CLASSIC: The Mystery of Coral Castle

After being jilted a day before his wedding and narrowly surviving tuberculosis, Latvian immigrant Edward Leedskalnin spent almost 30 years building Coral Castle out of huge blocks of stone. But how did he make it, and why wouldn't he allow anyone to watch him at work? Join Ben and Matt as they explore the mystery of Coral Castle in today's classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I love so many SPLENDORDU noble splintered. It's just splintered
as well. It's a noble splintered at times fractious thing.
And I don't know, you guys remember maybe your your
days of heavy teenage love where you felt like the

(00:21):
entire world was collapsing because things might not work out
with someone you were in love with. Do you guys,
do you guys ever have that moment? I don't recall.
I plead the fifth Okay, I would say, yes, I know.
And the most moving and important thing I could ever
do for a young lady that I was in love
with as a young man was write a song. Oh.

(00:44):
It felt like I was creating something beautiful and amazing
for them. But you know what, some other some other
people have more grander designs than I. Yeah. Oh, man, Well,
first off, we shouldn't. We shouldn't be quick to uh
throw away your song? Man, I can't. I would love

(01:05):
to hear it one day. I think we all would. Uh.
But you're right, people do crazy things out of love
to recover from love. Uh. This episode is about something
called Quarrel Castle. A man named Edward Leeds Skalman spent
almost three decades building this thing by himself out of

(01:27):
huge blocks of stone, and even today people aren't sure
how he did it. So let us hear the tale
from UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, everyone,

(01:51):
welcome to the show. My name is Matt and I'm Ben,
and this is stuff they don't want you to know.
Today we're gonna kind of recap look back at our
episode on Edward leads Skalman's coral castle. Yeah, interesting thing.
First question for most people would be what the heck
is a coral castle. It's a good question because this

(02:11):
thing is not actually a castle. No, no, not really.
It's kind of, I don't know what I would call
it a It's kind of an art exhibit or a compound.
That's exactly what it is. It's an art exhibit and
it's not coral, is it. No? No, it's made of
a kind of limestone called lytic limestone, which is actually
a sedimentary rock. Well, well, first of all, where is

(02:32):
this thing? Oh right, yes, yes, this is, along with
so many other crazy things located in Florida, Florida. Yeah,
Florida also has an abnormally large population of cults. Really,
we need to look into this, we do. We do now.
When when we first started our show on Coral Castle,

(02:53):
we did this as an audience request, right, yeah, that's correct.
We we there were several people on YouTube claim writing
for it, and most of our best episodes come from
audience suggestions. And we were excited to do this one
because it's both close to us in terms of space
geographic space, and in terms of time. You know. Oh yeah, well,

(03:15):
it's fascinating there there's there were so many questions and
there still are so many questions revolving around how the
heck this thing was made um and about the guy
that made it. So yeah, yeah, and uh the okay,
so Coral Castle itself, it's made of these huge rock sculptures.
When we say huge, we mean they wait tons, they're
nine ft tall, et cetera. But there's great skill in

(03:39):
precision in the in the crafting of these sculptures. For instance,
a door that washes tons and tons that once upon
a time you could just turn with the slightest touch
because it was so well balanced. That's pretty incredible. They're
also all kinds of other uh, just very cool shapes
that were made out of the stone. There's I know,

(03:59):
there's a un dial there. There's also well they call
it a Polaris telescope. Do you know much about this thing?
I know it looks like a tower and it's got
a hole in the center or not the center of
the top. So yeah, yeah, the um the hole in
the top actually is a Latvian star because the guy
who created the obelist, our buddy, Edward lead Scaldan, was

(04:23):
himself from Latvia. There's there's other cool stuff too, like
the giant furniture, rocking chairs, um, a water well. An obelisk,
of course, because what would a strange monument be without
an obelisk. Always got to have one of those. Well again,
we'll talk about it later. But but he had some
Egyptian influence in his castle, right yes, And there was

(04:45):
no mortar in this right man. It's just no, no, no,
They're all just fit together almost perfectly. And and I
guess let's okay, there's a reason why they're fit together
so well, and that's because Edward had kind of a background.
His family had a background in masonry, right yes, yes,
although his formal education was fairly limited. Edward lead Skalman

