Posts Tagged ‘What To Do In Florida’

What to Do in Fort Lauderdale â?? Take the Ghosts and Mysteries Tour

 

As the burnt orange light of dusk dimmed into deep, dark blue on the evening western horizon, Scarlet the Wiccan ghost tour guide of Fort Lauderdale did her glide-walk around the corner of Las Olas and Andrews to meet tonightâ??s group of ghost hunters in the Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends tour. It is what to do in Fort Lauderdale beyond the pale of the ordinary. Are you drawn to the mysterious, the unknown and the explained? Then this is your thing to do in Fort Lauderdale â?? under the cover of the night sky. For most ghost tour guides giving a ghost tour, it is merely a night job to make extra income. But for Ms. Scarlet the Wiccan, dealing with the spirits is part of her life. “I believe in the afterlife,” she says, “and that is a part of my daily life. The spirits are always with me. As they are with all of us.” She adds, “Ghosts have felt the need to reveal themselves to me since I was four. My first visitation was from a great aunt. I didnâ??t realize she was a ghost until I told my mom about the lady in my room. My mom gathered up the old photo albums and asked me to show her who it was. The lady I selected was my great aunt who had passed three days before I was born.” “I wear a black dress, black cape and top hat. It is not simply part and parcel of an entertaining night out with someone wearing late 19th century attire. Black is traditionally worn to protect from evil spirits. So this getup actually has a purpose, no matter where a ghost tour is.” This is not your ordinary ghost tour. It is more like taking the first class in a the course of How a Wizard Deals with the Spirits of the Night. More importantly she has fun on the tour, as a result, so do the guests â?? particularly the children. They are fascinated by Ms Scarletâ??s collection of amulets, charms, incense and stones along with diving rods and a laser thermometer, which she uses to find and bring out the spirits of the Netherworld. The adults like her total style. The night I went on the tour, there was a group of ten adults, half of whom were on it for the third time. “The tour can vary from night to night,” says our tour guide. “What I cover depends on the curiosity and questions of the crowd. ” “Usually the tour ends outside of two haunted, 100 year-old mansions,” says Alison, one of the third-time participants, “but tonight, because we have repeated the tour, Ms Scarlet walked a little farther to the site of the Cooley Massacre. ” “This incident, by a group of renegade Seminoles killing a wife, her three kids and their tutor, execution style,” adds Ms Scarlet, “started the Second Seminole War for which President Jackson had a fort built nearby called Fort Lauderdale. It is this area of land, next to the fork of the New River, where our city began and how we got our name. “The spirits of the Indians, and the early Spanish and American settlers still linger. There are a few sightings of early and mid-20th century ghosts, but otherwise we have gotten lots of readings in this neighborhood and photos of many orbs.” In a group of eight participants, there were five children from three to 12 years old. It was the latterâ??s birthday. “They were a lot of fun” says Ms. Scarlet, “and I made the night special for the kids. I took dye-cut goody bags with a pattern of roses, hearts, and stars and put a few items in each one â?? a glow-in-the-dark eye bouncy ball, a package of popcorn that turns orange when you pop it, an “energy stone” and each girl got a chocolate-covered granola bar. I told the girls if they put three push lights in their bags, the bag would cast shapes on their walls!” What made the tour special for the birthday girl is the guide brought her a cape and battery-operated candle so that she could be her assistant and guest guide. You could see the thrill in her eyes. All the party girls were into the ghost tour. An 11 year old told me she wanted to be a ghost hunter and a medium so that people could talk to their dead family members. What an unusual profession for an 11 year old to want. Then the birthday girl added in that she has seen ghosts before. She said she saw her Dad! The six year old then chimed in that she didn’t see her Dad but she felt him!!!!! Like going to Disney World, taking the Ghost and Mystery tour in Fort Lauderdale is for the kid in all of us. More information and photos are at â?? and at MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/fortlauderdaleghosthunt.

