 |
| Miami news photographer
Bill Reinke took this portrait of Villa Paula in March 1976. |
 |
A hallway with columned grand arch
and chandeliers.
|
By Terence Cantarella
Special
to BT
When Cliff Ensor bought Villa Paula in
1974, the house was in a grave state of disrepair. Vandals
had shot out the beautiful stained-glass windows, graffiti
was scrawled across the stucco walls outside, and the county
was ready to order its demolition. Not to mention, the ghost
of a one-legged Cuban woman frequented its hallways.
The exquisitely designed house at 5811
N. Miami Ave. in Little Haiti catches your eye as you drive
past. It sits among ramshackle homes and overcrowded two-story
apartment blocks like a misplaced masterpiece. By the time
you turn your head to get a good look, though, it’s
too late. The adrenaline-charged traffic spurs you past it
and you barely manage a glimpse of the whitewashed, neoclassical
gem.
When the home was built in 1926 to house
the Cuban consulate to Miami, things were a little different.
The neighborhood was still mostly agricultural and the home’s
first occupants likely sipped coffee on the white-columned
front porch in rural tranquility.
All the building materials for the mansion, and the workers
who built it, were imported from Cuba. Ten rooms, two baths,
18-foot-high ceilings, elegantly hand-painted floor tiles,
and Tuscan columns are just some of the features Havana architect
C. Freira included in the home. Almost six decades later, in
1983, the City of Miami officially designated the structure
historic. A second designation, in 1987, amended the original
to include the interior and an adjacent lot.
But what really draws attention to Villa
Paula is its reputation as Miami’s most haunted home.
A few years after Cuban consul Domingo
Milord moved into the newly constructed home, his wife Paula
died in one of the bedrooms from complications related to
a leg amputation. The circumstances of the amputation and
of her premature death are unclear. We know, however, that
despite the effort put into construction, Villa Paula ceased
to serve in an official capacity for the Cuban government
sometime after Paula’s death. Ensor
ascribes the consulate’s closing to “the troubles
in Cuba,” and indeed there was trouble.
President Gerardo Machado, faced in the early 1930s with growing
opposition, including a burgeoning Communist movement, morphed
from democratic reformer to repressive despot. Following a
series of violent clashes with opponents, he resigned. Then,
in quick succession, three different national leaders came
and went, ending with the ascension of military strongman Fulgencio
Batista.
Back in Miami, Villa Paula was shuttered and sold to one Muriel
Reardon, who lived there for around 30 years until her death
in 1960.
Villa Paula continued to change hands
during the next 14 years, even serving as a senior citizens’ home for a period
of time. By the 1970s, abandoned and derelict, Villa Paula
was near literal collapse, and fortuitously ended up in the
hands of Ensor. He says he and a few friends immediately set
to work on the place — cleaning, painting, removing graffiti,
landscaping, fixing broken windows, restoring the interior,
eventually returning Villa Paula to a condition close to its
former glory.
However, it is also with Ensor that the strange tales began.
He began relating stories of a black-haired
woman who would float down the hallways in a long gown, with
only one visible leg. He claimed he would often smell coffee
brewing and the scent of roses when there were none. He said
he heard piano music, and high heels on the back porch. His
dishes and silverware, he claimed, were thrown to the floor
one day and a chandelier inexplicably fell from the ceiling.
A back gate would slam shut on windless days and kill Ensor’s cats — three
of them in total.
Ensor invited mystics and held séances in the house.
Rev. Emma Tandarich, a visiting psychic, claimed five separate
spirits haunted the house, including a young woman searching
for the grave of her illegitimate baby — perhaps a servant
who had lived in the house.
The unsettling tales, plus the publicity Villa Paula received
during the 1980s (notably a cover story in the Miami Herald‘s Tropic magazine),
spooked local Haitians. Many would bless themselves and cross
the street to avoid walking in front of the house. Ensor spent
years trying to sell the place, asking $185,000. He eventually
resorted to auctioning it in 1985 for $110,000. Postal worker
Larry Cozart, who won the auction, immediately backed out of
the deal when he learned of the haunting.
Ensor managed to sell the house two years later to Lucien
Albert, a Haitian pediatrician skeptical of the supernatural
claims. When contacted by telephone in March of this year,
Dr. Albert, who sold Villa Paula in 2003 and now lives in Kendall,
had no opinion to share on the matter. He suggested BT call
the current owners. “They can tell you what you need
to know,” he said.
Public records list the current owner
as the Villa Paula Restoration Group, LLC. A few clicks of
the mouse reveals this entity has a human face — that of Marc Swedroe, a real estate investor
and son of renowned Miami Beach architect Robert Swedroe. Marc
hasn’t spent much time in the house since buying it in
2003 (sale price: $275,000) and says he hasn’t experienced
anything unusual. “The house is just very peaceful,” he
offers. The “restoration” in the company name is
something Swedroe and his family are serious about pursuing,
but legal entanglements concerning the property have delayed
improvements. (See sidebar “Villa Paula Meets Martin
Siskind.”)
Cuban fashion designer Fernando Garcia,
who rented the house for a brief period until six months
ago, had a different tale to tell: “I don’t believe
in ghosts, but strange things happen in that house.”
One day, when Garcia was sitting at his
desk, a windowpane fell out of its frame behind him. When
he got up to investigate, a 40-pound chunk of plaster fell
from the ceiling onto the spot where he had been sitting
moments before. “If I
hadn’t moved when I did,” he says, “I would
be dead.” The fortunately timed coincidence led him to
believe if there were ghosts in the house, “they must
have liked me.”
Garcia would often hear thumping on the
wooden ramp that leads up to the back door, as if someone
were walking on it. The day after he brought his cat to the
house, she disappeared. “I
didn’t find it dead. I just never found her at all,” he
recounts. A friend of Garcia, apparently sensitive to the spirit
world, began to cry after entering the former maid’s
quarter. “They used to beat the maid,” the friend
told him.
Now 81 years old and living in North
Carolina, Cliff Ensor, whose experiences were the first to
be publicized, remains resolute to this day. “The house is definitely haunted,” he
says by phone. “Emma, the medium, used to hold séances
in there every two weeks. This woman couldn’t play the
piano at all, but one day she channeled a spirit and began
to play like a pro.” Ensor, and others, recorded the
feat on three separate tape recorders. When they played back
the tapes later, all three were blank. During another séance,
she channeled a stern spirit that admonished, “I don’t
like cats in my house!”
The daughters of previous owner Reardon,
who lived in the house prior to Ensor, sent him a letter
from Alaska when they learned of his experiences. “When we were little,” they
wrote, “there was one room that we were never allowed
into.” Their mother, it turns out, was terrified of that
room.
“A University of Miami professor brought a self-proclaimed
Satanist to the house once and pushed her into that room,” Ensor
recalls keenly during the call. “She immediately began
to choke as if she were being strangled.”
Today a lone groundskeeper who prefers
to remain nameless occupies Villa Paula. “Stuff’s always moving around
in here,” he says. “I’ll put something in
one spot and find it in another later.” Three bulbs in
a bathroom light fixture began to flicker on and off in random
order one night. That is, until the fearless custodian told “Paula” to
cool it — and she did. “I’m good with spirits,” he
adds nonchalantly. “I got no problem with ’em.’”
He’s not scared. Even though he senses a presence, Paula
has yet to actually make an appearance for him. “But
I’ve only been in here since December,” he notes. “Maybe
she just needs to get used to me.”
Feedback: letters@biscaynetimes.com
|
