November 28, 2025 • 30 mins
The second and final part of Season 09 Episode 4: To Each Man His Castle
We return to the Florida scrubland as Edward Leedskalnin embarks on his strange solitary mission to build a vast megalithic dreamscape carved from oolite limestone.
Then the rumours begin; whispers of huge stones being moved about as if freed from gravity itself, and of a strange black box equipped with otherworldly powers...
Written by Neil McRobert and produced by Richard MacLean Smith.
Find us at youtube.com/@unexplainedpod, tiktok.com/@unexplainedpodcast, twitter @unexplainedpod, facebook.com/unexplainedpodcast or www.unexplainedpodcast.com for more info. Thank you for listening.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to the second and final part of Unexplained,
Season nine, episode four, to Each Man His Castle. In
January of nineteen thirty two, a small, poorly written advertisement
in the Miami Daily News invited curious sightseers to visit
(00:32):
an obscure corner of southern Florida. The directions were clear,
if somewhat reliant on local knowledge, go towards Florida City,
then follow Palm Avenue south to Redland Road. After half
a mile, turn west and continue for another quarter mile. There,
the ad promised, you will find Ed's place. The cost
(00:54):
of entry was ten cents. Two photographs accompanied the advert.
The first depicted a maze like arrangement of stones, though
the coarse grain image made it hard to discern the
exact layout. The second photo is clearer and shows a
man in a shirt tie and dark formal trousers. His
(01:17):
hair is crisply parted, and his posture is as tense
as his face is haggard. He is unrecognizable from the
first photograph taken of him on American shores some twenty
years previously, but the most noteworthy thing in the photo
is not the man. It's the chair. He is sitting
on a carved block of rough stone over two tons
(01:40):
in weight. Next to it is a huge table top
sitting on rough hewn stone legs. In the photograph, the dimensions,
shape and true size are hard to make out, but
visitors to the strange exhibition were discovered that the table
is carved into the sh of the state of Florida.
(02:02):
This vast furniture as the sole work of the man
sitting at them, rocking in his colossal armchair, trying and
failing to convey a sense of ease and relaxation. His
diminutive frame only serves to highlight the sheer scale of
the stone that surrounds him. It is Edward Leedscownin, of course,
(02:23):
and all that stone is the first iteration of his
life's work. It would have many names over the years.
At the time the photo was taken, it was Ed's Place.
Later it would be known as Rockgate Park, but in
the enduring public imagination, it's best known as Coral Castle,
(02:44):
America's Stonehenge, and just how it came to be remains
one of the abiding enigmas of modern Americana. No one
really knows when Edward Leedskownen first began the project that
(03:05):
would carve his name into the annals of the American Bazaar.
The nineteen thirty two advertisement is the first known mention
of it in print, but Ed had been living and
presumably working on the site for almost ten years by
that point, ever since he bought two acres of Florida
City land from the Moser family after they'd saved his
(03:26):
life and helped him recuperate from near fatal tuberculosis. Ed
had chosen the land because of the ready availability of
oolite limestone, known in laypersons terms as coral. It was
abundant in the area, and nowhere more so than on
the extensive plot belonging to the Moses. During the decade
(03:48):
that Ed spent on his two acres, he quarried the coral,
heaved it from the ground, carved it into fantastic shapes,
and arranged it into startling configurations. Visitors to Ed's place
could wander through his larger than life creation, taking in
the exquisite craftsmanship and the inexplicable heft of what he'd made.
(04:11):
All in all, Ed extracted more than eleven hundred tons
of stone from the ground, and somehow he did it
all single handedly a man in ill health, standing little
more than five feet tall and weighing a mere one
hundred twenty pounds. It's a feat that has confounded visitors
(04:32):
and commentators alike, and which comes with a fair share
of local legend. In their two thousand and nine book
Coral Castle, The Mystery of ed Leedscalnen and his American Stonehenge,
authors Rusty mc cure and Jack Heffron have compiled the
most comprehensive accounts from witnesses to ed Leedscownon's labors. They
(04:55):
quote neighbors of its people who knew him well, but
who were none the less as founded by what he achieved. Accounts,
details and theories vary, but all agree on a few
common facts. Ed worked alone, without any help from man
or any other animal. He worked only at night, illuminated
(05:15):
by the moon or by a lantern, depending on the weather.
And he was only ever seen using simple handheld quarrying
tools that he himself had personally crafted from car parts
he scavenged from a nearby junk yard. The tools alone
were a work of strange genius, let alone what he
did with them. Earl s Lee was a boyhood neighbour
(05:39):
of Ed's in nineteen twenty nine, when he was lucky
enough to witness how the quarrying was done. According to Lee,
he saw Ed cut and dig out the huge slab
that would become the Florida shaped tabletop. Lee describes how
Ed would mark out his desired shape and then dig
a narrow foot wide ditch around its edges. He would
(06:03):
then drive metal wedges into the gap, breaking the stone
loose in one single piece to prize the cut shape
out of the hole. Lee claims that Ed used nothing
more than a few simple poles with a heavy bucket
attached to the end for leverage. Other photographs collected in
(06:30):
mcure and Heffron's book show Ed using a large ten
foot tripod built from telephone poles. His block and tackle
pulley system is attached to a large chain which Ed
would slip beneath the cut stone once it was wedged up.
