"All's Fair In Love And Science"

Information given in The Lost Experience game last summer led players to believe that Alvar Hanso may have lost a loved one, possibly a wife and/or the mother of his daughter Rachel, to a mental or physical illness. This loss was also hinted at having inspired his interest in a lifelong scientific quest for solving the health issues of the world, in lieu of not being able to help his wife. Eventually Hanso created a complex corporation led by a core mission to advance all aspects of research, in every scientific discipline imaginable.

But long before Hanso’s ambitious project began, a humble Latvian man named Ed Leedskalnin was also motivated to accomplishing amazing works, due to the loss of his only love, a girl named Agnes Scuffs, whom Ed called his “Sweet Sixteen.” Not-so-sweet Agnes cancelled their wedding the day before, and left Ed forever pining for his lost love. So what did Ed do to express his love for Agnes? Like any other man, he made monolithic statues and structures for his true love with multi-ton blocks of coral, all by himself, and with no visible means of conventional mechanical equipment, of course!

The amazing works that Ed accomplished, are known as the Coral Castle site, in Florida. It is an outdoor structure comprised of living areas of a sort, including stargazing apparatus, fountains, pools, and Flintstone type furniture. All are made out of the huge blocks of coral, that in some cases defy gravity in their movement and agility. And which in all cases defy logic as to how Mr. Leedskalnin, a sickly 5 foot tall 100 pound man, manipulated and moved these monolithic boulders into the sensual sculptures that make up his Coral Castle.

To make the strange story even stranger, not only did Ed build the Coral Castle alone, he then moved it 10 miles away to its current location, with no visible equipment to onlookers but a large trailer! He loaded the trailer in secret at night, a driver hauled it to its new home during the day, and again Ed moved the sculptures off the trailer at night. No one saw Ed arranging any equipment for picking up and loading the sculptures, and no one saw any tools for unloading at their destination. Needless to say, theories and speculation abound since then but none have discovered how Ed defied gravity and moved the heavy pieces. Nor has it been discovered how he managed to balance many of them, such as the main gate, with a pinpoint accuracy allowing the coral tonnage to swivel freely with only a gentle nudge. After years of wear, some repair has been necessary, but the engineering adjustments made have not been able to duplicate the delicate balance that Ed originally built into the moving boulders.

How did a man with only a 4th grade education, use and manipulate the laws of physics and gravity to accomplish such Herculean tasks?! Today we have only a few of his notes and published pamphlets, and a strange pulley-like contraption in one of his towers, to give us any hints at his creative process. Did Ed accidentally stumble across one of the greatest discoveries in the history of man? Did the power of love give his psyche the extraordinary ability to contemplate and surmise the power structure of the starry universe that he also loved? Or was this man with little formal education somehow schooled in the secrets of the Cosmos? Secrets that also seem to be in play on the Island where Alvar Hanso set up his Dharma Initiative, that are accessed by the mysterious original Island inhabitants, and anyone else that the Island might deem worthy.

http://www.coralcastle.com/