Strange Music | Sunday Favorites: Local Ghosts
The Graham House Poltergeist Â
In the early hours of the morning they awoke to find the room “bathed in blood-red light” coming from the chandeliers and sconces – they had all awoken at the exact same moment. Every light was on in the room, but when they looked closely the switch was in the off position. That day the electrician reported that the electricity had been mysteriously fixed.
The next night, the brave children decided they’d all sleep in the living room. After reading their mystery novel they began to hear strange music that they believed to be coming from next door. It was the sound of bongo drums and a harmonica– only it was coming from a room above the garage – one that was uninhabited. A dog was barking from inside the room and the next day they found old hardened dog feces on the floor.
The family lived in the house for a year and during that time all sorts of mysterious things happened. There was always audible noise from the room above the garage, and they continued to find old dog feces. Even though they cleaned it on a regular basis, it would mysteriously reappear. There would always be light above the garage that was viewable from the river. Footsteps belonging to no one, cold spots, shadowy figures and an abnormal anger that seemed to possess family members were just a few of the happenings that went on during their stay.
Shortly after they moved out, the house was floated to Snead Island on a barge where it still stands today. A condo was erected on the original property. Though the new inhabitants have claimed to never experience anything paranormal, Tamera, one of the Kafka children, walked the original property as an adult and claimed she felt a familiar sense of eeriness and anger that had consumed the family in their short stay at the Graham House. (More informaion on this story can be found in an article “Ghosts Won’t Cross Water by Nan Russell and donated to the Eaton Collection at the Manatee County Library ).
Sickened Calusa Soul
Several texts support the notion that the natives believed that three was a sacred number. They worshiped three Gods and they thought each person was inhabited by three souls. When a member of the tribe would get sick, they believed that one of the souls had escaped and was lurking in the woods. They would send a Shaman out to round it up, but with all the disease transported to the area during European immigration, who knows how many souls went unrecovered and are still wandering the mangroves for eternity.
The Hitchhiker
“We were headed to a Ray’s game one night. It was pouring down rain and when we reached the top of the Skyway we saw this sad blonde in a white dress looking as if she was going to jump,” said Jason Velez, resident of Bradenton in an interview. “After seeing her, I just knew right away it was the ghost, she fit the profile. Just as we got to the other side, a fire truck flashing lights and sirens was headed up that way. Somebody must have called it in.”
When conditions are desirable, police stations and toll booths will be littered with callers reporting “a sad blonde woman who looks like she may jump.” Some texts claim that she appeared after the Summit tragedy of 1980, but sightings have occurred prior to that. She is thought to be a suicide victim that hitchhiked her way into an infinite purgatory.
“Do you believe in Jesus?” she asked, “Are you ready to die and meet Jesus?” she cried, according to “Jim and Ellen” in the book The Tampa Triangle . Before they could answer — she was gone.
This Old House
When the Santeilli’s from Palmetto bought and restored the historic Harllee house on the river they were excited to see it when they got completely through with the re-model. Ironically, the original owner saw its potential all along. The new buyers found a love letter in one of the closets, only it was from Mrs. Harllee to the house. She loved the house so much, that some say her hospitable spirit still lingers in it, preparing meals for her new guests.
When the new couple went away on a trip, they had both grandmothers stay to babysit. Grandmother Marilyn and her friend were sleeping in the upstairs guest room while the Grandmother Lisa stayed in a room downstairs. The two women upstairs were awakened by the clamorous sounds in the kitchen.
“We heard all this carrying about and I thought Lisa was making us breakfast. When we got down stairs she was fast asleep. Well, we just laughed. We weren’t scared or nothin’, just laughed and said that was the ghost of Mrs. Harllee down there makin’ all that racket in the kitchen,” they said.
On another occasion, Lee Santilli’s husband was playing with their baby outside so she could take a nap. She was awakened by heavy footsteps on the second floor.
“I yelled up there sarcastically, ‘I’m awake now! You can come down!’” she said.
She then went into the kitchen and found that she couldn’t get the light turned on so she again yelled up the stairs for her husband.
“I said ‘Tom, I need your help. Please come down’, I heard him walking to the staircase and so I waited. Then I said sighing, ‘Tom!’ as I walked up and see what was keeping him. But when I got up there, the room was empty,” she said.
When she looked out the window Tom was still playing with the baby outside.
The Singing River
Several residents have acknowledged the fact that the Manatee River makes its own music. There are accounts of its eerie melody as far back as the Seminole Wars. At the battle of Braden Castle, where pioneers were under attack by Billy Bowlegs (a famous Seminole Chief that raided several area villages in the late 1800′s) one of his gang was shot and captured. When the settlers brought the native in to bandage his wound, he told them of a famous legend about a Calusa princess and her love affair with the Timucuan chief’s son. He told them how the two had secretly met at a point in the Manatee River where a mysterious music seemed to emanate from the river and could be heard on certain moons.
The music has presented itself through poetry and local stories. The phenomena is said to take place in the months of April and May at Rocky Bluff, which is located between the Gamble Mansion and the I-75 bridge. No one knows exactly where the song comes from, but its mystery has allured even the most skeptical to the site.
Sources:Boegilin, Byron (1977). South Florida’s Vanished People: Travels in the Homeland of the Ancient Calusa. Lower, Cathrine and Cynthia Thuman (2008). Haunted Florida: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Sunshine State . Machanicsburg PA, Stackpole Books.Miller, Bill (1997). Tampa Triangle: Dead Zone . Saint Petersburg FL, Ticket to Adventure Inc.Morris, Theodore (2004). Florida’s Lost Tribes . Gainesville FL, University Press of Florida.Russell, Nan (1983). Ghosts Won’t Cross Water. Interviews and paper are part of the Eaton Collection at the Manatee County Library.Warner, Joe (1986). The Singing River: A History of the People and Places along the Manatee River . Florida: Printing Professional and Publishers Inc.
The two photos taken by me and used in this article are not actual ghosts. They are photographs of reinactments. The latter is not the actual Harllee House it is an old house in Gainesville. The “ghostly” effect can be acheived with a camera by setting it to a slow shutter speed and creating movement.
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