Oakland Cemetery

Visitors describe an uneasy, eerie feeling after leaving the Phillips Mausoleum at Oakland Cemetery, and some say the presence of Calvin C. Phillips can be felt at the crypt, though no firsthand accounts have been documented and the stories are local legend. Phillips, an eccentric Tallahassee architect who had designed structures for the 1877 Paris Expo and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, spent his final years building a 20-foot onion-domed mausoleum for himself, by hand, blending Roman, Greek, Doric, and Indian architectural influences. According to local telling, he had a cherry-wood casket custom made, climbed inside the finished mausoleum, lay down in the coffin, and died there in 1919, a week after completing it. In 2000, vandals broke into the crypt and stole his skull; the case has never been solved.