Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

My flat-lined town says, ‘Boo!’

It seems our town--a relatively new town founded on the extension of the Everglades to the north--is into drumming up business. When we moved here in 1992, we were told that in 1968 this town had only one street as its main street with less than ten structures on it. No one had heard of hauntings, ghosts, and things of that nature.

Now that we have a historical society, before history is even seeded into our soil, we are conducting ghost tours. With the exception of a few neighbors who passed away, and they were too nice to turn into ghosts, I don’t know who is haunting the place.

Those who know (!) insist that visitors who come here can encounter with the ghosts of ye-olde-time pirates who roamed our shores, the Seminole wolf men, and creatures who terrorized the early settlers. To tell the truth, no one could have settled here then, except the alligators. Even the main street with its ten structures probably formed around one hunter’s cabin hastily built sometime during the 1940’s or 50’s.

Since our town is one of the most afflicted Florida towns due to the economic crisis, everyone is doing their best to attract business. Come to think of it, it could be a good marketing trick to use the housing crisis for profit.

I bet the tour guides could take the tourists to empty houses and pass them as haunted houses. Not a bad idea and not at all untrue. To say the least, the entire state of Florida seems to be haunted with all those empty dwellings, and also, the empty brains huddling around inside the city councils.