Hey Ty, we had a great time on your tour. We found it to be so much fun and informative. This picture was taken last time we were on the tour in March. We were walking from one bar to the next and we randomly took this picture and the orb was right there. I hope this can help.

Thanks alot!
Jackie, Steve, & Jim

My first encounter with a haunted building was when I was 15. I was partying in
an extravagant four story mansion in a mountainous resort in Asia. The mansion
had been converted to a nightclub called “Spirits”. The first floor was a
gigantic dance floor. The second and third floors were restaurants and
bars with a panoramic view of the dance floor below. The fourth floor was
reserved for children, who were playing video games and being taken care of by
their nannies while their parents danced and drank on the lower floors. It was
very fun, ethereal, and eerie moment…listening and dancing to trance music in
what was once a haunted mansion.

Now, I find myself going to haunted locations almost every day as a tour guide
for Ghost Augustine. Sometimes, I’m surrounded by people, who want to have
“spirits” with the spirits, on the Haunted Pub Tour, a very jovial tour in some
of the most haunted taverns and pubs in St. Augustine. On other
occasions, I find myself giving a tour with people, who want to investigate and
have that serious ghostly encounter, on the Paranormal Investigative Tour.
To be honest, I never saw myself as a tour guide. I just enjoyed taking out
family and friends to all the fun and historical places in St. Augustine for
free. Falling into this job was very serendipitous and so easy, yet I realized
later on that it requires a certain person, who can provide entertainment and
knowledge with tenacity, fortitude, and a sense of humor.

Being a tour guide for GhostAugustine has been quite the adventure! I started doing tours in April 2010. At first I didn’t get a lot of activity. That quickly changed as I got to know the “entities” that hung out on our tour. Especially the ones that were in the hearses! I would like to tell you a few experiences I have had with Frankie our 1990 hearse!
One my first Haunted Hearse Pub tour we stopped at The British Pub on Anastasia Island. I shut off the lights and locked up the hearse while my guests took a bunch of pictures with Frankie. We were in the Pub for about 20 minutes, when we came out Frankie’s lights were on but she was still locked up! My guests excitedly talked about how they were taking pictures before we went in and the lights WERE OFF! They even had the pictures to prove it!
On another evening with Frankie she would not let the guests out of the hearse. Frankie has power locks and when I popped the locks and started to open the passenger door, the door locked itself! This went on several times! I got the key out to unlock the door manually and the door locks would not open.  At that point the K-2 meters were spiking! Finally I said “Okay Frankie, stop playing with the locks and let these nice people out” the door immediately unlocked! I heard a small chuckle in my ear. This gives new meaning to the phrase “captive audience”! Please be assured no one was in any danger but Frankie is a bit of a prankster and loves to get involved with our guests.
Last week I had a gentleman sitting in the front seat with me while his friends were in the back. He was a “self proclaimed” non-believer. We were at the Lighthouse and I was about to start up Frankie when we began a discussion about being skeptical. Suddenly my seat began to move up and back! I started to laugh and asked the gentleman if he just witnessed the movement. He shook his head yes. Seconds later the seat moved down and forward! Again I asked if he witnessed the seat move. This time he said he did and” if he was driving the hearse this would be his last night!” He told me he still wasn’t sure about all the “ghost stuff” but something strange had just happened! His friends in the back of the hearse were getting spikes on their K-2 meters!  I think Frankie just wanted me to be safe and moved the seat closer to the steering wheel!
These are just a few fun things that happened while out with Frankie. Our hearses like people have their own personalities and really enjoy interacting with our guests. They are unpredictable and each night is a new opportunity for a unique experience!

During the GhoSt Augustine Haunted Pub tour of Tuesday, July 28th, 2010, we visited 2 haunted pub/restaurants and two haunted pubs. The third stop of the night, the first pub visit was to McLean’s English Pub. McLean’s boasts two super natural entities, which are considered by most to be completely separate from one another. The first, the “Lady in Red” was discussed as being a cinematic ghost. The second was Roy, a previous pub proprietor. During the discussions of the evening, we had placed two EMF detectors on a table top as an observation point. As our guide, Ty was telling the tales of the lady in red and of Roy, the meters would occasionally go off. Later in the evening, Ty remarked that Roy must have left because the meter activity had stopped. I remarked, in jest, that Roy was off hitting on the lady in Red. At that moment, both meters started massive readings for quite some time. Roy must have really enjoyed the joke!

My name is Ty, and I’m one of the GhoSt Augustine haunted pub tour guides. One of my pub stops is an establishment which has had a history of many residents over a span of 150 years. The spirit is particularly interesting because it interacts often with the pub owner, who lives upstairs . Without going into much detail here — you’ll need to attend the tour for the full story! — I will say that the spirit is a mischievous poltergeist whose identity remains unknown . During my tour I relate various documented activities and anecdotes regarding this particular haunt. Based on these occurrences , I always venture a guess that the spirit is that of a young boy. The following event might shed some light on this mystery.

