Originally Published Oct. 30, 1999
STEVE NEWBORN
of The Tampa Tribune
HIGHLAND PARK - Walk through the creaking iron gates and face a pair of giant stone bulldogs that glare at anyone approaching the hulking home.
To your left and right are a mosaic of saints. High above is the “turret” of this castle, lurking on a grassy knoll over the tidy hamlet of Highland Park.
Inside is an apparition that may come from a place far beyond the reach of our mortal senses.
This is no ordinary Halloween story. Jean Louwsma’s house may truly be haunted by benign spirits.
To Louwsma, the angels in her home are as real as she is.
“Sometimes I’ll turn the upstairs lights off, and come up the drive and the light will be on,” she said. “It’s just amazing. You get to be so used to it.”
But others are not as comfortable with her haunted home.
“None of my relatives except my sister will stay here with me,” she said, “and none of them will stay here alone. My sister said she hears doors open and shut.”
What Louwsma believes inhabits her home is the spirit of one of the original owners. Irwin Yarnell built this 36-room coquina stone home in 1923 for the unheard of price then of $1.5 million. He named it La Casa de Josefina after his wife. Her name still announces itself to visitors entering through the old stone archways.
Yarnell was a real estate mogul who built the village of Highland Park in the 1920s, said Lyn Reynolds, an Indianapolis woman who wrote an article on La Casa’s 75th anniversary last year for the Lake Wales News, a local newspaper.
Reynolds is currently writing a novel inspired by Yarnell’s life and the tales of La Casa Josefina.
According to her research, Yarnell and his family lived a lavish lifestyle through the late 1920s.
He hosted grand parties at his home. Well-known figures such as Thomas Edison were known to visit.
But by the Great Depression of 1929, his fortune changed. He lost his money and later that year lost his daughter, Virginia, who died suddenly.
His wife, Josephine, lived in the home for 31 years after Yarnell died of a heart problem in 1936, Reynolds said. She said Josephine - who was used to a life of leisure with bevies of servants attending her every need - was suddenly forced to fend for herself.
Josephine Yarnell’s attachment to the home may be what’s keeping her spirit there, she said.
Reynolds said she has seen the ghost of Josephine, but “I just didn’t realize it at the time.”
One day, while visiting many years ago, she was upstairs in the turret, or bell tower, peering in a window when she noticed a reflection of a woman standing behind her. When Reynolds turned around, not a soul was there. She didn’t know who it was until weeks later, when Louwsma showed her a scrapbook about the house that had Josephine’s picture.
Louwsma believes Josephine isn’t the only spirit. Yarnell also had a son, Irwin Jr., who died at a young age in an airplane crash.
“I believe I didn’t come here to harm it, I came here to do good,” she said. “I’ve never been afraid.”
“It’s almost like a protector to me,” said Louwsma. “I really think we have guardian angels. Love can conquer all.”
Louwsma, 67, and her husband Lou, 66, bought the decrepit mansion in 1981, seven years after they spotted a For Sale sign. The old place had remained vacant for a generation - buyers were scared off once they heard the stories of its hauntings.
“I heard rumors right away,” she said. “I heard from the real estate man, he said “You’re crazy, you’ll never want to live there.’ “
Even friends told her about strange tales of doors opening and closing. And she got a letter from a man in Cincinnati one time who said he had been in the house and saw a person materialize at the top of the stairs.
It took the Louwsmas four years to get the old place to look like a home again, decorating each room in period details, complete with mannequins and angels. Strangely, Louwsma said she bought several pieces of La Casa de Josefina’s original furniture, found as far away as Atlanta.
Another time, she was led by circumstance to the original screen door emblazoned with a “Y,” rusting away in a junkyard not far from her home. It was restored and once again graces the front entrance.
“I don’t even look for it [the furniture],” she said. “It kind of finds its way back.”
The couple’s days in the old mansion may be numbered, because Lou Louwsma is suffering from liver cancer. But Louwsma said she’s got time left yet with her guardian angels.
“I’ve already turned away people who wanted to buy it. I tell them they’re not the right people to live here,” Louwsma said. “Maybe I’m destined to stay here the rest of my life.”
Originally Published Oct. 31, 1991
JOHN LESTER
Tribune Staff Writer
BROOKSVILLE - Everyone in every city has a favorite story about someplace that is stalked by the souls of crippled children, wailing women or mangled men.
There’s supposed to be a ghost on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. An old projectionist still stalks the Tampa Theatre. Museum visitors in Brooksville tell stories of hearing a child crying.
Brooksville seems to have a scary story about every old house in town - the ones that have not been turned into law offices.
Most - if not all - of the stories about haunted houses are, of course, unfounded. But the tales are passed on and on, enhanced each time they are told.
