Florida is the home of an enigma known as Coral Castle. It is constructed out of incredibly large, heavy blocks of stone. How was it built and why? That is the mystery.

The Mystery of Coral Castle
By Gary Val Tenuta

Here's a mystery that’ll make you go “Hmm…”

Seems there was this guy named Edward Leedskalnin who was born in a country called Latvia back in 1866. He had a girlfriend that he called “Sweet Sixteen” but she left him and it broke his heart. So he came to America to start a new life. That’s when things got weird.

He just couldn’t get Sweet Sixteen out of his mind and he got the crazy idea of building a castle for her in hopes that she would hear about it and be so impressed that she would come back to him. Yeah, I know. Sounds like a sappy love story but, hey, that’s the way it was. So ol’ Ed began building his castle in a place called Florida City, Florida.

Now here’s what’ll make you go “Hmm…”.

Ed built his castle out of gigantic blocks of coral rock, some weighing as much as 25 tons, and he moved them around all by himself! Some of those blocks weighed more than the blocks of stone that were used to build the Great Pyramid in Egypt! Pretty good trick for a little middle-aged man who barely weighed in at 100 pounds! Oh, and did I mention he also had tuberculosis to boot?

So Ed labored, alone, for 20 years, mostly in the dark of night. By the time he was done he had built a huge castle with an enormous rock garden and an obelisk that weighed nearly 30 tons! Not only that, but he also constructed a huge swinging gate completely made out of stone. The gate weighs 9 tons but the door of the gate pivots open and shut with just the touch of a finger. But wait! There’s more!

No sooner did he finish his work than he decided to move the whole thing to another city 10 miles away! And it’s not like he hired a crew of big burly men to help him. Oh no. Not Ed. He moved it all, piece by piece, by himself, in the dark of night, and it only took him about a month. Okay, he did get some help from a big flatbed truck to move some of the stone blocks. But even that is a mystery. Ed somehow lifted the gigantic blocks of stone onto the bed of the truck without any help from anyone.

How’d he manage to do all these impossible feats? Well now, that’s the question isn’t it? The answer is, nobody knows. According to one story, it seems two boys sneaked up to Ed’s property one night and, peeking over a wall, saw Ed make a huge stone block float in the air and then he just easily guided it along with his hand, as easily as pushing a balloon. Others say he used some sort of strange sounds, tones that made the stones levitate. A reporter once asked Ed how he managed to move those huge stones. Ed just smiled and said he’d discovered the secrets of the pyramid builders.

So there you have it. That’s the mystery of Coral Castle. And, oh, by the way, his girlfriend never did come to America to see the castle he’d built for her. Poor ol’ Ed died in 1951, alone and foresaken by his Sweet Sixteen.