 In the early 1800s, as the United States was trying to get its bearings as a new country, land prices in the state of Georgia started to rise. Because the state of Georgia mainly had plantations, a lot of the farmers had to move elsewhere in order to afford their own business. A lot of these farmers ended up going south to the rather mystical land of Florida. One of these Florida pioneers was a man named Jesse Knight. Jesse Knight happens to be the three times great grandfather of esoteric Atlanta's own Todd Roderick. Jesse Knight drove his cattle down to Florida when the Georgia prices started to rise. He originally stopped in what is now Tampa, and there still is a night station in Tampa, Florida. But by 1861, when the Civil War had broken out in the United States, Jesse Knight, along with a few other families, ended up going even further south in order to avoid the Union troops potentially coming in and stealing their cattle. Jesse Knight ended up finding the town of Nekomas, Florida, which is now a small town right outside of Sarasota. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button and give us a like. This video is going to be a fun ghost story back to our origins of telling ghost stories, but our next video, we will be getting back into our truth series. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce, and today we're going to be talking about the ghost of Nekomas, Florida. Florida is a very small fishing town on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The population in 2010 was just a little bit over 3,000 people. And as I said in our intro, Nekomas was founded by Jesse Knight in 1861. Now, again, Jesse Knight was born in 1817, and by 1853, he had already started to move his family down into Florida. Jesse Knight had a huge family. In fact, Jesse and his wife, Rebecca, had a family of seven boys and eight girls. There are a lot of knights still left in the Nekomas area, all distant cousins of our own Todd Roderick. Jesse Knight was also a very religious man. He was a Methodist. See, I grew up Presbyterian, as I've said before, and in my opinion, I feel like the Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church are very, very similar. So Todd growing up Methodist and I growing up Presbyterian, we have a lot of common ground. And by 1868, Jesse Knight had opened a Methodist Church in Nekomas, Florida. Now, the really cool thing about this Methodist Church is that Todd's parents are still members. The church also acted as a school, which was very common back in that time. Now, Jesse Knight was the Reverend of the church. He wasn't an ordained Reverend. I don't really think that matters though, especially back then and he was known as the Reverend Jesse Knight. Now, Jesse Knight passed away in 1911. He was 94 years old. Now, Jesse Knight comes from Todd's mother's family and Todd has told me many times that his mother's family, they're drinking from the fountain of youth because they all live a really long time. That's some awesome genes to have. Then six years after Jesse passed away is when Nekomas got its first post office. Now, I don't know how much you guys know about towns, but getting a post office is a really big deal. From what I've learned, having a post office makes your town legit. But before the post office was built, something else happened in Nekomas. Nekomas got a railway station. This isn't a big deal today. But back then in the early 1900s, having the railroad come through your town was a pretty big deal. It meant that you were going to have more foot traffic through your town. And of course, when there's more foot traffic, your economy is going to grow. And by 1920, we see Florida experiencing a huge land boom. The railway station of the early 1900s is a lot like our interstates today. A lot of towns like having interstates by their town because it makes the town more accessible. Now, when the Florida land boom happened in 1920, Nekomas built a hotel right by their railway station. And this hotel is the first place that we're going to look at that is supposedly very haunted. Now, of course, the railway station today isn't in use anymore. In the city of Nekomas, though, they did something I really like. They took the railway station and they turned it into the legacy trail. It's a 12.5 mile trail that cuts right through where the railway stop used to be. Now, Todd's parents house, the trail is right by their backyard, which I really like. I love to get out and fresh air and exercise and it is a beautiful, beautiful trail. In fact, I think Nekomas is such a beautiful town anyway. So the funny thing is before I even knew about this haunted hotel, I had walked past it on this trail multiple times. Now, the old hotel is apartments today. So I'm not going to give the address out just to respect the privacy of the people who live in the apartments. The old hotel is about a block away from the railway stop and it's also about a block away from the Jesse Knight Cemetery. I've been to the cemetery. I've seen Jesse Knight's grave and I think it's really cool that Todd can literally go to a cemetery and see a bunch of his ancestors all buried together. Now, there's a bit of a mystery to this story. Again, Nekomas is a very small town and from what I gathered, I could only find personal accounts with the ghost of this area. In fact, for this story, I have no name to attach to these hauntings. However, the story was so intriguing and gave me goosebumps. I can't help but share it with you. It starts with a mysterious man in a wheelchair. Apparently, there was a pizza joint somewhere around in Nekomas where the delivery guy would get called to these apartments a lot to deliver pizza. Now, on his way to the apartment, he would have to pass the Jesse Knight Cemetery. He claimed that often there would be a man in a wheelchair without a face or without legs. Now, me being me next time we're in Nekomas, I kind of want to go out there at night and see if we can find this guy for ourselves. But this man in the wheelchair isn't the strangest part of the story. Maybe this man in the wheelchair was always there to warn the pizza delivery boy because see what would happen is he would get to the delivery to the house and he would knock on the door to give them their pizza. The interesting thing is that nobody in the apartment had ordered a pizza. However, the