‘Tis the season for ghosts, spirits, apparitions and other visitors from the otherworld, and Florida has more than its share.
According to moving site moveBuddha.com, Florida is the fourth-most-haunted state in the U.S. in 2024 based on analysis of the number of “haunted locations,” cemeteries, and ghost sightings by population, among other scores. The Sunshine State also ranked No. 7 in their list of States That Will Give You the Creeps based on the number of unsolved murders and abandoned buildings, something oddly omitted from the state’s tourism ads.
The scariest place in the U.S.? Not even close. It’s New Mexico, thanks to its multitude of abandoned cities going back thousands of years.
But Florida regularly appears on most-haunted lists with our spooky lighthouses and restaurants, a cursed highway, theaters with spectral patrons, haunted trees, and even lingering ghosts in the Happiest Place on Earth. It might, in fact, be easier to list the Florida towns and cities that don’t have a local ghost story.
SpookyTraveler.com agrees. “Florida’s long and tumultuous history has left behind countless ghost tales and restless spirits. Spanish explorers, Native American conflicts, pirate raids, Civil War battles, and even the development of swamplands into cities have all contributed to its haunted legacy,” it said.
Here are some of the most haunted places in the Sunshine State:
Haunted St. Augustine Lighthouse and, really, most of St. Augustine, Florida
Are there any places in St. Augustine that aren’t haunted? There must be a tour for that somewhere.
The country’s oldest city ranked as one of Travel + Leisure’s 20 Most Haunted Places in America this year, which named it a “hotbed of ghost activity.” There is a rich history of hauntings and any number of spine-chilling tours and experiences available Ghosthunting is a big part of the local economy.
There’s The Old Jail, which contained — and hanged — some of the city’s most violent criminals from 1891 to 1953 and has since been the site of numerous strange phenomena, reports of guests being touched or grabbed, and sightings of apparitions in period clothing.
The Old Mansion on Joiner Street (most recently a bed-and-breakfast) reportedly holds the spiritual remains of the wife of a missing Civil War colonel who haunts the place waiting for his return. Residents report seeing the ghost of Elizabeth, the daughter of the gatekeeper in the early 1800s, who died of Typhoid Fever, hanging around the city gates at the north end of St. George Street. A World War II and Korean War veteran dead of suicide haunts the Plaza de la Constitucion. Children’s footsteps have been heard on the 4th floor of the Casa Monica Hotel. A 5-year-old boy who fell from a tree in a local cemetery is buried under it and has been spotted playing in the branches. Henry Flagler is said to roam the halls of Flagler College. And there are many, many more.
But people from around the world have come specifically to be creeped out by the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum, which the SyFy channel show “Ghost Hunters” called “the Mona Lisa of paranormal sites.” Shadowy figures on the stairs. Furniture moving around. Unexplained footsteps. Sightings of small girls playing on the grounds. A disembodied female voice calling for help.
Some of this, at least, is based on true and tragic tales. During the construction of the tower on July 10, 1873, the foreman’s children were playing on a supply cart that was trapped. The two oldest children, Eliza and Mary Pittee, and another 10-year-old child died, local tour guide Matt Hladik told the St. Augustine Record in 2014. And on Dec. 5, 1859, Light Keeper Joseph Andreu was painting the tower when he fell 60 feet to his death. Visitors also have seen a “man in blue,” supposedly a sailor who hanged himself there, in the basement of the former lighthouse keeper’s duplex.
‘We don’t have ghosts on payroll”: Halloween is go time for haunted tours in St. Augustine
Bellamy Bridge ‘most haunted spot in Florida’
The Bellamy Bridge, built in 1914 in Jackson County near Marianna, is the oldest structure of its type in Florida. It’s also home to numerous ghost legends, most famously Elizabeth Jane Croom Bellamy, a young woman who died tragically by fire on the day of her wedding and has been spotted roaming the area since the 1800s.
The legend has some accurate bits. Bellamy did exist, married to Samuel Bellamy, and did live near the bridge, and she did have a tragic death. But it was from yellow fever in 1937, according to exploresouthernhistory.com. However, in one of her books, 19th-century novelist Caroline Lee Hentz, wrote about a young enslaved woman who perished in flames on her wedding day at the Bellamy estate and over time the stories became conflated.
“None of this, of course, proves that there is not a ghost at Bellamy Bridge,” the site said.
The Florida Theater in Jacksonville has a ghost in residence
Joseph Hilton, an organist who worked in the Florida Theater in downtown Jacksonville in the 1920s and who later died from suicide, reportedly haunts the balcony and may have been caught on film by paranormal investigative TV show “Local Haunts” in 2010.
Whether Hilton is attending the theater or not, the venue wants to stay on his good side. In 2020 the seats were all replaced, except for his favorite seats, Balcony E1 and E2, which were instead refurbished and put right back in.
“We did not want our ghost to be homeless if his or her seat went away permanently,” said Numa Saisselin, president of the theater, at the time. “They are the only two seats being restored. Every other seat is being replaced. Hopefully, the ghost does not mind being without his or her seat for a few weeks.”
