Category: Paranormal

St. Luke’s Cemetery, Oviedo, Florida

We drove out to St. Luke’s on a scorching day in June after and equally scorching trip out to Lukas Nursery. The greenhouses, despite their fans, were intolerable. I could feel my skin burning while we were on all of the outdoor paths. Why I decided that we should go to St. Luke’s as well is beyond me, but I did, and it was not the best decision.

St. Luke’s is a small, Lutheran church cemetery with about 790 burials. It’s a little odd, honestly. There are no outstanding monuments, much of what you see is memorial flat markers. It’s a grassy field, which is beautiful and peaceful, but I can see where they would really have to stay on top of their maintenance since the grass was so perfect and thick. (Rare for Florida, where cemeteries tend to be sandy and have sparse grass at this time of year.)

I have to drive by this cemetery every week while I’m working, and it always looked interesting from the road so I made a note to visit. But recently I met an interesting woman and we started talking about cemeteries. She told me that she used to come to this one when she was in high school late at night because it was supposed to be haunted. There was supposedly a woman carrying a lantern (wearing white- what else?!) who could be seen late at night wandering through the graves. She never saw her. She also mentioned the fog that appears at night in the area that is always in the same specific spot (Chapman Road, I believe.)

Hogwash. Ya’ll know what I think of these stories by now.

But, she did say that they used to break into the chapel on the property and sit around in there and that it was spooky. I thought that it was actually a caretaker’s cottage, so I was most interested in seeing that. According to hauntedplaces.org some people have reported feeling like they can’t breathe inside the chapel or have come out covered with scratches and welts. Well, I’ll be frank, I did come off of their porch covered with scratches and welts but it was from the numerous mosquito bites that I got on the property. Paranormalghostsociety.org did a nice historical write up about the history of the place (used to be celery fields, just like Sanford) so if you’re interested you might take a look at that before going out there.

The chapel itself is quite unique and looks more like a tiny house. Inside was clear glass windows and old, well-polished pews to seat maybe 20 people. Maybe. The door was weathered and warped. It was my favorite feature on the property.

I’ll be honest. I do believe in ghosts, but I do get tired of different versions of the same story popping up all over Central Florida. That is what I find tiresome. The ghost is always wearing white. It’s almost always a female spirit. There is generally a lantern or candle involved. There is usually little explanation of who the ghost might be or why they’re haunting the area (usually a cemetery). So with that said, I’d like to hear some stories about restless male spirits for a change. One was mentioned in the linked article, a man that walks up and down the road carrying a suitcase.

I would definitely like to meet him.

The Ybor City Ghosts

Chris and I planned this night out for weeks ahead of time. I was all excited the day before I was supposed to meet her in Tampa, but I woke up at 2 a.m. the morning of green-faced, sweating, and vividly remembering a horrible nightmare. Some people don’t recall their dreams, but I can recall them years later. I can smell in them. Taste in them. See colors. Talk, control them, or wake myself up if need be. I’ve tried to hone the waking myself up part a lot over the last few years. Sometimes I don’t make it.

This dream was probably due to eating very late the night before and then immediately falling asleep. Despite the natural reasons, I felt unsettled all morning and stayed in bed with a pile of books, a cup of green tea, and a cat. When it was time to leave I was feeling marginally better, and thought I’d be okay to drive over to Tampa.

Chris and I met in L’Unione Italiana but they were closing in ten minutes, so we visited a couple of other cemeteries before deciding to get out of the heat and head over to Burger 21 to meet two of her friends, Michelle and Sue, for dinner and the tour. We devoted an hour to dinner and then drove to Ybor City, which is gorgeous. It’s beautiful in the sunshine, during the sunset, any time of day, really, but it truly comes alive at night. It literally feels like you’re in another place altogether at night. The men sit outside of the cafes in a cloud of grey cigar smoke watching the women walk by, while the women sit in groups of friends drinking wine or coffee and staring back at the men. It’s all fairly polite and restrained.

We met Max, our tour guide, at King Corona Cigars on 7th. When we walked inside to take a look around it was hard to see because of the haze of cigar smoke that hung like a wreath around everyone’s head. When I went home the smell was in my hair and in my clothes, and it thankfully overpowered the pervading smell of sweat and sunburn that I’d carried around all day.

