Jaxlore: Folklore, Urban Legends, and Regionalisms
Folklore is the unofficial culture of a community, passed along through word of mouth and other back channels. Folklore is often indelibly tied to place, and is a large part of what makes home feel like home. Here are a few common bits of lore from Jacksonville and the First Coast. How many do you recognize?
1. First Coasts First: The Birth of a Regional Identity
The First Coast
In the realm of local place-name lore, the “First Coast” stands second only to the breezy “Jax” when it comes to repping Greater Jacksonville. The names of everything from businesses to bus systems to a testify to this regional moniker’s pervasiveness in the five counties of the Jacksonville metropolitan area– Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau, and St. Johns –and beyond.
But where did it come from? Unlike many other entries on this list, this one’s origins can be pinpointed exactly, though they’re not particularly romantic or venerable: “Florida’s First Coast” is the product of a 1980s Chamber of Commerce marketing campaign.
In 1983, the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce hired heavy-hitting ad firm William Cook to devise a new brand covering the whole metro area. While individual communities had their own nicknames, there was little sense of regional coherence, causing the area to miss funding opportunities. Over nine months of rumination, a combination of history and geography percolated into promotional paydirt: the region would be “Florida’s First Coast.” It debuted at that year’s Gator Bowl and hasn’t left the brochures since.
St. Augustine’s Castillo de San Marcos, an iconic landmark of the First Coast. National Park Service
It’s easy to see how the “First Coast” became popular. It fills a niche for a regional identity without favoring any particular community. It also rings true on multiple levels: the region has been the “first coast” for many visitors, past and present. This is the coast of Ponce de Leon (supposedly) and Jean Ribault, of Fort Caroline and the “Ancient City” of St. Augustine. Today, it’s the “First Coast” encountered by swarms of southbound tourists to the Sunshine State.
A 2007 academic paper on Florida’s “vernacular regions” found the First Coast to be one of the best known in the state, in the company of the Space Coast and The Panhandle. These days, its reach appears to be expanding, with references occurring as far south as Palm Coast, Flagler Beach, and Palatka, and even spreading north to St. Mary’s, Georgia. Perhaps William Cook should have secured some royalties.
2. The Lost Town of Cowford
Downtown Jacksonville
Image courtesy of USF Libraries Digitization Center
Easily the most pervasive legend about Jacksonville is that the city was originally a town bearing the rather undistinguished name of “Cowford.” This story circulates in official accounts and classroom curriculums, but there’s one problem: it’s not quite true.
There definitely was a “Cowford,” or more usually “Cow Ford”: it was a crossing at the St. Johns River narrows where the town of Jacksonville was eventually established, used for driving cattle across. The Seminole reputedly knew the Cow Ford as “Waca Pilatka,” a corrupted Creek phrase essentially meaning “cow’s crossing.” During Florida’s British period (1764-1784), the new government built the King’s Road, which crossed the St. Johns at the Cow Ford. They established a ferry in 1765. Visitors to the Cow Ford included John Bartram in 1766 and his son William Bartram in 1774.
While the Cow Ford was an increasingly important crossing, the small community living nearby was no town. In fact, for years most activity, including the ferry, focused on the south side of the river. In 1822, area landowners led by Isaiah D. Hart donated property to create a new town on the north bank. In June of that year (the exact day is lost), they surveyed the 20 blocks that would become Jacksonville. If anyone ever conceived of calling this new town “Cowford,” they must have thought better of it very quickly, as the founders signed a petition on June 15 asking that their town of Jacksonville – named for former military governor Andrew Jackson – be designated a port of entry.
Plaque commemorating the Cow Ford in Downtown Jacksonville. Katie Delaney
Popular history is often averse to nuance, and over time the phrase “the Jacksonville area was previously known as the Cow Ford” became “Jacksonville was previously known as Cowford.” In the 20th century this ostensible town of Cowford became embedded in the local imagination. Today, it survives in the names of numerous local businesses and institutions, such as the American Cancer Society’s annual Cowford Ball and improv troupe Mad Cowford. Cowford also returns whenever some wag wants to highlight Jacksonville’s more backward characteristics; for instance, a 2012 Florida Times-Union column called City Council members opposing protections for LGBT citizens “leaders worthy of Cowford.”
3. The Devil’s School: Legend Tripping with Annie Lytle
Jacksonville – Brooklyn
Image courtesy of David Gano
The former Annie Lytle Elementary School, alias Public School Four, has been called the “most haunted place in Jacksonville,” a reputation Metro Jacksonville has covered before. With urban myths abounding, the abandoned landmark is the premier local site for “legend-tripping”: the right of passage in which young adults brave locations associated with frightening legends for purposes of initiation, rebellion, or simple entertainment.
