When it comes to New Castle and Haunted that Manor on the hill is what first comes to mind. But not so fast.
In fact the First Haunted house to allow tours in the USA was across town and opened in the 1960s
It was located at 1161 N. Liberty (Atlantic Ave. ) and was built by Alexander L. Crawford who was an Iron Works Pioneer between 1855-1872
The home served many purposes over the years including as a home for as many as 35 under privileged girls to serving the elderly . and was Added onto over the years to make it 33 rooms from original 13 . During this period many thought the home was haunted or had eerie experiences.
It was eventually leased by a Retired Chiropractor G.A.Laughlin from Bethel Park
Who had interests in the Paranormal and started candle light evening tours for couples at his now christened Haunted House
complete with the Seance Room and its Hidden hidden passages
https://medium.com/truly-adventurous/the-house-of-lost-souls-c4aed0378bb8
The link above is a very long article on the home and all its hauntings and criminal acts which happened at it . Its eventual down fall and forced closing and eventual demise in a Fire which demolished it on October 9th ,1970
Below is a small sample of the almost 20 page article on the home with such a fascinating History
it is well worth signing up for the free account to read the whole article
https://medium.com/truly-adventurous/the-house-of-lost-souls-c4aed0378bb8
Just after 2:20 on the morning of Friday, October 9th, 1970, the thirty or so members of the New Castle, Pennsylvania, volunteer fire department woke to the sound of squealing radios.
Listen to the audio version of this story from Audm
Fire Chief Jack Stoner bypassed the station, which was out of his way, and tore off for the scene, only two-and-a-half miles from his home. Following the curve of the Shenango River, he watched the blaze transform the black sky into a swelling neon bruise as he swerved south onto Atlantic Avenue. Intense heat shot from the rambling brick mansion with a low, crackling gasp.
As the first trucks arrived on scene and underequipped volunteers laid hose and began dousing the blaze, the water pressure inexplicably dropped. It was as if some grand, invisible force were silently willing the fire to finish its work.
By the time Stoner radioed for additional units and manpower from West Pittsburg, five miles south, an uphill battle had become a lost cause.
There were no victims to save or survivors to comfort in the home, which had been abandoned four months earlier. The last firefighters left the scene before the sun rose, concluding the sort of dull and exhausting battle referred to in the fire service as a surround-and-drown. The fire had brought to a close the brief and strange history of the first haunted house in America open to the public, but it wasn’t done yet.
Forty-five minutes later, the firefighters’ radios shrieked to life for the second time that morning. The house, saturated with thousands of gallons of water, had burst into flames again.
Three years earlier, in the summer of 1967, the Sonntag Real Estate Agency got a nibble on a property they worried they might never unload, 1161 North Liberty Street on the western edge of New Castle. In its industrial heyday, the town had been called “Little Pittsburgh.” Not anymore. In less than a decade, nearly fifteen percent of the town’s population had left.
In the two decades since an out of town investor had purchased the dilapidated mansion, the agency had only managed to rent it out to a single family. The family did not stay long, even though the sprawling estate cost less per month than most of the compact ranch houses that peppered the rest of the town on quarter acre lots. It stood atop a slope overlooking the road at the base of a hill that faded into looming pines and old maple trees. A shallow angled roof crowned the second story, supporting a tall, white cupola. A trio of high windows glared down beyond the grounds at the road, the railroad tracks, the river. A shaded porch competed with the wild vines snaking around its front columns.
At first glance, Dr. Gerald A. Laughlin seemed an unlikely taker. A man with round proportions and well-groomed facial hair that brought an Old World colonel to mind, he had a conspiratorial smile that tended to pull people into an easy confidence. No one could have looked more out of place in a rundown house with a leaky roof and busted windows. His previous home was tidy and nestled in a row of prim houses with broad front lawns in Bethel Park, a fashionable suburb of Pittsburgh.
But under the respectable veneer, there had always been something different about Laughlin. A doctor, yes, but a doctor of chiropractic medicine, a discipline founded only a few decades before on the idea that all diseases stemmed from an interruption in the flow of divine presence. He was also one of only eighteen qualified hypnotists in the Pittsburgh area.
Born to older parents, his nearest sibling was twelve years Laughlin’s senior. When he was three, the economy tumbled into the Great Depression, then at five his mother died after a mastectomy failed to rid her of cancer. His father, a salesman, was forced to send Laughlin to live with an aunt. Just the same, like so many people forged by tragedy, he grew into a gregarious young man, described by his high school classmates as “our funny man, known by everyone.” His senior yearbook photo shows a pale, plump face with a smile fighting back laughter.
Upon graduating in May of 1944, he enlisted in the army, and by December he was overseas. Shortly after being discharged, he met and married a woman a decade his senior. Being an unmarried woman in her thirties at that time would have branded her an old maid to most people, but like Laughlin she had her own strange allure and was even elected Most Excellent Chief of the Pythian Sisters of Indianapolis, a secret society. As they settled into a life in Bethel Park, they proved every bit the outwardly perfect family the 1950s expected. They had one child, Gerald Alexander Laughlin, Jr., and by all accounts lived happily.
If lives wax and wane, the man being shown the house in New Castle in the summer of 1967 was more crescent than full moon. A few years earlier, a radio documentary had launched an undercover investigation into the chiropractic office he shared with his partner and claimed to have discovered irregularities. The program, called “The Shadow World of Medicine,” made clear its distaste for the relatively young homeopathic practice. Merited or not, the public nature of the charges ensured the demise of Laughlin’s livelihood. The Bethel Park property was foreclosed and put up for auction, and the family found itself sleeping in a station wagon.
Under the weight of such strains, it is not surprising that by the time Laughlin toured the deserted home, he did so as a single man. And the house must have been more appealing to him than most. Beyond the benefit of not being a station wagon, it retained a grand and imposing character undiminished by the scars of time. You could say Laughlin sympathized.
Besides, the lease came with an option to buy for $7,500 at a time when the median price for a house stood at over three times that. Laughlin shook hands with the relieved realtor and signed the lease. As he received the keys to the mansion, he became its final resident.
Laughlin threw himself into repairs. Most of the houses window’s were broken, and the days found
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