Orlando's first embalmer operated a combined furniture store and mortuary here from the 1880s, storing overflow bodies on the beds and sofas upstairs
15-17 W Pine St, Orlando, FL 32801
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Exterior viewing only; building is a privately operated commercial space
Access
Wheelchair OK
Downtown sidewalk, paved
Equipment
Photos OK
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
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
The Elijah Hand Building at 15-17 W Pine Street is a documented stop on several Orlando ghost tours including the US Ghost Adventures downtown route. The building's exterior and documented history are publicly accessible. Formal ghost tour visits provide the best context; the building is also passable on any self-guided downtown Orlando walk.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPPensacola, FL
The Museum of Shadows is the creation of Nate Raterman, a demonologist and paranormal investigator with more than two decades of casework. Raterman opened the original location in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Pensacola branch opened in late 2024. The collection contains over 5,000 objects that Raterman and his team deemed genuinely active during investigations — ranging from allegedly cursed Ouija boards and haunted dolls to items used in criminal acts and human remains. The museum bills itself as the most haunted museum in the world.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPOrlando, FL
Carey Hand opened his funeral home at 36 W Pine Street in 1920 after buying out his father Elijah Hand's share of the original business at 15-17 W Pine in 1914. The new building, designed by architect F.H. Trimble in Renaissance Revival style, was the first funeral home in Florida to include an on-site chapel and housed the first crematorium built south of Cincinnati and Washington D.C. The operation served a five-county area and remained Central Florida's largest funeral home until it ceased mortuary operations in 1992. UCF's College of Business began using the building as its Executive Development Center in 2007.
Davie, FL
Broward College's Central Campus in Davie operates as a comprehensive community college serving South Florida. On January 18, 2002, a domestic violence murder-suicide occurred on campus between Building 5 and an adjacent structure, resulting in two deaths and creating the historical trauma that spawned persistent paranormal reports.