Haunted Florida

Florida is famous for sunshine, beaches, theme parks, and reinvention. But beneath the postcard image is another Florida: older, stranger, and harder to forget.

In Haunted Florida: Ghosts, Legends, and Restless Spirits, James R. Wexler explores the ghost stories, haunted landmarks, and local legends that cling to the Sunshine State's forts, lighthouses, cemeteries, hotels, storm sites, old roads, and vanished communities. From the coquina walls of St. Augustine to the wreck-haunted coast, from Key West's strange island folklore to Ybor City's cigar factories, from Cassadaga's Spiritualist camp to Miami's restless glamour, this book follows the places where history and legend refuse to separate.

This is not a collection of simple ghost tales, and it is not an attempt to prove every haunting. Instead, Wexler places Florida's supernatural stories in historical context, showing how they grew from conquest, shipwrecks, yellow fever, hurricanes, war, labor, tourism, crime, preservation, grief, and reinvention. Along the way, familiar names such as Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Osceola, Henry Flagler, George Merrick, Gene Otto, and Robert the Doll appear beside the ordinary people whose lives gave these places their lasting emotional weight.

Atmospheric, carefully researched, and deeply rooted in place, Haunted Florida reveals why the state's ghosts endure. Florida keeps changing, but its past keeps finding ways to speak.