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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