Doug Dillon's Blog, page 129
May 8, 2014
Florida Sea Creature Controversy
The St. Augustine Monster - hotly debated by scientific community for over 100 years. A controversy that gained international attention in multiple centuries.
I’m a Florida writer, author of The St. Augustine Trilogy, a series for young adults and adults young at heart. As the title for these three combined novels suggests, they all take place in my favorite city of St. Augustine, Florida.
As America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine was the perfect setting for these paranormal/historical books.
In the development of Book II in the trilogy, Stepping Off a Cliff, I needed some sort of unusual creature as an integral part of the plot. Much to my amazement, I found that such a fascinating animal actually existed in St. Augustine’s past.
In fact, I originally used these key words, “St. Augustine Monster”, in a Google search and came up with a bunch of hits with titles saying, “The St. Augustine Monster.”
And after scanning some of that information, I found out that the St. Augustine Historical Society, where I was doing research for the trilogy, even played a part in what turned out to be one of the most sensational news stories of the late 1880s.
Of course, on my next trip to St. Augustine and its historical society, I asked for information on “The St. Augustine Monster” and was handed a thick file. What fascinating reading!
Street entrance to the St. Augustine Historical Society’s Research Library
At the end of this post, you will find some of the links I first encountered on Google for you to begin your own search for information on this subject if you should choose to do so. But in the meantime, I decided to condense my basic research as much as possible in order for you to get a quick glimpse of this intriguing event in Florida history.
1. Nov. 30, 1896
Two boys discover a huge carcass of some sort while riding their bikes on St. Augustine Beach.
One of Dr. Webb’s photos of the carcass
2. Dec. 1, 1896
The boys bring Dr. DeWitt Webb to view the carcass. Webb is a physician, amateur naturalist and head of the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science (Today known as the St. Augustine Historical Society).
What Webb Finds, Does and Concludes:
• The carcass is partly buried in sand and it is badly deteriorated.
• He digs it partly out.
• The surface is pale pink but in the reflection of bright sunlight it looks a whitish silver color.
Dr. Webb
• The length measures 18’ and the width 7’-10’ wide.
• Webb estimates the weight at somewhere between 4 and 7 tons.
• The carcass has a thick hide (3+ inches) – hard to cut – dulls knives & axes.
• The carcass has stumps that to Webb looks like where arms had been attached.
• Webb believes what the boys found is the remains of a giant octopus.
3. Dec. 7, 1896
• Webb gets some help and has the carcass photographed.
• Close to this date, a Mr. Wilson- digs out carcass even more and finds more “arm” stumps and one arm 23’ long.
4. Jan. 9-15, 1897
• A storm carries the carcass south close to Crescent Beach.
• Dr. Webb finds it again. He takes 4 horses, six men & planking, moves the carcass back to St. Augustine Beach and rolls it 40’ above high tide line.
• Webb adjusts his measurement of the creature’s length from 18’ to 21’.
• The carcass becomes a tourist attraction.
• News reports from this era call the creature, “The St. Augustine Monster.”
5. March 17, 1897
• The carcass is last seen on the beach.
6. Scientific Analysis, late 1896, early 1897
• Dr. Webb initially sent drawings of the carcass to Dr. Verrill of Yale.
• At first, Verrill thinks Webb’s find might be a giant squid.
• Verrill then changes his opinion and calls it a giant octopus. He even publishes his conclusion and gives Webb’s find a scientific name – Octopus Giganteous. He determines, based upon the carcass dimensions sent by Webb, that the creature’s arms might have been 100’ long, giving it a diameter of 200’.
• But once Verrill gets photos & samples of the carcass from Webb, he changes his mind yet again. This time, he says that the creature is actually the remains of a large whale – whale skin and blubber.
• There the story ends until the late twentieth century.
7. Revived Interest, 1957
• Mr. Forest Wood, Director of Marine Studios, later called Marineland, just south of St. Augustine, becomes interested in Dr. Webb’s forgotten find.
• He gathers all the information as is available about the creature and locates the old tissue specimens at the Smithsonian Institute.
• Wood begins a campaign to get scientists to analyze what he has found using modern methods of investigation. That effort takes a while.
8. Scientific Analysis, 1971
• One scientist agrees to investigate, Dr. Genarro at the University of Florida
• He studies the case, examines the photos and analyzes the specimens.
• His conclusion is that what Dr. Webb found was indeed a giant octopus.
The carcass and possibly Dr. Webb next to it
9. Scientific Analysis, 1986
• Dr. Roy Mackal, University of Chicago, verifies Dr. Genarro’s findings.
10. Scientific Analysis, 1995
• A joint team of investigators from the University of Maryland and Indiana University open their own investigation (Sidney Pierce, Gerald Smith, Timothy Maugel and Eugenie Clark).
