Last year, I was again in bed, reading, wide awake. I was sitting, my back against the pillows and my hair had fallen over my forehead, almost in my eyes. Gently, very gently, something lifted my hair off my forehead and brushed it back into place. I froze for a second and when I finally got the courage to lift my eyes I saw, for just about two or three seconds, a faint, white mist. That is the only time I have seen anything. Occasionally there is a loud thump or crash that I can’t explain. Then, again, there are those I can explain.
The most awesome event took place in the living room. The previous owners had installed brass wall sconces with glass chimneys on each side of the fireplace. I had inspected these very closely to see if they could be moved, but found that they were each held by two sturdy screws through the sheetrock into the solid wood wall behind. One day, the dogs and I were outside when I heard an enormous crash in the house. I ran inside to find one of the sconces on the floor, with glass everywhere. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was no way it could have simply come out of the wall. I looked at the wall. If the sconce had fallen downward, the bottom hole through the sheetrock should have been elongated by the screw pulling loose. But it was the top hole that was elongated, upward! The sconce had been pulled upward, and out, by some tremendous force!
Then there was the night I came home to find no hot water at any faucet in the house. But when I checked my gas water heater it was running fine. I called several people, including a plumber, and no one could give me any possible reason. After making arrangements for the plumber to come out the next morning, I shut the hot water heater completely off, figuring something had to be wrong with it. Two hours later, I went to the kitchen to fill a pot to heat water to wash up in, and the instant I turned the faucet on, hot water came out! The plumber found nothing wrong. There was no possible explanation!
The most recent incident happened only a week or two ago. [Note: This would have been in March 1993.] The dogs and I (I’m up to three now) were in the den one evening when I heard a crash in the bedroom. I ran in to find a heavy, nearly solid crystal perfume bottle smashed on the carpeted floor. This bottle had been on a tray on my dresser surrounded by a dozen or so smaller, more fragile perfume bottles. But all the other bottles still sat undisturbed. I cannot possibly explain how one bottle in the middle had fallen, or how such a sturdy bottle could shatter on . . . thick carpet. Actually, I can’t explain any of this.
Char, my female dog, now weighs fifty pounds, about the same as Beaux. She sometimes wakes me up in the morning by jumping up on my bed. And a fifty-pound dog jumping on my bed does not shake it with near the force of the unexplained bed shakings.
While the dogs don’t appear to sense anything, there have been many times one of them, usually Beaux, has suddenly yelped, jumped, and slunk away to hide in a corner and look at me with hurt eyes, just as if to say, “Why did you hit me?
The bed-shakings seemed to have stopped about the time that Joe Lee’s granddaughter visited. When I told her about all my incidents she did not seem at all surprised. She simply nodded and said “Paw-paw’s still here. You need to tell him to either behave himself or leave.” I did. And at least I can get a decent night’s sleep now.
The only pattern I have been able to think of is that the events have happened, or at least started, after men were in my house. The bed-shakings started while the carpenters were here; the wall sconce crashed the day after a party, the perfume bottle fell after a young man had dog-sat for me for a week.
As I said, I don’t “believe in” spirits. I don’t talk about this often because people often act like they expect me to try to convince them there are such things. I’ve found it’s not a matter of believing or convincing. It’s simply a matter of realizing and finally accepting the fact that Joe Lee (or someone else) lives with me at 1616 Elgin in some form or another. I don’t like it, and I don’t want it. But, whoever, or whatever, it is here.
Is the Spirit Still Around?
Debbie Sandifer read in the Beaumont Enterprise that I was seeking ghost stories. She telephoned me right away with her story!
During the two years, from 1971-1973, that Debbie and her husband, Jim, rented a small four-room house in Nederland, so many unexplainable things happened there they are convinced they played host to a poltergeist!
As is typical of many homes in the coastal area, this small dwelling was built up on piers. From the first night the Sandifers resided there, strange manifestations began. There was a small dining area, no larger than 4 by 6 feet, off the kitchen. As the Sandifers and another couple sat around the table chatting after dinner the first night they spent there, they noticed a small copper pipe which was located on the floor start to move up and down, coming up about one to 1 to 1 1/2 inches from the floor level. It was the type of tubing that would have been used for an icemaker, only their refrigerator had no icemaker. Astounded, they decided there must be an animal under the house, and it had caused the pipe to be pushed up through the floor. They went outside, taking their big German shepherd dog, King, with them. King showed no interest in the area under the house from which the pipe had emerged, and a good look under the house turned up nothing. The two couples went back inside, and several times during the evening the small pipe would move up and down in the floor!
Debbie told me during their two years of living in the house “things moved around a lot.” A neighbor who lived across the street was bodily pushed through his open patio door, also. This neighbor believed at times the Sandifers’ ghost visited his house as well!
The gas heater the Sandifers used to warm the house during chilly weather would sometimes turn itself off at the wall after it had just been lit. When they questioned their landlady, the Sandifers said she was very reluctant to discuss the possibility that the house might be haunted, even though the neighbors assured Debbie that previous tenants had also experienced peculiar things at the house and the landlady was well aware of it.
When the Sandifers took a trip to Lubbock, in West Texas, they arranged for Jim’s parents to have a house key so they could come in and feed and water King while they were away. Debbie left a note of instructions on the kitchen counter as to what to feed the dog. When they returned from their trip, they were astounded to find this note firmly glued to the kitchen cabinet with a “white, milky-looking substance,” some of which had trickled down the cabinet. When Debbie questioned her mother-in-law about why she had pasted the note on the cabinet, she was so shocked to hear this that she came right over to Debbie’s house to see for herself how the note got stuck to the cabinet!
