by Tom Lapham
The front of the store was open to customers, and Kenny had his working area in the rear. The large workroom contained a work table, two sewing machines. a podium for customers to stand on while getting fitted, and later, a television set. A storeroom and a bathroom opened off the main area, and there was an outside door in the rear wall. Kenny's workroom was a comfortable, well-lit place, and he spent many hours there, keeping up with all the business.
One evening he was working late by himself. He was sitting at one of the sewing machines, occupied in hemming a customer's trousers when, suddenly, he heard a doorknob turning. He looked up from his work and watched as the knob of the storeroom door turned, and the door slowly opened. He sat motionless, not knowing what to think, for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds. Then he was enveloped by an over-powering smell of flowers which reminded him of a funeral home. It was a sickeningly sweet smell, like cheap perfume. The smell clung to him. It wouldn't go away. He closed the shop and went home. Even at home he could smell the aroma of those flowers, although his wife couldn't detect the odor.
Days and weeks and months passed, and strange events continued to occur with increasing regularity. At first, Kenny was petrified, but he soon became used to his “visitors,” even if at times they were a little unnerving. The bathroom and storeroom doors opened and closed, items in the workroom moved from one place to another, and the scent of those funeral flowers continued. And the events didn't always occur at night. Often, a knob would turn and a door would open in the middle of the day, and Kenny would be encompassed by that sweet aroma, an aroma that only Kenny could detect. Neither Kixie nor the seamstress, Dorothy Giddens, could ever smell it.
Late one evening when all was quiet in the shop and on St. George Street, Kenny heard what sounded like soldiers or sailors marching on a wooden floor or perhaps the wooden deck of an old sailing ship, the rhythmic stomp, stomp, stomp of leather heels on wood in a regular cadence. Later, Kixie and others heard the sound too, even out on the street when no one was around. Now there was no wood flooring in Kixie's, nor in any of the other stores and shops along that section of the street, but the distinct sound of men marching on wooden planks could be heard with some frequency for years.
Years later, after Kenny had installed the television in the workroom, he was working late. His friend, Preston Lay, was keeping him company. While Kenny worked, Preston watched a TV program, which, coincidentally, was a documentary on strange and unusual occurrences. Kenny was sewing a collar on a coat, a job which must be done by hand, so he couldn't watch, but he listened, and he and Preston chatted. All of a sudden, the storeroom doorknob turned, and the door opened. The sickeningly sweet aroma of funeral flowers fairly billowed into the room. Preston turned to Kenny and commented on his strong-smelling aftershave. For the first time, someone else had smelled the strange scent.
As they sat there, the bathroom door suddenly swung wide open. That was enough for Preston and for Kenny, who put down his work and prepared to leave. Before departing, however, Kenny got out a small tape recorder he had recently purchased and put on a blank tape. He pressed the record button and left the recorder lying on the table. Then he and Preston locked up, making sure the bathroom and storeroom doors were closed, turned out the lights, and left.
The next day he eagerly entered the shop to listen to the tape. Of course, as he expected, the storeroom and bathroom doors which he had closed were open. Nothing else had been disturbed. He rewound the tape and turned it on. First, there was the sound of their leaving the previous night. He could distinctly hear the closing and locking of the back door, the sound of his and Preston's cars starting up, and their driving away.
Then there was silence, but only for a few seconds. Soon, the stomping of feet began, followed by strange, unearthly guttural sounds, which made his spine tingle just to listen to them. Doors opened and closed, leather heels marched back and forth on wooden decks, something squeaked—not unlike a mouse or rat, something scratched, like a dog scratching on a door, trying to get in. In the background were those unnatural, unintelligible guttural sounds. At the time Kixie had an old ship's bell in the front of the store, and, once or twice, the sound of the ship's bell could be heard, tolling the early watches. Later, when Kixie and Dorothy Giddens arrived, they listened to the tape and were startled by it. His friend, Preston, came down to listen to the tape, too. (Not long after, Preston Lay died of a heart attack.)
