An outdoor landscape photograph by Ray Roa showing Oaklawn Cemetery in Tampa, Florida on June 25, 2024. Captured in a wide eye-level shot, historic weathered stone gravestones, monuments, and obelisks stand scattered across a grassy lawn shaded by large oak trees draped with Spanish moss. Sunlight filters through the dense leafy canopy overhead, illuminating the green grounds and tree trunks under bright, sunny daylighting.
Oaklawn Cemetery in Tampa, Florida on June 25, 2024. Credit: Ray Roa / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

Cemetery drama is real in the City of Tampa, and this afternoon stroll through one of Tampa’s oldest graveyards is sure to provide some tea.

Dating back to 1850, Oaklawn Cemetery is home to Tampa’s first mayor who is buried there along with a dozen other city mayors, a governor and a pair of Florida Supreme Court justices. There’s even a forbidden love story underground.

Led by Manny Leto, the brain and liver behind the infamous Drunk Tampa History, this tour will casually move through the historic site offering, “real stories of murder and mystery from Tampa’s past.”

Tickets for Brick Street Tours’ “Not-so-spooky” Oaklawn Cemetery walking tour happening Saturday, Oct. 24 are still available for $30. More information is available via @brickstreettours on Facebook.

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This article appears in Oct. 15 – 21, 2026.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...