In this way, it seems he was able to lift
massive pieces of coral from the ground all on his own.
(06:53):
But on top of the tripod is a strange black
metal box. It seems to serve no obvious purpose, but
over the years many have speculated the degenerated strange powers,
powers that only Ed alone was privy to, and which
he put to use in his Titanic undertaking. More prosaically,
(07:17):
Ed's skill and knowledge is often attributed to his early
apprenticeship in stonemasonry back in the Baltics, where he learned
from his father. He certainly had a better than average
understanding of how to cut and maneuver stone. Yet working
on gravestones, it's one thing at Ed's place. Some of
(07:38):
the stones, such as the gigantic single piece known as
the Obelisk, stood over forty feet in length and weighed
more than thirty tons. That's five times the weight of
the average male African bush elephant. Could any level of
expertise with handmade tools and a basic pulley system ex
(08:00):
explain how Ed was able to so finely cut and
position such monoliths. The engineering sophistication on display was often
even more impressive and confounding than the scale of the
end product. One of Ed's most famous sculptures, known as
the Rock Gate, is constructed from a single nine ton
(08:21):
slab of coral. The size is daunting, but what's more
amazing still is that the door does not simply stand there,
inert and imposing no all of its vast weight is
set to turn with the merest pressure. Somehow, Ed first
managed to hang the door perfectly. Then, having identified the
(08:44):
exact center of mass, he bored a hole through the
coral and inserted a metal rod into it. The rod
is balanced so precisely on ball bearings scavenged from a
model t Ford that, when pushed, the door smoothly swivels
with less than a quarter inch clearance between it and
the surrounding doorframe. Extracting the slab is one thing, Maneuvering
(09:09):
it into place is yet another. But the accuracy required
to sow perfectly suspend nine tons of stone that seems
beyond the reach of even the most skilled stone masons.
As a paper in the Journal Civil Engineering would later
point out, not one piece of stonework showed any sign
(09:33):
of a crack or damage, suggesting that Ed had somehow
managed to create this great work without any need for
trial and error. In other words, it seems he got
it all correct first time. By the late nineteen twenties,
(09:59):
Ed was welcoming plenty of visitors to see his hand
carved wonders. The ad he placed in the Miami Daily
News in nineteen thirty two claimed that over seventeen thousand
people had walked his grounds, a figure that seems strikingly
optimistic for such a rural stretch of the state. Florida
(10:19):
City only had approximately one thousand inhabitants, so it's hard
to believe that Ed's estimated footfall is anything more than
crude boosterism. But Ed dismissed the notion that he was
interested in fame or profit. Instead, those who took his
tour would be treated to a well honed speech that
implied far more romantic motivations. Ed's place, he said, was
(10:44):
dedicated to his great love, young Agnes Scuffs, the bride
who jilted him at the Altar back in Europe, who
he'd never forgotten. As Ed's story went, he'd undertaken his
great task in her honor. It was intended as a
castle fit for his queen. Some of the sculptures tied
firmly into his tail. One structure, which Ed called his
(11:08):
Feast of Love Table, was a five thousand pound block
of coral carved into the shape of a heart. In
the center was a small hole into which Ed placed
an Exora flower or West Indian jasmine. He would tell
his tour groups that men too often neglected their wives,
and he wanted his lost love to have flowers in
(11:28):
her honor every day. Another part of the site, known
as the Throne Room, contained several chairs. The largest, Ed's
throne sat atop a stone plinth. Next to that was
a smaller version of the same design, just waiting for
Agnes should she ever come back to him. A few
(11:50):
feet away was a sinuous slab of stone that Ed
called his love seat. This would allow two people to
sit side by side yet faced to f and was intended,
Ed explained, to help him and his fantasy princess to
resolve their quarrels. Whether Ed really expected Agnes to join
(12:10):
him in America is doubtful. In all his papers and writings,
there's no indication he ever once wrote to her, or
indeed to any of his loved ones back home. In fact,
there are those who think that Agnes Scuffs never truly existed.
Some offer a more sinister interpretation that the true focus
(12:32):
of Ed's desire was Lois Moser, the teenage daughter of
his neighbors, the family who had saved his life. There
is no evidence of this However, beyond scurrulous local gossip,
the truth of Ed's Agnes is just one more unresolved
chapter in his story. Whether she was an authentic lost love,
(12:54):
a mythicized piece of Ed's past, or just a cynical
narrative construction, you shall likely never know. What is certain
about Edward Leedskownen is that he was a well known
and generally well liked member of the local community. People
(13:17):
would often go to his place to socialize, where he'd
hold cookouts and would welcome them generously. After his itinerant
start in America, it seemed as if ed had finally
found a place to call home. But by nineteen thirty seven,
Ed was once again looking to move, and just as
he had built it all on his own, he would
(13:39):
move it with the same mystifying independence. Ed paid just
ten dollars for the ten acre plot that would become
known forevermore as Coral Castle. It wasn't far away, in
the nearby town of Homestead. But when you're transporting over
a thousand tons of stone any distance at all problem,
(14:01):
and that problem is multiplied by magnitudes when said stones
weigh enough to blow out the tires of most vehicles.
Ed approached the issue with his trademark homespun innovation. First,
he built a trailer from the chassis of a junked truck,
over which he laid thick boards with the weight then spread.
