A Frankenberger Follow-Up

This is the photo by Dick Johnson allegedly
showing the shadow figure(s). Unfortunately,
this copy is too dark to see anything!

Hey everyone! It's officially Spooky Season, and despite the fact that I last mentioned it almost two years ago, I wanted to post a follow-up to the Frankenberger Mansion in Charleston, WV! This location came to my attention via a modern-day story on it ran by a local news station. That article was fun, and it inspired me to look into the history behind the turn-of-the-century home turned broadcast station, but details about the actual reported paranormal activity were kinda...sparse. But, thanks to newspaper archives, I was able to find a story from the Charleston Sunday Gazette Mail dating back to 1972, which delves a little deeper into eyewitness reports. The smell of perfume, LOTS of phantom footsteps, and a wayward hat are pretty much what was experienced by everyone who worked there.

I've transcribed the article from the 19 March 1972 edition of the Charleston Sunday Gazette Mail below for your Halloween-time reading pleasure!

THE RADIO-ACTIVE GHOST

By Terry Marchal

Al Sahley, the rotund radio man, arrives at WCHS in the deep, dark hours before dawn. The minute he steps inside the main door of the television-radio building on Virginia St. E., he starts talking to a ghost.

"Ghost," he says, "I know you're in here. Just let me know you're around. You can have a cup of coffee with me if you want. But don't do anything. I don't like surprises."

Sahley has never seen the ghost. He has never experienced anything unusual. But he sincerely believes the spirit is there.

"A lot of people laugh at me," he said. "But I really believe in the thing. Too many things have happened to too many people around here. It couldn't possibly be a practical joke."

For several years, incidents around the older section of the WCHS building complex have kept alive the belief that a ghost wanders in the nighttime.

Hats being knocked from heads. Puffs of cold air blowing through closed-up rooms. Strange odors. Eerie noises. Footsteps in deserted areas. Slamming doors. Flickering lights.

The WCHS complex is built around an old three-story Virginia Street home. Although a newly built front section and an adjoining television building have hidden the outer views of the old house, it's still there. And that's where the ghost is said to stay.

"Nothing ever happens in the newer television section," Sahley said. "And the incidents mostly occur in the upper two floors of the old house."

Sahley said the house was once owned by the Frankenberger family. The radio man said he has tried to dig up some history of the house, something that might account for the presence of the ghost. So far he has found nothing. "But I'll keep trying," he said "because I know the ghost exists. 

Dick Johnson, director of photography at the station, also believes in the ghost. He thinks it's a female.

"Well, there have been perfume odors," he said. "So, I figure it must be a woman."

Like Sahley, Johnson talks to the ghost. He calls it "honey." He said "I guess as long as you talk nice to it, it won't bother you."

Johnson may have taken a picture of the spirit of WCHS.

He once set up a camera on time exposure overnight in an office at the station. When he processed the resulting picture, two shadowy images were apparent.

"It could have been someone who came in to get a coat and created a shadow on the time exposure," he said. "But I like to believe it's the ghost."

Gene Brick, chief engineer, also believes that talking to the ghost keeps its bothersomeness limited.

Brick said his hat was knocked from his head a couple of times one evening. At first he thought it was done by a fellow human. When he realized there was no one around him, he assumed that the hat had been knocked off by a string dangling from an overhead light.

"But the string was five or six feet away from me," he said. "So I turned around and said "Ghost, why don't you stop bothering people around here?"

That was the last trouble he had with the spirit, Brick said. 

When art director Butch Armstrong first came to WCHS 20 months ago, he had a harrowing experience.

The art department is on the top floor of the old section. A storeroom adjoins the art room. 

"I don't believe in ghosts," Armstrong said, "but when some strange thing happens that you can't explain, you can't discount it."

Armstrong was working in the art department one night when the lights suddenly went out. He said he went to a master switch and circuit breaker next to the storeroom door. But flicking the switches failed to bring the lights on again.

Armstrong said he had a hint of perfumey odor near the storeroom. In the darkness he opened the storeroom door. 

"When I opened that door," he said "the odor filled the entire art department. It was a sweet musty odor like that of an old trunk that's just been opened."

"I had a morbid feeling as if a cold wind had swept past me. But all the windows were closed. I backed away from the storeroom door. Then the odor faded and the lights came on."

