Sauer Castle is located in Kansas City, Kansas.
Sauer’s Castle is a 3 story, 18th century German Gothic inspired brick mansion built by German businessman/entrepreneur, Anton Philip Sauer for his second wife Marie and their 5 daughters. It has a tall watchtower and a walkway on the roof. The double front doors are huge, being 10 feet wide as a unit, 10 feet high and 6 inches thick.
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.
Throughout the years, 5 generations of the Sauer family lived and died in this family mansion. Besides Anton’s death, his wife Mary also died in the mansion in 1919, as well as other family members throughout the years from natural and unnatural causes. There was one suicide, one infant death, one child drowned in the swimming pool, and Anton’s son, Julius, was killed in a train accident, burned to death.
Despite the stories being circulated about the mansion, there were no murders, no bodies were buried here, and no treasure existed. There is no secret tunnel as the hill the mansion stands on is solid rock. The suicide which happened here was an old man, who was the second husband of one of the descendants, killing himself with a gun because he was upset about his declining health. No woman hung herself in the lookout tower as theorized by popular thought.
Another legend commonly reported tells this tragic tale; That at the end of the Civil War, a woman ( supposedly Mrs. Sauer) who lived in this mansion went to wait at the docks for her soldier husband (some say Anton Sauer) to come home on the ferry which he said he would be on, as his service was over. When he didn’t show up, she went home and killed herself, thinking he had been killed. He had merely missed the boat. When he arrived home, and found her dead, he in turn killed himself. The original teller of this tale had read Romeo and Juliet one too many times. Besides, the land belonged to an Indian in 1859, Tom Bigknife, during this time period, and the land was basically just an undeveloped property. The Sauers didn’t come to Kansas City until 1868.
Read more here: https://ghost.hauntedhouses.com/kansas_kansas_city_sauers_castle#
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/and-thats-why-we-drink/e/66245437
Check out our interative map to find other locations. https://hauntedroadtrip.us/map/
