Pumpkin spice candles lit, pugs snoring, and the veil officially thin—welcome to Paranormal Pets: Halloween Potpourri. Host Brandy Stark catches us up on a wild summer: the saga of her bright red hearse (now resurrected with a new engine), a brutal tibial plateau fracture and recovery, and Ajax the pug’s emergency IVDD surgery—and triumphant return to walkies. Then it’s story time: a galloping glimpse of the Phantom Horse of Celery Avenue from Weird Florida, and the legend (and investigation) of Morris the Casino Cat in Gulfport—beloved mascot, possible urban legend, definite good-luck charm. Brandi also teases the 2025 update of Supernatural St. Petersburg & Paranormal Pinellas, her new haunted columns for The Gabber, and local spooky events. Settle in for cozy creeps, animal apparitions, and a few real-life scares with happy endings.
EPISODE NOTES: Hearse of a Different Color: Red Rides & Restless Spirits - A Halloween Potpourri
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EPISODE NOTES: Hearse of a Different Color: Red Rides & Restless Spirits - A Halloween Potpourri
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/paranormal-pets-ghostly-encounters-with-past-pets-pets-animals-on-pet-life-radio--6668039/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Baby is pet Life Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Let's Talk Pets. Hello and welcome to Paranormal Pets. I
am your host, Brandy Stark, and today with it of
catchup and a Halloween Hope Foray episode. So I am
(00:27):
here with my pumpkin spice candles lit, my pugs sleeping.
It is definitely nighttime and it's oh so quiet at least,
I hope so. And we will tell a few scary stories.
We'll get started right after these messages.
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Speaker 4 (01:22):
Let's Talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Hello and welcome back to Paranormal Pets Halloween Popo re edition.
I know it's been a hot minute. Just to give
you all a quickly undown on some stuff that's been happening.
Oh my gosh. So in March I bought a bright Redhearse.
He is a wonderful car. I kept my eye on
him for quite some time until the price dropped two
(01:59):
one thousand dollars and I thought, okay, want to go
see it. The Hearse itself is actually a retired Hears
from a North Carolina funeral home. They retired it at
twenty years so it's a nineteen ninety eight herse, so
that would be about twenty eighteen. It went up for
auction and artists bought it. He was the one who
painted it red, and he, I guess, moved to Saint
(02:22):
Petersburg the irony there, and Saint Pete's not always the
best place for a big car like that, and they
are kind of expensive to maintain. So he had sold
it off. It went to Hudson, this little rinkadink car
lot in Hudson, where, bless his heart, the owner was
into wildlife rescue and also had a few rescued cats
(02:42):
on his property. But while let's just say it was
an interesting experience, I ended up getting the Hearse buy
or beware. And it's always kind of a gamble with
stuff like this and I knew that. So for a
couple months he did great, and then he started to overheat,
So so I took him to a local mechanic to examine.
(03:04):
The mechanic was about ten blocks away. And what I've
done in the past because my mom is now almost
eighty two and I'm her caretaker and she no longer drives,
and oftentimes it's just me doing this stuff. I got
a little electric scooter, which I will not be keeping.
I have done it a couple times, but I've dropped
(03:25):
off cars and as I said, a solitary driver, and
I've taken my little scooter home. And this time I
fill off the scooter around thirteenth Avenue. I hit my
right side and I broke my left leg. I had
a compression fracture of the tibial plateau. I actually could
not stand up. I couldn't get my leg to lock
in place. I had to call for help. I had
(03:47):
friends coming to get me because I am poor. So
you have no ambulance for me, thank you. Ended up
in the er, had to go see the author the
next day. Yes, indeed, surgery. Now here's the irony. Three
years ago, when Ajax was a mirror youngster. Maybe it
was four years ago. Now it must have been four
years Ajax, my pug, and I still had achilles another
(04:09):
pug thanks to them. Between their combined mite, I actually
slipped on one of three stairs that goes from my
house down into my garage and broke my ankle. I
have a plate and seven screws in the left leg
from that. At the ankle. It was a spiral fracture.
Because when I do stuff, I do it right well.
(04:31):
I will tell you that this tibial break was the
most painful thing I have ever endured in my life.
I highly do not recommend it. The break was kind
of the large part of the boon under the knee,
and apparently it was wedged in pretty deeply. The doctor
was surprised at how much he had to work to
pry it out. So all of that should tell you
(04:53):
that this was not a good time. I spent six
weeks basically not weight bearing, so I had to work
mostly from home. I leveled up by a decade on
a birthday at home with just Mede, the pugs and
Mom and my wheelchair and a walker. So if you
(05:13):
really want to have a very mortality awakening, experience. There
you go. And then there was two weeks of partial
weight bearing, and then there was two weeks of full
weight bearing plus all of the in home therapy, and
I have been finally freed by the doctor. I mean
(05:35):
this took almost until I want to say, mid July.
It was not fun. Meanwhile, I had this one mechanic
look at the hearse and he said, no, it's dead.
The gasket heads had blown. It's gone. I had two
other people tell me the same thing. I mean, I
had it checked. I had called a scrapper. And you
(05:56):
have to understand, I mean, I felt miserable this summer.
