I've lived in Central Florida my whole life. Disney World, mosquitos, the beach and flip flops are a way of life. I'm used to the sticky hot humidity, the gator filled swamps and the tea stained water of the St. Johns river. This is where my tale takes place; horrifying and unbelievable, yet true ...
I don't know when I first heard tale of the Dead Zone, a stretch of interstate four between Sanford and Debary Florida. Legend has it that the founders who settled in the area became ill of Yellow Fever residing in the mosquito infested lagoons and scrub of palmettos, which is where they succumbed to the abyss named Death and found their final resting place. For over a century, their plots were marked with wooden crosses and they owned their own place amongst the moss draped oaks. There's lots of tales surrounding these graves; some say a man tried to remove the fencing that was at some point placed around the markers and that very night his house burned down. Another account alleges that a curious young boy tried to dig up one of the graves and was killed by a drunk driver shortly after. Myth or truth, i'm not sure. Many years later, when the developers came in and wanted to build what us Floridians call I4, they were sworn to build the road around the graves of the settlers, as to not disturb them. They agreed with a handshake and a smile, but as we all know, their intentions were set before the empty promise was made. Instead, they opted for what was easy and logical, disturbing and paving overtop of the burial site. The tale goes to tell of ghostly sightings, travelers dealing with late night car troubles and more accidents on that stretch of road than you can imagine, all at the consequence of the deceitful agreement that disturbed the dead.
Now, I've never been one to really buy in to the paranormal and I've driven this stretch of road hundreds of times. I've witnessed several accidents and broken down vehicles on the shoulder but never did I feed into the "Dead Zone" theory. If every disturbed grave became a ghost story, we'd have more tales to tell than we could keep up with. But, what I witnessed with my own eyes, driving that stretch of busy road, peering over the St. Johns River bridge, is something I will never forget, something I cannot shake and something that has forever changed me and my view of the paranormal.
It began over a year ago when I had just started a new job. I had to drive past the Dead Zone, exiting right across the bridge at the Sanford exit. I4 can be a white knuckle experience, especially if you have to drive it daily, but the part I always enjoyed was approaching my exit, breathing a sigh of relief that I had not been victim of any road rage or accidents and peering off the bridge into the murky brown waters below. Something about the way the sun shone down, reflecting itself in sparkling ribbons across the gator infested stretch, lily pads dancing with every swirl and breeze across the water, boats drifting lazily while fishermen cast another line, made me feel at peace. It was early on that I noticed the two houseboats floating aside the lily pads. I had seen them before, many times in fact, but it was after starting the job and having it be a part of my daily drive that I began to wonder how long the boats had been there. They looked abandoned, old and decaying. I remember thinking "who comes to rescue deserted vessels or do they float along until they sink?" ...
The houseboats troubled me, for no apparent reason other than the fact that they had become a stationary landmark on the waters that upset my peaceful feeling with a darker and more foreboding impression. I could imagine what horrors lay behind the surface and in my mind's eye I saw a mummified corpse, jaw locked open, forever staring into eternity. Abandoned. Forgotten. Surely the owners of the boats hadn't jumped into the waters and swam to shore and left their boats cast off into the lily pads to sit until ... Until what? I could only imagine the poor soul who decided to one day board the craft to discover my dreamed-up corpse. Perhaps, more than one corpse.
