The Beyers-Lyons House, built in 1898 for Pittsburgh steel magnate Alexander Beyers is a magnificent 4 story, 90 room double mansion. The structure, unusual in the fact that it was intentionally constructed as a divided home, served as the personal living space for both Alexander Beyers’ family – who lived on the left side – and his daughter and son-in-law John Denniston Lyons’ family – who lived on the right side.

The issue that eventually created a massive, dividing rift between the two families that was initially at the heart of the matter in 1901 is not clear, but, what is known about the matter is that over a period of about a year or so an internal feud began to boil over between the two families, driving a wedge between them. Although Alexander Beyers loved his grandchildren very much the situation eventually ended up in a state where both parties living in the mansion rarely spoke to each other. Because of the magnitude of the ongoing dispute between John Lyons and Alexander Beyers, it was decided by John Lyons to hire another housekeeper to watch his children rather than leave them with his in-laws, but this decision may have been influenced as much by the custom of the day as it was by his feud with Beyers since the tradition of the time was for the wealthy, influential individuals of the Victorian era to maintain a small live-in staff to take care of their day to day household needs while the socialites took care of both business and pleasure away from the home. This, however, would eventually prove to be a decision whose fatal price would affect the family no matter what side of the mansion that they lived on.

Because of this long-running disagreement the forthcoming events, almost completely owing their existence to the now entrenched Beyers-Lyons feud, set the stage and opened the door for fatality to come in, sweeping swiftly down on darkened wings to play the extract the ultimate price in the lives of the two families. In particular, the details involved in this tale of tragedy begins on the Lyons side of the mansion and specifically centers around the ornate sculpted wood staircase that rises straight up from the marble floor in the foyer stopping on three floors before eventually ending at a glass-topped skylight shaft that separates the children’s bedrooms and nursery on the third floor from the servant’s quarters on the fourth floor.

Fate, not willing to be denied the opportunity for a tragedy, found that in 1902 a hired servant, a young immigrant girl from Germany, was watching Lyons’ children in her fourth floor quarters when she inadvertently fell asleep. During the interim the Lyons’ youngest daughter wandered off from the sleeping nanny’s room and eventually made her way into the skylight area. She crawled up onto the glass and began to make her way over the skylight. The glass shattered and the little girl fell 70 feet onto the marble floor where she died instantly. When the nanny awoke to the sound of shattering glass she went looking for the children and found all of them – with the exception of the little girl. Cautiously making her way to the skylight shaft she found what she had feared most – the youngest of the Lyons’ children lying lifeless on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Overcome with grief and stricken with guilt the nanny found a length of rope and, before hanging herself in the same area where the little girl fell from, wrote on a message on a dusty ledge on the skylight shaft: “Entschuldigan Sie mir bitte.” Please, forgive me.

Years later the mansion was purchased by the Community College of Allegheny County and remodeled for student use. Although decades have gone by and the use of the house has changed numerous students, staff and administrators still, on occasion, see or hear the apparition of a young woman weeping near the skylight shaft and, every so often, they hear the laughter of a little girl echoing through out the house. It would seem that, given the accounts and first hand experiences of those who have witnessed the otherworldly phenomenon over the years at Beyers-Lyons Hall at CCAC, events and circumstance in this world continue to play out in a twisted, painful waltz over the years scarring both time and memory in this century-plus old structure.