There were 8 of us on the tour, and promptly at 8 o’clock Max appeared, introduced himself, and our two hour walking tour began.

If you’re concerned about walking for two hours don’t be- there were frequent stops and the highest elevation was about 34 feet at the “hill” in Ybor City. It was an easy walk, and the night was cool and comfortable after the heat of the day. When we stopped at one point I looked over my shoulder and saw that the full moon was rising, the Pink Moon. It was so beautiful, sending a faint glow down over the red brick buildings. The moon added so much to the tour for me, but I’ve always been a moon lover.

I won’t tell you everything that the tour covered to leave some mystery, but I will highlight my favorite part, which was the Cuban Club. I thought that the tour would only include stories about the history of various buildings and inhabitants of the city, but we actually got to go in 2 buildings. The Cuban Club (built in 1917) is stunning, and included in it’s heyday a ballroom, a theater, and much to the chagrin of the Italian Club down the street, a swimming pool. When Max unlocked the door I was pretty excited to go in, and when I stepped over the threshold it was to heat and an odd smell, almost like the smell of an old hotel…if that makes any sense. Older carpet, old paint, plaster, that kind of smell. We walked downstairs and when we got to the bottom of the stairs I saw a movement to my right, but I thought that I was looking at a mirrored wall and that I was seeing the reflection of someone in the group. The lights were very dim and around the corner from where we were, so the section we were in had no overhead lights at all. Several people pulled out their phones in order to look around.

A child had died here, he drowned in the swimming pool. The pool had been bricked in and filled with concrete many years earlier, but you could still feel the energy of the water there, and it didn’t feel good or like it had been a happy place. I walked to the side to look at the corner where I saw movement earlier. It wasn’t a mirror, it was an open doorway. I turned away. I don’t know what I saw.

When we walked up the stairs Max told us we could take a quick peek at the theater, which was overwhelming. The ticket booth was white and gold, and the theater itself was 2 storied, with a balcony and a ceiling painted sky blue. The pendant lamps (not on, we were in the dark) were ornate brass and the air was so incredibly still, as though it were breathlessly waiting for people to file in again, laughing and talking as they found their seats. It was magical, and my favorite part of the whole experience. Also, all of my photos from this part have white marks or streaks on them.

We ended the night with a visit to Cheezy’s, which was a pizza joint/speakeasy and had once been a church. It amazed me that while you could tell you were inside a church because of the shape of the windows and the orientation (unless I’m very much mistaken the bar is where the pulpit used to be), you couldn’t feel the weight of all those years of prayer and petition. I loved it. The owner came and spoke to us, and we had a round of Shirley Temples and chocolate milk since we were all driving home and it was late. The bartender had even decorated the glasses with chocolate syrup to make it all look fancy and it was an adorable touch.

I had such a great time on this tour and plan to go again this fall when the renovations for the Cuban Club are complete and there will be more access to the building, but if you get the chance, go.

I’m doing some work on Pinterest now so the blog might have a few minor changes in the near future.

