Paranormal Yakker

Interview on paranormal subject

Paranormal Yakker

Supernatural Sarasota

December 24, 2024 • Stan Mallow

Haunted Sarasota Trolley & Psychic Sunday Tours explores the supernatural and metaphysical sides of this vibrant Florida city; once the former winter home of Ringling Brother Circus. In her interview with Stan Mallow on Paranormal Yakker, Tammy Hauser takes us on a haunting journey through the city’s ghostly narratives; from the spirit of a hooker who still haunts the brothel in which she took her life to the infamous Mummy Murder case, which is still unsolved to this day. She also talks about the large metaphysical community that resides in Sarasota and all the spiritual experiences tourists can avail themselves of; such as having a magical sound bath at the historic Crocker Memorial Church.

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Hi everyone, I'm Stan Mallow.Welcome to Paranormal Yakker.My guest in today's show isTammy Hauser, founder and CEO ofDiscover Sarasota Tours. While hercompany organizesdifferent types of exciting tours,I will be focusing this interviewon her Haunted SarasotaTrolley and Psychic Sundays Tours.Tammy Hauser, welcome toParanormal Yakker.Thanks so much.Appreciate you inviting me on.Sarasota, Florida, once the winterhome of the Ringling Brothers Circus,is still a major touristattraction with its beautifulbeaches and vibrant culturalsense, and your tours have become amust-go fortourists visiting the area.What Tammy initially got youinvolved with the organizing oftours in Sarasota?I'm originally from Minneapolis,Minnesota, and I moved toSarasota 9 years ago,and at that time I was working asan arts consultant, sothat means I would work withtheater companies, dance companies,mostly in the education area,community programming.I've always loved to learn andexplore places, and I choseSarasota because we are the artscapital of Florida. We are known asthe Florida's cultural coast,but what surprised me was therewere no trolley tours. In thissightseeing town with so muchhistory, as you've mentioned withthe circus, we have a large Amishcommunity. So many unique andinteresting people have lived here,and there were no tours. Thatreally was the impetus to createtrolley tours that could tellthe story, the history, theinteresting aspects of Sarasota forvisitors, and also for residentswho live here full-time.Your Haunted Sarasota Trolley Tour is ahistorical ghost tour of thearea. While it's not a conventionalghost hunting tour per se, you doindeed talk about ghosts onit. Can you, Tammy, tell me aboutsome of those ghosts?All towns have ghosts, of course, becauseghosts are, as I believe, spirits.We all are energy, and I believevery much that we are spiritshaving a human experience. So itmakes sense that when we pass, thatenergy remains. And so what Ihave found is ghosts like to dowhat they did in life after they'vepassed. They'll often hangaround the home that they lived inor the bar that they frequented.And those stories are how weweave in the history of Sarasota.And as an arts community, we have alot of theaters. Ghosts lovetheaters. There's a lot of passionand energy that happens backstage,front stage, and oftentimesperformers, when they pass, theythink that they still work thereand they still show up in thecostume shop or in the audience orsometimes even on stage. And wehave quite a few of those storieswe tell. We also have a lot of barsand restaurants, and we have aghost called the ghost is thegooser. And apparently he was kindof a pervert in the days that hedid go to that bar. He liked topinch women as they went up thestaircase. And women who go upthose staircases now still reportbeing pinched or touched. Andthey're very surprised by that. Wehave some ghosts that arekind of naughty, some ghosts thatare harmless, some ghosts that areloving. We have a ghostcalled warm fuzzy. And he frequentsthe Florida studio theater. And theactors report that whenthey feel his presence, he's givingthem kind of a warm fuzzy hugbefore they go on stage. We havethe full gamut. We tell stories ofabout 40 different ghosts that weknow about that havebeen verified. And mostly they'rein the downtown Sarasota area.Sarasota has its share of famousmurders and they are covered on thetour. Could you, Tammy, share a fewof them?We start our tourwith a visit to the RosemaryCemetery, which is the secondoldest cemetery in Sarasota.And in that cemetery are many ofthe founders of Sarasota's veryold, over 100 years old, 150,some of the plots. Well, there's afamily called the Green family andit's a tragic sad story.But they came down from the north,as many people do. And somethinghappened to the dad. We don'tknow if he had a mental lapse,something happened. But in themiddle of thenight, he ended up takingan axe and chopping off the headsof his wife and the 2 smallchildren. And he ended up beingkilled by the sheriffs who didfinally find him. That whole familyis buried, the Green family,in the Rosemary Cemetery. Anothermurder that is unsolved, we callthe mummy murder.Frankly, it's my favorite. It's avery interesting story. There was afamily here in the 1950s whenSarasota was the celery capital ofthe world. You ask what possiblygrows in briny sand?Celery. And we were, that was ourbig export for a