Ghosts of South Florida
Stories of true ghostly encounters
Over the years I have had several ghost stories sent anonymously to me, and it's these quaint and subtle stories of hauntings that I find so fascinating, because you realize that ghosts make their presence known in the most mundane of settings, and sometimes it's only in hindsight that we realize exactly what we were experiencing. I have excluded surnames and exact addresses in order to protect the privacy of families. The following are those stories:
Uncle Charles
My family owns an old home in rural Davie. The tiny home was hand-built by my great-uncle (via marriage) - a person I have never met. His name was Charles C. and he and his wife, Betty, lived there.
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He was said to be a nice man and you can easily see how much he loved his home. Betty C. was an Alzheimer's victim and Charles cared for her himself. He was putting a new roof on the home one day when he felt ill and came inside to lie down. He suffered a heart attack in the tiny hallway and passed away. Betty, being in a poor state of mind, stepped over his body for two or three days before neighbors came to investigate. Having not seen Charlie, they broke down the front door and found him deceased.
The spooky, if you can call them that, events came later. My father lived there for some time and claimed to have seen him a few times. He moved out and some time later I was preparing to move in. My husband and I came one evening to begin moving a few items in and while he was putting things in the outdoor sheds, I was bringing items into the guest bedroom. I walked through that small hallway many times and although I knew Charles had died in the house, I was not aware he had died in that hallway. As I continued to walk in and out, through the hall and past the darkened master bedroom into the smaller room, I felt "watched" and...this may sound weird, but in my head I heard someone saying "Who are you? What are you doing here?" I didn't hear anything aloud - the words just popped into my mind. I got a REALLY creepy feeling and would't go back in alone.
During our time living there, it was mostly peaceful with a few minor exceptions. Occasionally when wearing a dress, I felt someone tug at the back. Something I am told Charles did to his wife often. Another time we had a weird experience in the middle of the night... the lights in the shed had stopped working and we couldn't figure out why. Weeks passed and we ignored it, using a flashlight if need be. One night, I heard noises out in the yard and peeked out to see one shed light on, the door open and noises coming from it. I woke my husband, who grabbed our only weapon - an old bb gun - and went out to check. No one was there and we couldn't figure out how the light got on. Nor could we figure out how to turn it off - we never knew which switch would correct it and none responded. Eventually, the light just went off again.
We don't get along with my uncle particularly well and we moved after two years to Tamarac, Florida. My father and sister live there once again now and haven't reported anything too odd. The idea being that Charlie knows who they are. We've never tried to get his attention, but I feel strongly that any attempt to do so would be successful.
Haunted Condo in NW Miami
There’s a condominium I used to live in. The only words I can use to explain the place is, infested! While living there, at least 5 people died, and about 1 year before I moved out, a man shot himself in the head and died on the 1st floor. Another lady was murdered in the elevator.
The one prominent entity in that apartment building was a dark shadowy figure of a man, which seemed to have a negative origin. Lucky me, I was the only one in the apartment that he never had an encounter with. I heard about it on a daily basis from my sisters who constantly had to deal with it.
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It seemed that the smaller of the two bedrooms (which was where both my sisters slept) was where all the activity was.
On one occasion me and my mother woke up to the sound of my sister screaming as if someone was attacking her. Well, when we reached the room she was screaming about something pulling on her legs, and we did see her struggling with it. My other sister on the other hand was sound asleep. As soon as we turned on the light, nothing was going on at all.Â
They also reported seeing this figure walk behind them while they were fixing themselves up in the mirror, or seeing it sit on their beds. Although the figure did seem evil, it wasn’t violent with any of us, it only basically pulled practical jokes and of course the occasional scare.
On one occasion a friend of my sister's saw it sitting on the couch in the living room, after which we had to take her home.  She never stepped foot back in that apartment again.
The halls of the building also had the quality of making you feel as if someone is watching or following you; it gave you that numb feeling in your eyes that you get when you're afraid.
