Edward Leedskalnin (Latvian: Edvards Liedskalniņš) (January 12, 1887, Stāmeriena parish, Livonia; December 7, 1951, Miami) was an eccentric Latvian emigrant to the United States and amateur sculptor who single-handedly built the monument known as Coral Castle in Florida. He was also known for his unusual theories on magnetism.

Life

Edward Leedskalnin was born January 12, 1887, according to World War I draft registration records, in Stāmeriena parish, Latvia. Little is known of his childhood, aside from the fact that he was not wealthy and achieved only a fourth-grade education. However Edward was a sickly boy, and often spent his time inside reading books — eventually leading him to discontinue his schooling as it “bored him”. For Ed, his development of a yearning to obtain knowledge became a passionate and potent driving force in many endeavours throughout his later life.^[1] At the age of 26, he was engaged to marry Agnes Scuffs, a girl ten years younger.^[2] However, the girl that Leedskalnin referred to as his “Sweet Sixteen” broke the engagement the night before their wedding, so he emigrated to North America^[3] where he found work in various lumber camps in Canada, California, and Texas.

Then, after contracting a case of tuberculosis, Leedskalnin moved to the warmer climate of Florida around 1919, where he purchased a small piece of land in Florida City. Over the next 20 years, Leedskalnin putatively constructed and lived within a massive coral monument he called “Rock Gate Park”, dedicated to the girl who had left him years before. Working alone at night, Leedskalnin eventually quarried and sculpted over 1,100 short tons (997,903 kg) of coral into a monument that would later be known as the Coral Castle. He used various basic tools, several made from timber and parts of an old Ford; first he built a house out of coral and timber, then he gradually built the monuments for which he is famous.^[3] In spite of his private nature, he eventually opened his monument to the public, offering tours for 10 cents. He was a surprisingly accommodating host, even cooking hot dogs for visiting children in a pressure cooker of his own invention.^{[citation needed]}

When people asked Leedskalnin how he had moved all of the stone by himself, he refused to give over his method and would only reply to whoever was asking with the same statement: “I understand the laws of weight and leverage and I know the secrets of the people who built the pyramids (being those at the site at Giza in Egypt).”^{[citation needed]}

This building was originally located in Florida City in the 1920s; then in the mid-1930s Leedskalnin hired a truck and driver^[3] to move it to its present location on a 10-acre (4.0 ha) site near Homestead, Florida. On November 9, 1951, he checked himself into Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Leedskalnin suffered a stroke at one point, either before he left for the hospital or at the hospital. He died twenty-eight days later of pyleonephritis (a kidney infection) at the age of 64. His death certificate noted that his death was a result of “uremia; failure of kidneys, as a result of the infection and abscess.”^[4]

Writings

During his lifetime, Leedskalnin published five pamphlets, advertising them in local newspapers.

Moral education

His first and longest booklet, a treatise on moral education, is printed on only the left-hand pages, and begins with the following preface:

Reader, if for any reason you do not like the things I say in the little book, I left just as much space as I used, so you can write your own opinion opposite it and see if you can do better.
The Author

In the first section, Leedskalnin vents his anger at his “Sweet Sixteen”, arguing that girls should be kept pure, and that boys are primarily a soiling influence upon them. On page 4 of A Book in Every Home, Leedskalnin writes:

Everything we do should be for some good purpose but as everybody knows there is nothing good that can come to a girl from a fresh boy. When a girl is sixteen or seventeen years old, she is as good as she ever will be, but when a boy is sixteen years old, he is then fresher than in all his stages of development. He is then not big enough to work but he is too big to be kept in a nursery and then to allow such a fresh thing to soil a girl — it could not work on my girl. Now I will tell you about soiling. Anything that is done, if it is done with the right party it is all right, but when it is done with the wrong party, it is soiling, and concerning those fresh boys with the girls, it is wrong every time.

The second section continues along the theme of moral education, with several aphorisms aimed at parents regarding the proper way to raise children. The last, “Political” section, reveals that the reclusive Leedskalnin had strong political views. He advocates voting for property owners only (and in proportion to their holdings), and argues that “Anyone who is too weak to make his own living is not strong enough to vote.”

Some writers^[who?] have suggested that Leedskalnin’s booklet contains further information on his electromagnetic research and philosophies encoded in its pages, and the blank pages are provided for the reader to fill in their decrypted solutions. It has also been suggested that Leedskalnin’s frequent referral to his “Sweet Sixteen” may in fact refer to the numerological and/or scientific relevance of the number sixteen to his research and theories.^[5]

Leedskalnin’s ideas may appear unusual. He wrote that a mother’s most important task is to ensure that her daughter remains “chaste and faithful”:^[3]

In case a girl’s mamma thinks that there is a boy somewhere who needs experience then she, herself, could pose as an experimental station for that fresh boy to practise on and so save the girl. Nothing can hurt her any more. She has already gone through all the experience that can be gone through and so in her case it would be all right

Magnetism

Leedskalnin’s other four pamphlets addressed his theories on the interaction of electricity, magnetism and the body; Leedskalnin also included a number of simple experiments to validate his theories.