• They conclude that Dr. Verrill’s final verdict was correct. The remains found by Dr. Webb were those of a whale.
So there you have it, at least where the story rests at this point. And as promised previously, below you will find links to some excellent sources that in turn will allow you to burrow even deeper.
Enjoy.
Castillio de San Marcos, the old Spanish fort on Matanzas Bay
The Smithsonian Institution Archives
The St. Augustine Record (St. Augustine’s hometown newspaper)
Oh, one more thing. Below you will find the book trailer for Stepping Off a Cliff. You might find it interesting to see how “The St. Augustine Monster” gets worked into the plot here in a tantalizing way.
“Read This Book!” Paranormal & Historical.
Sliding Beneath the Surface fiction for young adults and adults young at heart. The St. Augustine Trilogy: Book I
A review placed on Amazon by Erica E. Scott.
“I stumbled upon this book and I really enjoyed it! It is very well written and I enjoyed how the past and present fused together!
“This book is a must read!!!
“I can’t wait to get my hands on the next two novels!”
To see this review on Amazon.com, click here.
See the book trailer below:
To see more on The St. Augustine Trilogy, click here.
May 7, 2014
Reading Motivation Strategies That Work
Intensive Reading grades 10-12 – a YA novel that brought classes to life. A reading strategy that truly motivated and built skills.
The book - Sliding Beneath the Surface, Book I of The St. Augustine Trilogy - paranormal & historical.
Motivating some teens to read is a tough job, to say the least.
The kids I’m talking about here are often the ones who fail statewide assessment tests and end up in reading classes. Exasperated parents and teachers everywhere live with this situation on a continuous basis.
Having taught for many years in grades 7 – 12, I experienced the frustration of trying to get certain students to read anything.
These days though, I come at the problem from a writer’s viewpoint—a writer of teen fiction. And I’m sending out this post because I recently participated in a very rewarding experiment that showed how it is definitely possible to interest even the most reluctant teens to read.
In fact, I’m still basking in the warm glow of what happened.
Teacher Kathy Snyder early in her well earned retirement
It all started near the end of the 2012-2013 school year with one very smart and extremely dedicated teacher by the name of Kathy Snyder. At the time, Kathy taught intensive reading to 11th and 12th graders at a high school near where I live in Central Florida.
After reading and reviewing the first book in my young adult series titled, The St. Augustine Trilogy, she contacted me.
Sliding Beneath the Surface
Kathy felt very confident that the book, Sliding Beneath the Surface, would interest her students and she hoped to use it in all of her classes.
This was her final year in teaching and she wanted to make one more big push to motivate her kids before retiring.
Well, she did that and a lot more.
Once we got a class set of books ordered, Kathy and I decided to make her classroom use of my work a full-blown teacher/author project.
I would donate my time and book resources to help her and she would write-up a study guide as well a detailed report about the project’s results.
We were both excited about the possibilities and couldn’t wait to get started.
At this point in my post, I think I need to give you a little background information on my book series. In that way, you can get a better feel for what attracted Kathy to it:
1. It’s called The St. Augustine Trilogy because St. Augustine, Florida is the physical location for the plot.
The Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine
Why? Because the place is the oldest and most haunted city in the United States–prime territory for great spooky stories and teaching kids a little history along the way. Yup, social studies was my game at one time.
2. I created the trilogy with at-risk youth in mind because I spent the last 10 years of my career as an educator working full time helping such kids and their families.
So many of those young people had huge “victim” mentalities and blamed others for their problems that I wanted to do what I could as a writer to counteract those thought processes. That’s why the trilogy premise is this: You Create Your Own Reality.
Fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden, the main character, is a composite of the many at-risk kids I worked with over the years. And it is his growth over time in taking responsibility for himself and others that is a primary thread throughout the trilogy.
3. Each character, Jeff, his girlfriend Carla and old Lobo represent the three main cultures that built the city of St. Augustine: Jeff is white, Carla is African American and Hispanic, and Lobo is Native American.
4. I use the paranormal as a hook to pull kids into the plot. My real life experiences with such things as described in my nonfiction book, An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic, are the prime material for developing the more exciting, unusual and spooky events in the book.
Now back to the project itself.
The Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine.
Photo courtesy of Greg Dillon – Photography by Greg
Kathy did a fantastic job of introducing her students to St. Augustine and its history way ahead of time.
In doing so, she really paved the way for those kids to feel comfortable as they encountered things that might be unfamiliar.
As part of this process, I sent her a CD packed full of photos—St. Augustine locations, historical reenactments, the cover for each book of the trilogy, my picture, etc.
Then using the book trailer (see below) to introduce the project, Kathy launched into a full schedule of students rotating the reading of Sliding Beneath the Surface aloud in class.
