Shadows on the Coquina Cooperatives

As twilight settles over St. Augustine, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the country reveals its double life. During the day, the visitors throng the narrow, coquina-paved lanes of Charlotte Street, buying salt-water taffy and plastic pirate swords under the shade of century-old pecan trees. But as the streetlamps flicker to life, the historical actors yield the stage to the ghost tours. Dozens of groups, led by guides in mock-Victorian mourning attire, set out through the dim alleys, carrying glowing green lanterns that cast eerie shadows on the ancient, gray coquina walls.

For local residents like Martha Finch, who lives in an eighteenth-century Spanish-colonial home, the nightly parade is both a source of amusement and a minor municipal nuisance. From her second-floor balcony, Finch can look down on the tour groups as they stop outside her garden gate. The guides relate, with varying degrees of historical accuracy, the tragic tales of yellow fever epidemics, lost love, and Spanish soldiers bricked up in the fort. Finch has learned to schedule her evening reading around the tours, her living room filled with the dramatic, echoing narrations of her own house’s supposed hauntings.

The coquina stone itself, a natural conglomerate of tiny shells quarried on nearby Anastasia Island, has a soft, porous quality that seems to absorb the damp Florida air and the heavy weight of history. For Finch, the true ghosts of St. Augustine are not the colonial specters, but the vanishing pockets of quiet in a town increasingly dedicated to historical tourism. Still, as the last tour group moves off toward the plaza, their lanterns bobbing in the dark, she enjoys the sudden, profound silence that returns to the old street. The ancient walls remain, holding their real secrets in the cool, salt-scented night.