The Elevator Man

When the days of autumn grow shorter and the looming of night arrives earlier every evening, ghostly apparitions can conjure on sandy shores, and even on the beach at Marco Island.

For non-believers there is a famous quote by Albert Einstein: “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form into another.”

Ghost-hunters of the supernatural and aficionados of the netherworld will readily explain that the first category of haunting pertains to intelligent haunting. This is the classic ghost story where a human spirit is a self-aware entity and can interact with living humans. These ghosts are quite often friendly and reportedly open doors or turn on lights for their living counterparts. They are generally not malicious, appear often, and have regular habits.  

The second category in paranormal activity is residual haunting. This is a repeating apparition apparently caused by sudden and extreme violence or tragedy. These are ghosts where spiritual energy roams locally and often appears at twilight at specific locations. These echo apparitions continuously replay a pattern without being self-aware or knowing that anyone living is watching. Battlegrounds are often the sites of residual haunting or old buildings where tragedies have occurred. Residual hauntings can possibly be anchored spirits linked to a precise catastrophe that was so sudden and so unexpected the locality cannot be left behind.

As with every effort, project, and endeavor created by humankind, there are always cause and effect scenarios. On many occasions, when projects loom large and many individuals are involved, sudden tragedy can occur and leave behind lost and wandering legacies of the paranormal. Shipbuilders of the previous century often reported tragic and accidental deaths when large ships were under construction. For these ill-fated vessels tainted with misfortune, distant voyages often brought reports of false lighthouses glowing in an open ocean and unexplained passengers dressed as dockworkers walking the promenades at sunrise and sunset.

Falling from great height is the leading cause of death and fear for high-rise construction workers. During the decades when Florida hotels and condominiums began climbing out of the sand and dominating the beaches and the skylines, some of the workforce that fell from lofty heights into tragedy might possibly be roaming ghosts searching for answers or looking for home.

High-rise construction on Marco Beach has now been finished for years, but recently, a construction worker has been sighted walking along the beach after sunset. Darkness falls fast in the tropics and after the fall, when the orange orb of October vanishes into the gulf, a solemn figure with a battered hardhat, steel-toed boots, and a tool belt has been walking along the beach alone. As the lone figure passes, he often looks over his shoulder to the high-rises where the last of the sunlight is still touching the highest pinnacles of the buildings. The highest pinnacles of the buildings that contain the motors and the complex mechanisms of the multi-story elevator shafts.

Many years ago, when a crew of Marco Beach Boys were driving into work we were surprised when a massive group of construction workers was crossing Collier Boulevard early in the morning. The construction crews were all dressed in hardhats, tool belts, and heavy boots but on this solemn morning, the men were walking away from the very tall concrete skeleton on the beach and as the men walked, every head was turned down in tribute. There was no talking among the groups of hardworking men as they slowly shuffled, but there was a silent alarm screaming. The rough and tumble hard workers were walking away in forlorn silence because they had lost one of their own. A young man full of life had lost his grip and then his footing. He had fallen into a modern tragedy that was an empty elevator shaft and his compatriots and colleagues were following the age-old tradition of walking away when one of their own was lost - whenever death claims a coworker on a construction jobsite, all work stops for the remainder of the workday. 

When the Elevator Man first appeared searching the beach at sunset, he was easy to explain. A construction worker had waited to join the tourists and the islanders for the nightly sunset celebration. He was probably waiting for his girlfriend. He was wearing his uniform of the day because he just finished his shift - everyone knew of all the beachside construction - construction workers were everywhere on Marco…in the years gone by.

During the following decades, and after all the major beachside developments were complete, The Elevator Man began to appear as out of place. He was hard to explain when he was seen walking in the twilight. There was nothing on the beach under construction, but the lone figure was often there if the timing of the sunset and the falling of darkness were perfectly in place.

On other sunrise and sunset occasions, when the autumn season is equal with light and darkness, the Elevator Man is the fleeting glimpse of a construction worker as he disappears around the corner when an empty elevator door closes. The Elevator Man is also in the whispers of high-rise elevators operating at night in the lonely summer months of off-season, in the almost vacant towers when no residents are present or awake to call the machinery in life.

Later, on the evenings after the Elevator Man returns from the beach and his never-ending search for the distraction that was the cause of his fall, flashes of ghostly green light are often observed rising above dune grass as he climbs again to his place at the machines at the top of the towers.

The Green Flash is a well-known ghostly phenomenon for Marco Beach at sunset, but could it be the lost and fallen Elevator Man returning on perfect evenings to repeat the lost and lonely cycle of a residual haunting…again and again?