The details of what she did will be forthcoming. If you wish to be on a mailing list to receive that information when it is ready in September, just email me by using the contact button on this website.
Here’s the book trailer created by Cheri Crump, a fan.
Day-by-day, Kathy explained to me via email how increasingly interested her students were becoming in the book and how many of them even wanted to read ahead. Students who rarely paid attention, or rarely spoke at all, did the opposite as their readings continued. Other teachers reported how those same kids were talking about their literary adventure outside of the reading classroom.
Needless to say, Kathy was thrilled. Her hard work was really paying off. Then in an email about halfway into the project, she asked if I could come visit her students once they finished the book.
And since her school isn’t very far from where I live, and it would be fascinating to participate in the project firsthand, I agreed to spend the day at her school.
Annual reenactment of the Dade Battle that began the Second Seminole War in Florida-1835
What a great time I had! And Kathy did too.
Those kids—those non-readers—were so attentive and knowledgeable about the book I found it hard to believe I was in an intensive reading classroom. When I asked them questions about the plot and characters, they had the answers—things even Kathy didn’t know they had absorbed.
Lots of kids greeted me as they came into the room at change of class, some even giving me a hug—including a few of the guys! In high school? I was stunned.
And around the room, Kathy had attached 100 pictures to the walls, one from each of the students. Their assignment was to pick a chapter in the book they liked and a line or two from that chapter.
They were then instructed to write that information on a piece of paper and illustrate the meaning of the chapter/sentences by drawing some kind of picture. And they did beautiful work. I’ve included some of those drawings here because I think they are so important.
This is one of my favorites because this student really got the book’s focus on mental attitude.
When I got home that evening, I had an email from Kathy, thanking me for working with her students. But it was her final comment that really got to me.
This is what she said, “This day was the best one of my entire teaching career.”
Those words really hit me because as an educator and a writer, I too felt that day with Kathy’s kids was the best one of both my careers. How tremendously rewarding.
At the end of the school year, Kathy packaged all of those pictures and sent them to me. What a treasure.
Along with the pictures, Kathy sent me thank you notes from some of the kids. Here are some excerpts from those priceless, and often telling, messages:
I really enjoyed your book and can’t wait for the others.
I love your book. Write more.
I hope you continue to write your stories. I love how many details you include. They made me picture my old house.
I hope we meet again someday.
Thank you for being the first author I’ve ever met and the most
interesting too.Yesterday that you were here the period went by fast.
I was really pleased how your book turned out.
Your book was full of suspense that made me want to keep reading.
I wanna get back in touch. Email me at . . .
I have to say that the book was very entertaining. It felt like I was really in the story . . . it sent chills down my spine.
You have a very interesting book and I think that St. Augustine would be a very nice place to live . . . or the Keys. (Don’t you love it?)
And finally, I close out this unusually long posting with a message to the teacher who made all this possible:
Kathy, I want to thank you publicly for giving your students and me so much in so very many ways. Yes, your students seemed to like my book, but it was you who made it all fit together in a truly viable package.
Your obvious love for those kids, your unrelenting drive to get them resources and your professional skills were so apparent during all the time we worked together. It was a pleasure being your colleague even if it was for a short time.
I know you will enjoy your retirement greatly but I sure wish you were still out there doing such great things with young people.
Further Links for Reading and Language Arts Teachers About Using This Book in the Classroom
Reading Teacher Sparks Student Interest
An article from teacher Kathy Snyder about her experience.
Quotes From Sliding Beneath the Surface Book Reviews
Book reviews for Sliding Beneath the Surface on Amazon.com
Includes reviews from reading and language arts teachers.
A Book Series for the Reading Classroom
The multiple themes and threads that make the series of value.
The St. Augustine Trilogy and America’s Oldest City
The setting for the series in St. Augustine, Florida and how that provides a fascinating backdrop for action.
The St. Augustine Trilogy & Historic Events
Specifies the actual historic events that happened in America’s oldest city that are woven into the series.
Description for The St. Augustine Trilogy
Teaching History Through Young Adult Novels
Teaching Resilience Through Young Adult Novels
Teaching About the Paranormal Using Young Adult Novels
Sample Photo Galleries – Historic St. Augustine, Florida
The Castillo de San Marcos (The old Spanish fort)
The St. Augustine Cathedral Basilica
Spanish Soldiers of the 18th Century
St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum
The Dade Battle Reenactment, Part II (The trigger that started the Second Seminole War)
Top Summer Reading for Teens
YOUNG ADULT, SUPERNATURAL, PARANORMAL, TIME TRAVEL ADVENTURES inspired by the author’s true-life experiences.
This is for real. Many years ago, after my father died, there were a lot of paranormal events that happened in my family. At the time, my wife and I didn’t believe in the paranormal but that soon changed.
