The oldest city in America, St. Augustine, Florida has many secrets. In this particular city you will find a college that has the unfortunate situation of being haunted. Flagler College is one of those haunted places that for those who encounter it seldom view it the same afterwards.
Henry Morrison Flagler was an oil magnate and tycoon of the late 1800’s. He along with business associate John D. Rockefeller made a fortune with oil and he decided to retire himself to Florida. In 1885 he returned to St. Augustine, Florida intent on investing in hotels there. Here he built the centerpiece of his property in the Florida, the Ponce de Leon Hotel. This hotel as well as several other historic buildings serves as the campus of Flagler College.
There are reported ghosts in this college, the most prominent being Henry Flagler himself. Counted along the ghostly entities are one of his wives, a mistress and at least two guests. These various individuals died in varying ways in varying degrees of sanity. Flagler himself had an fascination with death and the beyond, and this is where we will start off.
Henry Flagler was a railroad and oil tycoon that moved to Florida to make it more of a tourist attraction like the French Riviera. What followed was him trying to own and revolutionize St. Augustine. He built most of the buildings that consist of Flagler College and is reported to haunt it himself.
The story is as follows. Henry Flagler was a very peculiar man he had his own set of beliefs that he followed religiously. Every room in the Ponce de Leon is in fact different, no two are exactly alike. Also it is reported that as the tilers were finishing the tile in the main hall one of his associates made the innocent comment of it being ‘perfect’. In response Flagler moved a tile commenting ‘only God is perfect’. It is with this tile that our tale begins.
Upon his death Flagler requested that all the windows and doors be opened to allow his spirit to leave for the afterlife. During his funeral a wandering janitor of his closed all the doors and windows, the opposite of what was stated by Flagler. Suddenly a gust of wind enters the auditorium, Flagler’s spirit. As the spirit rushed for the exit to beat the janitor the last window was slammed trapping it inside. Bouncing off of one of the windows the spirit landed in one tile, the tile stated above. Till this day you can see a picture of Henry Flaglers face in that tile. In the late 60’s a student in Flagler College invited Henry for a visit in his room, he has been haunting the place and messing with students ever since.
Flaglers second wife Ida Alice Flagler is said to also haunt the hotel. Mrs. Ida was not the most mentally stable person. Though committed to a sanatorium she did not gain any health and ranting constantly at the walls. She eventually died of consumption, which is an older name for modern day Tuberculosis due to the fact that it consumes its victims. Now she haunts the the school wandering around and staring at the many paintings past and present as well as the beautiful ceilings. It is stated that she knew of the many affairs that her husband ensnared himself in and this drove her mad. She is seen at times staring at a place in the wall where a large painting of Flagler himself stood. One of those mistresses also died and haunts in the hotel.
The mistress usual room was the on the 4th floor in a large ornate room almost completed covered in mirrors. This room was in fact a psychomantium, a room designed to alter ones mood but also to contact the dead. Upon a surprise visit by Mrs. Ida Alice Flagler, Henry in a bit of a pickle locked her in the room to keep the two from having one of those awkward meetings. Well this happened so much and so often the poor girl started to slowly go mad staring at herself in a room full of mirrors. As time went on the thoughts turned suicidal and eventually she hung herself from a chandelier in the room.
Fast forward to today. The 4th floor is needed for space and is currently used for storing sports equipment. But it used to house students that had to be moved due to the alleged throwing of things off walls, screams heard from the mirror room itself and also other frightening ghostly activity.
The two guests that haunt the hotel are more of a mystery than the first three we have described. One is a women in blue that haunts due to sadness. Legend has it that she was a mistress of someone staying at the hotel. The plan was for the man to divorce his wife and marry her. This was also complicated by the fact she was also pregnant. When her love refused to follow through his plan she ran up the stairs crying, tripped on her dress and fell and broke her neck.
The other ghost is actually a small boy. The legends vary on him as he is unknown to many. There are two stories, one is he died in the hotel due to some disease in the early part of this century. Another is that he was actually a relative of a college student charged to watch him. He fell to his death from a balcony because the college student was not.
All these ghosts can be seen at any given time in the Ponce de Leon Hotel or what is now Flagler College, located in the heart of St. Augustine Florida.
Henry Flagler Article
Wikipedia.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Flagler
Flagler College Article
Wikipedia.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagler_College
St. Augustine Florida Article
Wikipedia.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._augustine_florida
Ghostly Legends of North Florida excerpts
Florida’s Ghostly Legends and Haunted Folklore: North Florida and St. Augustine
By Greg Jenkins
http://books.google.com/books?id=KY3ta7poJvsC&pg;=PA104&lpg;=PA104&dq;=ponce+de+leon+hotel+legends&source;=bl&ots;=9g3IZYAb8m&sig;=ZlSam0EBWLW53pCEQN2uC4gOE9o&hl;=en&ei;=PxWUSsqrGcKLtgePxMFV&sa;=X&oi;=book_result&ct;=result&resnum;=1#v=onepage&q;=ponce%20de%20leon%20hotel%20legends&f;=false
