Ghosts of Dry Tortugas Part 4: Private Winters

Whispers of shadows disappearing into shaded arches. Eerie feelings creeping up your spine causing goosebumps and lingering doubt.

What makes a good ghost story? An undeniable tale of tragedy? Eyewitness accounts backed up by historical evidence? A good night vision camera, spirit radio, and a crew ready to back up your stories? (I’ve been doing a lot of research on ghost hunting recently.)

How about a tingle at the back of your neck or a strong desire not to linger in a certain brick corner day or night? An unsettled awareness that this specific place is different, spooky? Stories told by people you have every reason to believe about voices, specters, and moving boxes of pencils?

If none of those work, how about a poorly remembered assemblage of all of the above?

The story begins with an eerie feeling and small brick path nestled between the southwestern turret of Fort Jefferson and the ruins of the small powder magazine on the edge of the parade ground.

Something about the southwestern corner of Fort Jefferson felt off.

When I lived out there, the first floor of this turret was labeled as the former cell of the Dry Tortugas most infamous prisoner: one John Wilkes Booth*. It was also, more correctly, known as the dungeon, where prisoners were sent for continued misbehavior. Fort Jefferson was considered a terrible assignment for the guards. The heat, the bugs, the lack of water, or lack of any passable entertainment beyond drinking and stargazing, soldiers journals paint a picture far different than the tourist’s tropical paradise the park is today.

It was even worse, no doubt, for the prisoners. So, surely, some terrible things must have happened in that dungeon. Abandon all hope, ye who enter! A quote from Dante’s Devine Comedy written over the doorway.

Except that my fear of the corner wasn’t of the dungeon but from outside.

Each fort turret has a coiled stone staircase. Granite stairs spiral up to a second-floor split narrow hallway. Keep going and they will take you to the top. Footsteps echo as sound plays off stone and brick. Each turret is dark, lit during the day by narrow keyhole windows, and at night by dim bulbs or nothing at all. There are six stairways, all intimidating if you try to climb them alone at night.

The granite staircase and one of those keyhole windows.

In this second-floor hallway, outside the stairwell and to the left there is a locked wooden door.

Every turret has an internal powder magazine on the first and second floor, put there so soldiers could rapidly collect powder to load their cannon. Most powder magazines are abandoned, blocked by warning signs, and guarded by scorpions, mold, and dust. But the southwest second-floor powder magazine was in use when I was out there as a home base for a team of underwater archeologists.**

If you’ve read Treasure off the Coast, you might know the team they inspired. (U.R.S.A. and the Dive Bears are 100% fictional)

The southwest turret was the most intimidating, even when occupied by cool archeologists.

There’s no reason to continue this description up to the roof. Other than the height, I don’t have any scary stories from the top of the fort.

It’s the second floor, and the ground floor, which always creeped me out.

Fort Jefferson only has one exit: the sallyport. You can cross the parade ground to get there from the living area, but the sandbur free option involves the brick path through this narrow corner. During the day it’s shaded by ginkgo trees. At night it’s lit by an external light, which wasn’t there a century before.

The corner is always sheltered by the ruins of the small powder magazine, giving the impression that it is a further enclosed space inside Fort Jeff’s already sheltering walls. Because of the ruin, you can’t see the stairwell entrance until you approach. and cross around it, making this the most enclosed corner of the fort. Each time I crossed though this small space I hustled—afraid I was sharing the space. (Even when no one else was around.)

My fear response would be later justified. Private Winter’s Corner. My name for it: not an official title. Called that because of stories told about what happened here.

Private Winters was a Union soldier, part of the garrison sent to guard prisoners at the fort. Most of whom were Union deserters, with notable exceptions. This meant that many of the imprisoned men were separated from their guards by one fateful decision. The guards themselves were isolated on the island. It’s inevitable that they might find some kinship with their prisoners. It’s possible this kinship lead to tragedy.

I’ve heard various accounts of the story. One night, on the second floor near the southwest turret:

·       Private Winters was drinking with fellow guards, or prisoners. He was impaired by drink and enticed to making a single bad decision…

·       Private Winters was enraged after losing big in a card game…

·       Private Winters was drunk. It was late and he came up with a comedic prank...

On the other end, two guards on their nightly rounds saw a figure enraged seeming to escape:

·       Rounding the sheltered corner, they came across a man wielding a knife as he leapt from the stairwell…

·       Startled by a lumbering form who seemed to lunge at them out of the dark…

·       Exiting the stairwell was a disheveled figure staggering and lumbering toward them…

Some, or all of these. Whatever the case: an unarmed, or under-armed, Private Winters startled two guards. The guards pulled their loaded rifles and fired.

Private Winters was shot and died on brick path outside of the southwest turret, between the fort and the small powder magazine.

The stories don’t end there. Private Winters has, apparently, stuck around.

            Tourists aren’t allowed inside the fort at night. (Sad because this means they miss out on my favorite sunset view.) Rangers, however live out there. And it took a moment for one ranger to realize the obvious:

            Crossing through Private Winters’ Corner one night, returning from the docks, this ranger waved at a gruff stranger headed in the opposite direction, towards the sallyport. The realization hit him. This was someone he didn’t know in the fort after hours! Not a big deal, but unusual. So he turned to talk to the man, only to find no one. No one on the path. No one hiding in the dark arches of the first floor. No one in the dungeon. He pulled out his flashlight and searched. He still couldn’t find anyone anywhere and there hadn’t been enough time to sprint to the exit. The figure was there, and then gone

            On the second floor, a few days or weeks later, the archeologists were working in the converted powder magazine. They were doing their archeology work when a box of pencils (or pens?) was flung from the table and scattered about the room. There were witnesses, but no one near the pencils.

            Several rangers and archeologists reported hearing voices whispering in the night echoing out of Private Winter’s corner.

            More people have reports of seeing strange figures or shadows.

            I can only report being creeped out, first by the corner, then by the stories. Private Winters was, for me, an unwitnessed but ever-present reason to walk swiftly past the small powder magazine and decline invitations to the archeologist’s home base.

            Voices, visions, feeling and figures: from what I gather, this was a distinctly active period for the late Union soldier. And I have a guess as to why:

            Apparently, before I came out to the fort, a theatre troop from Key West had performed a reenactment of Private Winters ill fate. The actors had play acted the soldier on his last walk down those winding granite stairs, frightening his two guard peers, their quick-shot reaction, and his final moments on the bricks below, the path which everyone walks.  

It was after this performance that Private Winters became more active. Perhaps enjoying the increased attention. Or perhaps this performance only served to increase the awareness of Fort Jefferson’s longest resident. Perhaps Private Winters is always there, waiting around the corner of the small powder magazine, hiding beneath the shadow of a gumbo limbo, or haunting the room upstairs waiting for the next group of archeologists to appear.

Fort Jefferson, no, the Dry Tortugas in their entirety, have a long history. Like any place on the edge of the world, with the advance of time, this storied past includes tales of tragedy, loss, suffering, and separation. Stories which may explain, inform, or even provide the origin for all types of spooks and specters.

Next time you make your way out to the Dry Tortugas, walk the halls of Fort Jefferson, snorkel the wrecks of ships beyond their times, check out the coral buried in the walls of the fort while asking yourself if something else might be in there too, and stop for a while in the shade of the gingko trees in the southwest powder magazine. Maybe linger after dark and listen in stairwell for the sounds of uniformed feet and pangs of regret for a prank gone wrong.

Just ask permission from the rangers first. Because the Fort is closed at night, and maybe that’s for the best. You never know who might be lurking in the shadows…

(not a real ghost photo. Spooky though, right?)

That’s the small powder magazine off to the left.