HGB Ep. 602 - Haunted Crystal River

Moment in Oddity - Bishop Castle (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)

Back in 1959, a 15 year old young man named Jim Bishop purchased a plot of land in Colorado. Ten years later he embarked on a unique journey with the goal of single-handedly building himself a home on that property. The initial structure began as a stone cottage, however residents of the area started commenting about how much the home looked like a castle. Those thoughts sent Jim Bishop's imagination into overdrive. Over 44 years, Mr. Bishop continued adding stone and iron to his home, gradually making it more and more castle-like. By the end of its creation, Bishop's Castle displayed a tower that stands over 160 feet high, intricate spiral staircases, stained glass arched windows with a view of the surrounding mountains, grand halls divided by stone and steel arches and a fire breathing dragon on the front peak of the castle. The dragon does actually breathe fire with the assistance of a hot air balloon burner and due to a cleverly designed chimney, the nostrils do blow smoke! Bishop's Castle is open to the public for visits and it works off of donations to help preserve the unique structure. Sadly, Jim Bishop passed away in November of 2024, however, it is reported that his son is continuing with his father's vision and will keep maintaining and building onto the incredible structure. 

Haunted Crystal River

The town of Crystal River in Florida is the home of the manatee. This is where they can be found in the winter, congregating in the natural springs found in the area. Those springs attracted indigenous people as well and some of them left behind their mounds. These not only have cultural and historic interest, but they have paranormal activity as well, which we discovered for ourselves. There are other locations with ghost stories too, one which also has a connection to Elvis Presley and his film "Follow That Dream." And we found a wonderful small historic cemetery that not only had some sad stories to share, but the activity we experienced there, brought us back for a second trip. Join us as we share the history and hauntings of Crystal River! 

The town of Crystal River sits along what is known as the Nature Coast of Florida. This area is home to manatees and a wide variety of other animals that enjoy the natural springs, marshland and flowering plants. Florida's early pioneers, known as Crackers, built their simple and sturdy wooden homes here that featured high ceilings and large windows for airflow. But long before they arrived, the people of the Deptford culture were here, followed by the Santa-Rosa-Swift Creek culture and the Fort Walton period and they left behind their mounds. They abandoned the area for unknown reasons. Native Americans had called the Crystal River, Weewahi Iaca. After the Armed Occupation Act of 1842 was passed, twenty-two settlers filed claims for land in Crystal River. Not many people would come here until after the Civil War, but during the war there were small skirmishes because the Union Navy blockaded the entire coast of Florida because the state was an important source for supplies for the Confederacy. The Spanish had planted citrus trees all over Florida and this also attracted people from the North. Crystal River not only was a fishing economy, but turpentine became a major business as did cedar mills. The Dixon Cedar Mill employed everyone, including women and blacks. The richest phosphate deposits in the world were discovered in 1889 and the area boomed until 1914 thanks to that. The railroad showed up at the same time as the phosphate discovery, so that helped as well. Crystal River would become an official town in 1903 and was incorporated in 1923. 

Crystal River Archaeological State Park 

This state park is located at 3400 N. Museum Point and features all varieties of mounds left behind by what is believed to be the Deptford Culture. Those mounds included not only the trash or midden mounds many indigenous groups would leave behind, but there were also ceremonial mounds and burial mounds. At this park, there are only six mounds that still remain. It's possible that there were more, but settlers had used them for fill dirt and that is how the artifacts buried in them were discovered. Two unique steles (Stee-leez), or stone monuments, were left behind as well. These were large pieces of limestone and have carvings on them, one of which looks like a human face. What makes this site so fascinating for us is that there were clear connections to Central America civilizations and also groups from the Ohio River Valley. As a matter of fact, this is the southernmost site in the United States to have a burial mound layout like the ones in the Ohio River Valley. So despite Florida being this peninsula, it seems to have attracted separate cultures migrating or traveling via trade routes from both Ohio and Central America. 

