Ghosts of the Gulf

From Bradenton Beach to Tampa Bay, these aren’t campfire tales from somewhere else, these are the ghosts people here still talk about like their neighbors.

The Curry House in Bradenton Beach

Heavy footsteps thundered across the third floor when no one was upstairs. Mail vanished and reappeared days later in strange places. Dogs froze on the porch, howling rather than cross the threshold. Sweet orange blossoms perfumed cold spots that drifted through rooms and vanished the moment you stepped outside. On windless nights, cigar smoke curled along the tideline and a woman in a 1920s dress seemed to pause on the staircase.

They were the ghosts of the house’s owners, Capt. Henry Curry and his bride who never arrived, Estrella.

In 1923, Capt. Curry built an 18-room seaside home on Bradenton Beach, its wide porch staring down the Gulf. Years later, he escorted his new bride Estrella from Boston aboard a sailing ship. But their ship sank. There were no survivors. Locals said both spirits returned. The captain walked the shore smoking his Cuban cigar. Estrella claimed the third floor, smashing any “new” thing she disliked and laying out vintage clothes as if for an evening delayed forever. In the 1990s, new owners endured scratching walls, stomping feet, and a séance where a floating woman gave her name: Estrella, meaning “little star.” Police answered countless calls but no culprit was found. Condemned at last, the house fell in 2004. Still, some nights, the captain and his little star linger by the surf.

The Ghost Hound of Rocky Bluff

On certain moonlit nights in northern Manatee County, people hear a hound howling from the old quarry at Rocky Bluff (located near present day I-75 bridge. The bay races up the old Fuller’s Earth Works road, past the fork, the air goes cold and then comes a scream. Locals say that’s the ghost hound of Fuller’s. As the story is told, a laborer from Fuller’s Earth Works in Ellenton was walking home with his dog when another man picked a knife fight, killed the worker, and slit the dog’s throat, throwing its body into the quarry before fleeing town. Soon after, the dead dog was heard every full moon, trotting the quarry road and crying for his master, always stopping at the fork and whining before slipping back toward the water. Years later, the murderer returned and rented a nearby room. One night, witnesses heard the hound run past the fork for the first time and charge up the inn stairs. A single human scream followed. The lodger was found with his throat torn out. Police never solved it. People in the area still say they hear the hound. According to Nan Russell’s “Ghosts Don’t Cross Water,” donated to the Manatee County Historical Society.

The Ghosts of the Cuban Club (Ybor City, Tampa)

First you hear piano music coming from the theater, even when the building is empty. Then come high heels on tile, slow and deliberate, and witnesses see a woman in a white dress with red shoes walking down the grand staircase before vanishing mid-step. Staff also report a little boy in the basement near the old drained swimming pool, rolling a ball across the floor where he supposedly drowned decades ago. People feel a cold hand on their shoulder and turn to find no one. Lights flip on in locked rooms. The elevator moves by itself. Guests swear they’ve heard a scream from below when no one else is in the building.

These aren’t strangers. According to “The Cuban Club: Where History and Hauntings Collide,” by Jennifer Jones, they’re believed to be the spirits of those tied to the Cuban Club,  El Círculo Cubano, a 1917 social club built for Tampa’s Cuban community. Stories include an actor who took his own life after forgetting his lines onstage, and a woman said to have been pushed from a balcony after refusing a man. Some paranormal groups claim there are hundreds of spirits in the building, and modern ghost tours still treat it like one of Tampa’s most haunted places.

So what do we do with stories like these, a captain pacing the surf with his lost bride, a loyal hound hunting a killer long after death, a woman in red shoes walking down a staircase that shouldn’t exist anymore? You can call it folklore. You can call it memory. But along the Gulf Coast, people still smell cigar smoke on still nights, still hear baying where no dog stands, still feel a hand on the shoulder in an empty room. The living say the past is over. October says otherwise.