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 I have had many things happen on my Haunted St Augustine tour. One night there were 8 of us on my tour including myself and as we were standing around discussing what had happened at the location we were at, all of the sudden everyone of our KII meters started flashing one after another as if someone were running around us in a circle. I had never experienced this before and so I asked everyone to check their cell phones just to be sure this wasn’t an electronic interruption. No one had missed a call. On another occassion, everyone on my tour including the tour manager who happened to be going along with me this night, watched as the blinds of one very empty and very haunted house opened and closed themselves for about 20 minutes! There have been many…

Curse of the Pharaohs The Curse of the Pharaohs refers to the belief that any person who disturbs the mummy of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh is placed under a curse whereby they will shortly die. Many tombs of pharaohs have curses written on or around them, warning against entering. The belief was brought to many people’s attention due to the deaths of some members of the team of Howard Carter, who opened the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in 1922, launching the modern era of Egyptology. The first of these “mysterious” deaths was that of Lord Carnarvon. He had been bitten by a mosquito, and later slashed the bite accidentally while shaving. It became infected and blood poisoning resulted. Skeptics pointed out that many, many others who visited the tomb or helped to discover it lived long and healthy lives. A…

My first encounter with a haunted building was when I was 15. I was partying in an extravagant four story mansion in a mountainous resort in Asia. The mansion had been converted to a nightclub called “Spirits”. The first floor was a gigantic dance floor. The second and third floors were restaurants and bars with a panoramic view of the dance floor below. The fourth floor was reserved for children, who were playing video games and being taken care of by their nannies while their parents danced and drank on the lower floors. It was very fun, ethereal, and eerie moment…listening and dancing to trance music in what was once a haunted mansion. Now, I find myself going to haunted locations almost every day as a tour guide for Ghost Augustine. Sometimes, I’m surrounded by people, who want to have…

Banshee Traditionally, when a citizen of an Irish village died, a woman would sing a lament (in Irish: caoineadh, [‘ki¢°n??] or [‘ki¢°n?u¢°]) at their funeral. These women singers are sometimes referred to as “keeners”. Legend has it that, for five great Gaelic families: the O’Gradys, the O’Neills, the O’Briens, the O’Connors, and the Kavanaghs, the lament would be sung by a fairy woman; having foresight, she would appear before the death and keen. When several banshees appeared at once, it indicated the death of someone great or holy. The tales sometimes recounted that the woman, though called a fairy, was a ghost, often of a specific murdered woman, or a woman who died in childbirth. Banshees are frequently described as dressed in white or grey, and often having long, fair hair which they brush with a silver comb, a detail…

Being a tour guide for GhostAugustine has been quite the adventure! I started doing tours in April 2010. At first I didn’t get a lot of activity. That quickly changed as I got to know the “entities” that hung out on our tour. Especially the ones that were in the hearses! I would like to tell you a few experiences I have had with Frankie our 1990 hearse! One my first Haunted Hearse Pub tour we stopped at The British Pub on Anastasia Island. I shut off the lights and locked up the hearse while my guests took a bunch of pictures with Frankie. We were in the Pub for about 20 minutes, when we came out Frankie’s lights were on but she was still locked up! My guests excitedly talked about how they were taking pictures before we went…

The Hag A hag, or “the Old Hag”, was a nightmare spirit in British and Anglophone North American folklore. This variety of hag is essentially identical to the Anglo-Saxon mæra — a being with roots in ancient Germanic superstition, and closely related to the Scandinavian mara. According to folklore, the Old Hag sat on a sleeper’s chest and sent nightmares to him or her. When the subject awoke, he or she would be unable to breathe or even move for a short period of time. Currently this state is called sleep paralysis, but in the old belief the subject had been hagridden.It is still frequently discussed as if it were a para-normal state. In Irish and Scottish mythology, the Cailleach is a hag goddess concerned with creation, harvest, the weather and sovereignty.In partnership with the goddess Brìde, she is a…

