Twenty Years of 'Myths Over Miami'

IAN SIMMONS wonders what happened to the strange children’s mythology uncovered by journalist Linda Edwards

Publicity surrounding the recently released film The Florida Project,1 which focuses on the precarious lives of children living in scruffy motels around Disney World, set me thinking about an extraordinary tale that emerged from similar circumstances 20 years ago.

In June 1997, journalist Linda Edwards published a story in the Miami New Times under the title “Myths Over Miami” 2 in which she recounted a series of vivid tales she had heard from children very similar to those in The Florida Project.The kids in the film, drifting through an endless succession of temporary residences in decaying motel rooms rented by the day, are just a moment’s misfortune away from the homeless shelters in which Edwards found the children she interviewed, whom she claimed possessed a surprisingly consistent secret mythology. Edwards claimed that this mythology was shared among homeless children, aged mostly under 10, not just in Miami, but right across the US, quoting examples from as far away as Chicago and Oakland, California. Passed on orally by children telling each other stories when they gathered in the shelters, it was a rich and strange brew, fraught with horror and imminent danger, along with rituals and beliefs to summon, contain and defend against demonic forces; and it was quite unlike anything anyone had ever come across before.