UT and Plant Museum,
Feb. 29, 2008
Today, Verna (of the SPIRITS) and I went to Plant Hall Museum today. It's a leap year, and today is the day, so does that make thing any different on the spectral level? Maybe!
We did learn the history of UT. It started out at the Tampa Bay (Plant) Hotel, built in 1891. According to the pamphlet, "The Tampa Bay Hotel: The Victorian Railroad Resort that Defined the Elegant Frontier" Henry Bradly Plant , founder of the Plant System of railroads, steamships and hotels, built the hotel. He saw it as a Moorish palace, which was designed to emphasize its exotic locale. The hotel cost $2.5 million to build and another half-million to furnish. The hotel was the most modern of its day with electric lighting, private baths, telephones and elevators. Steel building materials and concrete floors also made it nearly fireproof. People who stayed at the hotel spent $5 a night.
The Tampa Bay Hotel offered a variety of activities to entertain guests, including hunting, fishing, golf, tennis, horse racing, dancing, boating and swimming. Open December to April, the hotel was a respite from the frozen north.
The Tampa Bay Casino was built in 1896, and it was one of the first performing arts center. John Philip Sousa, Anna Pavlova, Booker Washington, Ignace Paderwski, Sara Bernhardt, Nellie Melba, and Minnie Madden Fiske were among the first celebrities who appeared.
The hotel operated for 40 years and hosted guests such as Babe Ruth, Thomas Edison, Teddy Roosevelt, Clara Barton, Winston Churchill, Frederic Remington, Gloria Swanson, Richard Harding Davis, John Astor, Stephen Crane, Majorie Douglas, Grover Cleveland and many others.
It was eventually sold to the city of Tampa and operated as a convention center for a while. Eventually, the hotel was converted into its current location as a University.
Since then, reports of haunting activity include a number of areas. The Library film vault actually contains ashes from former patrons, McKay Hall, one of the minarets, the Ratskellar, the mail room and Plant Hall.
Personal stories reported to me include:
Mail room, activity at night including items and papers moving and intense cold breezes. One student, a non-believer in ghosts, set up an experiment and challenged the entity. He returned to find the things that he set up, including a bulletin board tacked up with papers, scattered all over the room.
McKay Hall: Movement and the sound of marbles rolling across the floor.
Ratskellar: Unknown, but alleged to be haunted.
Plant Hall: Personal Experience: Going on the main stairwell during summer session, I walked through a "cold spot" between the first and second floors. There is no central a/c in the Hall and the temperature was remarkably high in the building (the individual classrooms do have wall units). I stopped immediately and turned around to find the cold spot -- it was gone. Doors are also reported to open and close, and there are reportedly sounds of things dropping. Henry Plant is also said to manifest in the area. Vague reports of activity on the 3rd and 4th floors of "feeling watched."
Minaret: One SPIRITS member went up into a minaret and felt a cold breeze around her legs.
The Library has been alluded to as being very haunted, but no known description has been offered.
Today, Verna and I went to the Plant Museum. I brought my EMF meter and digital camera. We watched the 14 minute historical video, and then toured the Museum. The EMF meter was useless as there was too much electrical wiring in the area. She found three rooms of high activity, pictured below. Only one orb showed up on one cabinet that Verna specifically picked up as having "a lot of energy". I took several shots in a row of the cabinet; one showed up with an orb the others did not.
We then walked up the second, third and fourth floors. On the way down the main stairwell, on the landing between the third floor going onto the second floor, she also saw something move out of the corner of her eye. We stopped to take images and there was nothing near her, but there were orbs (sigh) in the hallway.
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Today was such a brilliant day to do a tour of the Henry B. Plant museum in Tampa, Florida. Brandy Stark and I took a tour of this particular museum and viewed a 14 minute reel about the history of this old hotel/university. This building is rich in history due to the wonderful occupants that it held during it's time. To note a few, Theodore Roosevelt, John Phillip Sousa and George Washington Carver. The small museum is designed to look as if the hotel did when it first opened in 1891.
Once inside the museum we started at the end of the hallway and worked our way back up to the front. The first room we entered had a lot of antiques. There was a beautiful cabinet up against the wall. Noted that there was a TV there running some footage of the hotel history, I began to pick up a lot of energy there. The energy there was so strong that it was causing my hand to ache. It was such a beautiful display of diversity in art during the late 1800's, early 1900's.
Another room I felt a lot of energy in was the Spanish-American War room. This room had a lot of artifacts, including hand written letters and uniforms that were worn. I cannot tell you where the energy was coming from in this room, but it was very strong. Another room that held intense energy was The Writing Room. It was very neat to see all the desks lined up with their fine writing instruments, books and newspaper. The Virginian Pilot was one of the newspapers laid out on the desks. It reminded be of being back home in Virginia.
The third and final room that I felt energy in was the Sitting Room. It contained fantastic antique furniture and a huge umbrella style lamp. Once again there was a huge amount of energy. Could this be residual from way back when? The energy that I was receiving seemed to be positive. I felt as if that energy was during the time things were blissful and the hotel reigned.
While Brandy and I cruised the campus I walked into a real hot spot of energy on the third floor staircase. At the base of the staircase I was picking up a huge amount of energy. There are stories that this building has some haunts of it's own. This made me believe even more that what I was experiencing was real. Brandy took a snap, in that area, but no real orbs and such were witnessed. We did manage to go down the hall on that floor and were able to pick up some orb activity on film.
