For 125 years, Preston Castle has stood in Ione. Once home to juvenile inmates, the now defunct youth correctional facility is a historic landmark, offering guided tours by eager docents. For many, the history of the castle is most compelling, with stories of a military-style school housing troubled boys since 1894 abandoned in 1960, the murder of a staff member named Anna Corbin in 1950, and the castle’s journey to becoming a piece of local history. For others, it’s the paranormal activity—disembodied voices, doors opening and closing, spirit sightings, paranormal energy, and more—that excite. “Preston Castle has witnessed many decades of change and has as many stories as square footage to share,” says Chris Garbarini, a docent and self-described empath who offers paranormal tours on property. “I absolutely believe 100 percent that Preston Castle is haunted.”
Chris’ suspicions about the paranormal activity come mainly from firsthand experiences. Chris recounts a story from 2010 where he swears he could smell fresh baked pastries wafting from the out-of-use staff kitchen and feel the steam of the plunge bath tickling his nostrils. Since then, the encounters have only gotten stranger—and harder to explain. “I have watched a very tall male spirit float down a hallway after a woman in a flowing dress… I’ve locked eyes with a spirit while walking right through him. The list goes on and on.”
Chris isn’t the only one with stories to tell. Sometimes guests ask Chris and crew about the docents dressed in period pieces and the small children in uniform. This would be normal, if either of those people existed at Preston. However, they don’t. These sightings are just as hard to explain as the photos taken of faces in the windows of rooms where nobody is and electronic voice phenomena (EVP).
Even Karl Knobelauch, the president of The Preston Castle Foundation and self-declared skeptic has experienced weird happenings at the castle including a disembodied voice calling his own name. “But there was no one [there],” he said.
One EVP from 2016 is Chris’ favorite to date. After leaving a cell phone on record upstairs during lock up, Chris and his wife returned home to listen to the recording. “You can hear normal everyday noises, birds chirping and cars driving down Preston Avenue,” Chris says. “But at 2:35 seconds of the recording you can hear the voice of a little boy call out from down the annex hallway say, ‘Come down here….Help!’” No one heard the voice while they were inside the castle, and only one other person was outside during the time of the recording. To this day, Chris can’t explain it.
According to Chris, some days the spirits interact and some days they don’t. One particular entity seems to linger around the castle quite often, taking up residence in the intake room where boys coming into the school were processed. “This spirit and I have some history from the last few years. I have seen him multiple times in the intake room as well as in the hallway leading to it. I had shown my flashlight down the hall because he was more active than usual and as the beam from my flashlight hit where he was standing the light did not penetrate the black mass and I watched him move up a set of stairs,” says Chris. He says the same entity has stopped him from closing doors, objects have inexplicably moved in front of his eyes, and random knocking often occurs in that part of the castle. “These are just a few of my many encounters with the unknown at Preston Castle,” Chris says.
Ghost stories aside, historic tales are also eerie. There are 18 boys buried in the on-site cemetery, many boys died while attending the school (commonly of disease), one was shot during an escape attempt, and the man who murdered that women in 1950 was convicted of rape and murder in Oklahoma later on.
With a past like Preston Castle’s, it’s no wonder strange things are happening inside the castle walls. Stories of physical/corporal punishment by guards aren’t scarce. By 1895, one year after the castle opened, 175 boys lived in the on-site dormitories. In 1960, the castle was almost gone for good. For eight years three elderly women fought to keep the castle in place. And they won. Which is why Preston Castle—and all of its ghostly residents—still reside in Ione today.