BOOK
REVIEW
Freaky Florida is a frightening collection of
true stories about Florida’s hidden history.
Authors Mark Muncy and Kari Schultz share
their discoveries from a 3,500 mile journey
across, down, and around the Sunshine State
without ever leaving it.
This collection of myths, monsters, massacres
and legends will leave you gasping for more.
Forget the beaches and world-famous attractions.
Use this book like a travel guide and pack your
bags for bone-chilling adventure in your home
state.
The authors ran a haunted house – Hellview
Cemetery (a charity haunted house in central
Florida that was so infamous it was banned by
the city of St. Petersburg) – for 20 years, and
based their entire haunted attraction on
local lore and legends collected throughout
Florida.
Their last book, “Eerie Florida:
Chilling Tales from the Panhandle to the
Keys” was published in 2017 and focused
on their, “creatively
embellished legends for the
haunted house.”
This book moves from one
extraordinarily dark fact to
another, giving us everything
from “The Devil’s School” in
Jacksonville to “The Ghosts of
the Oldest City” in St. Augustine
to the “I-4 Dead Zone” near Lake
Monroe, and countless more. Having a lifelong
thirst for horror, each of the authors have a background
that suggests they not only write about
horror, legends, and the supernatural, but also live
it in their everyday. Despite these lifelong exposures,
one of the tales seemed to surprise and
frighten people more so than others.
“The story that just keeps getting scarier and
scarier is The Dozier School for Boys,” they said.
“We went looking for ghost stories just as everything
broke (in the news) about the abuse and
the extra bodies discovered there. Talking to
survivors amongst The White House Boys would
give anyone nightmares.”
They are always searching for the next story
and are, as they say, “motivated by curiosity and a
sense of wonder.”
“What started all of this was me trying to use
local folklore in our charity haunted attraction
Hellview Cemetery,” the couple said. “When we
realized there were five or six different versions
of the legend of Minnie Lights in St. Petersburg
we had to dig in and find the truth behind the
legend.”
Florida even has its own version of Sasquatch,
circa 1918 Lakeland. The Native Americans of the
area talked of the Wild Man of the Swamp, who
roamed through the heart of this area. The settlers
talked of great bears that walked like men,
creatures that would often harass the cattle.
Some would talk of terrible smell of death and
Freaky
Florida
A Book Review - By Jonathan Herbert