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Historic haunted places in Tampa, FL. Each page gives the ghost story, whether visitors can go, and a link to the site the story came from. The stories are folklore, not documented fact.
6 listings shown.
Haunted place
The most repeated report at this Ybor City clubhouse is babies crying on the lower floors when no infants are there. Staff over the years have also seen blown-out candles relight, …
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Haunted place
The club's best-known figure is 'Virginia,' said to have been part of the cleaning staff, who appears on the grand front staircase and in the foyer. Investigators complain that bat…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Haunted place
Gambling boss Charlie Wall testified before the Kefauver Committee in this courthouse's main courtroom in 1950 and was murdered five years later in a case never solved. Since the 2…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Haunted place
One grave reads simply 'Charles Owen Hanged 1882,' for a man lynched by a Tampa mob, and visitors claim to see the shadow of a hanging figure among the oaks near it at sunset. Tour…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Haunted place
Projectionist Foster 'Fink' Finley worked in this 1926 movie palace's booth for most of his life and died there in 1965. Staff soon began to feel he had never left, and the booth r…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Haunted place
Ybor City tour guides tell of 'Rosalita,' a young woman said to have been thrown from the third-floor ballroom after turning down a dance, and of a piano in that ballroom that play…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Tampa's haunted ground is two districts, and they were built a generation apart for different people. The older of the two, in the telling of Ghost City Tours' Ybor City page collected, is Ybor City itself: "Ybor City was built by people chasing something better. In the 1880s and 1890s they came by the thousands from Cuba, Spain, and Italy to roll cigars in a brand-new town on the edge of Tampa, and in a single generation they turned a stretch of palmetto scrub into one of the most remarkable neighborhoods in the South." The same page's FAQ names the forces that shaped the district its walk covers: "the immigrants who built Ybor City, the cigar factories where they worked, the fires and epidemics that shaped the neighborhood, and the social clubs and old buildings where people still report unexplained encounters."
The Cuban Club's own history page: as early as 1899 Cuban immigrants formed recreational societies, and in 1902 Cuban workers founded "El Circulo Cubano," a mutual aid society to "bind all Cuban residents to Tampa into a fraternal group, to offer assistance and help to the sick." Hillsborough County's historical-marker page adds the building sequence: the first meeting house was built in 1907 in Ybor City; after fire destroyed the original building, a new structure was built in 1917 by M. Leo Elliott, a prominent Hillsborough County architect, in partnership with Bayar C. Bonfoey. The club's own page describes the present building the same way: a four-story, yellow brick building with Neoclassical design elements on the original site, constructed in 1917, containing a two-story theater, pharmacy, library, ballroom and cantina, and once housing a gymnasium, a swimming pool and two bowling lanes. The county page records what happened inside it within a few years: when the Great Influenza epidemic of 1918–1920 hit Tampa, the Cuban Club was converted to a temporary hospital for ailing locals, including non-members, with surgeons, doctors, nurses and pharmacists on staff in its early years. The county page also gives the later arc: membership dues, predominantly from cigar workers, declined as a result of the 1962 Cuban Trade Embargo; the Cuban Club Foundation was formed in the early 1990s to maintain the building; and on November 15, 1972, the Cuban Club was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, at 2010 N. Avenida Republica de Cuba.
Downtown, the second district, is framed by Tampa Terrors on its own pub-crawl page, recorded here as that operator's framing: Tampa Bay's development began in 1845, when the territory became part of the United States; despite the Civil War the area grew steadily, with railroad expansion and lavish hotels; and the city "was once even called 'the damndest city this side of Hell,' due to its seedy beginnings and history of rum runner." Its tour cards name the downtown anchors by date in the listings collected: the Tampa Theatre, a 1926 Mediterranean Revival building in the operator's listing copy, meeting point for its main walk at 711 N. Franklin Street, and Le Méridien Tampa, a restored 1905 courthouse in the same copy. Those dates are the listings' own, carried as such.
This section is folklore — reported by the operators and accounts cited, and never asserted as fact here.
