As legends go, this home's past truly spooky

By Andrew Lyons
News Journal Staff Writer

PORT ORANGE -- Stomping feet march down the hallway. A woman in a flowered dress appears out of the corner of the eye. Pictures tilt sideways. Shadows creep across walls. The ceiling fan chain whips violently. From the living room comes a loud crash in the middle of the night. Books lie 5 feet from the shelves. "This house is haunted, there's no two ways about it," says Christopher Rollier. "I mean, I get spooked." What he lacks in proof he makes up for in conviction. Legends as old as his 76-year-old home tell of Al Capone frequenting Flemming Avenue, a quiet overgrown street off the Halifax River in the old section of Port Orange. Old-timers who live nearby speak of rum runners and Capone cronies who stopped by in the 1920s and 1930s. Based on stories he's heard, Rollier, a 42-year-old corrections officer at the Volusia County Branch Jail, believes his is the house where Capone kept his mistress. Eerie thing is, Vera never left. Rollier claims Stan, an older gentleman who died in the bedroom more than a decade ago, hangs around, too. Other ghosts stop by from time to time, he says. A guard strolls through a smaller building in his back yard. A baby cries in the wee hours of the morning. Ghost hunters say there's definitely something scary going on, but his house is only moderately haunted. They've filmed ball-shaped lights floating in the back yard and found a cold spot in the living room -- proof, they say, of some paranormal activity. One ghost expert says Rollier's efforts to take strangers through his home for a fee is more about greed than respect of the dead. Rollier has already filed for bankruptcy due in part to costly home renovations.

"It bothers me when people embellish this kind of activity," says Doris "Dusty" Smith, a paranormal investigator from Holly Hill. "There are people who have serious activity in their home and believe me, they're not dancing around all happy about it." Rollier says he wants to convert his home to a bed and breakfast for ghost finders. "I made a pact that whatever money I made off the house would go back into the house," he says "That's what Vera would like." Rollier says he speaks to Vera often, though the house looks empty when he does. Despite her concerns, Smith confirms "there's some very groovy activity." "Could it be this woman Vera? Maybe," she says. Not a day goes by that Rollier isn't startled, he says. While cooking at the stove, a woman in a flowered dress walks by. Later, a tall man walks through the front door and suddenly falls to the floor. "It's a tall man wearing an old time gangster hat," Rollier states in a 41-page book he's trying to get published."Sometimes he goes down to the floor or walks across the room into the wall." Researchers at the Halifax Historical Society can't confirm Capone visited the area. But the Chicago mobster's trips through Ponce de Leon Inlet and up the Halifax River are a local legend. The Chicago Crime Commission, a nonprofit research and watchdog group, has plenty of proof Capone lived in Miami from 1927 to 1931 but cannot confirm he visited Volusia County. Whether it's Vera who tosses encyclopedias off the shelves or Stan who affectionately rubs the leg of Rollier's girlfriend at night, no one can say. But there is this: Rollier is not alone. There are plenty of other ghosts haunting Volusia County, if one trusts tales told by believers. A woman in a long skirt is said to haunt the Halifax Historical Museum in Daytona Beach. Workers hear her skirt rustling in the afternoon. She's been seen in the ladies room during social functions.

For half a century, a spirit has been seen roaming the halls of an upstairs apartment at Lilian Place, built in 1884 on the peninsula side of Daytona Beach by Laurence Thompson, an early settler. But no place is scarier, says Smith, than a three-bedroom home in Deltona, where the ghostly chatter at night is as loud as a cocktail party. Smith says that for months her fellow ghost hunters documented the unexplainable: a toy truck that moves on its own, golf clubs that fall for no reason, orbs of light that surround the house, the sound of crunching leaves outside when no one is there. For two years, people have moved in and out of the East Hancock Drive home. Smith says a mystical formation that resembles an upside down rainbow lingering over the home could be the reason why. The U-shaped display is a daunting sight for even a paranormal expert. Documented in other parts of the country, the anomaly could be a portal to
the other side, Smith says, a doorway for spirits to exit and enter this world with ease. But a forecaster with the National Weather Service offers a much simpler explanation -- moonlight reflecting through ice crystal clouds. Skeptics offer a slew of reasons for why things go bump in the night. Pictures fall and household items drop from vibrations like passing vehicles. Images seen from the corner of the eye can be optical tricks from the brain. Round balls of light could be light reflecting off dust or moisture. "There is no scientific evidence of ghosts but there is a powerful human desire to believe in ghosts and that's what drives these tales of haunting," says Joe Nickell, senior researcher for the New York-based Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Maybe so, but Rollier is tired of closing the closet door and rearranging his wine glasses. Seven years of living in the house has taken its toll on his relationships. His wife, and later a girlfriend, have left the home, due in part to the hauntings. Lisa Moffett, 38, his current girlfriend, doesn't mind the scares, although she's frustrated she hasn't caught one of the ghosts on film.
"Sometimes, you have to ask their permission to take their picture," she says. "It's only right." Rollier's only solid evidence of Vera is a painting kept for decades in a chest in his next-door neighbor's house. Below the painting of the young woman with the steely eyes are the words: "Lest you forget Vera." Rollier never will. "I'm afraid to leave this house," he says. "I don't know what their capabilities are."