House has a past, maybe even a spirit

The home of Brooksville's redevelopment coordinator is old and full of character. And it doesn't hurt that the house might be haunted.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published December 5, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - Brian Brijbag took a job this past summer as this city's redevelopment coordinator. He got an office and a badge and got going as an upbeat leader of the continued revitalization efforts. But the most meaningful thing he's done so far might be a real estate transaction: He moved into the big Victorian house on a corner of W Fort Dade and Lemon avenues.

Everybody who's been around these parts for any length of time knows about 122 W Fort Dade.

Some call it the old Weeks house.

Some just call it the yellow house.

And some call it haunted.

Above all, though, the house is authentic, a still stately antique, and so, so Brooksville, with the tin roof and the creaky doors and the uneven floors and the tall thick-trunk oaks and a whole mess of Spanish moss.

"I'm putting my money where my mouth is," Brijbag said not too long ago. "If you want to be a part of this city, this is how you do it. Right here."

The house is like the town. It is a character in a story - of love and time, layers of paint and places to hide, lost treasure and stubborn ghosts.

Over in the local history center at the Russell Street train depot is a "house" drawer with a file labeled "Weeks."

The file says the house was built in 1882 by a rich owner of a sawmill named G. Gordy. All of the wood was heart of pine.

The Weeks family owned the house from the 1930s to the '70s. Joe Weeks still runs the hardware store on Main Street. It was his uncle and his cousin who had the house.

Property records show it was sold in 1980.

And in '86.

Then twice in '88.

Then again Sept. 17, 2001, for $49,500, and just three days later for $114,000.

The Brijbags - Brian, his wife, Amy, their three small children - bought it in late September for $225,000.

But most of what is said and thought about this house doesn't come from plain paper records.

Local lore has it that in the 1930s, a man showed up and persuaded the Weekses to let him rip apart the fireplace because he was sure Gordy had hidden his fortune behind the bricks. He found nothing and left town.

The place sat mostly vacant in the '70s and '80s. Vagrants stayed there at night and used candles and matches to spark their cigarettes. People walking by would get spooked by the flickering lights.

One owner in the late '80s and '90s bought the property and kept it for 13 years just so he could dig up the yard and rip open the walls looking for treasure.

The man found arrowheads, rusted keys in old-time shapes, a nickel from 1890 and a quarter from 1892. He told a reporter from the Times in 1995 that his heart went "pitter-patter" when he found something good and how digging in the ground made him feel like a part of the past.

Local artist Mary Alice Queiros once was doing an ink sketch of the house when the man showed up with his shovel.

"He was digging up the ground, digging holes, tearing floorboards apart," she said. "This little short man with glasses."

But the man also told the Times that he once was turning a doorknob when it moved on its own. "I'm serious," he said.

The place has a space on hauntedflorida.com. The Web site is set to spooky music. This is part of what it says about the Weeks house: "Doors being slammed and whispers are also very common."

"There's nothing to that," Joe Weeks said the other day at his store. He visited his aunt and uncle and cousins a lot when he was little.

"Never saw a ghost," he said. "Or heard one."

"I can tell you at one time it was haunted by termites," said Joe Mason, a local lawyer, born-and-bred Brooksville. "It was remaining standing only because the termites were holding hands. Maybe the ghosts got killed by the termite fumigation."

That fumigation happened in 1987. Some around town say it didn't work. At least not on the ghosts.

Richard Butts is the Realtor from Weichert who sold the Brijbags the house. Butts was inside the house for the first time about 15 years ago when he was an insurance agent. He took photos and said he saw on the prints strange white balls of light.

He's a believer.

"It's the quintessential Brooksville historical property," he said. Haunts and all.

Brijbag, 30, graduated from Spring Hill's Springstead High School in 1994, went to Florida State University and then came back and lived in Spring Hill for eight years.

But his wife comes from an old Brooksville family. And he helped found the Bandshell Bash and was active in the local Fine Arts Council even before he was on the city payroll and moved down the hill from City Hall.

He started moving in late in October. Boxes were still stacked up in the living room in late November.

But the house had hot water and potted plants and the stairs were painted Victorian cranberry and the kids' baby pictures were up on the wall.

From his yard, he can see the water tower, the American flag on the top of the courthouse and the back of the WWJB 1450-AM building.

He walks to work.

Downtown is busier than he thought it would be - but not in a bad way. Rumbling trucks and cars drive by. The kids get up at night.

Brijbag's heard the haunted talk.

Now and again, he said, the bathroom door downstairs floats open. It usually happens when he and his family are about to leave.

Then, the other night, this happened: He had Lightning hockey tickets and came home to change into some jeans and ran up the stairs and saw that the white attic door was open and the silver eye-hook lock was broken off and on the floor.

He figured maybe the lock was loose. So he picked it up and fixed it and closed the door and set the alarm and left the house.

He was only five minutes toward Tampa when his cell phone rang. It was ADT Home Security. There's movement in your house, he was told.

He turned around and drove back. Brooksville police officers were already there.

The officers walked around the old house at 122 W Fort Dade. They went inside and crawled into the attic and shined their flashlights into the dark.

It was empty.

But they looked.

And they listened.