Mark Muncy and Co Author Kari SchultzOne of the main speakers in the morning at the confrence was author Mark Muncy. He has been researching and writing books for many years and his credits include books like “Eerie Florida” among others. Muncy’s speaking session was the first session of the morning that really spoke to me and made an impression.
The main thrust of Muncy’s argument came from keeping an open mind and being open to all sorts of reports as outlandish as they may seem. To illustrate his point he told a story of how a family in 1932 supposedly went into the Charlotte Harbor after it had been drained of water (due to the effects of a nearby hurricane) and found themselves too far from shore when the water began to come back in. According to muncy the story goes that the family saw what they thought was a piece of dry land with a tree on it in the middle of the bay, since it was closer than the shore they went to it. As the water came in they noticed the island began to float, so it wasnt an island after all. As they stood on there shelter attempting to figure out what to do next they noticed that this shelter was floating AGAINST the current, and at that point one of the youngest family members noticed a HEAD sticking out of the water, and they were not on an island or peice of flotsam at all, they were on a turtles back! The turtle swam to shore and the family disembarked. A truly fantastical story, Muncy admitted. But can all fantastical stories be dismissed? Oftentimes yes acording to muncy.
Muncy went on to tell the audience of another story, this time from Tampa Bay in 1965. At the height of the Cold War, just a couple years removed from the Cuban Missle Crisis Muncy describes a time of heigtened awarenes in Florida millitarily. Muncy described how the Navy was using divers in Tampa Bay to survey the bay underwater and claimes a navy diver observed a thirty foot diameter loggerhead sea turtle. Again, a truly fantsastical sighting. Muncy contends that while sometimes stories are easily dismissed, when patterns begin to occur, or things start to repeat there may be evidence in favor of even the most absurd claims.
My favorite story that Muncy told was the last one he closed with. He regaled the crowd with stories of the St. Petersburg mini lights. According to him the story of the mini lights had two distinct versions. On the south side of St. Petersburg the mini lights were these sort of nefarious, scary, firgtening thing that would accompany ‘Minnie Lightning’s” Gator boys who would kidnap children and take them away. On the north side, it was more like a “bloody mary” situation. It was said that if you said “mini lights” three times the green mini lights would appear and chase you. Muncy described how he did research for this story and was trying to piece things together when he was in an archival library and he discovered an artifact in an old book. A paper fan from an Alligator Farm near St. Petersburg. The fan depicted African American babies and the words “Alligator Bait- St. Petersburg Alligator Farm”. Muncy went on to describe the practice of using African American babies as ‘bait’ in alligators farms to get the gators to be more active and entertain the tourists. So the minnie lights, and the gator boys who would take children away, were in actuality the “men with lights” who would kidnap children who on the streets at night and take them away to be used as bait for the entertainment of tourists at the alligator farm. The takewaway? Stories have meaning in comunities, oftentimes meanings that are forgotten and not immediatly evident.
The story Muncy ended with left the room silent. I am glad that he told it, history like this is difficult for the public to talk about, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to teach. It is important to confront these sorts of sins in our past head on and in frank discussion. This speaker was really an intersection of cryptozoology and histroy that I very much appreciated.
Mark Muncy was only the second speaker of the day, but the first one to make a real impression on me. His appraoch of looking for connections in stories across the decades is a good one, and he is devoted to telling the stories of these communities and attempting to see where they come from and what they mean to to people and why. If you are interested in reading any of Mark Muncy’s work you can find books like “Eerie Florida” at booksellers across the state, his own website HERE and Amazon.
You can read more about the St. Petersburg Mini Lights as a way that communities deal with trauma and violence HERE
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