The Dead Files (2011) s01e06 Episode Script
Hotel Hell - Ybor City, FL
Ybor City in the early 1900s was the Southern version of the Wild West.
And it was violent.
Immediately, like, I feel, like, a murder/suicide.
You could see right through her.
She had no color.
It was a ghost.
Some things are very difficult to accept and believe.
There were different things done in different rooms.
Would you be surprised if tomorrow you found out there were bodies in his basement? No.
A lot of dead people are here.
My name is Amy Allan.
There's something down there.
I see dead people He doesn't want me back there.
I speak to dead people She's pissed.
And they speak to me.
She doesn't like the people who live here.
But there's only one way to know if my findings are real.
Someone did hang themselves here.
- Where? - There.
I rely on my partner.
I'm Steve Dischiavi I'm a retired New York City homicide Detective.
Did you want to kill him? And I know every person, every house has secrets.
She did die in this house.
It's my job to reveal them.
Would you be surprised if there were bodies in his basement? No.
But Steve and I never speak We never communicate during an investigation.
Until the very end.
Not good.
Will we uncover if it's safe for you to stay Will it get worse? Or time to get out? - Oh, yes.
- Whew.
Steve will conduct his investigation, without knowing anything that I've encountered.
He interviews the witnesses.
He gathers the facts.
He finds out the history.
And at the end, we'll come together to compare our findings.
I'm in Tampa, Florida, in the historic district of Ybor, City.
Ybor City was the cigar capital of the world about 100 years ago.
I'm investigating a hotel called the Don Vicente Inn.
The owner Tessa called me because she encountered, a female apparition in the basement of the inn.
She didn't really know what to make of it, until guests started reporting similar sightings all over the hotel.
Now I'm gonna go meet with her now and see if I can get to the bottom of it.
Matt will go in before me.
And he'll remove any information, that may distract me from communicating with the dead.
And then I come in not knowing anything and do my walk through the location.
This is a dead guy here, and he's a nasty, nasty guy.
A lot of dead people are here.
There's a lot of people coming out of the walls.
Tessa.
- Steve, nice to meet you.
- How are you? Thank you for coming.
Thanks for having me.
This place is beautiful.
Thank you.
Now that I'm here, we spoke on the phone about things going on here.
Maybe you could explain a little bit about what's happening and, uh, what you do here.
My dad bought the building in 1998.
It was completely condemned.
Um, it took us about two years to restore.
We have now 16 guest rooms.
We've got 14 on the third floor, And we also have a basement downstairs.
Now was this always a hotel? It wasn't always a hotel, actually.
It was Vicente Ybor, who founded Ybor City, built it as a development corporation.
And then it became a hospital for some time.
Oh, so this was a hospital at one point.
- Yep.
- And how long has it been a hotel? It's been a hotel for the past 11 years.
Okay, and you run/own it? My brother and I run and own it, my dad restored it, and he comes and goes.
So when we spoke on the phone earlier you mentioned that you guys are kind of uncomfortable about certain things maybe you could explain some of that for me.
We're kind of concerned about some of the energy here.
Well, when you say the energy, are you talking about, like, a negative energy Yes.
I've experienced some things.
Um, our guests have experienced some things.
So we kind of want to know who we're sharing our space with here.
Tessa seems genuinely concerned about her hotel, and I want to help.
But her description of this negative energy, really doesn't give me a strong lead.
There's, like, this little lady.
She's taking care of people.
She's doing a lot of stuff and taking care of people.
And she's, like, doing it all the time, 24/7.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
And she's wearing, like, the, you know, nurse-y shoes, like, the white shoes.
- So where are we headed now? - We are headed to our basement.
I am terrified to be down here.
So whenever I am down here by myself, I take these steps in two steps going back up.
When we bought it, it was a little creepy crawl space.
My dad kind of dug it out, and now we do a lot of parties down here.
So it was 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon.
I came downstairs, I had my purse on my shoulder, said good-bye to my brother.
And walked over here to the women's bathroom, and that's when the most frightening thing that's ever happened to me happened.
I walked into the bathroom, turned on the lights, and there it was, right there.
- What was? - Well, it was a ghost.
And, um, for several days, I couldn't figure out what I really saw until I had thought about it.
And I know that it was a Spanish woman.
Was she older, younger? Do you remember? You know, I really I was so terrified that I don't I don't remember whether she was old or young.
But you could see right through her, she had no color.
That had to scare the hell out of you, I would assume.
I went flying backwards, screaming.
My purse fell off my shoulder.
All the contents ended up on the basement floor.
I was terrified.
She walks up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down.
A lot on here, up, back, forth, back, forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
But you know what's weird is that, um You know, like she I'm getting two ages on her.
So I see her, like So maybe that's how, like How long she was doing this or something? And she's short.
She's really short.
So Tessa's seen a Spanish woman, but she can't give me any specifics on the experience that she had.
That doesn't help me in a hotel that used to be a clinic.
Where there would've been hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.
Unfortunately, I can't speak to guests that have come and gone.
But I can speak to Tessa's father.
He may know something Tessa doesn't.
So I was talking to your daughter, and she was saying some interesting things are happening here.
I'm curious as to you and What you might have experienced here, if anything.
The most significant thing that occurred Difficult to talk about things like that.
It sounds so fantastical, so bizarre.
So I met with Tessa who owns and runs this hotel, and she explained her concerns to me.
But I want to talk to her father Jack.
Jack renovated this place, and I'm sure he knows a lot about its history.
Now, I was talking to your daughter and she was saying some interesting things are happening here.
I'm curious as to you and What you might have experienced here, if anything.
One day, when we were excavating the basement, I was sitting down there, I had my notes, I saw Well, it's the basement.
There's no windows there.
But I was sitting there, and I noticed a light, some brightness over in the corner.
I saw a very small lady.
Latin, definitely But very, very small.
And I looked at her, and she just was there looking back at me.
I was so surprised by the whole thing that it didn't register, I mean, you know? Some things are very difficult to accept and believe.
