Just a collection of stories from today’s St. Petersburg Times that caught my eye.

Writer Jerry Blizin revisits the stories he wrote about Mary Reeser back in 1951. Reeser is arguably the best documented and best known example of the non-phenomenon known as “spontaneous human combustion.” What’s interesting is that the FBI got it right at the time:

“Once the body became ignited almost complete destruction occurred from its own fatty tissues,” the FBI reported, adding that the absence of any scorching or adjacent damage was due to the fact that “heat liberated by the burning body has a tendency to rise and form a layer of hot air which never came in contact with the furnishings on the lower level.”

That’s the wick effect, since proven to be the unusual circumstance behind most of the so called spontaneous human combustion cases. Even though this good explanation has been around for more than 50 years, Reeser still shows up all the time in paranormal literature as a “mysterious” case.

Then there’s the story about a Marine reservist who attacked a priest with a tire iron. The priest, who was attacked for no other reason than pure xenophobia, reportedly doesn’t want to press charges because he wants to practice “biblical forgiveness.” I’m not sure what that means legally, but I hope the reservist is still prosecuted. Forgiveness is terrific thing to give to those who are repentant, but I’d hate to think that the priest’s interpretation of his Christian beliefs is going to allow a clearly dangerous man stay free to visit more violence on innocent people.

Finally, there’s a new bar called Club Sinn over by Williams Park, and they’re getting ready to feature scantily clad dancers. No real skeptical angle here, but I have to call attention to the following, regarding whether or not these dancers will make the bar an “adult business”:

What about a bikini, from a legal point of view? “Generally, I would say that a bikini is not a violation. There are small bikinis that are smaller than other bikinis, and those might be a violation,” said Mark Winn, the city’s chief assistant attorney. “You almost have to look at them on a case-by-case basis.”

I’m thinking that the city won’t have much trouble finding selfless public servants willing to look at each and every one of those bikinis. In context.

The unseasonable heat we’ve been suffering through here in St. Pete broke last Friday, finally making it feel like fall, or as close to fall as you feel surrounded by trees that stay green year round. Time to go on a ghost tour!

Ghost tours are traditional in many cities across the country. St. Petersburg is a relatively young city, so it doesn’t have ghost stories that go back to colonial times, or even the Civil War. In fact, most of the stories I heard on this year’s tour were post-1980, if they had historical truth to them at all. I went on a tour put on by GhostTour.net, which leaves from the Full Monty Cafe downtown. The guide was a friendly woman named Laurie, who was wearing a cape and skull earrings. There were about 25 other people on the tour the night I went.

Basically, Laurie took us on a mile long hike to the oldest buildings still extant in downtown. At each stop she talked a bit about the history and significance of the building, and then followed up with some creepy tales about ghosts or other mysterious happenings. Most of the stories ended with the equivalent of a wink, as if she were letting us in on a joke.

Perhaps the most interesting story was attached to the Detroit Hotel, the oldest and arguably the most historically important building downtown, built by the city’s founder John Constantine Williams. In 1981, workmen knocked down a partition to an unused portion to the building’s attic and found a portrait of a man that appeared to date back to at least the early part of the 20th century. The find was reported in the local paper along with a request for information as to whom it portrayed. A couple weeks later, the paper printed a follow-up that came to no firm conclusions. However, Laurie told a story that took the identification of “the Captain” and ran with it. She claimed that some nights when there is a concert at Jannus Landings (a venue that is essentially a courtyard the hotel overlooks) people will see a shadowy figure in old timey clothes on one of the balconies of the hotel, watching the ladies, as the Captain was wont to do. I can attest to seeing mysterious shadowy figures while at Jannus Landings, but they might have been attributable to the fact that I was at a Meatloaf concert, and some of the other concertgoers were smoking what can only be described as a heroic amount of weed.

The next stop was the Ponce De Leon Hotel, currently host to the tapas restaurant Ceviche. At one point, the hotel, by virtue of having a basement (nonresidents can be excused for finding that odd) was used as a morgue, so all kinds of creepy things happened there. Mysterious attacks, falling bottles, suicides (including that of Thom Street, who was mentioned in the first newspaper story about the Detroit Hotel portrait), and even hints of conspiracy. Laurie did tell one story I suspected was a complete fabrication, about the mysterious death of an elderly resident of the hotel. It sounded suspiciously like a conflation of the story of Mary Reeser (St. Pete’s famous spontaneous human combustion victim) and Norma Desmond.

The final two stops on the tour were the Fine Arts Museum (no ghosts, but maybe a curse) and The Vinoy resort. The latter is supposed to be home to a Lady in White, which is such a standard feature in ghost stories that I wonder if it’s mandated by the afterlife entity union, and some stories involving baseball players that showed up in Haunted Baseball.

I enjoy these kinds of tours, so long as the whole paranormal angle isn’t pushed too hard. Laurie did encourage us to take pictures and look for orbs, but I suspect that was a just a little theater. I may be projecting, but I don’t think she took the whole ghost thing very seriously. I didn’t get any history of the area I didn’t know already (I take history tours on a regular basis, too), but the stories were amusing. If you’re in the area and would like to have a pleasant evening out, tickets are available at this website. They’re doing tours every night until at least Halloween.