Scaring Up Business at a ‘Haunted’ Castle

The news is enough to make Rosa Suit’s ghost blanch in terror.

Berkeley Castle, a century-old West Virginia landmark where Suit’s restless spirit is said to roam and occasionally engage in mischief, was claimed at auction recently for $360,125 by self-proclaimed ghost chasers.

The new owners plan to scan around the clock for “paranormal” activity using electromagnetic sensory equipment. They also hope to make money by giving an inside view to spirit-seeking guests willing to spend $250 a night to sleep there.

“There are a lot of haunted places where you can rent rooms, but nowhere is there a paranormal organization operating a facility where you can also stay,” said Joe Holbert, whose investor group beat out 20 other bidders.

The 12-room mansion in the resort town of Berkeley Springs, two hours from Baltimore, was built by wealthy Maryland businessman Samuel Taylor Suit for his young bride beginning in 1885. It will be renamed the Berkeley Castle Paranormal Research Center upon completion of the sale.

Holbert, 50, plans to renovate the sandstone castle and make it the headquarters for a three-member group he heads in Leesburg, Va., called Virginia Science Research. The organization leads ghost tours of that city’s historic area and says it conducts free investigations of homes whose owners think they might have uninvited otherworldly guests.

The new incarnation for Berkeley Castle should generate the most excitement between its walls since Rosa Suit, by then a widow, threw lavish parties around the turn of the century en route to burning through her inheritance.

For about a half-century, the building on a ridge overlooking the town of 700 residents has been a museum open to visitors for $5. But the Bird family, which bought it in 1954, decided to sell it to help pay for 84-year-old matriarch Elva Bird’s nursing care.

Her son, Walter Bird Jr., said the new owners will be good stewards of the corridors he explored as a boy after museum guests left. “They seem like nice people, seem like they’re going to do right by the castle and hopefully will return it to its former grandeur,” Bird said of Holbert and his associates.

As for Suit’s possible reaction, Bird doubts the increased scrutiny of happenings inside Berkeley Castle will cause any “friction” on the ghost front. Indeed, Holbert, who says he has been chasing ghost-like entities for 10 years, says he isn’t looking to drive out any spirits. “We’re not ghost-busters,” he said. “We don’t capture them, take them away. We observe, we document.”

Let him explain that to Suit, who was forced out of the house by creditors, endured extreme poverty and wound up dying out West.

Holbert said he hopes to open the center, with eight or nine guest rooms, by mid-December. First up, though, is a big Halloween bash. None of it, he predicted, will bother Suit or any other spirits that might be lurking about.

“I don’t think they would even know we’re here,” he said, but he added: “I guess we’ll find out.”