I was questioning all of my life choices, all of
this pain in my leg for a car that it
turns out I wasn't gonna keep, at least I thought
so at the time. I literally had it signed up
to be picked up for like three hundred dollars from
a scrapper company when I had contacted one other mechanic
(06:19):
and he was the mechanic that had been working on
restoring my mother's ninety four Firebird, And the day before
it was supposed to be picked up by the scrapper,
this mechanic found a used nineteen ninety eight Cadillac engine
with thirty seven thousand miles in excellent shape. Now, yes,
for those of you who know about Cadillacs, their engines,
(06:42):
they drive very smoothly, but when they go, they go,
So I'm a little you know, I was a little
concerned about that. However, if we did some preventative maintenance
on this engine, so new filters, new, new, new, new,
and installed it in the car, it would come with
a two year warranty. And so that's what we have done.
So it actually took me, I believe, three to four
(07:06):
trips to get all of the nuts and bolts taken
care of in this hearse. It was definitely a little
chunk of money. But he is up and running. He
is still bright red. People smile when they see him.
I smile when I drive him. It is like driving
on glass. The Spirits of Saint Petersburg did check the car.
They didn't find anything, so no backseat drivers, and I
(07:28):
believe actually at this point all of the pugs have
ridden in the front of the hearse with me. I'm
not putting them in the back, and they've all been
just fine. But yeah, so there was the traumatic birthday
which I have been dreading since I was a child,
because I knew about this birthday coming in twenty twenty five,
because my mother had me on a year where it
(07:49):
was really easy to figure out this birthday. Then, like
I said, I had wanted a hearse for so long,
finally found one, totally vibed with it. Thought I was
going to have to get rid of it, that it
was a junker, that I had been completely scammed, and
I might have been partially scammed. I mean, I'm gonna
say maybe, But as I said, this car lot was
really really interesting to work with, and like I never
(08:11):
got my license plate that I paid for, and a
couple other odds and ends that were kind of like
huh really, but okay, broken leg, same leg, had to
have surgery. Mom is no longer able to be my
medical backup. So I had a friend who helped lecks
her art. She drove me to all my appointments, and
(08:34):
she drove me to surgery, and she waited for me
that day and I was not alone. And I am
eternally grateful for that, because you know, we're kind of
navigating some new waters. No husband, no kids, and no siblings.
My mom's the only living relative I have, and you know,
it was it was scary, and I know that you know,
she's in her early eighties and that I will eventually
(08:56):
be facing this again, you know. So it was definitely
very eye opening. And then to top all of that
off was Ajax. Ajax is four and a half years old.
He is part of a hub group that you guys
have gotten to hear grow up. He and Neo used
to sound like little dinosaurs playing in the background of
(09:19):
some of my podcasts from about four years ago. And
Ajax unfortunately on a Sunday evening while I was still
in recovery with the broken leg, I think it was
I don't think I was even partially weight bearing. I
was at the end of the first non weight bearing period,
but I was cheating because of the emergency. I was
using my crutches, but he couldn't stand. He started limping
(09:40):
around five or six at night, and by eleven o'clock
he could not lift his hind end at all. So
I rushed him into the VET, the emergency VET. They
determined that it was a spontaneous disc in his back crereation,
that he has a degenerative disc disease. It turns out,
I think it's discs eleven and twelve. I had to
(10:03):
hurry to get him to a specialist before this paralysis
became permanent. I honestly was not sure he was gonna
make it. I really thought, as much as this emergency
VET was telling me, how you know bad this was,
and you know time is of the essence, I honestly
didn't think he was going to get in in time
for this surgery. But the VET actually gave him a
(10:23):
sixty percent chance of regaining his ability to walk. If
he had been older, I don't think I would have
put him through this, but at four and a half,
with theoretically ten years to go, hopefully more with a
will to try, because Ajax definitely wants you to be happy,
and he really does try very hard. And thinking that
(10:45):
the surgery was going to be quote unquote only eight
thousand dollars and I'm still trying to get over that,
we went ahead and tried for it and the surgery
was twelve thousand dollars. I will be paying for that
for quite some time. And of course there was still
that forty percent chance that he would not regain the
ability to walk. I am happy to say he has.
(11:07):
He has regained the ability to walk. My biggest concern
was walking and bowel and bladder control. This was a
surgery that was very intense, and the paralysis literally meant
that he could not urinate on his own. I had
to palpat his bladder until he could regain control. So
it was very traumatic. I was doing physical therapy exercises
(11:27):
for his legs, you know, on crutches or a walker
with my legs, you know, almost completely stranded. I mean,
it was awful. And at this point the only decent
thing was that I had been cleared to drive, so
I was able to drive and get him up to
the vet and he was there for five nights. I mean,
(11:48):
this poor guy. And you have to understand, I don't
let my pugs out, you know, for anything. They stay
home unless they're with me traveling, going to the art
studio or to an event. So he was nearly hysterical
when I went to pick him up. But he is
not as graceful as he was. There's definitely still some
awkwardness and a little bit of lagging with one of
the legs, but he can walk, he can support himself.
(12:10):
He does not jump now. He cannot build up enough
pressure to jump up. So this summer, I have to
say it was one of the most expensive summers I
have ever had in my life, and I think it
was scarier than Halloween with all of this drama. There's
been drama at the art studio and the artists are
stirred up, and there just seems to be a lot
(12:30):
of national drama, and there's you know, even my mother's
health has been very shaky these past couple of months,
and so it was really heavy summer, and so I
was not doing a lot of podcasting and I do
apologize for that. But here we are, and we are back.
