The Ghost Bridge In Pinecraft Amish Village

Some hundred years ago, an Amish family moved from Pennsylvania to Sarasota to establish a celery farm. Every week the eldest son, Amos, would load a train car full of celery and accompany it to it’s destination. On one such trip, he caught the gaze of a beautiful young girl hanging laundry on her family’s farm just north of the Phillippi Creek rail bridge. Her name was Ingrid, and the two soon fell in love with all the fondness of their true hearts and began secretly meeting beneath the bridge, for such a relationship between an Amish boy and an English girl was strictly forbidden. One evening Amos was preparing  to meet Ingrid, when his father became suspicious and forbade him to leave the house. As she waited, the young girl strolled back and forth along the shore of the creek gathering a bouquet of wild irises when she lost her footing and fell into the creek, tearing her dress and injuring her hand. She discarded the wet clothing in the creek and hurried home to mend her wound. When Amos’s father finally fell asleep he was able to sneak out of the house and hasten to the bridge. There, he found Ingrid’s clothes floating in the water and the blood soaked bouquet of irises strewn upon the shore. As he desperately searched the waters, the fiery eyes of an alligator were revealed by his lamplight, leaving him no doubt of his beloved’s terrible fate. Full of sorrow, he made his way onto the bridge, walked down the iron rail, onto a wooden plank and threw himself off it’s edge onto the Southern shore. The next day Ingrid saw Amos’s lifeless body from across the creek. Believing she could never be happy without him, she threw herself off the bridge, ending her life just as he had on the opposing shore. Unfortunately for them, their story did not end with death, as they had hoped. Ever since that fateful night the restless spirits of these forlorn lovers have haunted that bridge, forever searching for one another but unable to leave their places of death, Amos on the South shore and Ingrid on the North, from time to time hastily dragging an innocent passerby off the bridge, mistaking them for one another. 

Tampa's Stikini Witches

Through the first Seminole War a small group of elderly Seminole women were allowed to remain in their homes on North of Fort Brooke on the Hillsborough River. In 1835 The United States moved forward with plans to relocate all of the Seminole Indians west of the Mississippi. When given this news, these woman were enraged, refused to move and threatened that Fort Brooke would be forever cursed. Soon there after 110 soldiers left Ft Brooke moving Northward. The first morning at camp a young soldier was found dead in his bed, an investigation concluded that the man's heart had been removed. This same scenario happened night after night and as fear of the Seminole womens' curse grew stronger, soldier Joseph Sprague abandoned his post. As he fled through the forest at dusk he saw the group of Seminole Women whom had cursed the soldiers. He watched in horror as they kneeled, chanted and expelled their internal organs from their mouths. One by one they then took the form of owls and took off into the night. They were the stikini witches of Seminole legend coming to exact their revenge. Sprague hurried the news to Fort Brooke but by the time reinforcements arrived all 109 other soldiers lay dead in their beds with their hearts removed. The group of elderly Seminole were never seen again but will always be remembered in this story of the Dade Massacre. 

Desidero The Catfish Merman

In the heart of Tampa, a young woman named Isabella yearned for love. Seeking guidance, she visited a sacred spring, Palma Ceia. There, she met a mysterious man, Desiderio, and fell deeply in love. However, Desiderio had a secret: he was a merman. He warned Isabella never to follow him to the spring. Unable to resist her curiosity, she did, and witnessed his transformation. Heartbroken, Isabella later gave birth to a child, half-human, half-catfish. She released the child into the spring, where it grew into the legendary walking catfish of Florida.