St. Augustine

1. A Soldier’s Duty 
     Those of us who were left vowed we would follow him to hell and back to make him pay. I have already been through hell because of him and will, one day, find him and make him suffer as so many did as the result of his treachery.
     “All the while the apparition was speaking I was gradually retreating. He was still rambling on when I turned and ran away.”

2. Axe Murderer and the Beauty Queen 
     “I bolted into the darkness, grabbing the little cloth bag I’d hidden by the stage stairs. I turned my head in time to see Winnie clutch Maggie’s arm, and see her wince, eyes wide. For some reason I remember plainly seeing the fire axe sitting next to a red bucket in the rear of the stage.
     “Terrified, I scurried down the street stopping only to exchange my high heels for the pair of flat shoes that I’d concealed along with what I thought would be my wedding trousseau. Dogs barked, and men whistled as I ran headlong down the narrow streets. I heard footsteps behind me but kept going.

3. Barking Dogs 
     “You’re going to have to change all this around and use fake names before you print it, of course. People still remember what happened to Athalia Ponsell Lindsley at 124 Marine Street on the afternoon of 23 January 1974.”
     “Start at the beginning,” I said. “Who was she, this Powers’ Model? Who was he—this Fake engineer, Alan Stanford?”
     “Two things you need to know first. She was an outsider. Locals call them a NOOO—not one of ours.

4. Blue Ghost Fireflies 
     Miss Miller, who insisted on being called Adeline, edged into the tiny area already filling up with lunch clientele. I had wanted to see this eatery for myself since I had heard it was the preferred meeting place for the privileged gentry of the oldest town in the U.S.
     The roots of these patrons went back generations. They were white, Episcopalian, elite, and proud. WEEPs. I expected to see large floppy garden hats and white gloves, but the women were dressed like the rest of the world—or the way the rest of the world would dress if it had tons of money and excellent taste.

5. Butler Beach Boulder 
     Is it possible I drifted off and had a nightmare? No. This felt real. I looked and directly in front of me, on top of the boulder, was a shape. It came from nowhere—it simply appeared. The thing turned her face to the light, and my heart stopped. It was nearly fleshless, as if a horrible fire had blackened it and made large craters and bumps on her face and hands. She somehow still had hair, and it looked wispy—white as snow in the moonlight as it blew in the stiff breeze.

6. Creatures of the Night 
     “’All right,’ she said. ‘I swear this is the truth–I saw– ah– two things dancing together.’”
     “Things?”
     “‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what to call them—they looked like people, but I could see through them. The music come from the juke box, but the cord was still draped over the top.

7. Fill ‘er Up 
     As gently as possible Mr. Greene explained it this way. “I hope you understand that not everybody can see you. There are many of us who believe in ghosts and such, and because we believe in you and your kind, we can see many of you. We can tell you’re not happy and we all want to help solve your problem, so you can move on. Wouldn’t you like to settle this matter of the money that is owed to you?”

8. Fish Swamp Train 
     “I have always considered myself a psychic, although my wife Betty Gayle says I am merely weird. Actually, I view myself as a historian. Well, let me start again and give you a little background. There is a place in St. John’s County called Fish Swamp. It’s remote, to say the least. Closest town is right here, St. Augustine.
     “If you run one of those computer searches you come up with USGS Dinner Island NE Quad, Florida. That is where a ghostly train-driver runs through there holding a human skull and laughing manically at tourists who come to ghost hunt.”

9. Georgia on my Mind 
     I don’t know where our guns came from but we all ended up with one. I remember one time, though, we had to sneak into the enemy’s armory to steal ammunition. We almost got caught when the soldiers walked right past where we were hiding.
     “‘Them enemy boys didn’t look no different from me—real young, down-and-out, skinny, and hungry. I don’t know why we were fighting each other.

10. Ghost Cowboy without a Horse 
     “Look, whether a guy is from this world or some other, undefined plane, a Peeping Tom is still a Peeping Tom, a term we’ve all heard since childhood. Most of us grew up thinking we knew what it meant–a nosey somebody, watching his neighbors to see what they do in the privacy of their own home. Only later did I realize there was a carnal aspect to such clandestine spying.
     “Now one wonders what sort of pleasurable sensations a ghost might derive from watching an old man sleep on the floor.”

11. Hello Walls 
     “Good. In his emails, Davey described his house as being quaint, and extolled what he called theE unusual features of his place. Personally, I wouldn’t call cracks in the walls that let in rain and wind as quaint, but he said it added character. Mind you, he told us the character part after we arrived, not before.
     “Sounds like old Davey liked surprises.”
     “You have no idea. He said his place was only a few blocks from the bridge, and you could walk to St. George Street. He didn’t add that you needed to be an Olympic athlete to do that.

12. Mustache Misery 
     Her fondest wish was to see what he looked like without that huge mustache. She asked if he would shave it off, so she could gaze on his face and touch his smooth skin.
     “Her request hurt his feelings—wounded his pride and his ego. He said he would have to think about it. He announced he was going to take a walk and ponder her request, and he’d let her know his decision when he returned. He left the veranda, turned his back on his faithful bride and walked away.

13. Noisy Revenge 
     “You’ve probably heard how the ghost’s head is perched on the footrest of a green, velour recliner chair where he sits. He holds the remote in his hand and is seen at times clicking away in a frenzy as if there is something emanating from the television he doesn’t dare miss seeing. His body language doesn’t tell us much, although he occasionally makes some hand gestures toward the screen or raises an arm as if to throw something at it.
     “His head is another matter altogether. It laughs raucously at times, argues with news commentators, sings along with commercials, and tells the hand when to change channels.

