Introduction to Ghost Stories of Venice

Like those special friends mentioned in the dedication of this book, ghosts have made their presence known to me in mysterious ways since I was a little munchkin.

The first ghosts I remember were those in stories told to me by my father. I was probably 5 or 6 at the time. Night after night he would spin his mysterious yarns just for me. Some tales were recounted from his own youth and others were wonderful stories created on the spot, with twists and turns probably dictated by my childish reactions and questions.

Then there were those other ghosts that children with too vivid imaginations can conjure up from a bathrobe hanging on a closet door or a bedspread fallen from the bed in an odd shape that resembles something ‹ or someone.

In school and at the movies I met ghosts created by Edgar Allan Poe and others portrayed by Vincent Price. His rendition of Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" will never be bested. Sunday afternoons, my father and I listened to "The Shadow" on the radio. Radio is the perfect medium for ghost stories because even the best story can be enhanced with a little help from one's imagination.

When I made my first trip to Disneyland I met up with the famed inhabitants of the Haunted Mansion, saw the holographically generated images that danced around the banquet table in the mansion's great hall and marveled at the Yettis on the Matterhorn ride.

Diehard investigators of the paranormal ‹ those so-called ghost buster types ‹ would scoff at these man-made images, discounting them as so many manufactured figments of some designer's imagination.

Or, were they?

Consider a world without mystery, a campfire without scary stories and marshmallows, theater without Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and other mysteries, or a library without the works of Poe.

Most stories, even the wildest works of fiction, derive from some grain of truth or experience. There have been ghost stories and other legends as long as there have been people to tell them, hear them, fear them and even to discount them.

Ghosts even haunt the hallowed halls of academia.

Sweet Briar College, my alma mater, has several. Most often seen or sensed have been the ghosts of Daisy Williams who was 16 when she passed on in 1884 and her mother Indiana Fletcher Williams who died in 1900. Sweet Briar was founded in Daisy's memory in 1901. Daisy's ghost seems more mischievous than that of her mother who seems to have continued to maintain a vital interest in her college.

No wonder the fascination with the supernatural endures. There have been enough confirmed sightings of "something" or "someone" and enough mysterious sounds that are more than just creaky steps, that even the most diehard skeptic would be hard-pressed to deny that, on occasion, things occur for which there seems to be no logical explanation.

Despite my own fascination with things that go bump in the night, my first message from "the other side" did not arrive until just after the death of my husband. After 14 years of enduring too many medical problems for any one person, Ken died, at the age of 51.

The message came to me shortly after the funeral, delivered by my cousin's husband Crayton, with a noticeable hesitation in his voice. We had returned to my house following the funeral service.

"There is something I must share with you," Crayton said. "While the minister was speaking, I was very aware of something---I don't know how to describe it--but something in the corner of the room. It appeared to rise and fall in rhythm with the minister's words. I don't know what it was but I sensed Ken's presence somehow. When the minister stopped speaking, whatever it was vanished."

Ken's body had been cremated. The remains were in a walnut urn, in the corner of the room described by Crayton.

My friend, Iona, had overheard the conversation.

"It was Ken," she said, matter-of-factly. "You always go to your own funeral."

She is a believer in ghosts and the supernatural and not afraid to admit it.

Crayton, on the other hand, is an engineer by training, a person who looks at things from the viewpoint of a scientist or mathematician, or, at least he did, until that day.

If Ken did appear at his funeral as Iona believed, and he wanted me to know that he was there, he chose well in appearing to Crayton.

One week later, on our daughter's birthday, Ken may have made one additional appearance. I had given his watch to Heidi. She took it off only to shower.

On her birthday, and at precisely the hour of his death, the alarm on his watch sounded. Was that a final birthday gift from her father? We like to think so.

Whether that was a message from the beyond or not, there is plenty of mystery in life, as well as in death.

Consider for a moment the people who have come into your life at one time or another, and then may have moved on but not passed on. Very much alive, these people may have gone elsewhere to impact other lives as they may once have impacted yours or mine.

Such encounters have led me into the needlework business, the judging of figure skating, competitive curling, travel writing and, most recently, to hunt for ghosts and legends in my adopted community of Venice, Florida.

That Venice is not rife with famous haunted houses and other mysteries has made my hunt all the more interesting.

In the process I have learned that Venice is far more than just the Shark Tooth Capital of the World.

Although the prehistoric fossilized sharks teeth are not without mystery, there is far more to the history of this charming little beach town and its citizens who have come here from so many other places and times.

It was a chance meeting with another writer from another place that spawned my fascination with the other history of Venice, the other worldly history.

This first book of ghost stories and legends of Venice is a result of that encounter.

Was it only a chance meeting? I no longer think so.

As you meet some of the kindred spirits of Venice and its neighboring communities within these pages, you may agree.

To the best of my ability, I have related only true and verifiable tales. Some were told to me in the first person and some of the mysteries were reported in the press at the time they occurred. Second hand tales sent me scurrying to my history books and to the city archives in an attempt to find a relationship between the story and some possibly related incident in the history of Venice. Given the preponderance of naysayers in these parts, most of these tales would never have found their way into this book except for the generosity of the story-tellers who were willing to share their tales.

That too is a common thread experienced by those of us who would pass on tales of the other side. Some people are truly afraid to even contemplate the reality of ghosts and want no part of such stories. Others think it is all make believe. Perhaps reality is somewhere in between.

So, fix a pot of tea, curl up in a favorite chair and take a different look at the Shark Tooth Capital of the World, one of the finest planned communities in America, a city that might have become a ghost town more than once except for its spirit--or spirits.