(14:23):
The trailer could support even the heaviest of his stones.
With that in place, he sought the only help he
ever solicited from a local farmer named Bob Biggers. It
was Biggers who owned the solid tied tractor capable of
pulling the burdened trailer up the highway to the new site,
which he did repeatedly until every single stone was relocated
(14:46):
from Florida City to Homestead. But Bob never saw how
the stones were loaded and unloaded. All he knew was
that Ed would call and Bob would then arrive to
find the trailer already laid with huge blocks at the
other end. Ed would thank him and ask him to
come back in two or three days, by which time
(15:08):
the trailer would be empty and the stones would be
in their new and final position. How Ed managed this
with no help or industrial equipment, Bob couldn't say. Ed's
later biographer Rville Irwin was just fourteen at the time
and remembers asking Ed how long it would take him
to move his entire castle. According to Orville, Ed smiled
(15:33):
a peculiar smile and simply replied, it'll take a long time,
but I'll do it. By mid nineteen thirty nine, Ed's
entire complex sat in its new grounds. The relocation is
commonly attributed to his need for privacy. Supposedly, word had
gotten around about plans for a new housing development, and
(15:56):
Ed wanted to escape the prying eyes of all those
new neighbors. In truth, Ed lived in a relatively isolated
stretch on the edge of town, and even now, nearly
a century later, it remains largely undeveloped. Would he really
have gone to the colossal task of moving over a
(16:16):
thousand tons of stone just on the basis of a rumor.
In his nineteen ninety six biography of Ed, mister cant
is Dead, Awvial Irwin opines that his move was motivated
by far more business minded interests, and that he had
(16:39):
drained his pool of visitors, and the mere two acres
of his previous home were inconveniently placed to attract more.
The new site certainly solved that problem. Located in the
town of Homestead, just off Highway One. It was in
a prime position to grab the attention of travelers eager
for a quick distraction on their way to the Everglades
(17:01):
or the Florida Keys. It was also five times the
size of his original site, which allowed Ed to keep
expanding his megalithic work. Indeed, another theory for the move
is that Ed had exhausted the available oo light in
Florida City, Whether catalyzed by a fresh location or a
fresh reserve of stone, He set to work with renewed vigor. First,
(17:26):
he constructed a set of walls to curtain his new site.
Each of the three foot thick slabs weighed over six
tons apiece, and they were assembled with such precision that
no beam of light shone through them. The new additions
to the castle were easy to distinguish, as the stone
quarried at the new site at a darker, grainier tint
(17:48):
than the near white coral he'd been working with previously.
They are also even more sophisticated than his earlier pieces.
The telescope, for instance, is a twenty five foot twenty
ton column sitting just outside the main wall. It has
no lenses, mirrors, or magnification of any kind, merely a
(18:10):
large hole cut near the top with two wires overlapping
like a gunsight. If a viewer were to look through
the small holes carved in the curtain wall and line
up their perspective with the corresponding hole in the telescope,
they will find the location of the North Star on
any given night of the year. It's a feat of
(18:32):
astronomical mapping, not dissimilar from that encoded in Stonehenge or
other megalithic structures. Another nod to the stars is glimpsed
in the most photographed of all ed sculptures, the Crescent
of the East, a moon shaped slab of coral jutting
up from a low wall. Around it sat similarly massive
(18:54):
representations of Mars and Saturn. The castle also features a
large Sunday, carved from a single piece of stone and
accurate enough to keep time within a few minutes throughout
the year. And there was the sun Couch, a huge
circular stone bed that could swivel at a touch to
(19:14):
face the sun throughout the day. It's this bet that
the writer Joe Bullet had suggested ed used to aid
his recovery from TB through self administered sun therapy. But
the greatest mysteries both of the man and his work
were found in the structure known as the Tower. The
(19:44):
tower is where Ed lived, worked and pursued his strange
scientific theories, and it's where the story of Ed slides
into the truly unfathomable. The tower itself is just one
more confidence with the seemingly superhuman. It is built from
blocks weighing five to ten tons and roofed with thirty
(20:08):
one ton blocks. Inside a staircase winds up to Ed's
living quarters, where his bed hung suspended from the ceiling
on chains allowing him to adjust the angle and height
to his whim. Designed to mitigate Ed's ongoing struggles with tuberculosis,
as elevated sleeping upright can help reduce breathing difficulties. Ed
(20:32):
liked to claim that he was entirely cured of the disease,
but both the nature of his sleeping arrangements and his
steadily declining health suggest otherwise. It's mystery enough that he
lasted as long as he did. It's the ground floor workshop, however,
that contains the apparatus most central to the legends circling
(20:54):
Ed leeds gownen there Ed stored his radio and its generation,
both of which play a part in the more esoteric
theories about Coral Castle. Some have proposed that Ed's homemade
radio was used to contact extraterrestrial support. They point to
(21:14):
the surprising strength of his simple arrangement made from copper
wire and a mason jar, and when people queried how
he'd accomplish so much, with an enigmatic smile, Ed would
simply reply, I know the secrets of the ancient Egyptians. Certainly,
for conspiracy theorists comparing Coral Castle to the Pyramids of
(21:36):
Gezer or other mysterious ancient sites, extraterrestrial help is a
tantalizing prospect. Some even suggest that Ed himself was an
alien who'd come to Earth with all the knowledge of
the heavens, though why he would use such universal wisdom
to build a coral castle in Florida remains to be answered.