So Jack and his daughter both have seen a Spanish woman.
I can't be sure that they've seen the same woman, but it's definitely an odd coincidence.
Am I the first person to hear you tell the story? - Yes.
- Okay.
The third floor is difficult to understand.
I'm being pulled in so many different directions and to so many different rooms.
Fortunately, the room with the strongest pull is vacant.
- Can I go? I don't know.
- You can go in there.
I don't know what this is.
Uh, there's, like, somebody laying in the hallway.
How are they laying? Face up.
It's a woman.
So I guess I'll go in here and touch that, see what's up with that.
Oh.
Oh, my God.
What year did this change from a clinic to a hotel, or did it go from a clinic to something else and then a hotel? Well, it, uh, it remained a clinic until, uh, 22 years ago.
So I had the opportunity uh To rehabilitate this building into what it is now.
So many people, I would assume, passed away here.
Many, many, yes.
Many were born, and many passed right here.
Like, so I walk in here, and I'm, like, you know, immediately Like, I'm Feel like a murder/suicide.
I'm feeling sick, though.
There was a body in the bathroom And I feel it was a woman.
Mm Yeah, I fell sick, though.
I really feel sick.
Hey, Ray.
How you doing? I'm Steve.
Pleasure meeting you.
I'm doing an investigation on the building and its background.
Um, and I'm investigating some of the things that have been going on.
So I was wondering if you had any experiences or you heard of any experiences that people had here? Anybody come down and mentioned to you that they might have seen an apparition or something like that? One lady, she was in 305.
And she swore she saw a A shadow or a ghost figure.
Because that's what I asked her.
I said, are you sure it wasn't a shadow? And she said, no, it was somebody staring at me.
She said, I could feel the presence.
She came a lot of times after that but She never wanted to be in that room again.
- She never wanted to be in 305 again? - That's correct.
So I checked with Jack and Tessa, and to their knowledge, there have been no crimes or violent incidents in room 305.
Or anywhere else in the hotel, for that matter.
But they can't speak for when this place was a clinic.
From what I'm finding out about Ybor City It has a pretty violent criminal history.
I'm talking execution-style killings, money laundering, racketeering.
This all sounds like organized crime to me.
But I'm not sure it's Mafia-related, so I'm gonna go meet with a historian.
Maybe he can shed some light on the city's violent past.
Ybor City has an era called the era of blood.
In the early 1900s, different Mafia factions, fought for control of Tampa's underground.
And a lot of historians say it was the Southern version of the Wild West.
There were brothels and gambling houses.
I kind of am getting a little bit of a Kind of Mafia thing here.
But this is like you know, the thing is, is, like, not everybody here is Italian, you know? Um It's all races.
And, um And dealings.
Lots of people down here.
Laughing.
I mean, people having a pretty good time.
I feel, like, it went wrong, though.
Like, it went wrong.
I'm not exactly sure how But it went wrong in a in a big way, it went wrong.
Then there was a War all the Italian families here, and it was violent.
With all the murders that took place around this hotel, they would probably have taken them to the closest medical clinic, which was this one.
And, um I feel like No, I can't say that, not for all of them.
Um, I think that some of them were killed.
I feel, like Some of them were killed.
Paul gave me a lot of information about the crime in Ybor City, but I need more information about the hotel itself.
So I'm going to meet with a local expert that can tell me more about when it was a hospital.
So I understand the location's an inn now, it's a hotel.
Mm-hmm.
It's been that way for about 11 years, but I understand way back when, it was actually a clinic or a hospital.
It was one of the most famous medical clinics in Tampa.
This was not merely an outpatient clinic, this was a modern hospital.
The key figure in understanding that building, is a man by the name of Jose Luis Avellanal.
He had so many lives, so many disguises.
Born in Tampa in 1903, the only child of privilege.
- And his father operated the clinic.
- Was he a doctor? Honestly, I'm not sure whether he had a medical degree or not.
He had been investigated, uh, by the government for running a diploma mill.
So, basically, with this diploma mill, he could've made himself anything he wanted to be.
He was anything he wanted to be.
It turned out he went to Mexico in the mid-1940s.
Bribed his way into creating this legion of honor.
Which allowed him to be decorated with the rank of Lieutenant General.
He would not respond to you unless you called him General.
Now did he eventually come back to The States? He did, and stayed in Ybor City until his death in January 1982.
Never married? Never married, but claims in a suicide note That he had 500 relationships.
All right, so he decides to write a suicide note, - but doesn't kill himself.
- Yes, yes.
It's a disturbing, rambling Jarring portal to his soul, I guess.
Uh, he's writing that no woman could ever satisfy him.
It's rather a disturbing document if you look at it.
Okay, so this is not good.
The Mafia presence in the basement feels strange to me.
I'm getting that this was a hospital.
And now I'm sensing an even darker energy.
And I'm getting a little nervous.
All the bad things that I did.
Uh And there were different things done in different rooms.
And, like, you know, it's weird because it's, like, I hear fire, but I'm, like, getting this gas.
Like, it's so weird.
Like, it's like a gas.
Like, it doesn't really, like, smell like smoke or taste like smoke.
It's like a gas almost.
The strangest aspect of this, was Avellanal's obsession with death and eternal life.
Avellanal, he was constantly petitioning local boards To experiment on cats.
To restore cats' lives.
And God knows whether he was ever experimenting with humans there, but he was simply convinced that only he had the truth.
So he was convinced, in his brain, he could bring Yes.
Dead animals and/or humans back to life.
Yes.
Like, some really wicked [Bleep.]
went down here.
Sorry.
Uh, just feel there Uh, there's there's panic going on.
Like, there's confusion going on.
And, um Yeah, I'm feeling that.
And there's, like, tunnels.
There's, like, tunnels.
Um, like, there's tunnels.
There's, like, this whole freaking thing, man.
Now was there any evidence that he might have used the hospital to With this reviving of dead bodies stuff? Well, if you connect the dots, I mean, he lived literally family owned that clinic until 1982.
