Ghost Stories of Cedar Key

Both Cedar Key and the surrounding areas are rich in history as well as numerous stories of ghost tales and haints, many folks were steeped in superstition.

A long time ago two talented ladies teamed up and wrote a short booklet about some of them titled "Cedar Key Legends," I don't know whether or not the booklet is still available to purchase, it is great little read if you can. 

I have asked several people, and they don't know either. You might be able to get a copy through a library or get a copy at Amazon.com.

Photo courtesy of
Carmen Day Williams 

The two ladies were Sally Tileston who was quite a talented artist, she owned and operated a local art gallery. I worked in her gallery for awhile and got to know her quite well. Sally along with Bessie Gibbs, was one of the founders of the annual Cedar Key Art Festival.

Her friend was Dorthea Comfort, and Ms. Dottie was also an artist.They had heard the stories over the years and decided to record as many of these ghost tales as possible before they were all forgotten; because most were handed down by word of mouth.

One of the stories they wrote about was also painted in watercolor by Ms. Dottie.

She titled it “The Wailing Widow”. There used to be and still might be a house in Cedar Key that had a widow’s walk that was built on top of the house, for the purpose of the lady of the house to walk around and watch for her husband’s boat coming in from the Gulf.

It was said that the widow walked around the walkway on stormy nights and wailed, mourning the loss of her husband who had been lost at sea during a storm. Many still believed this house was haunted and that her ghost still walks around the rail and wails on stormy nights..

Another ghost story is the one about the headless horseman that rides the beach at Seahorse Key on moonlight nights. 

Lafitte's Landing

The tale was told that one of the pirates (Jean Lafitte) left a treasure buried on the Island and he left a man with a horse for him to ride the beach and guard the treasure till he returned.

Someone came to steal the treasure and killed the man by decapitating him with a sword.

Several of the older fishermen would not go on Seahorse Key any night, moonlight or not, and they swore they had seen this headless horseman on moonlight nights still riding the beach.

Headless Horseman

One of the most famous tales is the lady at Shell Mound; I have heard that her name was Annie Simpson, many have also sworn to have seen her more than once. She too was connected somehow to a buried treasure.

Whether or not there is buried treasure on any of these Islands I don't know, and I am not sure that anyone else knows this for certain. I do know many have searched for it, and many tales have been told about their searches!

I used to ride with my friend Janie Robinson, at night, out to Shell Mound to pick up her husband Curley, when he came in late from crabbing. Janie claimed to have seen this lady many times, and if memory serves; the lady carries a lantern in one hand, and she has a dog with her, and sometimes a monkey, but I have never seen her.

Shell Mound view from the sky
 by
Diana Beckham Topping
Down Home Adventure trips and tours

Janie said, “The first time I ever saw her Curley and I were going out fishing one night, and we ran aground on one of the little sandbars in the channel, I looked back to see how far we were from the beach.

Shell Mound Low Tide

Curley was overboard trying to push us off, I saw her walking down the hill when I looked back, and it scared me so bad I jumped overboard and helped Curley push us off so we could get the hell outa there!”

Many other locals claim to have seen this lady; some who claim that they had never even heard the story about this ghost before seeing her.

There are numerous other ghost stories connected to Cedar Key and other islands. There are three or four connected to the Island Hotel, which was built in 1859-60, has the Neptune Bar, Dining Room, and Rooms, they tell you in their advertisement about the Ghost Stories. 

Island Hotel Cedar Key, Florida

There was one ghost story about McClamery that my husband and the two Andrews brothers (Joe and Kenny) laid to rest one night when they were young guys fishing together at night. You will read this story "Wonder of Nature" in another place among my rambling memories.

What I have written here is only a small portion of all of the stories and tales told about ghosts and haints that surround and still haunt these Gulf Coast Islands.

The ‘50’ Hurricane

This is how this hurricane has always been referred to in Cedar Key, and still is even though it was named ‘Easy’. There are quite a few folks still living that survived this horrific storm, and they remember it well.

Rose Campbell, daughter-in-law, Ilene Campbell, Wesley Campbell her son
 and Sarah Campbell granddaughter

My sister-in-law, Ilene Campbell lived here at this time. She and her family were one of the families that lost everything. My father-in-law, H. B. Haven heard on the news that Cedar Key was getting a direct hit from the storm.

He packed as many tools, and supplies as he thought he might need and filled jugs with water and packed up food that didn't have to be cooked. He loaded as much as he could possibly get into the car and a small trailer headed out, it was quite a long trip in those days.

He was a welcome sight when he arrived at their place; they had already begun to salvage whatever they could, which was not much. He unloaded the food and water, and while everyone was eating; plans were made as to how the re-building would proceed.

Left to right
tennant, Faye and Papa Haven

It was decided that Mr. Haven would take Ilene and the children back to his home in Lake Wales for awhile, whatever the length of time this was I do not remember. Varnell, Ilene’s husband was a boat builder and a very good carpenter as well as being a local fisherman.

They began to re-build I also do not remember how long it took before they had the home rebuilt enough that the family could move back in and start over, but eventually this was accomplished.

In 1950 I was eleven years old and I lived in Holmes County, in the Florida Panhandle, but I do remember this storm, and even though we didn't get anywhere near the full brunt of it; we were effected by high winds of the outer bands.

At what point and where the hurricane was located at the time I don't know, we had very little communication from the outside world. We'd had electric lines strung through our part of the country in 1948 and we had electric lights, but had no electrical appliances.

Our only way of receiving communication was from a battery powered radio that sometimes picked up and sometimes it didn’t.

I do know that by water it is 90 miles from Cedar Key to the Saint Marks light, and from there to where I lived it is approximately 100 miles depending on the route you take by highway, however as the crow flies I have no idea, but it would likely be somewhat less.

Map of Florida

My daddy was a logger and a farmer, and he was in the woods working when the storm clouds began to appear. My mother was a very strong woman in many ways, but she was terrified of lightning and storms.

Kerosene Lamp

We hurried to bring in firewood and several buckets of water, shut the chickens in the hen house, and the animals in the barn. Make sure the lamps were filled with kerosene and the globes were clean. Mother still cooked on an old wood stove, and it is difficult to cook a meal with wet wood.

The sky began to turn a weird tin foil color with a faint yellowish tinge; Mother’s fear began to rise because she knew it was going to be a bad one. Her greatest fear was the possibility of a tornado, but she didn't tell us kids this, at least at that time.

She continued to hurry us along to get everything done that we possibly could in preparation. By the time we got it done to her satisfaction the winds were howling and the bolts of lightning were fierce and sizzling with great peals of rumbling thunder following. 

LIGHTNING

She gathered us four children into the center of the house which was just inside the door of the front bedroom.

She sat us down in a small huddle and piled mattresses on top of us. The mattresses were not heavy, she had made them with cotton from our fields, but it was dark and it got pretty hot under there, but she would not let us come out.

She walked the floor and cried out to God for our safety. I had heard my mother pray many times, but never like this! She would cry out, oh God, spare my children’s lives, if you have to take a life take mine, but please Lord, spare my children. It was a frantic and desperate prayer!

My brother Neal, four years younger than me and I have laughed and talked about this many times since, and have often wondered what in the world we would have done if we had lost our mother during that fierce storm.

Thankfully we all survived, and our home survived for many years afterwards. I think we lost some tin off the roof and we had some leaks till daddy got it repaired. I learned many years later how difficult it was for the other folks in Florida and especially Cedar Key; because later in life I lived here for thirty five years.