Halloween is the day that haunted houses are the most haunted, the day that spooky stories are most spooky. It’s the one day when ghosts can roam at will, appearing in windows, scraping at ceilings and making all sorts of things move or fly across the room.
If there are indeed such things as spooks, spirits, apparitions, ghosts and ghouls, this is the day they will come out to play.
In the old Weeks House on the corner of Lemon and West Fort Dade avenues in Brooksville, the annual stories of goblins running rampant have risen again.
The scarred, yellow building has been vacant for more than 10 years and sold five times since 1978. The floors are rotten, the walls are falling and the broken weather vane on the roof completes the image of a house perfect for haunting.
The current owner lives in Maine, and family members who have lived in the house say they have warm memories of the place.
But local lore has it instead stalked by the undead. Some say there’s a woman who stands in the front window. Others say they have heard noises and seen figures through the cloudy windows.
“We had always heard my grandmother’s house was haunted,” said Lin Brightly, the now-grown granddaughter of Jim and Ava Weeks. “I think it has to do with a big old house that you can hear the wind through.”
She discards the rumors of haunts but, if so, she is sure the spirits are not evil.
“It was just a warm and wonderful place,” she said. “I would think the spirits would like a good place.”
Her father, Howard Weeks, said the rumors started when vagrants passing through town stopped at the vacant building for a place to stay. They often brought candles and residents were spooked by a flickering in the window.
Down the street from the old Weeks House is the Heritage Museum, another ominous building. Visitors to the museum always ask about the young girl who died there in the 1800s and can still be heard crying for her mother.
Such tales of terror are not confined to old towns such as Brooksville. Just about any place that looks spooky is bound to be “haunted.”
The ghost of projectionist Foster “Fink” Finley has been reported to be still making his rounds through the Tampa Theatre. Legend says he died in 1965 and decided to remain in the building where he spent much of his life working.
One of the favorite ghosts in Pinellas County has not been seen for years, but today is sure to bring out the tales again.
The Skyway Hitchhiker is a girl with long, blonde hair who used to stand near the entrance to the old Sunshine Skyway Bridge, thumbing for rides. People would stop and let her in the back seat and then when they turned around to ask her where to let her out, she was gone.
Or so the story goes.
Originally Published Oct. 31, 1994
DIRK LAMMERS
Tribune Staff Writer
TAMPA - An actress from the 1930s floats through the Falk Theatre, searching for a lost love.
Shadowy figures, creaking staircases, strange noises and babies’ cries haunt the Biglow-Helms mansion during its 86-year history.
A fleet of approaching ships in Hillsborough Bay vanishes before the bewildered eyes of an 1800s army colonel and his entire camp.
These tales are among a handful of ghost stories attached to some of Tampa’s historic landmarks.
The scarcity of lurid local legends, says professor William Heim, can be attributed to the city’s relatively brief history.
In W.K. MacNeal’s recent book, “Ghost Stories from the American South,” Florida boasts just a listing in Miami and one in Tavares.
“We don’t have the sequence of generations that leads to legend and folklore,” says Heim, an associate professor of English at the University of South Florida whose specialty is the history of Western holidays. “In England, it’s hard to find a square foot of land that doesn’t have a ghost story attached to it.”
But while the stories may not be well-known, they are out there, says Flora Zbar, a USF associate English professor and expert on classical origins of modern beliefs.
Zbar often gets calls, usually from residents of private homes and apartments, about strange occurrences.
“People don’t like to talk about this sort of thing,” she said. “Just about everybody is interested, but few want to admit to an interest or a belief.”
Bessie’s love
It’s a late night in the late ‘70s and Rosemary Orlando is the last to leave the University of Tampa’s Falk Theatre. The director of the Alice People theater group was often the last to lock up and head home after a night of intense rehearsals or emotional performances.
Orlando says she was never alone.
A lost soul desperately searching for her lost love floats throughout the theater. It’s a coldness, an unexplainable yet non-threatening presence Orlando feels. It’s “Bessie Snavely.”
Years later, theater and speech professor Gary Luter is in the Falk Theatre, just before dawn.
As he checks backstage lighting, a clamorous rhythmic beat diverts his attention to the third floor. He looks up the four-story staircases and sees the doors of an unused dressing room slamming open and closed in rapid succession.
“I thought someone had been up there,” Luter recalls.
It’s Bessie’s old dressing room. He calls campus security, but nothing is there. Must be Bessie.
The legend of Bessie Snavely dates back to the 1930s, when the former Park Theater, built as a vaudeville house, was a home to touring companies.
Snavely, an actress, reportedly grew frustrated about an unrequited love she had for a theater “techie” and hanged herself in the third floor dressing room.
