ORLANDO, FL – June 9 2015:Historic Church Street.Located in Downtown Orlando Florida on June 9 2015.; Shutterstock ID 286361975; name: Deb Wenof; Client: Marriott Traveler; Publication: Marriott Traveler Orlando; Story ID: Haunted Orlando. Who Knew?
Synchronicity is so often a trickster that catches you by complete surprise. This one happened when Rob and I recently visited our daughter in Orlando and attended one of her Paint Nite classes. This one was actually on a Saturday afternoon at one of our favorite venues – Schumann’s, a German bar and restaurant.
We usually arrive early so we can grab a bite to eat beforehand, find choice seats, and help Megan and her assistant with their setup. This time, they had 40 students registered and were short a couple of canvases, so Rob drove back to Megan’s place to pick up some extras.
Around 12:45, other people started arriving, and a young woman and her dad sat across from Rob and me. The woman, Stephanie, and I started talking about Orlando’s old buildings. The city was founded in 1885, long before Walt Disney arrived, and some of the older places are known to be haunted. She mentioned that when she used to work for American Ghost Adventures, located just down the street from where we were, she got to know some of these old buildings very well.
As soon as she mentioned this ghost hunting outfit she had worked for, my antenna twitched. Take Harry Buffalo’s, she said. I knew the place. It’s another of Megan’s venues for Paint Nite, where the class is held in that downstairs area in the middle of the building. See the second floor?
Back in the late 1800s, the building housed a bar on the first floor and an infamous brothel on that second floor. Stephanie used to lead tours of the second floor and says it’s haunted by some of the women who worked in the brothel – and their babies. During one tour, she encountered the ghost of a man who used to toss the infants of the brothel women into the street from a second floor window or door.
When I Googled haunted places in Orlando, Florida, reams of links appear, but most of them are related to Halloween, that time of year when people believed in spooks and things that go bump in the night. Harry Buffalo’s, though, located at 129 West Church Street, seems to be a hub for spooks.
In the dozens of Paint Nite classes we’ve attended, we’ve never sat across anyone who brought up the subject of ghosts or who had worked for a ghost hunting company or who had ever heard of Cassadaga. But it turned out that Stephanie led ghost hunting tours in Cassadaga and had some terrific stories about spirits she had communicated with in the Cassadaga Hotel. Here’s the photo she sent me that was taken in the hotel:
The synchronicity for this incident is that Rob and I currently have a proposal circulating about spirit contact. This seems to bode well for a sale!
That picture is spooky, all right. Of course your proposal will be successful! 🙂
Yeah, spooky, all right!
I wonder if most cities with historical areas like this are haunted.
Probably!