The World's Most Haunted Places by Jeff Belanger

Author:Jeff Belanger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Career Press
Published: 2011-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Thornewood Castle

Lakewood, Washington

Tel: 1 (253) 584-4393

Website: www.thornewoodcastle.com

Thornewood Castle is a private residence that operates as a bed-and-breakfast. Additionally, the owners occasionally run history and ghost tours through the property. Check with the castle for details. Photo courtesy of Thornewood Castle.

Thornewood Castle is a 16th-century medieval English castle located at the edge of American Lake on the outskirts of Tacoma, Washington in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. In 1908, Tacoma business mogul Chester Thorne invested $1 million to build his dream house. He wanted to capture the essence of an English manor home in Washington. To make his dream come true, architect Kirtland Kelsey Cutter got most of the brick, stone, oak paneling, oak staircases, and stained glass by dismantling a castle in England and shipping the materials via three cargo ships around the treacherous waters of Cape Horn in South America, all the way up the coast of the Americas to the port of Tacoma. After three years of building, the dream home was completed.

Born in 1863 in Thornedale, New York, Chester A. Thorne came from a wealthy family of financiers—he was a Yale graduate who got his start in business with the Missouri Pacific Railway Company. Thorne married the company general manager’s daughter, Anna, and moved to Tacoma, Washington, where he invested money in the National Bank of Commerce. At age 30, he became the bank’s president. Thorne, a meticulous businessman, acquired significant wealth and prestige as one of the founders of the Port of Tacoma, and he was one of the driving forces behind the founding of Mount Rainier National Park. The Thornewood Castle was a giant monument to his prosperity. The 27,000-square-foot English Tudor/Gothic mansion has 54 rooms, including 28 bedrooms and 22 baths. The Thornes had 68 people working at the estate—28 gardeners, as well as 40 house servants to care for Chester, Anna, and their daughter, Anita.

Thornewood was the place for American dignitaries to visit. Besides many prominent businessmen in the Pacific Northwest, overnight guests included Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft and even some foreign royalty. Ches, as those who knew him best called him, had not only made a lot of money, he also made a lot of friends in the community through his works of charity. He had a great life for sure and Thornewood Castle was his masterpiece. Ches died of a lingering illness on October 16, 1927 in his palatial mansion, but Thornewood would always be Ches’s house.

I spoke with Deanna Robinson, the current owner of Thornewood. Deanna and her husband, Wayne, bought the estate in April 2000, and very soon after, they made an agreement with ABC Disney to allow the company to film Stephen King’s Rose Red miniseries there. In exchange for allowing the property to be used as the setting for King’s story of a paranormal researcher who takes a team of psychics into a haunted house, ABC Disney agreed to remove the apartments that were installed in the Great Hall and the Ballroom and restore them to their original splendor.

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