1918 House Turned Funeral Home with Third-Floor Ghost
190 S Holly Ave, Orange City, FL 32763
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Private funeral home; no public admission. Exterior view only.
Access
Limited Access
Sidewalk and paved driveway on Holly Avenue
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1918 · 1918 Residential Architecture · Orange City History
The house at 190 S Holly Avenue in Orange City was built in 1918, during the period when residential construction in central Florida followed the rail lines extending through Volusia County. The structure predates the Lankford Funeral Home operation by over four decades.
W. Clyde Lankford and his wife Eleanor established Colonial Funeral Home at 220 E New York Avenue in DeLand in 1950, later renaming it Lankford Funeral Home. In 1962, the Orange City chapel opened to serve families in that community. The 1918 house at 190 S Holly Avenue became part of the funeral home's operational footprint.
The building's original family history — who built it, who lived in it between 1918 and the funeral home's occupation — was not documented in sources found during research. The Shadowlands narrative places a daughter of the original builders in the third-floor room during the 1918 period, consistent with the influenza pandemic that killed tens of millions globally that year, though no independent source connects this specific family to that event.
Sources
According to the account in the Shadowlands index, the original builders of the 1918 house had a daughter who contracted an infectious disease at a time when contagion isolation was standard domestic practice. She was moved to the third-floor bedroom to separate her from the rest of the family. She did not recover.
The reported phenomena fall into two categories. The visual accounts describe a girl looking out the third-floor window — observed from the exterior of the building. The auditory accounts describe floor creaking on the third floor as if someone is walking around, reported by the few individuals who have lived in the second-floor apartment beneath.
No independent historical records confirming the girl's death, her name, or the specific disease were located during research. The 1918 context is consistent with the influenza pandemic, though that attribution is not made in any source found.
Notable Entities
Lankford Funeral Home occupies a 1918 two-and-a-half story house in Orange City, Florida. The third-floor window — where a girl's figure has been reported looking out — is visible from the street. This is an active business; access is limited to the exterior.
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