Kathleen Walls wrote "Finding Florida Phantoms" in 2004 and she wrote in there that a ranger reported that voices had been heard among the mounds when no one was present, and some apparitions have apparently been spotted here as well. So we brought our recorder and K2 with us when we visited. We started at Burial Mound G, which was not a really tall mound. This is thought to be one of the earliest mounds based on radiocarbon dating. Many of the artifacts found here were items that weren't very valuable, which made us think that people of a lower status were buried here. But these also could've been a less developed culture. We passed several midden mounds, which were trash heaps with oyster shells, animal bones, charcoal and broken pieces of pottery. The top mound at the site was Temple Mound A, which rises 30 feet and has a flat top that could've been seen by the entire group, so it is believed that a temple was built atop this and that rituals would've been conducted here. It was probably built in 400 AD and only one-third of it still remains. Before we got there, Kelly was carrying the K2 and she noticed that it was going off. The K2 rarely ever goes to red for us when we use it at haunted buildings. But this thing was pinging red for us over and over and in response to us. We aren't sure who was communicating, but there was no way any EMF was setting it off as we were out in the middle of nowhere in the midst of these mounds. Perhaps the spirits here have been disturbed that their mounds and burial places were disturbed. 

Riverside Drive in Yankeetown

We ventured a little out of Crystal River to a small fishing village about 12 miles north named Yankeetown. This is closer to the coast and is just upstream of where the Withlacoochee River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. This village was first settled by an Indiana lawyer named Armanis Knotts in 1923. He decided to build a lodge to cater to the fisherman flocking to the area. He named the lodge, the Izaak Walton Lodge, after the author of the fishing classic "The Compleat Angler," Izaak Walton. That book was written in England in the 1600s. The lodge still stands and has been converted into the Blackwater Restaurant, which serves up hand-carved steaks and fresh local seafood. And ghosts. It is said that water taps turn themselves on and music will play when nothing is turned on. A young woman's image has been seen in a mirror. And there are even reports of being pushed by something unseen.

There are some haunted houses here as well and several places that served as filming locations for Elvis Presley's movie "Follow That Dream." Much of the filming was done toward the end of County Road 40 where the Bird Creek Bridge was built. The road was renamed "Follow That Dream Parkway" leading into Yankeetown and we followed that past the Nature Coast Inn where some of the cast and crew stayed and arrived at the bridge. Many locals played extras and worked to create a beach on Pumpkin Island. We also drove over to a town called Inverness to see the Old Citrus County Courthouse, which is now a museum, but was the set for the courtroom scenes in the movie. We made a short video that is up on YouTube and Tik Tok if you want to see all of that.  

Yankeetown has many great examples of Old Florida cracker homes. Crackers were early settlers to Florida and they built homes condusive to the hot and humid weather. The streets were narrow and pretty beat up and with the large oak trees draped in Spanish moss lining Riverside Drive, it felt like we were going back to a simpler time. Not only was the lodge on this street, but there were a couple of haunted homes on this street. One of them is across from the lodge. Mama DD wrote, "I have heard many ghost stories about some of the houses on Riverside Dr. The one I know happened was the old house across from Izaac Walton Lodge. Yankeetown is called an “original cracker town” and the houses by the river still had the slave quarter houses standing. My sister lived in one of these houses so one day going to do something at her house I remember seeing an old black man sitting at the top of the slave house staring down at us with worn clothes and as I tell my mother there is someone here and she replies that there is no one there. She drags me back to the truck and we leave. She has also told me stories when she was in the large plantation house and she thought her son was in the house trying to scare her but she realized he was outside. So she started running for the door and she heard louder footsteps chasing her. When she got outside she slammed the door and refused to enter the house alone after that. There have been other stories told about this house but I can not remember all the details."

