12 Most Haunted Places in Florida Will Creep You Out!

The Most Famous Haunted Places in Florida

Fort East Martello, Key West – Robert the Doll

Perhaps Florida’s most famous haunting is Key West’s Robert the Doll. Robert is housed at Fort East Martello, an old Civil War fort started in 1862. The Fort is now a museum.

Robert, the 4-foot doll, was the possession of a Key West eccentric named Robert Otto. Upon his death in 1974, the doll became part of the artifacts at the East Martello Museum. Anytime a malady of any kind occurred, his original owner blamed “Robert the doll”.

Today’s legend says Robert changes facial expressions, makes noises and occasionally moves. However, the real reason Robert has become famous is his ability to impart bad luck on those who disrespect him. Just ask Ozzy Osbourne and his bad luck after encountering Robert.

People say you must ask his permission to photograph him. Visitors who are non-believers who scoff at him have a lot of bad luck befall them.

A complete story about Robert the Doll’s history and potential curses are here.

Key West is a haven for ghost stories, haunted houses and persistent legends. Our experience is there are more strange things that happen on Duval Street than any self-respecting ghosts could conjure up!

Things To Do in Key West

St. Augustine Light House

The St. Augustine Lighthouse has long been the subject of TV shows seeking paranormal activity. Many report strange inhabitants and spirits.

The story is two-fold. First, visitors claim they encounter strange sounds, sights and happenings attributed to a former lighthouse contractor who in 1859 fell to his death while working on the lighthouse. Others say the shadowy figure of a man seen is one of several lighthouse keepers.

The second story is the one about Hezekiah Pittee and his two daughters. Pittee was the keeper of the lighthouse in 1872. His daughters, along with a playmate, were riding in a cart used to haul materials from the waterfront to the grounds.

On a tragic afternoon, the girls tipped the cart over. They drowned underneath. They say the spirits of these children roam the grounds of the Lighthouse. Evidence from workers say that giggles from the girls and small footprints remind them of the tragedy that occurred here.

The legends have a few variations, but paranormal investigators corroborate the strange presence of spirits.

The Cuban Club

Supposedly, the Cuban Club in Ybor City, (a Tampa Neighborhood) is a hotbed of spirits that occasionally get the attention of visitors.

The Cuban Club was a place that immigrants patronized as a gathering place. This social club included entertainment, recreation, and political input in Tampa.

The current Cuban Club building was built in 1917 as a replacement for a structure that burned down. According to the Travel Channel, the Club is one of their top 10 Haunted Places.

The two prevailing stories about the spirits that frequent the Cuban Club are one about a suicide that took place there and “Little Timmy” who drowned in the Club’s pool.

Story one is about people reporting the lively spirit of an actor who performed regularly at the Cuban Club. He was on stage and forgot his lines. He committed suicide while on stage.

Perhaps the most tragic of the stories is that of Little Timmy. He was 8 years old when he drowned in the basement pool of the Club.

The Cuban Club is supposed to be haunted by the two spirits above, plus several hundred more, according to the Club’s envoy, who offers tours.

Cassadaga Spiritual

We don’t know if you call the Cassadaga Spiritual community haunted or not, but this is on their website – “A medium is one who is capable of receiving communication from people who were once living on the earth and have passed into the spirit world.”

Now, as far as we are concerned, if you are talking to ghosts, that’s haunted enough for us!

Cassadaga Spiritual Camp is a group of 80-plus residences near Lake Helen in north central Florida. Many of the residents are practicing spiritualists and healers who have resided here since the founding in 1894.

People come here to communicate with people in the afterlife and to explore the healing powers through spiritualists.

As we stated early on, we are skeptics. However, the stories that come out of Cassadaga are compelling.

For instance, one account is of a 10-year-old girl who started communicating with her dead uncle. Today, she is supposed to offer her powers to the public. There are many more such reports throughout the community.

In our world, a ten-year-old grows to be a teenager who doesn’t communicate with anyone!

Believers, doubters, and the curious visit Cassadaga. We will stay at home.

Gilbert’s Bar – One of the Top Legends About Haunted Houses in Florida

Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge was established back in 1874. Congress created places like this primarily for shipwrecked sailors and others who were victims of storms. Now it is one of the top 10 haunted houses in Florida.

Gilbert’s Bar was such a refuge near Stuart, Florida. This was an active area for storms and wrecked ships.

Any structure as old as Gilbert’s Bar is bound to have a ghost or two hanging around occasionally doing what spirits are supposed to do. They make noises, slam doors, and walk around the building.

But there is more, and it starts to get weird as some things in Florida tend to do.