(22:00):
The generator, however, is implicated in the most obscure theory
about Coral Castle, one based on Ed's own scientific reasoning,
as we briefly covered in Part one. In nineteen thirty six,
Ed published a pamphlet concerning electromagnetism and the True nature
of matter, In Ed's hypothesis, it is magnets, not atoms,
(22:24):
that are the fundamental building blocks of the universe, that
everything that is made up of subatomic magnets, each with
their own north and south pole. Gravity, to Ed's mind,
was simply the pull of the Earth's vast magnetic core
on this magnetic fabric of the world. And if we
(22:46):
follow Ed's logic far enough by reversing the polarity of matter,
he would then be able to counteract the gravitational pull
of the Earth. But to do so, as Ed pointed out,
would require a great deal of consistent power. Could the
answer be found in that strange black box spotted on
(23:07):
top of its tripod? Edward Leedscowdin's writings are so convoluted
and compromised by his middling grasp of English that it's
difficult for the lay person to follow. Some of those
who claim to understand it believe that not only did
(23:29):
Edward manufacture a way to make his coral monoliths levitate,
he had also invented a perpetual motion machine, a device that,
once set in motion, would spin, whir or tick forever,
drawing no fuel, losing no energy, and producing endless work,
as if it had stolen a secret from the universe itself.
(23:53):
Inventors have been chasing this impossible dream for centuries. Ancient sketches,
mysterious devices, whispers in dusty manuscripts all hint at humanity's
obsession with creating a machine that could self run forever.
If Ed had indeed made one, it would have required
(24:14):
breaking not only the first but also the second law
of thermodynamics, and bending the very fabric of reality as
we know it. Some have suggested this is exactly what
he was hiding in his black box. Others have suggested
it was in fact his generator. Though it's a humble
looking combination of flywheel and handle. The theory suggests that
(24:37):
Ed could have attached strong magnets to the wheel, then
when it was turned, electromagnetic forces would ricochet between these magnets,
creating perpetual motion and a limitless energy source. All of
this speculation was put to work in the claim that
Ed had somehow managed to overcome gravity. It sounds dubious
(25:01):
at best, but one local legend commonly retold in the
years before Ed published his magnetic hypothesis, offers a possible
glimpse into the truth. One night under the silvery glow
of the moon. As the story goes, a group of
teenagers spotted Ed walking across its land, singing to himself,
(25:23):
while a huge stone appeared to be levitating right in
front of him. Without the mirror's touch, the teen said
he was able to move it along and simply float
it into place. There is one stone at Coral Castle
that tour guides use even today to prompt questions about
(25:44):
Ed's secret understanding of strange forces. At the very start
of a modern tour, visitors will encounter the three ton gait.
This is a thick, triangular slab that, despite its weight
and bulk, is balanced gently on a car axle. Tour
guides will ask for a volunteer to step forward and
(26:05):
raise their arm above the stone. When they do, the
guide will try and fail to push the guests armed down.
The guide will then tilt the angle of the three
ton git on its axle and try again. Supposedly, this
time the visitor's arm will drop without resistance. This experiment
(26:25):
is offered as proof that the stones at Coral Castle
have a strange effect on the energy fields around them.
By the end of the nineteen forties, Ed was in
his early sixties and his health was in steady decline.
(26:47):
He was gaunt and half starved on a self administered
diet of crackers and sardines, and loneliness had taken its
own toll. The end was imminent. For a man who
lived a life cloaked in mystery and law, why would
death be any different. The oft told tale of Ed's
(27:07):
final days is that he simply hung a sign on
the doorway of Coral Castle that read going to the hospital,
where he died three days later. The truth is a
little less laconic. Ed checked himself into Miami's Jackson Hospital,
where he deteriorated over a span of four weeks. When
(27:29):
he finally slipped away, the cause of death was registered
as an acute kidney infection which had turned to sepsis.
It was a fittingly lonely end, perhaps for a man
whose life was always governed by a degree of solitary sadness.
But it was also a life that lasted far longer
(27:49):
than medical experts had ever thought possible, which included achievements
that no one has ever been able to sufficiently explain.
Some say that the mysteries of the man and his
Castle are entwined that Edward Leads Gownman emerged from the
anonymity of America in search of natural powers that allowed
(28:11):
him to live longer and do more than anyone could
have believed. Such a theory takes us full circle back
to where we began in episode one, A green corner
of Southwest England and the Puzzle of Stonehenge. It's long
been argued that Stonehenge sits on an important junction of
(28:32):
lay lines, and that that undeciphered power source holds an
answer to both the purpose and construction of the monument,
that it was built there to honor the power, and
because the power allowed it to be built. Lay Lines
are a global concept. If they do indeed exist, then
(28:52):
they gird the entire earth, and in a quiet corner
of southern Florida, some believe there is another vergence of
the lines right in the town of Homestead, home to
Edward Leeds Scownden's Coral Castle. For what it's worth, Homestead
just so happens to more or less mark the edge
(29:13):
of one particular region famous for its association with unseen
forces and inexplicable phenomena, a place where the rules of
reality are routinely said to bend Falter and break the
Bermuda triangle. This episode was written by Neil McRobert and
(29:37):
produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Thank you as ever
for listening Unexplained as an Avy Club production podcast created
by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast,
including the music, are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained.
