Drawing the Line(s)

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Carol Hoffman

Beth Richards voluntarily takes others to scary places, but some things still creep her out.

The 35-year-old guide for the Haunted Cleveland tours TM can't explain the red lines that frame the boarded-up basement windows at Franklin Castle in Cleveland she's seen in a dozen pictures taken by people on the tours. She says it can't be camera flash. "The wood is painted flat black so nothing reflects off of it, and there were no cars there and no lights on."

Debbie Ward, assistant manager at Dodd's Camera in Fairview Park, agrees that a flash would not cause the lines. "A flash might cause a flare [if it reflects off of metal or a nail head], but it will not frame in a window," she says.

Richards also has seen pictures of a window with the same red lines in the "trophy room" at Squire's Castle in the North Chagrin Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks. Richards stopped walking through the the castle when it was on the tour last year.

"I waited by the bus for the others," she says. "I wouldn't even walk up to the door. The story is that Rebecca Squire, the owner's wife, fell down the steps and broke her neck, and you can see a red lantern going through the castle at night."

"That's what she carried because she suffered from insomnia," Richards adds. "I don't want to run into her."

Richards, a full-time office manager for Polinsky, Mellinger & Associates, a Cleveland court reporting firm, uses books and the Internet to learn about the history and experiences surrounding each location.

"I believe the stories because a lot of things have gone on in my parents' house," Richards says. During visits to their home in the East 185th Street area of Cleveland, she says she and her parents have seen her childhood cat, Button, "who lived to torture my father," in the back yard and have heard a dog's choker chain jangling in the house.

"Maggie, a bulldog, lived to be 14 years old," Richards says. "That was the only dog Mom and Dad ever had that wore a choker chain."

For information on Haunted Cleveland tours, TM including this year's Gold Coast Ghost Tour, call 216-251-0406.