A Night of Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends in Fort Lauderdale

The purgatorial train shrieks and rumbles down the tracks by night, rocking side to side, whistle screaming on its journey through the dark abyss of eternity. Packed inside are souls whose trip with this train has no end in sight . . . souls of those who died tragically on the tracks of the Florida East Coast Railroad. Its endless journey through endless time is their punishment for stupidity . . . or was it suicide? So goes the introduction to the Ghost Train along Fort Lauderdale’s original railroad line, and its tie to its dark past. The tale of this train has been told several times on the History Channel. It is but one of many tales related by the Ghost Tour Guides of the Ghosts, Mysteries & Legends tour of Old Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale’s premier ghost tour. Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends of Fort Lauderdale meets at the northeast corner of Las Olas and Andrews under the sign of the very modern Museum of Art, in the heart of the city’s restaurant and entertainment district, minutes away from the beach and the downtown and airport business hotels. With cape, gaucho hat and lamp in hand, Ghost Guides wander off into the night and introduce visitors and locals to Fort Lauderdale’s “other night life” as they walk along the banks of the New River in the city’s historic district. But Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends is more than just a ghost tour, as Christian Rieger, its managing director tells, “There are more than just ghosts of the dead out there. We introduce our clients to the ‘world of spirits.” Some are spirits locked in time, some are visitors from other time zones, other times, other dimensions and other places on our physical plane. Then there are the nature spirits, the angelic host and guardian angels — all figure into the civilization and culture of the “other side of the veil.” And all watching us. There is no privacy. So get over it. We talk pretty much about the whole pack.” Fort Lauderdale has two para-normal power aspects which makes it important in its revelations of what is going on in the non-material world. One is the energy that runs down the New River from the Everglades (hoary with antiquity, perhaps three ice ages old). The other is Fort Lauderdale is at the western point of the Bermuda Triangle. The lowest gravitational point on the planet is over its southern point at the Puerto Rican Trench, the deepest hole in the Atlantic Ocean. A group of Danish scientists who have made it their life’s study, have discovered that the magnetic field of the planet has declined 1 3/4 % in the last twenty years, while in the Bermuda Triangle it has declined by 20%. Mr. Rieger postulates, “We believe that these two important energy aspects contribute significantly to some of the paranormal events that have happened, and people have gotten digital photos of, on our tours.” Orbs indicate the presence of, or are supposed to be, ghosts. People using their digital cameras on ghost tours everywhere else when they photograph orbs, are content to get what looks like large or small, shiny, bright, translucent ping-pong balls. But here in Fort Lauderdale the guides and the patrons frequently get faces in orbs. One night a man looked at one such very evil-looking wol- face from the depths of hell, and said, “I wished I never saw that.” “One photograph” adds Rieger, “is of an orb perhaps 10 or 12 feet over the roof of an old hotel. When magnified three times, it show an image of a phantom flying through the air within it. If orbs are supposed to be ghosts, this was proof. As far as Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends knows, no one has taken such a photo elsewhere. We also have a photo of an orb with a square-rigged ship in it, and another of a one-room school house. Both images are connected to the history of Fort Lauderdale and have apparently shown up in the “memory of nature” as recorded by the cameras.” “We have also photographed the activity of nature spirits,” says Rieger. “Nature spirits are the entities that mystical tradition tells us causes the grass to grow, the flowers to be aromatic and the winds to blow. Frequently, at the beginning of rain storms, photographs will show hundreds of orbs. These will not be seen several minutes later.” Classic ghost tails include the strange carrying-ons of the Women in the White Wedding Dress, the Mystery of the Wandering Left Hand, Shirttail Charlie, and the Drunk at the Bar. “It is great family entertainment,” says Rieger, “something for the family besides watch television in the hotel room. It also works great for local families, because ghost tours are a clever way to introduce local history to children – a way of making history interesting and easy to listen to. And be sure to bring your digital camera.” Photographs taken by guests along the tour are at their website, Their MySpace website includes excerpts from a video recorded by PBS Channel 2 in Miami, Florida