Est. 1880 · Orlando's First Embalming Operation · Victorian-Era Combination Furniture and Mortuary Business · Downtown Orlando Commercial History
Elijah Hand moved from Indiana to Orlando in 1885, a year when the city was barely incorporated and had no formal funeral industry. He formed a partnership with E.A. Richards, who operated a furniture business at 15-17 W Pine Street. The combination was practical: coffins were a furniture product, and embalming as a profession had spread rapidly after the Civil War, when families had wanted preserved remains shipped home from distant battlefields. Hand brought those skills to a city whose population was growing rapidly through land speculation and citrus agriculture.
The business grew. Hand's reputation as an embalmer drew families from across the surrounding region, and demand periodically exceeded the capacity of the ground floor mortuary space. According to local accounts documented in UCF's regional history archives and Orlando news sources, when the downstairs preparation area was full, Hand stored bodies on the second-floor furniture for sale — on beds, on sofas, among the merchandise — until space freed up below.
Elijah Hand's son Carey joined the business in 1907, having trained as an embalmer himself. In 1914, Carey bought out his father's share and moved the funeral home operation across the street to 36 W Pine. The original Hand building at 15-17 W Pine subsequently passed through various commercial uses, including a daycare, a school, and multiple nightclub and bar configurations since the 1980s. Each nightclub that attempted to operate there reportedly closed after a short period. The building is featured on Orlando ghost tours and described in local paranormal accounts as among the most verifiably haunted commercial buildings in downtown Orlando.
Sources
- https://www.ucf.edu/news/ucfs-haunting-history/
- https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2024/10/25/these-15-orlando-area-spots-are-among-the-most-haunted-in-florida/
- https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/items/show/1682
Phantom footsteps (second floor)Apparition (woman in white)Apparitions (children in hallways)Figure in windowSensed presenceUnexplained object movement
The paranormal reports at 15-17 W Pine Street cluster around the second floor, which served as the overflow storage area when the ground-floor mortuary was at capacity. Visitors and employees of tenants across multiple decades have reported disembodied footsteps on the second floor when no one is present there, and bands waiting in the upstairs lounge have described a heavy, unsettling presence that made extended stays uncomfortable.
Two apparitions are described with some consistency. The first is a woman in white on the second floor, appearing in the area that once served as the furniture showroom and body storage space. The second is a group of small children — not connected to any documented event at the address — reported playing in the hallways and visible briefly before disappearing. A figure of a man has also been observed standing in one of the second-floor windows from outside the building.
Passers-by have described feeling watched while walking past, and a small number of accounts describe being struck by small objects thrown from above, though this claim has not been systematically documented.
The building's history of failed commercial tenants has entered local lore. Orlando paranormal historian Kari Ott, who has researched the building, described it as 'definitely haunted, and possibly cursed' — an assessment tied specifically to the pattern of nightclubs and bars opening and closing in rapid succession since the 1980s.
Notable Entities
Elijah Hand