One evening I was waiting outside the establishment for my group to reconvene before heading to the next stop. A woman in my group approached me, claiming t hat she had psychic ability. Her talent was corroborated by her husband and friend who accompanied her. She surprised me by saying, “Ty, I need to correct you on one important point in your story. T he spirit is not a boy.” In response to my puzzled expression, s he continued . “She is a girl, and was eleven years old when she died. She complains that someone braids her hair much too tightly.” The psychic explained that the girl would prefer to wear her hair down, but the adult won’t pay her any mind.

I pressed her to help me understand her ps ychic gift. “It’s not necessarily a gift,” she told me. “I’ve been able to see into the spirit world for as long as I can remember. Believe me, some things you just don’t want to know.” She hesitated briefly. “By the way, did you know the strap in the back of your vest is undone?” She tied the strap around its buckle. Since then, neither spirit nor dry cleaner has loosened it.

ASSESSING THE PARANORMAL:

by Harry Stafford, Ph.D, Director of Haunted St. Augustine – Nighlty Investigations of
the Paranormal

                                           THE ROLE OF THE MIND I

        There’s a familiar saying “it’s all in the mind.”  All of us have experienced the power of suggestion.  We know how rapidly our attention can be riveted to something of appeal or significance to us – such as someone consuming an icy beverage on a blisteringly hot day.  Parapsychology recognizes how easily the power of suggestion can evoke the paranormal experiences that so many strongly desire. This is evident in many supposed sightings, interpretations of what we hear on EVP, or just the feelings evoked by eerie accounts of paranormal events.  What about a decidedly spooky setting such as a cemetery filled with broken and weather-worn monuments?
        On an even more fundamental level, we are learning the potent role mind can play in the very ways we construct reality.  The Placebo Effect has proven how sugar pills can contribute to healings if we believe these pills to be some powerful drug.  Demonstrations of psychokinesis or telekinesis in the laboratory illustrate how the mind may directly affect material objects apart from any ordinary physical contact.  What is most relevant to the paranormal, however, is the view of many physicists today that mind is at the basis of all reality.  Sir James Jeans once remarked that our understanding of quantum physics makes the world look more and more like a great idea (mind) rather than a great “thing” (matter.)  Most of the founders of quantum physics – such as Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, etc. – held similar views, views that are even more commonplace today.
        All of us — and all “things”– are manifestations of a vast, integral field of energy that is more like “mind” than “matter” as it is traditionally understood.  Our observation and interpretation of what we see and experience cannot be neatly separated from what we think of as a world or events existing objectively apart from us. In a real sense, there is no such separately existing world.
        Consider what this means, for example, for encounters with the paranormal. If we do not exist separately from the ordinary world, how much more true is this of the paranormal?  If we in part construct the ordinary world through our senses and our beliefs and interpretations of events, how much more true may this be for the world(s) of the paranormal?  If we project reality outward onto our everyday world (a well-known fact of modern psychology,) how much more may we do so with the paranormal world(s)?  For example, what is an “intelligent haunting,” really? We shall return to these intriguing and perplexing issues . . . Paranormal riddles are also riddles about the nature of reality itself.

©Harry C. Stafford, 2010

Hi, my name is Amy. I am honored to be one of your Haunted St. Augustine tour guides. I have been interested in the paranormal since the age of 4 when i had my first paranormal experience. I have since had many more experiences. The Haunted St. Augustine tour is the perfect tour for me to be a guide on because it is a real investigative tour, not theatrical. I really want to know what the other side is all about and I love investigating with people who share my interest. I also love making believers out of skeptics which tends to happen alot on this tour. So whether you’re a die hard paranormal fan, or a total skeptic, or maybe even somewhere in between, I look for to investigating with you!

GhoSt Augustine is launching a brand new tour! Starting this Friday July 9th, 2010 we will be offering 3pm Historic Cemetery Tours on Fridays and Saturdays.
Ride in one of our HEARSES to the well known and not so well known cemeteries of St. Augustine. See and hear the history of these beautiful historic cemeteries, burial customs, the history of funerals, funeral cars, superstitions, and learn about pleasing the spirits. 
This hour and a half tour is full of fun for the entire family and will take you to places most people never will see on the walking tours. You will also learn seldom known and sometimes unbelievable facts about the subject.
We are very excited about launching this new tour and think you will be too once you encounter GhoSt Augustine’s Historic Cemetery Tour.
Adults are $29 and rear seating is $19
See you in the hearse on our Historic Cemetery Tour!

