Ghost Stories of St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Pinellas County: Tales from a Haunted Peninsula
96
Ghost Stories of St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Pinellas County: Tales from a Haunted Peninsula
96eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Does the restless ghost of a murder victim haunt a Gulfport home? Does a doomed pirate search for his lost treasure at John’s Pass? Are sea captains and Civil War soldiers still combing the area, years after their deaths?
With wit and style, the “Queen of Haunts,” Deborah Frethem, calls upon years of experience as the general manager and guide of Tampa Bay Ghost Tours to present legends of sinister deeds and whispers of the past from Florida’s haunted peninsula.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781625844149 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 10/20/2018 |
| Series: | Haunted America |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 96 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Ghosts of John's Pass
John Levique
Drive along Gulf Boulevard and you will pass over a bridge that connects Madeira Beach with Treasure Island. The body of water beneath that bridge provides passage between the Gulf of Mexico and beautiful Boca Ciega Bay. This passage is known as John's Pass. It was formed a relatively short time ago, cut by a huge storm in 1848. Before that time the land formed a solid barrier island. Those not from the area have occasionally been heard to refer to this straight of water as St. John's Pass. Truth be told, the man after whom the pass is named was anything but a saint.
Born in France in the waning years of the nineteenth century, John Levique was a poor lad without education. Unable to read and write, he always signed his name with an "X." At the age of ten he found employment aboard a Spanish vessel sailing back and forth between the old world and the new. Unfortunately, pirates captured this ship on John's very first voyage. The pirates (being the sweet, sensitive folk that they were) offered the young lad a choice. He could either join their pirate band and work as a slave in their galley, or they would slit his throat.
Understandably, the boy chose to live. As he grew up he became accustomed to pirate life and prospered, becoming cabin boy, mate, first mate and finally captain of his own ship. However, he was not the most successful of captains, most likely because he preferred not to kill people. Pirates of that time lived by the creed, "Dead men tell no tales," but John, perhaps because of his own death threat as a young boy, preferred to let his victims live.
His lack of success led him to leave the pirate life in the early 1840s. He decided to retire to Florida, as so many do today, and chose the area we now call Madeira Beach as his new home. He brought with him one small chest of treasure, which he buried along the barrier island.
Levique then began his new career, that of turtle rancher. There were good reasons to become a turtle rancher in those days. Obviously, a fast horse was not required. But more importantly, turtles were an excellent cash crop. Turtle meat was prized as an ingredient for soup, an epicurean delight. Furthermore, turtles could be transported alive, a huge advantage in the days before refrigeration.
In the late summer of 1848, John and a friend named Joseph Silva took a boatload of turtles across the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans, Louisiana. They were able to sell their cargo for quite a large profit. After spending quite a bit of that profit on wine, women and song in New Orleans, they headed home in September.
It was a dangerous gamble to cross the Gulf in September, the height of hurricane season. There was no Doppler radar or weather radio to warn of approaching storms. And sure enough, about halfway home, the two men noticed a huge storm growing on the horizon. They found a "hurricane hole" where they could ride out the storm. Although they had a rough time, they did survive and managed to resume their journey. When they arrived home, however, they found a completely changed shoreline, including a new pass that cut right through the barrier island. They sailed through the pass with John at the ship's wheel. Joseph remarked that this new pass must be "John's Pass," because John Levique was the first man to sail through it.
It's a sweet story. But it has a rather sad ending. The place where John had buried his one little treasure chest, all his profits from his pirating days, was exactly the place where the Great Gale of 1848 had cut the new water passage. John desperately hoped that his treasure had not been washed out to sea, but simply had been pushed off to one side of the pass or the other where it lay buried just beneath the sands of the beach. He spent the rest of his life looking for that treasure. He never found it and died just a few years later, a poor and broken man.
