Ghosts of South Florida

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Over the years several ghost stories were sent anonymously to Miami Ghost Chronicles. It's these quaint and subtle stories of hauntings that are so fascinating, because you realize that ghosts make their presence known in the most mundane of settings.

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Uncle Charlie still haunts his old home

Surnames and exact addresses were excluded in order to protect the privacy of families. The following are those stories:

UNCLE CHARLES

My family owns an old home in rural Davie. The tiny home was hand-built by my great-uncle (via marriage) - a person I have never met. His name was Charles C. and he and his wife, Betty, lived there.
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He was said to be a nice man and you can easily see how much he loved his home. Betty C. was an Alzheimer's victim and Charles cared for her himself. He was putting a new roof on the home one day when he felt ill and came inside to lie down. He suffered a heart attack in the tiny hallway and passed away. Betty, being in a poor state of mind, stepped over his body for two or three days before neighbors came to investigate. Having not seen Charlie, they broke down the front door and found him deceased.

The spooky, if you can call them that, events came later. My father lived there for some time and claimed to have seen him a few times. He moved out and some time later I was preparing to move in. My husband and I came one evening to begin moving a few items in and while he was putting things in the outdoor sheds, I was bringing items into the guest bedroom. I walked through that small hallway many times and although I knew Charles had died in the house, I was not aware he had died in that hallway. As I continued to walk in and out, through the hall and past the darkened master bedroom into the smaller room, I felt "watched" and...this may sound weird, but in my head I heard someone saying "Who are you? What are you doing here?" I didn't hear anything aloud - the words just popped into my mind. I got a REALLY creepy feeling and would't go back in alone.

During our time living there, it was mostly peaceful with a few minor exceptions. Occasionally when wearing a dress, I felt someone tug at the back. Something I am told Charles did to his wife often. Another time we had a weird experience in the middle of the night... the lights in the shed had stopped working and we couldn't figure out why. Weeks passed and we ignored it, using a flashlight if need be. One night, I heard noises out in the yard and peeked out to see one shed light on, the door open and noises coming from it. I woke my husband, who grabbed our only weapon - an old bb gun - and went out to check. No one was there and we couldn't figure out how the light got on. Nor could we figure out how to turn it off - we never knew which switch would correct it and none responded. Eventually, the light just went off again.
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We don't get along with my uncle particularly well and we moved after two years to Tamarac, Florida. My father and sister live there once again now and haven't reported anything too odd. The idea being that Charlie knows who they are. We've never tried to get his attention, but I feel strongly that any attempt to do so would be successful.

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There were many ghosts in that small apartment where my family lived

HAUNTED CONDO IN NW MIAMI

There’s a condominium I used to live in. The only words I can use to explain the place is, infested! While living there, at least 5 people died, and about 1 year before I moved out, a man shot himself in the head and died on the 1st floor. Another lady was murdered in the elevator.

The one prominent entity in that apartment building was a dark shadowy figure of a man, which seemed to have a negative origin. Lucky me, I was the only one in the apartment that he never had an encounter with. I heard about it on a daily basis from my sisters who constantly had to deal with it.
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It seemed that the smaller of the two bedrooms (which was where both my sisters slept) was where all the activity was.

On one occasion me and my mother woke up to the sound of my sister screaming as if someone was attacking her. Well, when we reached the room she was screaming about something pulling on her legs, and we did see her struggling with it. My other sister on the other hand was sound asleep. As soon as we turned on the light, nothing was going on at all. 

They also reported seeing this figure walk behind them while they were fixing themselves up in the mirror, or seeing it sit on their beds. Although the  figure did seem evil, it wasn’t violent with any of us, it only basically  pulled practical jokes and of course the occasional scare.

On one  occasion a friend of my sister's saw it sitting on the couch in the living room, after which we had to take her home.  She  never stepped foot back in that apartment again.

The halls of the building also had the  quality of making you feel as if someone is watching or following you; it gave you that numb feeling in your eyes that you get when you're afraid.