Blue Graves In The South

I hope everyone had a beautiful Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I’ve been collecting photos for this post for some time, thinking that as the time passed I’d gather more information about this and have an awesome post to write.
But that didn’t really happen. Additionally, something is weird with my formatting for this post, so forgive me.
Blue grave sites in the south are still a bit of a mystery. I’ve heard several different reasons for painting the graves, and I will share all of them here. Special thanks to Dave Lapham for his help on this, and also to Barbara Broxterman, who offered a good deal of information as well.Barbara lives near and old (but still very active) cemetery in Levy County and was able to talk to some ladies who were there one day working, cleaning the graves. Apparently, they have a small business doing just that for other families who aren’t able to do the work themselves. I loved that.
Haint Blue, as it’s called, is a soft blue color generally found on porches in the Southern states. I never really noticed it until last summer when we were looking at houses in Sanford. Two of the homes that we visited had a gentle blue paint on the porch. I didn’t like it much though I did think it gave the porches a fresh, airy feeling. Shawn thought it was odd. Now that I know what I know, I’ll be adding blue to my porches this year.
The blue color is there because of Southern superstition. It is said to fool insects into thinking it’s an extension of the sky, so they’ll go elsewhere and not linger. It’s also said to drive away bad or evil spirits from the home. Both are positive reasons to add a little blue to your porch.
So why put blue on a grave? I know a lot of people believe that bad spirits linger in cemeteries and they would naturally want to protect their loved ones, so they’d paint the grave topper or ledger stone blue. In some cases the color can match the color of the house of the deceased or their families, and thereby continue to tie them to their home or make them feel at home in the cemetery. And then there was the more basic answer- that the paint is used to seal the cracks in the concrete. I guess that is possible too, but the paint is usually blue or white. I even noticed blue tiles in a mausoleum fountain, and even though blue is the usual color for that kind of water feature, I still felt it’s significance when you have to pass the fountain to approach the dead in the mausoleum.
This information made me pause to consider my own use of the color blue when it comes to visiting cemeteries. I have a favorite blue tee shirt that I usually wear, and my boots are blue. I wear blue shorts when I’m visiting a cemetery in hot weather, not because they’re blue, but because they fit well and I’m not worried about getting them dirty. If I was trying to protect myself in some way by doing these things it was done unconsciously.
I’ve noticed that in a lot of African American cemeteries that blue is a choice color for floral arrangements. I know this is sometimes done for men or boys, but it does seem to be very popular. What I do know is that once you start seeing blue in cemeteries, you’ll notice it everywhere.
While in New Orleans this past weekend we were fortunate enough to see the Weeping Angel in Metairie Cemetery, who is perfectly placed under 3 panes of blue stained glass, casting a moody light onto her. Aside from this mausoleum, there were many with blue glass throughout the cemetery, but to me she will always be the most beautiful with the most artfully arranged lighting.
Because I wasn’t able to find out much about this topic please share if you have more information! I’d love to hear some other ideas about why blue is so popular in cemeteries. Thanks to everyone who reads the blog, and I hope everyone has a happy and prosperous New Year!

American Ghost Adventures in Greenwood Cemetery

Shawn surprised me for Halloween. He booked us for a ghost tour in Greenwood Cemetery, and I was under the impression that it was the moonlight walking tour I’d been on many times before. However, this one was different. When we arrived at the cemetery just after dark we were issued K2 meters and presented to our guides for the evening, Mark and Debbie, both sporting Victorian attire.

They pretty much had me right there with just the clothes and the meters, and we weren’t even IN the cemetery yet. Debbie wore a hat with a double veil and I was really impressed with her ability to lead the tour and see so well. She looked fetching. And I really love Victorian dress on men. Something about those coats….

We began with our group of eight by the offices, where we were shown the area that used to be the African American Jonestown settlement when Orlando was all about celery and citrus. Many of the workers were former slaves and they lived here. Several people from the Ocoee race riots are buried here in the original segregated part of the cemetery, with well visited and tended graves. I remember stumbling on their funeral records in the Carey Hand books once and being startled by reading about such a violent death when many of the other records said things like, ‘senility’, or ‘heart attack’.

We then proceeded up the hill to the highest point by the Wilmott Mausoleum, which I love for it’s creepy, domed, paint peeled beauty. It’s close to the Carey Hand family plot, so I gave them a nod on the way past as I always do, still thinking that a book about that family would be so much fun to write.

It was here that Mark and Debbie brought out a flashlight and placed it on top of the Robinson grave in the off position. It was also here that it began to rain and the umbrellas came out, and thunder rolled across the sky. I was thinking that there was nowhere else I’d rather be in that moment when the flashlight began to blink and flash, and Mark and Debbie began talking with a spirit.

Do I believe I ghosts? Yes. Do I go looking for them? Normally, no. This is only my second ghost tour, and while I believe they’re around us all the time, the skeptic in me does rear it’s shaggy head at times. But strangely, this was not one of them. The little flashlight blinked on and off, once for yes and twice for no, and eventually it came out that were were in the presence of a young boy who really wanted to chat. I think we were there for at least 20 minutes, and while I would never do something like that myself, I did like witnessing the whole event. I feel safe in cemeteries. But I know that a lot of people don’t and that there are many who would have been upset by something like that.

