👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº1189
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King House (Mayport)
King House (Mayport) is a location reputed to be haunted in Mayport, Florida, US. Its reputation comes from reported apparitions, unexplained phenomena and eyewitness accounts gathered over time.
Where is King House (Mayport)?
- Location
- Mayport, Florida, US
- Type
- House / mansion
- Coordinates
- 30.393, -81.431
- Testimonies
- 0
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is King House (Mayport) said to be haunted?
The King House stands at 4627 Ocean Street in Mayport, the fishing village at the mouth of the St Johns River, and the City of Jacksonville lists it as a local landmark under the name "CAPTAIN W.J. KING RESIDENCE", LM-95-29. Captain William Joseph King reached Mayport in 1878 as a ship's cook, married Clara "Polly" Arnau of the bar-pilot family in 1881, and around 1913 raised the two-storey house that now carries his name in front of his wife's family cottage of 1857. Its fame rests on ghost stories that his son John Franklin King began telling high school students in the early 1960s, charging a small donation for a tour of the house. The date that circulates everywhere as the fire which destroyed an earlier sailors' boarding house on the site, 25 April 1881, is the day the Duval County marriage index gives for his parents' wedding. The historian Donald J. Mabry, who traced it, writes that John King told the fire story as a joke.
What is the history of King House (Mayport)?
Mayport grew around the bar pilots who guided ships over the shifting sand bars at the mouth of the St Johns River. Captain James Arnau founded the St Johns Bar Pilot Association in 1820 with six other men and put up a watch tower seventy-five feet high so the pilots could see ships waiting at sea. Piloting paid well, and in Donald J. Mabry's account Arnau "built a fine house on Ocean Street with some of his money". Wayne Wood's survey of Jacksonville architecture dates that first cottage to 1857.
William Joseph King came to it from outside. The census of 1870 finds him aged fourteen in Seaford, Delaware, working as a common labourer to support his mother and three siblings after his father died at sea. He sailed into the St Johns in 1878 as ship's cook on a schooner guided in by a bar pilot, and on 25 April 1881 he married Arnau's sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Clara "Polly" Arnau, daughter of the Minorcan family of Estebán Arnau of Saint Augustine. Her father saw to it that her husband was trained for the bar, and King took his licence in 1882. The Florida state census of 1885 records the couple living alone in the one-storey house on Ocean Street at the corner of Julia Street, now Roxie, with the Andrew Floyd and Joseph Houston families as neighbours.
In 1913 King raised a second, two-storey white house in front of the old one. Two porches, one to each floor, wrapped it on three of its four sides, each balcony running to 1,040 square feet against 656 square feet of living space per floor. "For its day, the King House was massive," Mabry writes, and its seven rooms served a household that shared them. Plumbing and wiring arrived later, since electric power reached Mayport only in 1936. Fire destroyed most of Mayport Village in 1917, and Mabry's sentence about that fire dates the building better than any deed: "The four-year-old King House survived."
The house held the family's ceremonies. Helen Cooper Floyd described the wedding reception of Clara Mae King and Fuller D. King on 16 January 1924, held on the lower floor among greenery, with the cake on a lace table cloth and the bride throwing her bouquet down the staircase to Marguerite Andreu. John Franklin King (1896-1977), a coxswain assigned to submarine chasing in the First World War, inherited the property in 1940 at the age of forty-four and lived in it as a merchant mariner and fisherman.
He moved out in 1974. On 18 April 1978 the house sold for $33,000 to the pianist Gene Nordan, who removed the Arnau cottage and the watch tower to make room for a restaurant, learned from his surveyor that the lot lacked the parking a liquor licence required, and "quickly sold the house to Ray Dillmon (Harbour Lights Restaurant) and an attorney for $36,000". The ARN-BEN Corporation of Wayne Bennett bought it on 27 January 1982 for $42,500 and spent a year on it: sand-blasting through the many coats of paint down to the heart pine, five coats of Minwax outside and six inside, cedar shake in place of the asbestos roof, and the first two bathrooms the house had ever had. Working the wood, the carpenters found a shadow on a wall showing that the staircase had at some point been reversed. Albert Millar bought it on 17 May 1994 for $85,000, used it as a law office and obtained the historic designation that lowered its taxes. The City of Jacksonville landmark register of August 2010 carries the result on line 114: "LM-95-29 CAPTAIN W.J. KING RESIDENCE ... MAYPORT ... 4627 OCEAN STREET".
Timeline: the documented record of King House (Mayport)
- April 1568 A Spanish garrison died defending a small fort "in the area of what is now Broad Street" against French soldiers and Timucuan Indians, and a relief party sent from Saint Augustine buried them nearby. Joseph Picket dates the old Mayport burial ground from that action, several streets from Ocean Street.
- 1820 Captain James Arnau founds the St Johns Bar Pilot Association with six other men and erects a watch tower seventy-five feet high. With the proceeds he "built a fine house on Ocean Street".
