On warm August evenings on Anna Maria Island after sunset, as the gentle, cooling breezes engulf beach walkers and waves lap gently at the water’s edge, the vision of a young lady in a wedding gown walking the beach in front of the Bali Hai Resort in Holmes Beach seems strange.
Bali Hai co-owner Al Bouziane thinks “urban legend” might be a better choice of the description of the strange tales of the bridge on the beach.
The bride of Bali Hai has no name, but some ghost-hunter websites say she’s a mourning soul searching the seas for her lost husband.
Bouziane and brother Dave have never seen the Bali Hai ghost, but have heard plenty about it, especially since the Internet began ghost story websites.
“My mom built this place in 1971. It was nothing but vacant land and no one had heard of any ghost stories,” said Al Bouziane.
In the late 1970s, he and his brother first heard the story of the ghost bride of Bali Hai. They dismissed it as just another Island legend, but the story never died. With the advent of the Internet in the mid-1990s, the story found a home on many websites devoted to ghost stories.
According to the website hauntedflorida.com, a man and woman got married on Anna Maria Island many years ago. The man was a sailor who went to sea one day and never returned. His bride has been looking for him ever since.
She’s described on the website as appearing only in August, wearing a white wedding dress, walking the beach in front of the Bali Hai in the late evenings. According to the legend, she’s usually observed out of the corner of the eye. When the person looks directly at the figure, she vanishes from sight.
Al Bouziane said several years ago, a woman staying at the resort to the south of Bali Hai told him she had seen the ghost bride walking the beach late one August night.
But no one else has ever come to him claiming they’ve seen the woman in white, he said.
Word of the Bali Hai ghost, however, has spread considerably.
“I get about a hundred calls a year from people asking about the ghost bride. We’ve had ghost-hunters come in August, stay for a week and walk the beach at night. One August, we had a group of women who held a séance on the beach, and another time, a group of motorcyclists came for a week to see the ghost.”
The story has grown so much that a New York daily newspaper — Bouziane can’t remember which — sent a reporter to Bali Hai several years ago to investigate.
He’s happy to talk about the Bali Hai ghost story, but believes it’s just a story that started many years ago and developed into an urban legend.
Bouziane said he and his brother have never read anything about a man drowning or lost at sea, never seen any official report about a drowning or anything.
“But we’re happy to tell people what we know. Just walk the beach late at night in August and maybe you’ll see her. A lot of people come every year looking for the bride,” he said.
Hauntedflorida.com and other ghost hunter websites all report on the ghost of Bali Hai.
“It’s just a good story that’s grown over the years,” said Kimball McKay of Sebring, who comes with his wife Marillyn often in summer to stay at the Bali Hai.
“Al told us the story, but we’ve never seen anything strange. But we don’t make it a habit to walk the beach late at night looking for her,” he said.
Whatever or whomever the bride of Bali Hai is, hers is not the only ghost tale on Anna Maria Island.
Hauntedflorida.com also reports that on Coquina Beach near the Longboat Key Bridge, there was a hotel torn down years ago and, and later the area became a county park.
According to the website, “On the beach, a male figure in black clothing walks from the picnic area to the shoreline and vanishes. This particular area has a lot of wandering spirits at night, but this male ghost has been seen in daylight and looks totally out of place.”
Manatee County marine rescue chief Jay Moyles, who is in charge of the lifeguards at Coquina Beach, said he’s heard of the “man in black” apparition over the years, but none of the lifeguards have reported to him that they saw anything resembling the figure. And no member of the public has ever reported a “man in black” walking on Coquina Beach, and then disappearing into the water.
Moyles offered a possible explanation for the ghost bride of Bali Hai, a story he heard about 30 years ago, when he first went to work for the county.
Many years ago, according to the story Moyles related, a sea captain built a house for his new bride on the Gulf of Mexico in Bradenton Beach just north of Cortez Road.
No one knows what happened to the couple, but after the house was sold about 30-40 years ago and torn down for construction of a new residence, some workers reported hearing strange noises and voices and smelling cigar smoke. Some of the workers reportedly refused to re-enter the house to continue working.
When a real estate agent was showing the new house, a woman interested in buying walked through by herself. When she returned to the agent, she asked about all the gowns in a closet. The agent said there’s been nothing in the house for years.
Of course, when the agent and buyer went to investigate, there was nothing in the closet.
A true story or an urban legend?
If you meet the ghost bride of Bali Hai, maybe she can offer a clue to the answer of both stories, if you dare ask.
2 years ago, during spring break, my friend and I headed to the beach on Anna Maria Island late at night around midnight. We were going to look for shells with flashlights during the low tide. We were staying with my grandparents at smugglers cove resort. When we crossed the road to get to the beach, we both saw a glowing figure in a long white dress standing on the beach facing the water about 20 yards away from us. You could only see the figure from the shoulders down. There were two lights swirling around her, I cannot explain how the lights were twirling around her for she was not moving. Unsure of what was going on my friend and I decided to walk the beach in the other direction, however I was skeptical and kept looking over my shoulder at the figure. We hadn’t walked very far and I turned to see if the figure was still standing there and it was gone. My friend and I shined our flash lights in the direction of the te figure and there was nothing there. By now we both were getting scared and headed back to the resort. The next morning we told my grandparents what we saw. Then we told the manager of the resort, Gloria, what we saw. She exclaimed to us that we had seen the ghost of Anna Maria Island, the bride who would wait on the beach in her wedding dress for her husband to return, and that he got lost at sea and never returned.
My boyfriend came home from a trip to Walgreens last night. he said he was turning to go into Walgreens and a woman in a long gown was crossing the road in front of him. She just kept looking at him as she crossed. He thought it very strange…why was she walking to the beach in a long gown?…was she real?…
He mentioned her several times during the night last night. Now I find this story. Cant wait to show it to him.