So now that you know all of that, let me
(12:51):
go ahead and actually, hello everybody, I am actually doing
this on a YouTube live so that I can actually
kind of record this and Mark can clean it up,
our wonderful producer can clean this up. So that's that
was the summer. But now now that you know all
of my fears and hesitations, I have found a couple
(13:13):
of interesting ghost stories. There is a book called Weird
Florida came out in two thousand and five, and I
read it when it was out in two thousand and five,
and so Now as I went through the book again,
I found a hard copy of it at a thrift store,
and I would like to replace my soft that copy.
And so here is one of these wonderful animal ghost
(13:34):
stories that I have found, and it is called the
Phantom Horse of Celery Avenue. So Weird Florida is all
about haunted locations and oddities in Florida. So the book
actually says this is kind of a sad story, but
also a cool one. So for all of my horse
(13:55):
people out there, I hope you like this one. Celery
Avenue runs between the Saint John's River and the town
of Sanford. Before nineteen forty, this was the Celery capital
of the nation, and both sides of this avenue were
lined with acres of celery fields. The east end of
the road cuts through old Indian grounds where there is
still a well preserved burial mound. For years we have
(14:19):
heard stories about a phantom horse on this road that
the only historical accounts connect to a horse that is
on the west end of this road. It is in
this area where a giant horse is allegedly buried beneath
the road. The big horse, which stood twenty two hands
high and weighed three thou two hundred pounds, belonged to
a local blacksmith named Sly Earnest. When the horse died,
(14:43):
it required a tractor to haul his heavy corpse out
of the stable to his burial pit beside Celery Avenue.
Since that time, the road has been widened several times
and the horse's grave has been covered over. Whether this
indignity to an equine has anything to do with the
phantom horse story is anybody's guests. But there are stories.
(15:03):
And what I love about Weird Florida is that they
actually include emails or website entries from this time period
from others who've heard the legend and stories. So the
first one is the horse vanished. This guy I know
in Orlando told me about seeing a white horse that
vanished running on the road in Sandford. I think it
was on that road that goes east and west by
(15:25):
that old stadium. He just said that he saw this
white horse galloping beside his car, and it followed him
for a short distance, and while he was watching it
and trying to steer the car, the horse just vanished.
Next entry translucent warrior on a white horse. I live
in Altamonte and one day a friend of mine was
(15:46):
coming to see me. She was driving down that road
from the Austin Bridge to Sandford because the traffic is
easier anyway. She did not want to ask about what
she saw because she thought it would sound crazy, so
she asked me to tell you. It was about nine
or nine thirty and she was driving down that road
and noticed something to her right on that side of
the wood. She turned and looked and said what she
(16:09):
saw was a pure white horse with an Indian on
his back, and the Indian had a long feathered headdress on.
She said it was like translucent. It was white, but
you could see through it. It ran along beside her
a car for about a quarter of a mile and
just vanished. She said that she was doing about forty
and whatever it was kept up with her speed. Have
(16:30):
you ever heard of any ghosts on this road or
has anybody else ever said anything about seeing something like this?
And the third entry, it did not seem like a
solid horse. Okay, this is going to sound nuts, but
I know what I saw. I was going down Celery
Avenue coming back from the beach, and it was dark.
I was about halfway down the road when a big
white horse dashed across in front of my car. It
(16:52):
did not seem like a solid horse. What I mean
is that I thought I could see through it. I
thought about it. Maybe it was a trick of my headlights,
but the horse was real. I hit the brakes and
looked quickly in the direction of where he had gone,
but did not see him. I don't know if it
was a ghost or what, but I saw something strange.
(17:14):
So there we go, a nice little ghost horse story
for Halloween. And what we are going to do at
this point is we are going to pause for commercial
messages and we'll be back right after this.
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Did you hear that?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Commercials have mysteriously disappeared? Paranormal Pets is back with a
haunted host. Our ghost host Brandy start after.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And welcome back to Paranormal Pets. I am your host,
Brandy Stark. The pugs have awakened. I guess my ghost
war story was enough, but I did want to share
with you that supernatural Saint Petersburg in Paranormal Panelists, I
have one more edition of it, the twenty twenty five edition,
which I expanded to two chapters, and continued to try
and clean up some of the file discrepancies. I discovered
(19:31):
that there was a file corruption and for some reason
there's like this weird symbol showing up in certain words.
So I've gotten that cleaned up. I have been writing
haunted articles for The Gabber, which is the oldest independent
newspaper in I believe, in Florida. So I write monthly
articles about haunted locations. It has been a blast, and
(19:55):
so getting started, I was trying to kind of revisit
some of the urban legends and the the older investigations
that we had had. I get to write about any
haunting in Penelas County in Florida, and so at the
same time, I wanted to clean up volume one of
my book. My team, the Spirits of Saint Petersburg, has
been nagging me to create volume two. They're like, stop,
(20:18):
stop messing with this first volume because you cannot do
any more to it. I mean, enough's enough. You need
to start on volume two so that people have something
new to purchase. So I spoke with the folks at
the Gabber and I said, well, is it okay if
I take the original articles that I send to you,
which are a little bit longer, and use those in
(20:38):
a book crediting the issue where they are published as
a shorter article in the Gabber. And they were okay
with that. So, because the Gaber used to be called
the Golfport Gaber, I chose to write about Morris the
Casino Cat. Now, this is an episode of Paranormal Pets
(20:59):
that goes way. I want to say, it's like episode
ten or something like that. We talked about it a
long time ago, and I think it actually has the
spirits of Saint Petersburg the original investigation we did. But
I'm just going to read you this chapter from my
book so that you can hear a little bit about it.