In fact, Barb and I spent several years after Dad died investigating such weird occurrences. In the end, we had so much research material that we wrote a nonfiction book about it all and even did radio interview/call-in programs across the U.S. and up into Canada.
That book, An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic, was published across the world by a division of Prentice Hall.
But more recently though, I decided to write a series of fiction books for young adults and adults young at heart using my paranormal experiences as the inspiration the wild and crazy plots of those books. As an old history teacher, I couldn’t resist creating this fictional world for young people.
Today, the title of that series is The St. Augustine Trilogy and it takes place in America’s oldest and most haunted city in the U.S., St. Augustine, Florida.
Trilogy Description
Told in his own words, this paranormal/historical series is a very personal account of fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden’s explosive coming of age in America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida.
Join Jeff and his girlfriend Carla as they experience mind-blowing events that threaten to destroy their very existence.
Follow the two teens as Lobo, the Native American shaman, tries to protect them from powerful forces beyond understanding. Be there when Jeff and Carla discover the depths of reality as well as their own powers to reshape what they find.
Two of the three books in the trilogy are available in both print and eBook formats at the moment, with the third book due for publication in 2015.
Check out the book descriptions you’ll find here and then click on the active links for each book to see the reviews on Amazon.com.
I’ve also include the book trailers for the two books already in print so you can get a real sense of the characters and the plot.
Below all that, I have included active links to some of the most interesting blog posts I’ve written on the paranormal.
Enjoy.
Sliding Beneath the Surface: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book I
Description
In America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, teenager Jeff Golden is in trouble. Horrible dreams won’t let him sleep, and he is up to his eyeballs in terrifying, paranormal experiences.
Finally, Jeff turns to his girlfriend Carla, and Lobo, the mysterious Native American shaman, for help. But what he discovers is a lot more than he bargained for.
A ghostly presence linked to a local historic cemetery is not only threatening Jeff’s sanity but his life as well. And before he knows what’s happening, Jeff finds both himself and Carla pulled into one of the nastiest and bloody events in Florida history. It is a place from which they may never escape.
Book Trailer
Stepping Off a Cliff: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book II
Description
An otherworldly, evil and dangerous force infests America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida. Everyone living there, or visiting, is at risk in ways too horrible to imagine.
Standing between this invader and the people of St. Augustine are teenagers Jeff and Carla, the mysterious Native American shaman, Lobo, and Lyle, the homeless guy.
In their quest to save themselves and all the inhabitants of this ancient Florida city, Jeff and Carla uncover lost parts of St. Augustine history, push past the limits of space and time, and come face-to-face with what they come to realize are the true walking dead.
Book Trailer
Targeting Orion’s Children: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book III – due for publication in 2015
Description
In this, the final book of The St. Augustine Trilogy, the team of Jeff Golden, Carla Rodriguez, old Lobo, the Native American shaman and Lyle, the homeless guy, gather once again to join forces.
This time, though, the two teens face a paranormal presence that defies full human understanding and becomes a threat far beyond the oldest city in America where they live.
Overwhelmed by the immense responsibility they hold in their hands, Jeff and Carla make a jaw-dropping discovery that leads them in directions they could never before have imagined.
Now, as promised, here are those blog postings that contain some very interesting paranormal stories:
Haunted Lighthouse in St.Augustine, Florida
Paranormal Experiences: The Skyway Bridge Disaster
St. Augustine, FL Ghost Hunt: Miss Caroline’s Guest House # 2
Ghost Hunting on the Queen Mary
Infinite Hummingbird Experiences
Paranormal Events in Families: The Car Horn
Dreams of Past Lives? The Russian Revolution
Carl Jung on Coincidences, Synchronicity and the Paranormal
Huge Sea Creature at Nation’s Oldest and Most Haunted City
The St. Augustine monster - hotly debated by scientific community for over 100 years. A controversy that gained international attention in multiple centuries.
I’m a Florida writer, author of The St. Augustine Trilogy, a series for young adults and adults young at heart. As the title for these three combined novels suggests, they all take place in my favorite city of St. Augustine, Florida.
As America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine was the perfect setting for these paranormal/historical books.
In the development of Book II in the trilogy, Stepping Off a Cliff, I needed some sort of unusual creature as an integral part of the plot. Much to my amazement, I found that such a fascinating animal actually existed in St. Augustine’s past.
In fact, I originally used these key words, “St. Augustine Monster”, in a Google search and came up with a bunch of hits with titles saying, “The St. Augustine Monster.”
And after scanning some of that information, I found out that the St. Augustine Historical Society, where I was doing research for the trilogy, even played a part in what turned out to be one of the most sensational news stories of the late 1880s.
Of course, on my next trip to St. Augustine and its historical society, I asked for information on “The St. Augustine Monster” and was handed a thick file. What fascinating reading!
