If you have an evening to spare and some comfortable walking shoes, the St. Petersburg ghost tour is well worth your time.
I showed up at the Hooker Tea Company where the tour meets an hour early to order a pot of tea with some friends. We were worried we wouldn’t be able to spot the tour guides — but fortunately, one of them was wearing a cape.
The group of people who showed up for the tour (about 30 doomed souls, mostly families) was divided between the two tour guides, and we set off in different directions.
Our guide, Tracy Ferguson, was lively from the start, and kept the narration quick and interesting.
The first stop was a sidewalk vantage of the Vinoy Hotel, easily one of the most haunted places in St. Petersburg judging by the stories we heard. The most gruesome was about the possible murder of the wife of Gene Elliot, former manager of the Vinoy. He and his wife were in the midst of a nasty divorce proceeding when she showed up dead at the bottom of their back porch stairs one morning. The maid who witnessed her “fall” conveniently moved to Europe days after. (Likely story.) Now, Ferguson said many believe that Elliot’s wife is the lady in white who haunts the fifth floor of the hotel.
As the tour continued we took less traveled roads and heard about lesser known stories, from women being attacked by invisible hands at the Indigo Hotel to a good-hearted ghost at the Blocker House that may have prevented a tour guide from getting hit by a truck in a crosswalk. (The ghost’s voice, picked up on detection equipment belonging to paranormal investigators who took the tour previously, allegedly said, “Beware, mattress.” Guess what was on the back of the truck?)
There were no sightings or voices on our tour, but a few people captured orbs in their digital camera photos. I didn’t get anything unusual on my Nikon, but I haven’t blown them up for closer inspection yet. Maybe I’m afraid to.
“We’ve found that it’s more likely to happen if someone has lived in a haunted place or is haunted themselves,” Ferguson said of orbs showing up in photos.
She awarded points to people who answered questions correctly along the way, and knew when to slip in something scary as the kid’s attentions were starting to fade.
At one point, a bunch of very inebriated people in costumes stumbled by (haunted by bad decisions at the bar, no doubt) adding to the Halloween character of the tour. A lot of people driving and walking by stared as well, probably wondering what we were all doing on the corner. So if you like being in on secrets, you will enjoy one of these tours.
Overall, the tour is well-suited for those who enjoy the paranormal and for those who just enjoy a good bit of history. I learned a lot that I didn’t know about the buildings and people that make up the past of St. Petersburg, and we also ran into a lot of the characters that make it an interesting place today.
The tour was on par with similar ghost walks in St. Augustine and Savannah, Ga. — and given that St. Petersburg is so much younger than those cities, that is saying something.
My favorite stop by far was the Ponce de Leon Hotel and Ceviche Restaurant. We learned that the space was once a morgue for grizzled soldiers during World War II. Be careful what you eat off of.
Cost: $15 ($13 if you reserve your spot online or over the phone). Reservation is required. Tours run nightly.
Learn more at ghosttour.net/stpetersburg.