And it's interesting you mentioned this, there were tunnels in Ybor City.
And it was always assumed, I think, it was for prohibition.
But that never made sense because Ybor City was a wide-open town.
So if you wanted to get rid of any kind of, uh, let's say, evidence, he could have burned it up at the clinic? Could have, sure.
Like, there feels, like, there should have been a way to go through this wall, to the other room.
It's frustrating because I can't follow these people into the walls.
And so our conversations keep ending abruptly.
As soon as one person walks away, another person walks in and gives me new information.
This is a dead guy here.
And, um, it's almost like he's afraid he's gonna get busted for something.
So he's trying to, like, be quiet about it.
He's definitely dead.
And Uh Maybe he doesn't know.
Uh yeah, he doesn't know he's dead.
[Bleep.]
Yeah.
There's a lot, um There's a lot of history here, so And, I mean, like, active.
Like, active history here.
What I mean is like a lot of dead people are here.
The longer I stay in the basement, the more agitated I feel, because there are so many dead people down here that want to talk to me, and they're all trying to talk to me at once.
I actually I don't know if it was a hospital or A place for people who, um, were mentally ill.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and I'm still not sure, really, which one it was.
And then there was a lady upstairs that was Um, seemed to me to be kind of like a nurse.
So given what you know about this man right now He's a pathological liar, he's obsessed with the dead.
He's got a narcissistic personality, to say the least Would you be surprised if tomorrow you found out there were bodies in his basement? No.
And there's people coming out of the walls.
There's a lot of people coming out of the walls.
- And - Are they all related to this event? And this stuff going down here, or they I don't know.
It's just, like, they just all came Like, I almost feel like Some of them were in the wall.
Like like Like, literally.
They're a mess.
What do they look like? They've got, like, crushed faces Broken arms And they feel all feel, like, they're in, like, they're vibrating.
Ooh, and there's people coming out of the walls.
Like, I almost feel like Some of them were in the wall.
Like like Like, literally.
And they feel all feel, like, their inner, like they're vibrating.
Like, they're just in that moment, and What moment? Yeah.
These people seem confused and terrified because they don't know how they got in here.
I'm having trouble understanding what they want because they're in so much pain.
Someone's yelling fire, so and that's a male.
Can you describe him? Um, he's wearing, like, actually, a really nice suit.
And he has dark brown hair, and it has, like, the goop in it.
And it's, like, combed back.
And he has a white shirt on, the suit's dark.
And he has even has, like, the little bow tie on.
Mm-hmm, no facial hair.
Um, like, strong face.
Yeah.
But he wants to figure out what happened.
So I start out looking for a little old lady, and I find out that maybe thousands of people died in this building when it was a clinic.
Now I discover that the son of the doctor who ran the clinic was obsessed with death.
He kept journals of bizarre medical procedures.
And he left a suicide note which is nine pages of lunacy.
I mean, this guy kind of had the psych profile of a serial killer.
Charming, he was power-hungry, and he had plenty of money to basically do whatever the hell he wanted.
[Bleep.]
Okay.
Somebody's here, and they're, like Is this that other guy? What oh, oh, oh.
Oh, oh, oh, I don't like that.
What's going on? Oh! Like, a little push, a little nudge on my back.
I thought it was a female coming up behind me.
And, uh But I'm not sure now.
Because they went away, and then I was wondering if it was that guy.
Like seriously, I'm getting chills up and down my back.
Because they're touching me on my back.
Oh, I don't okay.
I don't like that.
Sometimes I get to a point where I just need to shut down.
The dead people here are angry with me because I can't help them all.
So now they're starting to attack me.
There's just so much going on that I'm starting to feel physically ill.
And I think we need to leave now.
I encountered so many dead people on my walk.
That nobody really stood out, except for this one man.
Who seemed to be attached to the location.
So I'm gonna have the sketch artist sketch him.
He is very masculine-looking.
- Square jaw? - Yes.
Okay.
Uh, light haired, gray haired? - Oh, dark hair.
- Dark hair, okay.
He has it slicked back.
- Slicked back.
- Black hair.
It's like very, um, suave.
Yeah.
Very, um Meticulous.
He, uh, definitely was very vain.
And what we would call today a Metro Sexual.
He would clean his, uh - Nails every day.
- Mm hmm.
He would, um, he filed them.
It's like O.
C.
D.
about these things.
He would shave the hair off of his, um, fingers.
Like he's like, even, like, constantly doing this, with his arm hair to keep it nice.
Like, even the eyebrows, like, brushing them up and cutting them to make sure that they're, like, perfect.
And then, like, you know, he got older, he had a lot of power and control over a lot of things.
All right.
Something like that? Yep, that's him.
Amy and I have not seen each other since the beginning of the investigation.
I have no idea what she's encountered, what she saw, what she felt.
But now we get to sit down and see if any of our findings match up.
Amy, this is Tessa and Jack.
They are the owners of the hotel we're in.
They called us in because they've had some issues with guests, seeing apparitions and bizarre events going on.
Okay.
Tessa has actually encountered an apparition in the basement in the restroom area.
Okay.
And if you can explain to her what you saw.
It was in the female restroom in the basement downstairs, and walked in on a very dark, dark restroom.
Went to turn the light on, and there she was.
Okay.
And I actually know that she was of Um, hispanic or Spanish descent.
Okay.
Very interesting.
Well, I did encounter an older female in her 70s.
Um, who stayed here for some time.
She was very petite.
Um, she's on the third floor, mainly.
Um, she does have a hispanic heritage.
And she, um, what Was some type of nurse or something like that, a caretaker.
There was a lady upstairs that was Um, seemed to me to be kind of, like, a nurse.
Mm-hmm.
And she's short.
She's really short.
Now you don't know this, but your father informed me that he actually saw something himself.
And I was really the only person he's ever told.
I didn't want to look foolish, uh, in that respect.
So I was allowed to look foolish with my story, telling everybody all these years, and you just, - you know, keep it to yourself.
