Lisa Browder

The Tampa Terrors ghost tour is a lot of fun and I recommend it – but only if nighttime brisk walking for an hour and a half over uneven terrain is within your capabilities. I was a tour guide for about seven months, and I can assure you that the stories are entertaining, the buildings are beautiful, the history of Tampa is interesting and there are some memorable ghosts involved at each location.

The tour begins downtown in front of the Old Tampa Theatre and it’s one of the more haunted buildings. There is the Lady in White who was trampled by a horse and carriage. There’s the lingering presence of the projectionist, “Fink” Finley. He smoked incessantly and patrons will smell his cigar smoke. There’s the ticket taker who was murdered on the premises, probably for his paycheck. And there’s my favorite, the man in the brown derby. He is always seen sitting in seat 308 and, if spotted, will doff his hat and vanish.

Originally a federal courthouse, this is now Le Meridien hotel. It was here that one Charlie Wall, a famous Tampa mobster testified before the Kefauver Commission and spilled his guts about illegal bootlegging and gambling activities. He was subsequently murdered, his head bludgeoned with a baseball bat. Though never solved, it’s assumed the hit was directed by Santo Trafficante.

This is the old City Hall. Built in 1915, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. It has three ghosts who are most often seen as orbs of light circling the clock tower. People on the tour often take a series of photos that pick up the orbs. A man on one of my tours commented they were likely the reflection of the streetlights. I worried that was, in fact, the case until the night a guest took a video and played it back. The orbs of light moved across the frames, so it was most certainly not the streetlights.

Notice the faces between the window sections beneath the ledge. Those are Seminole Indian maidens. The legend is that the Seminole Indians protect Tampa from the winds and rains. Coming to Tampa from Las Vegas, I wasn’t accustomed to hurricane forecasts. They were (are) a bit frightening. But I have noticed that they rarely make it to Tampa. Must be that legend.

The beautiful Sacred Heart Catholic Church has the spirits of three Jesuit priests who died during the Yellow Fever epidemic of the late 1800s while tending to the sick. The center photo is the Floridan Hotel (once the Florida Palace) a popular destination for movie stars and military dignitaries in the roaring 20s. There are stories of suicides at this hotel. And then there is the S.H. Kress building, home to black-eyed children (a questionable story for me, but darned scary at night for sure). I once had a child on the tour tell me, quite disdainfully, that he didn’t believe in ghosts. That changed when we got to the black-eyed children. Up until that point, none of the other stories fazed him, so I figured he must have identified with the age. After that, I started asking children which ghost they liked best, and the majority were drawn to the black-eyed children.

And then we get to Oaklawn Cemetery, created in 1850. It has the graves of Charlie Wall and the three Jesuit priests. There are commemorative plaques to the yellow fever victims who were buried in mass graves and to confederate soldiers whose remains were discovered when they excavated the ground where Fort Brooke once stood. There are 13 of Tampa’s former mayors and one Florida Supreme Court Justice buried here. Vincent Ybor, the man responsible for establishing Ybor City and its vibrant cigar industry is here. There are two pirates, one of them with a headstone that reads, “found shot to death in the woods.” There’s a sheriff, a woman born in 1796, a prominent Floridian who was a friend to Chief Billy Bowlegs, and even two markers without names – one saying Murdered and one saying Hanged. It’s a beautiful place during the day but, of course, the tour group is seeing it at night. That’s a whole different ballgame.

The ghost tour might be challenging for anyone with physical limitations, and I can’t imagine a wheelchair managing at all. It’s a mile and half brisk walk, at night, over streets, train tracks, beat up sidewalks, and cobblestones. That said, if you’re up for it, it’s a fun tour with great stories and lots of Tampa history. You can purchase tickets at http://www.tampaterrors.com.