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Meet the ghosts of Ybor City with author Deborah Frethem

 
Published Oct. 28, 2014

The white marble statue of Cuban liberation hero Jose Marti stands silently in the center of his namesake park, extending its arm to all who would enter.

"People have seen the arm move," said Deborah Frethem, 65, author of Haunted Ybor City. "It moves very slowly up and down."

It's one of the many "hauntings" in the old cigar factory town just east of downtown Tampa, and not even the most chilling. "If you want real shivers, you've got the Cuban Club," Frethem laughed. "That place has a lot of history with hauntings."

History and hauntings, two of Frethem's favorite topics, will be the meat of her lecture Thursday night as a part of the Tampa Theatre's A Nightmare on Franklin Street series.

She'll share details about Ybor City, Tampa and maybe even St. Petersburg, since she literally wrote the book on the paranormal disturbances in all those places.

"Whenever I hear a story, I use that as a starting point and then go investigate the history. And if I find out a story is bull, then I say that. I don't perpetuate bad stories," Frethem said.

Separating the bull from the real isn't a matter of seeing something for herself. Very few people ever actually see a ghost, Frethem said. But there are experiences, a sudden chill, hearing a voice or feeling something touch you when you're alone that give credence in her mind to the existence of the supernatural.

"I do believe in ghosts," she said. "I've had experiences here in Tampa that can only be explained that way."

Her career with the paranormal began in her native Minnesota 16 years ago. She left a lifetime of office jobs and started to put her college degrees in history and theater to use as a history tour guide. Inside a historic building she gave tours in, a murder had taken place in a rear room.

"The energy — I just never wanted to go in there," she said. "Finally after about a year I just went back there and said, 'I'm here, guys,' and that was that."

Coming to Tampa 10 years ago to lead ghost tours, she immediately fell in love with the weather and the stories of her new home.

Stories like that of Rosalita, the turn-of-the-20th-century prostitute who would go to the top of cigar factory that is now Ybor Square to see if her lover was returning on a ship.

"Maybe it's because he died at sea or perhaps he didn't love as much as he said, but he never came back. That's why people see the shadowy figure in that glass building — the cupola — sometimes," Frethem said.

Rosalita isn't not Tampa's only lovelorn ghost, but the most persistent apparitions seem to just love their jobs too much to move on. Even the Tampa Theatre has a projectionist who collapsed on the job and died off site, but kept coming right on back to work, according to Frethem. "I have smelled his aftershave very strongly outside the projectionist booth. It was lilac-scented aftershave and lilac don't grow in Florida. I'm from Minnesota, so I know how lilacs smell."

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He's even touched her friend's leg as she was standing alone in the lobby: "I was there. There was nothing around her when she felt it," Frethem said.

Thrill-seekers looking for a fright this weekend will have to be satisfied with the presence of spirits, because to hear Frethem tell it, this is a town of Caspers, not the malevolent spirits you'll catch in R-rated features.

"I guess I just find them comforting," Frethem said. "Not to get religious, but it lets me know there is something after life."