The schoolhouse dates to 1917, a time when the city considered education such a lofty imperative as to demand monumental architecture. It was renamed in the 195os after its longtime principal, Annie Lytle Housh. The school closed in 1960 after years of decline due to age, size limitations, and isolating expressway construction. The building became an administrative facility until being condemned and abandoned in 1971.
Legend-trippers started flocking in soon after, attracted by two key qualities: the formidable edifice is foreboding, and yet highly visible. It can be seen from I-95, firing many a youthful imagination and ensuring that well-placed graffiti will be seen by thousands. Around the 1980s, the age of heavy metal and moral panics about satanic cults, the building gained a reputation as a haven of diabolical activity, increasing its legend-tripping cachet and earning it the nickname “The Devil’s School.”
Image courtesy of YourMainParadox
Legend-trips begin with an “introduction”, where trippers recount legends about the destination. The “Devil’s School” is reputed to be haunted, and has accumulated several outrageous legends accounting for this. Common variants tell of schoolchildren killed by a boiler explosion; by a psychotic janitor; or, most absurdly, by a cannibal principal who devoured students sent to the office. As with most tripping situations, the stories have no basis in reality and vary from telling to telling; their true function is to set the appropriate mood for a trip into the tenebrous unknown.
Next comes the “enactment”, or what actually happens on the trip. This may involve “sensing” the resident spirits or performing some designated activity. As nearly any photo of the building shows, enactment at the Devil’s School often involves graffiti tagging. Finally, departing trippers craft “retrospective personal narratives” about their experience to include next time around.
Image courtesy of David Gano
Annie Lytle School means a great deal to First Coast legend-trippers, but vandalism, weather damage due to busted windows, and two fires have taken a heavy toll. Fortunately, advocates now offer a way to explore the structure while helping preserve it through organized cleanups. Despite these travails, Annie Lytle Schools still stands, awaiting its chance at the renewal now sweeping Brooklyn.
4. Old Red Eyes and the Ghosts of Kingsley Plantation
Jacksonville – Fort George Island
Kingsley Plantation House. Haleigh Jacquot
Kingsley Plantation, which features the state’s oldest plantation house, 23 slave residences, and associated buildings amid a pristine wetland, is one of Florida’s most important historical sites. As with many similar landmarks, local folklore holds that former residents still haunt the place.
The plantation dates to 1797. From 1814 to 1837, it was owned by the South’s most atypical slaveholders: Zephaniah Kingsley and his wife Anna Madgigine Jai, a Wolof slave he married and later freed. Their family included three other wives and nine mixed-race children. A comparatively humane slave master, Kingsley lobbied against increasingly restrictive slavery laws adopted after the U.S. acquired Florida in 1822. When these efforts failed, the Kingsleys moved to Haiti. The property came into public hands in 1955 and became a national park in 1991.
Kingsley Plantation slave houses. Ennis Davis
Legends that Kingsley Plantation was haunted spread just after it became a park. The plantation’s historic architecture and sublime surroundings encourage ghost stories, and its status as a national park gives it a core of dedicated caretakers who foster its lore and pass it to visitors. Easily the most famous of the plantation ghosts is Old Red Eyes, who’s been spotted since 1978. The story goes that he was a slave who raped and killed girls in the slave quarters until the others caught him and lynched him from an oak tree beside the roadway. The villain’s ghost still appears as a pair of glowing eyes in the woods. The legend relies on some nasty old tropes – mobs used stories like this to rationalize lynching. However, it’s worth noting that the legend portrays Red Eyes’ deeds as crimes against and avenged by slaves. This development may reflect the unusual social dynamic of the Kingsley days, a legacy the park’s staff fastidiously memorialize.
Anna Kingsley, is that you? Image courtesy of Joyce Elson Moore
The legends and sightings extend well beyond Old Red Eyes. Staff have reported hearing a ghostly child crying in the well and encountering a turban-wearing African in the main house. Joyce Elson Moore, author of the Haunt Hunter’s Guide to Florida, snapped a photo she believes shows an ethereal “woman in white” – none other than Anna Kingsley herself. Zephaniah is also said to be present; the staff maintain a tradition of never saying “Goodnight, Mr. Kingsley,” as “something bad” may happen.
5. A Haunted Homestead: Alpha Paynter, Ghost of TacoLu
Jacksonville Beach
TacoLu, former home of The Homestead Restaurant. Katie Delaney
Jacksonville Beaches lore claims that Alpha Paynter has had trouble letting go of her old Homestead Restaurant, even five decades after she died. Perennial ghost sightings have made this building – now home to Tex-Mex joint TacoLu – one of the First Coast’s most famous haunted places.
