Haunted Homesite, Sparr, Florida

by Cheryl Wallace
(Sparr, Florida, USA)

Eight acres nestled within old oak trees and hanging moss. In town a that was once as bustling as Ocala, Florida is today. It use to be the site of a sucessful saw mill, the train stopped in Sparr so commerce was doing quit well. Then the train no longer stopped in Sparr and the saw mill moved away and took with it the businesses and people who moved on to other areas in search of jobs. There were a few families who stayed in Sparr and from them I later learned the stories of the area. They have passed on, as well, so I now carry the stories through oral history as they were given to me.

Between the eight acres that is now owned by my family, the front six acres and the back two acreas were once divided by an old logging road. There was an old home site owned by an African-American family that sat next to my back two acres on the northeast side of my fence line. It has been gone many years.
There was an elderly man who wore a bright white suit and drove from home to home selling eggs, milk, and freshly baked breads. He made friends with everyone he met including the family that once had a home close to mine.
There was a group of men, who for unknown reasons, did not like the family, so one hot summer day they shot and killed the entire family including the elderly cauasian man.
One evening as I was cleaning around a tree that was on my property line everything became suddenly silent. I could not hear the wind in the trees or the birds going to roost. Then my attention was drawn to a house on the northeast side of my property line that was not there before and a family was on the porch. I could see a elderly woman siting in a rocking chair smoking a corn cob pipe and wearing a flower print cotton dress. she smiled at me and nodded. I responded in the same fashion.
There were children sitting on the edge of the proch swinging their feet back and forth waving at me and various other people standing on the porch. The man in the bright white suit turned to look at me and he smile and waved, too. Then I saw an old truck pull up behind the man's truck and four men got out in a hurry with shot guns. They were saying something because I could see their mouths moving but I could not hear them. They raised their shot guns and started shooting everyone. After the smoke cleared bloodied bodies were everywhere. The men who had killed the people on the porch and the man in the white suit looked at me with such hatred in their eyes then as fast as it started it ended. They just evaporated and I could hear the wind and birds, again. A cold chill ran through me because I knew I had just witnessed a murder that happened many years ago.
I started researching to see what I could find and there was nothing showing any kind of murders in that area.
After asking people who live in Sparr I did not find any answers. Later that evening after returning home from the library my dad said that he had heard that a family of African-Americans were murdered in that area and the eldery caucasian man turned up missing. This was not published in any newspaper, but it was passed down by oral history through the elders who had lived at that time in Sparr.
Were they showing me the events of their death?
Since this happened to me a family has developed that land with a home, barn and fencing.
My family land is haunted and this is one of many tales that I will share with you, but it is late now, and time to say "Goodnight".