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Terror from a distance

On the ground, no one can see it scream. But from the sky, an area in Odessa takes on the ghoulish countenance of a movie murderer.

ODESSA - The five lakes formed eons ago. Two anguished eyes. A stunted nose. A fateful blemish on the left cheek. A mouth, clearly crying out in terror.

Yet nobody noticed.

The Tocabago Indians lived near the lower lip of the ghastly face, perhaps for more than a millennium, blissfully ignorant.

The Tocabagos lacked aerial photography.

Jaime Collazo did not. Thus he may have been the first to learn the grim truth: Ghostface lurks in Odessa.

Until Collazo, 34, moved to Georgia in August, he was an environmental scientist with Hillsborough County's Environmental Protection Commission. One day, Collazo was conducting an environmental review on Mound Lake, the gaping mouth. He downloaded an aerial photo. A moment away from clicking to a closer view, Collazo noticed the image. It was eerily familiar.

The movies Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 3 had haunted local cinemas from 1996 through 2000. Their common thread: a masked slasher. Before his victims learned to take him seriously, they called the slasher Ghostface.

Collazo had seen at least one of the Scream movies. He found the Scream Ghostface on the Web. He posted the two images in a corridor of the EPC's offices. In the process, Collazo noticed a second unsettling detail in the aerial - Dead Lady Lake.

"It's almost like a mole on that face," he said.

"Lady Lake" is the name preferred nowadays, particularly in real estate circles.

"It sounds so much nicer," said Sammie Callahan, who bought a house on the lake three years ago.

Callahan, 50, discovered the lake's real name as she checked property records on her house. County employees told her a woman had been found dead there long ago. Then, after moving in, Callahan asked a local old-timer about the name.

"She said, "The body was in the ditch that runs alongside your house.' "

So, three days from Halloween, is life spooky there?

No, agree Callahan and other neighbors among the five lakes. It's scenic and serene, they say.

Except ...

- Callahan's house suffers "brownouts by the thousands, three a day," she said. "We've had electricians out, and they say there's no explanation for it."

- Walking the dog one dark night, Callahan (and the dog) had to stop for a 7-foot alligator crossing the road.

- Bizarre weather struck Odessa's Ghostface between the eyes last July 12, an afternoon of typical summer thunderstorms. Violent wind uprooted trees on Forest Drive, on the shores of Lakes Wood and Elizabeth. It tore up screen porches. It ripped baby birds from a nest. Then everything turned calm.

- Nobody seems to know why two prehistoric mounds exist at the south end of their namesake, Mound Lake, or what they contain. Centered in Safety Harbor, Tocabagos were the predominant local tribe.

"In that area, I would have a very, very strong suspicion that they were burial mounds," said Riverview archaeologist Robert Austin.

State archaeological records documented the mounds in 1953 as "much pitted." Yet there is no record of excavations.

Not spooky?

"No," said Linda Boyett, who lives on Lake Elizabeth. "And I've been here since 1970."

Then Boyett remembered Gidget, her three-legged mixed-breed dog.

"We were all playing in the lake, and she got bitten by a snake, and all the mucky stuff got in," Boyett said. "She got a life-threatening fungus."

A veterinarian amputated the leg to save the puppy, she said.

"It was just horrible, too gross to really talk about."