Coral Castle: A Colossal Mystery Inspired by Romance

Blogger: Amber Lemus

 

Today I am sharing about one of the strangest places I've ever visited. When I first went, I thought it a tragic and romantic tale. But revisiting the story almost ten years later, I feel it might be a little on the creepy side too. Let me know what you think.

Several years back, my family and I took a vacation to Florida. While we were there, we visited a very interesting, but often unheard-of attraction. They call it Coral Castle.

Before I go into the interesting and mysterious parts of the castle itself, there's a story you must know.

Ed Leedskalnin

Romance & Heartbreak

Ed Leedskalnin was born in 1887 in Latvia, a small country in Northern Europe, right next to Russia and Lithuania. He was a stone mason, like his father before him. When he was 26 years old, he met and fell madly in love with a sixteen-year-old girl named Agnes Scuffs. He convinced her to marry him, and a date was set.

Today, a twenty-six-year-old marrying a sixteen-year-old would probably be considered pedophilia, however in those days, girls marrying at such a young age was pretty common. Still, it does feel a little weird.

Just one day before the wedding, Ed's "Sweet Sixteen" called off the wedding. She would never marry him, she said. Ed was crushed. So deep was his grief, that he left his native country of Latvia and journeyed to the United States where he settled near Miami, Florida. Here, he began to build one of the modern world's greatest mysteries, a tribute to his lost love.



Eccentric, NOT crazy. 

Ed was a small man, about five foot tall, and weighing in at less than 100 lbs. His small size didn't keep him from doing big things. He settled in a place where there was a ton (pun intended) of fossilized coral. He excavated this stone by himself and used it to carve out blocks and build his castle. 

He built his first castle around 1923, but later moved to another location that was closer to the population base around 1939.


 Ed was a very interesting fellow, though somewhat strange. But he attested that he was not crazy. Eccentric, yes, but not crazy. At the entrance to the castle, he has a sign that says "You will be seeing an unusual accomplishment." He had a bell, with a sign that instructed the visitor to ring twice if they wanted a tour. If they failed to follow the instructions, he would either ignore them, or yell over the wall: "Go away. You can't follow directions and you might break something."



A Wonder of the Modern World

A map of the Coral Castle sculptures - Click to enlarge

From his background as a stone mason, Ed had great knowledge of stone, leveraging heavy objects and masonry, but that still doesn't account for the amazing sights at Coral Castle. The entire castle is made up of the Coral Stone and scraps that he picked up from junkyards. To start, he created a wall around the castle. Then he erected a tower in one corner for his living quarters and tools, and the rest of the courtyard was somewhat of a playground for him. He built tables, chairs, a sundial, a self-heating bath, rock telescopes, models of the planets, an obelisk and much more.

The Nine-Ton Gate

Ed had two gates to his castle, both made of large stones that were so perfectly balanced that you could push the stones like a revolving door with only one finger. One gate was three tons, the other made of a nine-ton stone. We're talking TONS here.

The entire castle was built with his "Sweet Sixteen" in mind. He always made things in sets of three. One for him, one for Agnes, and one for the child that they would have. Ed dreamed that one day, Agnes would come across the ocean, agree to finally marry him, and they would live happily ever after in his Coral Castle.

Below, we see the Feast of Love table. "We men are forgetful." Ed said, "I may forget to buy her a Valentine, so I built her one out of stone so that she will always have a valentine from me." The flowers at the center were her favorite kind, until they recently died and were replaced. "I am too poor to buy her flowers all the time, so I planted them here so that she will have flowers every day."

I mean, that's pretty sweet...if the object of his affections wasn't a sixteen-year-old who had rejected him and moved on with her life already. 

The Feast of Love Table

Here's something interesting, if your sweetheart proposes to you in front of this table of love, and you accept, they will let you have your wedding at the castle. According to their website, they occasionally do renewal of the vows at the castle for couples.

You might be wondering, did Anges ever know that poor Ed had come out here and built a castle for her with his own hands? The answer, sadly, is yes. Someone once asked her if she knew about the castle, and if she knew that he'd built it all for her. She replied, "Yes, but I didn't want to marry him then. And I don't want to marry him now." 

Ed's Obelisk

To the right is a picture of the obelisk that Ed built. Guess how much it weighs. twenty-eight tons. The heaviest stone in the castle is thirty tons. TONS, people! I was amazed.

How on earth did one man -one very small man- carve and move those rocks by himself? That remains a mystery. He worked only at night, or when people could not see him. If people would show up, he would stop working. "When you leave, I can get back to work." He would say. 

There are many theories about how he built this fantastic castle. Some say Aliens came and told him how to build it, helping him with their anti-gravitation devices. Others say that it was just sheer leverage. I personally find that difficult to believe.

