The Mouth of the Hillsborough River

Submitted by Ian C. Hawkins

I have embellished here and there to make it alittle more interresting. But most of this is exectly as I heard it when it was told to me. I have also found some photos of the tower itself. I've included them as attachments. Bear with me; I am not accustomed to telling stories like this. I don't remember exact dates right now, but this all happened around the 20's or 30's. The few articles I have found so far put the tower's construction date at 1927.

The Seminole Indians came down into Florida because of the White man's encroachment of their territory. They settled small areas here and there. Many of this tribe settled along what is known today as the Hillsborough River. This river spawns from a natural spring located in what is today called North Tampa. The Seminole have a tale of a creature, or spirit, that is imprisoned in the "Mouth of the Hillsborough". This spirit is known for trying to make deals with mortals in exchange for something. I cannot for the life of me find any reference to the "Something" that the River Demon wants.

Many decades later, White man came and settled here in Florida. A Port was built for trade and eventually the area became known as The Port City of Tampa. North of Tampa was a resort area called Sulphur Springs. There was a young developer living there named Josiah Richardson who wanted make a name for himself. Josiah could not seem to make any headway in his business endeavors. Failure after failure finally drove him to the point of desperation. No one knows how he came to know of the spirit in the river or how he made contact with it, but legend tells us that Josiah made a deal with this entity. Josiah was granted financial success. Josiah built 3 main structures that have stood the test of time. The Water Tower, the gazebo, and his house. More on those 3 later. All in all, Josiah built a shopping arcade (Florida's first mall), a waterslide, a hotel, a park, and some housing. According to the legend, Josiah tried getting out of the deal. This brought the sprits wrath upon him and his. The Hillsborough River flooded and wiped out all of Josiah's financial assets. The flood also killed many people. The only structures that survived the flood are the water tower, his house, and the gazebo. The Gazebo does not look like a typical gazebo. It follows many of the design elements of a Hermetic Cabalistic Temple. The house was broken into by students of metaphysics and it was found that the basement (one of the only basements in Florida) has a casket shoot leading out to the river and a stained altar. The house also has a skull motif worked into the stone used for the base of the house. The final building left standing is the Water Tower. This structure is built directly into the underlying bedrock of Tampa. The city has been unable to demolish it due to the support structure. If they tried blasting it.... it would only accomplish creating a huge eye sore on the Tampa skyline. The tower has an artificial spring at its core. Josiah had his workers drill all the way down into the bedrock to tap the aquifer and create a well. Josiah also seemed to think it was important to make the tower look like some medieval castle tower, battlements and all.

But that is not all. Amongst my friends, I am known as the skeptic. I am pure atheist. I do not believe in magic. Everyone has taken to calling me a magical null zone because no one else feels any magical influences in my presence as well. Such is the power of my disbelief. Because of this lack of spirituality on any level, I have surrounded myself with people who believe in such things. I have an open challenge to anyone who can bring me somewhere or show me something to change my mind. It was on one of these 3 am journeys that the following information came to my attention. There were only 2 of us, my friend Hunter and myself. He told me about a park that had the oldest trees in all of Tampa. These trees have been there since the 1920's. They sit on the location of an old park near the Mouth of the Hillsborough River. The mouth of the Hillsborough used to be a public watering hole. The city shutdown the site due to an "unidentified bacterial contamination". The really odd thing is that they sealed it off with an iron fence. The city also sealed off the Gazebo with an iron fence. One has to ask one's self, why an iron fence and not a much cheaper chain link fence? Anyway, Hunter and I went to this park. It was very beautiful. Hunter tells me that when the flood claimed all those lives, their souls where trapped in the trees. Apparently all the local practitioners (pagans, Satanists, cabalists, ect) come here because it is supposedly a place of power now. He told me that if I was going to feel anything anywhere it was going to be here. As soon as I set foot on the grounds, the whole place went dead. I'm talking about no sound at all. I couldn't even hear the crickets chirping. The only sounds I heard where from cars. Apparently birds won't even nest here. Once we get in alittle, Hunter starts feeling the trees. Lightly at first, but then he starts brushing his arms and hands along them. He told me that with me there he couldn't feel anything either. Then we arrived at the Mouth of the River. It was locked off with a heavy iron gate. The tops of the iron bars were all tipped with spikes. The water was unusually calm with the exception of the swell in the middle from the water welling up from below. This is where Hunter related the other string of deaths associated with this ominous body of water. Every year that this was a watering hole (natural swimming pool), at least 2 people would drown in it. Most of the deaths were attributed to missing persons at first. The children would go missing from the pool area and everyone assumed they were kidnapped. Only later in the week, or sometimes month, the body would come back to the surface. In all cases the cause of death was drowning. In some cases there were strange marks on the bodies like those from some kind of animal. I have been unable to find any official records of these deaths. The feel of the place was profoundly creepy, but I never felt anything while we were there. One odd thing did happen while we were on our way out of the park. When we got back to the car, it was dead. This was a brand new car. Hunter hadn't had any problems with it and had only owned it for roughly a month. We had to have a friend come and give us a jump. So who knows, maybe something does live in the mouth of the Hillsborough River.

Return to the Photos Page

Return to the Main Page