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Lawrence “Larry” Lawson & Indian River Hauntings
See You on the Other Side...
Every community has stories. Some are carefully recorded in history books. Others are passed from one generation to the next. And then there are those stories that seem to linger stories of people, places and experiences that aren't quite so easily explained. This October, we're stepping into that mysterious side of Sebastian's history with Lawrence “Larry” Lawson, founder of Indian River Hauntings, LLC and the Florida Bureau of Paranormal Investigation (FBPI).
Larry's journey into the paranormal began long before Indian River Hauntings. In 1980, while working as a correctional officer at the Dade County Jail in Miami, he witnessed something he still remembers today: a tall, lanky person in uniform walking across an outer catwalk. Larry sent other officers to find out who it was. They found no one. It was Larry's first paranormal experience, but certainly not his last.
Larry went on to spend a significant portion of his law-enforcement career as a detective. That experience taught him something that would eventually become fundamental to his paranormal investigations: don't jump at the first obvious answer. “You have to examine the evidence and make a sound judgement as to what that evidence tells you,” Larry explains. Years later, Larry's son Ryan an enthusiastic fan of the television show Ghost Hunters asked his father to take him to the St. Augustine Lighthouse, where the show's investigators had previously recorded an unusual experience. Father and son went and had an unexplained experience of their own. For Larry, it reignited a question that has fascinated humanity for thousands of years: What happens after we die?
Determined to search for answers, Larry founded the Florida Bureau of Paranormal Investigation. As word of the team's investigations spread, people began asking Larry to give talks and tours. That eventually led to Indian River Hauntings, LLC, created as the public outreach arm of FBPI. Larry's mission became about more than investigating ghosts. It became about preserving history. “If we don't preserve our history, we are destined to lose it over time,” he says. There is plenty of history to preserve here.
Visitors sometimes think of Florida as little more than, as Larry puts it, “sand, sun and mouse ears.” But beneath the vacation image is a much older story. Florida remained a wild frontier well into the 20th century, and communities along the Treasure Coast were shaped by exploration, shipwrecks, fishing, agriculture, hardship, opportunity and generations of people working to build lives along the coast. Sebastian is an especially fascinating example. The community was recognized as a fishing village as early as the 1870s. For a short period during the 1880s, the town was even known as Newhaven.
Go farther back and the stories become even more intriguing. There are stories surrounding survivors of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet disaster, legends associated with Preacher's Island, and the violent history of the infamous Ashley Gang, whose story intersects with the old Dixie Highway bridge crossing the Sebastian River toward Micco. For Larry, all that human history its struggles, emotions, triumphs and tragedies make Sebastian an especially compelling place to investigate. Even some of the area's more modern buildings have produced stories and experiences that Larry and his team have explored.
When Larry walks into a supposedly haunted building, his detective instincts take over. “I look at it as a crime scene.” Before declaring anything paranormal, the team examines the environment for ordinary explanations. High electromagnetic fields, temperature changes, movement, sounds and other environmental factors can make people feel strange or cause investigative equipment to react. FBPI uses EMF detectors, motion detectors, REM pods, radio-wave scanning devices, FLIR thermal imaging, laser thermometers, SLS cameras, laser grids, trip cameras and voice recorders. They even employ old-fashioned techniques such as dowsing rods and, importantly, their own senses. But Larry stresses an important point: no device currently exists that can unequivocally prove the existence of a ghost or spirit. In fact, Larry estimates that at least 50% of the paranormal claims his team investigates ultimately have a logical or natural explanation.
Ask Larry for his favorite Sebastian ghost story and you'll have trouble getting him to choose just one. At the historic Sebastian Woman's Club, Larry and his team have investigated what he describes as an “after-life dispute” involving the two wives of Dr. David Rose, Sebastian's first doctor. Then there are Lenora and Mildred, daughters of Sebastian pioneer Simeon Park, whose continued presence Larry says his team has investigated at the building where they once lived—today part of District Sebastian.
These aren't simply stories Larry tells from a script. During portions of the Sebastian Historical Ghost Walk, guests can see and even try some of the equipment used by paranormal investigators. Larry says guests themselves have had some rather “unique experiences” inside the Sebastian Woman's Club. What exactly happened? You'll have to take the tour and ask him.
That's perhaps the most interesting thing about an Indian River Hauntings tour. You don't have to believe in ghosts. Larry carefully separates documented history from folklore, personal experiences and paranormal evidence. Historical records can be checked against other sources. Legends may contain stories that can't be independently verified. Personal experiences tell us what someone believes happened to them but don't necessarily provide physical evidence. Truly documenting a paranormal claim, Larry explains, requires bringing together eyewitness accounts, physical evidence and verified historical facts something that is extremely difficult to accomplish.
So, while people may initially sign up for the ghosts, Larry hopes they leave talking about the history. First-time guests should expect what he calls “a heavy dose of history,” along with Sebastian legends and stories of paranormal activity uncovered during FBPI investigations. “My biggest hope,” Larry says, “is that all of my guests walk away with a greater understanding of the history of beautiful Sebastian.”
So…What Is a Ghost? After years of investigations, Larry will be the first to tell you that nobody can definitively answer that question. Some believe ghosts are the spiritual energy of people who have died. Other theories suggest beings occupying an adjacent dimension that occasionally intersects with our own. Still others speculate that some paranormal experiences could somehow originate within the enormous, still poorly understood capabilities of the human mind. “The truth is no one knows for sure,” Larry says. But his own experiences have left him with a deeply held personal belief. “My research, investigation and personal experiences have without a doubt convinced me that this existence is NOT the end of the line. We do move on.” It's why Larry has developed a favorite farewell over the years: “See you on the other side.”
Whether you're convinced, skeptical, curious or simply love a great local story, that's part of the fun of spending an October evening with Indian River Hauntings. Come for the ghosts. Stay for the history. So when you're walking through Sebastian after dark, pay a little more attention to the old buildings, listen a little more carefully to the stories, and remember the generations of people who walked these same streets before us. Because around here, history isn't always as far away as you might think.
Find your history. Find your mystery. Find your adventure. Find it all in the Sebastian River Area.
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