The store was open late on Thursdays and Fridays until eight o'clock. Kixie would often leave early, and there were other times, too, during the day when Kenny was in the store alone. Not long after the store had been opened, Kenny installed a buzzer, which was wired to the front door, so that even when he was alone, he could continue working in the back and be alerted when customers came into the store. Kenny had run a wire from the contact on the front door, up through the dropped ceiling, and back to the buzzer in his workroom. This system worked without any problems for many years.
Then, in the early 1970s, a customer entered, and the buzzer didn't work. Kenny checked his system and found that the wire had been cut, up above, in the ceiling. Kenny knew that no one had any reason for climbing up to the ceiling. No one had been up there.
Finally, he'd had enough. He called Monsignor Harold Jordan down the street at the Cathedral and requested that he come right away to perform the Rite of Exorcism. Monsignor was at first reluctant, because he had had no experience with exorcism. He said that he did know a priest in Miami whom he could call, but Kenny insisted. He couldn't wait for a priest to come all the way from Miami; he needed someone right away, so Monsignor came over that evening, armed with his crucifix and Holy Water.
He performed the rite, walking around the entire store, inside and out, and through each of the rooms, including the storeroom and bathroom. He blessed everything and exhorted the unwanted spirits to depart. The strange happenings stopped after that, everything except the smell. To this day when Kenny comes down for his coffee and passes by the store, he frequently smells the sickeningly sweet aroma of funeral flowers.
But that is not the end of the story. Just down the street is the two-story, Lapinsky Building, with stores at ground level and two lovely apartments on the second floor. The owners of Champs of Aviles Restaurant to the south of the plaza on Aviles Street just across from Artillery Lane live in one of the apartments.
A nun, a sister of St. Joseph, used to walk past the restaurant on Aviles and would occasionally stop in for a chat with the owners. Soon they got to know each other well and became good friends. One day the sister came by with a present, a bright red blouse, which had been given to her. Of course, she couldn't wear it, so she gave it to Champs' owner, who, as it happened, didn't feel very comfortable in red either. But she graciously accepted the blouse and took it home, where she hung it in the back of her closet.
Not long after the exorcism at Kixie's, the couple returned home to their apartment in the Lapinsky Building after closing the restaurant to find the red blouse laid out on the bed. The woman smiled at her husband and asked, “Why did you get this blouse out? You know I'm not going to wear it.”
“I didn't get it out. I just came in with you.” And they both laughed.
Over the next few months they returned home on several occasions to find the blouse laid out on the bed. One evening they found a book on the bed. The wife asked, “Didn't we both finish this a couple of months ago?”
He agreed that they had.
“Well, then, why did you get it out?”
“Look, I didn't even know where you put that thing. I didn't get it out.”
Not long after the book incident, the couple in the next apartment invited them over for coffee one evening. During their conversation, the woman related that she and her husband had both been waking up together at eleven o'clock and again at two thirty for the last several evenings. There didn't seem to be any reason for it. They'd look out in the street and out the door, but they never'. saw anything. Neither remembered h
earing any noises, but at eleven and two thirty, they both simultaneously woke up. The restaurateurs looked at each other. The same thing had been happening to them.
The neighbor went on, “And that's not all. You know, we have a ghost in our apartment.”
Again, they looked at each other. No, they didn't know, but they were beginning to piece everything together.
“Yes, we have a ghost, and it's a man. I know it's a man, because he's very fresh. He keeps slapping me on the behind.” Her husband laughed.
The couple laughed, too, but when they got home they had a very serious discussion about the blouse and the book and waking up twice every night. They decided they needed to talk to someone about these mysterious happenings, so they called Karen Harvey, an editor for the local newspaper and an authority on the ghosts of St. Augustine.
Karen contacted a psychic, who came to the apartment with a photographer. The psychic, a woman, walked around the whole apartment, stopping in each room and finally going out to the stairwell. In the stairwell, she said, “This is where I feel the strongest presence of your guest. His name is Henry Barnes, and he was a sailor.”
