September 15, 2024
St. Petersburg, FL
In attendance: Home Owner, two canines (later: Home Owner’s guest)
Marina, Nancy, Brandy and Carissa
Kristi: archival research
Lexi’s Lair is a wonderful excursion into the most haunted neighborhood in St. Petersburg: Roser Park. As with all of our investigations, this one had its quirks and perks.
The first quirk was our arrival. I had inadvertently inverted two numbers of the address when I sent it out to members and to our archivist. When I arrived, I corrected my error and sent the update to our archivist. Until that time, she had reported no findings on the wrong address that I had sent in. Though she was offsite, she started to do some research with the correction while we started the investigation.
Immediately, before we even got our equipment out, Nancy felt a tightness in her chest which she later described as a “stabbing pain indicative of a heart attack”. Marina, the first to arrive and who waited inside until the rest of us found the right house, also noted that she had felt a rapid heartbeat, light headed, and had a slight headache in that room before the investigation started. She also thought that she heard a male voice saying something down the hall.
As the team organized, a message came from Kristi: she had found an article on the correct address. She sent it to me while the others moved to the backyard to start their search. I checked the article and, sure enough, on August 29, 1954, a 66 year old man named Harry Marks was a tenant in the house. He was helping his neighbors by pruning their plants while they were out of town. He had a heart attack, fell off his ladder and broke his arm and leg. made it to the hospital, died minutes after being admitted. I kept these details to myself until the end of the investigation.
As per usual, the rest of the group sensed activity in the backyard. Since Roser Park is a haven for ghosts, especially with Greenwood Cemetery embedded in its perimeter, spectral residents still wander through the streets of the neighborhood. A lot of energy was sensed and one member felt “jelly-legged”. The home owner’s dog also seemed to sense something outside with them. Nancy felt as if someone was grabbing her by the back of the neck and also experienced a pain in her ribs.
The front bedroom on the first floor seemed to hold an energy of its own. Two members felt as if the imprint of past conversations were trapped there, and felt energetic pressures while they were in the room.
There were small spots in other parts of the house that had a bit of energy, but the other significant area was the upstairs bedroom. All three members who did the first walk-through felt that the upper room had activity. Marina noted that while she was waiting for the others to arrive, she thought that she heard footsteps on the wooden stairs leading to the room. During the investigation and the first time she went to the room, she felt as if she could not go in; that the door would slam in her face. She felt unsteady on her feet as if she was under the influence of heavy medication, and as if a huge amount of energy was hitting her in the room. Carissa also noted the immense energy upstairs. Nancy thought that she felt a portal of energy up there. While the bed felt neutral and protected, other parts of the expanded bedroom, which had an additional sitting room attached, poured out energy. She felt the need to focus on that energy and sensed an old woman’s energy. The woman died there, and she got the name Matilda or Molly.
The other energy that Nancy sensed was that of a Togobagan, one of the indigenous natives that were here in St. Petersburg before the Spanish came through. Roser Park is built on the “kitchen mounds” of shells left behind by the tribe. She felt that the feminine native spirit that she felt was returning to “what was theirs” and wanted to reestablish a peaceful energy.
While we were discussing the findings, the theremin that the group had left behind in the upstairs bedroom started to go off. All present in the house were downstairs, including the canines. When we went upstairs to check on the device, nothing was present nor near the device. It did go off one more time while we were in the room, and then went silent.
Nancy opted to go ahead and try to clear out the energy of the room and close the energy portal that she sensed.
Discussion with the home owners also indicated that one of the dogs sensed activity in the home. She occasionally barked at nothing and throughout our investigation, and during times of activity, she would let out a singular “bark!” Nancy believed that the sog was a protector and acted to alert them to the presences.
Post investigation review:
The house was originally designed as a series of apartments that were later combined into a single residence. Ads looking for tenants were found in the archival search.
Kristi was able to do a bigger research dive and discovered a second death related to the property. The original article had inverted the house number in the same way that I had so it showed up as a correction in a later edition. A woman named Edith Monday, 50, “died in a fire in her three-room upstairs apartment” on March 29, 1964. Her mattress caught on fire, likely due to a lit cigarette. A telephone company employee working nearby saw the smoke and tried to rescue her. He broke down the backdoor but the smoke was so thick he could not go in. Fire rescue came a short time later to put out the fire. Edith died at 2:30 PM that afternoon upon admission to Mound Hospital. The upstairs area was smoke damaged and the downstairs apartments had water damage.
Review of the sound files picked up a male voice on the first floor who seems to be interjecting comments during the EVP session. When asked if he had a message to pass on, he simply said “hi!”. Other parts of the recording pick up inaudible words indicating that he is speaking to us, though we are still working to determine what he said.