Favorite haunts

The third floor of Edna Pilla’s rowhome at Ninth and Greenwich always had a "weird" feeling, recalls her grandson, Louis "Spike" Maglio.

So naturally — er, make that supernaturally — it was the prime location for Maglio and his cousins to tell ghost stories while growing up.

One day, while spinning spine-tingling tales in a third-floor bedroom, the youths heard a loud "rapping" on a window.

The sound was enough to strike terror in their little hearts, so they bounded downstairs screaming, "There’s a ghost upstairs!" recalls Maglio, now 44, who was born and raised on his grandmom’s block.

The cousins learned they weren’t the only ones who had heard the mysterious rapping on Pilla’s third-floor window.

"It was really strange because other people had heard rapping up there. My grandmother and aunts would hear voices," he says. "Some of my family didn’t like to go up there [on the third floor]. It had a presence. Someone was there."

To this day, Maglio doesn’t know the source of the rapping, but says he’s certain of one thing: There were no trees, wires or anything near that third-floor window that could have produced the sound.

The incident inside the South Philly rowhome was Maglio’s first brush with the unexplained.

But it would by no means be his last.

The heir to the Maglio sausage empire had no desire to join his brothers in running the family business, founded by Louis A. Maglio. The company that started as a little butcher shop at 18th and McKean is now part of the Food Distribution Center at Third Street and Pattison Avenue.

Instead, Louis Maglio chose to follow in other people’s long-gone footsteps in Key West, Fla.

Since the late 1990s, Maglio — who prefers to be called by his nickname, Spike (a long spike chin-piercing earned him the name) — has been a guide for the Original Ghost Tours of Key West.

As a boy growing up in Philly, Maglio vacationed with his parents in South Florida and fell in love with the Sunshine State — particularly the Keys.

"When all the nuts of the Northeast fall off the tree, they roll down here — Key West and Florida," Maglio says with a laugh.

"It’s a beautiful place, it’s beautiful people. It just seems to be a different pace of lifestyles. Key West is a small town with a very big reputation," he says of his home since the mid-1980s.

One might find it hard to believe that this scenic, tiny island — only 4 miles by 2 miles — is reputedly the second most haunted town in America. (New Orleans is the first.)

The island’s real name is Cayo Hueso, which means Bone Island, explains Maglio.

Legend has it when early settlers and pirates landed, the island — trees, water, beach and land — was covered in bones. Before any white settlers arrived on Key West, it was inhabited by the native Caloosa Indians. Seminole Indians (who lived in Dade County, Miami, and points north) declared war on the Caloosa.

After the Seminoles massacred all the Caloosa men, women and children, they placed their bones and bodies all over the island. The Caribbean pirates and the Spanish settlers later found the grisly remains and named the place Bone Island — the cursed island of bones.

With a history like that, it’s not hard to understand why many believe the island to be haunted.

The History Channel consulted the Original Ghost Tours of Key West before it featured the island in its smash series Haunted History. The Travel Channel, Discovery Channel and BBC also have consulted the tour company. This month on the Travel Channel, Key West makes cameos on America’s Most Haunted Places and Weird Travels.

Pirates, wreckers, smugglers and a parade of eccentric characters through the ages all contribute to the island’s wicked and decidedly wacky past.

Each night, Maglio and his fellow tour guides lead lantern-lit walks through the shadowy streets of Old Town Key West. The guides dress in Victorian garb, don top hats and carry staffs. Maglio is partial to solid black, except for a "blood-red cravat and skull of a vampire bat" tie pin.

"Kids look at me and get scared before I even open my mouth," he says.

In seven years as a ghost-tour guide, Maglio has encountered a lot of things that he says he simply cannot explain. Among them is the occasional rattling of the doors of a church — the site where eight children died in a fire. "That’s what I worry about, them following me home," Maglio says, adding that he wears talismans to ward off any unwelcome spirits. Around his neck is a protective crystal, and on his finger is a large ring with another protective design. He even wears some symbols to let the spirits know he’s friendly and comes in peace.

"I wear a lot of black, skulls, coffins. I want them to feel at home," he says with a laugh.

The ghost stories Maglio told in grandma Edna’s third-floor bedroom pale in comparison to some of Key West’s most bizarre real-life sagas — like the depraved Count Carl von Cosol and his dead bride Elena.

The German immigrant worked as a radiologist in a Key West tubercular ward in the early 1930s. When a beautiful young woman, Elena Milagro Hoyos, was brought in with an advanced case of tuberculosis, von Cosol was determined to cure her with his own unconventional methods. His patient eventually succumbed to the fatal disease, leaving the count heartbroken, for he had fallen madly in love.

After pining over his beloved’s grave for two years, von Cosol could stand it no more. So one moonlit night, he dug up Elena and took her decomposing corpse home.

Through an elaborate embalming process, the count managed to stave off further decay and garishly dressed Elena in bridal garb. Von Cosol shared a bed with his mummified wife and even made love to her.

The creepy communion between the count and the cadaver came to an end after Elena’s sister discovered her desecrated, empty grave — remarkably, seven years later. Von Cosol was arrested and poor Elena was interred in a secret grave — the location of which is still unknown today. The Dean-Lopez Funeral Parlor, site of Elena’s two funerals, is a stop on the ghost tour.

"Sometimes the real people of Key West scare me more than the ghosts," Maglio says.

Ever fascinated by the island and its haunted past, Maglio says he loves his job and feels he’s finally found his calling.

"Storytelling is universal. Every culture, every people have their people who made history real for them. I want to make Key West and the crazies who live here real to the people who visit. A T-shirt goes in a drawer, but my stories keep getting told," he says.

Maglio writes most of the scripts for the ghost tours and recently finished a book, Pirates of Cayo Hueso, that will be released early next year.

The divorced father of three grown children apparently is quite fond of apparitions. He gave up a job in computers making six figures — and then there was the family sausage business.

Maglio also holds a degree in political science. "Now that’s scary," he says with a laugh.

Grandma Edna’s seemingly haunted house aside, it was Maglio’s mother who introduced her son to the ghost world.

Maglio’s mother was a history buff who took Louis Jr. to see all the historic sites in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. A haunted history accompanied many of the places, including Brandywine Battlefield, Valley Forge, Independence National Park and the Betsy Ross House.

"It really did pique my interest," Maglio recalls. "I would say that was the beginning of when I started to look at that other world. It was a part of many other interests, including sports."

Possessed by the paranormal bug, he began researching local sites to learn more about their haunted past.

Maglio says he believes in ghosts, "but not the Hollywood Casper the Ghost portrayal."

For the folks like him who take this stuff seriously, he says there are only two reasons apparitions appear: "They don’t know they’re dead or they have unfinished business."