A plaque bearing her name adorned her dressing room door for years until someone stole it. Her room sat unused and avoided, especially by techies responsible for backstage lighting, sound, set design - and Bessie’s sorrow.
“Nobody really liked to go up to her dressing room,” says Orlando, now artistic director of the Warehouse Theater in the Channel District. “It
was always kind of cold.”
Some psychics believe a spirit of a person who dies a sudden, violent death will stick around the location of the killing, Zbar says.
In these cases, the spirit, which often does not know how to get beyond this state, is stuck between two worlds not knowing that time has passed, the theory suggests.
Theaters are a popular locale for ghost stories. A spirit of Foster “Fink” Finley, an old projectionist, is believed to have stuck around Tampa Theatre after his 1965 death.
Biglow-Helms House
If only the walls could speak.
The ones of the stately Biglow-Helms House would no doubt orate the diverse history of a gray stone mansion that has served as a family home, a hospital, an artists’ studio and an office complex.
If those walls have maintained their silence, folklore suggests that some entity or entities have been trying to keep alive some of the mansion’s historic past.
Silas Leland Biglow, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native who moved to Tampa in 1884 and became an original city councilman, built the mansion at Gandy and Bayshore boulevards in 1908 as a family home.
When Biglow died inside the house in 1917, his widow, Mattie, sold the 10,000-square-foot house to Tampa physician John Sullivan Helms.
But some believe Biglow’s spirit never left, sticking around with the house he built for his family. Stories passed through the generations say that some may have seen Biglow’s ghost inside the majestic mansion, says his great-great-granddaughter, Kirsten Love, 28.
When Helms took over the home, he converted it into Bayside Hospital, the first private hospital on Florida’s West Coast. The building remained a hospital until 1927.
Like theaters, hospitals experience a variety of emotions such as grief, worry, terror and joy. The energy generated by those emotions over the years often manifests as echoes of the past, Zbar says.
Some claim baby’s cries could be heard throughout Biglow mansion after it served as Bayside Hospital. Others reported unknown figures that seemed to loom around the estate.
“They have a feeling of being watched,” Zbar says.
In 1927, the mansion again became a private home. Portrait artist Jack Wilson lived and worked in the home until his death in 1965. The house sat abandoned for more than two decades as several owners pondered over bold yet unfulfilled plans for its future.
The vacant estate became an eyesore in the affluent Bayshore neighborhood and for years the building was a favorite target of vandals. The mansion’s walls were covered with graffiti and satanic symbols, and developers found candle wax and blood on the walls - signs of satanic rituals.
In 1988, a Swiss family bought the mansion and designated it a landmark. Uneasy with its past and recent graffiti, developers had a priest bless the structure prior to ground breaking.
Workers lifted the 500-ton mansion off its base, moved it to the front of the 1.9 acre lot and built 24 luxury apartments behind it. The mansion, called the Biglow-Helms House, now serves as a rental hall, a catering facility and offices.
The spirits have reportedly been quiet.
The mirage?
Old Fort Brooke, now the site of a downtown parking garage of the same name, is the setting for what may be Tampa’s oldest recorded ghost story. Army officer George A. McCall tells the tale in a letter to his father, dated March 28, 1823.
Col. George Brooke and his officers were stationed at the head of Hillsborough Bay when a fleet of distant but slowly approaching vessels emerged from the mist.
As the image intensified into a discernible view of five ships, Brooke surmised that Gen. Scott was visiting as part of his inspection tour of the Southern states.
The commander quickly ordered his soldiers to shave, don full uniforms and be ready in a half hour to give the general a cordial welcome.
“Where are the vessels?” one officer suddenly yelled.
Puzzled soldiers rubbed their eyes as the ships vanished from the bewildered gaze of Brooke and the entire camp.
As the camp later pondered what had happened, McCall offered a scientific interpretation.
The ships were a mirage of five approaching sandhill cranes, which appeared larger through the mist. As they saw McCall standing with his double-barrel gun, the birds, looking like ships, flew off in unison.
McCall wrote that Col. Brooke agreed with his theory of the phenomenon. Not all the soldiers followed suit.
“There were many who talked much of the spirits of a ship’s crew reported to have been murdered by pirates off the mouth of the bay not long before,” he wrote.
Originally published Oct. 31, 1995
JENNIFER BARRS
Tribune Staff Writer
TAMPA - Florida is full of ghosts.
At least that’s easy to think, listening to tale after tale of ghostly apparitions and historic hauntings in the Sunshine State.
The Tampa Bay area seems particularly busy and no wonder. There are old theaters, old homes, old Indian burial grounds - and a population that apparently cherishes its spooky folklore as much as its natural vegetation.
Here are a few of the more famous tales. Just in time for Halloween.