The Homestead boarding house c. 1934-1947. Beaches Museum
Alpha Paynter was a prominent businesswoman for decades, owning the Homestead and the Copper Kettle Inn. While she’s somewhat mysterious – no photo of her has been found – historian Don Mabry has pieced together her life story. She was born Alpha Pullen in 1887, and came to Jacksonville with her husband, John Clifford Paynter, in the 1920s. The Paynters divorced in 1930 and Alpha moved to Jacksonville Beach, opening the Copper Kettle. Finding unusual business success for a divorced woman, Paynter constructed the log cabin that would become the Homestead in 1934. Originally a boarding house, Paynter converted it to a restaurant serving family-style Southern cooking in 1947. She sold the business in 1961 and died in 1962. Under a succession of owners, the Homestead remained a Beaches institution for fifty years. It hit hard times in the 21st century and closed in 2011. TacoLu moved in in 2012, bringing life back to the old cabin.
TacoLu’s side deck. Katie Delaney
Locals report hearing stories that the Homestead was haunted as far back as the 1960s. At some point, Paynter herself became the legend’s preeminent ghost. The restaurant’s old-timey architecture and its enduring significance to several generations of locals made a fertile field for ghost stories, which have been carefully cultivated by restaurant staff. As such, the Homestead has appeared in many books on Florida ghost lore. Typically, Paynter is reported as a benign spirit near the fireplace, stairs, or ladies’ room. Some variants state – falsely – that Paynter died by hanging, or was buried on the property. In others, she’s just one of several ghosts on premises, with the hanging story transferred to a mysterious mother-daughter pair.
The legends live on at TacoLu. One way or another, Alpha Paynter’s presence definitely remains strong at the “Old Homestead.”
6. The Ghost Light of Greenbriar Road
St. Johns
Bill Delaney
Before the McMansions and A-rated schools, northern St. Johns County was a quiet, rural backwater. In those days, the old dirt-paved Greenbriar Road was known as the “Ghost Light Road,” as it provided nighttime visitors with a singularly disconcerting experience: a lone spectral headlight that appeared to approach cars before vanishing into the perfect dark.
The Ghost Light appeared from at least the 1970s into the early ‘oos, and is one entry the writer can personally vouch for. Like Annie Lytle School, the Ghost Light Road was once a popular legend-tripping destination, and I was one of those trippers. Between 1997 and 2001, I witnessed the light on several occasions, with different people and at least a few times without intoxicants involved.
Like any good apparition, the Ghost Light had an accompanying tale. The version I heard recounted a young motorcyclist whose father had warned him about speeding on the dirt road. One fateful day, the motorcyclist’s brother strung a rope across Greenbriar. This prank merely would have unseated the cocky rider had he heeded his father’s admonition, but, unfortunately, he gunned the engine and lost his head. Thereafter, his ghost shined his headlamp down Greenbriar in a nightly vigil.
Origin of the “Ghost Light?” Katie Delaney
While the story is apocryphal, the light was a real phenomenon attested by numerous witnesses. The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office received so many reports that they investigated the light in 1987, but they came to no firm conclusion about the cause. Researchers’ best guess is that the lights were optical illusions caused by a banked curve on Florida 210 near the Greenbriar intersection. According to the theory, the angle made headlights on westbound 210 appear to be coming up Greenbriar – at enough distance that two lights looked like one – before they abruptly disappeared as the vehicles passed through the intersection. This explanation gains support from the fact that the light hasn’t been seen since the intersection was reconfigured for safety in 2001. Or, so as not to kill a good story, perhaps the ghost found the safety features satisfying and finally crossed over.
Katie Delaney
Today, Greenbriar Road has been paved. Cookie-cutter subdivisions have replaced the open fields and woods. The Ghost Light still occasionally appears in books on Florida ghosts and curiosities, but otherwise it shines only in the memories of legend-trippers past.
7. Jiffy Feet: No Shoes No Problem
Orange Park and regional
Images courtesy of R. Land
.
“Jiffy Feet” are familiar to all Jaxsons even if they don’t know the name. It’s the accepted local designation for that beautiful layer of dirt and asphalt acquired from walking around barefoot, as when your hankering for a Squishee at the neighborhood convenience store doesn’t quite abrogate your desire to avoid shoes at all costs. This colorful colloquialism is specific to the First Coast, and speaks enough to stereotypes of Florida’s shoe-shirking rednecks, beach bums, water kids, and unwindulaxers that it has become iconic.
