What tour company do you work with?
I work for GhostAugustine, a company that's been in town for sixteen years doing ghost tours and paranormal investigations.
How did you get into doing these tours?
A friend of mine retired and sold his restaurant, then went back to work. He figured I should do the same after I sold my restaurant and retired. I told him I didn't want to work and fortunately living in St. Augustine I didn't have to, but after a while, I was getting a little bored. My friend continued sending me craigslist job listings, and I kept telling him I wasn't looking for work, until one day when he sent me an ad for a Ghost Tour Guide. I was in a wacky mood that day, so I answered the ad, and five minutes later, I had the job, and two weeks later, I was a licensed St. Augustine tour guide.
Fortunately, they had an open spot with the haunted pub tour, so this is now my niche with the company. I take people to bars and restaurants that have had haunting and paranormal experiences, and I tell them ghost stories while they have their cocktails. I have been doing this for over three years now and still haven't gotten kidnapped by aliens or ghosts yet, so all is good.
When did you move here, and why did you choose St. Augustine?
We were always going to retire to Florida since my in-laws lived in South Florida, but we weren't going to move there because the weather never changes. We liked the idea of North Florida since you get some change in the weather, but we've never visited the area before so we came in June 2014 and started spending a weekend a month down here exploring the different areas. We found a property in December 2014, began to build in January 2015 and moved here in March 2016 and we love it. Most of our neighbors moved in around the same time, so we have a great community of neighbors and friends.
Where are you from, and what did you do before retirement?
I was born and raised in Long Beach NY where I was a chef and owner of restaurants. I have lived in Long Beach for basically 43 years of my 61 years, other than my four years of college, four years cooking in Manhattan, and a season working as a chef in Puerto Rico.
How did you end up in Puerto Rico?
A friend of mine had spent some time down on the island of Vieques. She was in touch with someone who needed a chef for the season, and she wasn't going to take it, so she called me. I happened to be between kitchens, and this was well before I opened up my restaurants. I figured, why not do it. I called, he offered me the position and stayed for the season. It's a small world because my current neighbors own a house in Vieques and their neighbor is a woman I worked with when I was over there.
What inspired you to get into the restaurant business?
I went to Cornell and left with a degree in industrial labor relations. I knew I didn't want to sit in a cubicle all day, so after graduating from college, I decided to travel to Australia. On the way, I spent some time in Honolulu with a friend from Cornell and lived with him for a few months. He was managing a couple of restaurants which I thought was interesting so I came back to New York and went to restaurant school. I started that in 1981, and to this day, the wontons I make are the ones I learned to make in Honolulu after college.
What kind of restaurants did you own in Long Beach?
I guess it was farm to table and contemporary American, this was in 1991 so it was before there was a name for that. I would change the menu of my first restaurant every week, so there would be fifty menus a year based on what I could get locally and seasonally.
After a while fifty menus a year got to be a bit much so when I opened up the second restaurant, I only changed the menu once a month and that allowed me to expand the menu a little more. My restaurants were fine dining, one was in a casual setting and didn't have a liquor license, the second one had a liquor license and had a 125-bottle wine list, a private dining room, and an art gallery that changed every 6 to 8 weeks. I figured if I was going to be there every day I didn't want to look at the same art every day, so it not only kept it fresh for me but helped my art collection grow.
Was it hard to leave Long Beach and move to St. Augustine?
Not necessarily, it was getting expensive, and it was getting cold. Moving here allows me to do my fun tour guide job and not have to work to survive.
Tell me about the license you had to get to do the tours?
I had to learn about the history of the town, so the Flagler era, the Spanish period, building materials, the expansion of the town, etc. I received a booklet to study and then had to pass a test.
What would your customers say they love most about your tour?
The groups are always a different dynamic. Sometimes I have 2 to 4 people, sometimes I have 30 people, add drinking and crowded bars, and you never know what will happen so we get through the tours as best as we can depending on the size of the group and the bar crowds. I did get some nice Trip Advisor reviews, one from a large group saying that I was able to manage and keep everyone engaged, so that was a nice compliment.
Did you ever have any paranormal activity during a tour?
In the beginning, I was a huge skeptic in the land of ghosts, but I am dramatically less skeptical since I started doing these tours. I have experienced some weird stuff at Scarlett O'Hara's. People I know have told me about the hauntings in the ladies room at Harry's. A friend of mine at Meehan's texted me at 2 am one night saying that some weird freaky stuff happened while he was there alone when closing up. These stories I've heard, pictures I've seen and taken have certainly made me more open to it than I was three years ago.
What days do you do your pub tours?
It's flexible, but as a rule, it's Monday, Friday and Saturday. If someone wanted to book a tour on those nights, they'd likely have me as their guide, but people can book private tours through the boss as well.
What is something many people don't know about you?
A lot of people down here in St. Augustine do not realize that I was in government and elected office for eight years in Long Beach NY. I did that for eight years, and it took me that long to accomplish what I set out to do. I worked with some good people and it took time but we were able to move the city along.
Would you consider running for something here?
From time to time, I have thought it would be interesting since they are dealing with the same things that I had to deal with years ago in Long Beach. It was a city of 40,000 people that swelled to 50-60,000 in the summer. It was a beachfront community 50 minutes from Manhattan, and we'd get hundreds of thousands of people on our beaches in the summer, so we had to deal with the infrastructure, parking, and flooding, on a barrier island same as St. Augustine. I have the experience, so maybe someday but not right now.
What do you love most about being a tour guide?
The best thing about doing these pub tours are the people I've met doing them not only from other cities but the people I've met locally. Having moved to St. Augustine five years ago and not knowing anyone here at the time, I now have good friends all over town, so that's worked out nicely for us.
To book a tour with Ghostaugustine, check out their Website | Facebook | Trip Advisor
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