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A HOTEL’S HAUNTING ROMANCE: Don CeSar and Maritana are characters in Vincent Wallace’s light opera “Maritana.” But they also are cast in the Bay area’s most engaging ghostly drama, a tale that begins more than 100 years ago.
Glynna Hanchette, a former employee of the Don CeSar Beach Resort on St. Pete Beach, has interviewed dozens of people, devoting years to the study of this romantic legend. She has written a book on the subject, as yet unpublished but titled “The Man in the Panama Hat.”
She speaks of it with reverence, delighting in the details of a love story that - through popular legend and periodic updates - lives on.
The story begins in the late 1890s with a young Thomas Rowe, who was finishing his education in England when he met a young woman named Lucinda. She was a dark-haired Spanish beauty whose immense vocal gift had helped her earn the title role in Wallace’s opera.
The pair fell deeply in love, and they expressed their passion with pet names - she was the opera’s heroine, Maritana, and he was its hero, Don CeSar.
Lucinda’s parents did not approve of the union, Hanchette says, so the pair met in secret, often near an elaborate stone fountain. Their conversations often centered on the grand hotel Rowe planned to build, a so-called castle by the sea.
Ultimately, Lucinda’s parents prevailed. The couple did not share the same religious faith; moreover, Lucinda’s parents expected their daughter to have a long and illustrious career.
Rowe was sent packing.
Letter after letter was returned to the jilted American unopened. About two years after their meeting, Rowe learned that Lucinda had died - and she had written him a deathbed love letter. In part, it read:
“Tom, my beloved Don CeSar ... This life is only an intermediate. I leave it without regret and travel to a place where the swing of the pendulum does not bring pain.
“Time is infinite. I wait for you by our fountain ... to share our timeless love. ... Forever, Maritana.”
Though little is known about his private life, Rowe eventually married. He moved to St. Petersburg in the early 1920s, and by 1928, he had opened the Don CeSar Hotel - an elegant testimony to lost love.
The architecture was Moorish, like buildings in southern Europe. The interior was dominated by a courtyard. And the courtyard was dominated by a fountain, reportedly, a reproduction of the lovers’ London retreat.
Hanchette says Rowe lived in the hotel and was often among the guests, circling the fifth-floor dining room and the ground-floor lobby.
Rowe died in 1940 and a year later, the hotel was turned over to the military. The Veterans Administration moved its offices there in 1945 and for the next 20 years, the building was renovated over and over - the lobby courtyard enclosed, the fountain destroyed. In the late 1960s, a Save the Don committee helped resurrect the hotel and it reopened in November 1973.
It was in the early 1970s, during the hotel’s renovation, that stories of Rowe’s ghostly return were heralded. Hanchette says workers reported seeing a thin, older man in an old-fashioned suit walk around the construction site - and assumed it was the manager or owner of the hotel. It wasn’t. In fact, Hanchette says, the Don CeSar’s new management did not appreciate the ghost stories nor encourage them.
They have continued, nonetheless.
During her 14-year tenure at the Don CeSar in public relations and promotions, Hanchette learned of many encounters with Rowe’s ghost.
Reportedly, he was seen in the lobby, in the dining room, in the elevator - and then he would disappear into a crowd. He would ask guests questions such as, “Are you enjoying your stay?” or “Did you enjoy your dinner?”
Other guests reported seeing a young man and woman - he in vintage clothing, she in elaborate theatrical costume - walking hand in hand along the beach and in the hotel.
Hanchette says crews from Southern Bride and Conde Nast Traveler magazines encountered Rowe during their stays in the early 1990s. Both were using the hotel as a backdrop for photographic layouts.
An editor with Southern Bride, Hanchette says, encountered Rowe in her suite and he warned her not to take a certain photograph in a certain site. The next day, a huge black crow interfered with the photo shoot, allegedly at the very spot Rowe had mentioned.
“I think that it is very possible that ghosts exists,” Hanchette says, “and you must remember that when he was alive, Mr. Rowe never realized his dream.
“So if there is such a thing as a ghost, Rowe is there at the hotel, looking it over, being a caretaker and enjoying it the way he wished he could in his lifetime.”
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TALES OF TAMPA THEATRE: Thirty years since his death, Foster “Fink” Finley is still working at the Tampa Theatre - in a “floating” post that seems to have few requirements.
Fink was once the movie theater’s projectionist and now some believe he is its ghost, roaming the ornate, velvety confines of the 69-year-old dwelling in downtown Tampa. He may not be the only poltergeist, though. Employees and visitors still report ghostly activity, this from a former custodian.
The stories are told by Tara Schoeder, the theater’s public relations manager, who finds them fascinating and in keeping with the art, the style and the creativity one assigns to such surroundings.
“A historic theater, by its nature, seems to generate good spirits and good vibes,” Schoeder says. “Not to sound like a ‘60s reject, but I think that kind of thing lingers.”
