When you think of sunshine, beaches, spring break, partying, Disney and all the other bright and shiny pastimes of Florida, only certain people think about the ghosts. Florida is the oldest occupied state in America. The Spaniards were the first to set foot here way back in 1513 when Ponce De Leon first discovered this Land of Flowers. The French and English would soon follow. Native populations had been here 12,000 years.

 

The fact remains if there is a lot of life, there is a lot of death and sometimes it’s not just ghosts of people, but of the past as well. Crimes never solved, wrongs never righted, wrongs that never could be righted… The ghosts of those things will haunt forever.

 

The Beginning

 

In 1564 Rene Laudonniere was commissioned by the French king to continue where Jean Ribault left off and establish a colony and fort in Florida. Fort Caroline was built just north of the city of Jacksonville close to the St. John’s. 300 people were brought there to help get the settlement going, just barely a year later nearly everyone was dead or had disappeared. Sickness, starvation and Native attacks were the main causes. This was bad news as the French had the full attention of the Spanish now. Pedro Menendez was a monster compared to Jean Ribault…

 

Bloody ground from the get go, we have all kinds of supernatural creatures and tales around the Sunshine State.

 

Thousands upon thousands of bones in Lake Okeechobee. War ghosts, plague ghosts, hurricane ghosts. Old ghosts, new ghosts, famous ghosts and ghosts that you would never guess were there… Cemeteries where children giggle all night, haunted dolls, ghost towns, ghost ships, a ghost dog and entire cities where there really are more dead than living.

 

That’s right, from the super haunted drug store to the downtown Pizza Hut, good luck getting a good night’s rest anywhere in St. Augustine. It does have the ghosts of 500 years… but it’s not the only place where there is more ectoplasm than flesh.

 

Pine Level. A ghost town in South West Florida. Once the site of a booming cattle town, it boasted that it had more saloons than any town in Florida. In 1866 people were promised land if they could settle it, amid Seminole Indian attacks. Many people did, but those people were not the best people per say… Their ghosts still linger in a place that has only a church, a dead tree, and a sign proclaiming what was once there...