There are a number of rumors about strange occurrences here at Memories and North Trail Liquors. Are they real?
Do we have ghosts?
Starting at the beginning of 2023, we started a little project to research historical documents and conduct interviews as to the veracity of a number of stories surrounding paranormal events in both the liquor store and the bar. As far as we can tell, there is evidence of three separate, possible, presences. This is the story of the first one.
What follows is the culmination of our findings on Vivian Harper, a young woman who had her life cut short in a terrible injustice and who many believe is the cause of some pretty strange events under certain circumstances at North Trail Liquors and Memories Lounge.
(It has been written using stories we learned through our interviews.)
Vivian Harper was born and raised here in Sarasota, Florida, a city known for its beautiful beaches and cultural vibrancy. She was the only child of a small, close-knit family. Even as a young girl, Vivian was enchanted by the beauty of Sarasota, but she was also keenly aware of the underlying issues that occasionally upset our little slice of paradise.
A bright and insightful child, she attended Bay Haven Elementary as a young girl, and later went to middle and high school at Booker. It was in high school where her empathy and sense of justice became apparent. She stood up against bullies, always championed the underdog, and was a voice for those too scared to speak.
After high school, she attended Manatee Community College (now called State College of Florida, or SCF) and earned a degree in social work. Vivian was determined to give back to Sarasota, the city that, in all its imperfection, she loved dearly.
After graduation, Vivian got a job with a local non-profit helping young men get off the streets. She rented a modest yet cozy apartment in Gillespie Park, a neighborhood known for its eclectic mix of old and new, where historical homes coexisted with modern developments—just like it is today. It was a community of contrasts reflective of Vivian’s own battles—the constant tug-of-war between the inherent goodness she believed existed in people and the stark reality of the cruelty she witnessed.
Dedicating her life to helping troubled youth and dysfunctional families, she was enthusiastic about being a social worker. She believed in the power of change and rehabilitation and was known to go above and beyond to assist those in need.
Fast forward and Vivian Harper is doing great; she’s 32, choosing to help others over starting a family, and she’s becoming known for her ability to bring positive change to people’s lives. The summer was over and cooler temps were coming to Sarasota; the heat had finally broken. After a very long day at work (she was known to work well after the office closed), Vivian was driving home on a late October night. The year was 1983. An almost half moon hung in the night sky, casting long and eerie shadows that danced across the North Trail as she drove back to Gillespie Park from the Bradenton office. Vivian thought it would be a perfect night for a bottle of wine and a couple chapters of the latest book she was reading.
As she pulled into the North Trail Liquors parking lot she failed to see the liquor store had already closed—only the neon beer and liquor signs providing any clue an open store was normally there. Pulling into a parking spot, her headlights shone upon four young men wielding rocks in each hand. Just as the lights hit them one of the windows broke apart as one of the young men was in mid-throw at just that very moment. Now, awash in headlights, they all turned around and looked directly at Vivian.
Driven by her forever-intrinsic sense of justice, Vivian quickly rolled down her window. “Stop!” she yelled, her voice echoing across 41 as the storefront’s remaining neon lights reflected off the hood of her car. The neon cast an ominous glow that painted the scene with an otherworldly aura, lighting up Vivian’s face as she looked at the boys.
Ignoring her demand, the vandals laughed, menacingly and with a bit too much of a hint of evil. She yelled, “Stop,” again, summoning that same warrior spirit she’d had since the first time she witnessed injustice… but this night would have a different outcome. Not realizing the open driver’s side window left her vulnerable, she was shocked as the four young men descended upon her, arms reaching into the car, grabbing her and pulling her out, violently throwing her down on the sidewalk in front of the store.
They left her no time to plead for mercy. The beating was immediate. Blow after blow after blow rained down upon her, ruthless, merciless, animalistic, each strike a stinging reminder of the violence and injustice she had dedicated her life to ending. These four didn’t know about Vivian’s work, nor did they care.
Only when Vivian was unrecognizable did they turn their attention back to the glass they came to destroy.
As Vivian looked up through blood-filled eyes, the storefront’s glass finally succumbed to the vandals’ relentless attack, shattering, almost exploding, into a myriad of pieces. Each shard reflected Vivian’s eyes, filled both with terror and an unyielding defiance. In that moment of profound vulnerability, a transcendent connection between Vivian’s soul and the store was forged.
Vivian’s last breath was a whisper of an unsung song of justice, a melody that would forever linger in the aether of North Trail Liquors and Memories Lounge. As life slipped away from her, the vandals fled into the night, their laughter a most sinister lullaby that would haunt Vivian’s restless soul.
The store, forever and to this day scarred by the tragedy, still bears the silent, cold, echoes of Vivian’s unsung anthem of justice. By the morning light, as the first rays of dawn kissed the North Trail, Vivian was gone from the world of the living. Yet her spirit lingered—a silent guardian, an eerie testimony, forever bound to the sanctity of a justice denied.
That night, North Trail Liquors became a vessel of Vivian’s unresolved vengeance. Each bottle, each shelf, each unbroken yet potential shard of glass in the liquor store and the bar, pulsated with her lingering essence.
Her soul, though trapped, was not powerless. Every trespasser with ill intentions would feel her icy wrath, an eternal testament to a life given in the pursuit of justice, a voice silenced yet echoing louder in death than it ever did in life. The ghost of Vivian Harper became an inextricable legend of North Trail Liquors, and by extension, of Sarasota—a spectral sentinel borne from the ashes of tragedy.
