Deadwood's 1892 Queen Anne Mansion
22 Van Buren St, Deadwood, SD 57732
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Standard daytime mansion-tour admission. Evening paranormal investigations available seasonally for a separate fee.
Access
Limited Access
Multi-floor Queen Anne house with original stairs
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1892 · National Register of Historic Places · Black Hills Mining-Era Architecture · Eisendrath Queen Anne Design
Harris and Anna Franklin commissioned Chicago architect Simeon D. Eisendrath to design a Queen Anne residence on Van Buren Street overlooking the booming Black Hills mining town of Deadwood. Completed in 1892, the home featured radiant heat, running water, electric service, and a private telephone line — state-of-the-art domestic technology for the era. Contemporary Deadwood newspapers described the residence as the grandest house west of the Mississippi.
Harris Franklin died in 1923; Anna had predeceased him. Their son Nathan ran the family commercial holdings and was elected Deadwood mayor in 1914, defeating incumbent William E. Adams. In 1920 Adams — the merchant and former mayor he had unseated — purchased the Franklin home after the deaths in close succession of his first wife Alice and his only surviving daughter Helen. (The Adams family had previously lost three young children to childhood illness.) Adams remarried in 1927 to Mary Mastrovich; he died of a stroke in June 1934. Mary lived in the home until her own death.
In 1992 the Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission acquired the property and restored it as a house museum. More than 80 percent of the furnishings are original to the Adams family — preserved largely because Mary Adams retained the contents intact after W.E.'s death. The house is operated by Deadwood History, Inc., and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sources
Adams House staff have collected paranormal accounts continuously since the museum opened in the mid-1990s. The most-cited phenomena cluster around the figure of W.E. Adams himself. A museum director recorded an incident in which lights came back on in the closed building after she had switched them off and confirmed with staff that no one remained inside. On a separate evening she described seeing the shadow of a tall thin man pacing in an upstairs window from the parking lot below. The cigar-smoke detail — Adams was a documented cigar smoker — appears in multiple staff accounts.
Mary Adams's rocking chair is the second focus of reports. Staff and visitors have observed the chair rocking on its own when the room was otherwise still, sometimes during tours when guides have called attention to it. The reports have continued long enough that the rocking-chair phenomenon is incorporated into the museum's standard tour narrative.
The family's history of cumulative loss — three children to childhood illness, the first Mrs. Adams, the Adams's only surviving daughter Helen, and the brief childhood of Helen's own child — gives the house a documented emotional weight. The Black Hills Paranormal Investigations group has published several investigation reports on Adams House activity, and US Ghost Adventures includes the house on its Deadwood ghost tour. Deadwood History, Inc., supports paranormal programming as a complement to the documentary tour, treating the reports as authentic visitor experience without endorsing supernatural interpretation.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
A docent-led tour of the 1892 Queen Anne mansion built for the Harris Franklin family and later home of mayor William E. Adams. More than 80 percent of the furnishings are original to the Adams family, including Mary Adams's rocking chair, frequently associated with reported activity.
Deadwood History, Inc. periodically offers small-group after-hours investigations of the mansion in partnership with local paranormal researchers. Programming is announced on the Deadwood History site.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Charles City, VA
Benjamin Harrison IV built the current mansion at Berkeley Plantation in 1726, making it the oldest three-story brick structure in Virginia. The plantation became the birthplace of President William Henry Harrison in 1773 and the ancestral seat of a family that produced a signer of the Declaration of Independence and two U.S. Presidents. During the Civil War, General McClellan used the mansion as his headquarters and the cellar held Confederate prisoners.
San Jose, CA
Sarah Lockwood Pardee Winchester, widow of William Wirt Winchester of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, purchased an unfinished farmhouse in San Jose in 1886 and oversaw 36 years of continuous expansion until her death in 1922. The 160-room mansion opened to the public in 1923 and has operated as a tour attraction ever since. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is California Historical Landmark No. 868.
Indianapolis, IN
Hannah House is an 1858 Italianate mansion at 3801 Madison Avenue on the south side of Indianapolis, built by Alexander Hannah, an Indiana businessman who returned wealthy from the California Gold Rush. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.