- I never, never told anybody.
I saw a very small lady.
And I looked at her, and she just was there looking back at me.
Who do you think my lady was? Do you think it was her? - Maybe the same - I think it was probably the same The same woman, so The little nurse is a very active presence here.
She feels a responsibility to continue doing her job.
And I think that's why she presented herself to Jack and Tessa.
To let them know that she's still here.
I'm happy that I'm sane.
Because that lady, that really threw me for a loop.
That's why I never told anyone in my family, any of my friends.
But I know that someone interviewed our front desk, Ray.
I was wondering how that came out? Well, when I spoke to Ray, I specifically asked him if he'd seen anything, because I had heard from you two guys.
He hadn't, but he said a couple of guests, did mention a shadowy figure in a room, 305.
- Yes.
- Okay.
Um, as soon as I opened the door Immediately Like, I feel like a murder/suicide.
I'm feeling sick, though.
There was a body in the bathroom.
And I feel it was a woman.
Well, it was a hospital.
Well, all the rooms here were hospital rooms.
People were died there, treated there.
Okay.
- So each room - It was really bad and very intense.
Saw many stories.
Ybor City has a tremendous, tremendous history as far as, um, the Mafia and the mob down here.
The beginning of the 1920s, there was a time of, a span of almost 30 years.
There was a big mob war down here.
They called it the era of blood.
Because there was so much violence so many homicides, so many murders because of the gambling.
Most of those victims came here.
- This was the only clinic in the area.
- Okay.
So you're gonna have, I don't know how many murders within a year that actually wound up Even if they were alive when they got here, they may have eventually passed away when they were here.
Does that make any sense to you? Does that Yes, it does.
There was a character here that lived here for many, many years.
His name was Jose Luis Avellanal.
Now this guy was a handsome, tall, charismatic guy.
Real narcissist.
Meticulous the way he dressed.
- Does that sound familiar to you at all? - Yes, it does.
Well, you know what? I have a photo of, uh, this guy.
I want you to take a look at it.
Wow! Well, you know what? I have a photo of, uh, this guy.
I want you to take a look at it.
Wow! What I normally do during our investigation is put her together with a sketch artist.
As far as, uh, who she encounters.
So I had a sketch artist come in.
And they seal it.
I don't get to see it until now, actually, so Well, tell me what you think.
That's pretty close.
Wow, that's incredible.
That's kind of the outfit that he had on with the bow tie.
Yeah.
The eyes, I think.
Yeah.
When I encounter the dead, they project themselves how they want me to see them.
So it's always kind of shocking when, I see an actual photograph of someone I've met.
What was your take on him? I mean, what kind of a person do you think he was? Well, he definitely had obsessive-compulsive disorder.
That's the first thing.
He was in some type of a powerful position.
Just because, he had that authority.
Um, confidence that you get from being in some type of power position.
Okay.
Let me paint a little picture of, uh Mr.
Avellanal.
He had a diploma mill that he ran.
And he gave himself diplomas.
And he was selling them, also.
But he was a doctor, a lawyer, a minister, name it, he was it.
He was so far into this being powerful, he used to actually walk around In a Mexican General's outfit through Tampa and Ybor City.
So to give you an idea of what kind of a guy he was.
And you'll see this stuff.
He was really into trying to revive the dead.
He used to actually write letters to the Mayo clinic, Harvard.
They all rejected him.
Because they realized the guy's out of his mind, but he would experiment Using this type of stuff for reviving the dead.
This was the kind of machinery he used to do that.
And there's rumors that he might have experimented on cats, animals.
Now Jose Luis actually lived right diagonal from here, at the El Pasaje hotel.
In his younger years, he actually wrote a 9-page suicide note.
Now in this note, he talks about how many women he's had.
He had over 500 women in his life, and none of them could satisfy him.
Talked about taking over the world.
This is all in the same note, and he talks about committing suicide, which he never did.
You know, I was really interested in Avellanal for, a lot of the bad things that happened here.
You know, kind of everything was pointing towards him.
Do you think this guy killed anyone? No.
Even though the guy, in my opinion, is a sociopath, he's a lunatic, he's a liar, narcissistic.
He, yeah, definitely he didn't kill anybody.
Steve uncovered some unflattering information about Avellanal.
But when I met Avellanal, he seemed more confused, about his own death than anything else.
He was definitely an eccentric man.
But I don't think that he was ever dangerous.
And I don't think that he'll be a threat, to Jack or Tessa or their guests.
All I know is what I got, and You know, my concern is, is always trying to keep it as accurate as possible.
I'm not saying that everything I uncover is gonna jive with what you find.
- Right.
- But I just in this case I thought there was relevance there.
But if she says it isn't, it isn't so You've been a Detective as long as I have, you know that you've got to go by your gut instincts sometimes.
And my gut tells me Avellanal was up to no good.
But I have to go with Amy's findings on this one.
Avellanal, did he why is he here? Well, I think that Because he did have such a strong attachment to it, it is a place that he was familiar with and is familiar with.
So that may be why he comes and goes.
Um He wasn't present the entire time.
So I'm not sure if he stays here all the time or not.
But a lot of dead will just kind of converge sometimes at places.
Um, and being that this was a hospital, a lot of people were brought here to the morgue.
Like, I almost feel like Some of them were in the wall, like Like, literally.
They're a mess.
What do they look like? They've got, like, crushed faces Broken arms.
And they all feel, like, their inner Like they're vibrating, like The people who fell out of the wall Um, which I'm kind of relating to the morgue.
Now, the only thing with them is just they want to leave, they're not harmful in any way, they're just normal people that are, like, hey, I want to leave now.
But you are safe, the guests are safe, and the nurse is still working and doing her job, taking care of everybody, you know? - That's what we want is a happy place.
- Yeah.
Hotels can be hard to investigate, especially in cases like this.
Jack and Tessa have entity's that are happy to be here.
And they have entity's who no longer want to be here.
But like the living sometimes all the dead want is to be heard.
And now that their story's have been told.
