SPRINGFIELD, Fla. – Did you know there was a haunted mansion in Springfield?
Located at the corner of Third and Pearl Street, an eerie abandoned mansion has a deep, dark history like no other home in the historic neighborhood, and has a history some may describe as unsettling.
Both during the night and the day, this three-story mansion is looked upon by neighbors with a certain uneasiness.
“It looks haunted. Like at Disney World, it could be a haunted mansion,” said nearby resident Jamey Evoniuk.
Catye Evoniuk noted a similar sentiment. “Always a vibe of some bad juju. Like, it’s known as the haunted house here.”
Perhaps that bad juju stems from what happened at the mansion about 55 years ago.
According to published reports, on the night of March 13, 1970, which just so happened to be a Friday, a group of high school students snuck into the vacant mansion, as it was known to be a haunted house. While the teens were inside, two armed men entered the mansion and forced the group into a bathroom before kidnapping two girls from the group and sexually assaulting them.
Several months after that horrific event, on a June afternoon, two kids ventured into the backyard where they discovered a plastic bag containing a preserved human head. According to published newspaper reports, the head was reported stolen from the Duval Medical Center and belonged to a man who donated his body to become a teaching cadaver.
According to a book called Abandoned North Florida, an informant told investigators the head was taken by an orderly who worked at the hospital. The following month, the orderly was arrested and charged with dealing in dead bodies.
However, the odd twist to the story is that the orderly not only knew the man who donated his body to the medical center, but after stealing the man’s head, he slept with it the first night before burying it in the backyard of the Drew Mansion, and occasionally showed it off to friends.
But Drew Mansion didn’t always have a haunted reputation. And although it’s been vacant for decades, it didn’t always look spooky and run down.
The home was built in 1909 by Dr. Horace Drew, a renowned physicist and grandson of Jacksonville pioneer Columbus Drew. At the time, the mansion was considered unique due to the blending of architectural styles.
The Drew Mansion was eventually abandoned in the late 1960s through the early 1970s until another family purchased the home. The family renovated and lived in the mansion until 2006. Over the years, others have purchased and sold the property.
At one point, hundreds of thousands of dollars were pledged to restore the mansion, but restoration stopped.
“It’s an eyesore,” Jayme said. “You know that at one point in time it was a gorgeous mansion, but we’ve lived here for the last nine years, and it’s just become an eyesore.”
The blight he’s referring to isn’t just the unkept grounds, broken windows, and graffiti on the walls from vandals; neighbors say, despite this condemned notification on the front gate, drug addicts and squatters still find a way to sneak inside and further trash the place.
Jacksonville Department of Public Works manager Al Ferraro oversees the city’s blight initiative, a program designed to end blight throughout Jacksonville. He says that although the property is listed as one of the most endangered historical structures in Jacksonville, it has become so blighted that the current owners, who reside in Israel, now owe the city more than $2 million in code enforcement fines.
“If it were not under historic preservation, we would have moved forward on tearing it down already,” Ferraro explained. “But because it’s under historic preservation, or landmarks, there’s another set of criteria we go under.”
Part of that criteria includes meeting with the current owners next month. Michael Haskins, the Vice President of the Springfield Preservation and Revitalization Council, says there is hope in bringing the property back to life.
“We have every reason to believe this building can be restored, and we think it takes the right kind of project,” Haskins said. “It might not be the current owners. It might need to involve government action or non-profit action.”
Now, back to the mansion’s creepiness.
Some, like Jayme, say the city should capitalize on the mansion’s history by turning it into a museum or a haunted tourist attraction.
“They should charge admission, and you could go through during Halloween,” he suggested.
Haskins wasn’t opposed to the idea.
“It has some of those gothic elements. So, say, it lends itself to this fun stuff. I don’t personally believe it’s haunted, but I enjoy the history of the neighborhood and some of that local flavor, I think is a lot of fun,” he said.
Whatever the future has in store for this property, there’s no denying that the structure and its history loom like a shadow over this section of Springfield.
A shadow with a story to tell.