The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
(30:00):
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
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(30:22):
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Podcast
You're listening to the second and final part of Unexplained,
Season nine, episode four, to Each Man His Castle. In
January of nineteen thirty two, a small, poorly written advertisement
in the Miami Daily News invited curious sightseers to visit
(00:32):
an obscure corner of southern Florida. The directions were clear,
if somewhat reliant on local knowledge, go towards Florida City,
then follow Palm Avenue south to Redland Road. After half
a mile, turn west and continue for another quarter mile. There,
the ad promised, you will find Ed's place. The cost
(00:54):
of entry was ten cents. Two photographs accompanied the advert.
The first depicted a maze like arrangement of stones, though
the coarse grain image made it hard to discern the
exact layout. The second photo is clearer and shows a
man in a shirt tie and dark formal trousers. His
(01:17):
hair is crisply parted, and his posture is as tense
as his face is haggard. He is unrecognizable from the
first photograph taken of him on American shores some twenty
years previously, but the most noteworthy thing in the photo
is not the man. It's the chair. He is sitting
on a carved block of rough stone over two tons
(01:40):
in weight. Next to it is a huge table top
sitting on rough hewn stone legs. In the photograph, the dimensions,
shape and true size are hard to make out, but
visitors to the strange exhibition were discovered that the table
is carved into the sh of the state of Florida.
(02:02):
This vast furniture as the sole work of the man
sitting at them, rocking in his colossal armchair, trying and
failing to convey a sense of ease and relaxation. His
diminutive frame only serves to highlight the sheer scale of
the stone that surrounds him. It is Edward Leedscownin, of course,
(02:23):
and all that stone is the first iteration of his
life's work. It would have many names over the years.
At the time the photo was taken, it was Ed's Place.
Later it would be known as Rockgate Park, but in
the enduring public imagination, it's best known as Coral Castle,
(02:44):
America's Stonehenge, and just how it came to be remains
one of the abiding enigmas of modern Americana. No one
really knows when Edward Leedskownen first began the project that
(03:05):
would carve his name into the annals of the American Bazaar.
The nineteen thirty two advertisement is the first known mention
of it in print, but Ed had been living and
presumably working on the site for almost ten years by
that point, ever since he bought two acres of Florida
City land from the Moser family after they'd saved his
(03:26):
life and helped him recuperate from near fatal tuberculosis. Ed
had chosen the land because of the ready availability of
oolite limestone, known in laypersons terms as coral. It was
abundant in the area, and nowhere more so than on
the extensive plot belonging to the Moses. During the decade
(03:48):
that Ed spent on his two acres, he quarried the coral,
heaved it from the ground, carved it into fantastic shapes,
and arranged it into startling configurations. Visitors to Ed's place
could wander through his larger than life creation, taking in
the exquisite craftsmanship and the inexplicable heft of what he'd made.
(04:11):
All in all, Ed extracted more than eleven hundred tons
of stone from the ground, and somehow he did it
all single handedly a man in ill health, standing little
more than five feet tall and weighing a mere one
hundred twenty pounds. It's a feat that has confounded visitors
(04:32):
and commentators alike, and which comes with a fair share
of local legend. In their two thousand and nine book
Coral Castle, The Mystery of ed Leedscalnen and his American Stonehenge,
authors Rusty mc cure and Jack Heffron have compiled the
most comprehensive accounts from witnesses to ed Leedscownon's labors. They
(04:55):
quote neighbors of its people who knew him well, but
who were none the less as founded by what he achieved. Accounts,
details and theories vary, but all agree on a few
common facts. Ed worked alone, without any help from man
or any other animal. He worked only at night, illuminated
(05:15):
by the moon or by a lantern, depending on the weather.
And he was only ever seen using simple handheld quarrying
tools that he himself had personally crafted from car parts
he scavenged from a nearby junk yard. The tools alone
were a work of strange genius, let alone what he
did with them. Earl s Lee was a boyhood neighbour
(05:39):
of Ed's in nineteen twenty nine, when he was lucky
enough to witness how the quarrying was done. According to Lee,
he saw Ed cut and dig out the huge slab
that would become the Florida shaped tabletop. Lee describes how
Ed would mark out his desired shape and then dig
a narrow foot wide ditch around its edges. He would
(06:03):
then drive metal wedges into the gap, breaking the stone
loose in one single piece to prize the cut shape
out of the hole. Lee claims that Ed used nothing
more than a few simple poles with a heavy bucket
attached to the end for leverage. Other photographs collected in
(06:30):
mcure and Heffron's book show Ed using a large ten
foot tripod built from telephone poles. His block and tackle
pulley system is attached to a large chain which Ed
would slip beneath the cut stone once it was wedged up.
In this way, it seems he was able to lift
massive pieces of coral from the ground all on his own.