Contradicting the standard model of electromagnetism, his thesis is based upon the theory that the metal itself is not the magnet; & that the real magnets are circulating in the metal. These individual north and south pole magnets are particles smaller than atoms or photons; & each particle in the substance was an individual magnet by itself.^{[citation needed]}

Leedskalnin claimed that all matter was being acted upon by what he called “individual magnets”. He also claimed that scientists of his time were looking in the wrong place for their understanding of electricity and that they were only observing “one half of the whole concept” with “one sided tools of measurement”. For instance:

Magnets in general are indestructible. For instance you can burn wood and flesh. You can destroy the body, but you cannot destroy the magnets that hold together the body. They go somewhere else. Iron has more magnets than wood, and every different substance has a different number of magnets that hold the substance together. If I make a battery with copper for positive terminal and beef for negative terminal I get more magnets out of it than when I used copper for positive terminal and sweet potato for negative terminal. From this you can see that no two things are alike.^[3]

Source

Then we have a description about this awesome place called “Coral Castle” and I think that Edward used some ancient anti-gravity techniques to built it:

Coral Castle is a stone structure created by the Latvian AmericaneccentricEdward Leedskalnin (1887–1951) north of the city of Homestead, Florida in Miami-Dade County at the intersection of South Dixie Highway (U.S. 1) and SW 157th Avenue. The structure comprises numerous megalithic stones (mostly limestone formed from coral), each weighing several tons.^[2] It currently serves as a privately operated tourist attraction. Coral Castle is noted for legends surrounding its creation that claim it was built single-handedly by Leedskalnin using reverse magnetism and/or supernatural abilities to move and carve numerous stones weighing many tons.^[3]

History

According to the Coral Castle’s own promotional material, Edward Leedskalnin was jilted by his 16-year-old fiancée Agnes Scuffs in Latvia, just one day before the wedding. Leaving for America, he came down with allegedly terminal tuberculosis, but spontaneously healed, stating that magnets had some effect on his disease.

Edward spent over 28 years building the Coral Castle, refusing to allow anyone to view him while he worked. A few teenagers claimed to have witnessed his work, reporting that he had caused the blocks of coral to move like hydrogen balloons. The only tool that Leedskalnin spoke of using was a “perpetual motion holder.”

Leedskalnin originally built the castle, which he named Rock Gate Park, in Florida City, Florida around 1923. He purchased the land from Ruben Moser whose wife helped assist him when he had a very bad bout with tuberculosis.^[4] Florida City, which borders the Everglades, is the southernmost city in the United States that is not on an island. It was an extremely remote location with very little development at the time. The castle remained in Florida City until about 1936 when Leedskalnin decided to move and take the castle with him to its final location on 28655 South Dixie Highway Miami, FL 33033. The Coral Castle website states that he chose to move in order to protect his privacy when discussion about developing land in the area of the castle started.^[5] He spent three years moving the Coral Castle structures 10 miles (16 km) north from Florida City to its current location in Homestead, Florida.

Leedskalnin continued to work on the castle up until his death in 1951. The coral pieces that are part of the newer castle, not among those transported from the original location, were quarried on the property only a few feet away from the southern wall.

Leedskalnin charged visitors ten cents a head to tour the castle grounds. There are signs carved into rocks at the front gate to “Ring Bell Twice” and a second sign just inside the property that says “Adm. 10c Drop Below”. He would come down from his living quarters in the second story of the castle tower close to the gate and conduct the tour. Leedskalnin never told anyone who asked him how he made the castle. He would simply answer “It’s not difficult if you know how.”