How do we know Vivian is part of North Trail Liquors and Memories Lounge? While there have been many who have claimed to have “felt” Vivian’s presence, most stories about her are either mainly to scare new employees as a form of hazing, or as rumors throughout the bar. Note that we used the word “most.”
Two stories stand out to which we have no good answers. There are striking similarities. They are from different years. The people in the stories were of different ages, economic situations, different parts of Sarasota, and wouldn’t have known either each other or even about each other. There are no uncles or nephews, no distant relatives to quietly share parts of stories. The details from the first story weren’t made public by the Sarasota Police Department until 9 years after the second instance, so there was no way the persons in the second story could have known about what happened in the first story. Here we go:
The first time we believe Vivian made herself known it was a rare foggy night/early morning in Sarasota. A few years after Vivian’s tragic end, a thief, unaware of how Vivian met her demise, decided to rob Memories Lounge, which if you’re unfamiliar with Memories, is adjacent to North Trail Liquors.
This was before Memories had high-definition video cameras, but the story goes that he snuck up to the building just before dawn. As he broke through the lock, a chilling breeze swirled around him, chilling him to his core. Undeterred and thinking it was because of the fog, he entered. The thief was not a stranger to violence; he had committed grievous physical harm to others in his past pursuits.
Inside the bar (which was barely lit by an old Michelob neon sign in the back of the bar), silence reigned, punctuated only by the thief’s breathing and the low, constant hum of the ice machine. Suddenly, as he approached the cash register, the air turned ice cold and wine glasses hanging above the bar began to clink eerily. Just then, even in almost total darkness, the thief felt and saw a shadow… and within that shadow an almost imperceptible figure floated in a flowing white dress stained with blood. It was Vivian, awakened by the intrusion of someone with a history of violence, a history of injustice.
The thief, hardly believing his eyes, tried to flee, but an invisible force held him. The air around him was instantly filled with a frigid, icy blast, and louder and louder, pulsating with each new blast of ice cold air, were Vivian’s ghostly screams of terror—ear-piercing echoes of justice denied. Wine bottles, liquor bottles, and bar glasses exploded around him; glass shards, like vengeful spirits, inflicted cuts deep and painful, echoing the wounds Vivian had once herself endured. The thief experienced a terror beyond comprehension. His crazed screams filled the bar even though his body felt frozen, locked in place.
By dawn, police found him–petrified, bleeding, and whimpering in the bar in front of the never touched cash register, afraid to move, and forever marked by the icy touch of justice served.
That was the first time that we know about Vivian making herself known. To wrap that up, the thief was arrested and sentenced to Florida’s mental health system at the old (and infamous) Pierce Wood Mental Health Facility that used to be just a bit southeast of Arcadia. Patient records were found after the facility closed which had the mental health doctor’s notes of the therapy sessions with the thief (who we’re not naming because part of his family still lives in Sarasota, and they’ve done nothing to be tainted by his actions). Nevertheless, the doctor’s notes allegedly match the police report from the morning he was arrested.
The second time was different. It wasn’t a thief, and it wasn’t just one person.
Only a few years after the first incident, a group of reckless teenagers, inspired by the then-growing dark tale of Vivian Harper, decided to test the legend. Armed with spray paint, they aimed to deface the Memories Lounge sign painted on the exterior wall facing the parking lot. This was, again, before high-definition video cameras were installed to watch every inch of the property.
As they each started to spray paint the mural, the atmosphere changed; an icy presence filled the air. Vivian’s restless spirit, anchored to the place of her tragic demise, was again invoked.
The vandals, like the assailants of years past, laughed off the chilling atmosphere. But their laughter soon turned to screams. The parking lot lights flickered; a sinister darkness descended upon them, punctuated by spectral whispers of justice unsung. The shadows moved menacingly, coldly, and with an icy explosion of bone-chilling wind, there she was: a woman’s figure, wrapped in flowing white yet blood-stained robes, staring deeper into each of their souls than even their own mothers had ever ventured.
The lead vandal, known for his ruthless torment of weaker souls, suddenly felt an icy grip around his wrist. A freezing panic and terror coursed through his veins as unseen forces literally etched the painful echoes of his victims’ cries into his skin.
By morning, the terrified teenagers were found huddled together behind the bar by the dumpsters, eyes wide with the haunting imprint of unspeakable terror. The wall bore no vandalism; instead, it was as if an unseen hand had painted a chilling tableau of retribution among the boys—a spectral echo of Vivian’s silent, eternal vigil.
Those boys had no way of knowing about the details of the thief’s story, yet they match up. And, all of them witnessed it, not just the lead teenager. They all stated they saw the shadow and within it a woman in a flowing white robe marred with blood. They all stated the air changed from our regular overnight Sarasota late-summer mild humidity to a near freezing cold that completely enveloped them.
Of course, there have been other stories where we think Vivian’s ghost has been summoned to right an injustice, but these two are the ones that are completely inexplicable. We’re not saying anyone else’s stories aren’t true, but sometimes the person experiencing a possible Vivian sighting gives too many details, or not enough. Again: we’re not saying there aren’t many more instances or anybody is lying. The only thing we’re saying is this: we’re not about to test Vivian, and we hope she finds a peace that takes her to a better place.
As of this writing, including the two stories above, there have been 17 possible Vivian experiences both in the liquor store and in Memories Lounge. We kindly ask that you do not test her. We wouldn’t want you to become the 18th story.
The picture of Vivian Harper is her employee ID from the year she was murdered. It was originally made public in the Sarasota Herald Tribune back in 1983.