And another house that we couldn't pinpoint because of lack of details was shared by a woman named Mary Cashulette. She wrote in 2019, "I stayed at a home on Riverside Drive. I had no knowledge ahead of time of hauntings. During the night when I got up to go to the bathroom. I heard a woman saying, “help me”, in despair. I heard a deeper man’s voice saying it would be alright. I thought it was my friend having a nightmare in her room and her husband comforting her. When I returned to the bedroom, I asked my daughter if she heard anything, she said she heard a distressed voice going across the room. She couldn’t make any words out. When I asked my friends the next morning, they said nothing happened and they heard nothing."

Karma Cottage and Heritage House

The Karma Cottage is located at 652A N. Citrus Ave. This is a metaphysical and rock shop that opened in 2010 by owners who came from Denver. The Citrus County Chronicle reported in 2016, "In Crystal River, Karma Cottage owners Katie Novak and Andy Crane say the upper level of their building, which was the former garage to the main house that is now Dayz Gone By, located next door to them on Citrus Avenue, had been removed from the main house and added to the top of their building. The son of the owner of the main house reportedly lived in that upstairs apartment until he died. “We have heard footsteps walking upstairs when we know nobody is up there. I have heard things fall up there, as if someone dropped something, and go up and check it out, and there’s nothing,” Novak said. But it goes beyond just hearing. “I have actually seen a man looking out the upstairs window when I was out front,” Novak said. “I’ve named him ‘John.’” She doesn’t feel threatened by what she’s seen and heard, and actually thinks he is just curious.: 

Heritage House is a gift shop located at 657 N. Citrus Ave. It is part of the Heritage Village which is made up of several historic homes. The Heritage House was built in the late 1800s The Chronicle also wrote of it, "Across Citrus Avenue in Heritage Village, Laura Lou Fitzpatrick, owner of Heritage House, whose family owned those buildings, says she’s never had a personal ghostly experience, but one of her former tenants has. Dorothy Koehler, who now works at All About Nature, once ran an antique shop in Heritage House. “I had been down in St. Pete when I got a call that an elderly lady customer of mine, Uma Cross, had passed away,” Koehler said. “I stopped at her the house to look at her things, and bought some of her antique kitchen items.” Right after bringing them back to her shop, Koehler was helping a customer at the front counter when an older woman came in and just wanted to browse. “I was still wrapping the package for the customer at the counter when the elderly lady came back up from the kitchen area and said, ‘I want you to know you have a spirit in the shop.’ ” Surprised, Koehler asked, “How do you know that? What did you see?” The customer described seeing an elderly woman wearing a long dress with her hair tied back in a bun. “That was Uma Cross,” Koehler confirmed. “She always dressed that way.” She told the customer, 'I just came back from St. Pete from her kitchen and those are her things. She must have been checking out her stuff.'"

Crystal River Cemetery

The Crystal River Cemetery was established in 1860 and is fairly small. Many of the pioneers from the area were buried here. And for being a small cemetery, it had quite a few Woodman of the World headstones. One of the burials here was a very small headstone that just read Pope Culbreath of Tampa. We found out more about him:

There were many children buried in this cemetery and five plots really caught our eye. If you follow us on social media anywhere, you may have seen the reel that we made featuring these headstones. We'll play the audio for that here. (King Audio)