I think many of them are ready to move on.
Everyone will benefit in the end.
Both the living and the dead.
And it was violent.
Immediately, like, I feel, like, a murder/suicide.
You could see right through her.
She had no color.
It was a ghost.
Some things are very difficult to accept and believe.
There were different things done in different rooms.
Would you be surprised if tomorrow you found out there were bodies in his basement? No.
A lot of dead people are here.
My name is Amy Allan.
There's something down there.
I see dead people He doesn't want me back there.
I speak to dead people She's pissed.
And they speak to me.
She doesn't like the people who live here.
But there's only one way to know if my findings are real.
Someone did hang themselves here.
- Where? - There.
I rely on my partner.
I'm Steve Dischiavi I'm a retired New York City homicide Detective.
Did you want to kill him? And I know every person, every house has secrets.
She did die in this house.
It's my job to reveal them.
Would you be surprised if there were bodies in his basement? No.
But Steve and I never speak We never communicate during an investigation.
Until the very end.
Not good.
Will we uncover if it's safe for you to stay Will it get worse? Or time to get out? - Oh, yes.
- Whew.
Steve will conduct his investigation, without knowing anything that I've encountered.
He interviews the witnesses.
He gathers the facts.
He finds out the history.
And at the end, we'll come together to compare our findings.
I'm in Tampa, Florida, in the historic district of Ybor, City.
Ybor City was the cigar capital of the world about 100 years ago.
I'm investigating a hotel called the Don Vicente Inn.
The owner Tessa called me because she encountered, a female apparition in the basement of the inn.
She didn't really know what to make of it, until guests started reporting similar sightings all over the hotel.
Now I'm gonna go meet with her now and see if I can get to the bottom of it.
Matt will go in before me.
And he'll remove any information, that may distract me from communicating with the dead.
And then I come in not knowing anything and do my walk through the location.
This is a dead guy here, and he's a nasty, nasty guy.
A lot of dead people are here.
There's a lot of people coming out of the walls.
Tessa.
- Steve, nice to meet you.
- How are you? Thank you for coming.
Thanks for having me.
This place is beautiful.
Thank you.
Now that I'm here, we spoke on the phone about things going on here.
Maybe you could explain a little bit about what's happening and, uh, what you do here.
My dad bought the building in 1998.
It was completely condemned.
Um, it took us about two years to restore.
We have now 16 guest rooms.
We've got 14 on the third floor, And we also have a basement downstairs.
Now was this always a hotel? It wasn't always a hotel, actually.
It was Vicente Ybor, who founded Ybor City, built it as a development corporation.
And then it became a hospital for some time.
Oh, so this was a hospital at one point.
- Yep.
- And how long has it been a hotel? It's been a hotel for the past 11 years.
Okay, and you run/own it? My brother and I run and own it, my dad restored it, and he comes and goes.
So when we spoke on the phone earlier you mentioned that you guys are kind of uncomfortable about certain things maybe you could explain some of that for me.
We're kind of concerned about some of the energy here.
Well, when you say the energy, are you talking about, like, a negative energy Yes.
I've experienced some things.
Um, our guests have experienced some things.
So we kind of want to know who we're sharing our space with here.
Tessa seems genuinely concerned about her hotel, and I want to help.
But her description of this negative energy, really doesn't give me a strong lead.
There's, like, this little lady.
She's taking care of people.
She's doing a lot of stuff and taking care of people.
And she's, like, doing it all the time, 24/7.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
And she's wearing, like, the, you know, nurse-y shoes, like, the white shoes.
- So where are we headed now? - We are headed to our basement.
I am terrified to be down here.
So whenever I am down here by myself, I take these steps in two steps going back up.
When we bought it, it was a little creepy crawl space.
My dad kind of dug it out, and now we do a lot of parties down here.
So it was 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon.
I came downstairs, I had my purse on my shoulder, said good-bye to my brother.
And walked over here to the women's bathroom, and that's when the most frightening thing that's ever happened to me happened.
I walked into the bathroom, turned on the lights, and there it was, right there.
- What was? - Well, it was a ghost.
And, um, for several days, I couldn't figure out what I really saw until I had thought about it.
And I know that it was a Spanish woman.
Was she older, younger? Do you remember? You know, I really I was so terrified that I don't I don't remember whether she was old or young.
But you could see right through her, she had no color.
That had to scare the hell out of you, I would assume.
I went flying backwards, screaming.
My purse fell off my shoulder.
All the contents ended up on the basement floor.
I was terrified.
She walks up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down.
A lot on here, up, back, forth, back, forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
But you know what's weird is that, um You know, like she I'm getting two ages on her.
So I see her, like So maybe that's how, like How long she was doing this or something? And she's short.
She's really short.
So Tessa's seen a Spanish woman, but she can't give me any specifics on the experience that she had.
That doesn't help me in a hotel that used to be a clinic.
Where there would've been hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.
Unfortunately, I can't speak to guests that have come and gone.
But I can speak to Tessa's father.
He may know something Tessa doesn't.
So I was talking to your daughter, and she was saying some interesting things are happening here.
I'm curious as to you and What you might have experienced here, if anything.
The most significant thing that occurred Difficult to talk about things like that.
It sounds so fantastical, so bizarre.
So I met with Tessa who owns and runs this hotel, and she explained her concerns to me.
But I want to talk to her father Jack.
Jack renovated this place, and I'm sure he knows a lot about its history.
Now, I was talking to your daughter and she was saying some interesting things are happening here.
I'm curious as to you and What you might have experienced here, if anything.
One day, when we were excavating the basement, I was sitting down there, I had my notes, I saw Well, it's the basement.
There's no windows there.
But I was sitting there, and I noticed a light, some brightness over in the corner.
I saw a very small lady.
Latin, definitely But very, very small.
And I looked at her, and she just was there looking back at me.
I was so surprised by the whole thing that it didn't register, I mean, you know? Some things are very difficult to accept and believe.
So Jack and his daughter both have seen a Spanish woman.