Jacksonville is known for a variety of haunts, including the King House built on top of a Spanish graveyard, silent film star Fatty Arbuckle haunting the Casa Marina Hotel and Restaurant, a burlesque dancer occupying her “haunted dive bar” Ginger’s Place, and even the unexplained shadows caught on camera at the Jacksonville Beach lifeguard station, which has to be the most Florida supernatural phenomena, ever.
(Like haunted theaters? Check out the Tampa Theater, which boasts the ghost of ticket-taker Robert Lanier found dead in the 1950s in mysterious circumstances, and projectionist Foster “Fink” Finley who continues to roam the balcony.)
I-4 may actually be out to kill you, in ‘I-4 dead zone’
In a quarter-mile stretch of Interstate 4 roughly halfway between Orlando and Daytona Beach leading onto the St. Johns River Bridge over Lake Monroe, commuters have reported a sudden drop in phone reception, static on their stories and CB radios, and the occasional apparition, zigzagging ball of light, phantom trucker or ghostly hitchhiker. And a disturbing number of car crashes and fatalities.
Welcome to the I-4 Dead Zone.
The legend began the day that section of the highway opened in 1963 when a shrimp boat crashed at a certain spot, killing the driver. On that very location, underneath the concrete just before the highway stretches across the lake, are the remains of four German immigrants who perished in the yellow fever epidemic in Florida in 1887 and were buried unshriven, according to Bennett Lloyd, coordinator at the Museum of Seminole County History. The state was supposed to move them but paved over them instead.
A high percentage of traffic fatalities and inexplicable phenomena have been reported there ever since, including unexpected visits by Hurricane Donna (1960, on the day they first dumped dirt on the spot) and Hurricane Charley (2004, when construction was going on near the graves), according to Charlie Carlson, author of “Weird Florida” and grandson of one of the original site’s owners.
Is Disney World in Orlando, Florida, haunted? It’s a small afterlife after all
Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando is such an amazing experience, some guests (and workers) never want to leave.
The ghost of a dead employee has haunted the Pirates of the Caribbean ride for decades, cast members used to tell the guests. George gets cranky if he is disrespected and will shut the ride down with mysterious breakdowns. Other ghost stories from the cast members include:
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A guest who died on Space Mountain in the 1970s will apparently grab empty seats to ride again.
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A 4-year-old boy who died on the Mission Space ride at Epcot in 2005 seemingly manifests through cold spots and shuttle doors closing at odd times.
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A “bellhop” cast member who reportedly died of an attack in the Tower of Terror at Disney’s Hollywood Studios now haunts the ride, causing flickering lights and ghostly appearances in the Platform D elevator.
But the creepiest thing might be the sheer amount of human ashes that guests try to sneak in and spread at the Haunted Mansion to honor a loved one’s last, quirky wishes.
“The Haunted Mansion probably has so much human ashes in it that it’s not even funny,” one Disneyland custodian told the Wall Street Journal.
Welcome, foolish mortals: 5 creepy haunted legends and rumors from Disney World
The Devil Tree in Port St. Lucie, Florida, was the site of gruesome murders
There are a surprising number of haunted trees in Florida, but the Devil Tree in Oak Hammock Park in Port St. Lucie may be one of the worst.
In 1977, a hog hunter stumbled over bones and teeth belonging to two missing Iowa teen girls, Barbara Ann Wilcox and Colette Goodenough, who had been missing since 1973. They had seemingly been hung from the tree and then hacked apart, a scene reminiscent of two other sets of murdered teens for which former Martin County deputy Gerard Schaefer already had been sentenced to death. Circuit Judge C.P. Trowbridge, who oversaw the double murder trial, said years later there had been “evidence that (Schaefer) was responsible for about 30 other girls’ deaths across the country.”
Since then, Charlie Carlson has reported, there have been so many reports of “hooded satanic worshippers dancing around the tree” that a priest was brought in to perform an exorcism in 1992. There have been reports of people hearing screams from the tree and from the women’s bathroom in the park, and legends say any axes brought near the tree go dull and chainsaws refuse to work.
Ghost stories: 13 most haunted places on the Treasure Coast and their histories
Gator Club in Sarasota, Florida, may have undead employees
Next time you get served a drink in Sarasota’s Gator Club, make sure it’s from a living person.
The bar, housed in a two-story brick building from 1913, has at times also offered services outside the law such as bootleg whiskey during Prohibition, illegal gambling and even an upstairs brothel. But Larry Siegel, who bought the place in 2005, has reported lights and a TV getting turned back on, a cash register ringing up dozens of drinks all by itself, and cold breezes where there shouldn’t be any.
“There was this cold air, like a fan,” Siegel said in 2013, before the bar’s 100th anniversary, “that just blew past me.”