What lingers in the minds of the chosen few are encounters with Fink, which usually occur in the projectionist’s booth. The projectionist or visitor will be alone in the room, Schoeder says, and a large door on the west side of the booth will open. This heavy door, the only portal to the building’s generators, normally remains closed. But person after person has reported seeing the door open and a fleeting figure emerge - then disappear quickly.
Immediately after Fink’s death in 1965, Schoeder says, patrons reported seeing an apparition float across the screen while a film was being shown.
The ghost roll call appears to be growing. Several theater workers, including Schoeder, have heard keys rattling throughout the building during the last few months. They assume it is a former custodian who, like Fink, was a dedicated employee.
In one instance, a Tampa Theatre worker came in early and standing in the vacant lobby, heard keys rattling on the mezzanine. He called out, expecting to hear a custodian respond. No response. He walked upstairs to investigate, still hearing the keys but seeing nothing. The employee, who Schoeder says “would like to believe in ghosts but needs proof,” was convinced he had encountered a poltergeist.
Schoeder, too, is convinced. A few months ago, she accompanied parapsychologist Andrew Nichols through the theater. Nichols, with Florida’s Center for Paranormal Activity in Silver Springs, was searching for clues with a tri-field meter, a device that detects electromagnetic waves. Within minutes, the meter was humming.
The waves were the type commonly associated with ghost phenomenon, Nichols explains. Schoeder says the machine “went nuts. It’s all part of the theater’s mystery.”
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THE GHOSTLY BROOKSVILLE BOUNTY: There is nothing to look up - the old Hernando County Courthouse went up in flames during the 1870s, taking with it records that could possibly confirm the legend.
Were the children of Frank and Marena Saxon buried in the front yard of the house now known as the Stringer House? And if so, is that why the young girl Jessie May haunts the house, railing at those who trample on graves?
Jessie May died in 1872, but the story that surrounds her and the house in which she was born are stuff of Brooksville legend. The Stringer House at May Avenue and Jefferson Street is now the four-story, 12-room Heritage Museum. It is operated by the Hernando Historical Museum Association.
Virginia Jackson is the museum’s director and she is downright disturbed that the poltergeist has not made its presence known to her.
“I spend more time here than anyone else. It’s my home away from home,” Jackson says, laughing. “I sure wish she would talk to me.”
The words she refers to aren’t really conversations at all. Numerous visitors to the home say they have had encounters with the ghost, including museum board members who prefer to remain anonymous - at least on this subject.
Nonetheless, they all report a similar experience. They are alone in the house when suddenly they hear a female child crying. In a voice full of longing, she says, “Mama, Mama.”
According to her research, Jackson says four people died in the house, which was built around 1855 by John May. First, May died; then his widow, Marena, married John Saxon and had a son, who died in childbirth. In 1869, Marena died while giving birth to Jessie May, who lived only three years.
The stories surrounding Jessie May are well-known - that she was so grief-stricken by her mother’s death, she roamed the house crying. People assume Jessie May died of a broken heart.
They also assume that any time anything odd happens in the Stringer House, it is Jessie May’s doing, Jackson says. When small items are in one room and the next morning they are in another - Jessie has moved them. When lights come back on after museum workers turn them off - Jessie is responsible. When the burglar alarm goes off for no apparent reason - Jessie has turned it on.
Jackson says the Stringer House isn’t the only supposed haunted spot in Brooksville.
Locals have reported seeing a ghostly female figure standing in the front window of the Weeks House, now undergoing renovation by a private owner. The Chinsegut Mansion situated on Chinsegut Hill - the highest in Hernando County - also is rumored to be haunted. Same for the Scarborough House and the Fireside Inn restaurant, where customers claim to have seen the late Jean Truitt, a descendant of the old Hernando County clan, occupy a secluded back booth.
“I just think you hear about the hauntings ... because so many people died in houses back then,” Jackson says. “To this day, you can walk in certain places and feel a presence.”
Ghost stories and ghastly legends that haunt West Central Florida include:
* Falk Theatre at the University of Tampa - Bessie Snavely, an actor in the 1930s, hanged herself in a third-floor dressing room of the theater after being jilted by a lover. Today, people who use the theater report all kinds of activity there - rapid pounding coming from the deserted third floor, dressing-room doors that open and close in rapid succession, a cold temperature in the place where Snavely died.
* Oaklawn Cemetery in Tampa - Tampa’s oldest burial ground is more than just a vandal’s playground. Nighttime visitors to the cemetery at Morgan and Laurel streets have reported seeing glowing lights; others are spooked by the large number of bats.