I can't be sure that they've seen the same woman, but it's definitely an odd coincidence.
Am I the first person to hear you tell the story? - Yes.
- Okay.
The third floor is difficult to understand.
I'm being pulled in so many different directions and to so many different rooms.
Fortunately, the room with the strongest pull is vacant.
- Can I go? I don't know.
- You can go in there.
I don't know what this is.
Uh, there's, like, somebody laying in the hallway.
How are they laying? Face up.
It's a woman.
So I guess I'll go in here and touch that, see what's up with that.
Oh.
Oh, my God.
What year did this change from a clinic to a hotel, or did it go from a clinic to something else and then a hotel? Well, it, uh, it remained a clinic until, uh, 22 years ago.
So I had the opportunity uh To rehabilitate this building into what it is now.
So many people, I would assume, passed away here.
Many, many, yes.
Many were born, and many passed right here.
Like, so I walk in here, and I'm, like, you know, immediately Like, I'm Feel like a murder/suicide.
I'm feeling sick, though.
There was a body in the bathroom And I feel it was a woman.
Mm Yeah, I fell sick, though.
I really feel sick.
Hey, Ray.
How you doing? I'm Steve.
Pleasure meeting you.
I'm doing an investigation on the building and its background.
Um, and I'm investigating some of the things that have been going on.
So I was wondering if you had any experiences or you heard of any experiences that people had here? Anybody come down and mentioned to you that they might have seen an apparition or something like that? One lady, she was in 305.
And she swore she saw a A shadow or a ghost figure.
Because that's what I asked her.
I said, are you sure it wasn't a shadow? And she said, no, it was somebody staring at me.
She said, I could feel the presence.
She came a lot of times after that but She never wanted to be in that room again.
- She never wanted to be in 305 again? - That's correct.
So I checked with Jack and Tessa, and to their knowledge, there have been no crimes or violent incidents in room 305.
Or anywhere else in the hotel, for that matter.
But they can't speak for when this place was a clinic.
From what I'm finding out about Ybor City It has a pretty violent criminal history.
I'm talking execution-style killings, money laundering, racketeering.
This all sounds like organized crime to me.
But I'm not sure it's Mafia-related, so I'm gonna go meet with a historian.
Maybe he can shed some light on the city's violent past.
Ybor City has an era called the era of blood.
In the early 1900s, different Mafia factions, fought for control of Tampa's underground.
And a lot of historians say it was the Southern version of the Wild West.
There were brothels and gambling houses.
I kind of am getting a little bit of a Kind of Mafia thing here.
But this is like you know, the thing is, is, like, not everybody here is Italian, you know? Um It's all races.
And, um And dealings.
Lots of people down here.
Laughing.
I mean, people having a pretty good time.
I feel, like, it went wrong, though.
Like, it went wrong.
I'm not exactly sure how But it went wrong in a in a big way, it went wrong.
Then there was a War all the Italian families here, and it was violent.
With all the murders that took place around this hotel, they would probably have taken them to the closest medical clinic, which was this one.
And, um I feel like No, I can't say that, not for all of them.
Um, I think that some of them were killed.
I feel, like Some of them were killed.
Paul gave me a lot of information about the crime in Ybor City, but I need more information about the hotel itself.
So I'm going to meet with a local expert that can tell me more about when it was a hospital.
So I understand the location's an inn now, it's a hotel.
Mm-hmm.
It's been that way for about 11 years, but I understand way back when, it was actually a clinic or a hospital.
It was one of the most famous medical clinics in Tampa.
This was not merely an outpatient clinic, this was a modern hospital.
The key figure in understanding that building, is a man by the name of Jose Luis Avellanal.
He had so many lives, so many disguises.
Born in Tampa in 1903, the only child of privilege.
- And his father operated the clinic.
- Was he a doctor? Honestly, I'm not sure whether he had a medical degree or not.
He had been investigated, uh, by the government for running a diploma mill.
So, basically, with this diploma mill, he could've made himself anything he wanted to be.
He was anything he wanted to be.
It turned out he went to Mexico in the mid-1940s.
Bribed his way into creating this legion of honor.
Which allowed him to be decorated with the rank of Lieutenant General.
He would not respond to you unless you called him General.
Now did he eventually come back to The States? He did, and stayed in Ybor City until his death in January 1982.
Never married? Never married, but claims in a suicide note That he had 500 relationships.
All right, so he decides to write a suicide note, - but doesn't kill himself.
- Yes, yes.
It's a disturbing, rambling Jarring portal to his soul, I guess.
Uh, he's writing that no woman could ever satisfy him.
It's rather a disturbing document if you look at it.
Okay, so this is not good.
The Mafia presence in the basement feels strange to me.
I'm getting that this was a hospital.
And now I'm sensing an even darker energy.
And I'm getting a little nervous.
All the bad things that I did.
Uh And there were different things done in different rooms.
And, like, you know, it's weird because it's, like, I hear fire, but I'm, like, getting this gas.
Like, it's so weird.
Like, it's like a gas.
Like, it doesn't really, like, smell like smoke or taste like smoke.
It's like a gas almost.
The strangest aspect of this, was Avellanal's obsession with death and eternal life.
Avellanal, he was constantly petitioning local boards To experiment on cats.
To restore cats' lives.
And God knows whether he was ever experimenting with humans there, but he was simply convinced that only he had the truth.
So he was convinced, in his brain, he could bring Yes.
Dead animals and/or humans back to life.
Yes.
Like, some really wicked [Bleep.]
went down here.
Sorry.
Uh, just feel there Uh, there's there's panic going on.
Like, there's confusion going on.
And, um Yeah, I'm feeling that.
And there's, like, tunnels.
There's, like, tunnels.
Um, like, there's tunnels.
There's, like, this whole freaking thing, man.
Now was there any evidence that he might have used the hospital to With this reviving of dead bodies stuff? Well, if you connect the dots, I mean, he lived literally family owned that clinic until 1982.
And it's interesting you mentioned this, there were tunnels in Ybor City.
