VASQUEZ CASTLE
Location: Old Vasquez Castle was located on Vasquez Island, a tiny island in Florida Bay between the Florida Keys and the mainland, once easily reached by boat from Islamorada, Florida.
Description: The old castle was a crumbling Spanish fortress seized in 1699 by Captain Eduardo Vasquez, a rather obscure pirate, buccaneer and adventurer known only for his ghost story. The island was once reported as up to a full acre in size, but storms and the ocean dwindled it down to only a few hundred square feet. The once impressive rock and stone structure had a drawbridge into a walled courtyard and an edifice with a nearly intact interior including fine Spanish tapestries, furniture and furnishings. There were few trees on the island, but a lot more overgrown foliage. Paths once lead from the castle on a slight elevation down to the beach. For years, legends claimed of a unconfirmed treasure buried on the beach.
Ghostly Manifestations:
For a once popular local haunted castle, there is actually an absence of ghostly
phenomenon reported beyond its reputation. All the so-called stories about
individuals seeing ghosts here are actually remarkably similar and they all
center on the passed down rumor of treasure supposedly buried on the tiny speck
of land.
All the ghost stories told about the island run roughly the same. One or a group of individuals usually land on the island at the beach and look for a depression where it looks like something has been buried. After they’ve been digging for a while, they hear a loud boisterous laughter from the castle or sometimes even see a wizened figure lurking in a window or in the opening to the courtyard. Some of the stories have the ghost screaming in Spanish and even once in English! The earliest version of this tale traces back to a 1937 Miami Herald newspaper account, but it has since been repeated often and and with little variation. The names, reasons and motivations may differ, but much like the tale of the ghostly hitch-hiker getting picked up by motorists or the ghostly children haunting train tracks and wiping baby powder from their fingertips, the story stays the same.
However, the 1937 article could hearken back to a much earlier 1864 tale printed in "A Confederate Soldier's Travels and Observations of the Civil War," a forgotten book of letters by deceased Civil War soldiers published into a manuscript. Only three copies are known to exist, one in the custody of the Sanders House Confederate Museum in North Carolina, the others by private collectors. In the tale, told by First Lieutenant Aaron Demarest Lincoln of the 31st Regional Platoon, a small band of soldiers patrolling through the waters off the shore took a brief stop at the castle while it was still in existence:
"We was on the bay at dusk when visibility started decreasing and we lost sight of shore. Eventually, we saw signs of land to our south and reckoned it to be an island, so we put ashore and in time started collecting firewood and establishing a base in the old ramparts there (Vasquez). We had full sight of the shore, but visibility had decreased and we could no longer see the mainland. After two hours of securing the (site) and establishing base, we had assigned duties and regular patrols. One man patrolled high ground around base camp and another scouted the beach.
"About midnight, our scout on the beach
reported he heard an intruder coming up the beach. I sent an extra man to keep
him company and another to accompany my man on the bluff. We then all took
defense as we did a reconnoiter of the island again tracking the man entering
our midst and trailed him back toward the area of the ramparts. Not once did we
make sight of our intruder, but we could trail him easily over the grounds by
the sound of his whereabouts through the bush. At one time, we came close enough
upon him to smell the sweet liquor on his breath, but no person was in sight of
us. We traced the figure from the far end of the beach back toward us and into
base, not once seeing our intruder. We searched the ramparts (entirely), but
found no other man in our company."
In 1969, four teens with their Great
Dane vacationing in nearby Key West were out water-skiing when their boat ran
aground on the island after nightfall. Camping out on the beach, they eventually
got it into their minds to explore the castle and were supposedly scared out by
a white apparition vanishing into walls and popping up all over the place.
On October 18, 1987, the United States Coast Guard was patrolling the island because they had information that the castle was being used to smuggle illegal materials into the United States. One officer saw a light in the top floor of the castle and they stormed it as they searched it from top to bottom. When nothing living turned up, they blamed the sighting on a reflection.
History: Vasquez Castle was built somewhere in between 1675 and 1683 for
an unknown figure in Spanish Royalty, but Count Eduardo Vasquez seized it for
himself. While there is no historical veracity to him ever legally being a
count, there is a good reason to believe he owned a ship and that as a pirate he
used it to invade any English, Dutch or French ships that happened to cross his
path. No records are left to indicate he was ever brought to justice, but it is
believed his ship went down in a storm somewhere near modern Puerto Rico.
His castle supposedly was left to his widow, Esmerelda Vasquez, until a supply ship in 1710 noticed her missing. Whether her husband carried her off is unknown, but since her existence was described only in a piece of fiction from 1863, she probably never really existed.
The castle, meanwhile, sat intact until the
American Civil War when Confederate soldiers tried to use it as a Naval post.
For most of this time, the castle was intact and liveable despite damage from
the elements. In 1969, entertainer Vincent Chaney, a former
stage illusionist and escape artist known as Bluestone the Great, wanted for
income tax evasion headed out to the island to live in secret. Aided by unnamed
supporters, he was possibly responsible for the flurry of ghostly lights
reported in the castle in that year before he was finally captured by the Coast
Guard.
However,
in 1971, a storm ruined part of the castle, and all the
furnishings and furniture were removed to protect them by the State of Florida
Preservation Society wanting to save the castle as a tourist spot. Less than a
year later, Hurricane Dennis, however, completely leveled the castle into ruins.
Identity of Ghosts: Conceivably, Eduardo Vasquez... Local legend claims he was guarding treasure buried or hidden near the castle or perhaps just trying to return home from his watery grave.
Comments: “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” (Episode “Hassle in the Castle”)
Loosely based on Hannah Place in Bethpage, Tennessee, Oak Island in Mahone Bay,
Nova Scotia and the legend of
Blackbeard's Ghost.