But the folks who live along those beaches today, as well as many who visit the area, claim to have seen John still walking the beaches, sometimes even in broad daylight. He is said to wear the rough clothing of a Florida pioneer. Over his left shoulder is slung a burlap sack, perhaps to gather turtle eggs along the beach. In his right hand he holds a long, sharp stick. He walks a few steps and then drives that stick down into the sand, wiggling it around, as if wondering, "Is there something down there? Is it worth digging?"
Yankee Brothers in Southern Soil
Of course, the Civil War was the cause of great pain and strife throughout the country. And Florida was no exception. Despite the fact that it was not a plantation economy, Florida did become one of the Confederate States. But there were a few residents who felt very strongly that Florida should stay with the Union — strongly enough to enlist with the Union forces. Obviously, this was not a popular choice with some of their neighbors.
The island of Egmont Key was captured by Union forces in 1861. This island, just on the edge of the Tampa Bay shipping channel, is accessible only by boat to this day. The Union navy used the island as a base from which to operate a blockade of the shipping lanes, thus preventing aid and comfort from reaching the Confederate forces. Conditions on Egmont Key were difficult. The island is mainly rock and sand, not suited for growing food. And, of course, hostile forces surrounded the small garrison. These conditions produced an unforeseen crisis — men on Egmont Key were slowly starving to death.
Among the navy men at Egmont Key were two brothers, John and Scott Whitehurst, who had been local farmers before the war. In late August of 1862, John and Scott decided they would take a boat to their own farms on the mainland, hoping to obtain much needed supplies, especially food for the forces on Egmont.
All went well at first. They returned home, loaded their boat with supplies and prepared to head back to the base. Unfortunately, just at that moment, they were set upon by a group of Confederate guerrillas who, according to official navy documents, killed Scott Whitehurst outright and mortally wounded John. However, he still managed to get his boat launched and out of the line of fire. But he lay in the boat drifting for two days, in the heat of a merciless August sun, before drifting onto land somewhere along the shores of John's Pass. Found by Union navy forces, John died on the evening of September 2, 1862. The Union navy vessel USS Tahoma retrieved the body of Scott Whitehurst, and the brothers were buried side by side.
However they are not at rest. Apparently, they continue to try and reach the safety of Egmont Key. And they are definitely creatures of habit, as their ghosts are only seen in the pre-dawn hours of the morning, after each new moon. The local fishermen, who are habitual early risers, most frequently see these spirits. They state that the ghosts of the brothers are not in a boat but standing staunchly upright in the middle of John's Pass. Their feet are hovering just a few inches above the water. The apparitions are pale and scrawny, as if they are suffering from lack of food. Their clothes, the blue uniforms of the Yankee navy, are faded, tattered and torn. These figures are dripping with grease and mold. Worst of all, the sight of the brothers is always accompanied by an overwhelming stench of decaying human flesh.
In April of 2002, S.P.I.R.I.T.S. of St. Petersburg, a paranormal investigative group, came to John's Pass at 5:00 a.m. on the morning after the new moon hoping to see the brothers' specters for themselves. Although they did not actually see the spirits, some of the photographs they took that early morning show orbs floating above the buildings along the waterfront.
Coincidentally, for nearly a century, locals have reported seeing orbs rising from the grave of Scott Whitehurst. They described them as "ghost lights." Witnesses said these lights drifted across Boca Ciega Bay and moved up to the old Whitehurst farms in what is now Seminole. Do these spirits return because they feel their former friends and neighbors betrayed them? Or are they perhaps paying a penance for their own betrayal of their native state? Perhaps these tortured souls are "living" proof that betrayal, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Eleanor Key
Today the area around John's Pass vibrates with activity. Shops and high- rise condominiums abound, and people and boats create a buzz of action nearly twenty-four hours a day. But five hundred years ago things were totally different. This was once a quiet, green place inhabited by a small band of native people whose skin was browned by the sun and decorated with primitive tattoos. These people were the Tocobaga. And they had been here for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years before the Spanish Conquistadors set foot on this soil.
