July 23, 2008
A Night With The Ghost Hunters
By Taryn Young (Peaches Magee)

First off, I am sorry that it took me forever to get back to writing an article for the great OU. Secondly, it is not your basic article, a bit more like an elaborate trip report. It's the best I can do at the moment. Life has been pretty much like a roller coaster over the past few months. For all that do not know, I am now 16 weeks pregnant. Yep, another little peach coming into the family. Along with this pregnancy came a slue of every form of extreme sickness one can get. I ended up in the hospital needing I.V. Fluids for dehydration because I was unable to keep any food or drinks down. Then they put me on the same medication they give chemotherapy patients that are suffering from nausea. Yes, it was very bad indeed. Thankfully, once I entered around my 15th week I got some appetite back and lost most of the nausea. So... she is back. :)

Here is where I need to rewind back to early May of this year. Some of you may recall that I had purchased tickets to an investigation at the very haunted St. Augustine Lighthouse with three of the members of T.A.P.S. (The Atlantic Paranormal Society). They are better know as, the guys from the show Ghost Hunters. I recruited my friend Angela to take the trip with me up to St. Augustine. She was unable to purchase the ticket to the actual hunt but she just came for the mini-vacation. We left really early in the morning for the almost five hour drive north.  For those of you nearby that have never been to this area, I highly recommend you checking it out. Established in 1565, it is the oldest city in the country and it is right here in our state! It seems so hard to find good history in Florida as so much of it is torn down to make way for new things. It is all beautifully preserved there in St. Augustine. Home to many battles and pirates, there are more ghost stories here than anywhere I have been.

Last time I had been there was on my 8th grade class trip, so needless to say it had been more than awhile. We spent most of the day exploring downtown St. Augustine, walking around looking at all the shops and historic landmarks, then we stopped at a pretty cool outdoor restaurant and bar. It was more like a little patio. It was called “Mi Casa”, and it was owned and ran by two older guys straight from Germany, pretty strange, huh? It also came complete with a guy playing guitar and singing, of all songs, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”. I couldn't help but laugh and record it for a few seconds. I will post the link if I can find it. As we left my friend got hooked by a HORRIBLE Captain Jack wannabe selling tickets to the Pirate Ghost Pub Tour that night. Thank goodness I had plans for the evening, but she signed right up for it, the lush. We walked all around the Castillo de San Marcos fort right there on the water. That place is just extremely cool, I really wish they had a night tour.

Right around 7:00pm we met in a hall at the hotel for a meet and greet with Steve Gonzalves, Dave Tango and Kris Williams from the show. I had already met Steve and Tango once at a signing at the Virgin Megastore in Orlando last October. They are all very cool people, very down to earth and approachable. After a little Q&A and overview of the investigation area, we all headed over to the Lighthouse. I rented an EMF (Electro Magnetic Field)  reader in the gift shop for like $2.00 just to feel like I had some kinda of ghost tech equipment, as proton packs were not an option on this trip, dang it! We were all broken into groups and assigned an investigator and then we were to rotate to the different areas in the area. I was put in Steve's group first and how happy I was. It's no secret that I have a monster crush on him and his tattoos.

Here is a little bit of history on the area. There are quite a number of documented deaths that have occurred on the grounds. The tower as it stands today was built in 1824 but it took a lot of damage over the years from storms and was last restored in the 1980's.  It was built upon the site of the first Spanish watchtower built in 1589. John Carrera, a light keeper, died in 1853 at the lighthouse. Joseph Andreu, did actually fall from the lighthouse and died in 1859. William Harn, a Head Keeper at the time, died of tuberculosis in 1889. Rantia, the next Head Keeper's wife died in September of 1894, it is unknown how she died. Three young girls did die during the construction of the lighthouse. They were the daughters of the superintendent of construction of the tower. Since the construction was taking so long, he moved his family down to Florida from Maine. There was a rail car, handcart or some type of vehicle that went from the light station to the ocean. The workers used this to bring supplies from the beach to the work site. The children, he had five, used to ride it for fun. On July 10, 1873, something happened and the five children feel into the water. Workers were able to save a boy and a girl. Two of Pittee's daughters Mary (15) and Eliza (13) and a young black girl, either a servant or the daughter of a worker, drowned. As far as it is known, no one has ever hung themselves here. Though there is a story that a passing mariner hung himself in the house in the 1930's, there is no actual proof that it ever happened.  (Source: www.staugustinelighthouse.com) All of these deaths have lead to accounts of  sightings by visitors of an apparition of a woman on the balcony of the house, a woman's voice saying “help me” in the lighthouse and also of childrens' voices. There is also repeated accounts of a male figure in the top of the lighthouse and various other sounds up there as well.