number of years.Well, there were a lot of wealthybusinessmen who got wealthy in thatindustry. And the parents of theyoung woman, that was his job.This young woman met this young manin high school. They were kind ofthe football king and thecheerleader romance. And they endedup getting married. And for allintents and purposes,were quite happy until the youngman went off to college andapparently was seeing other womendrinking, gambling, you know,really went off on a bad path. Theyoung woman wanted to divorce him.He said, no, I want to try to makethis work. Came back to Sarasota,where she had been living withher parents, waiting for him tostraighten out. And the first nightthat he came home, he wasstaying at his stepmother's home,downtown Sarasota. And there was afire that happened that night.Now he was a light sleeper, thankgoodness, because the smoke wokehim up. He reported it. They allthought, oh, well, this is weird,but they didn't really think it wasanything but, you know, anaccident that could happen. Theyshould have thought more clearlybecause the following night,he was murdered in that same home.He was tortured, garroted. And theways the murder is called themummy murder is adhesive tape thatyou can get in those little medicalkits, that little tape.This murderer had cut teeny littlepieces of that bizarre whiteadhesive tape and taped it all overhis face, leaving only a couple oflittle holes for his nose so hecould breathe. It was a very long,torturous process. And then theytaped it all completely shut. Sowhen the police found him,the next day, he looked like amummy. And they've never been ableto figure out who was the murderer,although there was a copycat murderin St. Pete, Florida. A few yearsafter that. People thought,could it be his gambling debts?There was torture involved. Couldit have been another woman?Apparently, the people that livedhere during that time period who'vecome on my tour have told mesecretly after that everybody inthe high school and communitythought it was her dad. He didn'twant them back together. He got ridof her husband. So who knows? Butthat remains an unsolved murderhere in Sarasota.Haunted spiritedbuildings are visited on the tour.Which buildings are they andwhy are they considered to behaunted or spirited?Probably theoldest that has a Ringling tie-ingoes back to a hotel on theRingling College campus. That'swhere the train tracks used togo through. And it had been apopular hotel. And then withdevelopment changing,it lost its stature.It became a brothel. There was ayoung prostitute named Mary who wasnot, as we say on the tour,not a happy hooker. She was veryunhappy. Ended up taking her ownlife by hanging herselfin the stairwell. Well, the brothelat that time, I don't know ifthat's how things were done thenat the turn of the century, butthey ended up boarding her up. Theydidn't remove her. Theydidn't bury her. They didn't wantanyone to know about it. So theybricked over that stairwell area.Of course, her spirit was locked inthat sadness in that space afterdeath. She is said tohaunt that floor. It is now used asdormitories for students. Sostudents are reportinghearing her, seeing shadows moving,sort of like a hangingcorpse would be moving.She's even apparently, she'slevitated objects. So RinglingCollege is an artschool. A lot of thestudents report their paintbrushes, their pens start tolevitate in thespace where she was.And it isn't just one person sayingthis. People have been saying thissince the 1960s. They evenhave a celebration for her on theRingling campus to try to appeaseher spirit. She doesn't causeharm, but she does shock peoplequite a bit because things areflying around all the time.That's our oldest ghost story.Another one is a building that hasbeen many different things.It is an art gallery now. It usedto be a very popular dinnertheater. And a lot of the ghosts,as I said, love theaters. There arequite a few spirits from that timeperiod. Before that,it was a car dealership and theyhad a dog. And this dog would beleft out at night to guard thecars. This is sort of back in the30s, 40s. And that dog is a spirit.People still hear him barkingin night sometimes when there'snobody there. It's an art gallery.Nobody's breaking in,but they will distinctly hear thisdog barking, doing whathe did in life, I think.Your Psychic Sundays tour talksabout the metaphysical world ofSarasota. What, Tammy,is that metaphysical world like?And what can those taking thePsychic Sundaystour expect to visitand experience on it?In additionto being the arts capital ofFlorida, Sarasota is also knownfor its healing qualities, whichcome from the fact that most of oursand at our Siesta Key beach,or Lido Key beach, famous beaches,internationally recognized beaches,it's primarily quartz sand.And quartz as a conductor ofelectricity, energy, draws peoplewho feel energy, as I do, and manyothers do here, artists, healers.We have a metaphysical chamber ofcommerce in Sarasotawith 625 members. Go figure.Everything from, again, the healingarts, Reiki, acupuncture,massage, yoga, to the metaphysicalside, which is hypnotists,psychics, mediums, tarot readers,astrologists, palm readers, a wholehuge community. Because Ipersonally am alsoan astrologer, I'mvery much a believer in energyflow. I wanted to try to share