Giving up the ghosts: Sarasota locales that might go bump in the night
Victim of horrific 1934 murder said to haunt Ashley’s Restaurant in Rockledge
At Ashley’s Restaurant in Rockledge, visitors and staff have reported flickering lights, alarms going off, salt shakers dropping and dishes breaking, and people getting pushed on the stairs.
As the story goes, on Nov. 21, 1934, the body of 19-year-old Ethel Allen was found on the bank of the Indian River in Eau Gallie, mutilated and burned with a crushed skull and a slit throat. Ethel was last seen at Jack’s Tavern, the business that occupied the building before it eventually became Ashley’s Restaurant.
Visitors have reported seeing apparitions of a young woman in the bathroom mirror, and one manager claimed to have seen the feet of a woman wearing 1930s-era shoes in a neighboring stall, which was found to be empty.
Stabbed in London, this ghost came with the pub in Delray Beach, Florida
Bertha Starkey, a 19th-century London woman reportedly murdered by her husband for infidelity, was known to haunt a British pub for over 125 years when it was torn down.
But when the Blue Anchor Pub’s facade and wood interior were shipped overseas to Delray Beach, her howling soul came with it, according to the owners.
“To this day in Delray Beach, footsteps can be heard at night after closing, candles light and extinguish themselves along with banging pots and pans and the sound of Bertha wailing,” the pub’s site says.
Be afraid. Be very afraid: The most haunted places around Palm Beach County
Koreshan State Park in Florida once held religious sect, now local legends
Almost 130 years ago, doctor Cyrus R. Teed moved to Estero, called himself Koresh (the Hebrew version of Cyrus), and founded a religious sect of about 200 followers he relocated from Chicago to build a “New Jerusalem.” Koreshans believed in a hollow Earth, immortality through reincarnation, and their messiah, i.e. Teed. The Koreshans established their own civilization here, complete with nearly 30 businesses including a sawmill, publishing house, machine shop, general store, art gallery, a symphony and more.
After Teed died in 1908, his followers left his body in a bathtub for five days so he could resurrect, but instead, according to journalist and author Lyn Millner, after three weeks the health department forced them to dispose of the body. Teed’s mortal remains were placed in a mausoleum on the beach where they were carefully watched in case of resurrection until a hurricane washed it out to sea 13 years later.
The last four members of the sect deeded 305 acres of their land to the state in 1961, mostly the area containing the remaining buildings, according to the state website, as well as “landscaped grounds that include unique ornamental exotic vegetation from throughout the world.” Locals say the spirits of the Koreshans are still watching over the land at Koreshan State Historic Site, and there have been reports of unexplained voices in the buildings, floating orbs of light, and shadows of people on the trails, according to the regular ghost tours.
Pensacola boasts a ghost named “Fred” and a haunted district
You can spend weeks chasing ghosts in this West Florida city. There’s a haunted lighthouse at Naval Air Station Pensacola that’s been featured on the popular “Ghost Hunters” program, two haunted cemeteries, multiple haunted homes, and Seville Quarter, downtown Pensacola’s longtime popular entertainment complex, which is said to be inhabited by several spirits including a Seville Quarter employee who died there.
Robert, the world’s most haunted doll, chilling in Key West
In 1904, a Key West boy named Robert Eugene “Gene” Otto was given an odd, straw-filled , life-size doll that was to become his closest friend, and possibly enemy, for the rest of his life, according to HauntedKeyWest.com
Gene blamed Robert the Doll for his own misdeeds and talked to it often, and the family began reporting strange and mysterious activity. Later rumors arose that Gene’s wife died from “insanity” after locking Robert in the attic.
After being stored away for many years, Robert is terrorizing Key West visitors to the Fort East Martello Museum where it is believed he delights in casting curses on anyone who takes his picture without asking first.
Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida, stalked by ghostly captives, slain lovers
One more from St. Augustine. The 17th-century fortress Castillo de San Marcos, constructed by the Spanish in 1672, was used by the Spanish and British, and Americans used it to imprison Native Americans, including the Seminole war chief Osceola, according to the national park website.
Ghostly sightings of soldiers and Native Americans have been reported, as well as glowing orbs inside. But the best known, according to the Travel Channel’s “Ghost Adventures,” is that of Delores Marti, wife of Spanish Col. Garcia Marti, who reportedly suspected her of cheating on him with Capt. Manuel Abela in 1784 during the second Spanish occupation. Delories Marti and Abela mysteriously disappeared, and since then a forlorn female in a white dress has been seen atop the walls.
(The “ghost ship” from the 1700s that reportedly washed ashore after Hurricane Milton? Sorry, it was fake news.)
This is only a sampling, There are dozens, possibly hundreds of similar spooky tales in homes, hotels, saloons and attractions all over Florida. Walk carefully, and keep your eyes open.
Contributors: Tom Szaroleta, Florida Times-Union; Wade Tatangelo, Sarasota Herald-Tribune; Dave Osborn, Naples Daily News; Sheldon Gardner, Daytona Beach News-Journal, Maureen Kenyon, Treasure Coast Newspapers
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Florida ghost tales from St. Augustine to Sarasota to Key West
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