Wizard Hand Park

​Lake Park is a fun place where the people of Lutz and Tampa congregate to ride their bikes, race remote-control cars, rent canoes, practice archery, or play volleyball and other games. There is also a playground. This cheery facade hides a dark and deadly past known to only a few.

a wizard's hand

another wizard's hand

​All around the medium sized ponds among the trees are twisted, bare trunks – but these are no trees and they are not quite dead. These are the petrified hands of the great wizards of Lutz, the most feared beings ever to once walk Florida. What happened to them is the subject of legend and much speculation. Some say that it was Ponce de Leon himself who tricked them into this one location where he had set a trap. Others suggest the wizards turned on each other out of jealousy. However it was done, the wizards will never move again.

​​While the wizards are now impotent in casting overt curses as they once did upon both royalty and peasants alike, the place still buzzes with an ancient and mighty evil. Crows follow travelers everywhere. Other birds here are grey and non-descript, mere shadows of their brethren elsewhere. Rabbits are slow to hide themselves from passing woodsmen. Deer grow large by eating the tainted vegetation. Normally immortal tortoises die, leaving behind their broken and bleached shells. Snail shells find themselves strangely transported from their watery homes around the bases of trees empty of the snails that once inhabited them. How did they get there? Did the snails strip naked and dance around the tree in some freaky pagan ritual, only to be devoured by some sort of snail-eating monster? Older trees still bear the scars of that magic battle from so long ago.

the scars of evil magic

snail shells

There are skeptics that claim these are but ordinary trees that have lost their leaves, not wizard hands at all, but if that were true, where are the leaves now? Leaves don't just get up and walk away. They should still be piled up on the ground. Such foolishness! The sinister origins of the park are obvious to anyone with a map. It is rectangular! What sort of shape is that for a park not tainted by evil magic?
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17302 N. Dale Mabry, Lutz, Florida