(05:06):
born in January twelfth, eighty seven had an extensive homeschooling regimen,
likely by his grandfather, who was also a mason, so
he was trained in the ways of stonemasonry. Oh wow,
that's cool. So let's talk about what leads a person
to go to Florida and build castle of coral or

(05:29):
of of limestone. Well, it's a it's a good well,
it's a sad story, but you want to hear it anyway.
I do want to know, all right. So Ed is
twenty eight years old, it's nineteen nineteen. The love of
his life, ladies last name was scruff. I believe she
um is sixteen. It's a feen. She's in her teen.

(05:52):
He's twenty eight. She's sixteen, and she doesn't want to
marry him, even though even though he asked her in everything,
so well, hold on, did she say yes? Initially? Was
there an engagement? There was kind of Uh, that was
kind of an engagement. It was a spurning in the result,
a spurned lover spurned so bad that he went across
the Atlantic. Uh Landed I believe in Canada and trapes

(06:16):
about the East coast um until uh, tuberculosis concerns um
or should we say tubercular concerns. I like it. Yeah,
it sounds little dr sucy. Well, we'll keep it. The
tuberculosis drove him to Florida and hopes that the warmer
climate would help alleviate some of his pain. And once

(06:38):
he got in Florida, he did something very interesting. He
started kind of this monument to his um lost love.
So okay, so the coral castle is it was made
for her, It was made for his boss love. That's interesting.
After after he's been spurned, he went ahead and decided,

(06:59):
I going to make this monument out of Do you
think he did it out of spite? Like I guess what?
Guess what? I made this for you? But you know whatever,
I made this for you, but you know whatever. I
hope that's the inscript shell on the stones. Well it's
it's strange because he spends the next like thirty years
or so building these structures and he dies in nine.

(07:23):
As far as we know, I'm kidding him. We were
pretty sure, um, but something interesting would happen. He would
charge people to check out the check out the structure.
Pretty reasonable price like a dime or something. And then
then when they asked him how I would build it,
he would say, I've learned the secrets of weight and leverage.

(07:45):
I've learned the secrets of the pyramids, the builders of
the pyramids. Yeah. Well, okay, So in our in the
video we talked about this a little bit about what
those secrets could possibly be. There are some people who
think they're some to be magical or hidden technologies that
he found. Uh. There are even other people that think

(08:06):
there is some kind of energy that he was able
to harness, like electromagnetism or just magnetism, or even oh
what weren't there harmonies? Some people are saying to use
some kind of specific harmonies that allowed levitation to occur, right, Yeah, that, um,
a certain frequency would be able to negate in part

(08:28):
the effects of gravity, which is interesting, or the even
at Edward lie Scaldin himself had psychic powers. Because the
reason that we hear a lot of this stuff come
out is first, it's really cool, it's you know, it's
sci fi and it's interesting. But second, he was fairly
secretive about his process working with this stuff. Um. And third,

(08:51):
people who own Coral Castle and we'll get to the
cool part where you can visit Coral Castle a day.
Have a definite financial interest in sort of, I see
up the story, so the more mystery they can purport
to have. Well, and if he was selling tickets to
it or you know, his charging small amounts, he also
had probably a high stake in making it mysterious and mystical.

(09:13):
Oh and he was weird too. Did you ever read
those pamphlets that he wrote. You can find some of
them online. I read some about morality and how to
court Uh a woman? Well, yeah, that's I think that's
a book in every home. Is the name of that one?
I'm I don't know. It takes all kinds Ben, and
I was. I was interested. At least he wrote something down.

