LONGWATER CASTLE
Location: Longwater is a train stop and tourist town on the Florida coast five miles west of Port Charlotte. Longwater Castle is on a small marshy island two miles off the coast of Charlotte Bay. It is nearly inaccessible private property and trespassers are not welcome.
Description of Place: A once modernized and restored Spanish fortress, the neglected edifice is four stories atop three levels of caves and catacombs on roughly three and a square miles of land adjacent to a boat dock. It once included a library, grand hall, furnished bedrooms and a laboratory loft for medical research. A local generator supplied power, but there is no running water. The structure was maintained up until 1973 and intermittently through the 80s but now sits as a derelict structure.
Ghostly Manifestations: In 1973, Sondra Grey, a newspaper journalist, published her father's ghost stories, seventy-four varying tales about ghosts and walking undead all centered around Longwater Castle, a nearly forgotten local landmark with a varied and complex past. Her father, Wilbur Grey, a retired railroad baggage clerk., had claimed the stories were true, and the tales are possibly loosely based on real incidents and individuals, but Chet Young, her father's longtime "partner-in-crime," later warned Sondra against taking the stories at face value, later claiming that Wilbur was "full of the business." Interestingly enough, Wilbur Grey's creative stories began shortly after a time of a alleged "werewolf-sighting" hoax on Halloween 1948.
What is known is that Wilbur's first contact and fascination with Longwater Castle came after visiting the castle while tracing misdirected packages sent by error to the island location. At the time, the castle was a scientific retreat and medical equipment as well as pathology cadavers were being delivered by boat to the castle. The castle was a perfect setting for uninterrupted research, but among the cadavers being sent to the location were two wax figures from France actually meant for the local McDougal Wax of Horror, now long since out of business. (After closing, much of McDougal's wax figures were sold to Franken Castle in Ohio.) Ironically, the misdirected figures were that of Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster, and it is the type of the figures, the atmosphere at Longwater Castle and the time of the season which might have inspired Grey's fanciful, allegedly true stories that have made Longwater possibly haunted.
According to the late Wilbur Grey, who died in 1959, Longwater Castle was "the most haunted ghost capital in the world." Each room had its own ghost, each ghost had its own sound. His fireside tales read with the simplicity of the Brothers Grimm and the intensity of Stephen King. The marshes and trees around the stone and brick foundation conceal shadowy apparitions lurking in the darkness. Professor Leonard Stevens can confirm part of this tale. He does recall seeing a massive cadaverous form lurching out of the darkness just behind Grey and Young running to catch his boat departing the island back then, but when pressed for details, he explains that he is a medical doctor and not much of a story-teller. Today, boaters and fishermen in Charlotte Bay claim that they can see as many as ten to twenty shadows flitting through the scant sunlight piercing the marsh at the island, but whether it is the local animal life or something more otherworldly is undetermined.
Grey claimed that the castle often resonated with screams and shrill cries echoing up through the ramparts and up out of the towers. The castle had been built atop caves cut into passages into the foundation and it is in these sunken and damp catacombs that ghosts pace back and forth and gruesome specters rattle from rusted chains bolted to the walls. It is also inhabited by bats hiding in the dark recesses, and it could be the sounds that they make often heard in the structure.
The stars of Grey's ghost stories are almost as varied as his stories. One of his characters is Laurence Talbot, possibly named after the legendary 1894 character who became a werewolf in Late 19th Century England but likely based on an amalgamation of people from Grey's life, including himself and Chet Young. According to Grey, Talbot knew the ghosts of the castle intimately and experienced the gamut of phenomenon there. In one tale, Grey was sleeping in a huge half-ton oak bed that lifted itself off the floor and tried to project itself off a balcony. In another, Grey is awakened by "a wall of voices attacking him at once" and rushes out into the upstairs main hall to witness a crowd of ghostly pirates (or Spanish Conquistadors depending on the version) wandering down the staircase, through the catacombs and out into the marsh.
In one story, Grey is rowing back to the castle with supplies when a spectral sailor rises up from the bay, hitches a ride with him and then vanishes into the island. The sailor supposedly describes being on a pirate ship sunk in the bay by the French Armada. Shadowy figures are supposedly constant in the castle. Young and Grey reportedly saw the ghost of a Dracula-like figure staring down from a balcony and ordering them to depart the castle before vanishing. From there, Grey's stories become more fantastic and unbelievable for serious researchers to accept as Talbot becomes a "werewolf-hero" battling the undead creations of Count Dracula.
Regardless of the veracity of Wilbur Grey's collective fictions, local paranormal enthusiasts still row out to the sinking castle to search for ghosts, but their stories are not as incredible as those born from the imagination of the former railroad baggage clerk. Photos of orbs, possible EVPs and photos of shadowy figures have occurred at the island. The book, "Longwater Tales," compiled by Sondra Grey's memories of her father's tales, is considered fiction rather than a true account of legitimate hauntings. However, shortly after the book came out, Sondra Grey received a lengthy letter from a Herman Munster from Mockingbird Heights, California confirming at least some of the reputed hauntings. Munster had never been to the castle, but his Cousin Johann reportedly knew Wilbur Grey as well as a genuine Laurence Talbot who briefly lived at the castle. Oddly, neither Chet Young or Dr. Leonard Stevenson recall anyone named Johann or Laurence Talbot connected to the castle so just where this man fits into the genuine history of the castle in unrevealed.
History: Constructed sometime in the late 16th Century, Longwater Castle was built by Spanish Conquistadors to defend the bay from the French, but it was deserted by 1780 in the wake of the Seven Years War. The location of the castle off the mainland seems to be the reason it was never incorporated as a landmark or resident since it wasn't until the local railroad was laid in the early Eighteenth Century that the town of Longwater became more than just a port of call. It remained practically uninhabited until 1945 when Dr. Vladimir Laos, an East European scientist, acquired legal custody of the castle and had it restored and modernized as a scientific retreat. It is probably Dr. Laos with his Rumanian heritage and aristocratic bearing who reminded Wilbur Grey of the legendary Count Dracula. Among the doctors doing research at the island was Dr. Leonard Stevens and the notorious Dr. Sondra Mornay, the female "Butcher of Paris" wanted by Interpol for questionable experiments on the French homeless. In 1948, the castle was also distantly connected to the police investigation of a Halloween party guest nearly mauled by a man in a werewolf mask.
After Laos departed from the area, Stevens tried to keep the retreat going, but by 1953, he was no longer interested in maintaining the location. No one knows exactly what happened to Laos or Mornay, but the castle again fell derelict and neglected by the elements. Since 1967, the castle has changed custody in some form or another between willing and unwilling owners unsure what to do with it. Before his death in 1974, Chet Young tried to gain legal custody of the castle to capitalize off Wilbur's stories and give tours, but never quite gained support to do so. Today, the old castle and the island around it is undeclared property subject to hurricanes and vandals.
Identity of Ghosts: Spanish Conquistadors? Drowned sailors? Vampiric Apparitions? The identity of the spirits depends on the veracity of the stories and legends purported by Wilbur Grey still as yet unsupported by the known history of the castle.
Source/Comments: "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948), Phenomenon and history loosely based upon Waverly Hills Sanatorium near Waverly Hills, Kentucky and Beatty Castle near Basking Ridge, New Jersey.