Halloween is coming! It’s time to trick-or-treat, dress up in costume, carve pumpkins into jack-lanterns, bob for apples, watch scary movies and tell spooky stories. I thought I would share some of Sarasota’s haunted landmarks, including the Ringling Estate, Historic Spanish Point, and the Ghost Hotel. You can visit the sites if you dare!
Rosemary Cemetery is one of the spookiest landmarks in Sarasota history. It’s the final resting place for many early settlers, civic leaders, and entrepreneurs, including John Hamilton Gillespie, first mayor, Carrie Abbe, first postmistress, the Green family, victims of a horrible family massacre in 1887, and Harry Higel, a developer on Siesta Key, mysteriously murdered in 1921. Paranormal experts say that boisterous spirits roam the Rosemary after dusk. If you dare, stroll there at night, you may meet up with an old Sarasota soul.
The Gator Club A two-story brick building, at Main Street and Lemon Avenue, was built in 1912 by William David Worth a grocery store owner. Over the years, the building has been a number of establishments, including a cigar shop, an ice cream parlor, a speakeasy, and a brothel. The brothel’s madam is still around, playing weird tricks on new hires. A young boy in 1920s attire has materialized in photos taken on the dance floor, and the shadowy presence of a drunk man has been sensed in the pool hall. However, after the site’s original matriarch, the present staff calls Mrs. Worth a favorite.
The Edwards Theater (currently the Sarasota Opera House) was once a popular entertainment venue for famous personalities including W.C. Field, Bette Davis, Will Rogers, Charlton Heston, and Elvis Presley. Some people speculate that deceased celebrity royalty occasionally returns to make spooky things happen—like the phantom of the opera. Florida Studio Theater also has its share of ghostly stories in its Keating Theater. In the 1980’s they performed exorcisms but did it work?!
Historic Spanish Point in Osprey is a 30-acre preserve and one of the largest Native American mortuary sites in the southeastern United States. The land includes a prehistoric burial mound dating from 3,000 B.C to 1000 A.D., an early pioneer homestead, and gardens on the winter estate of Mrs. Potter Palmer, once Sarasota’s largest landowner. Some swear they occasionally see early settlers roaming the grounds, including the ghost of Bertha Palmer. It’s rumored that she strolls through her estate gardens from time to time. Visit the gardens of Historic Spanish Point, now part of The Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.
The Ringling Estate, Ca’ d’Zan was built by a business magnate and developer John Ringling and his wife, Mable, where he established Sarasota as the winter headquarters for the Ringling Barnum & Bailey Circus in the 1920s. They built a fabulous 66-acre winter residence along Sarasota Bay, a Venetian gothic mansion named Ca’ d’Zan. John and Mable Ringling were laid to rest in the Secret Garden outside near the mansion. Many accounts of the long-departed John and Mabel and their dog, Tell, roaming the estate. Mediums have also reported hundreds of ghostly encounters in the mansion—which is no surprise, as “Mable and John were avid entertainers and often threw ritzy parties for their friends at the Ca’ d’Zan during the Roaring Twenties.”
The Ghost Hotel In the 1920s, John Ringling and then-business partner, developer Owen Burns, plan for an opulent Ringling Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Longboat Key went bust due to the Great Depression. The never-completed castle-like structure lay abandoned for four decades and was dubbed the “Ghost Hotel.” Unfortunately, the site became a scene of tragedy when eight people fell to their death from the hotel before its demolition in 1964. Paranormal experts believe ghosts linger at the site to this day. The Chart House now occupies the land at the south end of Longboat Key where the Ghost Hotel once stood. Haunting Tales of Sarasota Site Tours Hop on board a haunted trolley or take a walking tour and enjoy spellbinding, interactive, narrated adventures! A fun way to hear stories about famous murders, visit spirited buildings and explore unsolved crimes.
Click for details: Discover Haunted Trolley Tours and Suncoast Ghost and Murder Walking Tours
Sources: Sarasota Magazine, The Observer, Sarasota History Live.