Paranormal Peculiarities in Florida

It just doesn't come closer to home than this!
(Listed by county, in alphabetical order)

Archer

Kosicki House
When Linda and Bob Kosicki bought this old house in 1993, they had no idea that it was haunted.  That was until the apparition of a woman in a white nightgown with a lacy hood started to appear.  They studied the history of the house and found that it was constructed back in 1893 by Charles and Cora Wood.  The Kosickis think that Cora, whose two babies died in the house, has come back to search for their spirits. (Archer is 12 miles southwest of Gainesville on Highway 24.)

Cassadega

Spiritualist Settlement
This entire town is comprised of mediums engaged in the business of contacting dead spirits.  The town was founded in 1895 by George Colby, who said three spirits led him to the spot.  He willed the land to the Spiritualist Church, and the town of Cassadega grew up around it.  The narrow streets and moss-laden oak trees give the town a somewhat Gothic look, befitting the four hundred residents, perhaps, who are always ready to converse with the dead.  (Cassadega is twenty-three miles north of Orlando on Highway 4 in central Florida.  The Spiritualist Church is on Highway 17/92, just outside of town.)

Clearwater

Indian Rocks Beach
A hideous sea creature emerged from the ocean and turned over a lifeguard platform on the beach here.  The slimy beast left behind deep gouges in the wood from its claws.  The first incident took place nearby the Everingham Pavilion, but the Clearwater creature was seen elsewhere on many occasions in the 1940s and 1950s.  The creature, with a crocodile-like head, a short jaw, and razor-sharp teeth, left behind three-toed footprints and walked on its hind legs with an eight-foot-long stride.  The creature terrified guests at the Indian Rocks Hotel and was also spotted on beaches at Dan's Island, Honeymoon Island, and Tarpon Springs.  Police and coast-guard investigations failed to provide an explanation for the numerous sightings.  (The town of Clearwater is located on the Gulf of Mexico, on the west central coast of Florida, just west of Tampa on Highway 275.)

Coral Gables

Biltmore Hotel
This Victorian-style hotel was built in 1925 but was closed for most of the 1970s and 1980s.  During that time, ghosts took up residence.  Townspeople congregated on the golf course to observe the strange lights and eerie sounds coming from the empty building at night.  (The town of Coral Gables is just south of Miami on U.S. Highway 1.)

Crystal River

Crystal River State Archaeological Site
This sacred site dates back to 200 B.C. and was home to several different cultures of mound builders.  Some of the first pyramid earthworks in North America were constructed here, and two magnificent  stone stellae from the site are startlingly Mayan in appearance.  There are two temple mounds intended for worship and two burial mounds, which contained almost five hundred skeletons.  This was a flourishing center of trade in prehistoric times, when religion was based on worship of the sun.  (The site is located seventy-five miles north of Tampa.  Follow I-75 to Highway 44 west.  Turn north onto U.S. Highway 19 at Crystal River.  Phone: 904-795-3817)

Everglades

Fakahatchee Strand
This sacred area in the Everglades is thought by the Seminole Indians to be the home of God, the Great Breathmaker.  They believe all life is intertwined, like the gigantic cypress trees and the strangler fig vines that grow over them in this primeval swamp.  (The Everglades National Park is west of Highway 27 in the southern tip of Florida.  The Fakahatchee Strand is at Big Cypress National Preserve in the Florida Everglades.)

L-1011 Crash
On December, 1972, an Easter Airlines L-1011 Tristar jumbo jet crashed in the Florida Everglades.  Captain Robert Loft died in the cockpit about an hour after the crash.  Second Officer Don Repo died thirty hours later in a hospital.  The crash occurred when the two men, preoccupied with a landing gear warning light, failed to notice the plane's descent.  Afterward, their ghosts were observed by reputable airline employees more than twenty times.  An Easter Airlines vice president reported striking up a conversation with a uniformed pilot on board a flight to San Francisco.  As soon as he realized he was talking to Captain Loft, the figure vanished before his eyes.  Other airline employees reported seeing the ghosts of the two men on several other flights, mostly on another L-1011 with the number 318.  Once, a flight was cancelled when the ghost of Captain Loft appeared in the first-class cabin.  In February 1974, the ghost of Don Repo warned a stewardess on a flight to Mexico City that the airliner would catch fire.  On the return leg of the flight, an engine burst into flames and had to be extinguished in midair.  Many similar potentially life-saving encounters were reported by dozens of witnesses, and an investigation showed that all the planes on which the strange events took place had spare parts from the wreckage of Flight 401.  An embarrassed Eastern Airlines finally removed all of the parts of Flight 401 from its planes, to keep its logbooks free from ghost sightings.  Many investigators believe this case could have provided definitive evidence for the reality of ghosts had the phenomena been allowed to continue.  (Flight 401 crashed in the Everglades, a few miles from Miami International Airport.  70 people survived the accident; 101 died.)

Fort Lauderdale

Bermuda Triangle
Awareness of this region grew with the mysterious disappearance of five Avenger torpedo bombers on December 5, 1945.  Flight 19 took off from Fort Lauderdale and was never seen again.  A flying boat sent out to search for the bombers also disappeared.  A five-day search of 250,000 square miles failed to turn up any trace of the missing planes.  A few years later, a DC-3 with thirty-six people on board disappeared only fifty miles south of Miami.  The story was the same for dozens of other aircraft and ships.  The Bermuda Triangle is not just a modern phenomenon.  Strange-lights have been observed in the region as far back as Christopher Columbus.  Some researchers believe the Bermuda Triangle is growing steadily westward and now encompasses much of Southern Florida.  (The Bermuda Triangle stretches from Bermuda in the northeast to Puerto Rico in the southeast, to the Gulf of Mexico in the west.  The city of Fort Lauderdale is North America's launching point into the mysterious area and is now considered a part of the triangle.)

