Lights are Bright, but the Ghosts are Restless

My sons and I visited Selby Gardens’ Lights at Spooky Point on Saturday, and it did not disappoint. From red eyes blinking in the middle of the woods to animatronics and good old-fashioned mannequins washed in dramatic lighting, this attraction had it all. Maybe a little too real in places. Take the graveyard, for instance.
“That almost looks like a real graveyard,” I heard a woman tell her husband.
“That’s because it is a real graveyard,” I said, pointing just beyond the path. “And beside it is a real chapel with a real ghost named Mary.” I was talking about Mary’s Chapel at Historic Spanish Point.

Mary is one of many apparitions that haunts the 33-acre peninsula. According to "Ghost Stories of Venice" by Kim Cool, Mary Sherrill arrived with her mother in February 1892 at the Webb family’s winter resort. She was in her early twenties and ill with tuberculosis; after only five weeks, she died. Though her body was returned to Louisville, Ky., visitors say her presence never left. In her final days, Mary liked to climb to the top of the big shell midden near Pioneer Cemetery to gaze over the water. Even now, a woman in white is sometimes seen at dusk on that ridge, listening quietly from the trees. Her family built Mary’s Chapel beside the cemetery in her memory, and the bell, donated by her classmates at the New England Conservatory of Music, still rings on windy nights, or so people claim. 

Spanish Point’s story stretches back thousands of years. It served as a home for Native Americans who built ancient shell middens used for various purposes. A rare walk-through exhibit that lets you see the layers of their daily life built up over centuries. An outdoor sign explains that decades ago a homeowner actually carved a notch into the mound for a one-car garage. The  act of convenience reads as carelessness now, but it’s also why visitors can “walk through” the mound today.

It’s easy to imagine why spirits might be unsettled. Guests and volunteers have long reported shadowy figures slipping between the live oaks and a soft, rhythmic sound “akin to footsteps but softer with a discernible beat,” as Cool describes. Some believe those are the voices and footfalls of early Indigenous people, uneasy with how their sacred ground has been handled. 

The pioneer era left its own echoes and Mary isn’t the only spirit with salt on the breeze. Cool also records tales of Captain Taylor, a bay pilot whose bell, some insist is a ship's bell, has been heard from Little Sarasota Bay. He’s even been spotted, some say, at the Church of the Angels in Venice. 

So yes, the graveyard at Spooky Point looks real because it is! The pioneer Cemetery resting quietly under the oaks and the chapel beside it does, by many accounts, host a very real ghost named Mary. Lights and props give October its funhouse thrills, but Spanish Point doesn’t need help to feel haunted. Next time you visit, listen for the soft tread in the leaves, look to the crest of the midden at twilight, and keep an ear out for a bell that shouldn’t be ringing. If you hear it, consider it a neighborly greeting from those who loved this place so much, they stayed.