Posted: 24 Aug 2021 11:27 AM PDT

A teacher recalled an event told by a Miccosukee Native American girl of the spirits of the dead rising and wandering throughout the ValuJet Flight 592 crash site in the Everglades. Also an incident at the 9/11 Ground Zero memorial in NYC.

I found the following interesting account recently:

“I’m a teacher in Pensacola, Florida and many years ago we had Miccosukee Native American students that would come to our school and I learned a lot about their culture. They lived out on Tamiami Trail between Miami and Naples, Florida in the Everglades, which is a pretty desolate two lane through the swamp prairie.

Well, foolish me, one day we had a tropical storm on Halloween. Schools were closed but we got about five inches of rain that day. Pitch black outside. So I thought “let’s tell ghost stories.” So the kids are telling me mildly creepy stories about chairs that moved by themselves and footsteps they have heard, etc. Well, a Miccosukee girl speaks up.

Apparently they have a cultural belief that they can see the dead. Spirits are part of their everyday existence. They believe, for example, if you get up from a chair, immediately a ghost replaces you in the seat. And some can “see” the dead. So, she starts telling about seeing ghosts in the Everglades and the story of her uncle who was driving down Tamiami Trail in the middle of the night and sees a grinning guy standing on the side of the road. He knows what’s up with him in one second so he refuses to make eye contact and passes him. Sure enough a minute later there he is on the side of road again, smiling and waving. Hell no, this uncle says and motors by. Then he feels the dude sitting in the passenger seat next to him. He just grips the wheel and stares straight ahead and soon enough the presence vanishes. Now I know this sounds like ‘Ghost Story 101’ but to hear it in that dark rainy Halloween scared the f*ck out of me.

Then she continued. She lived close to where ValuJet Flight 592 crashed in the Everglades in May 1996. And she described seeing the dead walking out of the swamps on certain nights near her house. She said this all as a matter of fact in a way I totally believed her.

She had a younger sister who didn’t speak much (they were in 8 and 7 grade) and I took them on a class trip to NYC in 2005. We went to the 9/11 Ground Zero memorial and the younger sister refused REFUSED to get off the bus, just shaking her head staring into the distance. I asked her sister what’s up, since I already had a clue, and she said there are dead people all around us, even in the aisle of the bus. This younger girl was terrified. So I left them on the bus with the bus driver while we walked around. They have a cultural belief that they cannot enter any cemetery because of the spirits of the dead and Ground Zero was a huge cemetery.

I’ll never forget those moments.” PS

NOTE: This reminded me of my investigation of the Sioux City Entity and the tie in to the July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232 crash at Sioux Gateway Airport. Lon

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