Street entrance to the St. Augustine Historical Society’s Research Library
At the end of this post, you will find some of the links I first encountered on Google for you to begin your own search for information on this subject if you should choose to do so. But in the meantime, I decided to condense my basic research as much as possible in order for you to get a quick glimpse of this intriguing event in Florida history.
1. Nov. 30, 1896
Two boys discover a huge carcass of some sort while riding their bikes on St. Augustine Beach.
One of Dr. Webb’s photos of the carcass
2. Dec. 1, 1896
The boys bring Dr. DeWitt Webb to view the carcass. Webb is a physician, amateur naturalist and head of the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science (Today known as the St. Augustine Historical Society).
What Webb Finds, Does and Concludes:
• The carcass is partly buried in sand and it is badly deteriorated.
• He digs it partly out.
• The surface is pale pink but in the reflection of bright sunlight it looks a whitish silver color.
Dr. Webb
• The length measures 18’ and the width 7’-10’ wide.
• Webb estimates the weight at somewhere between 4 and 7 tons.
• The carcass has a thick hide (3+ inches) – hard to cut – dulls knives & axes.
• The carcass has stumps that to Webb looks like where arms had been attached.
• Webb believes what the boys found is the remains of a giant octopus.
3. Dec. 7, 1896
• Webb gets some help and has the carcass photographed.
• Close to this date, a Mr. Wilson- digs out carcass even more and finds more “arm” stumps and one arm 23’ long.
4. Jan. 9-15, 1897
• A storm carries the carcass south close to Crescent Beach.
• Dr. Webb finds it again. He takes 4 horses, six men & planking, moves the carcass back to St. Augustine Beach and rolls it 40’ above high tide line.
• Webb adjusts his measurement of the creature’s length from 18’ to 21’.
• The carcass becomes a tourist attraction.
• News reports from this era call the creature, “The St. Augustine Monster.”
5. March 17, 1897
• The carcass is last seen on the beach.
6. Scientific Analysis, late 1896, early 1897
• Dr. Webb initially sent drawings of the carcass to Dr. Verrill of Yale.
• At first, Verrill thinks Webb’s find might be a giant squid.
• Verrill then changes his opinion and calls it a giant octopus. He even publishes his conclusion and gives Webb’s find a scientific name – Octopus Giganteous. He determines, based upon the carcass dimensions sent by Webb, that the creature’s arms might have been 100’ long, giving it a diameter of 200’.
• But once Verrill gets photos & samples of the carcass from Webb, he changes his mind yet again. This time, he says that the creature is actually the remains of a large whale – whale skin and blubber.
• There the story ends until the late twentieth century.
7. Revived Interest, 1957
• Mr. Forest Wood, Director of Marine Studios, later called Marineland, just south of St. Augustine, becomes interested in Dr. Webb’s forgotten find.
• He gathers all the information as is available about the creature and locates the old tissue specimens at the Smithsonian Institute.
• Wood begins a campaign to get scientists to analyze what he has found using modern methods of investigation. That effort takes a while.
8. Scientific Analysis, 1971
• One scientist agrees to investigate, Dr. Genarro at the University of Florida
• He studies the case, examines the photos and analyzes the specimens.
• His conclusion is that what Dr. Webb found was indeed a giant octopus.
The carcass and possibly Dr. Webb next to it
9. Scientific Analysis, 1986
• Dr. Roy Mackal, University of Chicago, verifies Dr. Genarro’s findings.
10. Scientific Analysis, 1995
• A joint team of investigators from the University of Maryland and Indiana University open their own investigation (Sidney Pierce, Gerald Smith, Timothy Maugel and Eugenie Clark).
• They conclude that Dr. Verrill’s final verdict was correct. The remains found by Dr. Webb were those of a whale.
So there you have it, at least where the story rests at this point. And as promised previously, below you will find links to some excellent sources that in turn will allow you to burrow even deeper.
Enjoy.
Castillio de San Marcos, the old Spanish fort on Matanzas Bay
The Smithsonian Institution Archives
The St. Augustine Record (St. Augustine’s hometown newspaper)
Oh, one more thing. Below you will find the book trailer for Stepping Off a Cliff. You might find it interesting to see how “The St. Augustine Monster” gets worked into the plot here in a tantalizing way.
May 6, 2014
Teen Paranormal Stories, Books, Series, Trilogy
YOUNG ADULT, SUPERNATURAL, TIME TRAVEL ADVENTURES inspired by the author’s true-life experiences.
This is for real. Many years ago, after my father died, there were a lot of paranormal events that happened in my family. At the time, my wife and I didn’t believe in the paranormal but that soon changed.
In fact, Barb and I spent several years after Dad died investigating such weird occurrences. In the end, we had so much research material that we wrote a nonfiction book about it all and even did radio interview/call-in programs across the U.S. and up into Canada.