Jiffy Feet are named for the erstwhile regional convenience store chain Huntley’s Jiffy Stores, better known simply as Jiffy stores. The Orange Park-based business was founded in 1965 by Louis and William Huntley, and grew to include 342 stores in North Florida and southern Georgia by the time the brothers sold it in 1990. The stores were so prolific, and their name so apt, that “Jiffy” became a generic term for this kind of shop in the First Coast.
The phrase “Jiffy Feet” dates at least to the 1980s, and has seen an upswing in popularity in the 21st century. It became a source of artistic inspiration in 2008, when R. Land, a Jacksonville-born artist now based in Atlanta, created a memorable “Jiffy Feet” installation series that popped up all across Jacksonville. The project featured black-soled wooden feet crafted in the artist’s characteristic vivid, cartoony style. The pieces first appeared on Riverside telephone poles, and eventually came in hundreds of variations.
Jiffy Snowman. Image courtesy of R. Land
Land, who often incorporates Jacksonville imagery in his work, sees his feet as celebrating something distinctive about life on the First Coast. The pieces brought wider attention to Jiffy Feet, particularly after Folio Weekly and the local blogosphere covered them in 2009. Other instances of Jiffy Feet entering the public consciousness include the photo website Jiffyfeet.com and a beer at Jacksonville Beach’s Green Room Brewing. Jiffy Feet have become ingrained in local culture like so much blacktop on Jaxsons’ collective soles.
8. The Bardin Booger: The First Coast’s Premier Skunk Ape
Bardin and Palatka
Image courtesy of Lena Crain.
The Skunk Ape – Florida’s version of Bigfoot – has been a prominent feature of Florida folklore for decades. Perhaps the most colorful member of this evasive species is the one who patrols the pine woods around the tiny logging community of Bardin, about 10 miles from Palatka. Metro Jacksonville, meet the Bardin Booger.
Bud’s Grocery. Katie Delaney
Sightings began decades ago, but took off in the 1970s. Early stories are typical Bigfoot fare: a hirsute, humanoid monster vexing folks in the woods. Locals swapped yarns about it at Bud’s Grocery, an unassuming shop and filling station that qualifies as Bardin’s center of town. Owned by Bud Key since 1966, it’s the only game in town for provisions, gas, and home-cooked cryptozoology.
The first Bardin Booger article. Katie Delaney
Bardin’s Skunk Ape left the realm of local lore when the Palatka Daily News reported on it in 1981. Needing something for an intern columnist to write about, publisher Jody Delzell suggested the Bardin monster. He’d heard the stories but considered them little more than a creative way for teen boys to convince girls to go “exploring” in the woods. Delzell dubbed the creature the “Bardin Booger” – “booger” meaning “boogieman.” The column was a big hit, to the point AP News and various other outlets picked up the story. Suddenly, Bardin and its Booger were national news.
Monster hunters poured into Bardin as sightings jumped to 2o a month, no doubt aided by pranksters. Bud’s Grocery quickly became Booger headquarters. Bud Key, who still runs the store with wife Norma and daughter Karen Moore, added Booger T-shirts and merchandise to the shelves (they’re currently sold out, but plan to restock pending demand). The Keys hang frame Booger stories in the window and still maintain a “Booger file” collecting all the news clippings the notorious critter has generated.
Jody Delzell adopted the Booger for his own Daily News column, writing dozens of pieces over the years. Delzell casts “Boog” as an ancient wanderer trying to make his way in this modern world. Mainly, however, Boog is a satirical device who vocalizes opinions Delzell would never print in his own voice.
Mr. Bardin Booger, Bardin is your home
And every day, you love to roam
Runnin’ through the bushes and runnin’ through the trees,
Mr. Bardin Booger, don’t you get me, please.
“Bardin Booger,” by Billy Crain
However, credit for keeping the Booger alive really belongs to Lena and Billy Crain of Palatka. Billy, who passed away in 1992, recorded a “Bardin Booger” song that became a bar favorite, and Lena later wrote a followup, “The Bardin Booger’s Christmas Wish.” Deciding “Ole Boog” should be available for appearances, the Crains devised a costume: a gorilla suit enhanced with long ears and big feet. Donning this getup, Lena has been a hot commodity at parades and festivals for over 30 years. Now 74, she still suits up when duty calls.
Image courtesy of Lena Crain
Today, the Bardin Booger is more a mascot for the Palatka community than the folkloric menace of old. Everyone I spoke to confirms that no one has encountered the “real” Booger in many years. Despite this absence of new sightings, the legend continues in Lena Crain’s appearances, Jody Delzell’s columns, and the conversations at Bud’s Grocery. What keeps it all going? As anthropologist David Daegling wrote, “maybe the Booger lives on for the simple fact that people want him around.”
