St. Augustine

...Coast most of my life, St. Augustine was a well-kept secret from me. It never came to my attention before I received an alert for ghost books from Amazon, announcing the newly released book, OLDEST GHOSTS, by Karen Harvey. It was ghost folklore and reasonably priced, so I ordered a copy. I must have missed this detail in an American history lesson, but this was the first I recall hearing about the Oldest City. Although I've read ghost folklore books ...
...flashed through my mind was St. Augustine. He had been thinking of Orlando, but I wasn't going to be so close to St. Augustine without visiting it. It is a medium-sized municipality about an hour's drive south from Jacksonville or two hours northeast from Orlando and has a character that the second city Walt built misses. Perhaps Orlando just lacks history, which St. Augustine has in abundance. Founded by Pedro Menéndez in September 1565, it is the ... more

Living on the American West Coast most of my life, St. Augustine was a well-kept secret from me. It never came to my attention before I received an alert for ghost books from Amazon, announcing the newly released book, OLDEST GHOSTS, by Karen Harvey. It was ghost folklore and reasonably priced, so I ordered a copy. I must have missed this detail in an American history lesson, but this was the first I recall hearing about the Oldest City. Although I've read ghost folklore books I've enjoyed more, I was positively intrigued by St. Augustine and put it on my mental list as a place to visit.

Of course, as soon as my boyfriend, Russell, mentioned wanting to go to Florida for our spring vacation this year, the first thing that flashed through my mind was St. Augustine. He had been thinking of Orlando, but I wasn't going to be so close to St. Augustine without visiting it. It is a medium-sized municipality about an hour's drive south from Jacksonville or two hours northeast from Orlando and has a character that the second city Walt built misses. Perhaps Orlando just lacks history, which St. Augustine has in abundance. Founded by Pedro Menéndez in September 1565, it is the oldest continuously-run European settlement on the North American continent. Having to protect its settlers from hostile natives and marauding pirates, it has always had a military presence; St. Francis barracks is still in active use today. During the late 19th century, after spending his honeymoon with his second wife there, Henry Flagler revived St. Augustine as a resort area. It is also considered one of the most haunted cities in the country. I wish I had had more time to spend there, as my search for ghost stories was a short one and there was plenty more to still see when I left. I'd go back again in a heartbeat.

St. Augustine made a great setting in my search for ghosts and ghost stories. We arrived in the middle of May and it was clear and beautiful. The weather was warm, but not overly so. The humidity was tolerable. The downtown streets were deliberately designed narrow to catch the winds between the buildings and cool them down for those generations who lived before air conditioning. Everywhere we walked little lizards darted across the sidewalks ahead of us. Some of the residents said they have tried to catch one, only to be left with a broken tail (which the lizard regrows).

Be that as it may, my favorite thing to do when I'm traveling is ghost walking tours. Visitors would have to be completely oblivious to miss the many choices available in St. Augustine. With nine different companies providing them, ghost tours are a thriving industry in the Oldest City. They aren't limited to walking, either. Some of the other transport options included horse and buggy rides, sailing, hearses, limosines, and buses. As Russell and I walked down St. George Street around 7:30 p.m., guides wearing black or historical costume lined the street like hookers looking for johns. "Looking for a good time tonight?"

Following is a list of the attractions I personally visited and are accessible to the public in some venue or another; however, I'll start with a general tip:

RED TRAIN TOURS

There are no ghosts on these trams, to my knowledge, but they can take punters to St. Augustine's most famous haunted sites. This is a step on-step off train tour that can be one of the best ways to become acquainted with the area. It goes through its route of 20 stops continuously from its daily 8:30 a.m. start time until the last at 5 p.m. Punters can climb aboard at any stop and alight at any attraction they please. The train stops at each attraction every 15-20 minutes so punters can rejoin the tour when they've seen enough of the attraction they've visited; however, if they linger at one past the 5 p.m. end time, they're on their own to find their way to their original boarding point. In between stops, the driver will explain why each site is significant and give you some of its non-ghostly background. The cost is $15 adults and $5.00 children 6-12 for three consecutive days. The price also includes admission to the Old Florida Museum and on-demand shuttle service to St. Augustine hotels. Russell and I found it an excellent introduction to the Oldest City. Had we been aware that tickets were good for three days, we would have taken advantage of it sooner. Instead, we used it for only one day. Red Train Tours also offer tour packages that discount rates at local attractions. For more info on them, go to http://www.redtrains.com.