When asked why he had built the castle, Leedskalnin would vaguely answer it was for his “Sweet Sixteen.” This is widely believed to be a reference to Agnes Scuffs (whose surname is given by some sources as “Skuvst”). In Leedskalnin’s own publication A Book in Every Home he implies his “Sweet Sixteen” was more an ideal than a reality. According to a Latvian account, the girl existed, but her name was actually Hermīne Lūsis.^[6]

When Leedskalnin became ill in November 1951, he put a sign on the door of the front gate “Going to the Hospital” and took the bus to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Leedskalnin suffered a stroke at one point, either before he left for the hospital or at the hospital. He died twenty-eight days later of Pyelonephritis (a kidney infection) at the age of 64. His death certificate noted that his death was a result of “uremia; failure of kidneys, as a result of the infection and abscess.”^[7]

While the property was being investigated, $3,500 was found among Leedskalnin’s personal belongings. Leedskalnin had made his income from conducting tours, selling pamphlets about various subjects (including magnetic currents) and the sale of a portion of his 10-acre (4.0 ha) property for the construction of U.S. Route 1.^[5] Having no will, the castle became the property of his closest living relative in America, a nephew from Michigan named Harry.^[8]

The Coral Castle website reports that the nephew was in poor health and he sold the castle to an Illinois family in 1953. However, this story differs from the obituary of a former Coral Castle owner, Julius Levin, a retired jeweler from Chicago, Illinois. The obituary states Levin had purchased the land from the state of Florida in 1952 and may not have been aware there was even a castle on the land.^[9]

The new owners changed the name of Rock Gate Park to Coral Castle and turned it into a tourist attraction.^[10]

In January 1981, Levin sold the castle to the Coral Castle, Inc. for $175,000.^[11] They remain the owners today.

In 1984, the property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.^[1] It was added under the name of “Rock Gate,” but the name on the list was changed to “Coral Castle” in 2011.^[12]

The Castle

 

A view from within Leedskalnin’s Coral Castle.

The grounds of Coral Castle consist of 1,100 short tons (1,000 t) of stones in the form of walls, carvings, furniture and a castle tower. Commonly referred to as being made up of coral, it is made of oolite, also known as oolitic limestone. Oolite is a sedimentary rock composed of small spherical grains of concentrically layered carbonate that may include localized concentrations of fossil shells and coral. Oolite is found throughout southeastern Florida from Palm Beach County to the Florida Keys.^[13] Oolite is often found beneath only several inches of topsoil, such as at the Coral Castle site.

The stones are fastened together without mortar. They are set on top of each other using their weight to keep them together. The craftsmanship detail is so skillful and the stones are connected with such precision that no light passes through the joints. The 8-foot (2.4 m) tall vertical stones that make up the perimeter wall have a uniform height. Even with the passage of decades and a direct hit on August 24, 1992, by the Category 5Hurricane Andrew, the stones have not shifted.

Many of the features and carvings of the castle are notable. Among them are a two-story castle tower that served as Leedskalnin’s living quarters (walls consisting of 8-foot high pieces of stone), an accurate sundial, a Polaris telescope, an obelisk, a barbecue, a water well, a fountain, celestial stars and planets, and numerous pieces of furniture. The furniture pieces include a heart-shaped table, a table in the shape of Florida, twenty-five rocking chairs, chairs resembling crescent moons, a bathtub, beds and a throne.

With few exceptions, the objects are made from single pieces of stone that weigh on average 15 short tons (14 t) each. The largest stone weighs 30 short tons (27 t) and the tallest are two monoliths standing 25 ft (7.6 m) each.

A 9-short-ton (8.2 t) revolving 8-foot tall gate is a famous structure of the castle, documented on the television programs In Search of… and That’s Incredible! The gate is carved so that it fits within a quarter of an inch of the walls. It was well-balanced, reportedly so that a child could open it with the push of a finger. The mystery of the gate’s perfectly balanced axis and the ease with which it revolved lasted for decades until it stopped working in 1986. In order to remove it, six men and a 50-short-ton (45 t) crane were used. Once the gate was removed, the engineers discovered how Leedskalnin had centered and balanced it. He had drilled a hole from top to bottom and inserted a metal shaft. The rock rested on an old truck bearing. It was the rusting out of this bearing that resulted in the gate’s failure to revolve. Complete with new bearings and shaft, it was set back into place on July 23, 1986.^[14] It failed in 2005 and was again repaired, however it does not rotate with the same ease it once did.

The Coral Castle remains a popular tourist attraction with various pop culture speculations regarding how Leedskalnin was able to construct the structure and move stones that weighed many tons. The Coral Castle site states that “if anyone ever questioned Ed about how he moved the blocks of coral, Ed would only reply that he understood the laws of weight and leverage well.”^[5] He also stated that he had “discovered the secrets of the pyramids”,^[15] which of course could be interpreted in either esoteric or engineering terms.

Source

Here is a small documentary about Edward:

 

And here is more about Ed’s techniques and “Coral Castle”. He left some clues to follow in the castle. These clues hold the secret of the Coral Castle (anti-gravity):

>> You can find many more videos in the YouTube if you are intersted about this mystery.

I think that Edward had some ancient information or he got the information somewhere, maybe from the aliens I don’t know. But definitely a topic to look for. Stay tuned for more SECRET SITES!!!