Florida Haunters

[GreenCapt]

Looks like a good time was had by all and some great props were born! I wish there were haunt enthusiasts living close to me so we could do something like this.

Actually I'm seeing more and more Florida based haunters on the forums. Maybe over the next few years some of us could organize a haunter's weekend?

[grapegrl]

NW Florida? Panhandle?

Yup...west of Tallahassee...

Greencapt, that would be an awesome idea!

[Torgen]

Yup...west of Tallahassee...

Greencapt, that would be an awesome idea!

I'm gonna guess Marianna (which is what I thought when I saw "NW Florida")

[grapegrl]

I'm gonna guess Marianna (which is what I thought when I saw "NW Florida")

You've got a PM, Torgen. Didn't want to hijack trishanne's thread! :p

[Frighteners Entertainment]

Actually I'm seeing more and more Florida based haunters on the forums. Maybe over the next few years some of us could organize a haunter's weekend?
GreenCapt, I think ones being organized as we speak.
I'll see if I can find the email and then I'll post it for you.

[grapegrl]

Sweet! I was going to start a thread, but it looks like Zombie might have moved some posts out of another thread and started one for us. Can we get a "roll call" of sorts of Florida haunters here at HauntForum?

I'm in the Florida Panhandle in a very small town between Tallahassee and Marianna. I'd be very interested in a Haunter's Weekend and would love to see what FE has heard about.

[Frighteners Entertainment]

Here's one of the groups TampaHaunters group on Yahoo.
I'll try to get a link to it later.

[Torgen]

TampaHaunters? I gotta look into this!

[Brad Green]

I'm located in Apopka,FL. That's about 10 miles outside of Orlando. Be nice if a HauntCon or anything of that nature happened around here! Hell, I'd be happy with a get together of like-minded home haunters period.

[GreenCapt]

I'm in St. Augustine on the east coast- not only an old city but one that has something like three or four 'official' ghost tours and all sorts of haunted history. In fact I grew up in a haunted house, one that was written up in the book Amazon.com: Haunted Places: The National Directory: Ghostly Abodes, Sacred Sites, UFO Landings and Other Supernatural Locations (9780142002346): Dennis William Hauck: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51E3K09Y7CL.@@AMEPARAM@@51E3K09Y7CL ! I wish I still lived there though. :(

[IshWitch]

TampaHaunters? I gotta look into this!
Hi Torgen!
Hi Everyone!

Torgen invited me to join. I am also a Florida haunter. I have a backyard haunt in west central Florida. I have been considering putting out the word to see if anyone would be interested in a Florida get together. So you can imagine my excitement when Torgen mentioned this thread!

[Bone Dancer]

Welcome to the forum Ishwitch. You should post a note in the welcome room so we all can say hi. This is a great place, nice people and tons of info. Have fun.

[grapegrl]

Hi, everyone, and welcome, IshWitch!

[heresjohnny]

Florida haunting, hmmmmmm. Welcome IshWitch to the street. Don't worry, Zombie will move you to the welcome room soon.

[IshWitch]

I had a direct link to this thread and joined because just the thought is so wonderful!
;)
I had to run out to help a friend whose car died and so ended up being logged in but not here for the past few hours.

I'll go "check in" now! :)

[DeathTouch]

Prettyghoul tells me that she has trouble with gators taker her props. Do you the rest of you have that problem?

[heresjohnny]

gators, yum!

[GreenCapt]

No gators at my place but we did have Hurricane trouble last year. Nothing like the Gulf coast thbough thank goodness!

[IshWitch]

We had hurricane trouble the past 2 years. Jeanne was quite the bitch! ;)

I live high and dry (now, old place was near water) so the only thing we FL haunters really fear is the sun! It ruins latex. Fades props. Sucks when it is too hot. Especially for those of us that come from up north, every little bit of cool weather really sets us off!
(Am I right? Y'all? )
Never heard of a gator taking a prop, but if it did that'd make it fair game! Yum!

[grapegrl]

I know what you mean about the sun and props, Ish...it's usually still miserably hot and humid well into October even here in the northern part of Florida.