During the GhoSt Augustine Haunted Pub tour of Tuesday, July 28th, 2010, we visited 2 haunted pub/restaurants and two haunted pubs. The third stop of the night, the first pub visit was to McLean’s English Pub. McLean’s boasts two super natural entities, which are considered by most to be completely separate from one another. The first, the “Lady in Red” was discussed as being a cinematic ghost. The second was Roy, a previous pub proprietor. During the discussions of the evening, we had placed two EMF detectors on a table top as an observation point. As our guide, Ty was telling the tales of the lady in red and of Roy, the meters would occasionally go off. Later in the evening, Ty remarked that Roy must have left because the meter activity had stopped. I remarked, in jest, that Roy…

Kraken Although the name kraken never appears in the Norse sagas, there are similar sea monsters, the hafgufa and lyngbakr, both described in Örvar-Odds saga and the Norwegian text from c. 1250, Konungs skuggsjá. Carolus Linnaeus included kraken as cephalopods with the scientific name Microcosmus in the first edition of his Systema Naturae (1735), a taxonomic classification of living organisms, but excluded the animal in later editions. Kraken were also extensively described by Erik Pontoppidan, bishop of Bergen, in his “Natural History of Norway” (Copenhagen, 1752–3). Early accounts, including Pontoppidan’s, describe the kraken as an animal “the size of a floating island” whose real danger for sailors was not the creature itself, but the whirlpool it created after quickly descending back into the ocean. However, Pontoppidan also described the destructive potential of the giant beast: “It is said that if…

My name is Ty, and I’m one of the GhoSt Augustine haunted pub tour guides. One of my pub stops is an establishment which has had a history of many residents over a span of 150 years. The spirit is particularly interesting because it interacts often with the pub owner, who lives upstairs . Without going into much detail here — you’ll need to attend the tour for the full story! — I will say that the spirit is a mischievous poltergeist whose identity remains unknown . During my tour I relate various documented activities and anecdotes regarding this particular haunt. Based on these occurrences , I always venture a guess that the spirit is that of a young boy. The following event might shed some light on this mystery. One evening I was waiting outside the establishment for my…

Brown Mountain Lights Although the mysterious lights have been observed by local Native American tribes for hundreds of years, the earliest sighting by a European seems to be from a surveyor of the area, Gerard Will de Brahm, in 1771. He tried to explain the phenomenon as a “nitrous vapor” which “inflames, sulphurates and deteriorates.” One early account dates from September 13, 1913, as reported in the Charlotte Daily Observer. A fisherman claimed to have seen “mysterious lights seen just above the horizon every night” red in color, with a pronounced circular shape. Rather soon after this account, a US Geological Survey employee, D.B. Stewart, studied the area in question and determined the witnesses had mistaken train lights for something more mysterious reports of odd lights continued, and a more formal USGS survey began in 1922, under the direction of…

ASSESSING THE PARANORMAL: by Harry Stafford, Ph.D, Director of Haunted St. Augustine – Nighlty Investigations of the Paranormal                                            THE ROLE OF THE MIND I         There’s a familiar saying “it’s all in the mind.”  All of us have experienced the power of suggestion.  We know how rapidly our attention can be riveted to something of appeal or significance to us – such as someone consuming an icy beverage on a blisteringly hot day.  Parapsychology recognizes how easily the power of suggestion can evoke the paranormal experiences that so many strongly desire. This is evident in many supposed sightings, interpretations of what we hear on EVP, or just the feelings evoked by eerie accounts of paranormal events.  What about a decidedly spooky setting such as a cemetery filled with broken and weather-worn monuments? On an even more fundamental level, we…

Bermuda Triangle The Triangle marks a corridor of the north Atlantic stretching northward from the West Indies along the North American seaboard as far as the Carolinas. To take advantage of prevailing winds, ships returning to Europe during the Age of Sail would sail north to the Carolinas before turning east to cross the north Atlantic. This pattern continued after the development of steam and internal combustion engines, meaning that much of the north Atlantic shipping traffic crossed (and still crosses) through the Triangle’s area. The Gulf Stream, an area of volatile weather, also passes through the Triangle as it leaves the West Indies. The combination of heavy maritime traffic and tempestuous weather made it inevitable that vessels would founder in storms and be lost without trace, especially before the telecommunications, radar and satellite technology of the late twentieth century….