Of my many encounters I only had a handful there. One encounter was with a huge man, completely white, I know he had features and was wearing some sort of clothing, and he didn't seem threatening in the least bit but I still ran away because of course I didn’t recognize him or what he was doing in my house. I was only 7 years old at the time, so I ran!
I also had to change the location of where I slept because I felt such a negative feeling where I was sleeping. Also I would stay in my sisters' room every so often, which I heavily regret as I would also experience lights flickering on and off, and loud noises coming from the kitchen, as if someone was looking looking through the drawers. It never failed, the noise always happened, but it could only be heard from the smaller bedroom. Although we dealt with it for almost 6 years we never inquired on the history of that apartment.
Whoever came after us to live there, probably didn’t see the word ghosts anywhere in the lease.
Apartment Near UCF Campus
This is something that happened a few years ago while visiting my friend Valerie while she was living on her own in Orlando. She was up there for school and her parents bought her a 1 bedroom apartment near the UCF campus.
The buildings looked pretty new but you could tell they were renovated especially when you went into the elevators. Anyways, we were spending the weekend there with her along with a bunch of our other friends to go to Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios.
The night was a bit freaky to begin with... while I was taking a shower and getting ready to go, the towel that I used and had hung on he rack behind me, started to move like if there was a strong wind blowing at it. Mind you, there is no window in the bathroom and no air from an air conditioning could have moved a WET towel that way! I didn't think much of it and just went on getting ready. I was almost done and went to grab my lipstick from the counter where I had set it down just moments before, and it was gone. I checked everywhere, on the floor all over the counter and in my purse. I know I wasn't going crazy so I called in my husband to check the bathroom for me as well. Maybe I was missing something, but he could not find it either. I said forget it and just went out into the living room.Â
Valerie was to take a shower next, she walked into the bathroom and found my towel on the floor, she scolded me for not picking it up and throwing it behind the toilet. I told her that I had left it hanging on the door which is on the opposite end of the bathroom, nowhere near the toilet. We both looked at each other and I saw a look of discontent in her eyes, and I knew she knew something more than she was letting on. I left her in the bathroom and she asked us to not come into the room since she was scared, and wanted to leave the door to the bathroom open.Â
Only a few minutes passed when she came screaming out of the tub and into her room, naked and grabbing a towel off her bed. We ran to see what was going on, and she had 3 scratch marks, or rather someone or something had clawed her on the back. The cuts were somewhat deep and she was bleeding very badly!!! Another friend that was there helped her clean up while my husband and I looked inside the tub, wondering if maybe it could have been something that she had brushed up against that could have scratched her like that. When I opened the shower curtain to look into the tub I almost fainted when I saw my lipstick sitting on the lower rim of the tub!Â
I didn't even want to pick it up! We walked back into the room and Valerie confessed that there had been some weird things happening since 2 weeks before when she and her friends from school, decided to play with incantations and spells out of a book that belonged to one of the girls' aunts. She said that the week before we came, she woke up in the middle of he night to her stereo coming on all of a sudden, and then when she came back to her room her bed had a large pool of rancid smelling clear liquid. She slept the rest of that night in her living room with her dog.Â
Occasionally her dog would wake up and start growling towards her bedroom.  The next day she went out and bought a new mattress since hers smelled horrible. When she got home, there was a black feather on her dresser and it smelled like something rotten as well.
After talking with her about the events of the past few days, we told her that if there was a spirit there, she needed to communicate with it and tell it to please go away!Â
We all sat in her living room the next afternoon and she tried it. Almost instantly there was a loud sound almost like a shatter that came from her bathroom. We all ran to see, and found her mirror had split in 2 and one side crashed down as we looked at it shattering into little bits all over the bathroom floor. That was the last day she stayed in her apartment. She moved in temporarily with a friend while the apartment went up or sale, and never returned.
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