You know us. We had to know more. As Diane thought about the last name King, she wondered if that had any relation to the fact that there is a King's Bay here. And sure enough, there was a connection. Turns out that King's Bay was named for Edwin King, who was the father of four of those children. He was born in 1836 at Kings Ferry, Florida, which yes, was named for his family. Apparently, his father Thomas King III was a ferry operator on the St. Mary's River. And that III was something Thomas adopted because there were two other Thomas King's in the area. Thomas actually died before Edwin was born because he died in 1835. He was 55 at the time and Edwin was his thirteenth child. Edwin would eventually take over the ferry business with two of his older brother's, Andrew Jackson King and Henry Perry King. In 1854, Edwin went to law school in Boston. In 1859, he married Mary Ann J. Stafford. The couple would move to Crystal River in 1863 and the lawyer decided he wanted to be a merchant, so he opened a general store. They had a home on the bay that would take their name. During the Civil War, Edwin wrote his brother Josiah that he would like him to come down to Florida when the war was over. An excerpt reads, "It is with much pleasure that I seat myself to write you a few lines hoping it will find you and your family well as it leaves me and my family at present...I am getting along finely down here. I have plenty to eat such as Cane Sugar, Syrup, Potatoes, Rice and Bacon. I want you to move down here when the War is over. I have a good place for you where you can get more fish than you can eat and raise as many hogs as you please and cattle accordingly. I have no news to write you. All is quiet down here. The Yankees came up the River sometime ago but we killed some of them and sent them back!" A couple of his brother's did join him and his brother Andrew Jackson Perry took over the King's Ferry business after the war. He had a daughter named Martha King, who died at 17-years-old. Her's is the fifth tombstone we mentioned in that video. We're not sure why she was buried here in Crystal River, rather than King's Ferry. Edwin and Mary had eight children and the other four headstones belong to four of those children: 

Leila Elizabeth King b Apr 20,1866,d Mar 2,1868
Edwin R. King Jr b Nov 17,1869,d Jan 16,1870
Franklin R. King b Aug 27,1875,d Mar 2,1877
Lottie Eloise King b Sep 8, 1877,d Apr 2,1879

Edwin R King Sr and his wife Mary Stafford King are buried in unmarked graves here at the cemetery. We were unable to find out what the children died from.  

We don't usually do investigations in cemeteries, but we decided to do one here and based on our experiences, we returned the following day for verification. Here is our first video of the EMF activity. For those just listening, the EMF went to yellow and kept going off, but it only seems to be in the one area. (EMF 1) So as you hear, we decided that somehow, even though we were in the middle of the cemetery, that we were somehow catching EMF from somewhere and that this wasn't a spirit. We decided to return the next day to the same spot and see what happened. After this, we decided that we indeed did have a spirit hanging around us. (EMF 2) Later the EMF did ping to orange, so we didn't get red but the orange was nice. And a couple times, Diane felt like her arm went threw a spider web. 

Plantation Inn on Crystal River

Our final spot, we only got to see the outside of because it is being renovated. It has a really cool fountain outside of it. The Plantation Resort, as it is called now, is located at 9301 W. Fort Island Trail. This is a replica plantation house built in 1962 that covers 232 acres and features golf, adventures, three restaurants and a spa. There is at least one spirit here that is said to be the ghost of a young girl who can be heard calling for her mother. Guests have reported unexplained phenomena and we have several of those stories to share.

Dee wrote in 2016, "I stayed at the Plantation Inn about 11 years ago and I have told numerous people about my experience there. This evening my daughter and I were talking about the remake of the movie Roots and we got on the subject of ghosts. I told her about my experience at The Plantation Inn. The first night I stayed at the Inn, I was a little unsettled because I felt like I should not be there. It was just a feeling I had because the look of the place reminded me of the “big house” with slave quarters on each side. I even mentioned it to my white co-worker and she just kind of laughed it off. Anyway, later that night when I went to bed, and I am a very light sleeper, but about 30 minutes after I got in bed, I was still awake but just about to fall asleep, I felt tugging on the bed spread, I opened my eyes and laid there very still, then it happened again. At this time I was scared, but I got up and looked around and opened the closet door, looked around the bed, but no one or nothing was there. So I said a prayer to God and went back to bed and went to sleep. I told my co-worker what happened and I told the lady at the front desk, but I don’t think she really think she believed me, but she just kind of laughed it off. I walked around the Inn inside and out and went to the golf shop which was a short walk from the inn, but I kept looking back at the Inn, and I still had a feeling that slaves lived there at one point. I still don’t know if this is true or not. But the second night, before I went to bed and I checked around the entire room, double checked the lock on the door. I watched TV for a while, then I turned off the TV and started dosing off and it happened again, this time the tugging was harder. Finally, I said out loud “look I have to be here because of my job, please leave me alone, I am leaving here tomorrow. I’m sorry for what happened to you, but please leave me alone.” I said my prayers again and fell asleep and it didn’t happen again. After the meetings I was rushing to get out of there. Every year, I talk about my experience at this Inn. It’s something I will never forget."