That book, An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic, was published across the world by a division of Prentice Hall.
But more recently though, I decided to write a series of fiction books for young adults and adults young at heart using my paranormal experiences as the inspiration the wild and crazy plots of those books. As an old history teacher, I couldn’t resist creating this fictional world for young people.
Today, the title of that series is The St. Augustine Trilogy and it takes place in America’s oldest and most haunted city in the U.S., St. Augustine, Florida.
Trilogy Description
Told in his own words, this paranormal/historical series is a very personal account of fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden’s explosive coming of age in America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida.
Join Jeff and his girlfriend Carla as they experience mind-blowing events that threaten to destroy their very existence.
Follow the two teens as Lobo, the Native American shaman, tries to protect them from powerful forces beyond understanding. Be there when Jeff and Carla discover the depths of reality as well as their own powers to reshape what they find.
Two of the three books in the trilogy are available in both print and eBook formats at the moment, with the third book due for publication in 2015.
Check out the book descriptions you’ll find here and then click on the active links for each book to see the reviews on Amazon.com.
I’ve also include the book trailers for the two books already in print so you can get a real sense of the characters and the plot.
Below all that, I have included active links to some of the most interesting blog posts I’ve written on the paranormal.
Enjoy.
Sliding Beneath the Surface: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book I
Description
In America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, teenager Jeff Golden is in trouble. Horrible dreams won’t let him sleep, and he is up to his eyeballs in terrifying, paranormal experiences.
Finally, Jeff turns to his girlfriend Carla, and Lobo, the mysterious Native American shaman, for help. But what he discovers is a lot more than he bargained for.
A ghostly presence linked to a local historic cemetery is not only threatening Jeff’s sanity but his life as well. And before he knows what’s happening, Jeff finds both himself and Carla pulled into one of the nastiest and bloody events in Florida history. It is a place from which they may never escape.
Book Trailer
Stepping Off a Cliff: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book II
Description
An otherworldly, evil and dangerous force infests America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida. Everyone living there, or visiting, is at risk in ways too horrible to imagine.
Standing between this invader and the people of St. Augustine are teenagers Jeff and Carla, the mysterious Native American shaman, Lobo, and Lyle, the homeless guy.
In their quest to save themselves and all the inhabitants of this ancient Florida city, Jeff and Carla uncover lost parts of St. Augustine history, push past the limits of space and time, and come face-to-face with what they come to realize are the true walking dead.
Book Trailer
Targeting Orion’s Children: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book III – due for publication in 2015
Description
In this, the final book of The St. Augustine Trilogy, the team of Jeff Golden, Carla Rodriguez, old Lobo, the Native American shaman and Lyle, the homeless guy, gather once again to join forces.
This time, though, the two teens face a paranormal presence that defies full human understanding and becomes a threat far beyond the oldest city in America where they live.
Overwhelmed by the immense responsibility they hold in their hands, Jeff and Carla make a jaw-dropping discovery that leads them in directions they could never before have imagined.
Now, as promised, here are those blog postings that contain some very interesting paranormal stories:
Haunted Lighthouse in St.Augustine, Florida
Paranormal Experiences: The Skyway Bridge Disaster
St. Augustine, FL Ghost Hunt: Miss Caroline’s Guest House # 2
Ghost Hunting on the Queen Mary
Infinite Hummingbird Experiences
Paranormal Events in Families: The Car Horn
Dreams of Past Lives? The Russian Revolution
Carl Jung on Coincidences, Synchronicity and the Paranormal
Best Summer Reading for Teens
YOUNG ADULT, SUPERNATURAL, PARANORMAL, TIME TRAVEL ADVENTURES inspired by the author’s true-life experiences.
This is for real. Many years ago, after my father died, there were a lot of paranormal events that happened in my family. At the time, my wife and I didn’t believe in the paranormal but that soon changed.
In fact, Barb and I spent several years after Dad died investigating such weird occurrences. In the end, we had so much research material that we wrote a nonfiction book about it all and even did radio interview/call-in programs across the U.S. and up into Canada.
That book, An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic, was published across the world by a division of Prentice Hall.
But more recently though, I decided to write a series of fiction books for young adults and adults young at heart using my paranormal experiences as the inspiration the wild and crazy plots of those books. As an old history teacher, I couldn’t resist creating this fictional world for young people.
Today, the title of that series is The St. Augustine Trilogy and it takes place in America’s oldest and most haunted city in the U.S., St. Augustine, Florida.
Trilogy Description
Told in his own words, this paranormal/historical series is a very personal account of fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden’s explosive coming of age in America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida.
Join Jeff and his girlfriend Carla as they experience mind-blowing events that threaten to destroy their very existence.