thatside of our community,and that's how we created thistour. Originally, my tour guide,Michael, was a medium. He has sincepassed. Wonderful medium. And wecreated a tour that would exposepeople to a variety of modalities.So people begin with an exercise ofjust simply rubbing your handstogether and generating thatheat, and then pulling your handsapart and going to a partner, sortof mirroring, and you can feeltheir presence. You're nottouching, you're feeling thisenergy exchange, justto get people to startthinking about things you can'tsee, but you know are there and youcan sense. Then we go toa metaphysical shop called Pixie Duston Main Street. They have anamazing array of items and allreligions, all practices, all areasof spirituality. We stop there forabout 15 minutes, then we getback on the trolley, and we head tothe center of the tour, whichpeople love the most. We do a soundbath. Fabulous. I have a wonderfulsound healer named Kayleen McCaw.She brings gongs, bells, chimes,bowls into a church. We have ahistoric little church called theCrocker Memorial Church.Teeny seats about 100 people. Weset people up on pews. She createsa 15-minute soundbath experience. Most people havenot done that. They don't know whatI'm talking about when we saysound bath, but the minute they sitand allow all the sound waves toflow over them, I have to wakepeople up after 15 minutes. Some ofthem are snoozing and fallingasleep because it is just soincredibly relaxing. Then we getback in the trolley. We head overto one of the seven labyrinths thatare located in Sarasota. They'reall at churches. People again don'treally understand the connectionpaganism and Christianity and thelabyrinth connecting point in thathistory. We have peopleget out and talk about the metaphorof a labyrinth where you're goinginto the center, you're bringing,and then you're walking out backinto the world. It is this inside,outside, so above, as below,this way of seeing movement andmetaphor for one's life and one'srelationship to the greater world.We walk there. Then we get back inthe trolley and this is where themagic happens. My new tour guideDenny, who's been leading this tourfor about a year, is a master tarotreader and also a psychic.We do a little mini spirit galleryreading. She will pull in spirit towhatever is coming throughto her. She'll have time for maybe2 to 3 and always she is justreally gifted. Someone will beable to take what she's saying.She's evidentiary, which means ofcourse that she has to give veryspecific information. She can'tjust say an old lady, oh it's yourgrandmother. No, she loved towear red. She loved to bake cherrypie. She played the piano. Veryspecific information and someonewill always say, oh my gosh, that'smy mom or oh my goodness, that wasmy child who passed early onand I think about him every singleday. That is a emotionalcenterpiece. It isabout Denny giving,using her gift to heal others, tobring some peace and comfort toothers. It's awonderful experience.On the way home, she does a minitarot reading with little tarotcards so everybody getsjust a sample one minute quickreading to get a sense of what thetarot is. We talk about thehistory of it as a divination form.We talk about what people whopractice the metaphysical arts,what we're trying to do and I findit's an eye-opener. It's also aconnector for people. We have a lotof new people moving to town. Theydon't know where to go and how tofind a community thatsupports them. It's all of thosethings and we, oh I didn't saythis, we start off with mimosas.That's always a big hit. We haveorange and pineapple mimosas to setthe mood so it's justa lovely way to spend a Sundayafternoon.Should viewers ofParanormal Yakker want to haveinformation about yourHaunted Sarasota Trolley Tour, the Psychic Sundays Tour,and learn aboutany of the other specialized tours,Discover Sarasota Tours offers.How, Tammy, can they do that?We have a fabulous website and wehave all 17 of our tours on thatwebsite and I've taken greatpains to try to really capture theessence, what you're going to see,where you're going to go.Our tours are all 90 minutes, veryeasy to book online, which I highlysuggest if you come tovisit. Certainly in the seasonalmonths of January through April,we're sold out every day. We run7 days a week. We only have onetrolley so every tour has its owntime once a week and wecan seat up to 30 people at a timeon those tours. We're airconditioned, verycomfortable trolleynamed Dolly. We have a verycharming gift shop where everybodymeets at and I've got a collectionof metaphysical items, also hauntedand spirited items. There's severalbooks, haunted buildingsof Sarasota, haunted theaters ofSarasota, all locally writtenmaterials. We carry all of thatin the gift shop so it's a fun wayto come, free parking, come in, getyour water, get your drinks,if it's specialty tour, shop in theshop and then you know it's a90-minute experienceand you'll always be entertainedand you will alwayslearn something new.And what is that website?Please share it.It's the name of ourcompany, super easy.DiscoverSarasotaTours.com. Tammy Hauser, I thank youfor being my guest onParanormal Yakker. I very muchenjoyed yakking with you and I wishyou continued successwith your tour company.I so appreciate it.Thank you very much.