[GreenCapt]

Its odd- as a child I remember Halloween as crisp and cool weather, some of the first of the year in Florida. I *still* associate that first cool snap with Halloween. BUT that said, as an adult, I can only remember Halloweens that are hot and humid here. Go figure. :)

[NecroBones]

Its odd- as a child I remember Halloween as crisp and cool weather, some of the first of the year in Florida. I *still* associate that first cool snap with Halloween. BUT that said, as an adult, I can only remember Halloweens that are hot and humid here. Go figure. :)

Man, that's a shame. I still associate it with the start of cool weather up here near DC. Makes it much easier to wear layers of costume, when it's only 55-65 degrees on the big night, and low humidity.

[Torgen]

Global Warming, GreenCapt. :D

Seriously, it seems it doesn't get dark til 9:30pm, and it's hot now. I remember it being dark sooner and cool at night as well.

[IshWitch]

Global Warming, GreenCapt. :D

Seriously, it seems it doesn't get dark til 9:30pm, and it's hot now. I remember it being dark sooner and cool at night as well.
Well, I believe the daylight savings time has been extended. And 5 years ago it was 42 on the night of my party and everyone was freezing and sitting around in the backyard.

But then the next week it was too hot and muggy!:p

I guess it is equivalent to getting snow and "ruining";) your costume because mom made you wear a coat!
:devil:

[IshWitch]

Hubby and I are going to St. Augustine this Friday for the weekend. Hope to get in a ghost tour or two.

I was wondering if anybody would be interested in a Florida haunters get together there one weekend. I'll check out prices for all of the ghost tours, there are about a dozen, and see what people think.
:)

[GreenCapt]

Hubby and I are going to St. Augustine this Friday for the weekend. Hope to get in a ghost tour or two.

I was wondering if anybody would be interested in a Florida haunters get together there one weekend. I'll check out prices for all of the ghost tours, there are about a dozen, and see what people think.
:)

Well I'm in- wouldn't be far for me to travel... lol! :jol:

[Torgen]

Give me plenty of warning. Weekends are the busiest time of week for Realtors, and I'd have to drive in from Tampa. I'd have to clear my schedule, and I'm fairly certain Mrs. Torgen will not let me go on ghost tours alone. ;)

[shaunathan]

I just came back form st. augistine (and other parts of florida) just a few weeks ago... even got some orb pictures in fort san marcos... if you're into that sort of thing...

[IshWitch]

We did 2 ghost tours and it was great. We love St. Augustine and have done them before. It is a fantastic town for it. Pretty much everything is in walking distance.

A couple of years ago we did a Trolley tour, it drove by some sites, stopped at a few and had a couple where you got to get out and look around. We got lots of orb pics and also some faces in a mirror in the old drug store. We didn't get a chance to go in there this time, but want to the next time we go.

This past weekend we went on a trolley type tour on Friday night. The guide was a very well informed lady who was really interesting and encouraged pics. Unfortunately the group was the gum-cracking uninspired type with a couple of smart mouths added in. I think the attitude of the group really effects the tour. It certainly did with this one. I would very much like to take this tour again with a group of people genuinely interested in the info as well as attempting to get pics.

Then on Saturday, after a day of random strolling about, we decided to sign up for another tour before going to supper. It was 100 degrees out, so we came back to the St. George street area and began weaving in and out of shops to take advantage of the a/c. We came across one of the little booths that sell tickets to several of the tours and they had EMF machines for sale. And a newspaper clipping of the Ghost Hunters recent visit. We started talking to the lady there about the show, the EMF's, and what areas the tours she had went to. We wanted to try and pick up a new area we hadn't been to. She said, oh, maybe we would be more interested in a tour run by one of the local paranormal society members. We snapped that one up in a heartbeat. It was almost twice as much a person as the generic tours, but we would get to use EMF's and it would be twice as long or more than the others.

We met at 10pm and didn't get done 'til around 12:30, there were 3 couples and the guide, who is a PHD and very interesting. Since it was a nice small group, we all snapped off pics whenever someone had an EMF spike and then checked out each others cameras. I got orbs and even some mist in a house. One guy got some streamers. I may have gotten mist in the Tolomato graveyard, but want to check it against flashback since it was through a chainlink fence. The time really flew. We can't wait to do this one again! Definitely going back soon!

Here are pics that other people on that tour have taken and have been put up on their site. We plan on submitting ours and seeing if any get posted as well!

www.haunted-st-augustine.com

If anyone would be interested, I'll let y'all know when we go next and we could meet up!