And it was always assumed, I think, it was for prohibition.
But that never made sense because Ybor City was a wide-open town.
So if you wanted to get rid of any kind of, uh, let's say, evidence, he could have burned it up at the clinic? Could have, sure.
Like, there feels, like, there should have been a way to go through this wall, to the other room.
It's frustrating because I can't follow these people into the walls.
And so our conversations keep ending abruptly.
As soon as one person walks away, another person walks in and gives me new information.
This is a dead guy here.
And, um, it's almost like he's afraid he's gonna get busted for something.
So he's trying to, like, be quiet about it.
He's definitely dead.
And Uh Maybe he doesn't know.
Uh yeah, he doesn't know he's dead.
[Bleep.]
Yeah.
There's a lot, um There's a lot of history here, so And, I mean, like, active.
Like, active history here.
What I mean is like a lot of dead people are here.
The longer I stay in the basement, the more agitated I feel, because there are so many dead people down here that want to talk to me, and they're all trying to talk to me at once.
I actually I don't know if it was a hospital or A place for people who, um, were mentally ill.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and I'm still not sure, really, which one it was.
And then there was a lady upstairs that was Um, seemed to me to be kind of like a nurse.
So given what you know about this man right now He's a pathological liar, he's obsessed with the dead.
He's got a narcissistic personality, to say the least Would you be surprised if tomorrow you found out there were bodies in his basement? No.
And there's people coming out of the walls.
There's a lot of people coming out of the walls.
- And - Are they all related to this event? And this stuff going down here, or they I don't know.
It's just, like, they just all came Like, I almost feel like Some of them were in the wall.
Like like Like, literally.
They're a mess.
What do they look like? They've got, like, crushed faces Broken arms And they feel all feel, like, they're in, like, they're vibrating.
Ooh, and there's people coming out of the walls.
Like, I almost feel like Some of them were in the wall.
Like like Like, literally.
And they feel all feel, like, their inner, like they're vibrating.
Like, they're just in that moment, and What moment? Yeah.
These people seem confused and terrified because they don't know how they got in here.
I'm having trouble understanding what they want because they're in so much pain.
Someone's yelling fire, so and that's a male.
Can you describe him? Um, he's wearing, like, actually, a really nice suit.
And he has dark brown hair, and it has, like, the goop in it.
And it's, like, combed back.
And he has a white shirt on, the suit's dark.
And he has even has, like, the little bow tie on.
Mm-hmm, no facial hair.
Um, like, strong face.
Yeah.
But he wants to figure out what happened.
So I start out looking for a little old lady, and I find out that maybe thousands of people died in this building when it was a clinic.
Now I discover that the son of the doctor who ran the clinic was obsessed with death.
He kept journals of bizarre medical procedures.
And he left a suicide note which is nine pages of lunacy.
I mean, this guy kind of had the psych profile of a serial killer.
Charming, he was power-hungry, and he had plenty of money to basically do whatever the hell he wanted.
[Bleep.]
Okay.
Somebody's here, and they're, like Is this that other guy? What oh, oh, oh.
Oh, oh, oh, I don't like that.
What's going on? Oh! Like, a little push, a little nudge on my back.
I thought it was a female coming up behind me.
And, uh But I'm not sure now.
Because they went away, and then I was wondering if it was that guy.
Like seriously, I'm getting chills up and down my back.
Because they're touching me on my back.
Oh, I don't okay.
I don't like that.
Sometimes I get to a point where I just need to shut down.
The dead people here are angry with me because I can't help them all.
So now they're starting to attack me.
There's just so much going on that I'm starting to feel physically ill.
And I think we need to leave now.
I encountered so many dead people on my walk.
That nobody really stood out, except for this one man.
Who seemed to be attached to the location.
So I'm gonna have the sketch artist sketch him.
He is very masculine-looking.
- Square jaw? - Yes.
Okay.
Uh, light haired, gray haired? - Oh, dark hair.
- Dark hair, okay.
He has it slicked back.
- Slicked back.
- Black hair.
It's like very, um, suave.
Yeah.
Very, um Meticulous.
He, uh, definitely was very vain.
And what we would call today a Metro Sexual.
He would clean his, uh - Nails every day.
- Mm hmm.
He would, um, he filed them.
It's like O.
C.
D.
about these things.
He would shave the hair off of his, um, fingers.
Like he's like, even, like, constantly doing this, with his arm hair to keep it nice.
Like, even the eyebrows, like, brushing them up and cutting them to make sure that they're, like, perfect.
And then, like, you know, he got older, he had a lot of power and control over a lot of things.
All right.
Something like that? Yep, that's him.
Amy and I have not seen each other since the beginning of the investigation.
I have no idea what she's encountered, what she saw, what she felt.
But now we get to sit down and see if any of our findings match up.
Amy, this is Tessa and Jack.
They are the owners of the hotel we're in.
They called us in because they've had some issues with guests, seeing apparitions and bizarre events going on.
Okay.
Tessa has actually encountered an apparition in the basement in the restroom area.
Okay.
And if you can explain to her what you saw.
It was in the female restroom in the basement downstairs, and walked in on a very dark, dark restroom.
Went to turn the light on, and there she was.
Okay.
And I actually know that she was of Um, hispanic or Spanish descent.
Okay.
Very interesting.
Well, I did encounter an older female in her 70s.
Um, who stayed here for some time.
She was very petite.
Um, she's on the third floor, mainly.
Um, she does have a hispanic heritage.
And she, um, what Was some type of nurse or something like that, a caretaker.
There was a lady upstairs that was Um, seemed to me to be kind of, like, a nurse.
Mm-hmm.
And she's short.
She's really short.
Now you don't know this, but your father informed me that he actually saw something himself.
And I was really the only person he's ever told.
I didn't want to look foolish, uh, in that respect.
So I was allowed to look foolish with my story, telling everybody all these years, and you just, - you know, keep it to yourself.
- I never, never told anybody.
I saw a very small lady.
And I looked at her, and she just was there looking back at me.
