Haunted Schools

Flagler College

-St. Augustine, Florida

Flagler College's impressive centerpiece is the historic former Hotel Ponce de Le n building. Henry Morrison Flagler – the industrialist after whom the St. Augustine school is named – oversaw construction of the grand edifice in the late 1880s. Despite great business success, Flagler endured a thorny personal life: his first wife passed away, his second was institutionalized, and one of his mistresses, it is said, hanged herself on the fourth floor of the Florida hotel. As for the building, it became part of the university in 1968 and was renamed Ponce de Leon Hall. According to students, the fourth floor remained out of bounds for many years, and this has surely given rise to ghostly gossip. Furthermore, Flagler died in 1913 and requested that all of the exits be kept open at his funeral in the hotel's lobby; however, the doors and other openings were shut by a janitor, and some hold that Flagler's ghost is eternally trapped in the building.