Haunted Sauer Castle

by Christopher McKenzie

Title

Haunted Sauer Castle

Artist

Christopher McKenzie

Medium

Photograph - Digital Photography

Description

Doesn't take much to make the old Sauer Mansion in Kansas City look much creepier than it already is...especially since I captured image this on Halloween.

HISTORY:
German-born, Anton Sauer, his 5 children and his first wife, Francesca immigrated to New York City in 1858. They spent the Civil War years in New York, building up his businesses. In 1868, Francesca died, and Anton Sauer was ill with TB, which he had caught in Europe. As his disease was progressing and for business purposes as well, Anton moved his family to Kansas City, where he fell in love with his second wife, Mary who herself was a widow with two daughters. Mary's family showed Anton the undeveloped hill property, which he bought to be the new site of their new home, which was big enough for all the children, plus the five children Anton and Mary would make together.

A lookout tower was built on the top of the mansion as well, because this property was close to the old Santa Fe Trail, which was the main highway for wagon trains and other not so nice folks traveling to the greener grass in the West.

Sauer's Castle was finished and the family moved in during the year of 1872, a home with all the bells and whistles, which were 25 years ahead of what was commonly offered in your standard mansion. Anton Sauer succumbed to his disease in a second floor bedroom in 1879, leaving his wife and family very well off financially.

Around 1930, Sauer's Castle got the reputation of being haunted, which only grew as the years rolled by. By the time the Sauer family sold the family mansion to entrepreneur Paul Berry, it was widely thought to be so, which drew not only curiosity seekers, but vandals and would-be looters, who Paul had to run off regularly. Paul lived there alone with his dog, trying to maintain the mansion, being kept busy repairing windows busted by rocks, repairing damage from break-ins and even surviving a physical assault. He lived here until he too died in 1986.

In 1987, Bud Wyman and his son and daughter-in-law, Cliff and Cindy Jones bought the mansion and owned it briefly for little over a year, hoping to fix up the mansion and pay for it by giving tours to visitors, dressed in 1800s attire. However, they sold it in 1988 to the current owner who bought the estate, with a long-held dream of restoring the mansion.


This image captured by me was published in the Volume 10, 2014 issue (Halloween Special) of "Eye On Fine Art Photography" magazine.

Uploaded

April 7th, 2014

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