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Sunday, October 5, 2008
The haunting season is here! After reading John Marc Carr's informative book, Haunted Fort Lauderdale, I decided to take the next step--I went on his ghost tour. I gathered my friends Kathy, Yaddyra and Lou (I was too scared
to go alone) and we met up with Carr and other locals and tourists in front of the Cheesecake Factory one Saturday night in
July. Our first stop was the Stranahan House.
I discovered that
Carr goes into even more detail on the tour than he does in the book. For example, Carr brought an EVP (Electronic Voice
Phenomena) player with him, and allowed us to listen to Ivy Stranahan's ghostly voice. He also goes into more detail
about the history of the various locations-we learned much about a young woman named Pink who died in the Stranahan house,
jilted by her two-timing husband. While the book briefly touched on the incident, on the tour, Carr's detailed account
made us feel the pain of the poor young woman's final hours as he described her bleeding to death after childbirth.
A couple odd things happened on the tour. First, a teenage
girl among us fainted in front of the Stranahan House, just as Carr was beginning to tell us about the ghost of Ivy Stranahan.
Yaddyra and Lou claim it was odd how she fainted-it was in slow motion, as if some unseen force was gently lowering her to
the ground. At the King Cromartie House, which is said to be haunted by a "pink lady," several members of our group
claim to have seen the curtains moving slightly. I have to say I didn't see anything I couldn't chalk up to an air
conditioning vent, but Carr explained that on a previous tour, people saw the curtains open more dramatically, as if by unseen
hands. A video of this can be seen on Carr's MySpace page.
Can I tell you first hand that Fort Lauderdale is haunted?
Nope. But I can tell you this--a dinner out on Las Olas Boulevard will never be the same for me. --Susan Parsons 
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| (Image from a Florida postcard) |
Weblinks to follow the weather:
www.nhc.noaa.gov - This is the official site of the National Hurricane Center. It's probably the most "official" site on the web,
so if you have trust issues, go here. They've improved over time, most notably with better maps and a new small news feed
at the top. In the past, their maps have been less definitive, with a huge cone, especially for slow-moving storms. Their
text descriptions are also very technical and dense. Plus, the site's not as colorful, and we all like colors, don't we?
www.wunderground.com/tropical/ - This is Weather Underground's tropical weather site. They are good if you want easy access to a wide range of information,
including things like the "historical" diagram which shows how similar past storms have moved. They have a good
variety of computer models (which are lacking on the NHC), and they're very easy to navigate. They're also the best source
I know of for hurricane blogging - Dr. Jeff Masters blogs about tropical activity pretty consistently, although if you're
a complete beginner he may seem a bit jargonish. Plus, they're the best location for hurricane news if you're trying to "one-stop
shop" for weather info at your mansion on Fisher Island, your home in the Hamptons, the Manhattan apartment, the London
flat and the Chateau on the Loire. On the con side, they are a commercial entity, so there are ads around the site.
www.skeetobiteweather.com - These guys have very clear diagrams that show not just where the storm will go, but how strong it will be in different
locations. They're also good for more minor systems, as they show details "investigation areas" that may develop
into depressions, which neither the NHC nor Weather Underground does. Their historical records, previously the least complete,
have been updated to include all storms since 2008, bringing them up to par with the others on that front. They have a slightly
wider variety of computer models than Weather Underground, though you need to visit both sites to see all of them. They can
be a bit slow in updating (they normally have a 45-minute to an hour lag in updating after the NHC, as compared to Weather
Underground's 5-minute lag), but that's because they end up presenting much more information with their diagrams. They come
across as no-frills, with their relatively plain layout and lack of things like "wind history" that the other two
throw in. --James Barrett-Morison
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Winners of the 2009 Florida Book Awards Children's Literature Gold
Medal: Joan Hiatt Harlow, Secret of the Night Ponies
Florida Nonfiction Gold Medal: Jack E. Davis, An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century
Silver
Medal: Carlton Ward, Jr., Florida Cowboys Bronze Medal: Todd
T. Turrell, Naples Waterfront—Changes in Time General Fiction Gold Medal: N.M. Kelby, A
Travel Guide for Reckless Heart.
Silver Medal: Janet Burroway, Bridge of
Sand
Bronze Medal: Ana Menendez, The Last War A. Manette
Ansay, Good Things I Wish You
Michael Lister, Double
Exposure
Popular Fiction Gold Medal:
Glynn Marsh Alam, Moon Water Madness
Silver Medal: Diane A.S. Stuckart,
Portrait of a Lady: A Leonardo DaVinci Mystery
Bronze Medal: Jonthon
King, The Styx
Chris Kuznecki, The Lost Throne
Tim Dorsey, Nuclear Jellyfish
Poetry Gold Medal: Campbell McGrath, Shannon
Silver
Medal: Denise Duhamel, Ka-Ching!
Bronze Medal: Jesse Millner,
Neighborhoods of My Past Sorrow
Peter Meinke, Lines
from Neuchatel
Spanish
Language Book Gold Medal: Juan Cueto-Roig, Veintiún cuentos concisos
Silver Medal: José Álvarez, País y la revolución cubana Young Adult Literature
Gold Medal: Alex Sanchez, Bait
Silver Medal: Rick Yancey, The Monstrumentologist
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