They were all still standing in the hallway by the stairs when the psychic suddenly said to the photographer, “Quick, he's right over my head, take a picture.” At that very moment, the couple's little dog jumped up, flattened his ears, and ran to hide in a cage in a corner of another room. At the same time, an icy cold blast of air enveloped them all. The psychic exhorted Henry to leave, but she was unsuccessful.
After the psychic's visit, activity seemed to increase. One night the woman was at her dressing table getting ready for bed. Her husband was already asleep. Something caught her eye just outside the open bedroom door. She looked and saw a white, flowing apparition on the stair banister. Then it disappeared.
The next day she called Karen back and was referred to Kenny Beeson. Kenny told her of his experience and suggested she call the monsignor. Monsignor Jordan came over in the afternoon and went through the same exorcism ritual he had done at Kixie's. That was the last anyone has seen or heard of Henry Barnes. Perhaps he returned to the sea, or maybe he's wandering up and down St. George Street.
FLAGLER COLLEGE
There are many stories about Flagler College, the former Hotel Ponce de Leon. The extravagant lifestyles of the wealthy guests who stayed in the hotel were fertile ground for myth, legends, and stories: secret subterranean passages; closed chambers in the attic; dark, mysterious rituals in hidden places. Even if most of the tales are untrue, they are delicious fodder for young students who now occupy these halls.
AFTER THE RELATIVELY QUIET decade of the 1870s, St. Augustine began a period of unprecedented growth and luxury it had not experienced before and hasn't seen since. In the early 1880s the city began staging a Ponce de Leon Celebration for winter visitors. In attendance in 1884 was a powerful and wealthy tycoon, Henry Flagler, honeymooning with his second wife, Alice. He returned a year later with grandiose plans to develop St. Augustine into the American Riviera for the country's social elite.
Before the turn of the century he had transformed the town and changed it forever. First he filled in Maria Sanchez Creek. Then he built the Hotel Ponce de Leon, which later became Flagler College, followed in quick order by the Alcazar, across King Street from the Ponce de Leon, and the Cordova, facing the garden between the two larger hotels. The Alcazar later became the Lightner Museum and the Cordova became local government offices.
These commercial enterprises were only beginnings. Before he was through he had paved streets, built a baseball field, established a bus line, started a dairy and a laundry for his hotels, built the Memorial Presbyterian and Grace Methodist Churches, donated money and land for the Catholic Cathedral and the Ancient City Baptist Church, and developed a subdivision north of his hotels. The list goes on and on. There was very little that Flagler did not directly touch in St. Augustine in the closing years of the last century.
But his beneficence was not appreciated by everyone in town. Some saw him as a self-aggrandizing bully, a pompous ass. What was good for Henry Flagler was good for St. Augustine. To many, Flagler's renaissance was unwanted. However, his influence was undeniable. And so, it was inevitable that upon his death on May 20, 1913, many stories about the man would flourish. They may or may not be founded in truth, but they are a part of the oral tradition of the city.
Flagler died in Palm Beach and his body was shipped to St. Augustine to lie in state in the rotunda of the Ponce de Leon, then to be buried in the Memorial Presbyterian Church. On May 30, 1913, all the Florida East Coast Railway trains stopped around the state. The funeral cortege gathered in the rotunda of the Ponce de Leon to carry Flagler's body to the Memorial Presbyterian Church for burial. Suddenly, in the hushed silence, the great doors of the rotunda slammed shut, startling and unnerving those present. After a few moments, calm prevailed, the doors were opened, and the entourage escorted the body to the church. Later that day a janitor was cleaning up in the rotunda and happened to look at a peculiar tile in the intricate designs on the rotunda floor. The tile he saw was the size of a thumbnail, and on it was the face of Henry Flagler! He intended to stay in the Ponce de Leon forever. That tile, with Henry's face, remains where it was found to this day.
