Freddie the Ghost part of Kohl Mansion’s lore

The Sisters of Mercy, nuns who now occupy a building on the mansion’s grounds but originally moved into the mansion house in 1924, have also reported Freddie-related sightings.

Sister Marilyn Gouailhardou’s oral history — recorded in the Burlingame Historical Society’s Fall 2020 issue — recalled novice nuns experiencing unexplainable powdery substances falling from the ceilings and general ghostly presences in the rooms.

“Some of the Sisters who lived in the far part of the house at night, the Novices, some of them said they experienced a presence,” Gouailhardou said. “I would have been scared living in that place then, the way it was at the time.”

Charles Frederick “Freddie” Kohl built the lavish Kohl Mansion, which was then known as “The Oaks,” in 1912, according to the mansion’s website. Designed in the style of an English manor house, the Great Hall was often used for entertaining and parties, hosted by Freddie’s wife, Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Godey. 

Their lavish lifestyle took a turn toward the sinister in 1911, after Freddie had a French maid, Adele Verge, arrested for “irregular and bizarre” behavior. Allegedly incensed by the arrest, Verge sued Freddie — and after he won the case, Verge shot him outside the courthouse. 

According to 1911 reporting on the shooting from the San Francisco Call newspaper, Freddie made what he presumed would be a deathbed statement from the hospital, forgiving his assailant — who had been brought to the operating room to “confront” her victim, the paper said — and identifying her. 

“My name is Charles Frederick Kohl. I live in San Mateo. I know I am going to die. Adele Verge shot me. There she is in the room now,” he said. “I am 48 years old. I am married. I don’t know why she shot me. I am a capitalist.”

Though he survived the attack, it haunted him for the remainder of his life, former San Mateo Daily Journal history columnist Paul Buchanan wrote in 2005. His marriage to Bessie — who fled to Europe with the Red Cross during World War I to entertain the troops — deteriorated, and he took up with a mistress, New York divorcee Marion Lord. 

“Freddie’s physical injuries and mental stresses continued to fester,” Buchanan wrote. “By 1916, feelings of physical inadequacy tortured the 53-year-old Freddie, who grew depressed, paranoid and extremely jealous of Bessie.” 

Allegedly, upon hearing that Verge had been released from the French asylum where she had been sequestered after the attack, Freddie shot himself in the head at the Del Montel Lodge, leaving the mansion to his mistress Marion and only $250,000 of his fortune to Bessie. 

Lord eventually sold Kohl Mansion to the Sisters of Mercy, and reports of ghostly behavior have followed ever since, including “loud, disembodied footsteps,” Climate magazine wrote in 2022. 

While the nuns dealt with very real threats to their safety, including the Ku Klux Klan, which purportedly burned a cross above the hill from Kohl Mansion, they also took steps to deal with Freddie, conducting a ritual blessing in 1927. 

Since then, tales of Freddie the Ghost have continued to lightheartedly drift throughout the Kohl Mansion Halls and throughout San Mateo County, however, his spirit seems largely content to live on in memory, without many major malicious disturbances reported since.