So Golfport. Golfport is a colorful town to the south
(21:21):
of Saint Petersburg. Residents referred to its origin as a
party town for the soldiers of Fort de Soto, though
the city itself points to a more agrarian influence. This
was also the birthplace of the artist Renaissance in Panelas County.
Small galleries popping up are popped up all along the
downtown area. As an artist, I have fond memories of
(21:43):
a gallery called Tweeters, which hosted my first ever art show.
I sold out before the show even opened, which was amazing.
I even worked for another gallery when the owner was
out of town. So I love Golfport the Gulfport Casino.
The city of Gulfport had a rough start. It was
supposed to be a port for a steamship, but that
literally went up in flames after a fire and ship sinking.
(22:06):
That's the luck of Penela sometimes. While Saint Petersburg had
the railroad, Gulfport did not. The founders even tried to
attract Civil War veterans by renaming itself Veteran City, but
the oppressive heat and lack of interest quickly quelled the idea. Finally,
Saint Petersburg built a trolley line, which was eventually extended
(22:27):
to the area. True to its name, it was a
port town and the trolley was a way to connect
sailors to the city. The trolleys carried passengers all the
way to the end of the line, literally letting them
off at the ships. Nearby away station and ticket office
was built. It had a post office, a postcard shop,
and a refreshment stand. Tourists could buy seashells, candy, soft drinks,
(22:49):
and tobacco. The structure contained an apartment for the merchants,
and the second floor had a dance floor with a bandstand.
The parishioners of a local Methodist church met there as well.
The doc was finished in nineteen oh five and what
is now known as Gulfport Casino was finished in nineteen ten.
It was the location where the founding families gathered to
(23:10):
incorporate Golfport that same year. The casino, along with the trolley,
made for an accessibility that brought people to the town
and finally put it on the map. Morris the Ghost Cat.
There is an odd story that abounds in Golfport featuring
a spectral feline. I first read about it in a
book by Deborah Fretham, Ghost Stories of Saint Petersburg, Clearwater
(23:30):
and Panellas County, published in two thousand and seven. The
story of Morris the cat, whose spirit remained after his
body pass dates back to nineteen seventies, when employees at
the casino saw a little yellow cat approach and took
him in. His color and gregarious personality echoed a famous
feline TV commercial spokesperson from the time, for whom he
(23:51):
was named Morris the Cat. He was an ambassador of
the casino for fifteen years, winning many fans from tourists
and residents alife. Upon his death, a memorial was erected
in his honor. It was at this time that the
rumors started. Some felt mysterious localized breezes when by the sculpture,
and others claimed to have seen him walk property at night.
(24:15):
From a paranormal point of view, people report that cat
hauntings will either happen for six months before the spirit
moves on, or the spirit will become a permanent denizen
of the location for decades. This piqued the interest of
the spirits of Saint Petersburg, who went out to the
memorial to see if we could find any trace of
the spectral Morris. Very little happened while we were there.
There were no unaccountable winds, temperature drops, or anomalist reading.
(24:38):
Nothing responded to the toys or food offerings. Even my
pug Odyssey, an animal herald to contact an animal ghost,
showed no unusual reaction. When we asked employees and locals
about Morris, several knew of the story and his haunting presence,
though they recounted hearing about it from the same person,
a local hotel owner. We concluded that this is likely
(24:59):
a remarkable example of a localized urban legend. Morris was
very beloved four legged figure to the area. Golfport has
a few other ghost cat stories in the general area
of the memorial, and there are other places who have
living feline mascots. These stories may have merged over the
years to create the Gulfport Casino Ghost Cat. As for
night sightings, perhaps a living cat has moved in on
(25:20):
Morris's old territory. We did have one woman report to
us that Morris has descendants a ginger cat colony lives
near the beach. She wonders if perhaps if offspring were
mistaken for the original cat. She also told us that
she regularly brings people to see the sculpture and pay
tribute to Morris. She likes to pet his head for
good luck, but to date has had no ghostly cat encounters.
(25:46):
So there you go. I was really excited because we
did get response on the article, and this one woman
just really loved Morris and apparently one of her family
names is Morris, and so she was just really really
into the cat legend. So with that, I think we
(26:06):
will end this first Halloween polpourri for Paranormal Pets. I
will probably have one more for you and that will
be our next episode. I thank you so much for
listening and getting caught up with me. If you are
in the Saint Petersburg area, we are doing the National
Day of Ghost Hunting September twenty seventh, and we are
(26:27):
also doing Spookyzar Spooky and Bizarre with thirteen handpicked local
artists at Arn't Lofts, so we hope to see you there.