One website of several claims the following;

House of Refuge at Gilbert’s Bar in Stuart is the location where a possible cult had been started. People lived here with a man they claimed to be some kind of Messiah. It turned out that the man was a doctor named Cyrus Teed, who later renamed himself Koresh. This new name came from the religion of “Koreshanity”. More than 250 people stayed at the location while following Koresh. Koresh passed away in 1908, and his body was propped up for weeks until it had to be disposed of. His body was placed in a mausoleum soon after and has since been washed away by a powerful hurricane. The spirits of those who lived at the location are said to linger the grounds. Witnesses have reported hearing phantom footsteps and seeing people appearing and quickly disappearing.

Here is where it gets more weird – none of the above occurred at Gilbert’s Bar that we can find. Teed was in Estero, Florida near Fort Myers all the way across the state. He died there, and his body was propped up there for three weeks waiting for a resurrection.

Are spirits rewriting history?

Tate’s Hell – A Haunted Forest

Tate’s Hell is a state park with over 200,000 acres of forest in the Florida panhandle. These untouched swamps and forest lands are admittedly some of the densest land masses left in Florida.

The interesting part is how Tate’s Hell got its name. Cebe Tate was the son of a homesteader on the edge of what is now called Tate’s Hell. His mother was a Cherokee Indian.

It was a tough place to be a farmer, but Cebe did raise pigs. The local Indian medicine man came by Cebe’s place once a year to get a pig from Cebe. It was in exchange for the medicine man’s blessing of his crops.

In 1874, Cebe decided not to give the medicine man his pig. The medicine man warned him.

In 1875, Cebe married a Jewish woman. She could not eat pork. In addition, Cebe’s father died, crops went bad, and hard times came upon Cebe.

With the urging of Cebe’s wife, beef became an obsession. There were wandering cattle in the dense forest and swamps originally brought over by Spanish explorers.

Cebe headed into Tate’s Hell. He wandered for days. Lost his musket in the swamp, had almost starved and was barely alive when he wandered out of the forest one day. His last words were, “I have just been through hell!”

There are a lot of strange, scary noises in a dense forest. Legend is that Cebe Tate’s spirit is one of those strange sounds, such as feet heard running and screams sounding like help.

What do campers, hikers, and visitors hear in Tate’s Hell? Who knows what’s there?

Ashley’s of Rockledge – One of the Notorious Murderous Places in Florida

This story has been published numerous times over the years. Everyone writing about the most haunted places in Florida seems to pick up this much-repeated legend.

In the 1930s, a man by the name of Jack Allen opened a bar/restaurant called Jack’s Tavern. Jack’s opened near what is now called the Space Coast in northwest Florida.

Ashley’s of Rockledge, successor to Jack’s, is a successful restaurant by any measurement. Good food, great guests, and attractive facilities help the restaurant thrive. Except there are some problems.

Employees and guests at Ashley’s report lights flickering, burglar alarms going off, dishes falling, and strange sounds on the stairs. All without human interference.

The place is reputedly haunted. Not from one spirit, but multiple ghosts seem to roam at will.

One story is about the death of Ethel Allen, possibly a relative of the original owner. She was a frequent guest at Jack’s but ran with a rough crowd. She was murdered in 1934. Some say it happened in the restaurant, but she was found on the shore of the nearby Indian River.

Her’s was a particularly brutal murder. Ethel’s killers were never found. Some say she roams the restaurant trying to fit into the life of a spirit.

Many paranormal researchers claim there are numerous spirits at Ashley’s. If so, that may account for the multiple strange events that occur in the restaurant.

Old Jail St. Augustine – Site of Hangings

St. Augustine is the oldest town in America, according to most historians. If there are ghosts, it would seem there are more than normal in such a small city – if there is a normal when it comes to ghosts!

Henry Flagler helped make what St. Augustine is today. He ran his railroad there. He built hotels and made St. Augustine the destination it is today. Another thing Henry built was the St. Augustine Jail.

From 1891 to 1953, the Old St. Augustine Jail housed all of the prisoners for the area, some of them violent. In fact, 8 men were hanged at the Old Jail.

Like the rest of the historical sites in St. Augustine, paranormal activity is rampant. Today, ghost tours take you to the Old Jail at night. They lock you in a jail cell. Turn out the lights and people swear they experience the spirits who dwelled there over one hundred years ago.

The Old Jail is a top tourist attraction. It is also a target of The Travel Channel’s Kindred Spirits show.

We can assure you we will avoid the nighttime jail tour, but many rational people agree the Old Jail has something going on.

Dry Tortugas – A Civil War Haunting

On a remote island in the Dry Tortugas, a structure was built with 16 million bricks. That massive fort was called Fort Jefferson. The fortress was designed for the protection and guidance of ships going through the Florida Straits into the Gulf of Mexico.