Our group was first assigned to investigate the grounds. This included all around the keeper's house and the woods behind the Lighthouse itself. We had an hour in each area so we got started quickly. Myself and two other people decided to venture into the woods. We went as far as we could go without needing a machete. We started hearing a lot of noises on the way and began tracking it. I got a few creepy feelings, but then we found the source of all the footsteps, a freaking armadillo. We head back out and around the rest of the grounds. I did get a spike on the EMF meter in a corner area of the brick wall surrounding the woods though. Here are a few shots I got looking up at the lighthouse. Seems there are orb-like shapes in all of them but as we know that could be from dust or bugs very easily and not spirit energy like we all hope to catch on film. I did see some movement of things out of the corner of my eye a few times in the dark that looked like they emitted light, so they could very well have been orbs of some kind.

Next we were assigned to venture up into the lighthouse. This was pretty exciting considering that this is a major hot spot of known and documented paranormal activity. 211 steps in the dark is NOT easy, let me tell you. I stuck with the same two people, Krista and Patrick, in here as well. We stopped on the landings a few times to see if we could get any spikes in EMF, nothing really. They locked the door that lead to the outlook on the top of the lighthouse. There was a group of girls that hogged the very top area and all they did was giggle and talk making it very hard to get anything on audio recorders or any legit sounds all together. We did hear a faint scream coming from outside in the distance but also couldn't rule out that it didn't come from just one of the investigators on the grounds.
             
We finally got up to the top just when our time was up, but we stayed up there for a bit anyways. Everyone else was heading down and out so we figured it was our chance to get the most out of the silence. After about ten minutes we got called down too. As we were walking down the stairs, just the three of us, we all got the feeling that there was something following us from above though no one was there. I saw a lot of shadows that were, I gotta admit, pretty chilling. I snapped as many shots as I could but nothing showed, of course.

Last place to investigate was the Lightkeeper's house. We made our way upstairs to the ballroom/balcony because we heard it was the only room that can get dead silent. We all sat down and tried to catch something on our audio recorders. After a bit, we started to hear a bunch of scraping sounds coming from behind us in one corner after I would ask certain questions out loud. Then we head to the main floor, sat silently in the room there, but really didn't get or feel anything. Lastly we went down to the basement. Now this place would have been fantastic had it not been for all the footsteps you could hear of the people walking around upstairs. It took away from any real findings, so that kind of sucked. The last hour we were allowed to roam anywhere we wanted. They opened the lookout at the top of the Lighthouse so I once again trekked up the endless stairs to take in a beautiful view of St. Augustine at 1:30am.

I came back to the hotel to find my friend passed out drunk on the bed with her knees all bloody and scrapped up. She ended up not taking a cab home from downtown but walking instead and it was a bit of a hike. She tripped, fell and blacked out for a bit. Thankfully someone stopped and helped her up. And yes, I laughed ridiculously hard when she told me the story. The next day we met up at around noon to reconvene and go over any findings that anyone caught and also share personal experiences from the night. A few people shared their audio but a lot of it was debunked as just other people speaking in the area. The one guy Patrick in my group did catch the sound of a lady saying “Help me” when we were all up in the ballroom area. Steve and Tango think his might just be legit after hearing it so that was pretty cool.

All and all it was a great experience. The only real gripe I have about it is that altogether there were about 50 people on the hunt and it really compromised any real findings in any given area. The area is kind of small in the lighthouse and in the all the rooms of the house, even when broken up into the groups of around 18 it felt crowded. And other than two brief moments I didn't feel creeped out at all... and I sooo wanted to. Ah well, onto the next investigation, when I can again. :)

If you are interested, they are having another hunt at the Lighthouse in Oct. Tickets are on sale now, might even be sold out already. They do hold 'Dark of the Moon' night tours on weekends there as well. Might be a better idea to go then, hopefully less people to ruin it for others.

Oh, and a quick pic from our little detour to Downtown Disney on the way home.

Later Leeches :)