A Ghost Tour of St. Augustine

I finally went on a ghost tour in St. Augustine. I have been wanting to go on one ever since I moved to Florida about a hundred years ago. My wife, Laura, set this up because I’m not smart enough. I don’t even think I’m smart enough to find St. Augustine and it’s pretty much a straight shot down a toll road…then down a freeway…then down a scary tree covered country road.

If you are unfamiliar with St. Augustine it’s supposed to be the oldest city in North America. It was founded by Ponce De Leon, the first official tourist of Florida in his quest to find the Fountain of Youth.*

He found it…and it tastes like shit. For five dollars you can get a tour of the Fountain and a small taste of everlasting youth shit water, and another five buys you a bottle of the stuff.** Give it to your favorite relative who is taste bud deficient.

It doesn’t work by the way, don’t waste your money. I have proof because most of the citizens of St. Augustine look like they are ready to die.

St. Augustine Visitor’s Center Greeter.

St. Augustine is known for two things:

1) Having the oldest of everything like: the Oldest Schoolhouse, the Oldest Fort, the Oldest Jail, and the Oldest Denny’s.

And

2) Ghosts. (Lots of ghosts!)

The city itself is a history of ghastly murders, untimely deaths, and bad karma. Also, it’s built on several Native American burial grounds. That helps in keeping the population of ghosts to a maxim.  I think the St. Augustine ghosts phone their ghostly friends to come on vacation there, and why not, there are five awesome Subways*** there.

There is also something about some sort of pole lines crossing St. Augustine, thus making the kinetic and spiritual energies that much higher. St. Augustine is one of four places in the world this does that, the other three went unmentioned…probably someplace like Transylvania or Narnia.

Our choice of ghost tours included riding in a hearse for 60 bones (see what I did there), doing a pub crawl for $30 or a walking tour for $16. The walking tour included going inside a haunted building and the rental of EMF meter.

If your a cool child of the ’80’s this is NOT a meter for trying to find the one hit wonder band that sang,’ Unbelievable.’ It is actually a blinking meter device for discovering electronic pulses in the air, which apparently ghosts give off when they fart or something.

We chose the walking tour, mostly because the pub tour included four pubs, but only one drink. It just seemed like a way for some of the bars to make money as opposed to actually being haunted.

Our tour guide was pretty good with the story telling. The only problem was she was from Tennessee, so you sometimes had to really figure out what she was talking about. For example, at one point she lead us into a small courtyard with a circular object in the middle of it. She started talking about the ‘whale’ in the yard and how haunted it was…but as hard as I looked, I could see no whale anywhere. I soon figured out the ‘whale’ as actually a well. A haunted whale would have been cool though.

The highlight of the tour was stories of and a chance to explore inside this haunted Antiques Shop. The Shop looked more like someone’s garage sale as opposed to any real valuable antique dealings. The shelves were lined with VHS tapes, cassette tapes, mounted fish, and other treasures. At one point I thought maybe the ghost tour company set up this store themselves…to you know…fake a haunted location. But no, it was a real working store.

The energies in the store were supposed to bad, but I think it was mostly the air conditioner that was bad. It was beastly hot. The store was small with two back rooms, which we were allowed to explore. One room had a long dark hallway which was probably used for storage of extra garage sale items like hot wheels, mason jar drinking glasses, and one armed Barbie dolls. Supposedly the ghosts like to pinch women when the men were not around. I think I got ghostly pinched at one point, which would make my ghost gay. I would have the first encounter recorded in history with a gay ghost. A scarier encounter I had was with a light in the hallway/closet area. It was sitting on a shelf and looked like a motion light or one of those that you tap with your hand to turn it on. It couldn’t have been motioned because many people passed by it, including me, several times. However on my last swing through, it turned on. When it did, I hightailed it out of the hallway! I’m proud to say with my pants unsoiled.

Freaked me out!

And just like they do in a horror movie, which causes people who are watching the movie to ask, “Why did the go back to the haunted place? Why didn’t they just run?” I want back to the light that turned on all by itself. I put my EMF up to the light hoping it would spike all the way to red ghost danger levels…but it recorded nothing.

Here are some other things I tried to get a ghost reading off of:

A haunted creepy doll.

A haunted creepy fish.

Oh no! The ghosts got all the snacks!

Lastly, while standing on one of the many brick roads, the Ghost Tour Guide was telling a story about how the city was going to repave the broken cracked bricks with new ones. Well, when they lifted up the bricks they discovered many, many dead bodies, so they decided to leave it alone and put the bricks back as they were. I was running an app on my phone called: Ghost Radar Legacy. Basically it shows energyblips and mysterious words spoken from the other side.

I took this screenshot while in my house and playing 70’s disco music. I believe the ghosts in my house were pleased and the app just missed the word ‘Get”.

This was the list of words the app brought back, mind you while standing on the brick body road, and mind you, while listening to the ghost guide talk:

Are you freaked out yet?

*History may not be quite accurate.

** Prices may not be quite accurate.

***Shameless plug for relative’s business