We were on vacation last week, in Florida. In Tampa, to be exact. Along with Disney, we did several other tourist things, which got me thinking about souvenir albums — you know, those old books with construction paper pages and all sorts of postcards and paper glued into them along with hand written notes on what they did and thought… The ones that force you to page through them at the estate sale so long that you have to buy them so you can take them home and really read them. And in doing so you experience the trips taken by persons long gone, to attractions (if not actual places) which may also be long gone… But in those faded pages the spirit(s) still live.

I get goosebumps just thinking about those old scrapbooks.

I wanted the kids to make such scrapbooks, but they had no interest in it. They never really have. Nothing short of forcing them would make it happen, and vacation memories at gun-point isn’t exactly the sort of charm I was going for.

If they wouldn’t do it for me, they certainly had no interest in doing it for some future collector. And that made me a little sad. At first.

I wondered if we just weren’t making vacations good enough — or at least “like they used to,” but then something happened…

In our condo’s packet of stuff to see and do, I found a brochure for Tampa Bay Ghost Tours. Boasting “All The Best Haunts”, I called and made reservations for the whole crew, including the kids (ages 7 through 18), without asking any real questions. I didn’t ask what the tours were, how long it lasted, or anything that (apparently) sane people ask. I just thought we’d all enjoy it and booked a date.

Now perhaps I should preface all of this by saying that the kids are, among many things, into ghosts.

Along with having hysterically historical parents (both in terms of our ages and our love of history), they are themselves imaginative as well as scientific in their approach to such things as ghosts. (Our household not only watches History Detectives & MythBusters, but Ghost Hunters too).

And it should be noted that one of the favorite Disney attractions was the Haunted Mansion. It was such a favorite, my personal souvenir from Disney was the book, The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies; certain to be a favorite for it’s ghost theme as well as (especially by the eldest) its information on theatrical effects. Oh, and we’ve officially got at least one goth kid. :sigh:

So while I may not have known much about the Tampa Bay Ghost Tours, I did — and do — know a lot about our kids. So I felt confident booking the evening walking tour along the boardwalk at John’s Pass, called the Maritime Mysteries & Pirates of the Pass tour.

The tour itself was everything I could have asked for — and so much more.

It was over an hour of ghost stories, told to us against the backdrop of the beautiful boardwalk at sunset. The stories or legends are of real people who lived in or around John’s Pass, documented and researched by Deborah Frethem who has authored Ghost Stories of St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Pinellas County: Tales From a Haunted Peninsula — a book available in the tour’s gift shop.

Books I eventually purchased.

Yes, “books” — because, for reasons I shall soon explain, each of the kids and myself, needed a copy.

You see, the tour was very cool, but what really made the tour so neat was our tour guide, Quartermaster Moe.

A large, physically imposing man dressed as a pirate (but not in an over-the-top way), his deep voice and mesmerizing storytelling had all three of the children, as well as we adults, spellbound. I can’t really say enough about Quartermaster Moe without further embarrassment of my family or the Quartermaster himself, but will say that Tampa Bay Ghost Tours has a goldmine in that pirate.

He so fascinated the children that when we returned to John’s Pass to purchase books the next day (the gift shop being closed by the time the tour ended), that I had an idea… I’d ask if we could get the quartermaster to sign our books. I wasn’t sure if this would be possible that day, but driving there I figured I could shoo the children to grandma for a few minutes and sneak into the gift shop and ask. Even if it meant having the books sent to us via mail, I imagined how happy each child would be… But when we arrived at the shop, who awaited us outside? Quartermaster Moe!

The kids were falling all over themselves at the sight of him when I asked him if he’d mind signing our copies of the book. He was surprised and said he’d never been “honored” with such a request before, but he’d happily do it — and shouldn’t we have photos of that too? At which time one of the other ghost tour guides offered to take a group photo of us all.

Well, long-story-short, he signed all three kids books and my own copy (because the kids wouldn’t have it any other way) and that, my friends, was the high-light of the day if not the trip. Girls clutched the books like they were pirate booty and even the seven year old boy who normally cannot be bothered with books outside of school sat down to read it!

From a collector’s standpoint, Quartermaster Moe’s signature may have no value — but to our family it sure does. In those bits of ink, the spirit of our family and our vacation are collected. Just like those old scrapbooks. Even if it is something a future collector would scratch his head over…

For unless this article makes Quartermaster Moe famous or something, researching that name will be rather difficult.

And that makes me rethink every book I own, ever seen, which has an unknown or seemingly unrelated inscription… Who might that person be/have been and what secrets does it hold?

It wasn’t until later that I noticed the books had also been signed by the author. Then I felt a twinge of guilt. I was marveling at what will likely be “meaningless” or intrinsic personal value of Moe’s signature and oblivious to what is perhaps the autograph with monetary value.

But then I realized (or at least hope) that Frethem would get our family’s love of such quintessence — she, after all, spent a great deal of time researching and writing about similarly powerful but oft unseen mysteries: ghosts.

Her collection of ghosts, or at least their stories, is a preservation of more than History with a capital ‘H’, but the specters of the past which are as incoherent yet potent as any other memory. And collecting them has value.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 7:19 am and is filed under Uncategorized, collecting fyi, events, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.