Hiding behind its charming, tourist town store fronts, lurking in the shadows of narrow cobblestone alleys, perhaps even peering at you from behind lace-curtained bed-and-breakfast windows are the spirits of St. Augustine's past. So they say.
"The ghosts are everywhere in St. Augustine," says Sandy Craig, Owner of the original Ghost Tours of St. Augustine, A Ghostly Experience. "All of the stories are true. We don't have to make any of it up," she adds.
St. Augustine is America's oldest continuously occupied city and was once one of the country's only two gated cities (the other was Charleston, S.C.). Violent battles during the Spanish-American War, deadly outbreaks of yellow fever, and good old-fashioned lover's jealousy is to blame for many of the reported hauntings.
A Ghostly Experience takes you to the very sites of the city's most popular hauntings. You can hear the stories, maybe even catch a glimpse of a ghost, as you take a walk on St. Augustine's dark side.
Among the favorites is the story of the honorable Judge John B. Stickney, a prominent St. Augustine politician who fell victim to typhoid fever and died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1882. He was in Huguenot Cemetery but was later exhumed when his children requested his remains be shipped to Washington D.C. During the exhumation, grave robbers attacked and stole the gold teeth from Stickney's skull. Residents say Judge Stickney's ghost can be seen at night, wandering around the cemetery with his head down, as if searching for something.
Another favorite story took place during the early 1930s at the Casablanca Inn, a then boarding house that is still in business as a popular bed-and-breakfast inn today. The widow who ran the Casablanca would stand watch on the balcony, swinging a lantern back and forth to warn rumrunners when government revenuers were in town. The widow has long been dead, but fishermen and shrimpers passing through the inlet say they often see the swinging lantern atop the Casablanca Inn.
But perhaps the most-loved spirit is the one known as the ghost bride, a beautiful vision in white, believed to have passed away only days before her wedding. The woman had given birth to a baby out of wedlock and, as was the custom in that day, the baby was taken away from her to be adopted. That's why the ghost bride most often appears to children.
Every evening at 8 p.m., A Ghostly Experience departs from the north end of St. George Street, at the Old Mill water wheel, across from the Oldest Wooden School House. Sandy Craig and her Original Ghost Tour has been featured on the Travel Channel, the Discovery Channel, and was voted The #1 Guided Tour in Florida by readers of Florida Living Magazine. Reservations requested. Please call 904-461-1009.