The Cuban Club carries Tampa's largest ghost count, and every collected source that gives the count attributes it the same way: to investigators and tour tradition, not to a record. The Official Ybor City Ghost Tour's tour listings state that the club was named by The Travel Channel the "4th Most Haunted Building in America," that the tour is the only one with keys to it, that a building the Ghost Hunters nicknamed "Club Dead" was "proclaimed to have 150+ ghosts in it," and warn, in the listing's own words, "Beware, actual ghost encounters do occur." Tampa Bay 28's October 2026 account of touring the building with guide "Tampa Max" Herman puts the same numbers in the guide's mouth: "There are four confirmed deaths that have happened in here, but paranormal investigators have said that there are at least 150 ghosts in here every single day and night," he says. "My theory is that they're having a big party in here." The station describes Max as the only tour guide with keys to buildings most people only walk by. An older participant account of the same tour, published by American Roads, retells two of the club's specific tales as tour tales, and they are carried here only as that: the swimming pool was the scene of the tragic drowning of a little eight-year-old boy, who still plays there, with visitors often bringing him balls and toys; and the classic theater upstairs has its resident spirit in a talented young actor who, after stage fright at his first play and booing from his friends, repeated the play perfectly and then hanged himself on the stage. Neither tale is documented in the club's own history or the county marker collected, and neither is asserted here.
The Official tour's other exclusive stop is told in its listings this way: Jose Marti Park, at 1303 E. 8th Ave, is "the only tour with keys to this sacred land where Jose Marti led his revolution and the ashes/bodies of Cubans lay today" — the listing's claim, recorded as such; the walk between the stops is described in the same listings as discovering Ybor's "haunted history of murders, mayhem, heartbreak and mafia."
Downtown, Tampa Terrors' own pub-crawl page tells its repertoire in its own voice, and it is kept in that voice. Of Bizou Brasserie, in the courthouse-turned-hotel: it "is famous for being the site of the infamous gangster Charlie Wall's murder," and "Look closely at the steps of Le Meridien Hotel, and you may just see his hazy figure" — the page asks, "Is he the reason the hotel halls are said to be haunted?" Of the Tampa Theatre: it "maintains its spectral reputation and historic infrastructure with a cast of phantoms roaming around inside," and the crawl shares "the horrific story of the ticket taker whose skull was bashed in while at work," plus "all the lost souls inside this iconic theatre." Of the Hub Bar and Ybor beyond it: the district was "once filled with gangster-run gambling halls" and "is now home to lost souls searching for redemption," in the page's words. All of those are the operator's reported accounts, attributed in full, and none is asserted here as a documented event.
Hountix lists 6 places in Tampa, FL. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.
Its own history page records skilled Cuban cigarmakers making Tampa's hand-rolled cigars world-famous; the founding of El Circulo Cubano in 1902 to bind Tampa's Cuban residents into a fraternal group offering assistance and help to the sick; the fire that destroyed the first clubhouse in 1916; and the present four-story yellow brick Neoclassical building, constructed in 1917 on the original site, with its two-story theater, pharmacy, library, ballroom, cantina, gymnasium, swimming pool and two bowling lanes, its imported tile, stained glass and scraffito spandrells, and a Grand Ballroom ceiling of elaborate murals. The courtyard west of the building, the same page says, has hosted boxing matches and entertainers such as Benny Moré and Celia Cruz and the big bands of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, and the Grand Ballroom on the top floor continues as the scene of wedding receptions, New Year's Eve parties and dances. The page footer gives the working present: The Cuban Club, 2010 Avenida Republica de Cuba, Tampa, Florida 33605, listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Hillsborough County's marker page, collected, adds the architects M. Leo Elliott and Bayar C. Bonfoey, the 1918–1920 influenza hospital chapter, the post-1962 decline and early-1990s Foundation, and the November 15, 1972 National Register date.
No published ghost lore appears on the Cuban Club's own history page or homepage collected: the club presents itself as a living social club and event venue, not a haunted site, and this story invents none for it. Its haunted reputation is told entirely by others — the Official Ybor City Ghost Tour's listings, with the Travel Channel's "4th Most Haunted Building in America" ranking, the Ghost Hunters' "Club Dead" nickname and the proclaimed 150+ ghosts; guide Max Herman's four confirmed deaths and his party theory, reported by Tampa Bay 28; and the participant account's pool and theater tales — all set out, attributed, in The legend above. By day and by wedding night the club is Ybor City's 1917 ballroom; on ghost-tour nights it is, by key, the most haunted interior in Tampa.
*Website: https://cubanclubybor.com/history/*