GHOST TOURS OF ST. AUGUSTINE

This was the city's first ghost walk company and it offers four different themed tours, "Haunted Lighthouse Tour," "Ghosts of the Matanzas" (sailing aboard the schooner Freedom), "Visit the Haunted Castle" (by bus), and "A Ghostly Experience." We took the latter, which was a walking tour. Tickets are $10, children under 6 free, and can be purchased in advance or at the cart on St. George Street, not far from the city gate, where punters are asked to meet.

Our tour guide was a young man dressed as a pirate. The story that stood out most in my memory was one that took place out in the open on St. George Street. A few blocks of this narrow street have been blocked from vehicular traffic and are essentially the equivalent of a modern strip mall, comprising mostly touristy retail shops, restaurants, and bars. Author Garrett Peck was working at one of the bars along the pedestrian route. As he and four of his co-workers were cleaning up after closing, he was a little slower than the rest of his colleagues in taking his bag of garbage out to the dumpster. Along their route, they passed through the courtyard of the Spanish Bakery across the street. There was no sign of them before Peck stepped into the courtyard that evening. He noticed a woman, dressed in Spanish colonial fashion, draping her laundry over bushes, tables, and fences to dry. Since many of those who worked along that section of St. George Street dressed in period costume, he thought little of it. He shouted a greeting to her, but she ignored him. Aware that a school for the deaf and blind was down the street, he still wanted to be friendly. He tried again, coming closer and physically motioning to her, and still received no acknowledgement. When she ignored him again, Peck ran to his friends down by the dumpster and told them the whole story. When they returned to the courtyard, the woman was gone, but after a quick search Peck spotted her walking down the ally, carrying her laundry basket. A couple of Peck's friends ran to catch up with her, noticing the temperature drop as they did so, and greeted her. When they had the same experience that Peck did, it became clear they saw a ghost. They hightailed it back to their bar, rapidly finished closing, and went home. This was the first reported sighting of the Spanish Laundress of St. George Street about 20 years ago, and she has been seen a few times since then.

As we finished our tour, we ended at the city gate, with the legend of Elizabeth, the apparition of a little girl frequently seen dancing around its arch during the wee hours of the morning. Our walk lasted a little over an hour, and after our guide told us his version of the ghost legend at our B&B, the St. Francis Inn, we lingered a little while longer to take some pictures. As we did, the other Ghostly Experience walk that was being conducted simultaneously to ours made a stop at the gate. The guide who led that tour was telling a decidedly different story than the one we just heard. I later learned that when the company takes on a new guide, they start them off by giving them the research material that the company has accumulated of various haunted sites and lets them choose, interpret, and present the stories how they feel best. No matter how many times their punters may take their tours, each one could be different, unless they keep following the same guide. This one is worth taking in. For more info on them, go to http://www.ghosttoursofstaugustine.com.

GHOST AUGUSTINE

Wanting to avoid an overlap of very much info the second night of our visit, I chose "The Haunted Pub Tour," which is offered by another company, GhoSt Augustine. This company was a little different from the others. It not only provided the pub walk, but it also has a shop specializing in ghost-related material, merchandise, and scientific investigating equipment; a haunted tavern and coffee house; and acted as a box office for all of the ghost tour companies in the St. Augustine, except one. The proprietor, Jonas Brihammar, planned to approach the ninth one, which had recently formed, in the near future. When we bought our tickets, I was really impressed by the selection of ghost folklore books he had. I picked up one for California and he had plenty covering Florida and other states as well.