(06:53):
But on top of the tripod is a strange black
metal box. It seems to serve no obvious purpose, but
over the years many have speculated the degenerated strange powers,
powers that only Ed alone was privy to, and which
he put to use in his Titanic undertaking. More prosaically,
(07:17):
Ed's skill and knowledge is often attributed to his early
apprenticeship in stonemasonry back in the Baltics, where he learned
from his father. He certainly had a better than average
understanding of how to cut and maneuver stone. Yet working
on gravestones, it's one thing at Ed's place. Some of
(07:38):
the stones, such as the gigantic single piece known as
the Obelisk, stood over forty feet in length and weighed
more than thirty tons. That's five times the weight of
the average male African bush elephant. Could any level of
expertise with handmade tools and a basic pulley system ex
(08:00):
explain how Ed was able to so finely cut and
position such monoliths. The engineering sophistication on display was often
even more impressive and confounding than the scale of the
end product. One of Ed's most famous sculptures, known as
the Rock Gate, is constructed from a single nine ton
(08:21):
slab of coral. The size is daunting, but what's more
amazing still is that the door does not simply stand there,
inert and imposing no all of its vast weight is
set to turn with the merest pressure. Somehow, Ed first
managed to hang the door perfectly. Then, having identified the
(08:44):
exact center of mass, he bored a hole through the
coral and inserted a metal rod into it. The rod
is balanced so precisely on ball bearings scavenged from a
model t Ford that, when pushed, the door smoothly swivels
with less than a quarter inch clearance between it and
the surrounding doorframe. Extracting the slab is one thing, Maneuvering
(09:09):
it into place is yet another. But the accuracy required
to sow perfectly suspend nine tons of stone that seems
beyond the reach of even the most skilled stone masons.
As a paper in the Journal Civil Engineering would later
point out, not one piece of stonework showed any sign
(09:33):
of a crack or damage, suggesting that Ed had somehow
managed to create this great work without any need for
trial and error. In other words, it seems he got
it all correct first time. By the late nineteen twenties,
(09:59):
Ed was welcoming plenty of visitors to see his hand
carved wonders. The ad he placed in the Miami Daily
News in nineteen thirty two claimed that over seventeen thousand
people had walked his grounds, a figure that seems strikingly
optimistic for such a rural stretch of the state. Florida
(10:19):
City only had approximately one thousand inhabitants, so it's hard
to believe that Ed's estimated footfall is anything more than
crude boosterism. But Ed dismissed the notion that he was
interested in fame or profit. Instead, those who took his
tour would be treated to a well honed speech that
implied far more romantic motivations. Ed's place, he said, was
(10:44):
dedicated to his great love, young Agnes Scuffs, the bride
who jilted him at the Altar back in Europe, who
he'd never forgotten. As Ed's story went, he'd undertaken his
great task in her honor. It was intended as a
castle fit for his queen. Some of the sculptures tied
firmly into his tail. One structure, which Ed called his
(11:08):
Feast of Love Table, was a five thousand pound block
of coral carved into the shape of a heart. In
the center was a small hole into which Ed placed
an Exora flower or West Indian jasmine. He would tell
his tour groups that men too often neglected their wives,
and he wanted his lost love to have flowers in
(11:28):
her honor every day. Another part of the site, known
as the Throne Room, contained several chairs. The largest, Ed's
throne sat atop a stone plinth. Next to that was
a smaller version of the same design, just waiting for
Agnes should she ever come back to him. A few
(11:50):
feet away was a sinuous slab of stone that Ed
called his love seat. This would allow two people to
sit side by side yet faced to f and was intended,
Ed explained, to help him and his fantasy princess to
resolve their quarrels. Whether Ed really expected Agnes to join
(12:10):
him in America is doubtful. In all his papers and writings,
there's no indication he ever once wrote to her, or
indeed to any of his loved ones back home. In fact,
there are those who think that Agnes Scuffs never truly existed.
Some offer a more sinister interpretation that the true focus
(12:32):
of Ed's desire was Lois Moser, the teenage daughter of
his neighbors, the family who had saved his life. There
is no evidence of this However, beyond scurrulous local gossip,
the truth of Ed's Agnes is just one more unresolved
chapter in his story. Whether she was an authentic lost love,
(12:54):
a mythicized piece of Ed's past, or just a cynical
narrative construction, you shall likely never know. What is certain
about Edward Leedskownen is that he was a well known
and generally well liked member of the local community. People
(13:17):
would often go to his place to socialize, where he'd
hold cookouts and would welcome them generously. After his itinerant
start in America, it seemed as if ed had finally
found a place to call home. But by nineteen thirty seven,
Ed was once again looking to move, and just as
he had built it all on his own, he would
(13:39):
move it with the same mystifying independence. Ed paid just
ten dollars for the ten acre plot that would become
known forevermore as Coral Castle. It wasn't far away, in
the nearby town of Homestead. But when you're transporting over
a thousand tons of stone any distance at all problem,
(14:01):
and that problem is multiplied by magnitudes when said stones
weigh enough to blow out the tires of most vehicles.
Ed approached the issue with his trademark homespun innovation. First,
he built a trailer from the chassis of a junked truck,
over which he laid thick boards with the weight then spread.
(14:23):
The trailer could support even the heaviest of his stones.
