{"id":325951,"date":"2025-10-23T07:54:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T07:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/325951\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T07:54:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T07:54:15","slug":"the-urban-legends-of-public-school-number-four-a-local-historical-landmark-nicknamed-the-devils-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/325951\/","title":{"rendered":"The urban legends of Public School Number Four, a local historical landmark nicknamed \u2018The Devil\u2019s School\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. <\/strong> \u2013 Nestled within the Brooklyn neighborhood of Jacksonville, next to the I-95 overpass, is a building at the center of local urban legends that have been passed down from generation to generation. <\/p>\n

Public School number 4, which is formally known as Annie Lytle Elementary, is often referred to as \u201cThe Devil\u2019s School.\u201d For many years, folklore and urban legends have allowed the old, rundown, and abandoned school to become the location of horror stories. <\/p>\n

One of the stories is about school children being killed during a boiler room explosion. <\/p>\n

Another story is about a janitor who went on a killing spree inside the building. <\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the ghastly tale of a cannibalistic principal who ate children that were sent to the office. <\/p>\n

For decades following the permanent closure of the school, impressionable teenagers and young adults who believed those stories would sneak into the building at night, attempting to get close to where the horror stories were said to have played out. <\/p>\n

Some visitors reported hearing the voices of deceased children, and that alone added a supernatural mystique to the building. <\/p>\n

Jaxson Magazine<\/a> writer, Bill Delaney, writes about history and culture in Northeast Florida. Decades before he published an in-depth article about the factual history of Annie Lytle Elementary and the folklore associated with the school, he was a teenager who needed to see what the horror hype was all about. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was one of the kids back in the 90s that snuck in here, wanting to see if the ghost stories and folklore were true. It wasn\u2019t for the record, but it was still something at that time that a lot of kids were doing,\u201d said Delaney, who went on to talk about legend tripping, which is defined as visiting a site associated with folklore and urban legends. <\/p>\n

In the case of Annie Lytle Elementary, the urban legends centered around made-up horror stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it had every element you would expect from a haunted house,\u201d said Delaney. <\/p>\n

Long before the school became the stuff of horror legends, it was known as Public School Number 4 in the early 1900s and decades later, was renamed Annie Lytle Elementary in honor of educator Annie Lytle, who worked at the school as both a teacher and a principal. <\/p>\n

The school was permanently closed in 1960. <\/p>\n

Currently, a group of volunteers known as the Annie Lytle Preservation Group<\/a> works to keep the property presentable should it be sold to a developer. They also work to keep out vandals. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe come here and try to get all the trash out. We removed the ceiling that was falling over the auditorium. We painted over all the graffiti. We\u2019ve secured the fence,\u201d said volunteer Brett Nolan.<\/p>\n

Still, every year, despite signs that say private property and signs that warn people to keep out, teenagers and young adults continue to try and sneak into the school because they believe the horror stories. <\/p>\n

\u201cNone of those stories is true. It is just absolutely folklore. The only thing scary in this building is the amount of damage that people have done to it over the years,\u201d said Nolan, who was referring to vandals who have spraypainted the walls and caused other kinds of damage. <\/p>\n

Halloween nights are notorious for legend tripping at the abandoned school, which is why Annie Lytle Preservation Group works with JSO to ensure trespassers are not only arrested but also convicted. <\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Nestled within the Brooklyn neighborhood of Jacksonville, next to the I-95 overpass, is a building…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":325952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[57902,5229,162449,1121,3188,723,17810,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-325951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-4-your-neighborhood","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-annie-lytle-elementary","11":"tag-brooklyn","12":"tag-fl","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-halloween","15":"tag-jacksonville","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115422407293701561","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}