"In downtown Jacksonville, jammed-up next to Interstate 10, stands an old brown, brick school building with more legends than you can stir with a stick, this is the infamous “Devil’s School.” It is known by Jacksonville’s teenagers as “the most haunted place in town.” In reality this was Duval County’s Public School No.4. The old building with tall white columns standing like sentinels at the entrance is supposed to be haunted, but if we are to believe the tales, then ghosts were the minor players in this evil place. The hauntings began in the 1960’s when a furnace exploded killing half the students, a few faculty members, and the janitor.
Ever since this tragic day the ghosts of the victims have haunted the school building. Allegedly the place became so haunted that teachers refused to work there and the school had to be shut down for a brief period. A priest was called in to exorcise the demonic spirits so the school could be re-opened. Well if that wasn’t enough, the school’s principal was a cannibal. I don’t know if all these evils took place at the same time or in some chronological order. According to the story, when students fell asleep in class they were sent to the principal’s office and were never seen again. This cannibalistic principal had a closet in his office that had been converted to a meat locker where the students were gutted and hung on spikes until he could eat them. We don’t know if any parents ever complained to the school board about any missing kids.
Then there is a tale about a principal going on a bloody killing spree and wiping out most of the student body. It’s curious that no teachers were victims of this vicious rampage, perhaps they escaped or maybe they were accomplices in this wickedness. We know that teachers can get fed up with unruly pupils but this is ridiculous.
If cannibalistic educators on killing sprees are not enough, there is another story that points to the janitor as the evil doer. Allegedly, the janitor went berserk one day and slaughtered a bunch of kids leaving the halls splattered with blood. If you believe that one, then it’s their ghosts that now roam the creepy old building. You would think that some of these problems could have been resolved at PTA meetings. With all this killing going on it certainly took care of over-crowded classrooms.
The most realistic claim about this school building that has sat abandoned for many years is that it was used for devil worship according to local ghost hunters who have explored the place. Attesting to this claim is the satanic graffiti that was once scrawled on the walls. Some people say there was a huge tree growing in the middle of the school, but others say there was no tree. Maybe it was a ghost tree, after hearing all the other eerie claims about this place anything is possible.
After a little research we came up with the real story behind this old school. It was designed by Rutledge Holmes and built in 1917 as the Riverside Park School. It was the first public grammar school in the city and was designated as Public School No.4. In more recent times it was called the Annie Lytle Elementary School. It is not certain when the school was closed, but the vacant building became a refuge to local homeless people and a place where kids held “initiations” into their clubs. The city officially condemned the place in the 1970s, although transients continued to live there. It was also a favorite place for urban explorers and a hideout for drug addicts.
Like most old abandoned buildings, it presented a creepy backdrop for evil legends. In 1995 there was a fire in the building that was later blamed on transients. There is nothing to support the claims of cannibalistic principals, crazy janitors, exploding furnaces, or evil teachers, although some pupils probably thought their teachers were wicked, I’m sure the feeling was mutual. The old building is now surrounded by a tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire; I suppose to keep the sinister stuff from escaping. As part of an urban renovation of that area, the building is scheduled to be turned into a condominium complex in the future."
--Weird Florida (
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"Stories about the School No. 4 are legion. Bring up hauntings in Jacksonville and inevitably someone mentions it as the most haunted place in Jacksonville. The place just looks haunted. You’ve probably passed it at one point or another. It’s on the corner of I-95 and Margaret Street in the Brooklyn area of Riverside.
I love the stories about the school, even though none of them are true. I’ve heard that most of the students died in the 60s because of a furnace explosion, that the principle was a cannibal who ate children and that a disgruntled janitor went on a bloody killing spree. Everybody has a story as to why the place was abandoned.
The reality is much more mundane. The school was built around 1917, as Riverside Elementary. It was used as a school until the 1960s, when the construction of I-95 cut off access to the place, making it a logistical nightmare to get to in a car. The same is true today—you can see it from the highway, but it’s difficult to get to by car. After many complaints and logjams, it was shut down as a school and used as an administrative building until 1970, when it was vacated.
Since that time, the homeless, ghost hunters, vandals and would-be-Devil worshippers (so the story goes) have invaded the school. The spook appeal has proven too much for teens looking for the forbidden. At this point, the place is in such a state of disrepair, after a roof collapsed and a fire in the 90s, that it’s very dangerous to go into the place, which has been slated for demolition since the 80s. Property owners, afraid that trespassers would be hurt on the site, put up barbed fencing and padlocks.
It hasn’t yet been torn down because of its status as an historical building. Plenty of uses for the building have been floated over the years, but most have been scrapped, either because of the accessibility problem or because renovations would have been too expensive. It doesn’t help that I-95 whizzes by the place within a few feet of the façade.
Finding a use for Public School #4 is only going to get tougher, as they’re building a fly-over ramp that will obscure the building.
While it’s been reported that the building will finally be demolished and the land sold, it has somehow survived under the constant threat of destruction for years. I’ll believe it when I see it."
--EU Jacksonville (
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A slide show about the school is available online (
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