Until then, I wish you a good night and happy hauntings.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Pet Life Radio presents Paranormal Pets, where you can always
expect the unexpected. Each week, we'll discuss all aspects of
we of our spiritual animal encountess, ghosts, totems, psychic animals,
animal souls, animal angels, and animals in religion, with a
little cryptozoology thrown in. Step into the supernatural world of pets.
(27:11):
Every week only on Petlifradio dot com.
Baby is pet Life Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Let's Talk Pets. Hello and welcome to Paranormal Pets. I
am your host, Brandy Stark, and today with it of
catchup and a Halloween Hope Foray episode. So I am
(00:27):
here with my pumpkin spice candles lit, my pugs sleeping.
It is definitely nighttime and it's oh so quiet at least,
I hope so. And we will tell a few scary stories.
We'll get started right after these messages.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
You know the expression cats have nine lives? Well, what
if you can give them one more? But give them ten?
Movement is on a mission to help give cats an
extra life. How with Spae and Neoter, Spain or nootering
your cat helps them live a longer, healthier life and
it helps control free roaming cat populations too. Learn more
(01:10):
about the benefits of Spee and Neoter and meet Scooter,
the neutered cat at give them ten dot org. Let's
give them ten dot org.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Let's Talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Hello and welcome back to Paranormal Pets Halloween Popo re edition.
I know it's been a hot minute. Just to give
you all a quickly undown on some stuff that's been happening.
Oh my gosh. So in March I bought a bright Redhearse.
He is a wonderful car. I kept my eye on
him for quite some time until the price dropped two
(01:59):
one thousand dollars and I thought, okay, want to go
see it. The Hearse itself is actually a retired Hears
from a North Carolina funeral home. They retired it at
twenty years so it's a nineteen ninety eight herse, so
that would be about twenty eighteen. It went up for
auction and artists bought it. He was the one who
painted it red, and he, I guess, moved to Saint
(02:22):
Petersburg the irony there, and Saint Pete's not always the
best place for a big car like that, and they
are kind of expensive to maintain. So he had sold
it off. It went to Hudson, this little rinkadink car
lot in Hudson, where, bless his heart, the owner was
into wildlife rescue and also had a few rescued cats
(02:42):
on his property. But while let's just say it was
an interesting experience, I ended up getting the Hearse buy
or beware. And it's always kind of a gamble with
stuff like this and I knew that. So for a
couple months he did great, and then he started to overheat,
So so I took him to a local mechanic to examine.
(03:04):
The mechanic was about ten blocks away. And what I've
done in the past because my mom is now almost
eighty two and I'm her caretaker and she no longer drives,
and oftentimes it's just me doing this stuff. I got
a little electric scooter, which I will not be keeping.
I have done it a couple times, but I've dropped
(03:25):
off cars and as I said, a solitary driver, and
I've taken my little scooter home. And this time I
fill off the scooter around thirteenth Avenue. I hit my
right side and I broke my left leg. I had
a compression fracture of the tibial plateau. I actually could
not stand up. I couldn't get my leg to lock
in place. I had to call for help. I had
(03:47):
friends coming to get me because I am poor. So
you have no ambulance for me, thank you. Ended up
in the er, had to go see the author the
next day. Yes, indeed, surgery. Now here's the irony. Three
years ago, when Ajax was a mirror youngster. Maybe it
was four years ago. Now it must have been four
years Ajax, my pug, and I still had achilles another
(04:09):
pug thanks to them. Between their combined mite, I actually
slipped on one of three stairs that goes from my
house down into my garage and broke my ankle. I
have a plate and seven screws in the left leg
from that. At the ankle. It was a spiral fracture.
Because when I do stuff, I do it right well.
(04:31):
I will tell you that this tibial break was the
most painful thing I have ever endured in my life.
I highly do not recommend it. The break was kind
of the large part of the boon under the knee,
and apparently it was wedged in pretty deeply. The doctor
was surprised at how much he had to work to
pry it out. So all of that should tell you
(04:53):
that this was not a good time. I spent six
weeks basically not weight bearing, so I had to work
mostly from home. I leveled up by a decade on
a birthday at home with just Mede, the pugs and
Mom and my wheelchair and a walker. So if you
(05:13):
really want to have a very mortality awakening, experience. There
you go. And then there was two weeks of partial
weight bearing, and then there was two weeks of full
weight bearing plus all of the in home therapy, and
I have been finally freed by the doctor. I mean
(05:35):
this took almost until I want to say, mid July.
It was not fun. Meanwhile, I had this one mechanic
look at the hearse and he said, no, it's dead.
The gasket heads had blown. It's gone. I had two
other people tell me the same thing. I mean, I
had it checked. I had called a scrapper. And you
(05:56):
have to understand, I mean, I felt miserable this summer.
I was questioning all of my life choices, all of
this pain in my leg for a car that it
turns out I wasn't gonna keep, at least I thought
so at the time. I literally had it signed up
to be picked up for like three hundred dollars from
a scrapper company when I had contacted one other mechanic
(06:19):
and he was the mechanic that had been working on
restoring my mother's ninety four Firebird, And the day before
it was supposed to be picked up by the scrapper,
this mechanic found a used nineteen ninety eight Cadillac engine
with thirty seven thousand miles in excellent shape. Now, yes,
for those of you who know about Cadillacs, their engines,
(06:42):
they drive very smoothly, but when they go, they go,
So I'm a little you know, I was a little
concerned about that. However, if we did some preventative maintenance
on this engine, so new filters, new, new, new, new,
and installed it in the car, it would come with
a two year warranty. And so that's what we have done.
