TV crew haunts local Inn for pilot

By Anne Geggis
Staff Writer
Last update: 20 August 2003

Psychic phenomena, like the kind that a TV film crew sought last week in Daytona Beach's oldest building, is hard to come by much less plan a production schedule around, so a few locals stepped in to play spectral parts. The living room of the Live Oak Inn was transformed into a ghostly tableau with the help of flickering candles, a fog machine and "guests" dressed in late-19th century finery -- bowler hats and long silky gloves. It was all part of the scenery for an independent TV crew's show tentatively titled, "Psychic Investigators."

"We're going to go look for some ghosts," said Denver resident Joyce South, who was visiting a Daytona Beach Shores friend and wound up wearing an old-fashioned hat and dress in front of a camera. Her friend, Patricia Lewandowski of Daytona Beach Shores, immediately clarified their roles: "Joyce, we are the ghosts," she said.

Carlos Medina, executive producer of Village Films, a Miami-based independent TV company, said the ABC network and Sci-Fi Channel have expressed interest in his fledgling program, which will focus on ghosts, missing persons and unsolved mysteries. Working on his pilot program, Medina and his crew were drawn to the Live Oak Inn by its reputation among former guests and recommendations from the Daytona Beach Paranormal Research Group.

And readings from psychic Jill Dahne, daughter of National Enquirer psychic Micki Dahne, confirmed there's more to the inn than the five senses register, Medina said. "She picked up that the restaurant used to be a speakeasy," he said. But Maria Clifton, whose grandmother bought the Live Oak building at 448 S. Beach Street in 1914, said there was never any such business on the premises. Clifton lived there from the age of 8 well into adulthood.

"There was never any type of shady aura about the house or the Palmetto House," which her family also owned, she said. "It was all very respectable." Clifton, whom the TV crew interviewed last week about the inn's history, was surprised to learn from a reporter that there was anything otherworldly about the TV crew's mission. They neglected to mention that to her, she said. She recalls the inn as a place full of laughter and parties, she said. "My parents entertained every Christmas morning," she recalled. "We had a large piano that was played. We had a wonderful growing-up in 448 S. Beach Street." A few nurses who helped care for her aging parents had felt uncomfortable staying in a few rooms, Clifton said. But the attic that spans the entire house held nothing for her but a delightful trove of toys and hiding places.
"I guess we weren't very receptive," she deadpanned. Medina said psychic Dahne felt someone had nearly suffocated in the back room. Clifton said that room was her mother's bedroom -- where she laid ill from a malady that caused her to lose her breath.