Stranahan House

At the Stranahan House in Fort Lauderdale, the man who built it is said to still be drowning out front. Visitors report seeing Frank Stranahan in the New River that runs past the house, jumping in, reliving the death that happened there on May 22, 1929.

Frank came to the area in January 1893, age 27, to run his cousin's ferry at a bend in the river. He built a trading post with the Seminole, married a schoolteacher named Ivy Cromartie in 1900, and in 1901 put up the building that still stands — the oldest surviving structure in Broward County. For decades it was the center of everything: trading floor below, community hall above.

Then the money went. His bank collapsed, his mortgaged land left him deep in debt, and in May 1929 he checked into a hospital after a nervous breakdown. Ten days later he was out. The day he died, he and Ivy returned from an excursion and she stepped inside for about ten minutes. That was the gap. He weighted himself down and walked into the river. The accounts split on what he used — some say an iron gate tied to his ankle, others a sewer grate at his waist. They never split on where it ended.

Frank isn't alone in the lore. The story names five more: Ivy, said to steady visitors with a cold gentle hand on the steep attic stairs, arriving with the scent of her perfume. Her father Augustus, blamed for thrown books and cold spots in the gift shop that was once his bedroom. Her brother Albert, the troublemaker. Her sister Pink. And a Seminole girl whose voice is reported on recordings, sometimes singing.

The strange part is who tells you all this. The museum itself published the roster — which relative haunts which room, which death came when. And on the same page it says: "During the 40 years of the museum being opened, there have been stories about hauntings but nothing has ever been proven." It no longer offers ghost tours, and says it never will again.