Originally Published Oct. 30, 1999

STEVE NEWBORN
of The Tampa Tribune

HIGHLAND PARK - Walk through the creaking iron gates and face a pair of giant stone bulldogs that glare at anyone approaching the hulking home.

To your left and right are a mosaic of saints. High above is the “turret” of this castle, lurking on a grassy knoll over the tidy hamlet of Highland Park.

Inside is an apparition that may come from a place far beyond the reach of our mortal senses.

This is no ordinary Halloween story. Jean Louwsma’s house may truly be haunted by benign spirits.

To Louwsma, the angels in her home are as real as she is.

“Sometimes I’ll turn the upstairs lights off, and come up the drive and the light will be on,” she said. “It’s just amazing. You get to be so used to it.”

But others are not as comfortable with her haunted home.

“None of my relatives except my sister will stay here with me,” she said, “and none of them will stay here alone. My sister said she hears doors open and shut.”

What Louwsma believes inhabits her home is the spirit of one of the original owners. Irwin Yarnell built this 36-room coquina stone home in 1923 for the unheard of price then of $1.5 million. He named it La Casa de Josefina after his wife. Her name still announces itself to visitors entering through the old stone archways.

Yarnell was a real estate mogul who built the village of Highland Park in the 1920s, said Lyn Reynolds, an Indianapolis woman who wrote an article on La Casa’s 75th anniversary last year for the Lake Wales News, a local newspaper.

Reynolds is currently writing a novel inspired by Yarnell’s life and the tales of La Casa Josefina.

According to her research, Yarnell and his family lived a lavish lifestyle through the late 1920s.

He hosted grand parties at his home. Well-known figures such as Thomas Edison were known to visit.

But by the Great Depression of 1929, his fortune changed. He lost his money and later that year lost his daughter, Virginia, who died suddenly.

His wife, Josephine, lived in the home for 31 years after Yarnell died of a heart problem in 1936, Reynolds said. She said Josephine - who was used to a life of leisure with bevies of servants attending her every need - was suddenly forced to fend for herself.

Josephine Yarnell’s attachment to the home may be what’s keeping her spirit there, she said.

Reynolds said she has seen the ghost of Josephine, but “I just didn’t realize it at the time.”

One day, while visiting many years ago, she was upstairs in the turret, or bell tower, peering in a window when she noticed a reflection of a woman standing behind her. When Reynolds turned around, not a soul was there. She didn’t know who it was until weeks later, when Louwsma showed her a scrapbook about the house that had Josephine’s picture.

Louwsma believes Josephine isn’t the only spirit. Yarnell also had a son, Irwin Jr., who died at a young age in an airplane crash.
“I believe I didn’t come here to harm it, I came here to do good,” she said. “I’ve never been afraid.”

“It’s almost like a protector to me,” said Louwsma. “I really think we have guardian angels. Love can conquer all.”

Louwsma, 67, and her husband Lou, 66, bought the decrepit mansion in 1981, seven years after they spotted a For Sale sign. The old place had remained vacant for a generation - buyers were scared off once they heard the stories of its hauntings.

“I heard rumors right away,” she said. “I heard from the real estate man, he said “You’re crazy, you’ll never want to live there.’ “

Even friends told her about strange tales of doors opening and closing. And she got a letter from a man in Cincinnati one time who said he had been in the house and saw a person materialize at the top of the stairs.

It took the Louwsmas four years to get the old place to look like a home again, decorating each room in period details, complete with mannequins and angels. Strangely, Louwsma said she bought several pieces of La Casa de Josefina’s original furniture, found as far away as Atlanta.

Another time, she was led by circumstance to the original screen door emblazoned with a “Y,” rusting away in a junkyard not far from her home. It was restored and once again graces the front entrance.

“I don’t even look for it [the furniture],” she said. “It kind of finds its way back.”

The couple’s days in the old mansion may be numbered, because Lou Louwsma is suffering from liver cancer. But Louwsma said she’s got time left yet with her guardian angels.

“I’ve already turned away people who wanted to buy it. I tell them they’re not the right people to live here,” Louwsma said. “Maybe I’m destined to stay here the rest of my life.”