Follow the two teens as Lobo, the Native American shaman, tries to protect them from powerful forces beyond understanding. Be there when Jeff and Carla discover the depths of reality as well as their own powers to reshape what they find.
Two of the three books in the trilogy are available in both print and eBook formats at the moment, with the third book due for publication in 2015.
Check out the book descriptions you’ll find here and then click on the active links for each book to see the reviews on Amazon.com.
I’ve also include the book trailers for the two books already in print so you can get a real sense of the characters and the plot.
Below all that, I have included active links to some of the most interesting blog posts I’ve written on the paranormal.
Enjoy.
Sliding Beneath the Surface: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book I
Description
In America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, teenager Jeff Golden is in trouble. Horrible dreams won’t let him sleep, and he is up to his eyeballs in terrifying, paranormal experiences.
Finally, Jeff turns to his girlfriend Carla, and Lobo, the mysterious Native American shaman, for help. But what he discovers is a lot more than he bargained for.
A ghostly presence linked to a local historic cemetery is not only threatening Jeff’s sanity but his life as well. And before he knows what’s happening, Jeff finds both himself and Carla pulled into one of the nastiest and bloody events in Florida history. It is a place from which they may never escape.
Book Trailer
Stepping Off a Cliff: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book II
Description
An otherworldly, evil and dangerous force infests America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida. Everyone living there, or visiting, is at risk in ways too horrible to imagine.
Standing between this invader and the people of St. Augustine are teenagers Jeff and Carla, the mysterious Native American shaman, Lobo, and Lyle, the homeless guy.
In their quest to save themselves and all the inhabitants of this ancient Florida city, Jeff and Carla uncover lost parts of St. Augustine history, push past the limits of space and time, and come face-to-face with what they come to realize are the true walking dead.
Book Trailer
Targeting Orion’s Children: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book III – due for publication in 2015
Description
In this, the final book of The St. Augustine Trilogy, the team of Jeff Golden, Carla Rodriguez, old Lobo, the Native American shaman and Lyle, the homeless guy, gather once again to join forces.
This time, though, the two teens face a paranormal presence that defies full human understanding and becomes a threat far beyond the oldest city in America where they live.
Overwhelmed by the immense responsibility they hold in their hands, Jeff and Carla make a jaw-dropping discovery that leads them in directions they could never before have imagined.
Now, as promised, here are those blog postings that contain some very interesting paranormal stories:
Haunted Lighthouse in St.Augustine, Florida
Paranormal Experiences: The Skyway Bridge Disaster
St. Augustine, FL Ghost Hunt: Miss Caroline’s Guest House # 2
Ghost Hunting on the Queen Mary
Infinite Hummingbird Experiences
Paranormal Events in Families: The Car Horn
Dreams of Past Lives? The Russian Revolution
Carl Jung on Coincidences, Synchronicity and the Paranormal
Ghosts & Monsters in Oldest & Most Haunted City in U.S.
St. Augustine, Florida – teen novel - Stepping Off a Cliff - paranormal, historical, romance , zombies, monsters.
The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book II is finally published! First check out the description below and then the trailer:
An otherworldly, evil and dangerous force infests America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida. Everyone living there, or visiting, is at risk in ways too horrible to imagine.
Standing between this invader and the people of St. Augustine are teenagers Jeff and Carla, the mysterious Native American shaman, Lobo, and Lyle, the homeless guy.
In their quest to save themselves and all the inhabitants of this ancient Florida city, Jeff and Carla uncover lost parts of St. Augustine history, push past the limits of space and time, and come face-to-face with what they come to realize are the true walking dead.
Click here to check out how Book I of the series, Sliding Beneath the Surface, is being used in school reading classrooms.
May 5, 2014
Giant Octopus in St. Augustine, Florida?
Florida sea creature hotly debated by scientific community for over 100 years. A controversy that gained international attention during multiple centuries.
I’m a Florida writer, author of The St. Augustine Trilogy, a series for young adults and adults young at heart. As the title for these three combined novels suggests, they all take place in my favorite city of St. Augustine, Florida.
As America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine was the perfect setting for these paranormal/historical books.
In the development of Book II in the trilogy, Stepping Off a Cliff, I needed some sort of unusual creature as an integral part of the plot. Much to my amazement, I found that such a fascinating animal actually existed in St. Augustine’s past.
In fact, I originally used these key words, “St. Augustine Monster”, in a Google search and came up with a bunch of hits with titles saying, “The St. Augustine Monster.”
And after scanning some of that information, I found out that the St. Augustine Historical Society, where I was doing research for the trilogy, even played a part in what turned out to be one of the most sensational news stories of the late 1880s.
Of course, on my next trip to St. Augustine and its historical society, I asked for information on “The St. Augustine Monster” and was handed a thick file. What fascinating reading!