* Biglow-Helms House in Tampa - Silas Leland Biglow, a Brooklyn native who moved to Tampa in 1884 and was a founding city council member, built the house in 1908 at Bayshore and Gandy boulevards. He died there nine years later but apparently never left. Visitors to the estate - which has been a residence, an artist’s studio, a hospital and a catering hall - claim to have seen the patriarch’s ghost. (Today the house is used primarily as office space.) Visitors says they have encountered other ghostly figures as well, and heard babies cry.
* Ships in Tampa Bay - Tampa’s oldest ghost story involves an Army troop stationed at Fort Brooke during the early 1800s. Officers reported seeing a fleet of ships in the bay and, believing it was a surprise visit from Southern military headquarters, the soldiers began to prepare for an inspection. A second scan of the horizon showed nothing, however, and the soldiers came to believe it was a mirage created by an approaching flock of sandhill cranes. Others weren’t so sure. They claimed it was a ghostly ship’s crew, murdered by pirates patrolling the bay.
* The Skyway hitchhiker - No sightings of this apparition have been recorded since the phosphate carrier Summit Venture crashed into the Sunshine Skyway bridge in 1980. Reportedly, a young female hitchhiker with blond hair was often picked up by drivers near the bridge. She would get in the back seat and then, when drivers asked her destination, she would disappear.
* St. Petersburg High School - No one knows why or where the ghosts originated. But many staff members say they’ve seen a strange thing or two in the three-story Bell Building: test papers floating to the ceiling, an empty chair rocking in the dean’s office, a face “with no recognizable features” peering around a door. All sightings are preceded by the slight scent of perfume.
* Trestle at Fish Hawk Creek - Some 100 years ago, a man named John died at this site near Brandon after being thrown from his horse into the creek. When his lover, Martha, found his body, she reportedly was so despondent she took her own life. Visitors have claimed to see Martha’s ghost here.
* Spook Hill in Lakes Wales - Now a tourist attraction, Spook Hill is the setting for a strange gravitational phenomenon - vehicles appear to roll uphill instead of down (if only by a few centimeters). Some consider this an optical illusion because of the angle of the road compared to a nearby hill. Others cling to the legend that a proud Seminole Indian chief is still protecting the land from intruders.
* Ghost Island - A headless ghost is said to roam this island on the west side of the St. Martin’s River, near Homosassa. According to legend, a ship filled with gold was caught in a hurricane during the early 1800s. Crew members jumped ship with the bounty and made their way to the island. However, they fought over the treasure and the captain murdered the first mate, cutting his head off with a machete. Hence, the headless ghost.
Originally Published Oct. 28, 2006
By JANIS D. FROELICH
The Tampa Tribune
From the description Maureen Patrick offered about her handkerchief, it was obvious she’s a precise person.
As the president of the Tampa Historical Society stood in the center of Oaklawn Cemetery, she lifted her wrist to swish a square of Irish linen.
“The border is black thread, hem-stitched,” she said.
The historian is used to talking in such detail. But she also enjoys a little mischief in her job.
For the past five years, Patrick has led tours of Tampa’s oldest burial ground. Oaklawn, at the edge of downtown between Morgan and Harrison streets, was established in the 1850s.
Portraying the mid-19th century character Miss Prudence Fipwhistle, Patrick will dress in head-to-toe black mourning lace for the one-hour Halloween tour, Gothic Graveyard Walk, at 3 p.m. Sunday.
Although the tour group will view graves among moss-draped oaks, the excursion will be neither spooky nor silly judging by Patrick’s serious research.
“People are looking for something in graves - whether it’s a link to their heritage or a scholarly pursuit,” said Patrick, whose factual tales are marked with reverence for the dead.
Forget about looking for ghosts among the tombstones at Oaklawn, she said. Psychics and others interested in the afterlife have found no evidence of a lively departed.
“The dead are quite comfortable here,” said Patrick, as she picked up her long skirt to walk among the headstones and wrought-iron gates.
A Tampa native, Patrick is well-versed in the stories behind the more than 1,500 graves at Oaklawn. She has a master’s in humanities from the University of South Florida, was curator at the Ybor City Museum and contributes to the H. B. Plant Museum living history project.
“The graves speak for themselves,” she said, standing beside the small tombstones of George M. Buckley, hanged Dec. 16, 1859, and George W. Goodwin, murdered Aug. 24, 1859.
Thirteen mayors are buried at Oaklawn, including the city’s first, Judge Joseph B. Lancaster, who died in 1856 and commands a prominent spot.
Patrick said 10 percent of those buried at Oaklawn are children. The deceased also include slaves, servants, Confederate soldiers and working-class families killed by such diseases as yellow fever.
Patrick also conducts tours in Ybor City, where she said there are haunted locations - or at least colorful stories hinting at that. She began those tours seven years ago.
