle or the carriage house all the way out to Lake Erie.   





    Enter the Romano Family

In January of 1968, the German Socialists sold Franklin Castle to James Romano. Almost immediately after moving into the home, family members began experiencing strange things. The Romano children would often speak of their new-found friend that they would play with up in the fourth floor ballroom. Often times, the children would ask their mother for extra cookies for their mysterious friends. Mrs. Romano also began to feel the presence of Mrs. Tiedemann in the home and to also hear organ music coming from different areas of the home. Looking for explanations, the family contacted the Northeast Ohio Psychical Research Society, a local team of ghost hunters, to investigate the Castle. If the stories are to be believed, one of the hunters ran screaming from Franklin Castle in the middle of the investigation. Shortly after the investigation, the Romanos turned to a Catholic priest for help, who allegedly refused to bless the house because what he felt when he stepped inside Franklin Castle.

   After enduring several more years of ghostly activity, the Romanos finally decided to sell the house. In 1974, Franklin Castle was sold to the family who would single-handedly bring the legend of Franklin Castle to the forefront; the Muscatellos.





      Grisly Discovery

By all accounts, the Sam Muscatello was all too eager to cash in on the legends of Franklin Castle. Offering tours of the house, Sam also invited members of the media in for walkthroughs. During a live segment on Cleveland radio, host John Webster had a tape recorder pulled from his shoulder and thrown down a staircase. Another time, during the taping for a local television piece, crew member Ted Opecec witnessed a ceiling light spinning on its own.

    Muscatello also began searching the house from top to bottom for more of the alleged secret passageways. His first discovery was an old still that seemed to be leftover from Prohibition days. The most shocking discovery, however, was found behind a hidden panel in the tower. Tucked neatly inside was a pile of human bones. Although few deny that real human bones were removed from Franklin Castle, who they belonged to and how they ended up there has long been debated. Of course, most took the bones as proof that Hannes Tiedemann was indeed involved in murderous activities. Some, however, believed that Muscatello himself stashed the bones there as "proof" of the hauntings of Franklin Castle. The final verdict by authorities was simply that the bones were indeed human and that they were very old.
    Unable to make Franklin Castle the haunted success they were looking for, the Muscatello family finally decided to sell Franklin Castle. From there, the Castle quickly passed through a series of owners, including Richard Hongisto, the then Cleveland Chief of Police, who owned the Castle for less than a year. . Hongisto and his family lasted less than a year in the castle before selling it to George Mircata, who owned the Castle until 1984.
    In early 1984, Michael DeVinko purchased Franklin Castle and almost immediately making major renovations to the house. Over the next 10 years, DeVinko spent close to one million dollars renovating the Castle, even going so far as to track down some of the original furnishings for the Castle. Despite all this, DeVinko still decided to move out and put the house

Arson




For the next 5 years, Franklin Castle stood empty until April of 1999 when Michelle Heimburger, who had been fascinated with the house since she was a child, purchased it with the intent of restoring it to its former self. In addition, Heimburger launched franklincastle.com and chronicles her renovations and plans for the Castle. Sadly, what started out as an exciting and fascinating revival of the legend and lore of Franklin Castle all came crashing down on the night of November of 1999, when a series of fires broke out inside the Castle. When firefighters arrived, they found a man unconscious inside the building and carried him to safety. In a strange twist of events, the man was eventually arrested, charged, and convicted in setting the fires that destroyed almost all of the fourth floor ballroom. 

    Dinner, anyone?




In July of 2003, Cleveland newspapers were filled with reports that Franklin Castle had been sold to a gentleman who was planning to turn it into a dinner club. Calling his endeavor the Franklin Castle Club, invitations for membership were e-mailed out and plans were said to be underway for major renovations. The Club's opening was said to be set for May of 2004. But nothing related to Franklin Castle ever comes easy and the sale quickly became bogged down in red tape. Today, almost a year later, the Castle looks much the same as it did after the original repairs were made after the fire. Windows are still boarded up, and a weather-worn franklincastle.com sign still hangs in the doorway. Only a few potted plants, long-since dead and slowly decaying on the front lawn, give any indication that someone has been there in recent years. The only signs of life around the Castle come from the people who occasionally walk up and down the sidewalk of Franklin Boulevard, some stopping to stare or snap a picture or two. All the while Franklin Castle stands silent and strong—waiting patiently for someone brave enough to ignore the bloody rumors and ghostly tales and restore it to its former glory.



                        

Hey Guys

Hey to all the fans of this page there is a little bit of bad news, I feel bad because it seems as though there is always an illness in the family that prevents me from doing updates, so just to keep you all up to date my Grandmother has been going through some pretty hard times at the moment. At this moment she is in the hospital every other week, and she has been on dialysis which has left her extremely tired, at this point she needs care around the clock my mother takes care of her during the day and I help her at night we were sharing the three days between my mom, aunt and I to take her to dialysis. However, at the moment we no longer have a car as my Mom was in an accident on Thursday she is sore and bruised but thankfully no serious damage has happened to her however the car is totaled. Which has added further stress.
   However, I do promise to post an update on here within the next three days so as always keep checking back.

Sick

I'm sorry I haven't been on in a while to do updates, I have been fighting a terrible cold that I've had since January I've been to the hospital and it still hasn't gone away. I've also been caring for my Grandma since she was released from the hospital due to the flu and pneumonia she is doing much better now but is still a little weak, on top of all of this my poor chihuahua has been having tracea collapsing problems along with bad arthritis as he is getting up there in age he will be 13 in July, I've taken him to the vet who put him on two medications one to prevent the tracea collapsing and one to help the pain from the arthritis, he is also on a strict diet, I also found out his heart murmur has gotten bigger which has caused his heart to enlarge, the doctor told me he has heart diesase. But with him losing weight it will ease the pressure on the heart. And just in case anybody is going to say something rude, my dog is not suffering from any pain due to his heart and no it's not cause he takes painkillers, his doctor said he is only to have them when he is in pain with his arthritis. Other than that he is in no pain or discomfort and enjoys running around the house and playing with his toys.

    I promise I will post an update as soon as possible, once again I'm sorry.