Mark Muncy - Freaky Florida: The Wonderhouse, The Devils Tree, The Shaman of Philippe Park, and More

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC

www.historypress.com

Copyright 2018 by Mark Muncy and Kari Schultz

All rights reserved

Cover illustrations by Kari Schultz.

First published 2018

e-book edition 2018

ISBN 978.1.43966.508.4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018942440

print edition ISBN 978.1.46714.035.5

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Kari and I know that no book comes out of just the work of the author and illustrator. This book is no different. We must thank our friends and families for their continued support. You all have our eternal gratitude.

A very special thank-you, as always, goes to Marta Jones, archivist at the St. Petersburg Museum of History. We could not have completed the book without your amazing skills and ability to find even the most obscure reference for us. The museum itself is a gem and gets a full chapter within.

Elizabeth Abbott helped us in so many ways and is an amazing friend. Between pre-editing, being a travel companion and working as convention support staff, we couldnt have made it through either book without you.

My daughters, Callie and Beth Muncy, acted as backup drivers on several trips. They long suffered growing up with a haunted house in our backyard. The fact that they still talk to me is incredible. The fact that they still go on crazy adventures with their old man is just wild.

We also have to thank our volunteer editors for this book. The brilliant authors Amanda Byrd and Allison Williams stepped up to bat for us. The incomparable Vanya Glyr also lent her amazing linguistic skills to the task of editing early on. We owe you a red-ink cartridge badly. Dani Cervantes, Susan Irving and Megan Rogers lent even more eyes on the initial edits.

Dale Aden Jr. played backup driver on one trip. Having been the beating heart of Hellview Cemetery for so long, it was nice to hit the open road with an old friend for a drive deep into the heart of Nowhere, Florida.

Contributors, interview subjects and other special people of note include Doug Stenroos, Owl Goingback, Jim Stafford, Sally Gage, Jennifer Sunday and David Sidotti. Special thanks go out to each and every one of you for helping so much.

Once again, we thank Nancy Alloy at Books at Park Place and the crew at Trader Joes in St. Petersburg for covering us for all those trips and events we keep having to go to. Thanks for putting up with us and letting us keep our jobs another year.

Finally, we have to thank the wonderful folks at Arcadia Publishing and The History Press for these last few years of support. Amanda, Jonny, Joe, Ryan, Crystal and Katie, you are all simply amazing and the best help we could have ever asked for.

INTRODUCTION

For those of you who read our last book, Eerie Florida: Chilling Tales from the Panhandle to the Keys, which came out in September 2017, Id like to say, Welcome back. For those of you who havent read it yet, you can go pick it up and well wait right here for you. If you cant get hold of it, cant wait or arent a fan of eerie things, then let us give you a quick rundown of who we are. The rest of you can skip ahead four paragraphs.

For those of you just joining us, here are the basics. We ran a haunted house for twenty years in St. Petersburg, Florida, called Hellview Cemetery. It was named after a local lost Tampa Bay cemetery called Hillview. We based the entire haunted attraction on local lore and legends collected throughout the Sunshine State. We creatively embellished the legends for the haunted house crowds as was needed to scare our audience. As the attraction gained in popularity, so did the legends.

We collected the stories on our website and eventually in a book called 31 Tales of Hellview Cemetery from Purple Cart Publishing. One year later, we were asked to remove the stuff we completely fabricated and re-release it with all new stories as Tales of Terror of Tampa Bay. Both books sold well at the haunt and in local bookstores.

We were constantly asked about the original non-embellished versions of the legends. We had assumed that the stories were common knowledge, as we had known them well. Some of our tales were gaining fame through the popularity of the Creepypasta phenomena (a Wikipedia-like page for urban legends) that was sweeping the Internet at the time. Several of our stories had been copied and pasted right into Creepypasta website and popular Reddit forums. We had no idea of the fame of our own mythology. Once word got back to us, we decided that it was time to remind people of the original legends.

In late 2016, we watched the last remnants of what had been St. Petersburgs infamous Hellview Cemetery be carted away by garbage trucks. Twenty years of a historic charity haunted house were fading back into nothingness and legend, a victim of our own popularity. We began to work on Eerie Florida for The History Press soon after. That book was a collection of the monsters, myths and legends from the dark side of Florida history.

We traveled more than three thousand miles and never left the state. We visited everywhere from the Gulf Breeze UFO flap in the panhandle to Robert the Haunted Doll down in Key West. As we traveled and toured, people would tell us about even more legends, ghost stories and crazy places. We knew there was going to be at least one more book filled with just as much history as Eerie Florida.

The book came out in September 2017, one year after Hellview Cemetery closed its doors (for now). We toured many conventions and bookstores throughout the state. We were on numerous podcasts and radio and TV shows. E-mails started choking out our mail servers at EerieFlorida.com with more and more stories for us to investigate. We were already compiling notes for the inevitable second book, but we wanted to do more than just retread old ground.

A few locations we had visited had no place in Eerie Florida. Some of these had no supernatural or paranormal ties. Many we simply wanted to write about were just odd, quirky or plain fun. Other locations we couldnt include in the previous book needed more research than we had time for during our quickly looming deadline.

We hit the road once again to collect the photos we would need for this second book while touring for the last one. This time around, we also sought out more historical societies, museums and new interviews. We quickly realized that places like Solomons Castle and the Wonderhouse needed to find a home in the new volume thanks to meeting the wonderful families involved with each of these places. Our working title with The History Press became Strange Florida. It would still include ghosts, monsters and legends, but this time, we could include some incredible places just for fun as well.