Vivian wrote in 2017, "About two years ago I stayed at this hotel for business purposes. I was sleeping but felt tugging on the sheets and I woke up to see a tall dark silhouette standing by the side of my bed. I screamed and screamed tried to move but was paralyzed with fear and couldn’t move suddenly it was gone and I could move again at first I thought someone had broken into my room. I looked through the room and there wasn’t any evidence of a break in. I didn’t say anything to the front desk thinking I must of had a nightmare but I was very scared. I was staying on the first floor it was room one hundred something but I couldn’t remember the exact number. I did tell a coworker about the incident who then said there had been a haunting incident there. I was telling my niece about the incident yesterday and she pulled up the hotel name after I told her the story and she read what happened to the person in room 107 it was so dauntingly similar that the same wave of fear that I experienced that day came back for a few minutes. This place is haunted I had to stay another time there a week after the incident which I very nervous about but it was a different room and nothing happened that time. Thank God!"

Kate wrote in 2018, "I didn’t have any experiences, but my toddler seems to have been frightened by something. He had nightmares every night during our stay. The final night, he woke up crying at one point. I asked him what was wrong and he said his pillow was moving and he saw something black by the chair. I held up my jacket that was hanging on the chair, but he said it was something else. He seemed to be struggling to describe it, but said what he’d seen was “too black.” I assured him it was just a nightmare, but an hour or so later, he woke up crying again. This time my husband, who hadn’t heard the first episode got up with him. I heard my son telling him the exact same thing; that his pillow was moving and something black was on the chair by his bed. This time he insisted on sleeping in our bed for the remainder of the night. I asked him about it in the morning because he’ll usually tell me about his scary dreams. This time, however, he kept insisting it was 'not pretend!'"

Yani wrote in 2019, "During our recent visit I was having a lot of difficulties to sleep, I kept having nightmares. On our last night, I continued to have problems falling asleep. When I finally did, I started having nightmares and woke up around 1am with a feeling that something was in the room watching.. I prayed, turned and hugged my husband. I felt asleep again and woke up around 3am with a nighmare of a young woman beeing in our room looking at us. I woke up super scared and on my side of the bed I felt this precense and saw a black shadow.. I closed my eyes and started praying again.. I turned n hug my husband and felt that the thing went away.. The next morning I told my husband what happened, my dream, feeling and what I think I saw and my husband told me he had also had difficulty sleeping because everytime he closed his eyes he will see a young woman with hair up to her shoulders coming towards him.. he felt this presence the whole night and when he woke up there was a black shadow around him… We both thought that the places was probably haunted because that has never happened to us.. and for both to see, dream, and feel the same thing .. thats not coincidence.." 

Anonymous wrote in 2023, "We stayed here last week because I thought it looked beautiful and knowing absolutely nothing about the history. We drove up and thought how fabulous it was. We walked inside to check in and both immediately had a weird feeling despite the beauty and the kind staff. Later in the evening we heard a girl crying for nearly 2 hours and could not figure out where exactly it was coming from. We fell asleep exhausted from driving all day and I was woken up from a deep sleep at 3am to all these very weird noises and the feeling was bazaar, if my husband had not been with me I would have thought I was crazy. By about 4am we looked online and I swear to you I read it was haunted by a little girl crying for her Mother and I was in shock reading about it, we are low key no drama people and never experienced anything like this. By 6am we were out of there." 

Crystal River is a beautiful area and the springs are not to be missed. Especially in the cooler months when hundreds of manatees gather in the warmer waters. Is it possible that some ghosts have gathered here as well? Is Crystal River haunted? That is for you to decide!