So it actually took me, I believe, three to four
(07:06):
trips to get all of the nuts and bolts taken
care of in this hearse. It was definitely a little
chunk of money. But he is up and running. He
is still bright red. People smile when they see him.
I smile when I drive him. It is like driving
on glass. The Spirits of Saint Petersburg did check the car.
They didn't find anything, so no backseat drivers, and I
(07:28):
believe actually at this point all of the pugs have
ridden in the front of the hearse with me. I'm
not putting them in the back, and they've all been
just fine. But yeah, so there was the traumatic birthday
which I have been dreading since I was a child,
because I knew about this birthday coming in twenty twenty five,
because my mother had me on a year where it
(07:49):
was really easy to figure out this birthday. Then, like
I said, I had wanted a hearse for so long,
finally found one, totally vibed with it. Thought I was
going to have to get rid of it, that it
was a junker, that I had been completely scammed, and
I might have been partially scammed. I mean, I'm gonna
say maybe, But as I said, this car lot was
really really interesting to work with, and like I never
(08:11):
got my license plate that I paid for, and a
couple other odds and ends that were kind of like
huh really, but okay, broken leg, same leg, had to
have surgery. Mom is no longer able to be my
medical backup. So I had a friend who helped lecks
her art. She drove me to all my appointments, and
(08:34):
she drove me to surgery, and she waited for me
that day and I was not alone. And I am
eternally grateful for that, because you know, we're kind of
navigating some new waters. No husband, no kids, and no siblings.
My mom's the only living relative I have, and you know,
it was it was scary, and I know that you know,
she's in her early eighties and that I will eventually
(08:56):
be facing this again, you know. So it was definitely
very eye opening. And then to top all of that
off was Ajax. Ajax is four and a half years old.
He is part of a hub group that you guys
have gotten to hear grow up. He and Neo used
to sound like little dinosaurs playing in the background of
(09:19):
some of my podcasts from about four years ago. And
Ajax unfortunately on a Sunday evening while I was still
in recovery with the broken leg, I think it was
I don't think I was even partially weight bearing. I
was at the end of the first non weight bearing period,
but I was cheating because of the emergency. I was
using my crutches, but he couldn't stand. He started limping
(09:40):
around five or six at night, and by eleven o'clock
he could not lift his hind end at all. So
I rushed him into the VET, the emergency VET. They
determined that it was a spontaneous disc in his back crereation,
that he has a degenerative disc disease. It turns out,
I think it's discs eleven and twelve. I had to
(10:03):
hurry to get him to a specialist before this paralysis
became permanent. I honestly was not sure he was gonna
make it. I really thought, as much as this emergency
VET was telling me, how you know bad this was,
and you know time is of the essence, I honestly
didn't think he was going to get in in time
for this surgery. But the VET actually gave him a
(10:23):
sixty percent chance of regaining his ability to walk. If
he had been older, I don't think I would have
put him through this, but at four and a half,
with theoretically ten years to go, hopefully more with a
will to try, because Ajax definitely wants you to be happy,
and he really does try very hard. And thinking that
(10:45):
the surgery was going to be quote unquote only eight
thousand dollars and I'm still trying to get over that,
we went ahead and tried for it and the surgery
was twelve thousand dollars. I will be paying for that
for quite some time. And of course there was still
that forty percent chance that he would not regain the
ability to walk. I am happy to say he has.
(11:07):
He has regained the ability to walk. My biggest concern
was walking and bowel and bladder control. This was a
surgery that was very intense, and the paralysis literally meant
that he could not urinate on his own. I had
to palpat his bladder until he could regain control. So
it was very traumatic. I was doing physical therapy exercises
(11:27):
for his legs, you know, on crutches or a walker
with my legs, you know, almost completely stranded. I mean,
it was awful. And at this point the only decent
thing was that I had been cleared to drive, so
I was able to drive and get him up to
the vet and he was there for five nights. I mean,
(11:48):
this poor guy. And you have to understand, I don't
let my pugs out, you know, for anything. They stay
home unless they're with me traveling, going to the art
studio or to an event. So he was nearly hysterical
when I went to pick him up. But he is
not as graceful as he was. There's definitely still some
awkwardness and a little bit of lagging with one of
the legs, but he can walk, he can support himself.
(12:10):
He does not jump now. He cannot build up enough
pressure to jump up. So this summer, I have to
say it was one of the most expensive summers I
have ever had in my life, and I think it
was scarier than Halloween with all of this drama. There's
been drama at the art studio and the artists are
stirred up, and there just seems to be a lot
(12:30):
of national drama, and there's you know, even my mother's
health has been very shaky these past couple of months,
and so it was really heavy summer, and so I
was not doing a lot of podcasting and I do
apologize for that. But here we are, and we are back.