Article by Bill Delaney
The First Coast
In the realm of local place-name lore, the “First Coast” stands second only to the breezy “Jax” when it comes to repping Greater Jacksonville. The names of everything from businesses to bus systems to a testify to this regional moniker’s pervasiveness in the five counties of the Jacksonville metropolitan area– Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau, and St. Johns –and beyond.
But where did it come from? Unlike many other entries on this list, this one’s origins can be pinpointed exactly, though they’re not particularly romantic or venerable: “Florida’s First Coast” is the product of a 1980s Chamber of Commerce marketing campaign.
In 1983, the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce hired heavy-hitting ad firm William Cook to devise a new brand covering the whole metro area. While individual communities had their own nicknames, there was little sense of regional coherence, causing the area to miss funding opportunities. Over nine months of rumination, a combination of history and geography percolated into promotional paydirt: the region would be “Florida’s First Coast.” It debuted at that year’s Gator Bowl and hasn’t left the brochures since.
St. Augustine’s Castillo de San Marcos, an iconic landmark of the First Coast. National Park Service
It’s easy to see how the “First Coast” became popular. It fills a niche for a regional identity without favoring any particular community. It also rings true on multiple levels: the region has been the “first coast” for many visitors, past and present. This is the coast of Ponce de Leon (supposedly) and Jean Ribault, of Fort Caroline and the “Ancient City” of St. Augustine. Today, it’s the “First Coast” encountered by swarms of southbound tourists to the Sunshine State.
A 2007 academic paper on Florida’s “vernacular regions” found the First Coast to be one of the best known in the state, in the company of the Space Coast and The Panhandle. These days, its reach appears to be expanding, with references occurring as far south as Palm Coast, Flagler Beach, and Palatka, and even spreading north to St. Mary’s, Georgia. Perhaps William Cook should have secured some royalties.
2. The Lost Town of Cowford
Downtown Jacksonville
Image courtesy of USF Libraries Digitization Center
Easily the most pervasive legend about Jacksonville is that the city was originally a town bearing the rather undistinguished name of “Cowford.” This story circulates in official accounts and classroom curriculums, but there’s one problem: it’s not quite true.
There definitely was a “Cowford,” or more usually “Cow Ford”: it was a crossing at the St. Johns River narrows where the town of Jacksonville was eventually established, used for driving cattle across. The Seminole reputedly knew the Cow Ford as “Waca Pilatka,” a corrupted Creek phrase essentially meaning “cow’s crossing.” During Florida’s British period (1764-1784), the new government built the King’s Road, which crossed the St. Johns at the Cow Ford. They established a ferry in 1765. Visitors to the Cow Ford included John Bartram in 1766 and his son William Bartram in 1774.
While the Cow Ford was an increasingly important crossing, the small community living nearby was no town. In fact, for years most activity, including the ferry, focused on the south side of the river. In 1822, area landowners led by Isaiah D. Hart donated property to create a new town on the north bank. In June of that year (the exact day is lost), they surveyed the 20 blocks that would become Jacksonville. If anyone ever conceived of calling this new town “Cowford,” they must have thought better of it very quickly, as the founders signed a petition on June 15 asking that their town of Jacksonville – named for former military governor Andrew Jackson – be designated a port of entry.
Plaque commemorating the Cow Ford in Downtown Jacksonville. Katie Delaney
Popular history is often averse to nuance, and over time the phrase “the Jacksonville area was previously known as the Cow Ford” became “Jacksonville was previously known as Cowford.” In the 20th century this ostensible town of Cowford became embedded in the local imagination. Today, it survives in the names of numerous local businesses and institutions, such as the American Cancer Society’s annual Cowford Ball and improv troupe Mad Cowford. Cowford also returns whenever some wag wants to highlight Jacksonville’s more backward characteristics; for instance, a 2012 Florida Times-Union column called City Council members opposing protections for LGBT citizens “leaders worthy of Cowford.”
3. The Devil’s School: Legend Tripping with Annie Lytle
Jacksonville – Brooklyn
Image courtesy of David Gano
The former Annie Lytle Elementary School, alias Public School Four, has been called the “most haunted place in Jacksonville,” a reputation Metro Jacksonville has covered before. With urban myths abounding, the abandoned landmark is the premier local site for “legend-tripping”: the right of passage in which young adults brave locations associated with frightening legends for purposes of initiation, rebellion, or simple entertainment.