Our guide for the Haunted Pub Tour was a mature woman dressed in black. Russell and I were her only punters for the evening, which gave us the opportunity for a lot of interaction. I ended up exchanging stories that we had heard in other cities. We stopped at four pubs along the way. One of the factors that I did not consider before buying our tickets was that Florida has no smoking regulations in its bars. One of the stops was a place called Stogie's, which was a cigar "club" as well as a pub.

The story that most stood out was that at the last stop, Scarlett O'Hara's at Cordova and Hypolita Streets. Back in the 70s, the upper story of this converted house was being rented as an apartment to a married couple. The husband collected antiques and had a fascination for the movie incarnation of Scarlett O'Hara. In 1975, his wife went out of town to visit some friends and he was murdered in their home. It was believed that two intruders broke in, beat him up, then drowned him in the clawfoot tub in the bathroom. The wife quickly vacated the premises, leaving behind his collection of antique furniture and GONE WITH THE WIND pictures. There was no immediately apparent motive for the killing. The husband was 43 and had been a well-liked musician. The police investigation soon eliminated the man's wife from the suspect list, but they soon learned he had been having an extramarital affair. His lover bore a striking resemblance to the young Vivien Leigh. Some believe she may have had something to do with his murder, but the police were unable to make the connection. His lover committed suicide two years later. Since then, apparitions of both have been seen around the second story of Scarlett O'Hara's. She wears a black lace dress (negligée?). Our guide said she walked up the stairs twice to find them sitting together. Today, the staff and locals feel nothing but negative energy in the second story and avoid it as much as possible.

This one lasted at least 2-1/2 hours and was definitely good value, if you can tolerate the smoking. Tickets were $16 per adult (this is not one to take the kids). For more info, please go to http://www.ghostaugustine.com.

ST. FRANCIS INN

We stayed at this beautiful Spanish colonial house B&B for three nights. It certainly exceeded our expectations with excellent breakfasts and a uniquely decorated room. Both its setting and ghost story was romantic. According to local legend, a military family was living there when a young soldier, nephew to the master of the house, had an affair with one of their slave girls named Lily. When the nephew defied the master's wishes and continued seeing her regardless, Lily disappeared and the nephew later learned she was dead. Distressed, he went up to the third floor and hanged himself.

Among the phenomena that has occurred there, is one couple who were sleeping one night. The young man was trying to, at least, when he saw the light in the closet go on around 3 a.m., then went out. He told his fiancée about it the following morning, and she immediately checked the alcove for the source. The closet had no light fixture or electrical hookup.

For more details on the St. Francis Inn, please see my more detailed review on the other website.

ST. AUGUSTINE LIGHTHOUSE & MUSEUM

The current St. Augustine Lighthouse was built in 1874. It was erected to replace the previous one, which was close to collapsing because of the tidal erosion of its foundation. After the completion of the lightkeepers' house in 1876, it soon fell during a storm. Among the sad stories that occurred around the light station, is of one of the lightkeepers, of the preceding lighthouse, who fell to his death from the scaffolding as he painted its exterior. One of the local newspapers went into great detail describing how his body bounced off awnings or the like as he dropped. A second, tragic story tells how a few children, most of whose father, Hezekiah H. Pittee, superintendent of lighthouse construction on the East Coast, died while playing around the complex. They were riding in a railed handcart that separated from its tracks and capsized in the water. Three little girls drowned.

One of the most commonly witnessed phenomena is hearing someone climbing the 219 cast iron steps in the tower. However, before the lightkeeper's house was ravaged by fire in 1970, several witnesses saw the apparition of 12-year-old girl peering out the window of an upper story. When the duplex was determined surplus property by the Coast Guard, it was rented to civilians during the late 50s through the 60s. One tenant, who usually ignored the noises in the upper stories, had a guest dared to open the door to a room where he heard them. A little girl, wearing old-fashioned clothes stood by the window, then looked directly at him before disappearing.