So now that you know all of that, let me
(12:51):
go ahead and actually, hello everybody, I am actually doing
this on a YouTube live so that I can actually
kind of record this and Mark can clean it up,
our wonderful producer can clean this up. So that's that
was the summer. But now now that you know all
of my fears and hesitations, I have found a couple
(13:13):
of interesting ghost stories. There is a book called Weird
Florida came out in two thousand and five, and I
read it when it was out in two thousand and five,
and so Now as I went through the book again,
I found a hard copy of it at a thrift store,
and I would like to replace my soft that copy.
And so here is one of these wonderful animal ghost
(13:34):
stories that I have found, and it is called the
Phantom Horse of Celery Avenue. So Weird Florida is all
about haunted locations and oddities in Florida. So the book
actually says this is kind of a sad story, but
also a cool one. So for all of my horse
(13:55):
people out there, I hope you like this one. Celery
Avenue runs between the Saint John's River and the town
of Sanford. Before nineteen forty, this was the Celery capital
of the nation, and both sides of this avenue were
lined with acres of celery fields. The east end of
the road cuts through old Indian grounds where there is
still a well preserved burial mound. For years we have
(14:19):
heard stories about a phantom horse on this road that
the only historical accounts connect to a horse that is
on the west end of this road. It is in
this area where a giant horse is allegedly buried beneath
the road. The big horse, which stood twenty two hands
high and weighed three thou two hundred pounds, belonged to
a local blacksmith named Sly Earnest. When the horse died,
(14:43):
it required a tractor to haul his heavy corpse out
of the stable to his burial pit beside Celery Avenue.
Since that time, the road has been widened several times
and the horse's grave has been covered over. Whether this
indignity to an equine has anything to do with the
phantom horse story is anybody's guests. But there are stories.
(15:03):
And what I love about Weird Florida is that they
actually include emails or website entries from this time period
from others who've heard the legend and stories. So the
first one is the horse vanished. This guy I know
in Orlando told me about seeing a white horse that
vanished running on the road in Sandford. I think it
was on that road that goes east and west by
(15:25):
that old stadium. He just said that he saw this
white horse galloping beside his car, and it followed him
for a short distance, and while he was watching it
and trying to steer the car, the horse just vanished.
Next entry translucent warrior on a white horse. I live
in Altamonte and one day a friend of mine was
(15:46):
coming to see me. She was driving down that road
from the Austin Bridge to Sandford because the traffic is
easier anyway. She did not want to ask about what
she saw because she thought it would sound crazy, so
she asked me to tell you. It was about nine
or nine thirty and she was driving down that road
and noticed something to her right on that side of
the wood. She turned and looked and said what she
(16:09):
saw was a pure white horse with an Indian on
his back, and the Indian had a long feathered headdress on.
She said it was like translucent. It was white, but
you could see through it. It ran along beside her
a car for about a quarter of a mile and
just vanished. She said that she was doing about forty
and whatever it was kept up with her speed. Have
(16:30):
you ever heard of any ghosts on this road or
has anybody else ever said anything about seeing something like this?
And the third entry, it did not seem like a
solid horse. Okay, this is going to sound nuts, but
I know what I saw. I was going down Celery
Avenue coming back from the beach, and it was dark.
I was about halfway down the road when a big
white horse dashed across in front of my car. It
(16:52):
did not seem like a solid horse. What I mean
is that I thought I could see through it. I
thought about it. Maybe it was a trick of my headlights,
but the horse was real. I hit the brakes and
looked quickly in the direction of where he had gone,
but did not see him. I don't know if it
was a ghost or what, but I saw something strange.
(17:14):
So there we go, a nice little ghost horse story
for Halloween. And what we are going to do at
this point is we are going to pause for commercial
messages and we'll be back right after this.
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Speaker 1 (18:55):
Did you hear that?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Commercials have mysteriously disappeared? Paranormal Pets is back with a
haunted host. Our ghost host Brandy start after.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And welcome back to Paranormal Pets. I am your host,
Brandy Stark. The pugs have awakened. I guess my ghost
war story was enough, but I did want to share
with you that supernatural Saint Petersburg in Paranormal Panelists, I
have one more edition of it, the twenty twenty five edition,
which I expanded to two chapters, and continued to try
and clean up some of the file discrepancies. I discovered
(19:31):
that there was a file corruption and for some reason
there's like this weird symbol showing up in certain words.
So I've gotten that cleaned up. I have been writing
haunted articles for The Gabber, which is the oldest independent
newspaper in I believe, in Florida. So I write monthly
articles about haunted locations. It has been a blast, and
(19:55):
so getting started, I was trying to kind of revisit
some of the urban legends and the the older investigations
that we had had. I get to write about any
haunting in Penelas County in Florida, and so at the
same time, I wanted to clean up volume one of
my book. My team, the Spirits of Saint Petersburg, has
been nagging me to create volume two. They're like, stop,
(20:18):
stop messing with this first volume because you cannot do
any more to it. I mean, enough's enough. You need
to start on volume two so that people have something
new to purchase. So I spoke with the folks at
the Gabber and I said, well, is it okay if
I take the original articles that I send to you,
which are a little bit longer, and use those in
(20:38):
a book crediting the issue where they are published as
a shorter article in the Gabber. And they were okay
with that. So, because the Gaber used to be called
the Golfport Gaber, I chose to write about Morris the
Casino Cat. Now, this is an episode of Paranormal Pets
(20:59):
that goes way. I want to say, it's like episode
ten or something like that. We talked about it a
long time ago, and I think it actually has the
spirits of Saint Petersburg the original investigation we did. But
I'm just going to read you this chapter from my
book so that you can hear a little bit about it.