order on the pizza is pizza that they would have eaten, the toppings that they would have requested. And whenever the pizza guy showed up, they were always hungry anyway. Now, they didn't order the pizza, but the pizza was always paid for. And whenever the pizza guy would get back to the restaurant, there would be no record of who paid for the pizza, just that the cash was in the register. Now, about two and a half miles from this haunted hotel is the neighborhood of Casey Keys in Nekomas. Now, Casey Keys is a rather luxurious neighborhood. In fact, it has residents like Stephen King, Oprah Winfrey and the ex-mob gangster John Gotti. In fact, the first time I ever went to Nekomas with Todd, Todd's dad told me that he sees Stephen King's in the local public grocery store from time to time. I don't know if I would actually recognize Stephen King and I actually would really like to get Todd's dad on the channel the next time we're down in Nekomas because Todd's dad, he's got a lot of charisma and he's a really good storyteller. He has his own stories about the Dusty Knight Cemetery. But anyway, let's get back to Casey Keys. So as I said, Casey Keys is a super exclusive, luxurious neighborhood that houses some of our most famous celebrities. Casey Keys is right on the coast and it's only about eight miles long. Now, when the 1920 land boom in Florida happened, the developer in Casey Keys wanted to change the name to Treasure Island. They wanted to change the name to Treasure Island because at that time it was believed that there was treasure buried on this little neighborhood island. I don't know if there's treasure buried there or not, but most of the houses in Casey Keys are at the least around two million. So if there is treasure on the island, I think most of it is probably now found in the homes of the people who live on Casey Keys. But alas, Treasure Island didn't stick and it just remained Casey Keys. Our next location for the ghost story is a restaurant that's right outside of the entrance to Casey Keys. And this is the restaurant called Pelican Alley. Now, the building itself where Pelican Alley is was built in the early 1900s. It was built as a fish camp and this fish camp was owned by the Chadwick family. They had a really big mullet business. They also are the family that was responsible for building the first bridge that crossed over from the mainland. So the mainland is where Pelican Alley is located and the bridge goes over the intercoastal waterway that connects you to Casey Keys. Of course, this bridge lifts up and comes down to still to this day to allow boats to pass through. The Chadwicks were pretty successful with their fish camp. The boats would pull right up and they would unload all their fish and they were able to keep their fish refrigerated with 300 pound blocks of ice. Again, this was the early 1900s. So the Chadwicks developed a little bit of an empire with this fish camp. And to this day, you can see on Pelican Alley where you could potentially pull your boat up. And I'm sure now you could pull your boat up and get some food to go. It's not a fish camp anymore, but that that marking is still there. The next owner were a couple named Alice and Fred Sanders and they really jazzed things up a bit. They turned this fish camp into a bit of a restaurant. It still wasn't a full on restaurant, but they called it the Gulf and Bay Fishing Resort. Boats, bait and beer. That was their motto. Not only did they have a small little restaurant, but they would also host fishing charters for local tourists. Now the next family to own this piece of property was the Arbuckle family. And they turned it into the Admiral's Wardroom, which was now a full on restaurant. Now, apparently the people who hunt this Pelican Alley are the Sander family and the Arbuckle family. Now they say that perhaps Mr. Arbuckle didn't want to give up the restaurant when he did. He gave it up in 1981 to a woman named Robin Sweeney who now owns Pelican Alley. The staff of Pelican Alley claim to see Mr. Arbuckle a lot as well as Alice and Fred Sanders. They say that dishes will fly sometimes and doors will slam for no reason. And if you happen to like ghost hunting episodes, there have been many paranormal investigators who have gone and spent the night at the Pelican Alley to try to make contact with the ex-owners who still can't quite let the building go. And according to Pelican Alley's own website, they do say that many of the weight staff and employees of Pelican Alley are pretty open about talking about their experiences. So if you happen to go into Pelican Alley to get lunch or dinner, be sure to ask them what they've had happen to them while working in this restaurant. I wish I had known that last time I was there because I would have sat there for hours asking the employees to tell me all their stories. Next time, next time I will go and I will ask people to tell me their stories and if they let me film them, I'll film them and I'll put it on the channel. And as we sign off today, I'm going to leave you with firsthand footage of Pelican Alley from our most recent trip down there, which was this past weekend to visit with Todd's parents. As always, thank you guys so much for joining in on this fun little ghost story or a couple of ghost stories. Our next video will be going back into more serious conspiracy and truth or information. Have a wonderful day. Bye. So here we are. We're in Tacomas, Florida, the Gulf Inner Coastal Highway. And here is Pelican Alley restaurant. Tacomas' premier haunted location. And actually, here, of course, is a pretty good restaurant. Didn't know it was haunted when we were here. You can kind of see the coastway here. It is literally hot as bald out here. I am sweating like a whore in church. It's pretty, isn't it? Actually, with mine moving here, changed the channel to esoteric. Tacomas, anyway. So, yeah, Tacomas is right outside of Sarasota. You can see more restaurants down the way there. And over in this area, we've got some famous people, like Stephen King. Hat houses over here. Although Stephen King is under some pretty crazy company with all this human trafficking, isn't he? There's Pelican Alley right here. Pelican Alley restaurant. We decided to let our dog see if he would get in the ocean. He doesn't really like the ocean that much. He prefers lake water.