For more details on the lighthouse, please see my extensive review on its own product page at the other website.

OLD ST. AUGUSTINE VILLAGE

When I first heard of this attraction, I had envisioned staff dressed in 18th century fashion recreating what life was like in colonial St. Augustine. I have to admit I was disappointed in more ways than one. Instead of watching a woman at a spinning wheel or seeing a smithy pounding hot metal at a forge, this city block was a museum of old houses. It is one of the city's oldest blocks, having been a part of its 1572 town plan, but it just wasn't what I had expected.

Kenneth Worcester Dow was the only child of a wealthy real estate and lumber family. In 1941, Dow pursued taking up long-time residence in St. Augustine and he bought the Murat house on St. George and Bridge Streets. This is one of the oldest houses in St. Augustine and gained some notoriety because it had been briefly occupied by Prince Achille Murat, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. Dow made it a personal goal to decorate it with antiques associated with the Murat family.

However, Dow's collecting didn't stop there. He collected all sorts of things, mostly a wide variety of antiques. He bought anything from furniture and china to a blacksmith's forge and horse-and-buggy paraphernalia. Whenever he ran across something that piqued his interest, he bought it. Soon he bought another house on the same block, then another, then another, until he owned this particular wedge of the city. The oddbits he bought rarely kept his attention for more than week, and afterward he'd stash the items someplace without much care over its maintenance. Two or three of these houses were used just for that purpose.

He eventually donated all of the houses with their contents to the Museum of Arts & Sciences in Daytona Beach during 1989. Since then, the museum has been restoring the houses and some of the many antiques they contained. Visitors enter the village through the Star General Store, which is now a gift shop. I was told three of the houses were left open for their guests, but the others were kept locked. A tour of the complex would start at 3 p.m. and meet by the little podium. Between the houses the ground is cobbled with bricks and prettily decorated with carefully arranged plants. I found it interesting to learn that enclosed within the village was the site of where the Emancipation Proclamation was first read to the local citizens over 130 years ago.

The tour went into detail about Dow, his collecting, and some of the items that were on display there. We were also taken into some of the locked houses. Our guide was the curator and a professional historian with a Southern twang to his voice. I just waited for it to be over before I asked my question about any phenomena in the complex. "Oh, no. We have more integrity than that. We only report on things that have some historical merit."

Say what?

Unfortunately, there weren't many other members of staff around to ask, but I did try the cashier in the gift shop. She said one visiting sensitive recently picked up something in the William Dean Howells House. People have also felt things in the Murat House. If anything uncanny ever happened on that block, I wasn't going to hear it that day. This attraction was a supernatural dud.

The entrance for Old St. Augustine Village is on Cordova Street. It is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for seniors, and $5 for students. For more info, go to http://www.old-staug-village.com.

OLDEST HOUSE MUSEUM COMPLEX

The Gonzalez-Alvarez House is not the oldest house in North America, but simply the oldest one in the oldest city. People had resided on this lot since its earliest days. With the English and others raiding the settlement and burning all of its wooden structures to the ground every so often, the original buildings stood little chance of surviving. Since this complex was right next door to where we were staying at the St. Francis Inn, I felt obliged to go see it. Besides, I vaguely remembered reading some phenomena about it.

The Oldest House and a few small museums are contained within a fenced area about the size of a city block. Visitors enter through the bookstore, where they can purchase their tickets. Guided tours are offered of the house, which last about 20 minutes. A lot of historical records for the house are still extant. It was a single-story home and made of coquina. Originally of Spanish colonial design, residents entered through the courtyard. When the British took possession of the territory, its occupants remodeled the home to have a front door and windows, then added a second story. During the 19th century, a Victorian trim was added to the outside, but the St. Augustine Historical Society has since removed that and have decorated it with relics that fit with the time periods the two different stories were built.