The schoolhouse dates to 1917, a time when the city considered education such a lofty imperative as to demand monumental architecture. It was renamed in the 195os after its longtime principal, Annie Lytle Housh. The school closed in 1960 after years of decline due to age, size limitations, and isolating expressway construction. The building became an administrative facility until being condemned and abandoned in 1971.
Legend-trippers started flocking in soon after, attracted by two key qualities: the formidable edifice is foreboding, and yet highly visible. It can be seen from I-95, firing many a youthful imagination and ensuring that well-placed graffiti will be seen by thousands. Around the 1980s, the age of heavy metal and moral panics about satanic cults, the building gained a reputation as a haven of diabolical activity, increasing its legend-tripping cachet and earning it the nickname “The Devil’s School.”
Image courtesy of YourMainParadox
Legend-trips begin with an “introduction”, where trippers recount legends about the destination. The “Devil’s School” is reputed to be haunted, and has accumulated several outrageous legends accounting for this. Common variants tell of schoolchildren killed by a boiler explosion; by a psychotic janitor; or, most absurdly, by a cannibal principal who devoured students sent to the office. As with most tripping situations, the stories have no basis in reality and vary from telling to telling; their true function is to set the appropriate mood for a trip into the tenebrous unknown.
Next comes the “enactment”, or what actually happens on the trip. This may involve “sensing” the resident spirits or performing some designated activity. As nearly any photo of the building shows, enactment at the Devil’s School often involves graffiti tagging. Finally, departing trippers craft “retrospective personal narratives” about their experience to include next time around.
Image courtesy of David Gano
Annie Lytle School means a great deal to First Coast legend-trippers, but vandalism, weather damage due to busted windows, and two fires have taken a heavy toll. Fortunately, advocates now offer a way to explore the structure while helping preserve it through organized cleanups. Despite these travails, Annie Lytle Schools still stands, awaiting its chance at the renewal now sweeping Brooklyn.
4. Old Red Eyes and the Ghosts of Kingsley Plantation
Jacksonville – Fort George Island
Kingsley Plantation House. Haleigh Jacquot
Kingsley Plantation, which features the state’s oldest plantation house, 23 slave residences, and associated buildings amid a pristine wetland, is one of Florida’s most important historical sites. As with many similar landmarks, local folklore holds that former residents still haunt the place.
The plantation dates to 1797. From 1814 to 1837, it was owned by the South’s most atypical slaveholders: Zephaniah Kingsley and his wife Anna Madgigine Jai, a Wolof slave he married and later freed. Their family included three other wives and nine mixed-race children. A comparatively humane slave master, Kingsley lobbied against increasingly restrictive slavery laws adopted after the U.S. acquired Florida in 1822. When these efforts failed, the Kingsleys moved to Haiti. The property came into public hands in 1955 and became a national park in 1991.
Kingsley Plantation slave houses. Ennis Davis
Legends that Kingsley Plantation was haunted spread just after it became a park. The plantation’s historic architecture and sublime surroundings encourage ghost stories, and its status as a national park gives it a core of dedicated caretakers who foster its lore and pass it to visitors. Easily the most famous of the plantation ghosts is Old Red Eyes, who’s been spotted since 1978. The story goes that he was a slave who raped and killed girls in the slave quarters until the others caught him and lynched him from an oak tree beside the roadway. The villain’s ghost still appears as a pair of glowing eyes in the woods. The legend relies on some nasty old tropes – mobs used stories like this to rationalize lynching. However, it’s worth noting that the legend portrays Red Eyes’ deeds as crimes against and avenged by slaves. This development may reflect the unusual social dynamic of the Kingsley days, a legacy the park’s staff fastidiously memorialize.
Anna Kingsley, is that you? Image courtesy of Joyce Elson Moore
The legends and sightings extend well beyond Old Red Eyes. Staff have reported hearing a ghostly child crying in the well and encountering a turban-wearing African in the main house. Joyce Elson Moore, author of the Haunt Hunter’s Guide to Florida, snapped a photo she believes shows an ethereal “woman in white” – none other than Anna Kingsley herself. Zephaniah is also said to be present; the staff maintain a tradition of never saying “Goodnight, Mr. Kingsley,” as “something bad” may happen.
5. A Haunted Homestead: Alpha Paynter, Ghost of TacoLu
Jacksonville Beach
TacoLu, former home of The Homestead Restaurant. Katie Delaney
Jacksonville Beaches lore claims that Alpha Paynter has had trouble letting go of her old Homestead Restaurant, even five decades after she died. Perennial ghost sightings have made this building – now home to Tex-Mex joint TacoLu – one of the First Coast’s most famous haunted places.
