The Crying Baby

Witness: Janie
Location: Tampa, Florida
Date of Encounter: 1995

We lived in a house in a tiny town outside of Tampa called Fort Lonesome. It consisted of one highway and our house and the house across the street. Our house was surrounded by an orange grove and a lake in the back of it — perfect place, so we thought. One night I heard a baby cry and woke my husband and he heard it too. We thought someone had abandoned a baby so we searched and searched — even under the house — nothing.

We heard it again the next several nights, and each night we searched the grove. One weekend we had company come in from out of town, she woke me up and said she heard the baby cry. We had told them nothing about our experience. She also searched the grove and all around the house but found nothing. They left the next day.

So we talked to the neighbor across the street. He said, "I can't believe y'all moved in there." We ask why, he told us about the ones that lived there before us and he said the mother had drowned her baby in that house. There was a back bedroom that stayed ice cold even in the dead of summer, we found out it was the baby's room. We left after that.