Last but not least we tried to get into the little pub in the basement. Upon arriving it had already closed for the day. I had such a blast visiting one of Tampa's historical and (well known) paranormal hot spots!
Area where Verna sensed intense energy, namimg the cabinet in specific. The TV in the bottom of the cabinet made EMF impossible to use. First shots had no orbs, I moved back and took the shot to the left, with two additional follow up shots (one to the right). Orb appeared only once and I tried to take the shots as quickly as my camera would allow.
The Spanish - American War Room:
There is a little known five month war that took place in 1898 between Spain and America over Cuba. Teddy Roosevelt (of the Rough Riders) was one of the commanders of this excursion. Plant used his influence to make Tampa the headquarters of the war effort, and the Tampa Bay Hotel was the place to house soldiers. The count at the time was 20,000 horses and mules, 30, 000 soldiers, and at least a press corp of 122. For the first time in its history, the hotel was filled to capacity. Not everyone enjoyed Tampa, though. The "soldier" (in authentic uniform) below represented a home sick young mane who wrote letters home to his mother. One thing he complained about was the 110 degree heat that hit Tampa that summer. The figure actually does not move, but the letters and uniform, as well as the other clothes in the room, are authentic. Verna felt an intense energy as we walked by the room the first time, and again when we went in. The "push" button at the "soldier's" feet gives an audio reading of the actual letters he sent home to his mother, which were housed in a cabinet (not pictured).
The Writing Room: No real history other than replicas and originals of old newspapers from the late 1890's. Verna felt an intense energy here as well.
The Ladies' Parlor: No real history, other than a funky lamp, but Verna also felt a lot of energy in here.
Verna at UT. (Plant is the man in the portrait behind her).
Walking the campus: On the way out, Verna saw something moving out of the corner of her eye that she described as a shadow figure "trying to get out of the way." No orbs appeared in the immediate area, but did in the shots of the hallway afterwards (likely dust, though the campus was pretty well deserted on Friday). This is near the same area where I walked through the cold spot (I was on the stairwell ascending to this flight of stairs).
(Walking closer to the archway).
Another area of alleged haunting; we tried to go in but it was locked.
Permission given to post:
Hi, Brandy!
I went to UT back in '89 (does that date me?). There's quite a bit
of activity going on in some of the places you visited.
The cleaning staff would not go above the 2nd floor of Plant Hall
after dark. The only night classes held in the building were on the
2nd floor or the 3rd floor right next to the stairs. The one time I
had to go above the 2nd floor after dark - I got locked out of my
shared bathroom and my suitemates were gone - I went up to the 4th
floor men's room - the only one open - and it was a pretty creepy
experience. The sensation of being watched in the halls and in the
restroom was almost overpowering. I was glad to be able to get out
of there and down the stairs in a hurry.
For the record, I'm mildly "sensitive" if you will. I tend to get
headaches that "point" toward sources of energy. I could take
classes in Plant Hall on the 2nd floor just fine, but on the 3rd
floor, I'd get headaches pointing straight up. On the 4th floor, it
was a nasty pounding from all directions. I never did go up to the
5th floor attic rooms.
The 5th floor attic was divided into three non-connecting sections
with separate stairs for each. Rumor has it that Mr. Plant used to
practice *ahem* "black magic" in the attic. Be that as it may, the
headaches above the 3rd floor were really bad - and this was before I
found out about the rumor. Incidentally, did you notice the finials
on top of the minaret steeples? Many of them are traditional black
magic sybmols. Interesting? Kinda. Convincing? Nah.
There was another ongoing incident in one of the dorm buildings. I
forget the name of the building (it's been almost *gulp* twenty
years!), but it was one of the two five-storey towers right on JFK
Blvd. (across from the Plant Theatre - also rumored to be haunted by
Mrs. Plant's ghost). It was the building furthest from the street.
The incident started with a mirror on the fourth floor of the dorm.
A guy I knew and his roommate began noticing a "strange black thing"
in the corner of the mirror in their bathroom. Then they started
experiencing paralysis as the Thing superimposed itself over their
faces. They started bringing people in - people they hadn't spoken
to about the incident - and asking them to see if they noticed
anything weird in the bathroom. After getting positive responses
from others that pretty much matched what they'd experienced, they
called in their Resident Advisor, who called in the head of student
housing. The two guys were relocated. Then they made the mistake of
trying to contact the Thing with *ahem* yes, a ouija board.
To make a long story short, the incidents escalated on the 4th floor -
including apparitions, cold spots, malfunctioning lights - until the
University had to relocate the entire 4th floor to hotel rooms across
the river for a few weeks until things apparently died down. Sadly,
I missed most of this; I only found out about it after my friend had
been relocated, and by that point things were on the wane.
The only incident I had personally was when I went to take a walk
past the dorm to see if I "picked up" anything. By that point the
4th floor was empty, so there were no lights or anything that could
be seen from the ground. I was a little disappointed - no glaring
eyes or phantom lights. Anyway, I walked up to JFK Blvd. and turned
left along the sidewalk heading to the main entrance of the campus.
I had to walk past about a dozen streetlamps on my way. As I passed
under each one, it went dark, then came back on after I reached the
next one. All of them did it in sequence, and only after I got to
the lamppost. Given that the Thing on the 4th floor had a habit of
extinguishing lights, it was kind of creepy!
Anyway, it's good to see that Tampa is getting some attention. I
don't really know of anything that's happened since then, but it was
interesting while I was there!
