Old, Older, Oldest

Perhaps I'm getting old. I don't care. I don't feel old.

Recently, I visited the oldest city in our United States of America, St. Augustine, Florida.  I felt young there.

What history!  What a confluence of forces!  And Christopher Columbus started it all.

Ponce de Leon was Columbus' First Mate on his second trip to the New World in 1493.  Ponce stayed on.

Wikipedia tells of the Spanish, French, and English all contesting for dominance at this site in the 16th C.

In the 17th Century, the Spanish built Castillo de San Marcosa, a fort made of coquina rock. This rock of shell fragments made the fort impenetrable. It remains the oldest standing fort in North America of that type of masonry.

St. Augustine has more than its share of oldest. Oldest wooden school house. Oldest street. So on...

The movers and shakers of the 19th Century settled in in style.

In 1888, Henry M. Flagler, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, and Louis C. Tiffany built the quintessential hotel, the Ponce de Leon.

Today, and for the past 40 years, this elite hotel serves as the girls' dorm at Flagler College. The stutents' dining hall is the very same in which Flagler and his cronies dined surrounded by Tiffany glass, Tiffany chairs, and Edison's electricity.

But perhaps the most unique aspect of St. Augustine is the oldest as the ageless, the ghosts!

St. Augustine's lighthouse is one of the most visited and studied paranormal densities.

I took the Ghosts and Gravestones tour. They advised us to shoot as many pictures as we wanted.  I didn't hear any unusual noises, or see anything with my naked eye, but the pictures I took really surprised me.

I have nighttime shots throughout the city, using my digital camera.

Three of my best pictures I sent to their website. This is one of my others.

Be aware that I was riding in an open tram, there was no mist in the air, and those random symmetrical orbs are supposedly ghostly energies.

This next photo was at the park adjacent to the lighthouse.

You can see the light at the top of the lighthouse and the spiral of Christmas decorations on it, all in the distance. The park is off the beaten path.  I stepped out in front of the crowd to take this picture because I wanted the lighthouse shot.

There is a cluster of small orbs (children?) bottom right. Up higher are bigger orbs. The lighthouse was the site of an accident when it was being built. Children were riding in a cart that broke and sent them into the water. They all drowned.

Someone else on our tour had a smart phone camera. We could see a single orb reviewing her pictures. My digital didn't show anything on replay. My captured orbs only showed up when I uploaded the pictures. 

I also got a shot of a few orbs in the dark jailhouse.

So if there is something beyond this body, some energetic signature, I too may be ageless some day.

I've no enemies I wish to haunt.