Hello All!

As rarely as I see activity wandering around on the pub tours, last night gave me an overdose!  We started off at a little pizza place where we love to go hang out with the amazing and sweet staff.  I know enough stories to know there are probably multiple hauntings there, but last night we got a good taste of one of them.  We sat down in the dining room and were chatting before I started in on my stories when my EMF meter spiked.  I said hello and the meter spiked up twice (perhaps responding with a “Hello”?).  I said “Thanks for joining us” and the meter spiked a few more times.  I launched into my stories and everyone seemed really involved (and really intrigued that we got spikes so early).  After I finished the meter started spiking again.  We laughed because it felt as if the ghost was waiting for me to finish before he communicated again.  As everyone was talking amongst themselves, a 21 year old girl on the tour turned to me and said “I thought you should know there’s a man sitting in that empty chair next to you.” He’d been there the whole time, listening, and was turning off everyone’s cameras because he didn’t want his picture taken! I figured that would be the best we got all night, but in the next place we went, one of my couples took the meter into the back lounge area and came back.  They both looked pretty impressed.  Apparently, in the lounge the meter was spiking by a moniter.  Thinking maybe the moniter was interfering
with the meter, they said “If there’s someone here, will you follow us to the other side of the room and make the meter spike.”  Sure enough, they crossed the room and the ghost followed along. We then ended up at a bar that I go to sometimes, but don’t know much about the history of that particular building.  I tend to tell some stories about the city and the fort outside.  After telling those, we went inside to chat and have a drink.  One woman came up to me after we’d been there a few minutes, showed me her camera and asked if she got an orb.  She certainly had something.  So my 21 year old proceeded to take a necklace and start channeling some energy to talk to our haunting.  We found out that he was an older gentleman who was a soldier (but didn’t die in battle) and had some sort of affiliation with a drugstore.  And we did get a few orbs on camera. Every tour I go out and we find something new.  Open up your instincts and you can find something just about anywhere in St. Augustine.  Thanks for reading everyone!
~Celynda

A few years ago I was hanging out with my friend walking around downtown St. Augustine. She knew I worked for GhoSt Augustine and asked me to take her to a haunted spot that was included on one of our tours. We just happened to be near Harry’s Seafood Bar & Grille, a normal stop on the Haunted Pub Tour, so I brought her inside. She follwed me up the stair case to the second floor asking, “Where the heck are we going!?”
“Almost there”, I said as we walked down an ‘L’ shaped hallway before I pushed open the paint peeling door to the ladies restroom. “Oh, you have to go the restroom,” she said chuckling. I responded, “Actually, I don’t.” She looked confused.
I continued, “this is where Katalina’s bedroom was hundreds of years ago before the building became many other things, like Harry’s.” I continued telling her the tragic story of Katalina and watched as her eyes widened in excitement. She started calling Katalina tauntingly. We sat down on the wicker love seat waiting for something to happen. After about 10 minutes, I myself, was feeling very impatient and yelled out, “Katalina’s just afraid to meet new people! Forget this girl!” My friend joined in, “Yeah, what a coward!”
I added, “What a pathetic excuse for a haunting!” as we laughed ourselves out of the bathroom and on to other activities for the evening.

Quite a bit of time had passed from that night and since I had gone on the Haunted Pub Tour. One night, on a spur of the moment, I decided to go on the tour with an old boyfriend for some fun. We stopped at Harry’s and went up to the second floor where the tour guide went over the history to the group, including the tragedy of Katalina. While she was telling the story, I had a sudden urge to use the restroom. When I pushed opened the familiar paint peeling door, I had a flashback of that night with my friend and smiled. There was no one in the restroom and it was very quiet. After coming out of the stall I went over to the sink to wash my hands. After shutting off the faucet I realized the towel dispenser near me what out, so I had to walk to the other side of the room and use the other one. While pulling the paper towel off, I could hear the water running in the sink I had just used, behind me. I slowly turned around. The water pressure seemed
like it was increasing, or as if someone was turning the handle. I walked over to the sink. “Did I forget to turn the faucet off?” I asked myself before I realized that the water was up to full blast. I put my hand under the water to test its temperature before immediately yanking it away followed by an, “Ouch!” The water felt boiling hot! I quickly turned the handle and ran out of the bathroom back to the group. After seeing the horrid expression on my face the tour guide asked, “Are you ok?” I mumbled in disbelief, “She turned the hot water on- full blast.”
The tour guide laughed, “You must’ve done something to piss her off, because that means she doesn’t like you.” The next time I went on the Haunted Pub Tour, I made sure to go into the girls’ restroom on the second floor at Harry’s and apologize to Katalina.
I have now learned NEVER to provoke another spirit again.  ~MM