We went to visit Fred Weeks by his mausoleum for another show with the flashlight. Fred Weeks was a man who knew how to get revenge with grace and style. When he was ripped off by 3 businessmen in the Orlando area he erected a headstone with their names on it by the front gates of Greenwood with a bible verse,  Luke 10:30. When the men bought back the swampland they had sold him in order to get him to take the headstone down, he built his mausoleum, and put their names on it instead. On the doors you can see where the names were removed. Mr. Weeks died alone; his wife left him and took the children with her so he’s in the mausoleum all by himself. It’s a good story, but just goes to show you that seeking  revenge hurts you as well as the other person. On most of my visits to Greenwood there is a flower on Fred’s door. I always wonder who leaves them.

Toward the end of the tour it was raining in earnest and we stopped briefly at Babyland 3. I took a few photos but mostly hung back. When they tried to get interaction with the flashlight again nothing happened. The babies were all resting peacefully tonight.

A few days later Shawn and I went back to Greenwood to look at some of the places we had stopped on the tour, and as we drove past Babyland there was a couple sitting together on one of the little graves. I’m pretty sure my heart just fell out of my chest because I felt so heartbroken for them.

At the end of the tour we went back to the cemetery office, where I bought a tee shirt and handed Mark my card, asking him if it would be okay if I wrote about the tour on the blog.

“Yes!” he said. ‘Will you write nice things?”

“Of course!” I replied.

“And will you tell them how good looking and single I am?” he asked me.

“Yes, I will,” I said. And I’m keeping my promise.

So lookout, ladies! If you like history and have a thing for men in bowler hats, he’s your man. You can take a tour with American Ghost Adventures here in Orlando- I’m definitely taking one of the city tours so I can learn more about some of the buildings downtown. Check them out on Facebook for upcoming dates and events!

 

 

Flowers at Page Jackson Cemetery

Grace, Gus, and I go out to Page Jackson together and also tend to monitor the site on our own. During this summer we spent some time researching more about the cemetery and people, and we also made plans for what we would like to do out there this winter when the heat and humidity isn’t sapping our energy so much. There’s still one gravestone I’ve yet to find from one of the first marked burials, and it’s bugging me. On the first cool day this winter that’s where I’ll be.

I went out recently with Shawn in the evening. We’ve been looking for a house in the area and many of our weekends are spent in Sanford checking out real estate. One day we were coming home later than usual; it was already getting dark. 

“Pull into the cemetery, would you?” I said as we came near, and he obliged.

My goal was to see how many cars were parked back there. We drove down the paved road until the asphalt gave way to the dirt road that leads into Page Jackson. There thankfully wasn’t anyone else there, and we could still see pretty well so we stopped and got out. 

Page Jackson doesn’t have a single flower blooming on its 11 acres. Not. One. It’s a combination of pine woods and oak trees and it looks like hell. Two grave sites are regularly visited out of 1,090, and their people leave silk flowers on them and not fresh. It’s always been like that. There is nothing here that smells except for the dirt road when it rains. That’s it. 

When I got out of the car that night there was an overwhelming smell of flowers. The smell wasn’t familiar, but it seemed like an old fashioned smell. It was heady and sweet and it felt like we were in a cloud of it. I turned to Shawn and asked if he could smell it. He could not.

I said, “The flowers. You don’t smell them?” He didn’t. He mentioned that something must be blooming but there wasn’t anything nearby or overhead. Just the cathedral of oak branches and Spanish moss. We left shortly thereafter because a couple of cars started pulling into the cemetery. One went to the house on the property, and one drove back to Shiloh cemetery.

I think it was during the same month when Gus and I went out after 11 pm to drive through and see if there were a lot of people there. That night there was not a single car, and we rolled the windows down. The crickets and frogs were loud, and I wondered if the smell would be there again but it wasn’t. 

Another night I drove through near dusk and the smell was there again, in the front section which is the oldest and covers about an acre. No matter where I went, the smell was there. It was just as strong. 

This week Grace stayed at Gus’s to pet sit and hang out in Sanford for a week, just to relax and get out of Orlando. She told me she was thinking of driving through the cemetery at night just to see what was going on out there. I told her to message me when she got back. 

A little after ten I got a frantic message saying that when she pulled past the sign to the cemetery and hit the dirt road the whole car filled with the smell of lilacs and her dog, Sherman, cowered in the seat and started growling. She stopped the car, backed up, and left immediately. She also said the smell had been overwhelmingly strong and that before she backed up she saw lights in the trees. 

“What, like flashlights?” I asked.

She shook her head no.

“Car lights, then? Headlights, maybe from someone driving through from Shiloh?”

