Seven Sisters Inn

On East Fort King Street in Ocala's Historic District, surrounded by live oak canopies and a neighborhood of Victorian-era homes added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the Seven Sisters Inn rises from the landscape exactly as it was meant to — ornate, commanding, and unapologetically excessive. The Gothic Queen Anne Victorian was built around 1890 by Linda B. and Joseph Lancaster and was known locally in its early years as the Painted Purple Lady, a nod to its distinctive original color. But the house's identity was defined by its second owners, and it bears their name in local memory to this day.

Charles Rheinauer was born in Germany in 1846, the son of a Jewish cantor, and arrived in America with ambitions that proved more than adequate to the frontier city of Ocala. After marrying Emma Hohenberg in Alabama in 1890, he migrated to Florida and established a dry goods and clothing business with his brother Maurice under the name Rheinauer and Brothers. The enterprise grew into one of the finest clothier operations in the state, their flagship building on Ocala's town square so prominent it became known as the Rheinauer Block. Charles served as vice president of the Ocala Iron and Machine Works, founder of the Board of Trade — the forerunner of the Chamber of Commerce — and founder and director of the first bank in the city, the Merchants National Bank.

He helped introduce Thomas Edison's incandescent electric lamp to the community. He served as presiding officer of the Hebrew Society of Ocala. In 1906, he became the second Jewish mayor in the city's history. And in a chapter that links the house to wider hemispheric history, Rheinauer collaborated with Cuban revolutionary José Martí to co-found La Criolla Cigar Company, which became one of the largest cigar factories in Florida and drew thousands of Cuban immigrants to the section of Ocala that became known as Marti City before the factory eventually relocated to Tampa's Ybor City.

Charles and Emma moved into the Fort King Street house in 1895 and remained there for the rest of their lives. Charles died in the home on May 18, 1925, at age 79. Emma outlived him by nearly seventeen years, dying on May 7, 1942, at age 74. Both are buried in the Temple Beth Shalom Cemetery, the only Jewish cemetery in Ocala. After Emma's death, the property passed through various hands over the following decades, serving at different points as a private residence and office space before being purchased and restored as a bed and breakfast. Later owners — former international cargo airline pilots — filled the house with antiques and artifacts gathered from decades of travel: temple doors from Bali over four hundred years old, pieces from Egypt, India, China, Indonesia, and South America. The inn now offers suites themed by destination, including Madrid, Casablanca, Beijing, Paris, and Cairo, each one a densely layered room that feels more like a cabinet of curiosities than a hotel accommodation.

The paranormal reputation is substantial and has attracted serious outside attention. In October 2008, The Atlantic Paranormal Society — TAPS, the group behind the SyFy Channel's Ghost Hunters — spent four days at the inn filming what aired as "The Ghosts of the Sunshine State." Their K2 meters registered unexplained electromagnetic spikes. Investigators reported seeing a shadow moving between rooms during nighttime sessions. A shoe left on the stairs turned up in a room no one had entered. Co-owner Bonnie Morehardt, who ran the inn with her husband Ken Oden for nearly twenty years, described the presence as consistently playful rather than threatening, and noted that a book had been found placed on a table and opened as though someone was in the middle of reading it. She said, pointedly, that she believed it was not the house itself that was haunted but the property underneath it — speculating about what may have occupied the land before the Victorian was built, possibly connected to the nearby site of Fort King. In the years following the Ghost Hunters episode, the inn hosted additional investigations by Chip Coffey, John Zaffis and Brian Cano of Haunted Collector, Scott Tepperman of Ghost Hunters International, and Steve DiShiavi of The Dead Files.

The haunting is described around a cast of seven identified spirits. Charles and Emma Rheinauer are said to appear occasionally in Victorian dress, and guests have reported seeing the couple together in what was once a ballroom. Three children of unknown identity are associated with playful, disruptive activity — moving small objects, producing sounds, generating unexplained responses during EVP sessions. A well-dressed man identified only as George, said to project a 1950s sensibility, has reportedly made his presence known to female guests specifically. A seventh figure, an older man whose identity has never been determined, is sometimes connected to the sound of phantom piano music. A woman in white has been reported passing through bathroom walls. Staff and guests across different eras have described footsteps in empty hallways, whispers, the rustle of long period clothing, furniture relocated without explanation, knocks from the walls, and the persistent feeling of being watched from somewhere inside the rooms.

The inn has changed hands more than once in the years since its peak ghost-hunting notoriety and has gone through additional restoration. It operates today as a boutique accommodation. The antiques are still there. The architecture is intact. The seven rooms in the guest registry that were never formally checked out appear to still be occupied.