As for the cemetery locale, Patrick was spending lots of time at Oaklawn trying to painstakingly decipher the inscriptions and grave artwork when she was asked frequently by friends and Tampa history buffs to set up a tour.
Patrick said the Tampa Bay area has done a poor job marketing its past.
“The tourist heritage industry thrives in many cities with less historic significance than Tampa,” she said.
Souls Of The Departed
Dell deChant, a University of South Florida religious studies instructor, said the fall is a time of transition and harvest.
“So this is also when great myths had the souls of the departed coming back to visit the living,” he said.
The rituals for the dead included leaving food.
“So visiting a cemetery would have a special nuance this time of year,” deChant said.
A few burial sites remain available at Oaklawn for people with ties to the cemetery, Patrick said. This fact was brought home to her as she walked near an arrangement of dried flowers left from a recent funeral.
Patrick knew the deceased, Ernest Reiner, a retired South Tampa physician who attended the historical society’s spring cemetery tour. The Reiner name appears on several Oaklawn graves, dating to 1883.
She Must Rent The Cemetery
All of her time spent in cemetery research hasn’t diminished Patrick’s dry sense of humor. She laughs about having to fill out paperwork from the city to rent Oaklawn for the afternoon. Plus, she apologizes to the dead (by name) when someone walks across a burial plot.
And then there’s her attire.
Patrick said the mourning dress she wears for the Halloween event, including a steel-bone corset and veiled hat, sets the proper tone to convey how Americans used to view the passing of a loved one. People would spend a lot of time and money on items ranging from head-to-toe black clothing to photographs of the dead.
“Mourning is now much more simple,” she said. “Like the pendulum swung.”
Originally Published Nov. 8, 2005
By STEVEN ISBITTS
BELLEAIR - Standing motionless in the dark hallway of the Belleview Biltmore Resort’s unoccupied fourth floor, paranormal investigator Thinh McCombs looked up from her blinking hand-held electromagnetic field detector and flashed a broad smile.
“Did you feel it?” she asked.
Those accompanying her on the venerable resort’s new weekly ghost investigation tour shook their heads Saturday night. No ghostlike entity had crossed their paths at that moment - at least not according to their EMF detectors.
Perhaps more would have shared McCombs’ encounter if they had been using laser-guided thermometers, sometimes employed by tour participants to detect cold spots that can signify a presence.
“I’m not sure what to believe until I have an experience,” said tourgoer David Christophy, of Sarasota.
That’s how it goes on a ghost tour that does not include staged events designed to shock spirit seekers. Eerie sounds, apparitions and chilled air are not always part of the action, and there’s no money-back guarantee if you don’t have a ghostly encounter.
The main attractions of the $25 tour are the stately ballrooms, hallways, lounges and closed areas of the Belleview Biltmore said to be haunted.
The Biltmore, built in 1897 and often touted as “the world’s largest occupied wooden structure,” is cashing in on the property’s haunted history, which garnered the resort a 30-minute feature on The Travel Channel’s “Weird Travels” series last year.
Led by a team of paranormal investigators from Orlando Ghost Tours Inc., two tours are offered to the public every Saturday night.
Spook hunters are guided throughout the Biltmore while listening to stories of paranormal encounters on the property. Then they are marched outside for a history lesson before intensive ghost-seeking in various areas of the original hotel buildings, including the ripped-up fourth floor, which smells of old pine and has the look of an abandoned construction site.
Comprehensive weekend investigations in which a team of psychics roams the closed floors are scheduled throughout the year. Those tours extend into the wee hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings and are attracting tourists, Biltmore spokeswoman Jennifer Addison said.
“There has been a lot of interest in the ghost aspect of the property,” Addison said.
Ghosts Won’t Leave
Resort guests milled about the Biltmore lobby Saturday night as teenagers from Northside Christian School in St. Petersburg danced to big-band music at their formal homecoming banquet in the Tiffany Room.
The place was jumping.
There were no signs of the many battles to save the Biltmore waged at recent Belleair Town Commission meetings.
In April, hotel owners filed for a permit to demolish all the buildings on the property, but their request was rejected.
It was reported that a Tampa developer had the property under contract and planned to replace all or part of it with hundreds of luxury condominiums. That deal appeared to fall through, but the hotel owners still want to demolish it.
In late October, hotel attorneys appealed the rejection of the demolition permit minutes before the town commission passed a historic preservation ordinance crafted to save the Biltmore.
So how would any Biltmore ghosts react if the property were razed?
Emelio San Martin, president and founder of Orlando Ghost Tours and a Golf Channel producer, said spirits would be unaffected by changes to the resort.
“The haunt isn’t in the building itself, rather on the property,” said San Martin, whose company also leads ghost investigation tours in Orlando and Louisiana.
“If the Biltmore was torn down, whatever was built on top of it would have the same haunts that exist today.”