So Golfport. Golfport is a colorful town to the south
(21:21):
of Saint Petersburg. Residents referred to its origin as a
party town for the soldiers of Fort de Soto, though
the city itself points to a more agrarian influence. This
was also the birthplace of the artist Renaissance in Panelas County.
Small galleries popping up are popped up all along the
downtown area. As an artist, I have fond memories of
(21:43):
a gallery called Tweeters, which hosted my first ever art show.
I sold out before the show even opened, which was amazing.
I even worked for another gallery when the owner was
out of town. So I love Golfport the Gulfport Casino.
The city of Gulfport had a rough start. It was
supposed to be a port for a steamship, but that
literally went up in flames after a fire and ship sinking.
(22:06):
That's the luck of Penela sometimes. While Saint Petersburg had
the railroad, Gulfport did not. The founders even tried to
attract Civil War veterans by renaming itself Veteran City, but
the oppressive heat and lack of interest quickly quelled the idea. Finally,
Saint Petersburg built a trolley line, which was eventually extended
(22:27):
to the area. True to its name, it was a
port town and the trolley was a way to connect
sailors to the city. The trolleys carried passengers all the
way to the end of the line, literally letting them
off at the ships. Nearby away station and ticket office
was built. It had a post office, a postcard shop,
and a refreshment stand. Tourists could buy seashells, candy, soft drinks,
(22:49):
and tobacco. The structure contained an apartment for the merchants,
and the second floor had a dance floor with a bandstand.
The parishioners of a local Methodist church met there as well.
The doc was finished in nineteen oh five and what
is now known as Gulfport Casino was finished in nineteen ten.
It was the location where the founding families gathered to
(23:10):
incorporate Golfport that same year. The casino, along with the trolley,
made for an accessibility that brought people to the town
and finally put it on the map. Morris the Ghost Cat.
There is an odd story that abounds in Golfport featuring
a spectral feline. I first read about it in a
book by Deborah Fretham, Ghost Stories of Saint Petersburg, Clearwater
(23:30):
and Panellas County, published in two thousand and seven. The
story of Morris the cat, whose spirit remained after his
body pass dates back to nineteen seventies, when employees at
the casino saw a little yellow cat approach and took
him in. His color and gregarious personality echoed a famous
feline TV commercial spokesperson from the time, for whom he
(23:51):
was named Morris the Cat. He was an ambassador of
the casino for fifteen years, winning many fans from tourists
and residents alife. Upon his death, a memorial was erected
in his honor. It was at this time that the
rumors started. Some felt mysterious localized breezes when by the sculpture,
and others claimed to have seen him walk property at night.
(24:15):
From a paranormal point of view, people report that cat
hauntings will either happen for six months before the spirit
moves on, or the spirit will become a permanent denizen
of the location for decades. This piqued the interest of
the spirits of Saint Petersburg, who went out to the
memorial to see if we could find any trace of
the spectral Morris. Very little happened while we were there.
There were no unaccountable winds, temperature drops, or anomalist reading.
(24:38):
Nothing responded to the toys or food offerings. Even my
pug Odyssey, an animal herald to contact an animal ghost,
showed no unusual reaction. When we asked employees and locals
about Morris, several knew of the story and his haunting presence,
though they recounted hearing about it from the same person,
a local hotel owner. We concluded that this is likely
(24:59):
a remarkable example of a localized urban legend. Morris was
very beloved four legged figure to the area. Golfport has
a few other ghost cat stories in the general area
of the memorial, and there are other places who have
living feline mascots. These stories may have merged over the
years to create the Gulfport Casino Ghost Cat. As for
night sightings, perhaps a living cat has moved in on
(25:20):
Morris's old territory. We did have one woman report to
us that Morris has descendants a ginger cat colony lives
near the beach. She wonders if perhaps if offspring were
mistaken for the original cat. She also told us that
she regularly brings people to see the sculpture and pay
tribute to Morris. She likes to pet his head for
good luck, but to date has had no ghostly cat encounters.
(25:46):
So there you go. I was really excited because we
did get response on the article, and this one woman
just really loved Morris and apparently one of her family
names is Morris, and so she was just really really
into the cat legend. So with that, I think we
(26:06):
will end this first Halloween polpourri for Paranormal Pets. I
will probably have one more for you and that will
be our next episode. I thank you so much for
listening and getting caught up with me. If you are
in the Saint Petersburg area, we are doing the National
Day of Ghost Hunting September twenty seventh, and we are
(26:27):
also doing Spookyzar Spooky and Bizarre with thirteen handpicked local
artists at Arn't Lofts, so we hope to see you there.
Until then, I wish you a good night and happy hauntings.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Pet Life Radio presents Paranormal Pets, where you can always
expect the unexpected. Each week, we'll discuss all aspects of
we of our spiritual animal encountess, ghosts, totems, psychic animals,
animal souls, animal angels, and animals in religion, with a
little cryptozoology thrown in. Step into the supernatural world of pets.
(27:11):
Every week only on Petlifradio dot com.
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