Fifteen ghost hunters filed into the white, wooden Andrews Memorial Chapel in Hammock Park on Tuesday, Aug. 11, clutching dowsing rods and spirit boxes, hoping to hear from the dead.

Another 15 sat on a waitlist. Some had driven more than 100 miles.

The 138-year-old Carpenter Gothic chapel at 1899 San Mateo Drive has drawn paranormal investigators from across Tampa Bay, but the building's real story may be stranger than any ghost tale: it was sawed in half, moved three times and nearly demolished for a parking lot before Dunedin residents fought to save it.

Cynthia Dominick, a Safety Harbor resident who founded Silent Slayer Ghost Tours in 2021 after the pandemic ended her hotel sales career, led the investigation. It was her eighth time inside the chapel, where two spirits are said to linger: "Ken," a carpenter who legend holds fell to his death from the wooden ceiling trusses, and William Andrews, the chapel's namesake, killed by a falling limb during a lightning storm while riding a horse.

Dominick opened the session with the same ritual question she asks every group, checking whether anyone had been brought against their will. She told Tampa Bay Beacons, which first reported the investigation, that the events aren't meant to frighten participants but to spark curiosity. She has conducted more than 100 paranormal inquiries since founding her company.

A chapel sawed in half

The chapel was built in 1888 on the corner of Scotland Street and Highland Avenue as the church for Dunedin's Presbyterian community. In 1926, it was pushed to the back of the property to make room for the grander First Presbyterian Church and renamed Andrews Memorial Chapel. Soon after, the church shoved it back another couple hundred feet south.

Local historian Eric Houghton, a Dunedin native who attended Sunday school there as a child, recounted the building's brush with demolition in the 1970s. The First Presbyterian Church wanted to tear it down for parking. The Dunedin Historical Society, founded in 1970, lobbied to save it and secured its listing on the National Register of Historic Places on July 31, 1972.

But saving it meant hauling the structure roughly 2 miles north to Hammock Park. Workers sawed the chapel in half. The two pieces sat wrapped in clear plastic sheeting for years before restoration began in 1974.

"Poor thing, cut in two, and looking pretty miserable by itself up there," Houghton said of the chapel's condition during those years.

A visible seam still runs down the middle of the building.

Who showed up

The investigation drew a cross-section of believers and the curious. Makayla Gustave, 19, a University of South Florida nursing student from Wesley Chapel, came with her mother and grandmother for her first ghost hunt. She takes a ghost tour in every new city she visits as a way to learn local history.

Nick Naive, 37, a construction project manager, and his wife Tiffanie Naive, 37, a home designer, drove two hours from The Villages. The couple fits a ghost tour into every vacation.

Barbara Lynch, 53, a former marketing professional, said she came seeking proof of what she already believes.

Houghton said he remains on the fence about whether spirits actually inhabit the chapel.

Visiting the chapel

The Andrews Memorial Chapel, maintained by the Dunedin History Museum, holds open houses Sundays from noon to 2 p.m., Wednesdays from 4 to 6 p.m. and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. As we reported Aug. 5, Silent Slayer's ghost tours at the chapel have been selling out amid growing interest in paranormal tourism.