No Such Thing As Ghosts
Andrew Nichols, the head of the Gainesville-based American Institute of Parapsychology, frequently is interviewed by national media near Halloween. He agreed that paranormal experiences on the Biltmore property probably would continue no matter what was on the land.
He doesn’t attribute ghostly activity to the dead, though. He cites potential geological factors that can affect the brain - and the power of suggestion.
“The ghost tours are entertainment. What they’re doing is not scientific,” Nichols said.
In the rare case that ghost sightings are caused by something beyond psychology, Nichols said, those events usually are hallucinations triggered by electromagnetic field anomalies caused by the proximity of a seismic fault, certain quartz-bearing rock or flowing underground water, which is common in Florida.
Nichols said electromagnetic forces can cause many types of hallucinations in about 15 percent of the population.
“My findings come from 30 years of rigorous science. So I get a lot of heat from the true-believer set,” Nichols said.
Nichols has not studied the Biltmore, but he said he would not be surprised to find that geological anomalies there have produced its haunted history.
“When a location has had years of recorded accounts, it’s worth investigating,” Nichols said.
Originally Published Oct. 31, 2006
By LORIE JEWELL
The Tampa Tribune
NEW PORT RICHEY - The ghost in the balcony of the Richey Suncoast Theatre has a preference for seat BB 1.
Charlie Skelton, president of the theater’s board of directors, has never seen the apparition. But for at least the past 10 years, he’s heard the accounts. Young people, mostly, swear they have seen a man occupying the aisle seat in the upper right side of the balcony.
He just watches. He has never paid for a ticket. Most have taken to referring to him as Willard, as in Willard Clark.
Clark has been dead for more than 20 years. A plaque on the front of the Grand Boulevard building, dedicated in June 1982, honors him as “Mister Theatre” and a patron of the arts.
Some patrons who have heard the ghost stories seek out Clark’s favorite seat. Others refuse to take it, Skelton said.
“Maybe they don’t want to sit on Willard’s lap,” he quipped.
The spooky feelings and accounts of strange happenings aren’t limited to Clark, although he usually gets blamed for anything that can’t be explained. Briana Waldorf, 14, said she took a pair of shoes off a shelf in a dressing room and left. When she returned, the shoes were back on the shelf.
“No one else went in there,” she said.
Skelton and others aren’t necessarily interested in ridding the historic theater of any ghostly occupants, but they wouldn’t mind knowing for sure what’s going on.
So when a relatively new group of ghost-hunting hobbyists called Haunted Hunters PSI (paranormal scientific investigators) contacted Skelton about investigating the theater, he invited them to come take a look.
On The Lookout
For the past two Saturdays, the Haunted Hunters have set up their cameras and other equipment, such as electromagnetic field detectors and voice recorders. They arrived after the audiences had filed out of the playhouse and stayed until early the next morning.
John Sullivan, who moved to Holiday from New York almost three years ago with his wife, Jodi, and three children, started looking for other PSI hobbyists this year. He was involved with a group in the North and missed the thrill of the hunt.
Sullivan counts the battlefields of Gettysburg as his favorite haunt hangout to date. He was there with his wife after midnight once and swears he heard a voice shouting orders and whistling. He also heard cannons being fired in the distance at one point, he said.
Sullivan found Chris Bratz, his go-to guy for technology, on the Internet. The group has about 20 members now, several from Pasco County and others from throughout the Tampa Bay area. They have a Web site: http://www.hauntedhunterspsi.com.
“I had never done ghost hunting before, but it’s a lot of fun,” said Bratz, a collateral analyst from Hudson. “I think it’s made me more of a believer.”
The group has checked out the Spring Hill cemetery, where Bratz thinks he heard the sound of hammering. One of the voice recordings sounds like someone saying “accident,” he said.
They’ve also been to the historic Belleview Biltmore Hotel in Pinellas County. Sullivan thinks he may have captured a digital shot of an image coming toward him in a hallway.
At the Richey Suncoast, they haven’t come up with concrete evidence of Clark staking a claim on the balcony seat. But on one voice recording, Sullivan said, there seems to be a woman’s voice saying something like, “I’m not dead.”
Both men know that what they do sounds strange and kind of creepy. But they aren’t crazy and they don’t try to invent what isn’t there, Sullivan and Bratz insist.
“We’re very skeptical,” Sullivan said. “It’s all about the science.”
He Can Stay
Should evidence of Clark’s ghost materialize, Skelton said it will be business as usual at the theater.
“We won’t do anything,” Skelton said. “But we’ll probably have more psychics wanting to come.”
They, and the general public, are invited to the Halloween Mystery Theater at 6 p.m. today. Tickets are $10 per person.
Ghosts get in free, naturally.
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