One of the more intriguing exhibits I saw in the complex were a couple of cement-looking bowls, with one hanging over the lower by a chain. Water was pored into the top one, which the bowl absorbed and dripped into the lower. We were told it was an old way to filter water. Although the processed water looks clean, it still has bacteria that anyone who has hasn't built up a tolerance against can still become sick.

The complex includes the Manucy Museum, which covers St. Augustine 400-year history, and the Museum of Florida's Military. The latter probably comes from the influence of St. Francis Barracks, which is across the street. It has a beautiful garden courtyard, with Grecian columns flanking the sidewalk leading to the restrooms. There is also a recreation of the separate building that would have accommodated the home's kitchen. Many homes of this period kept them in separate buildings in case of fire and to keep the homes cooler.

When I asked about ghosts, my tour guide said there has been no known phenomena at the Oldest House. As it turned out, my vague memory confused this house with the Benét House. For anyone interested in visiting, it is open daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for seniors, children 6 and over are $4. Their is also a family rate of $15. It's also available for weddings, and is certainly a romantic setting for one.

CASTILLO DE SAN MARCOS

Yes, there are castles in North America. This one was erected by Spanish settlers during the 17th century, using the indigenous coquina material, which was quarried on Anatasia Island. Aerial views show it has a diamond-like shape, but it has arrowhead shapes where its points would be. The walls are done with a slope, using the sharp shells in the coquina as part of its defense. In those days before antibiotics, the cuts and abrasions anyone would receive climbing the walls were a dangerous risk of infection. It has the distinction of never being taken by force. It has exchanged with the British and back again, but it was always by treaty.

Unfortunately we arrived late on Tuesday afternoon, as our last stop on the way to Orlando. The souvenir shop closed shortly after we entered. Compared to some other castles I've seen, this is a large one. It looked bigger than the Tower of London, but it has no donjon. The wide open space of the courtyard can be deceiving. We went to the presentation of one young ranger who had been working there for a year, but this was the first time she had given a talk to visitors. She detailed the obstacles of building the castle, which took 23 years, and did quite well, so the national park system should be proud to have a young one show such enthusiasm. When I asked her if she knew anything about the ghosts at the castle, she said she never heard anything about them. Since we arrived so late, I had too little opportunity to ask other staff.

There is a legend of an officer who caught his wife cheating on him. Vengeful in his disappointment, he is said to have put both his wife and her lover in chains in the dungeon, then had them bricked up. There is no historical documentation to back this story up, but during the 1830s an engineer had the wall torn down and two shackled skeletons were found in the room. It is said that the wife's sweet perfume can still be smelled in the area. In addition, pictures taken in the chapel have developed with orbs and another of the barracks revealed a white mist that was not visible when taken.

Admission to the old fort was $6. It is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is also a stop on the "A Ghostly Experience" walking tour.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Whether or not people liked Flagler, he succeeded. Two of his large hotels now serve other purposes, but St. Augustine is a fantastic tourist city, especially since the crowds are so much less crushing than what one would find in Orlando or San Francisco. The downtown area and most attractions tend to shut down around 6 or 7 p.m., so it's best to start early. Although many visitors have complained about the constant admission rates for the attractions, most are under $10, which is less than going to a movie in big city America these days. (Certainly cheaper than Disney World.) Bars and restaurants do stay open quite late, however. The Oldest City has had a bit of a growth spurt recently and many newer and less tourist-oriented stores and restaurants can be found along Highway 1.

As a history buff and big fan of ghost folklore, St. Augustine made an excellent amusement park for me. It has plenty more haunted attractions, but these were the ones I saw. Anyone who shares either or both of these interests should love it as well. For those who don't, there's always Orlando. As for me, two and a half days really cut things short. There's plenty more I would have liked to see. I hope someday to pay another visit to the Oldest City.

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Originally posted at Epinions.com on 21 July 2004. 

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