The Homestead boarding house c. 1934-1947. Beaches Museum
Alpha Paynter was a prominent businesswoman for decades, owning the Homestead and the Copper Kettle Inn. While she’s somewhat mysterious – no photo of her has been found – historian Don Mabry has pieced together her life story. She was born Alpha Pullen in 1887, and came to Jacksonville with her husband, John Clifford Paynter, in the 1920s. The Paynters divorced in 1930 and Alpha moved to Jacksonville Beach, opening the Copper Kettle. Finding unusual business success for a divorced woman, Paynter constructed the log cabin that would become the Homestead in 1934. Originally a boarding house, Paynter converted it to a restaurant serving family-style Southern cooking in 1947. She sold the business in 1961 and died in 1962. Under a succession of owners, the Homestead remained a Beaches institution for fifty years. It hit hard times in the 21st century and closed in 2011. TacoLu moved in in 2012, bringing life back to the old cabin.
TacoLu’s side deck. Katie Delaney
Locals report hearing stories that the Homestead was haunted as far back as the 1960s. At some point, Paynter herself became the legend’s preeminent ghost. The restaurant’s old-timey architecture and its enduring significance to several generations of locals made a fertile field for ghost stories, which have been carefully cultivated by restaurant staff. As such, the Homestead has appeared in many books on Florida ghost lore. Typically, Paynter is reported as a benign spirit near the fireplace, stairs, or ladies’ room. Some variants state – falsely – that Paynter died by hanging, or was buried on the property. In others, she’s just one of several ghosts on premises, with the hanging story transferred to a mysterious mother-daughter pair.
The legends live on at TacoLu. One way or another, Alpha Paynter’s presence definitely remains strong at the “Old Homestead.”
6. The Ghost Light of Greenbriar Road
St. Johns
Bill Delaney
Before the McMansions and A-rated schools, northern St. Johns County was a quiet, rural backwater. In those days, the old dirt-paved Greenbriar Road was known as the “Ghost Light Road,” as it provided nighttime visitors with a singularly disconcerting experience: a lone spectral headlight that appeared to approach cars before vanishing into the perfect dark.
The Ghost Light appeared from at least the 1970s into the early ‘oos, and is one entry the writer can personally vouch for. Like Annie Lytle School, the Ghost Light Road was once a popular legend-tripping destination, and I was one of those trippers. Between 1997 and 2001, I witnessed the light on several occasions, with different people and at least a few times without intoxicants involved.
Like any good apparition, the Ghost Light had an accompanying tale. The version I heard recounted a young motorcyclist whose father had warned him about speeding on the dirt road. One fateful day, the motorcyclist’s brother strung a rope across Greenbriar. This prank merely would have unseated the cocky rider had he heeded his father’s admonition, but, unfortunately, he gunned the engine and lost his head. Thereafter, his ghost shined his headlamp down Greenbriar in a nightly vigil.
Origin of the “Ghost Light?” Katie Delaney
While the story is apocryphal, the light was a real phenomenon attested by numerous witnesses. The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office received so many reports that they investigated the light in 1987, but they came to no firm conclusion about the cause. Researchers’ best guess is that the lights were optical illusions caused by a banked curve on Florida 210 near the Greenbriar intersection. According to the theory, the angle made headlights on westbound 210 appear to be coming up Greenbriar – at enough distance that two lights looked like one – before they abruptly disappeared as the vehicles passed through the intersection. This explanation gains support from the fact that the light hasn’t been seen since the intersection was reconfigured for safety in 2001. Or, so as not to kill a good story, perhaps the ghost found the safety features satisfying and finally crossed over.
Katie Delaney
Today, Greenbriar Road has been paved. Cookie-cutter subdivisions have replaced the open fields and woods. The Ghost Light still occasionally appears in books on Florida ghosts and curiosities, but otherwise it shines only in the memories of legend-trippers past.
7. Jiffy Feet: No Shoes No Problem
Orange Park and regional
Images courtesy of R. Land
.
“Jiffy Feet” are familiar to all Jaxsons even if they don’t know the name. It’s the accepted local designation for that beautiful layer of dirt and asphalt acquired from walking around barefoot, as when your hankering for a Squishee at the neighborhood convenience store doesn’t quite abrogate your desire to avoid shoes at all costs. This colorful colloquialism is specific to the First Coast, and speaks enough to stereotypes of Florida’s shoe-shirking rednecks, beach bums, water kids, and unwindulaxers that it has become iconic.
