Thornewood Castle

Chester Thorne shipped a 400-year-old English manor brick by brick around Cape Horn to build this 54-room Tudor Gothic castle on American Lake for his wife Anna. Both died here, and both keep showing up: Chester in his riding suit on the lawn, Anna gazing over her Secret Garden, and a phantom cocktail party of 100 guests that filled the Great Hall one night while the owner was reading.

Deanna Robinson was reading in the Great Hall of Thornewood Castle when the room filled with a cocktail party. At least 100 people appeared, socializing, dancing, drinking. Someone dropped a glass. The scene was hazy but visible, like she'd stepped back in time. Despite owning the estate, Robinson said she felt like an intruder, as if the ghosts were disturbed by her presence.

Chester Thorne built this place for love. In 1907, the Yale-educated financier who co-founded the Port of Tacoma purchased a 400-year-old Elizabethan manor in England and had it dismantled brick by brick. Three ships carried the materials around Cape Horn. Architect Kirtland Kelsey Cutter assembled them on the shores of American Lake in Lakewood into a Tudor Gothic mansion spanning over 27,000 square feet with 54 rooms. The 500-year-old Welsh red bricks, hand-hewn English oak staircases, and more than 100 pieces of stained glass from 15th and 16th century churches made it something closer to a transplanted piece of England than a Pacific Northwest estate. The Olmsted Brothers designed 37 acres of formal English gardens. In 1930 the Garden Club of America named it the most beautiful garden in the country.

Chester called it "the house that love built." He'd commissioned it for his wife Anna after more than twenty years of marriage. Anna's favorite room faced Mount Rainier, not the lake like the others. She called the garden below her Secret Garden.

Chester died at the castle on October 17, 1927. Anna stayed 27 more years, dying peacefully at Thornewood in 1954. Their daughter Anita, who'd lost much of her hearing to scarlet fever as a teenager, inherited the estate and sold it in 1959. The property deteriorated through several owners before Wayne and Deanna Robinson bought it in 2000 and started restoring it.

That's when the Thornes made themselves known.

Chester's ghost follows a fixed route through his second-floor bedroom: enters through the door, walks past the bed, vanishes into the bathroom. He's also been spotted outside in his brown riding suit and boots, carrying a riding whip as he crosses the lawn toward the garden fountains. In his old smoking room, light bulbs are found unscrewed so often that staff have stopped replacing them. Anna appears in her bedroom window seat, gazing out over the garden she loved in life. Guests in the bridal suite have looked into Anna's original mirror and seen her reflection standing behind them. The couple shows up together at the top of the grand staircase, dressed for an evening out, lingering for a moment before they're gone.

Each room has its own resident. In the billiard room, footsteps climb the staircase followed by the sounds of a game being played. A male ghost in a brown suit emerges from the bathroom in the Grand Room, crosses to the dining room, and walks through the glass doors. Old photographs suggest he's Anna's second husband. In the Grandview Room, a ghostly servant once organized a guest's shoes and neatly folded his socks over them. The Gold Room on the third floor smells like lavender and has a poltergeist that moves toiletries, particularly women's items. Anita, who used to hide during her parents' social gatherings because of her hearing loss, appears as a sad figure sitting by her window. Guests in her former bedroom hear phantom piano music in the early morning hours.

The Washington State Ghost Society investigated and captured EVPs of a man singing in the kitchen. Paranormal researcher Rosemary Ellen Guiley visited twice. On her second visit she had the entire castle to herself overnight. She heard the billiard-playing ghost, footsteps on the central staircase, and voices in Anna's Room with no identifiable source.

In 2000, ABC selected Thornewood from proposals across 30 states and Canada as the filming location for Stephen King's Rose Red miniseries, investing over $500,000 to restore the mansion to its 1911 condition. The series aired in January 2002, and a prequel, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, was also filmed here.

Thornewood operates as a bed and breakfast and event venue now. Chester built it for Anna. They both died here. The light bulbs in the smoking room are unscrewed again this morning.