Ed studied a lot about magnets and the magnetic force and had even managed to create a magnetic generator. Some believe that he somehow used his knowledge of magnets to levitate the stones. This seems more probable to me.

Above is the only picture of Ed building the castle. See that little guy down there at the bottom? Ya, that's Ed.

The Tragic End

So how does Ed's story end? His castle became quite an attraction, and folks would pay him for tours. He lived very simply in an upstairs part of the corner tower. He did this until he fell ill in December of 1951. He left a sign on the castle door that said, "going to hospital." He died three days later at the age of 64. 

Ed never married.

Still today, Ed's legacy lives on. The Coral Castle became a National Historic Place in 1984. It is a very impressive, possibly romantic, yet mysterious tribute to his lost love. Kinda reminds me of the Taj Mahal, although that story was a little happier.

So what do you think? Is Ed's tribute to Agnes romantic or creepy? Let me know in the comments below this post. 

(If you're reading this by email, you'll need to visit the blog page to leave a comment.)

*****

Two-time winner of the Christian Indie Award for historical fiction, Amber Lemus inspires hearts through enthralling tales She has a passion for travel, history, books and her Savior. This combination results in what her readers call "historical fiction at its finest".  

She lives near the Ozarks in her "casita" with her prince charming. Between enjoying life as a boy mom, and spinning stories out of soap bubbles, Amber loves to connect with readers and hang out on Goodreads with other bookish peoples.

Amber is a proud member of the American Christian Fiction Writers Association. Visit her online at http://www.amberlemus.com/ and download a FREE story by subscribing to her Newsletter!

Nancy Drew and Carolyn Keene

by Marilyn Turk

My favorite books when I was growing up were the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories written by Carolyn Keene.

My books are long gone, but recently I decided to buy some Hardy Boys books for my grandson in an attempt to connect him to the “classics” of my generation. When I searched Amazon for them, I came across the Nancy Drew stories and decided I wanted to read some again.

Out of curiosity, I googled Nancy Drew and Carolyn Keene. Who was this author, and what prompted her to write these revolutionary stories about a young girl detective?

What I discovered was shocking. Instead of reading about the life of Carolyn Keene, I found out that she wasn’t a real person. Nope. Never existed. Instead, Carolyn Keene was a pseudonym for quite a few authors who wrote the series.

The whole concept for the Nancy Drew stories came from a publisher named Edward Stratemeyer. Mr. Stratemeyer introduced the teenage female character in 1930 after the huge success of the Hardy Boys, another of his creations which began publication in 1927.  Although he personally believed a girl’s place was in the home, the popularity of the Hardy Boys books among girl readers convinced him they would like a strong female heroine.

Nancy Drew books were an immediate success and often sold out in days, described in a 1934 Fortune magazine cover story as crashing a male genre, taking even the publisher by surprise.

So who wrote the popular novels? Ghostwriters who signed contracts giving all rights to the publisher were paid $125 per book, which was double a month’s pay for the average newspaper reporter in the 1930’s. During the Depression, the fee was lowered to $100 and then to $75, but any income at that time was appreciated.

Stratemeyer’s process for creating the Nancy Drew Books consisted of creating a detailed plot outline, drafting a manuscript, and editing the manuscript. Edward Stratemeyer and his daughters Harriet Adams and Edna Stratemeyer Squier wrote most of the outlines for the original Nancy Drew series until 1979.

One of the writers who penned most of the stories based on the outlines was Mildred Wirt Benson. Others were Walter Karig, George Waller Jr., and Margaret Scherf, to name a few.

The original series was comprised of 175 books published from 1930-2003. However, the stories were updated throughout the years, beginning in the 1950’s, to reflect changes of the times.

Nancy herself changed over the years. Originally a sixteen-year-old high school graduate, later she was an eighteen-year-old, then a professional woman in her 20’s. 

Even though she was modernized, Nancy was still depicted as a young woman who was strong, brave, curious and energetic, while maintaining high moral character. She was independent and confident, outspoken and authoritative.

The publishers were aware that Nancy Drew was a role model for young girls and teens and tried to keep her image a positive one. Many famous women have credited her character as influencing their own.

Maybe she influenced me too. What about you? Did you read Nancy Drew books?

A multi-published author, Marilyn Turk writes historical fiction about the coastal South. Her fascination for lighthouses spawned her popular weekly lighthouse blog @pathwayheart.com, and inspired her upcoming Coastal Lights Legacy series and her Lighthouse Devotions. Her novel, A Gilded Curse, will be released March 2016 from Heritage Beacon Fiction, an imprint of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas.