Haunted Miami: Paranormal Places To Visit This Fall

MIAMI, FL — If you’re looking for a scare this Halloween season, paranormal author Mark Muncy has some spooky South Florida places to suggest. As an expert on haunted Florida, he’s written a trio of books on the topic: “Eerie Florida,” “Creepy Florida” and “Freaky Florida.” Here are some of his favorite haunted stories from the Miami area.

Miami Mystery Circle

Located downtown “in the heart of Miami,” the Miami Mystery Circle was discovered after an old apartment complex for torn down to make way for a new skyrise in the late 1990s, Muncy said. The site is located on the banks of the Miami River, and an archaeological team was brought in to evaluate the property before construction could begin.

“They expected to find some stuff, but what they did not expect to find was these ancient remnants of these weird holes dug into the ground, into the limestone,” he said.

Archaeologists also made another curious find: two basalt ax heads. While they were Native American items, they weren’t made by the Tequesta or Calusa, the tribes native to South Florida. This showed the group was more nomadic than experts originally thought.

“It showed they had a vast trading network with (tribes) all the way up to the Ohio Valley to the north,” Muncy said. “It was a big deal.”

Construction at the site came to a halt, which upset developers. Ultimately, the city of Miami purchased the property for $12 million, he said. “Just to keep it from being developed at this point.”

Eventually, they surmised that the holes in the ground were for posts used to build shelters off the ground to avoid flooding during tropical storms. Archeologists discovered hundreds of these holes and think they could have been there for thousands of years, Muncy said.

Today, the property is used as a dog park and the post holes were buried to keep them safe from the elements, he said. Experts can access them as needed. The spooky part?

“Many people walk across it and hear tribal drums echoing and see shadowy figures at night,” Muncy said. “It is a spooky, contemplative place. Nobody knows how old it is and it made us reevaluate that whole culture. And it was hidden right in the heart of downtown Miami.”

Visit the Miami Mystery Circle at 461 Brickell Ave., Miami.

Learn more about it online here.

Coral Castle

Another famous Miami-area haunt is Coral Castle, built by Hungarian immigrant Ed Leedskalnin between 1923 and 1951. He allegedly built it while pining for a lost love.

“He was five feet, four inches tall and weighed less than 150 pounds and he built the equivalent of Stonehenge with 30-ton things of coral and carved coral formations,” Muncy said. “It is beautiful and extraordinary and weighs tons, and he did it all by himself. And nobody knows how he did it.”

Leedskalnin loved astronomy and aligned the Coral Castle perfectly with the North Star on the solstice. He also carved coral versions of the moon and Jupiter. There’s also a coral throne and a 600-pound-table that’s shaped like the state of Florida and has a rain basin where Lake Okeechobee would be located. He lived in the castle, staying in the tower, and charged visitors 10 cents per person to visit.

Some people claim he built it using psychic powers, Muncy said. One man claimed to have seen Leedskalnin singing to the stones to make them move. When asked, he said he used the same techniques the Egyptians used to build the pyramids.

“Since he died, his spirit has been seen there many, many times and paranormal teams often see a small shadowy shape near the throne and in his bedroom,” Muncy said. “It’s a beautiful place to visit.”

Visit Coral Castle at 28655 S. Dixie Hwy., Homestead.

Learn more about it online here..

The Biltmore Hotel

This luxury hotel in Coral Gables dates to the 1920s. During Prohibition, gambler Fatty Walsh ran a speakeasy on the 13th floor, Muncy said. “And at one point, Fatty upset the wrong customer. No one knows who, though, and he was gunned down in his speakeasy.”

When police arrived at the crime scene, they found the elevators in the hotel weren’t operating. By the time they walked up 13 flights of stairs, the speakeasy had emptied out. All they found was Walsh’s body on the floor, and no witnesses or suspects.

“Fatty's ghost, of course, haunts this area,” Muncy said. “He has appeared to many and sometimes is seen with the spirit of a young lady. So, he's not alone.”

There are even stories of Pres. Bill Clinton encountering Walsh, Muncy added.

“The big twist to this one is that Fatty scared Pres. Bill Clinton, who, at the time, was staying at the hotel and going to watch a football game in the area,” Muncy said. “He got disturbed is the official word on the report and he went into a different room.”

Visit the Biltmore Hotel at 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables.