She shook her head again. “No. It looked more like small lights, almost as if someone were holding a candle about waist high.”

Grace and I went out the next morning to look for lights. There weren’t any- no one puts grave lights out here and when you see them in the dark they tend to have a tell-tale blueish cast, and they’re close to the ground. There are 2 tiki torches on one of the maintained graves, but we looked at them and they’d never been lit. Plus, if someone held a candle in the dark you’d see a reflection of the light on their face. And grave lights don’t move. Also, we don’t have lightning bugs in this part of Florida.

We found out that Gus had the same experience one night with the smell, but not with the lights. I think it’s interesting that all of us have had the same experience and we can’t find the cause. People say the cemetery is haunted but I’d prefer to look for something in the here and now before I believe this is some ghostly activity. The place has been investigated but I never heard anyone mention the smell. Also, the smell seems to only be in the front acre. It’s not farther back in the cemetery and not in Shiloh.

Aside from that, I believe any haunting in this cemetery comes from people being in there at night with flashlights and not from ghosts, but that’s my opinion. This cemetery has a lot of activity from the human element, and while I’m certainly curious, I don’t particularly care as long as there’s no damage or more trash for us to pick up. The cemetery has been vandalized in the past and we saw the polaroids in the local museum. It was horrifying. I think it’s also worth mentioning that every other time I’ve encountered a smell in a cemetery it’s clearly been from some kind of decay and has been gag-inducing and awful.

Has anyone had a similar incident happen to them at a cemetery? I’d like to hear about it.

Heavenly Bodies at Eau Gallie Cemetery, Melbourne, Florida

First a little bit of business. To the person who ran a search on my site for…and I quote… “pictures of 14 plus naked girls”, I believe that you are on the wrong site. We all wear our clothes around here, sir. I always read the search terms every week to see what people are looking for and I’ve gotten some good tips for cemeteries to visit, but not this time.

It was extremely hot the day that Shawn and I decided to head to Melbourne just to get out of the house and see what was over there. I wasn’t super thrilled with the area, but I’ll admit that I also didn’t really know where to go or what to see. We did go to several cemeteries, and Eau Gallie was one of my favorites. The sign in front said “Welcome! Booker T. Washington Neighborhood”. After some research I found out that it appears to be part of a neighborhood development plan, and there is actually a whole section of Melbourne that is part of this. I had read online from some ghost hunter that this was in a bad neighborhood but I never saw any evidence of that. The surrounding areas were clean and busy and the cemetery itself was in perfect condition. I would have gone in by myself and felt totally comfortable.

The cemetery is large and well designed with a roundabout in the center, a common design, with the cemetery moving out from the circle into quadrants. It had the most beautiful trees and the plushest grass I’d ever seen in a cemetery though, and for that alone it was worth getting out for a walk. Besides its beauty, there is one other thing that stood out in this cemetery. It is full of angels. The people who come back to visit their loved ones tend to leave angels on the graves, and there were so many everywhere I looked. I felt well protected while we were there! There was even a huge modern headstone with a crouching angel leaning over it, which is a style I’ve also seen in Greenwood Cemetery here in Orlando.

The cemetery was established in 1902 so it’s certainly not the oldest one I’ve been to, but it’s worth a visit. The surrounding area used to be a city called Eua Gallie, and the cemetery was operated by that city at one time until it just became part of Melbourne in 1969. It appears to still be an active cemetery and has about 1400 burials, though we didn’t see any new graves while we were there.

The grave of John P. McMillan was my favorite one that we saw and was also very poignant. It was a white marble obelisk with the Woodmen of the World symbol on it, and the dates told the story. Born 1896, died 1918. He gave his life for his country is the epitaph. I don’t see too many first World War veteran’s graves, or it could be that when I see the date 1918 I tend to first think of the beginning of the Spanish Flu pandemic. But this grave hit me hard, not only because the man was so young when he died, but to die at the end of the war when he had survived thus far seemed especially sad.

It was too hot to be walking around but we had one more cemetery to visit- the Shady Oaks African American cemetery nearby. More on that one soon. You should visit Eau Gallie if you’re in the Melbourne area. If you like taking photos in cemeteries, you can’t find a better subject. If you like the paranormal, everything I’ve read indicates that this is the place to be. However, this cemetery seemed very quiet and peaceful to me.