(09:35):
It's better than I've done. Well. He is also, um,
just cartoonishly politically incorrect in this day and age. Um,
he would say this. He would say stuff, for instance like, uh, well,
we shouldn't let people who are poor or don't have
jobs vote. If you let the weak vote, then that's
what's wrong with the country, which I don't think would
fly in most debates today. However, Um, you know there

(09:58):
might be some people who privately believe that. But he
also wrote some strange theories about magnetism, and this is
one of the reasons why people thought that he had
uh some other unknown power or technology. However, it's more
probable that he he learned how to use kind of
the basic mechanisms of physics. Some of the basic tools

(10:20):
have like pulleys, levers, Oh, simple machines, simple machines exactly. Yeah,
that's and you know, that's kind of the best, the
best theory that we have for how the Egyptians did it.
Just manpower and simple machines. Yeah, and ingenuity. I think
in our episode we talk about some um modern hobbyists

(10:42):
who have figured out ways to move gigantic blocks all
by themselves, like the guy building the replica of Stonehenge.
Fantastic and you can see Edward leet Skalman's tools on display,
I believe at Coral Castle today. There's also an interesting
guy aimed Orville Irwin, a friend of Lead Scaldon, and

(11:04):
he wrote a book with a just terrible title. I'm
gonna lay that on you guys right now. I think
the title is terrible. Uh, are you ready? Mr Kant
is Dead? The story of the Coral Castle. Mr Kent,
I assume that that refers to something in the book.
Maybe I'll like the title more after I read the book,

(11:25):
which I will read. But um Orville Orville claims uh
that lead Scalton's methods are not as mysterious as some
would have us believe. Right like he uh, he points
out that exactly what you said, these principles, weight and leverage,
that Edward lead Scaldan did do the work on his own,
which is amazing already, but that he did it through

(11:49):
um ingenuity, through knowing how to um arrange these stones.
If anything, one of his most extraordinary power would have
been that he was very very good at figuring out
the center of gravity of his gigantic structures and at
keeping a secret. And it keeping a secret that's a

(12:11):
very good, good superpower. Um. But we we so we
hate to bust the bubble for some people. But everything
that that we found about Edward leed Skaldan does show
us he's an eccentric individual. It does show us that
he really did build Coral Castle. Oh. One of the
things we I don't think we covered in the video, sorry,

(12:32):
just off the top of my head, that was that
he bought a single acre of land for some ridiculously
low price in Florida originally, and he started to build
his coral castle. Then for some reason he had to
move it. I think there was suba was coming in, yeah,
and he decided to move it. And he got a
friend to help him move all of these giant blocks,

(12:54):
just the truck and the driver. Yeah. Well, and and
he didn't even have a truck at the time. I
don't think. I think he had a chassis of a
truck or at least a small He had parts of
a truck that could move, but it couldn't function. So
we had to get another friend too, I guess attached
to his truck and then move okay, that way, but
he moved the entire thing and he got I think
it's ten acres of land and it only takes up

(13:17):
about three acres on the ten acre plot, but right,
And he sold some of that land, and that's where
he got a lot of the money. They say to
live for a while there by selling some land. And
as far as we know, he was never reunited with
his lost Latvian love. I doubt she's ever even seen it.

(13:38):
You know, it's weird since she is ten years was
ten years younger than him. It would be cool if
she if she did see it. You know, I'd like
to hear that story. If anybody, If if you know
of this occurring, please let us know, send us an
email or something. Yes, we are Conspiracy Discovery dot com.
We'll go ahead and drop that in because sometimes people

(13:59):
might miss it if we say it at the end,
but we'll say it again if you're just like hearing it. Um,
let's end on this note, Matt. People can visit Coral Castle. Yes,
it's still there. It's still there, you guys, and most
of the stuff still works. There was one one gate
doesn't work as well as it did because they had
to fix it. Um. But here's how you get there.

(14:19):
You uh go toward Homestead, Florida in Miami Dade County. Um.
It's at the intersection of South Dixie Highway and Southwest
One Avenue. There it is, And you can even type
it into Google Maps now and find Coral Castle, which
is kind of cool. Oh yeah, I wonder if you

(14:40):
can just go to a street view. I haven't checked that.
Wouldn't that be cool either? Look around in the castle.
Coral Castle. Oh no, man, they probably have blurted out
in some way to you know, make sure people will
still pay money to get in and look at everything. Yeah,
that might still be something they don't want you to know.
Well every time. UM right, So we're going to head out.

(15:01):
We hope that you enjoyed our episode on Corald Castle.
You can find us on Facebook. We're all over Twitter.
We're conspiracy stuff on both of those avenues. Uh. And
that's the end of this classic episode. If you have
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(15:21):
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(15:44):
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