The Ghost of Flight 401

“This is one of the biggest hauntings in history for the sheer scope, and because it affected how airlines keep their records and how they officially treat supernatural activities on airplanes,” Muncy said.

Eastern Airlines Flight 401 was heading to Miami from New York on Dec. 29, 1972 when Capt. Robert Loft and flight engineer Donald Repo noticed the front landing gear light wouldn’t confirm that the front landing gear had come down. They notified the radio tower, which had them circle on autopilot as Repo went down into “the hellhole,” Muncy said. This is what they called the spot underneath the cockpit that offers access to electrical wiring. In this space, there’s also a keyhole that Repo planned to use to visually inspect the landing gear.

While he was down there, autopilot was somehow turned off. The plane went from an altitude of 10,000 feet to 2,000 feet before Repo noticed the aircraft was plunging.

“He goes down there, sees trees and screams, ‘Pull up, pull up,’” Muncy said. “By then it was too late. They crashed in the Everglades. It was the worst crash at the time: 101 fatalities.”

Among the dead were Loft, Repo, two flight attendants and 96 passengers. There were 75 survivors.

At the time, it was a new plane – a Lockheed model L-1011-1 – and much of it was salvageable after the crash, Muncy said. It was stripped for parts and used to service other Eastern Airlines planes.

“This is where it gets spooky,” he said.

Other Eastern pilots and flight attendants began to see Repo and Loft on other L-1011 flights. Often, they’d warn the crew about issues on the plane, such as engine burnout or cabin pressure failure.

“They’re warning people of issues right before they happen and they’re seen by other pilots that knew them,” Muncy said. “One went to the hellhole himself and saw Loft looking back up at him.”

Whenever crew reported these sightings, though, Eastern would hide the logbooks for the plane.

“They didn’t want to be known as the haunted airline,” Muncy said. “After a while. They started threatening to put any staff that mentioned it on leave and forced them to see a psychiatrist before letting them come back to work. Naturally, everybody stopped reporting it.”

Then, an Eastern vice president saw an apparition for himself. They performed an exorcism on the plane and stopped using the replacement parts, Muncy said. “And the ghosts disappeared.”

Many of the pilots and flight attendants sued Eastern Airlines after this. This led to new Federal Aviation Authority guidelines.

“Nobody is to be remanded if they see a ghost in flight,” he said.

The Devil’s Tree

Just a short drive north of Miami is the Devil’s Tree, which is found in Port St. Lucie’s Oak Hammock Park.

“If you avoid the main trail and go to the second trail, you will come upon an impressive black oak tree. This tree is called the Devil’s Tree,” Muncy said. “This one’s truly evil.”

Serial killer and former sheriff’s deputy Gerard John Schaefer would flash his badge to capture hitchhiker and bring him to this tree “to do terrible things to them,” Muncy said. “Usually, he’d take two victims at a time and make them choose who dies first, and then he’d continue to do terrible things to them after they were dead.”

Eventually, he was arrested and convicted in the early 1970s. But he was only prosecuted for two of his murders. Authorities knew there were more, though.

While in prison, he became pen pals with Ted Bundy. The two killers tried to see who had the most victims. Schaefer also wrote books while imprisoned, fictionally confessing to 86 murders, Muncy said. Before he could be tried for additional crimes, though, he was killed by his cellmate, who stabbed him 49 times and removed his eyes.

“The Devil Tree’s legend goes beyond this, though,” Muncy said. “There was noted that the tree had a hole in that dripped black sap. It was thought that the tree was evil and caused (Schaefer) to do these crimes, though we know now that he did crimes before he ever found the tree. But the black sap is still sought by covens and ritualistic people to gain extra power and make candles using the sap.”

With “cloaked figures…swarming the park at odd hours,” state officials decided to cut down the tree, he said. But when chainsaws hit the tree, they broke. The workers hired to cut down the tree drove to buy new chainsaws and were killed in a head-on collision leaving the park.

A few years later, a woman decided to collect pieces of the tree and hide them in her cheating husband’s car, thinking then “she wouldn’t be liable for his murder,” Muncy said. She pulled off several pieces of bark and was killed in a car accident leaving the park.”

Authorities were unable to ever bring down the tree, he added. They tried everything – poisoning it, filling the hole with cement to starve it. “The tree grew around it. It has a cement based, so it will never die. It’s practically invulnerable now.”

Visit the Devil’s Tree at 1982 SW Villanova Road, Port St. Lucie.