From p. 30-32 of "The Carnivals of Life and Death" by James Shelby Downard:
"Florida Sponge & Fruit Company employed as many as a hundred men in the "sponge plant." Often there was discord among the men. Pete Chase, son of Charley, was deputy sheriff of Chase. His job was purportedly to drive people off from stealing sponges. Deputy Chase enforced the law in Keystone Kops fashion, which might have been humorous if there wasn't something evil permeating the operation."
"There weren't many people at Chase in 1919 when I was there, and those who were there, with the exception of laborers, were engaged in operating elecrical devices on which were electrodes , meters, graphs, etc. These men talked not of sponges but of magnetism, memory, magnetic fluid, memory reels, and the "Baloney Society" or Societe de Biologia. A man called D'Arsonval was there and his name was used time and time again. There was also talk about the Jekyll Island Club having burned down, walong with the word arson. I remember wondering if D'Arsonval had burned down the club."
"I also wondered if D'Arsonval had a magnetic crown, for there was talk at Chase of such a crown that could make people do things. I also wondered why, when looking at graphs and meters, the men would sometimes say, "the centipedes are coming" or "some centipedes are here now," because I didn't see any centipedes where they were looking. In the back of the building where the men were working, huge black centipedes were kept in cages with electrical devices on them. A woman they called "the centipede woman" lived in a tiny house a short distance away who believed she could communicate with the centipedes and actually had a centipede constantly on her dress. The cruelty toward the woman was the epitome of evil; they taunted her and told her that her mind was half centipede and would soon be all centipede."
"One of the men took me to the cage where the centipedes clung to wire mesh and said he wanted me to go in. I was scared, of course. Then he threw a switch and all of the centipedes fell to the floor, stunned by electrical current."
"While I was somewhat interested in the centipedes, I was more interested in the ice-making machine. The ice was deep green and after it was frozen was moved on what I called a chute-chute. One day a workman tried to get me in between two pieces of ice coming down the chute and in doing so was crushed."
"Things began to fall apart at Chase. Whether the people engaged in the sponge research got ptomaine poisoning or some other type of poisoning, I choose to think the centipedes got them. I don't believe there are any records of centipedes being poisonous enough to kill grown human beings, with the possible exception of Scolopendra obscura, which I know from experience to be a very peculiar type of centipede. Some people at Chase went out of their minds and were physically ill; some died. Two or three - one whom said his name was D'Arsonval - got into a roaboat and took off believing they could row to France. When Dr. Harris arrived at Chase to treat the poisoned people, he immediately had "the centipede woman" taken to the mental hospital in Key West. There is a Central American Indian myth that long ago centipedes developed a mystical power with which they started to take over the world, and they would have done it if not for an army of iguanas that showed up and ate them. They have a ritual based on that old myth in which members of the tribe pretend to be iguanas and eat or pretend to eat centipedes."
"The most likely theory regarding the breakdown of Chase, however, is microwave poisoning. There was a large and very high steel tower on the property purportedly used for broadcasting as late as 1938. Old-timers on the Key refer to these structures as "mind control towers.""
http://feralhouse.com/the-carnivals-of-life-and-death/
[Posted to Facebook by Thomas Myrtle, of Toronto]