ROSEWOOD Site — Cedar Key, Florida Status: Operating · Access: Open to public Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/rosewood-cedar-key-florida/ January 1923—the town erased from the map. A site in Cedar Key, Florida, Rosewood is filed here for what the record attaches to it. January 1923—the town erased from the map. HauntHunt files it with destroyed settlements, dark history and massacres. The presences in its file go unnamed: the rosewood dead, the record says. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend and 2 documented facts, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors. On January 1, 1923, in the sawmill hamlet of Sumner, Florida, a white woman named Fannie Taylor told her neighbors a Black man had assaulted her in her home. Within the week that followed, white mobs had killed the residents they could catch, burned the Black town of Rosewood to its foundations, and driven the survivors into the swamps — ending a community of roughly 120 people so completely that the state spent the next seventy years not talking about it. There is no haunted-house file here. There is a documented atrocity, a silence, and the kind of presence report that attaches to ground where the record says something happened that was never answered for. THE DOCUMENTED RECORD Rosewood was a mostly Black Levy County settlement on the Seaboard Air Line railroad. After Taylor's allegation — later investigation suggested she may have been struck by a white lover — mobs converged on the town. Sarah and Sylvester Carrier were killed in the defense of the Carrier house, with two white attackers killed on its porch; Lexie Gordon was shot; James Carrier, who escaped the shoot-out, was murdered by white men who believed he had information. Residents hid in the swamps until a train evacuated them to Gainesville on January 6; the next day between 100 and 150 white men returned and burned what remained. A Levy County grand jury convened a month later and returned no indictments. The official toll stands at six Black and two white dead; survivor testimony has long claimed twenty-seven or more, including a mass grave one witness recalled being covered by a plow brought from Cedar Key. Only one structure survived the burning — a white resident's house — and it is the only structure standing at Rosewood today. WHAT WAS FILED LATER The town's second history began in the early 1980s, when journalists found the survivors and the story re-entered the record. In 1993 the Florida Legislature commissioned a scholarly report — historians from Florida State, Florida A&M and the University of Florida — and in 1994 Governor Chiles signed House Bill 591, compensating survivors and descendants for property and suffering. John Singleton's 1997 film made Rosewood a national reference point; in 2004 the state marked the site a Florida Heritage Landmark. What witnesses report at the site is spare and collective: presences felt, the dead 'remembered' in the way places are said to remember. No named apparition has ever been filed — the lore stays communal, matching a crime that was communal. THE SITE TODAY What stands at Rosewood now is a Florida Heritage Landmark marker, dedicated in 2004 with survivor Robie Allenetta Mortin in attendance, and the single surviving house — John Wright's general store and home, the refuge where residents hid during the burning. The 1994 compensation law, HB 591, was the first of its kind in the nation for racial violence; the scholarship fund it created still carries descendants' names. The reports filed at the site — presences, unease, the dead remembered — are unverifiable in the usual sense, and in this dossier the usual sense hardly matters. The record already documented what happened; the lore only measures how badly the place wants to remember it. WHAT REMAINS Rosewood's file is the archive's quietest kind: the haunting is the history itself, the reports a thin layer over a documented week that a grand jury declined to answer. The town that was erased in 1923 exists now as a marker, a lawn where houses stood, and a compensation fund — and whatever the visitors say they feel where the town used to be. FILED CLAIMS — 2 on record, reported not verified · [Documented legend] named ghost legend: The dead are reportedly remembered. The accounts name only a collective — the Rosewood dead. The site in Cedar Key, Florida gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. The report is preserved in sources like 'Rosewood'. The name travels further than the proof; the sightings keep renewing the lease. source: Rosewood (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre) · [Anecdotal] apparition: Reported a presence at the site. The site in Cedar Key, Florida gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. It's anecdotal evidence in the strictest sense — stories, repeated, unresolved. 'Rosewood' carries the account. It is the sighting the place is known for, and it hasn't stopped. source: Rosewood (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre) HISTORY — 2 documented facts · White mobs attacked the community during January 1–7, 1923, killing residents and driving survivors away. Florida enacted compensation legislation in 1994. Rosewood's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. Sources including 'Rosewood, Florida' carry the record. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry. · The January 1923 massacre is documented. Rosewood's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. 'Rosewood' documents the entry. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry. The reports keep the address on the map. SOURCES — 2 cited · Rosewood, Florida — Florida Division of Historical Resources https://markers.flheritage.com/home/details/453 · Rosewood — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre — HauntHunt is a research archive. Claims are filed as reported — documented where sources exist, marked as folklore or unverified where they do not. Methodology: https://haunthunt.com/methodology/ · Corrections: https://haunthunt.com/report/