With that in place, he sought the only help he
ever solicited from a local farmer named Bob Biggers. It
was Biggers who owned the solid tied tractor capable of
pulling the burdened trailer up the highway to the new site,
which he did repeatedly until every single stone was relocated
(14:46):
from Florida City to Homestead. But Bob never saw how
the stones were loaded and unloaded. All he knew was
that Ed would call and Bob would then arrive to
find the trailer already laid with huge blocks at the
other end. Ed would thank him and ask him to
come back in two or three days, by which time
(15:08):
the trailer would be empty and the stones would be
in their new and final position. How Ed managed this
with no help or industrial equipment, Bob couldn't say. Ed's
later biographer Rville Irwin was just fourteen at the time
and remembers asking Ed how long it would take him
to move his entire castle. According to Orville, Ed smiled
(15:33):
a peculiar smile and simply replied, it'll take a long time,
but I'll do it. By mid nineteen thirty nine, Ed's
entire complex sat in its new grounds. The relocation is
commonly attributed to his need for privacy. Supposedly, word had
gotten around about plans for a new housing development, and
(15:56):
Ed wanted to escape the prying eyes of all those
new neighbors. In truth, Ed lived in a relatively isolated
stretch on the edge of town, and even now, nearly
a century later, it remains largely undeveloped. Would he really
have gone to the colossal task of moving over a
(16:16):
thousand tons of stone just on the basis of a rumor.
In his nineteen ninety six biography of Ed, mister cant
is Dead, Awvial Irwin opines that his move was motivated
by far more business minded interests, and that he had
(16:39):
drained his pool of visitors, and the mere two acres
of his previous home were inconveniently placed to attract more.
The new site certainly solved that problem. Located in the
town of Homestead, just off Highway One. It was in
a prime position to grab the attention of travelers eager
for a quick distraction on their way to the Everglades
(17:01):
or the Florida Keys. It was also five times the
size of his original site, which allowed Ed to keep
expanding his megalithic work. Indeed, another theory for the move
is that Ed had exhausted the available oo light in
Florida City, Whether catalyzed by a fresh location or a
fresh reserve of stone, He set to work with renewed vigor. First,
(17:26):
he constructed a set of walls to curtain his new site.
Each of the three foot thick slabs weighed over six
tons apiece, and they were assembled with such precision that
no beam of light shone through them. The new additions
to the castle were easy to distinguish, as the stone
quarried at the new site at a darker, grainier tint
(17:48):
than the near white coral he'd been working with previously.
They are also even more sophisticated than his earlier pieces.
The telescope, for instance, is a twenty five foot twenty
ton column sitting just outside the main wall. It has
no lenses, mirrors, or magnification of any kind, merely a
(18:10):
large hole cut near the top with two wires overlapping
like a gunsight. If a viewer were to look through
the small holes carved in the curtain wall and line
up their perspective with the corresponding hole in the telescope,
they will find the location of the North Star on
any given night of the year. It's a feat of
(18:32):
astronomical mapping, not dissimilar from that encoded in Stonehenge or
other megalithic structures. Another nod to the stars is glimpsed
in the most photographed of all ed sculptures, the Crescent
of the East, a moon shaped slab of coral jutting
up from a low wall. Around it sat similarly massive
(18:54):
representations of Mars and Saturn. The castle also features a
large Sunday, carved from a single piece of stone and
accurate enough to keep time within a few minutes throughout
the year. And there was the sun Couch, a huge
circular stone bed that could swivel at a touch to
(19:14):
face the sun throughout the day. It's this bet that
the writer Joe Bullet had suggested ed used to aid
his recovery from TB through self administered sun therapy. But
the greatest mysteries both of the man and his work
were found in the structure known as the Tower. The
(19:44):
tower is where Ed lived, worked and pursued his strange
scientific theories, and it's where the story of Ed slides
into the truly unfathomable. The tower itself is just one
more confidence with the seemingly superhuman. It is built from
blocks weighing five to ten tons and roofed with thirty
(20:08):
one ton blocks. Inside a staircase winds up to Ed's
living quarters, where his bed hung suspended from the ceiling
on chains allowing him to adjust the angle and height
to his whim. Designed to mitigate Ed's ongoing struggles with tuberculosis,
as elevated sleeping upright can help reduce breathing difficulties. Ed
(20:32):
liked to claim that he was entirely cured of the disease,
but both the nature of his sleeping arrangements and his
steadily declining health suggest otherwise. It's mystery enough that he
lasted as long as he did. It's the ground floor workshop, however,
that contains the apparatus most central to the legends circling
(20:54):
Ed leeds gownen there Ed stored his radio and its generation,
both of which play a part in the more esoteric
theories about Coral Castle. Some have proposed that Ed's homemade
radio was used to contact extraterrestrial support. They point to
(21:14):
the surprising strength of his simple arrangement made from copper
wire and a mason jar, and when people queried how
he'd accomplish so much, with an enigmatic smile, Ed would
simply reply, I know the secrets of the ancient Egyptians. Certainly,
for conspiracy theorists comparing Coral Castle to the Pyramids of
(21:36):
Gezer or other mysterious ancient sites, extraterrestrial help is a
tantalizing prospect. Some even suggest that Ed himself was an
alien who'd come to Earth with all the knowledge of
the heavens, though why he would use such universal wisdom
to build a coral castle in Florida remains to be answered.
