Context: “There’s this house that’s known as the Roseville Castle. People say it’s haunted. Some very eccentric guy bought it and it’s like super creepy on the inside. It’s called the I-80 castle. I’ve never been inside but it [apparently] looks super medieval on the inside and it’s super creepy. It’s a weird mix of 70’s aesthetic and medieval. People are just put off by it. [I’ve heard that] there’s a hot tub in the bedroom that got filled in with concrete and is now a stripper pole.”

He also mentioned that he’s seen many references to the castle on social media platforms like TIkTok. The stories all vary but they appear somewhat frequently on his timeline. 

Analysis: After doing some more research on this local legend, it is even stranger than he described. A local radio station did a piece on it where they detailed the property and did an expose on the owners. The aforementioned “very eccentric guy” was an air force pilot and beauty school tycoon who fell in love with the idea of living in a castle when stationed in the UK. So, he built his own “poor man’s” version of a castle off the I-80 highway with his own hands. Now, after his wife left him, the castle has fallen into disrepair. Despite sources like this detailing the history of the castle, it still remains shrouded in mystery. The article makes many references to a myriad of rumors; some claim that the castle was built by the Shah of Iran and others say it is a maze littered with hidden rooms and passages. While these rumors are categorized as purely fiction, there is still a common sense of confusion and mystery surrounding it

This castle and the surrounding rumors represent a variation on the idea of a local legend. Much like a haunted house, the dubious origins of the castle and its out-of-place aesthetic makes it stick out in the public consciousness. Furthermore, the “eccentric billionaire” character has always captured the imagination. The whole archetype is a representation of what people would choose to do with almost unlimited resources. It is a fantasy not many get to live out, making their antics all the more alien to the rest of the population. In this case, the idea that a man with a ton of money would just build a castle because he liked one in England doesn’t fully satisfy the imagination. Thus, like a sort of memorate to explain his oddities, people draw upon the past and make up stories about mysterious passages and foreign princes to explain how something so out of the ordinary can exist in a small suburban town.