Armstrong said he didn't think too much of it. "I'm a believer in logic and there must be some explanation," he said. "But it wasn't my imagination. I didn't even know about the ghost at the time."

The art director said there are often footsteps around the upper floors of the building.

"They are distinct footsteps. Sometimes you hear them approach from behind, but there's no one there when you turn to look. I once had an assistant run out on me one night after hearing the footsteps."

Armstrong said the footsteps may be explained by the acoustics of the building, that they could possibly be an echo from some other section where someone is walking.

"But there are very few people in this building who will come upstairs alone after dark to investigate noises."

Bob Hamlin, assistant operations manager, agreed. 

"There are a lot of unexplainable  happenings," he said.

One night, Hamlin was working after midnight on a videotape project with Gary Lashinsky of National Shows Inc. 

Although all the offices were locked and deserted and the lights turned out on one of the upper floors, they heard a banging noise from the area.

"When we went to check," Hamlin said, "we found all the doors open and all the lights on." Still, he said, the floor was deserted of other human existence.

"We turned out all the lights and relocked the doors," Hamlin said. But shortly after they returned downstairs they again heard the noise.

Returning to the area, they once again found all the locked doors swung open and all the lights on.

"This ghost has a thing with lights," Johnston said. "I was here one New Year's Eve--just stopped by to pick something up--and a fluorescent light above my desk that had never worked suddenly came on. "It hasn't worked since," he said.

"I walked into a hallway and around a corner and said to the ghost, "Hey, Honey. Happy New Year." My wife was with me. I went back to the office and got her and said, "Let's get out of here."

Commercial film coordinator Charles Martin had a "frightening experience" one night.

It was last summer. He was alone on the third floor, preparing to pack up a projector. 

"There was suddenly this sickening sweet perfumy odor you wouldn't believe. An eerie feeling came over me, just as though someone had slipped up behind me and started running their fingers up and down my back."

Martin said all the windows were closed, that there was no breeze in the room. Suddenly the door slammed shut and locked. 

"That door is next to impossible to lock," he said. "You really have to work with it. But it locked by itself."

"Naturally I was scared. I ran to the door and it wouldn't open right away. When I finally managed to get it unlocked and open, I ran downstairs.

He said newsmen Roy Brassfield and Jane Martin had to sit with him for about 20 minutes before he was calm enough to drive home.

"When I'm working alone upstairs now, "Martin said, "I tie the doors open. I know a lot of people laugh at people experiencing things like this, but I say wait until it happens to you. I was scared and I admit it."

Jane Martin, the pretty blonde TV weather girl, said she has experienced noises when there's no one around. 

"Some of them can be explained," she said. "Once, I was fixing some coffee and reached for a paper towel when I heard the floor squeaking as if someone was walking. But there was nobody there."

It was explained to her, however, that the tile floor often popped or squeaked a few seconds after someone had walked by, a natural occurrence. 

"But I tend to believe there is a ghost," Mrs. Martin said. "There are some things that haven't been explained. I once heard shuffling noises in a corner when there was absolutely no one there."

Engineer John Barker said there is a WCHS janitor who refuses to go to upper floors after dark because of the footstep noises he has heard.

"There are noises all around here at night," he said. "We used to have a lot of break-ins around the building and when we hear noises, we always go check them out. But we never find anything."

Barker said there are very few people who will travel alone to upper floors at night. 

"They always go in groups," he said. The footsteps are frequent. Nearly everyone in the building at night has heard them at one time or another.

"People hear the footsteps in the hall," Charlie Martin said, "and open a door to look. There's no one there. You hear them in the same room with you when there's no one there but you."

"There are a lot of people around here who laugh at the idea," he said, "but I'm a firm believer that there's a spook in this building."

The other morning, Charles Ryan, the news director, banged on the door of the control room and moaned softly. 

"There were people inside," he said "but they wouldn't open the door to investigate. Around here, nearly everyone believes."

Does Charles Ryan believe?

"Well, I don't know. Are there such things as ghosts?"

Before WCHS refronted the old house, it looked as though it certainly should be haunted.

Art Linkletter once visited WCHS. As he stepped from a car on Virginia Street and looked up at the old building, he said: "I thought they filmed The Munsters in California."