Fort Jefferson became a prison when Confederate prisoners from the Civil War were held there. Today, the Fort is a major tourist attraction. It is also reportedly a hotbed of ghostly activity.

One ghost tour site says this –

Everything bad that could happen on an island essentially happened at Fort Jefferson. Cannibalism, executions, murder, outbreaks of diseases – we’ll talk about that later on, inmates shanking each other, drowned Cuban refugees… You name the tragedy, Fort Jefferson has a story. This is basically ghost fodder. 

While we couldn’t verify all of the claims the tour operator purports, we do know many things occurred there that included hundreds of deaths.

Dr. Mudd, the doctor who treated Lincoln’s assassin, was imprisoned there. He was pardoned for treating prisoners and inmates during a Yellow Fever outbreak, killing 38 men. Many more would have perished without Mudd’s treatment.

Paranormal investigators and reporters have long been a part of the Fort Jefferson scene. Some claim they have photographic proof of ghosts on the island. Apparently, we have seen a lot of ghosts that appear as glares in many of our photos!?!?

In any event, if ghosts wanted a perfect place to haunt, dark, damp, and creepy Fort Jefferson is the place.

Riddle House – One of the Top 10 Haunted Houses in Florida

Located in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Riddle House has long been a source of rumored ghost sights, strange sounds and unexplained behavior. So much so the Travel Channel documented it on national TV.

The story starts in 1905 when workers on Henry Flagler’s railroad built the house. Eventually, it was the home to the caretaker of Woodlawn Cemetery. Part of the caretaker’s job was to protect the cemetery from grave robbers since it was common for people back then to be buried with their valuables.

That beginning is enough to start the origin of ghost stories. One such story is about a big man named Buck who was murdered in town. It is said he still roams the grounds maintaining his vigil.

The second story is about an employee of the Riddles who hung himself in the rafters of the home. After that, the Riddles could not keep employees who continued to hear sounds from the rafters. They promptly quit.

Since the suicide, visitors have heard chains being dragged across the floor, murmuring in the walls, and supernatural sights in and around the house.

Ghost tours of West Palm Beach make the Riddle House a mainstay of the tour. We haven’t visited it yet, but will soon, maybe!

The Key West Cemetery is one of the most haunted places in the Florida Keys, according to locals who relate many stories.

The Key West Cemetery – One of the Spookiest Places in Florida

The Key West Cemetery, located in the heart of Old Town Key West, Florida, is reputed to be one of the most haunted places in Florida. Several factors contribute to its haunted reputation.

Established in 1847, the cemetery was created after a hurricane in 1846 washed away the original burial grounds. Many bodies were never recovered, and the remains were reinterred in the new cemetery, adding to the eerie atmosphere.

The cemetery holds the remains of many Key West residents, including soldiers, pirates, and even victims of the 1855 yellow fever epidemic. This diverse mix of inhabitants contributes to a wealth of ghost stories and legends.

One of the most famous gravestones in the cemetery belongs to B.P. Roberts, with the epitaph reading, “I told you I was sick.” This humorous yet poignant message has drawn many curious visitors.
“Devoted Fan of Julio Iglesias” is another notable epitaph that adds a touch of the unusual to the cemetery’s lore.

Ghost Stories and Legends:

• Restless Spirits: Many visitors and locals have reported sightings of ghostly apparitions, strange lights, and unexplained noises. Some believe these are the spirits of those who died tragically or were buried improperly.
• The Ghost of Elena Hoyos: Perhaps the most famous ghost associated with the cemetery is Elena Hoyos. Her body was famously stolen by Carl Tanzler, a hospital worker obsessed with her, who lived with her corpse for years. It’s said her spirit haunts the cemetery, seeking peace.
• The Ghost of Captain Tony: Captain Tony’s Saloon, located nearby, is also reputed to be haunted by several spirits, including that of a woman who was hanged on the property. Some believe her spirit roams the area, including the cemetery.

Key West’s unique vibe reflects the quirky, eclectic nature of Key West itself and helps build the rumors about the Key West Cemetery. The blend of cultures, traditions, and superstitions creates a rich tapestry of ghost stories and folklore.

The cemetery is a focal point for Day of the Dead celebrations, where locals honor the deceased. This practice adds a spiritual dimension to the location.

The cemetery is a popular stop on Key West ghost tours, which share the haunted history and chilling tales with visitors.  Various paranormal investigators have explored the cemetery, documenting unexplained phenomena and adding credibility to the haunted reputation.

The Key West Cemetery’s combination of historical significance, unique epitaphs, ghostly legends, and cultural importance makes it a fascinating and spooky landmark, rich with stories that capture the imagination. We have visited the Key West Cemetery many times – not for ghostly encounters, but the historic and humorous grave stones make it fun.