True Ghostly Tales by Vivian Campbell

Author:Vivian Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ghost, ghosts, spirit, spirits, ghostly, paranormal, parapsychology, haunted, haunted house, poltergeist, haunting, unexplained, haunted, ghost story, spirit, spirits, haunting, child spirits, demons, wraiths, phantom, phantom attack, attack, supernatural, ghost
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2011-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

[contents]

Hide and Seek with Jessie May

Brooksville, Florida, 2010

The Hernando Historical Museum, affectionately known as the May-Stringer House, was born in the center of tiny Brooksville, Florida. John and Marena May built the original structure as a two-story, four-room frame house around 1855. By the 1870s, it had evolved into a stately, four-story Queen Anne mansion with fourteen rooms boasting ten-foot-high ceilings and three layers of lacey, wrap-around porches.

Looks aren’t everything, though: the beautiful home was rooted in death. John May died unexpectedly in 1858, leaving Marena alone to run their three-year-old plantation and raise the kids. Eight years later, Frank Saxon, a local Confederate Civil War hero, became part owner when he married Marena. Along with her house, Marena also gave Frank a daughter, Jessie May, born around 1869. Marena lost her own life to “childbed fever.” Motherless little Jessie May passed away three years later in 1873. The official record of the cause of the little girl’s death was reportedly lost in an 1870s courthouse fire. The locals say she’s buried somewhere in the yard, but not necessarily in the family plot.

Over a century later, the Hernando Historical Museum Association rescued Marena’s crumbling old mansion from demolition, and within two years it was proudly re-opened to the public as an historical museum filled with over eleven thousand eclectic artifacts … plus a few ghosts.

My love affair with Brooksville’s enchanting haunted mansion began during a meandering weekend trip. I was on my way to see the mermaid show at Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida, but my directionally challenged brain somehow plopped me in the middle of tiny Brooksville instead. Lost and confused, I paused by a group of trees at the crossroads of Jefferson Street and Museum Court to stare at my outdated map one more time. That’s when I felt the house. Yes, felt it. (Despite its size, the gray-and-red manor is fairly hidden behind the surrounding sentinel oaks, so it’s quite easy to drive straight past—which really should be a federal crime, because this is not a house to be ignored!)

Zing! I knew that buzzy feeling. My personal ghost alarm was crawling through my brain, over my face and down my backbone … but why would I be sensing spirits under two red lights and a stop sign? The only buildings in sight were a forgotten gas station and a small tavern proudly bearing the title “Miss Kitty’s,” which boasted a drive-through bar window. Those kinds of spirits could give me a buzz, but wouldn’t set off my mental ghost alarm. Bewildered, I glanced over my shoulder to the opposite side of the street. That’s when I saw the house. It was Eleanor of Aquitaine and Queen Elizabeth with a touch of Lady MacBeth. It was haunted. And it was closed.

My planned visit to Weeki Wachee evaporated. Ghosts were always more interesting than mermaids! I wandered around the massive yard that surrounded the stately old house, determined to find the source of my paranormal tingle or possibly a stray caretaker—alive or otherwise—with a key to the front door.

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