Oldest Ghosts: St. Augustine Haunts

Discarnate beings tap tourists on their shoulders. Spirits peer with hollow eyes through windows of abandoned houses, and ephemeral images are captured on film. Oldest Ghosts tells of unexplained exploits by the spirits dwelling in St. Augustine, the oldest city of European origin in the United States.

• Judge John Stickney watches from a tree limb above his cemetery monument.
• Ruth Hopkins Pickering looks out the window from the room where she died by fire.
• A Colonial-period ghost hangs laundry in a Spanish courtyard.
• The ghost of Will Green, who died in 1802, routinely enters the bodies of men drinking in a bar.
• A construction worker at the Victorian keeper’s house of the St. Augustine Lighthouse sees an apparition of a man hanging by a rope around his neck from one of the ceiling beams.
• The ghost of a Spanish guard tosses pots and pans around the kitchen at Pizza Hut.

Stories told of spiritual contacts continue with no rational, earthly explanations. Some are funny, some sad, some frightening. Some residents and visitors tolerate the playful spirits. Others prefer not to acknowledge them. Either way, the ghosts abide.