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Heavily Investigated

People don't just feel uneasy in the Riddle House — they leave. Men report being shoved by nothing in the attic, tools vanishing mid-grip, and a dragging-chain sound that stops the moment you go looking. The culprit most investigators name is Joseph, an employee said to have hanged himself up there when debt closed in around him; whatever lingers carries his reported grudge — going after men hardest, pulling hair, hurling objects, pressing a cold hostility into the air. When the house was dismantled in 1995, witnesses say whatever lived in those walls simply moved with it.

Built in 1905 from materials left by Henry Flagler's development crews, the structure began life as the Gatekeeper's Cottage — standing watch beside Woodlawn Cemetery in West Palm Beach, which set a certain tone early. It operated as a funeral parlor before Karl Riddle, the city's first superintendent of public works, converted it into his residence in the 1920s. Slated for demolition decades later, 60 volunteers dismantled it board by board over two days in August 1995 and reassembled it at Yesteryear Village on the South Florida Fairgrounds — a $450,000 state grant covering the restoration.