Street entrance to the St. Augustine Historical Society’s Research Library
At the end of this post, you will find some of the links I first encountered on Google for you to begin your own search for information on this subject if you should choose to do so. But in the meantime, I decided to condense my basic research as much as possible in order for you to get a quick glimpse of this intriguing event in Florida history.
1. Nov. 30, 1896
Two boys discover a huge carcass of some sort while riding their bikes on St. Augustine Beach.
One of Dr. Webb’s photos of the carcass
2. Dec. 1, 1896
The boys bring Dr. DeWitt Webb to view the carcass. Webb is a physician, amateur naturalist and head of the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science (Today known as the St. Augustine Historical Society).
What Webb Finds, Does and Concludes:
• The carcass is partly buried in sand and it is badly deteriorated.
• He digs it partly out.
• The surface is pale pink but in the reflection of bright sunlight it looks a whitish silver color.
Dr. Webb
• The length measures 18’ and the width 7’-10’ wide.
• Webb estimates the weight at somewhere between 4 and 7 tons.
• The carcass has a thick hide (3+ inches) – hard to cut – dulls knives & axes.
• The carcass has stumps that to Webb looks like where arms had been attached.
• Webb believes what the boys found is the remains of a giant octopus.
3. Dec. 7, 1896
• Webb gets some help and has the carcass photographed.
• Close to this date, a Mr. Wilson- digs out carcass even more and finds more “arm” stumps and one arm 23’ long.
4. Jan. 9-15, 1897
• A storm carries the carcass south close to Crescent Beach.
• Dr. Webb finds it again. He takes 4 horses, six men & planking, moves the carcass back to St. Augustine Beach and rolls it 40’ above high tide line.
• Webb adjusts his measurement of the creature’s length from 18’ to 21’.
• The carcass becomes a tourist attraction.
• News reports from this era call the creature, “The St. Augustine Monster.”
5. March 17, 1897
• The carcass is last seen on the beach.
6. Scientific Analysis, late 1896, early 1897
• Dr. Webb initially sent drawings of the carcass to Dr. Verrill of Yale.
• At first, Verrill thinks Webb’s find might be a giant squid.
• Verrill then changes his opinion and calls it a giant octopus. He even publishes his conclusion and gives Webb’s find a scientific name – Octopus Giganteous. He determines, based upon the carcass dimensions sent by Webb, that the creature’s arms might have been 100’ long, giving it a diameter of 200’.
• But once Verrill gets photos & samples of the carcass from Webb, he changes his mind yet again. This time, he says that the creature is actually the remains of a large whale – whale skin and blubber.
• There the story ends until the late twentieth century.
7. Revived Interest, 1957
• Mr. Forest Wood, Director of Marine Studios, later called Marineland, just south of St. Augustine, becomes interested in Dr. Webb’s forgotten find.
• He gathers all the information as is available about the creature and locates the old tissue specimens at the Smithsonian Institute.
• Wood begins a campaign to get scientists to analyze what he has found using modern methods of investigation. That effort takes a while.
8. Scientific Analysis, 1971
• One scientist agrees to investigate, Dr. Genarro at the University of Florida
• He studies the case, examines the photos and analyzes the specimens.
• His conclusion is that what Dr. Webb found was indeed a giant octopus.
The carcass and possibly Dr. Webb next to it
9. Scientific Analysis, 1986
• Dr. Roy Mackal, University of Chicago, verifies Dr. Genarro’s findings.
10. Scientific Analysis, 1995
• A joint team of investigators from the University of Maryland and Indiana University open their own investigation (Sidney Pierce, Gerald Smith, Timothy Maugel and Eugenie Clark).
• They conclude that Dr. Verrill’s final verdict was correct. The remains found by Dr. Webb were those of a whale.
So there you have it, at least where the story rests at this point. And as promised previously, below you will find links to some excellent sources that in turn will allow you to burrow even deeper.
Enjoy.
Castillio de San Marcos, the old Spanish fort on Matanzas Bay
The Smithsonian Institution Archives
The St. Augustine Record (St. Augustine’s hometown newspaper)
Oh, one more thing. Below you will find the book trailer for Stepping Off a Cliff. You might find it interesting to see how “The St. Augustine Monster” gets worked into the plot here in a tantalizing way.
Great Read for Middle School Students!
Sliding Beneath the Surface - Paranormal & Historical fiction for young adults and adults young at heart.The St. Augustine Trilogy: Book I.
A review placed on Amazon.com by Alisha Teague.
“As a Language Arts teacher, I found the book to be very intriguing and captivating!
“I can see my students reading ahead to find out what happens next.. thriller and mysterious!!”
To see this review on Amazon.com, click here.
See the book trailer below:
To see more on The St. Augustine Trilogy, click here.
