The Ridge Historical Society
The Paranormal Ridge: Part 12 – More Recent Experiences at the Castle
By Carol Flynn
The early owners of the Givins Beverly Castle at 103rd Street and Longwood Drive were three private families in succession, and for a year and a half in the 1890s, the Castle was rented by a female college. Since the early 1940s, the Castle has been owned by the Beverly Unitarian Church (BUC). The building has been used for church services and functions and rented or loaned out for many other functions, from Jewish religious services to Christian weddings to Neo-Pagan drummings.
Beginning in the 1970s, the first-person stories relating strange experiences at the Givins Beverly Castle started to be recorded in newspaper interviews. Three people publicly shared their paranormal experiences – a caretaker from the 1960s, a psychic who visited in the 1970s, and a minister from the 1990s. There were, of course, many other hearsay stories repeated through the years.
More recently, other people have shared personal experiences. Another caretaker from the past confirmed that her daughter-in-law, the “sensitive” one in the family, was visited by an entity at the Castle in a room on the second floor that she used for sewing.
People from Blue Island involved in a ghost investigation a few years ago observed the phantom of a young woman dressed in an old-fashioned plaid dress gliding around the outside of the Castle.
A police officer said he was called to the Castle in the 1990s when a church member saw a man’s face looking in the windows from the outside, moving from window to window. The police officer said there were no footprints in the snow outside the windows.
A person who came to the Castle for Neo-Pagan events in the mid-1990s reported on an on-line site that she and a friend experienced intense feelings of being watched and driven away as they were climbing the stairs to the third floor. She attributed this to a haunted nursery that had been on the third floor. The third floor does not have a history of being used as a nursery, but BUC did conduct Sunday school classes up there.
About eight years ago, someone from the Castle who wished to remain anonymous was shown a photo a local woman took of the Castle that seemed to show the phantom of a young girl out in front on the Longwood Drive-side, walking toward the school annex to the north. The anonymous person said that teachers at the school reported feeling someone tug on their clothes at a child’s height but when they turned around there was no one there, or they heard a child’s voice in the school hallway but there were no students out there when they looked.
Musicians visiting the outside of the Castle at night heard disembodied footsteps and experienced lights flickering on and off in response to their guitar-playing. This brings up a point – the entity does seem to respond to social events and music. Several BUC members, as well as the caretaker whose story was reported in post 9, have said they have heard the piano playing when it is covered and no one is in the room, and the sounds of the voices and tinkling silverware and glasses. The minister reported the slender arms that went around her husband’s waist during an event (post 10). And there are stories of a girl being spotted at social events, often on the stairs, when no children were invited or reported as being there, but these stories are not verified.
One piece of information that is shared in the books is a reference to an actual woman who reportedly lived in the Castle during the Great Depression and tended the gardens. Some people have thought this woman could be the ghost. Who started this theory, and why, isn’t known. No historical information has been found on this woman, and it would not be appropriate to name her in this post.
In summary, the major stories that come up again and again for the Castle involve a young woman and/or a girl, from the past, usually with an Irish brogue. Who this person (or persons) could be is a guess – a student, a servant, a patient, a teacher or church member, a family member, are all possibilities. She most likely is not Givins’ Irish fiancé who died before she lived in the Castle because, first, there is no record to be found of Givins visiting Ireland in the immediate years before the Castle was built, and second, at the time the Castle was built his wife Emma, a school teacher of Norwegian descent, was very much alive, and she did live in the Castle for years. His first wife had died some years before.
The other stories that are reported by several people include sounds of the piano playing, and voices and clinking cutlery and glasses, like an event is going on.
There have been a few reports of male presences but these are much less common.
In the next post on the topic, some odds and ends related to the Castle ghost stories will be explored.