In 1968 the Ponce de Leon became Flagler College, one of the country's finest small, liberal arts colleges. In the early ’80s a young man named Mark came to school here and moved into a room on the third floor of the west wing, not far from the rotunda.
Every day he passed through the rotunda on his way to and from classes and meals. Of course, it wasn't long before he heard the stories about the ghosts that roamed the halls and about Henry Flagler. He didn't believe any of it. But he was curious, and one afternoon, with little else to do, he searched the rotunda for Flagler's tile. He was surprised when he found it.
From then on, laughing, he would always stop at the tile, rub it, and invite Mr. Flagler to come visit him. This went on for several weeks, and Mark was even less inclined to believe in the ghost of Henry Flagler, or any ghosts for that matter.
Then, late one Wednesday afternoon he made his usual stop. While his classmates watched he bent down, rubbed the tile, and invited Henry to his room. “Come on, Henry! Come on up and visit!” The boys laughed, the girls giggled, and they all went their separate ways.
Mark went to his room, crossed it, and threw his books on his desk. While he was facing the desk he sensed someone enter. He wasn't surprised because he had left the door open. “Come on in,” he said and turned around. No one was there. He stood still for several seconds, not certain of what was going on. Then the door closed.
“Henry? Henry?” he asked in a less confident voice than he had used in the rotunda. There was silence, but he was surrounded by what he later described as an overpowering presence. Then the door opened, and he was alone again.
He was so shaken by the event he closed the curtains, turned off the light, and left. He has never been back to St. Augustine.
Flagler's second wife, Alice, or Ida Alice as friends called her, was a spunky, extravagant strawberry blonde. Pert, pretty, and lively, she was popular, if sometimes erratic in her behavior. History says she became insane and was institutionalized. Legend says she went crazy from playing with a Ouija board and died in a mental hospital, a raving, violent, mad woman.
In recent years a young coed came to Flagler and moved into the east wing of the main building. She was pretty and perky and looked very much like Ida Alice. Shortly after she arrived, the apparition of a pretty, young strawberry blonde was seen moving around the halls. Soon the ghost settled in the young woman's room.
The presence wasn't malicious, but it was disturbing. In the middle of the night the young woman would wake up with Ida Alice standing before her bed, watching her in stony silence. In the evenings she would return from the library and see the face of Flagler's wife in the door as she opened it. Finally she asked for another room, but even that di
dn't help. Before the end of the first semester, the girl left Flagler and went to Rollins College in Orlando. Apparently Alice didn't follow her there.
There is also a woman in black who allegedly is still seen on the top floor of the west wing. Supposedly, Flagler had a mistress. At one point Alice came for an extended stay in the Ponce de Leon. Henry was quite unnerved, of course, and fearing the two might meet if he allowed his mistress to wander around, he confined her to a suite of rooms out of the way. Apparently he wasn't willing to send her off while his wife was in town.
The suite was well-appointed, with mirrors on the ceiling and walls and servants always at hand. However, the young woman, who always wore black, needed more excitement. As time went on she became more and more depressed and finally, late one evening, driven to the depths of despair, she hanged herself.
THE CAPTAIN'S HOUSE
MANY OF THE STORIES OF GHOSTS in St. Augustine are founded in history. They can be traced to specific people who have died and continue to haunt a particular location. The governor at 214 St. George Street, Catalina at Catalina's Gardens, and the slave in the St. Francis Inn are all examples. There are some ghosts, however, who just evolve. They may be very real, but no trace of them can be found among the living. Any evidence of their previous existence has been lost in history.
One such apparition is the ghost that haunted the Upham Cottage at the south end of town. The magnificent twelve-room Victorian was built by Colonel John Upham in 1892 as a “winter cottage.” It was the center of much gaiety and elegant social life during the Flagler period. Colonel Upham and his young wife were among the elite of St. Augustine's winter residents. The colonel died in 1898, but his wife retained ownership of the house until 1915, often renting it to winter visitors from the North.