- 1857 The one-storey Arnau cottage goes up on Ocean Street at the corner of Julia Street, now Roxie. Wayne Wood's architectural survey gives the date and the builder, Clara Arnau's grandfather.
- 25 April 1881 William J. King marries Clara Arnau in Duval County; the Florida marriage index carries the entry. This is the day that circulates worldwide as the fire that destroyed a sailors' boarding house on the site.
- 1889 The old Mayport cemetery "was permanently closed to burials in 1889", the dunes having buried it. Two of the few named graves Picket recovered are the infant children of Captain King and Clara Arnau.
- 1913 Captain King raises the two-storey white house in front of the old cottage, with porches on three sides and seven rooms. Ennis Davis gives the same year and credits a builder from Fort George with the two-tier veranda.
- 1917 Fire destroys most of Mayport Village, including many fine houses. "The four-year-old King House survived," writes Mabry, which fixes the construction date at 1913.
- Early 1960s John Franklin King begins telling ghost stories to high school students. His neighbour John Gavagan later described how he and his friends started the legend for their own amusement, and King charged a small donation for a tour of the house.
- December 1968 Paranormal researchers bring the English medium Douglas Johnson to the house. None of his statements could be verified, according to the investigators themselves.
- 1 May 1982 The Florida Times-Union and Jacksonville Journal devote several pieces to the house. Cynthia Parks carries Gloria King Wilson's denial that anything violent ever happened there, and William T. Joines of the Psychical Research Foundation speaks about the 1968 sitting.
- 1986-1987 The Florida Maritime Heritage Survey records Geraldine Margerum and John Gavagan, Jr. at her home in Neptune Beach, covering "stories of local residents; drug running in Mayport; and local legends". The tape is the earliest recording of the Mayport tradition available online.
- LM-95-29 (1995-1996) Jacksonville designates the building a local landmark as the "CAPTAIN W.J. KING RESIDENCE". Mabry cites the Planning and Development Department's designation report of 1996 and notes that the owner sought the status to reduce the tax bill.
- 28 October 2011 The Wikipedia article is created with the summary "Creating new article on 'haunted' house". It prints the 25 April 1881 fire and the Rhine Institute of Duke University, and both claims spread from there into local media.
- 21 June 2024 The last live capture of the Mayport Cats website gives the charity's base as "331 1st Ave N in Jacksonville Beach" and makes no mention of the King House. The domain lapsed a year later.
Is there a rational explanation for King House (Mayport)?
The ghost stories of 4627 Ocean Street have a datable author. Mabry, working from the family and the neighbours, puts their start in the early 1960s: "In the early 1960s, John King began to tell ghost stories to high school students and their dates." John Gavagan, who lived next door and was one of those students, "tells the story how he and his friends started the legend unintentionally but then furthered it because for their own amusement", and King turned it into a sideline: "For a small donation, John would take them on a tour of the house." His great-nephew Joseph R. (Skip) King III wrote to Mabry in 2007 that his uncle "said the house was haunted and had tales of many sightings including 'the grey lady' and the 'old sea captain.'" When Cynthia Parks ran the stories in the Florida Times-Union and Jacksonville Journal on 1 May 1982, the family answered in the same pages. Gloria King Wilson, John's niece, who had grown up in the house and whose family lived there continuously from her grandfather's day, said "there was no violence, whores, murder or decapitations", and thought her uncle was lonely and encouraged by his audience.
Several details that circulate today come out changed when set beside that account. The pitchfork victim is, in King's own telling as Mabry reports it, the woman who ran the vanished boarding house, "murdered while asleep by a former lover wielding a pitchfork"; the printed versions, and Wikipedia after them, make her an aunt of William King killed in the rocking chair. The rocking chair belongs to a separate story of King's, about "the person murdered in the very rocking chair in which a guest as sitting". The bride was "a bride killed on her wedding night whom King had seen washing in dishes in his kitchen", which is also where the later "maid in the kitchen" stands. And the butler had livery and a job: "the little butler dressed in red livery who played tricks on him by turning the water on and off while King was taking a shower".
The 1881 fire is the load-bearing date and it does not hold. The Wikipedia article, created on 28 October 2011, states that "The first record of the building is from April 25, 1881, when it was destroyed by a fire" and cites page 361 of The Element Encyclopedia of the Psychic World (2006). Mabry went to the marriage records instead. The Florida marriage index for Duval County registers William J. King and Clara Arnau on 25 April 1881, and he concludes: "However, that was the date when his parents married! John King told this as a joke." His sentence prints the year as 1885 where his own footnote gives 1881; the index entry is the checkable half, and it falls on the same day of the same month. The newspaper attribution that grew around the date fails on its own: Jacksonville had no paper called the Florida Times-Union in April 1881, since the Florida Daily Times began only that November and merged with the Florida Union to produce the Times-Union on 4 February 1883.