(22:00):
The generator, however, is implicated in the most obscure theory
about Coral Castle, one based on Ed's own scientific reasoning,
as we briefly covered in Part one. In nineteen thirty six,
Ed published a pamphlet concerning electromagnetism and the True nature
of matter, In Ed's hypothesis, it is magnets, not atoms,
(22:24):
that are the fundamental building blocks of the universe, that
everything that is made up of subatomic magnets, each with
their own north and south pole. Gravity, to Ed's mind,
was simply the pull of the Earth's vast magnetic core
on this magnetic fabric of the world. And if we
(22:46):
follow Ed's logic far enough by reversing the polarity of matter,
he would then be able to counteract the gravitational pull
of the Earth. But to do so, as Ed pointed out,
would require a great deal of consistent power. Could the
answer be found in that strange black box spotted on
(23:07):
top of its tripod? Edward Leedscowdin's writings are so convoluted
and compromised by his middling grasp of English that it's
difficult for the lay person to follow. Some of those
who claim to understand it believe that not only did
(23:29):
Edward manufacture a way to make his coral monoliths levitate,
he had also invented a perpetual motion machine, a device that,
once set in motion, would spin, whir or tick forever,
drawing no fuel, losing no energy, and producing endless work,
as if it had stolen a secret from the universe itself.
(23:53):
Inventors have been chasing this impossible dream for centuries. Ancient sketches,
mysterious devices, whispers in dusty manuscripts all hint at humanity's
obsession with creating a machine that could self run forever.
If Ed had indeed made one, it would have required
(24:14):
breaking not only the first but also the second law
of thermodynamics, and bending the very fabric of reality as
we know it. Some have suggested this is exactly what
he was hiding in his black box. Others have suggested
it was in fact his generator. Though it's a humble
looking combination of flywheel and handle. The theory suggests that
(24:37):
Ed could have attached strong magnets to the wheel, then
when it was turned, electromagnetic forces would ricochet between these magnets,
creating perpetual motion and a limitless energy source. All of
this speculation was put to work in the claim that
Ed had somehow managed to overcome gravity. It sounds dubious
(25:01):
at best, but one local legend commonly retold in the
years before Ed published his magnetic hypothesis, offers a possible
glimpse into the truth. One night under the silvery glow
of the moon. As the story goes, a group of
teenagers spotted Ed walking across its land, singing to himself,
(25:23):
while a huge stone appeared to be levitating right in
front of him. Without the mirror's touch, the teen said
he was able to move it along and simply float
it into place. There is one stone at Coral Castle
that tour guides use even today to prompt questions about
(25:44):
Ed's secret understanding of strange forces. At the very start
of a modern tour, visitors will encounter the three ton gait.
This is a thick, triangular slab that, despite its weight
and bulk, is balanced gently on a car axle. Tour
guides will ask for a volunteer to step forward and
(26:05):
raise their arm above the stone. When they do, the
guide will try and fail to push the guests armed down.
The guide will then tilt the angle of the three
ton git on its axle and try again. Supposedly, this
time the visitor's arm will drop without resistance. This experiment
(26:25):
is offered as proof that the stones at Coral Castle
have a strange effect on the energy fields around them.
By the end of the nineteen forties, Ed was in
his early sixties and his health was in steady decline.
(26:47):
He was gaunt and half starved on a self administered
diet of crackers and sardines, and loneliness had taken its
own toll. The end was imminent. For a man who
lived a life cloaked in mystery and law, why would
death be any different. The oft told tale of Ed's
(27:07):
final days is that he simply hung a sign on
the doorway of Coral Castle that read going to the hospital,
where he died three days later. The truth is a
little less laconic. Ed checked himself into Miami's Jackson Hospital,
where he deteriorated over a span of four weeks. When
(27:29):
he finally slipped away, the cause of death was registered
as an acute kidney infection which had turned to sepsis.
It was a fittingly lonely end, perhaps for a man
whose life was always governed by a degree of solitary sadness.
But it was also a life that lasted far longer
(27:49):
than medical experts had ever thought possible, which included achievements
that no one has ever been able to sufficiently explain.
Some say that the mysteries of the man and his
Castle are entwined that Edward Leads Gownman emerged from the
anonymity of America in search of natural powers that allowed
(28:11):
him to live longer and do more than anyone could
have believed. Such a theory takes us full circle back
to where we began in episode one, A green corner
of Southwest England and the Puzzle of Stonehenge. It's long
been argued that Stonehenge sits on an important junction of
(28:32):
lay lines, and that that undeciphered power source holds an
answer to both the purpose and construction of the monument,
that it was built there to honor the power, and
because the power allowed it to be built. Lay Lines
are a global concept. If they do indeed exist, then
(28:52):
they gird the entire earth, and in a quiet corner
of southern Florida, some believe there is another vergence of
the lines right in the town of Homestead, home to
Edward Leeds Scownden's Coral Castle. For what it's worth, Homestead
just so happens to more or less mark the edge
(29:13):
of one particular region famous for its association with unseen
forces and inexplicable phenomena, a place where the rules of
reality are routinely said to bend Falter and break the
Bermuda triangle. This episode was written by Neil McRobert and
(29:37):
produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Thank you as ever
for listening Unexplained as an Avy Club production podcast created
by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast,
including the music, are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained.
The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
(30:00):
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or
a story of your own you'd like to share. You
can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and
(30:22):
reach us online through x and Blue Sky at Unexplained
Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained
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