The Most Haunted Places in Florida

Ranked

1. 

   1. Ringling College of Art and Design, Keating Hall Sarasota · Haunted House / Historic Home · Family Comfort: Moderate Private, not open to visitors

   Keating Hall opened in 1925 as the Bay Haven Hotel, a Spanish Mission Revival property whose fortunes fell with the Florida land bust into a stretch locally associated with gambling and prostitution before John Ringling bought it around 1931 for classrooms and a women's dormitory at his new art school. Campus legend holds that a young woman named Mary took her own life in the building's third-floor stairwell, now a fire escape closed to students, in the years before the hotel closed. Students and staff report anguished sobbing near the stairwell, cold spots and a scent of stale perfume, a hairbrush that lifted off a desk and hovered before it fell, and a long-haired woman a housekeeper encountered inside a locked bathroom, who put a finger to her lips and was gone moments later.

   5 original accounts · documented across 2 decades, 1990-2001 · retold in 3 later publications

2. 

   2. Casa de Solana St. Augustine · Haunted Hotel / Inn · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Don Manuel Lorenzo Solana, one of eight Spanish soldiers allowed to stay in St. Augustine after Britain took Florida in 1763, built this tabby house and used it to shelter travelers and Native Americans. Guests and staff describe a woman in white identified as Solana's first wife, Mary Mitchell, a watchful Dragoon named Frederick said to have been shot guarding the property, and a presence called Victoria tied to the Montejurra Room.

   3 original accounts · documented across 9 decades, 1763-2024 · retold in 2 later publications

3. 

   3. St. Augustine Lighthouse St. Augustine · Museum / Historical Site · Family Comfort: Moderate

   The 165-foot tower was completed in 1874 to replace an aging Spanish watchtower, but construction was marked by tragedy: on July 10, 1873, two sisters and a friend drowned in an accident on the site's supply tramway. Staff and visitors report children's laughter on the tower stairs, a girl in old-fashioned dress photographed on the grounds, and the smell of cigar smoke in the keeper's house parlor.

   4 original accounts · documented across 2 decades, 1950-1960 · retold in 3 later publications

4. 

   4. May-Stringer House Brooksville · Museum / Historical Site · Family Comfort: Moderate

   HauntBound identified two distinct published accounts at this museum site, across five kinds of published source. One later publication retells those accounts. Reported phenomena include apparitions and cold spots.

   2 original accounts · documented across 4 decades, 1856-1880 · retold in 1 later publication

5. 

   5. Evergreen Cemetery Jacksonville · Cemetery / Burial Ground · Family Comfort: Moderate

   HauntBound identified three distinct published accounts at this burial ground, across four kinds of published source, each known through a later source that names an earlier original. One later publication retells those accounts. Reported phenomena include apparitions and phantom sounds.

   3 original accounts (known through later citation) · documented across 3 decades, 1940-1995 · retold in 1 later publication

6. 

   6. Artist House (former Otto Family Home) Key West · Haunted Hotel / Inn · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Thomas Otto built this Queen Anne house in the 1890s; his son, painter Robert Eugene Otto, lived there with his wife Anne from 1930 until his death in 1974, and the doll called Robert occupied the turret room in his final years. Guests since the house became a guest house in 1978 report a woman in a wedding dress on the main staircase, often identified as Anne, and shadowy figures at the foot of beds.

   3 original accounts · documented across 2 decades, 1980-1997 · retold in 2 later publications

7. 

   7. González-Álvarez House (The Oldest House) St. Augustine · Museum / Historical Site · Family Comfort: High

   Built around 1723 from coquina limestone on the site of a structure British forces destroyed in 1702, the González-Álvarez House is St. Augustine's oldest surviving home and now operates as a museum under the St. Augustine Historical Society, which states it keeps no institutional record of paranormal activity. Ghost tours tie the reported activity to two of the house's real historical residents, Spanish infantryman José Tovar and Civil War-era General Martin D. Hardin, alongside an unnamed woman in black reported drifting through the upstairs hallway. In 1974 a night watchman quit after hearing a child's laughter and a door closing on its own, and in July 2019 a visiting family reported a man visible through a rear window who was gone by the time they went to look.

   3 original accounts · documented across 2 decades, 1974-2019 · retold in 3 later publications

8. 

   8. Flagler College (Former Hotel Ponce de Leon) St. Augustine · Other Dark Tourism Site · Family Comfort: High

   Henry Flagler, the Standard Oil co-founder, opened the Hotel Ponce de Leon in 1888; the building became Flagler College in 1968. After his body lay in state in the rotunda following his 1913 death, doors nearby reportedly began opening and closing on their own, and students today describe a mustachioed figure in formal dress near the same space, along with a woman in black seen on the fourth floor.

   3 original accounts · documented in 1968 · retold in 5 later publications

9. 9. TacoLu Baja Mexicana (Alpha Paynter Homestead) Jacksonville Beach · Haunted Dining / Bar · Family Comfort: High

   Alpha Paynter built this log cabin in 1934 as a boarding house that later became the Homestead Restaurant, a Jacksonville Beach fixture until it closed in 2011; TacoLu Baja Mexicana moved into the building the following year. Staff since the 1960s, spanning both restaurants, have described a woman near the large limestone fireplace, footsteps upstairs when no one is there, and lights or doors behaving oddly, attributed to Paynter watching over the place she built.

   3 original accounts · documented across 1 decade, 1960-1962 · retold in 5 later publications

10. 

    10. Captain Tony's Saloon Key West · Haunted Dining / Bar · Family Comfort: Not Recommended

    Built in 1851 as Key West's ice house and morgue, the building was constructed around a tree once used as a gallows, and its back poolroom is said to sit over an old city cemetery where remains have turned up during renovations. Patrons describe cold spots around the trunk that still grows through the bar and the apparition of a young woman, sometimes called Elvira, said locally to have been hanged for killing her husband.

    1 original account · documented across 3 decades, 1898-1980 · retold in 1 later publication

Superlatives