A local legend centers on a vast, uncanny palace whose rumored hauntings shape public talk and the strolls along the city promenade. The narrative juxtaposes lively descriptions of urban manners and feminine society with the superstition and curiosity that attend the building. It reconstructs competing accounts of the palace’s origin, involving a wealthy, learned patron associated with occult studies, and shows how gossip, fear, and pragmatic explanations interweave. The work meditates on the boundary between imagination and reason, the endurance of folklore, and the social texture of a small city as revealed through habit, rumor, and the built environment.