When the Spanish arrived they brought with them European diseases, which decimated the native population. Those that were not killed by the measles or smallpox were carried off as slaves to work in plantations and fields. Almost nothing remains of this ancient culture. In fact, Encyclopedia Britannica describes these people as extinct, although there are a few individuals alive today who still claim to have Tocobaga ancestry.
These natives left us two forms of evidence of their existence. The first is huge mounds of discarded shells from the seafood that they gathered and ate as the main staple of their diet. These mounds are known by archaeologists as "kitchen middens." Unfortunately, the contents of many of these mounds were used to pave early roads in Pinellas County. The other evidence of their existence is also in the form of mounds. Burial mounds.
Sometime in the late 1850s, two local pioneers, John A. Bethell and Anderson Wood, were hunting on Eleanor Key, which is a large mangrove island that can be seen just to the south of the boardwalk at John's Pass Village. They came across a small ridge, which they at first assumed was a natural ridge. Much to their surprise, they saw two human skulls and several small bones perched on top of the ridge.
After this unsettling discovery, their first thoughts were of treasure. They reasoned that if this was a Tocobaga burial mound, there might be gold and silver adornments hidden inside. They began to dig quickly and haphazardly, with no respect for either the archaeological significance of the site or the sacred nature of the mound to the ancient people. This act of desecration yielded no treasure of silver or gold. Instead they discovered three levels of skeletons, with the skulls facing toward the north and the feet toward the south, and many pieces of broken pottery.
Disappointed, and suddenly feeling afraid, the two young men quickly covered up most of the bones. However, they took with them one huge skull and jawbone, as well as two large thighbones. These bones indicated that the native people were of large stature. In fact, the skull and jawbone could easily fit over the heads of the young men. And the thighbones came nearly to the level of their waists. These stolen bones were eventually given to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. But since the day of this unauthorized excavation, the spirits have been restless on Eleanor Key. In the hours between midnight and dawn, a ghostly mist and unusual light hangs low over the island. A green glow rises slowly over the center of the mangrove trees and then spreads out until it covers the entire top of the island. Sometimes, the sounds of Native American drums are heard. Flashes and balls of light with no apparent source have also been seen.
The island is now a bird sanctuary, and the intrusion of human beings is no longer allowed. Hopefully, as time passes, the spirits of the natives will find peace and rest again.
Captain Hubbard
In October of 1929, a traveling carnival arrived in Pass-A-Grille to play a one-night stand. The carnival was owned by George and Anna Hubbard. Their plan was to entertain in the small Gulf beach town and then move on to their winter quarters in Miami. Unfortunately, the very day they set up their tents in Pass-A-Grille was "Black Tuesday," the day the American stock market crashed. George Hubbard reasoned that if people didn't have enough money to eat, they would not be spending money on traveling carnivals. So he sold everything that he could and purchased a small hotel in Pass-A-Grille. Like so many before them, George and Anna Hubbard became permanent Florida residents.
At the time they arrived, their young son, Wilson, was sixteen years old. He helped the family during those early days of the Great Depression by doing a lot of fishing. What the family didn't need for food he would sell. In just one year he had saved enough of his fishing money to buy five little rowboats and forty cane fishing poles. Thus began the career of one of the greatest fishing guides of the Gulf beaches.
Captain Wilson Hubbard ran his business from the Eighth Avenue pier in Pass-A-Grille until 1975 when he moved his boats up to John's Pass Village. In 1976 he opened the Friendly Fisherman, a seafood restaurant bearing the same name as one of his boats. According to his daughter Patricia, Wilson was also the first person in the area to start a "dolphin watch" boat ride. She said that at the time people told him he was crazy. "Nobody is going to pay to go out in a boat to see dolphin," people said. Of course, now there are dolphin sightseeing cruises making people smile up and down the Gulf beaches.
