Huguenot Cemetery

Visitors to Huguenot Cemetery report cold spots, orbs in photographs and full apparitions. The best-known ghost is Judge John B. Stickney, a tall dark figure seen perched in a tree or wandering near the entrance; his grave was disturbed by robbers after his death in 1882, in some tellings of his gold teeth, and he is said to be still searching for them. A young girl in a white dress, sometimes named Elizabeth and thought to be a yellow fever victim, is said to wave at visitors and has been seen atop the cemetery gate; one story is that she was a fourteen-year-old whose body was left at the city gates during an epidemic and, unclaimed and unproven to be Catholic, was buried here. St. Augustine's 1821 yellow fever epidemic, arriving just weeks after Florida passed to American control, killed so many so quickly that church bells stopped tolling for each death to spare residents the constant ringing. Because the city's Catholic cemetery was reserved for its own community, this public Protestant burial ground opened the same year and operated until 1884, taking in roughly 436 burials. The cemetery is fragile and usually locked, so check current visiting arrangements.