Of my many encounters I only had a handful there. One encounter was with a huge man, completely white, I know he had features and was wearing some sort of clothing, and he didn't seem threatening in the least bit but I still ran away because of course I didn’t recognize him or what he was doing in my house. I was only  7 years old at the time, so I ran!

I also had to change the location of  where I slept because I felt such a negative feeling where I was sleeping. Also  I would stay in my sisters' room every so often, which I heavily regret as I  would also experience lights flickering on and off, and loud noises coming from  the kitchen, as if someone was looking looking through the drawers. It never  failed, the noise always happened, but it could only be heard from the smaller  bedroom. Although we dealt with it for almost 6 years we never inquired on the  history of that apartment.
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Whoever came after us to live there, probably didn’t see the word ghosts anywhere in the lease.

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You never know what you’ll conjure when you use a Ouija board

APARTMENT NEAR UCF CAMPUS

This is something that happened a few years ago while visiting my friend Valerie while she was living on her own in Orlando. She was up there for school and her parents bought her a 1 bedroom apartment near the UCF campus.

The buildings looked pretty new but you could tell they were renovated especially when you went into the elevators. Anyways, we were spending the weekend there with her along with a bunch of our other friends to go to Halloween Horror Night at Universal  Studios.

The night was a bit freaky to begin with... while I was taking a shower  and  getting ready to go, the towel that I used and had hung on he rack behind me, started to move like if there was a strong wind blowing at it. Mind you, there is no window in the bathroom and no air from an air conditioning could have moved a WET towel that way! I didn't think much of it and just went on getting ready. I was almost done and went to grab my lipstick from the counter where I had set it down just moments before, and it was gone. I checked everywhere, on the floor all over the counter and in my purse.  I know I wasn't going crazy so I  called in my husband to check the bathroom for me as well. Maybe I was missing  something, but he could not find it either. I said forget it and just went out  into the living room. 

Valerie was to take a shower next, she walked into the  bathroom and found my towel on the floor, she scolded me for not picking it up  and throwing it behind the toilet. I told her that I had left it hanging on the door  which is on the opposite end of the bathroom, nowhere near the  toilet. We both  looked at each other and I saw a look of discontent in her  eyes, and I knew she  knew something more than she was letting on.  I left her in  the bathroom and she  asked us to not come into the room since she was scared, and wanted to leave the  door to the bathroom open. 
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Only a few minutes passed when she came screaming  out of the tub and into her room, naked and grabbing a towel off her bed. We ran  to see what was going on, and she had 3 scratch marks, or rather someone or  something had clawed her on the back. The cuts were somewhat deep and she was  bleeding very badly!!! Another friend that was there helped her clean up while  my husband and I looked inside the tub, wondering if maybe it could have been  something that she had brushed up against that could have scratched her like  that. When I opened the shower curtain to look into the tub I almost fainted when I saw my lipstick sitting on the lower rim of the  tub! 

I didn't even want to  pick it up! We walked back into  the room and Valerie confessed that there had  been some weird things  happening since 2 weeks before when she and her friends  from school, decided  to play with incantations and spells out of a book that  belonged to one of the  girls' aunts. She said that the week before we came, she  woke up in the middle  of he night to her stereo coming on all of a sudden, and  then when she came  back to her room her bed had a large pool of rancid smelling  clear liquid. She  slept the rest of that night in her living room with her dog. 

Occasionally her  dog would wake up and start growling towards her bedroom.   The  next day she  went out and bought a new mattress since hers smelled horrible.  When she got  home, there was a black feather on her dresser and it smelled like  something  rotten as well.

After talking with her about  the events of the past  few days, we told her that if  there was a spirit there, she needed to  communicate with it and tell it to please go away! 

We all sat in her living room  the next afternoon and she tried it. Almost instantly there was a loud sound  almost like  a shatter that came from her bathroom. We all ran to see, and found her  mirror had split in 2 and one side crashed down as we looked at it shattering  into little  bits all over the bathroom floor. That was the last day she stayed  in her  apartment. She moved in temporarily with a friend while the apartment  went up  or sale, and never returned.

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