Potential Ghost Evidence Caught at the May-Stringer House in Brooksville on 6/10/22
(Brooksville, FL) Emma Dowd, a Paranormal Investigator and Docent at the May-Stringer House was present in the room when one of the most profound potential paranormal images was caught on film. It was a picture taken by one of the tour attendees in Dr. Stringer’s doctor’s office room while she and her husband waited for the rest of the tour to show up.
It all went down about 8:30 on Friday night. Emma had just left the “war room” on the ghost tour on the first floor at the May-Stringer House. She entered the doctors office of Dr. Sheldon Stringer and waited for the group to follow in. While she waited a man in a red shirt and his wife entered the room. Her husband walked up to Emma who was by the surgery table. His wife came to the office, took two consecutive pictures then joined her husband. Shortly after that the rest of the group came in and Emma did the tour of the room. After leaving the room to bring the tour upstairs, the lady approached Emma with the photo she took.
Emma was shocked. She saw the figure of a man looking in the opposite direction of the lady’s husband, in front of a window in what appears to be a war uniform and beret. Emma mentioned to the lady she should send that to us for our evidence book and she complied. What makes this such an incredible piece is a shadow would disappear in front of a window from the light coming through, not to mention if it was a shadow of anyone in the room it was in the opposite direction and the woman didn’t use flash. Who could this be? Is this the spirit of a soldier who’s still attached to his uniform in the war room, or energy attached to a bullet that wounded and caused his death, looking for the doctor? Either way it was one of the absolute best photos taken in the May-Stringer House.
I’ve been paranormal researching for almost 20 years, and I have yet to capture a photo of a well defined spirit as she did that night. My background is in photography and what I saw defied ALL norms of a camera with that figure. What’s even more intense was I was maybe 4 feet from where this spirit appeared in that picture. To be that close to a real spirit is so exciting. It’s evidence like this that makes what I do so important and exciting to me, and one reason I love volunteering at the museum.
Emma Dowd
Emma isn’t new to activity in the house. Several times she’s seen things, heard things and smelled phantom scents. Twice she was scratched by what she thinks is the shadow figure that resides there. A shadow figure is a non-human entity; none of that has kept her away from the house and ghosts she loves.
You can take a daytime museum tour with Emma as she takes you through the history of the house, the antiques inside and more every Friday from 11 AM to 2 PM (Eastern) at 601 Museum Court, Brooksville. By appointment you can join her and a few other docents Friday night at 8 PM for the famous ghost tours.
About the May-Stringer House
A brief history of the house, John May purchased the land from Samuel Wiggins in 1855 and built the original 4 room structure (Parlor, Dining Room and two upstairs bedrooms). Three years later John May died of Tuberculosis. In the late 1860s his wife Marena May married Civil War hero Frank Saxon. Shortly after they wed they had a son that died weeks after his birth, then Marena would die giving birth to their daughter Jessie May. At the age of three, Jessie suddenly passed. Now a widower, Frank met and wed a woman named Tulula Hope and they built what is now the Saxon Manor a few blocks from the May-Stringer house. Frank would sell the house to a prominent doctor and Civil War surgeon Dr. Sheldon Stringer who build an additional 10 rooms onto the original structure and practiced his medicine in the office downstairs. Dr Stringer would die in 1903 but his son Sheldon Stringer Jr. continued to practice medicine in the home. Eventually in the 1940s the Stringer’s moved from the home and sold it, where it became a private residence and a rental home till it fell vacant in the 1970s.
