Thornewood Castle is a famous mansion. Stephen King chose it to be the star of the TV movies about Rose Red, the haunted Ellen Rimbauer’s house. For the ones who visit it and spend the night, the experience is always out of the ordinary.
Thornewood Castle is at the American Lake, in Lakewood, Washington, and it is 500 years old. Chester Thornewood was a rich businessman and banker who bought this English Tudor style mansion and carried to Washington brick by brick. It has 54 rooms, 22 of them are bedrooms, and there are 22 baths. It is built with cement, brick and iron, three cargo ships brought all to the Puget Sound.
The huge staircase was imported from , and there are antiques around the entire house, bought from a Duke’s collection. The Secret Sunk English Garden is a beautiful and enigmatic place, with exuberant flowers and plants, elegant fountains and hidden corners.
The actual owners, Wayne and Deanna Robinson, live on the house, and offer a part of it as bed and breakfast. People love to spend a night in the Anna Thornewood’s room, and they try to see any unexplained phenomena, take pictures and whisper around the fireplaces or the parlors.
Rose Red
If you watched any of the Rose Red’s movies, you know how the Castle looks, because it is piece by piece the same size and the same construction that Stephen King had on mind. They restored some parts of the mansion for the movies, and they added the tower. Some incidents occur at the house through the years, a suicide, and a former owner’s child drowned on the lake. Many guests insist they saw Chester Thornewood’s spirit, and the bulbs of the lamps in his room are sometimes mysteriously unscrewed. Others said they saw a child walking close to the lake, and some saw the reflection of Anna Thornewood on a mirror in her room, now the bridal room. During the filming of the Rose Red movies, casting and staff talked about strange phenomena on the set, voices and misplaced things.
Paranormal Activity
There are pictures and reports from paranormal investigators proving the existence of spiritual life at the Castle, and many guests shows their own collection of spooky photographs. Something is common to all the reports, the friendly activity of the ghosts. Apparently, a positive and peaceful energy flows around Thornewood Castle, and the supernatural experiences are not frightening.
The owners offer to their guests some occasional events, like murder mystery night or candle light tours, so they can enjoy the mystery of the mansion.
The rooms that are offered to guests are eight, and they vary in size, decoration, service and prices, going from the 290 dollars the night that Anna’s suit, (the bridal suit) can cost, to the 500 that costs the Lord Byron Attic Suite. The Rose Red suite was named after the movies, and is the closest to the tower.
The Thornewood Castle really is worth a visit, call for a reservation and make sure is not a wedding celebration during your stay, if you want to enjoy the peace of the place. Walk around the Secret Garden, appreciate the medieval stained glass windows and imagine the parties that the old walls saw, and maybe, if you are lucky, you can see a spirit or experience an extraordinary event. The place, anyways, is beautiful.
Featured Photo Credit : Photo by Joe Mabel