The Duke University attribution loosens under the source as well. Paranormal researchers came in 1968 and in December brought over Douglas Johnson, a medium from England; Mabry records that "The paranormal people said none of Johnson's statements could be verified but that they did not conflict with what others had said." The man who described the sitting in 1982 was William T. Joines of the Psychical Research Foundation, "previously an electrical engineering professor at Duke University", and Mabry's footnote adds that by 1963 the Rhine operation was "completely independent of Duke University which had only given it small grants previously".
The Spanish graveyard lies elsewhere. Joseph Picket, station librarian at Mayport, traced the old Mayport cemetery in the Mirror of 27 October 1989 and again in 2009: it ran from a great oak by the jog in the Navy fence westward "beneath a 45 foot sand dune" to what is now Broad Street, then south past the Marine Science Center towards Palmer Street, and it "was permanently closed to burials in 1889". The Kings do belong to that ground. Among the handful of names Picket could recover are "Elizabeth and William Joseph King: Infant children of CPT William Joseph King and his wife Clara Arnau". Mabry states the position plainly: "Joseph Picket, concluded that the Spanish cemetery was elsewhere. The cemetery story persists, however."
Can you visit King House (Mayport)?
The King House is a private property in a working village, with no public access, no tour and no published opening hours. The City of Jacksonville protects it as a local landmark: its register of August 2010 lists "LM-95-29 CAPTAIN W.J. KING RESIDENCE ... MAYPORT ... 4627 OCEAN STREET" among 135 designated landmarks. There is no National Register listing behind it. The National Register list for Duval County carries nothing on Ocean Street, and its only Mayport entries sit inside Naval Station Mayport.
The link with the Mayport Cats Program, which most descriptions of the house still repeat, has ended. In the last live version of the charity's own website, captured on 21 June 2024, Mayport Cats, Inc. gives its base as "331 1st Ave N in Jacksonville Beach", where it opened a cats-and-coffee shop in 2019; the words King, Ocean and 4627 appear nowhere on that page, against fifteen occurrences of Mayport. The domain lapsed after June 2025 and now serves an unrelated gambling page. The organisation's federal filings stop at the 2023 tax year, with income down from $192,873 in 2021 to $29,730.
The papers are easier to reach than the house. The Beaches Museum at 381 Beach Boulevard, Jacksonville Beach, holds the Dyle R. Johnson Collection of Mayport History, 1562-1980 (83-29-5) and the Alec Newell Collection, the two archives Mabry worked from. It opens Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Sunday from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., states that "There is no charge for admission", and keeps a Reading Room that is "always free to our members by appointment". The State Archives of Florida serves the 1986-87 Florida Maritime Heritage Survey recording free online, catalogued as "Interview with Geraldine Margerum and John Gavagan, Jr." and described as covering "stories of local residents; drug running in Mayport; and local legends" — the same John Gavagan who later told Mabry how the legend began. Mabry's essay, with his photographs of the house from 2000, 2001 and January 2015, downloads free from the Mayport Waterfront Partnership.
Mayport Village repays the walk on its own account. The St Johns River Lighthouse of 1858, "the oldest surviving structure in Mayport Village", stands on naval station land and went onto the Jacksonville History Center's endangered list on 20 May 2026, with the Mayport Lighthouse Association working to move the 81-foot tower onto city ground. The King House is absent from that list of 28 sites.
Sources consulted
- Donald J. Mabry, «The King House, Mayport (Jacksonville), Florida» — Mayport Waterfront Partnership, 2015 report
- Joseph Picket, «Spanish Cemetery — Continuation» — The Mirror (Naval Station Mayport), 27 October 1989; reprinted on JaxPoliticsOnline.com, 21 January 2009, 1989 newspaper archive
- City of Jacksonville, Planning and Development Department, «Landmarks List, August 2010 (LM-95-29, Captain W.J. King Residence, 4627 Ocean Street, Mayport)» — City of Jacksonville, 2010 report
- Florida Folklife Program and American Folklife Center; engineer William Chase, «Interview with Geraldine Margerum and John Gavagan, Jr. (Florida Maritime Heritage Survey Project)» — State Archives of Florida, Florida Folklife Collection, series S1592, 1986 archive
- Wikipedia contributors, «King House (Mayport)» — Wikipedia, 2011 web
- Ennis Davis, «Historic Mayport Village» — MetroJacksonville.com, 2010 web
- Mayport Cats, Inc., «Mayport Cats, Inc. — Home (last live capture, 21 June 2024)» — Internet Archive Wayback Machine, 2024 archive
- Internal Revenue Service, via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, «Mayport Cats Inc (EIN 26-3728042), Form 990 filings through tax year 2023» — ProPublica, 2026 report
- Beaches Museum, «Beaches Museum — hours, admission and Reading Room» — Beaches Museum, Jacksonville Beach, 2026 web
- Jacksonville Today, «New sites added to Duval's list of endangered historic structures» — Jacksonville Today, 2026 newspaper archive
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-09-09 · How we verify our content
📎 Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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