Jiffy Feet are named for the erstwhile regional convenience store chain Huntley’s Jiffy Stores, better known simply as Jiffy stores. The Orange Park-based business was founded in 1965 by Louis and William Huntley, and grew to include 342 stores in North Florida and southern Georgia by the time the brothers sold it in 1990. The stores were so prolific, and their name so apt, that “Jiffy” became a generic term for this kind of shop in the First Coast.
The phrase “Jiffy Feet” dates at least to the 1980s, and has seen an upswing in popularity in the 21st century. It became a source of artistic inspiration in 2008, when R. Land, a Jacksonville-born artist now based in Atlanta, created a memorable “Jiffy Feet” installation series that popped up all across Jacksonville. The project featured black-soled wooden feet crafted in the artist’s characteristic vivid, cartoony style. The pieces first appeared on Riverside telephone poles, and eventually came in hundreds of variations.
Jiffy Snowman. Image courtesy of R. Land
Land, who often incorporates Jacksonville imagery in his work, sees his feet as celebrating something distinctive about life on the First Coast. The pieces brought wider attention to Jiffy Feet, particularly after Folio Weekly and the local blogosphere covered them in 2009. Other instances of Jiffy Feet entering the public consciousness include the photo website Jiffyfeet.com and a beer at Jacksonville Beach’s Green Room Brewing. Jiffy Feet have become ingrained in local culture like so much blacktop on Jaxsons’ collective soles.
8. The Bardin Booger: The First Coast’s Premier Skunk Ape
Bardin and Palatka
Image courtesy of Lena Crain.
The Skunk Ape – Florida’s version of Bigfoot – has been a prominent feature of Florida folklore for decades. Perhaps the most colorful member of this evasive species is the one who patrols the pine woods around the tiny logging community of Bardin, about 10 miles from Palatka. Metro Jacksonville, meet the Bardin Booger.
Bud’s Grocery. Katie Delaney
Sightings began decades ago, but took off in the 1970s. Early stories are typical Bigfoot fare: a hirsute, humanoid monster vexing folks in the woods. Locals swapped yarns about it at Bud’s Grocery, an unassuming shop and filling station that qualifies as Bardin’s center of town. Owned by Bud Key since 1966, it’s the only game in town for provisions, gas, and home-cooked cryptozoology.
The first Bardin Booger article. Katie Delaney
Bardin’s Skunk Ape left the realm of local lore when the Palatka Daily News reported on it in 1981. Needing something for an intern columnist to write about, publisher Jody Delzell suggested the Bardin monster. He’d heard the stories but considered them little more than a creative way for teen boys to convince girls to go “exploring” in the woods. Delzell dubbed the creature the “Bardin Booger” – “booger” meaning “boogieman.” The column was a big hit, to the point AP News and various other outlets picked up the story. Suddenly, Bardin and its Booger were national news.
Monster hunters poured into Bardin as sightings jumped to 2o a month, no doubt aided by pranksters. Bud’s Grocery quickly became Booger headquarters. Bud Key, who still runs the store with wife Norma and daughter Karen Moore, added Booger T-shirts and merchandise to the shelves (they’re currently sold out, but plan to restock pending demand). The Keys hang frame Booger stories in the window and still maintain a “Booger file” collecting all the news clippings the notorious critter has generated.
Jody Delzell adopted the Booger for his own Daily News column, writing dozens of pieces over the years. Delzell casts “Boog” as an ancient wanderer trying to make his way in this modern world. Mainly, however, Boog is a satirical device who vocalizes opinions Delzell would never print in his own voice.
Mr. Bardin Booger, Bardin is your home
And every day, you love to roam
Runnin’ through the bushes and runnin’ through the trees,
Mr. Bardin Booger, don’t you get me, please.
“Bardin Booger,” by Billy Crain
However, credit for keeping the Booger alive really belongs to Lena and Billy Crain of Palatka. Billy, who passed away in 1992, recorded a “Bardin Booger” song that became a bar favorite, and Lena later wrote a followup, “The Bardin Booger’s Christmas Wish.” Deciding “Ole Boog” should be available for appearances, the Crains devised a costume: a gorilla suit enhanced with long ears and big feet. Donning this getup, Lena has been a hot commodity at parades and festivals for over 30 years. Now 74, she still suits up when duty calls.
Image courtesy of Lena Crain
Today, the Bardin Booger is more a mascot for the Palatka community than the folkloric menace of old. Everyone I spoke to confirms that no one has encountered the “real” Booger in many years. Despite this absence of new sightings, the legend continues in Lena Crain’s appearances, Jody Delzell’s columns, and the conversations at Bud’s Grocery. What keeps it all going? As anthropologist David Daegling wrote, “maybe the Booger lives on for the simple fact that people want him around.”
Article by Bill Delaney