Homestead

Coral Castle
In 1918, Ed Leedskalnin began carving stone blocks for his castle, intended to be a monument to a mysterious figure he called "Sweet Sixteen."  The house, furniture, and lawn decorations are all carved from huge pieces of limestone, which the five-foot tall, one-hundred pound man moved about with ease.  He claimed to have learned the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids.  No one has been able to discover how Leedskalnin created the ten-acre site, but many believe he somehow harnessed the power of psychokinesis.  (Homestead is near the junction of U.S. Highway 1 and Highway 27 in the southern tip of Florida.)

Jacksonville

Carriage House Apartments
There were so many reports of ghostly activity in Apartment 40 here that the management stopped renting out the unit and turned it into a storage room.  The spirits in Apartment 40 are thought to be and elderly couple who lived there from the late 1960's until 1985, when their family had them admitted to a nursing home.  Several tenants and visitors have described feeling uneasy when they pass by Apartment 40, and some have heard whispering sounds and other strange noises emanating from the vacant unit.  However, the apartment was considered haunted long before either of the couple died, and some of the activity might be due to other ghosts on the premises.  Investigator Lee Holloway believes the spirit haunting the front office is Mrs. Billie Boyd, who managed the Carriage House for more than twenty years.  After she died in February 1987, her presence was detected by a new manager.  A phantom cat has been sighted in the courtyard, as well.  The unearthly feline looks like an an ordinary white cat, until it vanishes into thin air. (2260 University Blvd. North, Jacksonville, FL 32211)

Greenbriar Light
This mysterious ball of concentrated light seems to be attracted to moving objects.  Cars moving slowly down the road in either direction bring out the light, which follows twenty-five to three hundred feet behind.  Occasionally the light moves over the cars, but it never passes them.  In 1987, the St. John's County Sheriff's Department asked several scientists to investigate the phenomenon, but no definite conclusion as to the source of the light could be reached.  According to legend, the light is the headlight of a phantom motorcycle.  A young man was supposedly pushing his new motorcycle to maximum speed on the road when he lost control and hit the support cable of a telephone pole.  His decapitated body was found the next day.  (Jacksonville is in the northeast corner of Florida, at the junction of I-10 and I-95.  The site is in St. John's County, south of Mandarin, between the towns of Switzerland and Orangevale.  The three-mile dirt road is known as Greenbriar Road, or Light Road.  It runs east off Highway 13, approximately seven miles south of the Duval County line.)

Homestead Restaurant
This restaurant is located in a two-story log cabin built in 1934.  The ghost here, seen and heard by the bartender and several other employees, has been identified as Mrs. Alpha Paynter.  She once operated a boarding house in the cabin and is buried in the yard behind the building.  Alpha's apparition has appeared near the huge limestone fireplace in the center of the main dining room and in other parts of the restaurant. (1712 Beach Blvd.)

Kingsley Plantation
This old plantation is haunted by a sinister presence known as Red Eyes.  According to legend, Red Eyes is the ghost of a former slave who tortured, raped, and murdered two or three very young female slaves.  When his deeds were discovered, he was taken down the narrow drive leading to the plantation and hanged from the limb of an old oak tree.  But death could not extinguish the black man's wickedness.  People driving along the one-lane road through the woods here report seeing two glowing eyes in the rearview mirror. 

Key West

Artist House

Audubon House

Hemingway House

Inn at Cabbage Key

Little White House

Kissimmee

Deadman's Oak

Lake City

Columbia County Board of Education

Lakeland

Highway 98

Miami

Club Alhambra Apartments

Hirschfield Theater

Tropication Arts, Inc.

Villa Paula

Witherspoon House

New Port Richey

Leverock's Restaurant

Oklawaha

Old Bradford House

Pensacola

Pensacola Naval Air Station

UFO Viewing Area

Rockledge

Asheley's Restaurant

St. Augustine

Abbott Mansion

Casablanca Bed-and-Breakfast

Castillo De San Marcos National Monument

Catalina's Gardens Restaurant

Cincinnati Avenue House

Don Pedro Horruytiner House

The House

Huguenot Cemetery

Oldest House Museum

Old Firestone House

St. Augustine Lighthouse

Scarlett O-Hara's Restaurant

Sea Captain's House

Wildwood Baptist Church

St. Petersburg

Don CeSar Resort

Madira Bickel Mound

Skyway Bridge

Silver Springs

Bridal Chamber

Tallahassee

Chi Omega Sorority House

Oaklawn Cemetery

Old City Cemetery

Old Leon County Jail

Phi Delta Theta Fraternity House

Tampa

Tampa Theatre

Useppa Island

Useppa Island Club

West Palm Beach

Burger King

Henry Morrison Flagler Museum

Lake Worth Playhouse

- NOT All of these listings are completed yet -
I am still filling them all in as to the events and storylines surrounding each location
- Updates will be finished shortly. Pleaase keep checking back... -

Source Used:   Hauck, Dennis William. "Haunted Places: The National Directory"