14. Not Carved in Stone 
     With that, the old man thrust his left hand forward so the young couple could see it in the moonlight—or rather they could see bones. Just bones. The hand was that of a skeleton.
     Linda’s scream pierced the night over the gently lapping water, then drifted away as did her grip on reality. She crumpled at the feet of the apparition.
     Pete yelled at the old ghost and told him to get away from them. As he bent down to lift his sweetheart from the water’s edge, he kept a wary eye on the apparition. To the young man’s astonishment, the old man evaporated right before his eyes.

15. Osceola in Anastasia 
     “Sure as shootin.’ It was October. Full moon. I had gone down there with Old Blu, my bluetick hound—that’s a coon hound. He sped off as usual, nose down, but when I caught up with him, he had his hair raised up and snarling. I thought he’d treed something. A bluetick never has his tail between his legs, you know, the tail is always high. But they do get their feelings hurt. And when they do, they’re the most miserable-looking creature on God’s green earth. That night, for the first time in my life, I saw him tuck tail and slink off. Old Blu had gotten spooked someway.

16. Phantom at Devil’s Elbow 
     “The woman at the helm of the boat raised a hand for silence. She raised her right arm and pointed a long boney finger toward the shore. As she did this her body shifted slightly and I almost fell out of my boat gawking at her. She had no head. It rested on the seat next to where she stood. The skull’s eyes blinked scanned her surroundings. When the lips moved, and her words were clear, as if the head was still attached to her body.”

17. Salina at East Creek 
     “It’s a mournful account of Auntie Melba’s much younger sister, Salina, who ran off with a married man. Auntie would tell the story and her eyes would glaze over, as if she was seeing the whole thing on a movie screen in front of her. She would stop and point to their invisible boat, and she’d turn her head north when she got to the part where the man’s wife (killer?) caught up with the star-crossed runaways. There was no doubt at all that the story was real to her, and it was as if it happened yesterday. It has been said that for the Irish the past is never past.

18. Scrub-A-Dub-Dub 
     I laid down beside him and held him, trying to give him comfort. He whispered he loved me, and I held him till he died. I too, died right then from a broken heart.
     “‘I woke up in a strange place, everything was hazy, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I found a pail and some rags and came back to clean the Pub, but I couldn’t find it. I’ve been looking every day since then.

19. The Copper Miner 
     “I’m sorry—I thought you never saw him.”
     “I didn’t. But I heard him. Every night, he’d be there, and he’d be talking about the shoes he’d tried on that night. Too big, too little. He had this Spanish accent. I’d jump up and run downstairs, but he’d always vanish before I got to the living room.”
     “How long did this go on?”
     “A month. I thought she’d get tired of it—I mean, how long can you be in love with a guy who doesn’t talk about anything but shoes? But she didn’t get tired of him, so I put my foot down. I was going to call in one of those ghost hunters. She got down on her knees and begged. She said she would die without him. I never dreamed that this was true.”

20. The Devil’s Treasure 
     “‘First off, I don’t need help—I don’t want help—this is my claim. I’ve been fighting off the others for seventy-five years.’
     “‘What others?’
     “‘That no-account bunch of spirits from the in-between world where most of ’em hang out, you ran right into a whole gaggle of ’em. They keep trying to steal my claim from me.’
“‘Why? What do they want with worldly treasures?’
     “‘Guess you could ask the same of me. It ain’t the treasure we’re after, boy. It’s just having something different for us to do. We get so tired of doing nothing. We can’t go back—even though we all have reasons why we want another chance to say or do a certain thing. At the same time, we can’t go forward because of that same unfinished business.’

21. The Maid 
     “The husband went to jail for the maid’s murder?”
     “Nope. He committed suicide. So, you see this maid’s spirit will never get to rest because the man died while he still grieved for her.”
     “What happened to the woman and the nine kids?”
     “Picked up and moved to Savannah, of all places. Her kind of town, I reckon. The pharmacist guy disappeared along with his old maid sister. That was the end of that. I think that one reason the phantom hangs around here is to hear me speak French. Kind of like home to her. Not so many speak that nowadays.
     “You through? You all through?” Alma pointed a red fingernail at her sister. “Now if you’re interested, I’ll tell her what really happened.”

22. The Old Gold Digger 
     “I didn’t want to empty the trash, but I also didn’t want the stuff left in the kitchen. People were coming to the house later for drinks, and Sally will just look in anybody’s throwaways and I didn’t want her to see what was in mine. Not that we drank that much, but she does like to spread rumors—like she didn’t drink like a fish.
     “I hollered, ‘Gracey. What happened to your arm?’ She had one of those hook things hanging from her sleeve. ‘They finally had to surgically separate you from Gus’s shoulder?’”
     “She didn’t even wave. Right then I knew it wasn’t Gracey. The little ‘ghost’ puffed up like a bantam rooster. Its cheeks pouched out and it blew air so far I could feel it—cold and damp.

23. Timeless Lighthouse 
     Apparitions come to us in many forms, and it is interesting to note that investigations have verified tales of lights that move with exceptional speed from one level of the enormous spiral staircase to another.
     There have been substantiated claims of vaporous mists, shadowy images, and voices. There are those who swear they have seen the older Pittee girl, Mary, in the same dress that she wore the day of the accident.
     Many affirm that they hear a woman crying, “Help me.”

24. Woman on the Gravestone 
     When I was finally home and alone, I was curious to know if Silly Sally was still in the bag but was afraid to open it. I called to her and asked if she was still there. She didn’t answer right away and when she did, I could tell she was pouting because I wasn’t being very hospitable toward her. I don’t know what she expected.