Wilson passed away in 1994. But his presence continues to be felt throughout John's Pass Village. It seems he likes to return to check on the legacy he left behind.
A portrait of the captain hangs on the wall outside the Friendly Fisherman. The image is not a frightening one. The captain looks kind and a bit mischievous. However, no matter where you stand, if you walk from one side of the portrait to the other, the eyes of the captain will follow you! Several people have claimed that the portrait has actually winked at them.
Inside the restaurant there is a small shelf near the service bar. When Wilson was alive this shelf was home to a bottle of rum, which he frequently used to spike his coffee. Of course since his death, there is no reason to keep rum on the shelf. Drinking glasses are now stored on the shelf. But, according to Wilson's daughter Kathleen, a few times a week those glasses rattle for no apparent reason. Often, one will fall off the shelf and break. Is it the Captain searching for his bottle of rum?
A former night manager by the name of Trent says that he had several encounters with Wilson Hubbard when he worked at the Friendly Fisherman. The most vivid one was very late one evening after the restaurant had closed, and everyone except Trent had already gone home. At about 3:00 in the morning, Trent heard a slow, even, deliberate knocking coming from inside one of the walls. "Not fast and irregular like a pipe rattling," he said. "The kind of knocking that only a human hand could do." He decided to "just get out of there." But when he went to enter his exit code into the restaurant security system, the system flashed back that it could not set because "motion was detected" in the empty restaurant. Trent walked through the entire restaurant looking for the source of the motion. There was nothing and no one to be seen. Once again he tried to enter his code, and once again the message of "motion detected" flashed back at him. He decided at that point to just get out and lock the doors behind him.
The next morning when the day shift arrived, the alarm was correctly set. Could Captain Hubbard's ghost have felt bad about driving Trent away and set the alarm himself to protect his restaurant?
Renovation and remodeling often make ghosts more agitated. At the present time, the John's Pass Boardwalk and Hubbard's Marina are undergoing a full-scale reconstruction. And Captain Hubbard has been seen more frequently as a result. Besides his usual haunts (no pun intended), his image has been seen on his dolphin-watching boat, The Sea Adventure. One of the employees of the local gambling cruise ship has reported that on several evenings, when the cruise returned in the wee hours of the morning, she looked at the empty and locked The Sea Adventure and saw the shadowy image of Captain Hubbard standing at the wheel.
The image of the captain is easy to identify. He was quite tall and slender and usually had his gray hair tucked up under a sea captain's hat. He also always wore one red sock and one green sock, as a reflection of the port and starboard navigation lights on a boat. Kathleen told me that he wore those socks with his tuxedo when he walked her down the aisle. And his son Mark said, "We buried him wearing those socks."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Ghosts Stories of St. Petersburg, Clearwater, and Pinellas County"
by .
Copyright © 2007 Deborah Frethem.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements,
1 The Ghosts of John's Pass,
John Levique,
Yankee Brothers in Southern Soil,
Eleanor Key,
Captain Hubbard,
Pirate Legends,
2 The Ghosts of St. Pete Beach,
Comfort and Joy,
Silas Dent,
The Castle Hotel,
The Hurricane Restaurant,
Don CeSar,
Snippets — Short Stories from St. Pete Beach,
3 The Ghosts of Gulfport,
The Peninsula,
Karen Gregory,
The Cat and the Casino,
The Trolley,
The Rolyat,
La Cote de Basque Winehouse,
Sunshine Skyway,
4 The Ghosts of Downtown St. Petersburg,
The Bathroom and the Museum,
The Vinoy,
The Home of Ott and Julia Whitted,
The Sutphin House,
The Coliseum Ballroom,
Two Flamboyant Mayors,
The Martha Washington Hotel,
Haslam's Book Store,
Bed and Breakfast Stories,
5 The Ghosts of Clearwater,
The Belleview Biltmore,
Fort Harrison Hotel,
Safety Harbor Resort and Spa,
Selected Bibliography,