[GreenCapt]

Sounds like a good time! And yes, it was hotter than heck here this past Saturday. We had a friend down from Ohio and we were all melting.

Glad to hear you got some cool pics. For me, though a believer in the paranormal, I don't put much into 'orbs'. Probably what I get from taking too many flash pics in too many dusty rooms in my life. Amusingly enough though the haunted house that I grew up in here in St. Aug made it into a picture on the Ghost Tours of St. Augustine website:

http://www.ghosttoursofstaugustine.com/photopages/gt22.html

I love photographing cemeteries though. I need to upload some more of my pics. :)

Daytime shots I took here:

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b247/CastleVonStuben/Random/cemetery2.jpg

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b247/CastleVonStuben/Random/cemetery1.jpg

[IshWitch]

Beautiful!

I just love graveyards.

[Ghostess]

JAcksonville Here! Well, I was born 'n raised in Jax, then moved to Clay COunty back in '94. I'd be interested in a ghost walk/tour. St Aug's only 45 minutes from me. My husband and I did a ghost walk in Savannah 2 years ago on our honeymoon, and it was very cool. Our guide, a fellow in his 30's, had a strange accent-- very "old-time" Southern, laced with a tinge of British from his time in college, so his narrative was excellent. I missed an opportunity to go on a Haunted Pub Crawl through St Augustine a couple of months ago with some neighbors due to a hockey game. (Hockey is life around here.)

Some of my Minorcan ancestors are buried in that cemetery in St Augustine, yet I have never walked through it. Sad really, since I have been to ST Auggie so often. (The "ex" wasn't into cool stuff like cemeteries.)

Another Jax haunter from another list was talking about getting a gathering together for us Florida people, but I think it kinda fizzled out. I'd definitely be interested in this! I'm not an organizer, but I make a killer worker bee!

[GreenCapt]

Ghostess- 45 min?!?!?! What, do you *walk* here? :P ;)

Just kidding- Jax sometimes feels so close yet so far, and I used to commute to work there daily! I'm glad those days are over. And sadly I've never been on any of the ghost tours here in St. Aug. I'm so lazy! Or is it tired? Having our first child (now 3 months) can be slightly tiring.

[Ghostess]

Ghostess- 45 min?!?!?! What, do you *walk* here? :P ;)



LMAO! It takes me that long to get through Green Cove Springs to get there!

Seriously, I live right off 17 on Fleming Island (between Orange Park and Green Cove), so I take 17 to 16 then have to go thru the non-natives in the shopping area (which is fairly dangerous!). Actually, the 45 minutes is to get to Anastasia or St. Aug beach.

Jacksonville is freakin' HUGE, ain't it?!? I remember back when there was nothing here, now it's all grown up and out. I don't miss commuting back and forth to the Prime Osborne every day for work, that's for sure!

And congrats on your new little future haunter!

[IshWitch]

When would you guys like to go?
And what all would you like to do?
I thought that hubby and I would most likely go up on a Friday night, so if people wanted to do a whole weekend that would be fine. And those who don't could just come one day. We could maybe reserve a tour for both Saturday as well as Friday night.

The regular tours all average $12 a person. I'm sure there is a give or take there as well as possible discounts for pre-registration. I wouldn't mind trying the riding tour again that we did last Friday, especially with the lady that was our guide. She was very informative and did her best to get the group on that tour to get into it, unfortunately it was a bunch of lame, smart alecky gum crackers. And I feel that the experience has as much to do with the receptiveness of the group as it does the quality of the guide. But we seriously need to do the tour run by Dr. Stafford. His are $20 a person, but they start later and aren't limited to an exact time frame, it could last 2 hours or more. As long as people are getting something, he will stay in an area, and he provides EMF meters for the tour, too.

I have to work every other weekend, but that shouldn't be a problem with scheduling. Should we shoot for September or earlier? I'm ready to go!
:)

[Ghostess]

I posted this elsewhere on this forum too, but here it is again just in case. Ish- let me know when you wanna go do the ghost walk. We're pretty much available any time.

I'm trying to get Florida people together for gatherings and such. I'm still in the beginning stage of getting people interested, so it may be a while depending on how many people show interest in it. In the meantime:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/floridahomehaunters/

I started that group for now, just to get things rolling.

Thanks!

Ghostess Deanna