Arsgan House Mystery?

Question

I stumbled upon this beautiful chalet, Arsgan House, while hiking near Playa del Carmen. The architecture was stunning, unlike anything I'd seen in the Yucatan peninsula. It was totally abandoned, though. Windows boarded up, overgrown vines everywhere... Creepy, but also fascinating. I found an old, leather-bound journal inside a broken window, a few pages were readable, hinting at a story of lost love and maybe... something more sinister. The writing stopped abruptly. What happened at Arsgan House?

dorotheawenzel · Answer

honestly that place has been a local legend for years. i grew up in Playa and my tio used to tell us kids to stay away from the road out past Xcalacoco, said the owner was some German guy who built it in the 70s and then just vanished. the vines you saw are probably the bougainvillea that swallowed the whole front wall.

i poked around there once in like 2016 and found the same kind of stuff, old furniture, a piano that was somehow still in one piece. word is the city owns the land now but nobody wants to deal with the paperwork or the squatters. if u go back bring a flashlight and watch for scorpions in the dry leaves.

jessicaklotz · Answer

That stretch of road past Xcalacoco has a name locals barely use anymore, it shows up on old maps as the camino a los cenotes, which is a clue in itself. If the journal mentioned anything about water or drowning, that would line up with the cenote on the south edge of the lot, there was a drowning there in the late 80s that got a couple lines in the Por Esto and then never came up again. The family angle is worth chasing but I'd start with the Registro Público in Cancun rather than Playa, property records for that corridor got centralized there in the 90s and you can request a certificado de libertad de gravamen for a small fee. As for the house itself, it was never a chalet in the Swiss sense, it was a copy of a Bavarian hunting lodge, the giveaways are the steep pitch and the corner posts.

christl · Answer

I've walked that stretch past Xcalacoco a few times and the chalet is a weird sight, Alpine timber style sitting in straight jungle. What most people don't know is the property line runs right up against a cenote on the south side, which is probably why nobody ever finished the paperwork, you can't get a clean title when part of the lot is a protected sinkhole. The journal you found might connect to the family that ran a small hotel downtown in the 80s, there are photos of them at the Casa de la Cultura archive on Avenida Yaxchilan if you want to dig. Bring a local guide if you go back, the caretaker situation out there changes by the month.

babsi · Answer

The German connection tracks with what I've heard, though the version going around Solidaridad is that he was Dutch and the house was built as a kind of artist retreat that never got permits. That would explain why the city sat on it for so long, the land is tangled up in some old ejido dispute and nobody wants to touch the title. If you want the real story, ask around the Sunday market in Playa, the older vendors remember the family that used to drive out there in a green VW bus.

cathleenecker · Answer

not sure who started the Bavarian lodge thing but the plans were actually lifted from a place in Austria, the owner's brother was an architect in Graz and mailed him the blueprints. my abuela cleaned houses in Playa back then and did a few months at Arsgan in like 1983, she said there was a woman living there who never came outside, played piano at night. then one day the family was just gone and nobody asked questions because half the staff were paid under the table. if you still have that journal the handwriting might be hers, she was supposedly from Oaxaca.

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