Who do you think my lady was? Do you think it was her? - Maybe the same - I think it was probably the same The same woman, so The little nurse is a very active presence here.
She feels a responsibility to continue doing her job.
And I think that's why she presented herself to Jack and Tessa.
To let them know that she's still here.
I'm happy that I'm sane.
Because that lady, that really threw me for a loop.
That's why I never told anyone in my family, any of my friends.
But I know that someone interviewed our front desk, Ray.
I was wondering how that came out? Well, when I spoke to Ray, I specifically asked him if he'd seen anything, because I had heard from you two guys.
He hadn't, but he said a couple of guests, did mention a shadowy figure in a room, 305.
- Yes.
- Okay.
Um, as soon as I opened the door Immediately Like, I feel like a murder/suicide.
I'm feeling sick, though.
There was a body in the bathroom.
And I feel it was a woman.
Well, it was a hospital.
Well, all the rooms here were hospital rooms.
People were died there, treated there.
Okay.
- So each room - It was really bad and very intense.
Saw many stories.
Ybor City has a tremendous, tremendous history as far as, um, the Mafia and the mob down here.
The beginning of the 1920s, there was a time of, a span of almost 30 years.
There was a big mob war down here.
They called it the era of blood.
Because there was so much violence so many homicides, so many murders because of the gambling.
Most of those victims came here.
- This was the only clinic in the area.
- Okay.
So you're gonna have, I don't know how many murders within a year that actually wound up Even if they were alive when they got here, they may have eventually passed away when they were here.
Does that make any sense to you? Does that Yes, it does.
There was a character here that lived here for many, many years.
His name was Jose Luis Avellanal.
Now this guy was a handsome, tall, charismatic guy.
Real narcissist.
Meticulous the way he dressed.
- Does that sound familiar to you at all? - Yes, it does.
Well, you know what? I have a photo of, uh, this guy.
I want you to take a look at it.
Wow! Well, you know what? I have a photo of, uh, this guy.
I want you to take a look at it.
Wow! What I normally do during our investigation is put her together with a sketch artist.
As far as, uh, who she encounters.
So I had a sketch artist come in.
And they seal it.
I don't get to see it until now, actually, so Well, tell me what you think.
That's pretty close.
Wow, that's incredible.
That's kind of the outfit that he had on with the bow tie.
Yeah.
The eyes, I think.
Yeah.
When I encounter the dead, they project themselves how they want me to see them.
So it's always kind of shocking when, I see an actual photograph of someone I've met.
What was your take on him? I mean, what kind of a person do you think he was? Well, he definitely had obsessive-compulsive disorder.
That's the first thing.
He was in some type of a powerful position.
Just because, he had that authority.
Um, confidence that you get from being in some type of power position.
Okay.
Let me paint a little picture of, uh Mr.
Avellanal.
He had a diploma mill that he ran.
And he gave himself diplomas.
And he was selling them, also.
But he was a doctor, a lawyer, a minister, name it, he was it.
He was so far into this being powerful, he used to actually walk around In a Mexican General's outfit through Tampa and Ybor City.
So to give you an idea of what kind of a guy he was.
And you'll see this stuff.
He was really into trying to revive the dead.
He used to actually write letters to the Mayo clinic, Harvard.
They all rejected him.
Because they realized the guy's out of his mind, but he would experiment Using this type of stuff for reviving the dead.
This was the kind of machinery he used to do that.
And there's rumors that he might have experimented on cats, animals.
Now Jose Luis actually lived right diagonal from here, at the El Pasaje hotel.
In his younger years, he actually wrote a 9-page suicide note.
Now in this note, he talks about how many women he's had.
He had over 500 women in his life, and none of them could satisfy him.
Talked about taking over the world.
This is all in the same note, and he talks about committing suicide, which he never did.
You know, I was really interested in Avellanal for, a lot of the bad things that happened here.
You know, kind of everything was pointing towards him.
Do you think this guy killed anyone? No.
Even though the guy, in my opinion, is a sociopath, he's a lunatic, he's a liar, narcissistic.
He, yeah, definitely he didn't kill anybody.
Steve uncovered some unflattering information about Avellanal.
But when I met Avellanal, he seemed more confused, about his own death than anything else.
He was definitely an eccentric man.
But I don't think that he was ever dangerous.
And I don't think that he'll be a threat, to Jack or Tessa or their guests.
All I know is what I got, and You know, my concern is, is always trying to keep it as accurate as possible.
I'm not saying that everything I uncover is gonna jive with what you find.
- Right.
- But I just in this case I thought there was relevance there.
But if she says it isn't, it isn't so You've been a Detective as long as I have, you know that you've got to go by your gut instincts sometimes.
And my gut tells me Avellanal was up to no good.
But I have to go with Amy's findings on this one.
Avellanal, did he why is he here? Well, I think that Because he did have such a strong attachment to it, it is a place that he was familiar with and is familiar with.
So that may be why he comes and goes.
Um He wasn't present the entire time.
So I'm not sure if he stays here all the time or not.
But a lot of dead will just kind of converge sometimes at places.
Um, and being that this was a hospital, a lot of people were brought here to the morgue.
Like, I almost feel like Some of them were in the wall, like Like, literally.
They're a mess.
What do they look like? They've got, like, crushed faces Broken arms.
And they all feel, like, their inner Like they're vibrating, like The people who fell out of the wall Um, which I'm kind of relating to the morgue.
Now, the only thing with them is just they want to leave, they're not harmful in any way, they're just normal people that are, like, hey, I want to leave now.
But you are safe, the guests are safe, and the nurse is still working and doing her job, taking care of everybody, you know? - That's what we want is a happy place.
- Yeah.
Hotels can be hard to investigate, especially in cases like this.
Jack and Tessa have entity's that are happy to be here.
And they have entity's who no longer want to be here.
But like the living sometimes all the dead want is to be heard.
And now that their story's have been told.
I think many of them are ready to move on.
Everyone will benefit in the end.
Both the living and the dead.