A group waits by several benches in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., as gray clouds gather overhead, warning of a stormy night.
As the sun sets on this Friday evening, 11 of us prepare to take a journey into another world. A world that brings the past and present together in a way not many can explain.
We hope we can make contact with the other side. We hope the Tampa Bay Ghost Tour will take us somewhere no one else can.
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ADDITIONAL CONTENT |
Click here for article "Looper trolley rolls through downtown's secrets for a quarter."
Click here for article "My morning in a Segway gang."
Click here for Web site including interactive map of the best of downtown St. Petersburg.
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Our guide arrives after a few minutes dressed in a black collared shirt, khaki pants, a straw hat and wooden cane. He introduces himself as Peter Demens.
Peter Demens, the Russian aristocrat who brought the first train to St. Petersburg in 1888.
Peter Demens, who died in 1919.
He smiles at me and tilts his hat. His face is warm and his laugh booming. He is as far from ghostly as one can be. I smile back.
We get an overview of where we will be going and a brief history lesson about the area. Then we head off.
The sun is just beginning to set as we wind our way through downtown on the hexagon-block sidewalks.
The man who calls himself Demens guides us past the history museum and we follow a path by the water. While we walk, he tells stories of strange phenomenon from around the city. We learn about people who died 100 years ago, yet were seen within the past 50 years. We learn about the rich history of St. Petersburg and the people who built it.
We reach our first destination: a giant historic hotel. In the light of a colorful sunset, the pink stucco looks cheery. But our guide enlightens us to the dark secrets within.
One story includes a boy, his mother and an elevator. The boy presses the button to go up to the mezzanine, but instead, the elevator continues up to the fifth floor. As it comes to a stop, the door opens. The floor is empty. Nobody is waiting.
Seconds later, the door closes and the elevator descends back to the correct floor.
Demens does not try to explain. He only mentions that many people believe the fifth floor is haunted. After one last glance to the dark windows five stories up, we move forward.
It is a couple blocks before we pause again at the Beach Drive Inn Bed and Breakfast. I shiver. I remember the last time I was here.
At the time, I barely gave it a second thought when a bedroom door I had closed reopened as I walked away. I told myself I had not shut it tightly enough.
Now I don't know what to think. I wonder if there could be another explanation.
The sun is rapidly disappearing. It is dark as we approach an old, run-down house. On the front door is a "No trespassing" sign. The windows are covered with dirt and the white paint on the front porch is peeling. It is deserted.
Here, our guide reveals the story of a cryptic photo, taken by someone on the tour a month earlier, which showed two boys' faces in the window.
No one has lived in the house for years.
Our guide is as clueless as we are about how the image appeared, but he doesn't have to tell us. We have already drawn our own conclusions.
As the guide talks, people take photos.
Click. Flash. Check. They're trying to catch their own ghost.
"Look! What's that?" shouts a brown-haired boy.
Demens pauses.
"Did you see something?" he asks.
It's just a camera flash reflected in the window.
The sky is dark and a full moon illuminates the night. We wind our way through residential streets, back to the history museum. We continue searching for some kind of sign of the otherworld as we pass the many old, dark houses.
But as the hour draws to an end, there is nothing.
Back at the history museum, Demens gives us our first real scare of the night.
He is not Peter Demens after all, but Jeffrey Reardon, who is, by day, a peer support technician with the Bay Pines Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. He tells us about his military service, his family and how he wound up where he stands today.
We applaud his theatrics and prepare to go. But as we turn to leave, the man with the cane has one last trick in his bag.
The ghostly cackle echoes through the otherwise quiet night. And for a moment, Demens returns before his final departure back into the darkness of folklore.
