Whether you believe in ghosts or not, these Florida ghost tours promise great stories, haunting visions and howling fun. In cities like St. Augustine, Monticello, Fort Lauderdale and St. Petersburg, it’s possible to hear tales of the Sunshine State’s fascinating past.
 
 
St. Petersburg: Ghosts Find a Friend

St. Petersburg’s ghosts didn’t have an advocate until 2004, when Tim Reeser wrote the book on them. After Reeser collected a dozen tales for Ghost Stories of St. Petersburg, visitors naturally wanted a tour of the spooky spots mentioned. Ghost Tour of St. Petersburg was born.

While St. Petersburg is filled with historic buildings, the ghost stories, says Reeser, are not all old ones. One popular stop takes visitors by the Jannus Landing Courtyard. Jannus Landing is a popular St. Petersburg outdoor concert venue that many believe is haunted by a phantom from the 1980s. The story took on new life when a family came up to the group during a ghost tour and said, “We think it was our son.”

The old hotels of St. Petersburg are important stops. The tour takes in the c. 1888 Detroit Hotel. There, owners found an unidentified portrait in the attic that some believe was an old mayor. The problem? Many claim that the eyes follow them around, and guides claim that “Ladies should beware!”

The most popular hauntings are at The Renaissance Vinoy Hotel & Golf Club. The hauntings at that hotel gained new attention in 2003 when baseball player Scott Williamson told the Cincinnati Enquirer that he felt a ghost on the fifth floor. Reeser says it’s easy to understand why the Vinoy evokes the strongest reactions. “It’s got the tower, and you see the lady in white.”

Reeser, like other ghost tour leaders, carefully documents all of the stories on the walks. This makes the tours equally popular with history buffs who want an entertaining trip through town. But it’s still entertainment, not history. “All of the guides are trained storytellers,” says Reeser.

Most visitors’ favorite story is of the 1907 newlywed who waits at the New River Inn for her husband, who never arrives. The problem? The husband was murdered in New York by the bride-to-be’s angry father, who wanted her to become a nun.
 
Monticello Nickel Tour

When does the director of a local Chamber of Commerce set up ghost tours? When she is the director of the Chamber of Commerce in Monticello, a city that ghost hunters call the “South’s Most Haunted Small Town.”

This town of 2,500 near Tallahassee started seeing ghosts when Mary Frances Gramling, director of the Monticello Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce, began promoting the downtown area through its Main Street program. The group set up a ghost tour as a fundraiser six years ago. They discovered 15 ghosts.

Today, ghost hunting with the group Big Ben Ghost Hunters is a regular Monticello event. For 2008, the chamber is setting up monthly tours to satisfy the believers and the curious.

“[The town] laughed at us at first because it started out small,” says Gramling. But today, ghost hunters come to do their “investigations,” and tours stop at each of the 15 haunted sights.

At first, the town fathers didn’t know what to make of the tours, and they still don’t, to a certain extent. “There is a lot of skepticism about it,” admits Gramling.

But two radio stations came and spent the night at the town’s 1890 Opera House, and visitors, who come to shoot photographs and “get orbs” where they believe they have captured ghosts on camera, leave happy. “People tell these stories,” says Gramling. “You gotta know it’s something.”

 
Fort Lauderdale: Dead Husband Never Arrives

Visitors who go on the Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends Tour in Fort Lauderdale see a different side of that beach city. They hear stories about ghost trains, the Bermuda Triangle and haunted balconies.

Guide Christian Rieger says most visitors’ favorite story is of the 1907 newlywed who waits at the New River Inn for her husband, who never arrives. The problem? The husband was murdered in New York by the bride-to-be’s angry father, who wanted her to become a nun.

The stories might seem scary for some, but Rieger says most young children tend to enjoy the idea of ghosts, as they are used to having invisible friends.

His tours last about 90 minutes, most guests get a ghostly “orb” photo. “We encourage people to bring digital cameras,” says Rieger.

 
St. Augustine: Ghost Central

When Jonas Brihammar came to the United States from Stockholm, Sweden in 2000, he had won a lottery to work in the United States. He happened upon St. Augustine while passing through, and fell in love with the town. Immediately, he found a position working at the St. Augustine Lighthouse. He got into telling ghost stories there, as the lighthouse is said to be haunted, and everyone from the director to the janitor had different tales to tell.

Brihammar decided to open up a ghost store in St. Augustine, and subsequently launched a Haunted Pub Tour and Haunted Hearse Ride. The hearse takes visitors to the lighthouse to check on spirits there, as well as other locations in town. The tour also lends guests an EMF (electromagnetic field) ghost-hunting meter.

The hearse tour is always popular. Guests are driven around in a 1974 Cadillac. “It’s very gothic. It’s spooky. It rolls up ‘bum-bum-bum’,” says Brihammar.

St. Augustine has become the perfect town for investigations, Brihammar says, and it officially earned a spot on the ghost map when the Sci-Fi Channel came to the lighthouse to check out ghosts in what Brihammar says was the “Mona Lisa of all the investigations.”

At first, the Swede was not a believer in ghosts, but after hearing the stories, the tales grew on him. In the end, there have been enough things that he couldn’t disprove. “You don’t have to believe in this stuff to have a good time,” says Brihammar. “[But] I have seen people turn into believers.”


Florida’s Beachy Ghost Haunt

Not all the ghosts are in towns. Some of Florida’s most eerie places are actually abandoned towns, including Fort Dade on Egmont Key, near St. Petersburg.

You might feel like you’re on the surreal TV island in Lost as you follow desolate brick streets and crumbling sidewalks that lead nowhere and climb the shadowed stairways of military batteries on Egmont Key. Located near the entrance to Tampa Bay, the key is accessible only by ferry from St. Petersburg’s Fort De Soto Park or by private boat, but it is well worth the trip.

Fort Dade was built on the barrier island when the Spanish-American War was imminent. Surprisingly modern for its time and remote location, it provided its 300 residents with electricity, telephones and the luxuries of a movie theater, bowling alley and tennis court.

The fort was deactivated in 1923, but the lighthouse, built in 1848, still operates. Little more than a few walls and bricks remain of the original town’s 70 buildings; many sites are marked with placards and black-and-white photos of buildings long gone.