Once, to surprise her husband, Debbie purchased a small model automobile kit. Since it was like the car they owned, she thought he would enjoy having the model. Her sister was with her when she bought it, and both ladies agreed the kit was well wrapped and sealed up, all parts intact, at the time of purchase. When her husband got home that night, Debbie asked him if he had seen her surprise. He had not, so she went to where she had left it and was shocked to find the package all unwrapped!
In a similar vein, Debbie said she liked to sew and often had projects going. Once when she had worked all day on a dress, she laid the finished product out to show her husband when he came home from work that night. She had it all finished except for sewing on the buttons, so she just placed them where they would go on the dress. Then she left the house and drove to pick Jim up from work. As soon as they got home, she took him to show off the fruits of her day’s labor . . . only to find the new dress she had so carefully laid out was “all rumpled and wrinkled, and the buttons all scattered about everywhere.”
Several times Debbie saw what she believed was a dark, shadowy form in the hallway, but she never found anything there upon checking closely. She got to the point where she was even afraid to sleep on her stomach because “it” might come up behind her. She said once when her sister spent the night with them, she asked Jim, Debbie’s husband, why he kept calling “Debbie . . . Debbie” all night. He said he had slept so
undly, and never once called out to Debbie. In fact, Debbie said he never did call her by her name at all, preferring the more affectionate term of “Honey” when he spoke to her.
Once when the Sandifers were having a plumbing problem, Jim went out in the backyard and dug up a portion of the sewage pipes. He had just uncoupled the pipes when a tremendous gush of water came through the pipe! Someone, or something, had obviously flushed the commode, and Jim knew there was no one in the house at the time. He rushed inside in time to hear the commode still running!
On other occasions, Debbie said she heard the clothes dryer running. She would go in to check it, and it would immediately shut off. It was never warm inside, as it should have been, after running.
As disturbance followed disturbance and the sleepless nights began to add up, Debbie finally discussed their problem with the parish priest. She said she went into great detail. The priest did not laugh at her or question her veracity, but he did tell her since the spirit had been only “mischievous” and had done nothing really evil, he believed it would be best to let well enough alone and not tamper with the status quo. From questioning a number of people who were familiar with such manifestations, Debbie said she and Jim came to the conclusion that the spirit they shared their home with may have been that of a child or young person, because it did only mischievous things, not really cruel ones. But child-spirit or no, Debbie said she was more than relieved when they at last decided to purchase a home in Port Neches and moved from the haunted property.
I also talked with a former neighbor of the Sandifers who is a contractor and did some renovations to the place after the Sandifers moved out. He reported he would turn off all the lights in the evenings when his work was done and lock up the place. When he would arrive the next day, he would find them all turned on! He also said that the phone company had come in and installed a new telephone. He did not know how they got in, because he had the only key to the house and he kept it locked up except when he was on the property! He said one hot summer day, he was working in a back bedroom. He was very uncomfortable and asked his wife to go to the store to buy him some cold beer. A short time later the front door opened, and he heard footsteps in the hall. He put down his hammer and walked out of the room, fully expecting to see his wife and a cold six-pack! Imagine his disappointment . . . and utter shock . . . when he realized his wife had not yet returned from her errand and he was completely alone in the house.
Debbie showed us the little house on a recent trip we made to Nederland. We wonder if the playful spirit is still there.
The Ghost of Christy Hardin
Not right in the Golden Triangle but just slightly to the west of Beaumont lies Liberty County. Liberty is one of the oldest settlements in Texas, named for an earlier Spanish settlement called Libertad. The old town was already settled prior to the Texas Revolution, and after the Battle of San Jacinto, the compound that held the captured Mexican troops of the defeated General Santa Anna was located in Liberty. Later, in 1840, General Sam Houston, first president of the Republic of Texas, maintained his law office in Liberty.
Kevin Ladd, Director of the Wallisville Heritage Park in Wallisville, Texas, sent me this account of a prominent early Liberty County family and its ghost:
During the 1820s and 1830s, a young man by the name of Franklin Hardin grew to prominence and position in Liberty. He organized a group of locals during the Texas Revolution and led them onto the field at San Jacinto in 1836. Hardin and his wife, Cynthia O’Brien, built an impressive home in Liberty, in what is now the 1800 block of Sam Houston Avenue. They called their home Seven Pines, and it was there that they raised a family of truly extraordinary children.
Christopher O’Brien (“Christy”) Hardin was their youngest son. Born in 1842, he went off to the Civil War and then settled back home after the war. One day in the winter of 1866, Christy and one of his black servants went out hunting. The servant caught some movement in the brush, and presuming it to be a deer, fired a shot. Tragically, Christy Hardin was dead, at the age of twenty-four years.
The black servants often looked out in the evenings to see Christy’s ghost standing restlessly by the front gate of the property. Aunt Harriet Evans would often say, “I saw Christy’s ghost again last night, down by the gate. He can’t rest.” The old house has long since disappeared, and a modern new cultural center stands on that same property, given to the city by members of the Hardin family. Those who work there think Christy Hardin’s ghost is still there.
The Cove Light
When I contacted Kevin Ladd, Director of the Wallisville Heritage Park, he was kind enough to send me the following story about an interesting “ghost light” over in western Chambers County:
One of the most unusual ghost light stories we have ever heard dates back several decades to the little town of Cove, in western Chambers County. This mysterious light first appeared at the home of Luther and Elizabeth Wilburn during the 1860s, while the family lived several miles further south in what is today Beach City. The Wilburns moved to Cove about 1870, and the light apparently followed them there. The light revealed itself in a lot where the family kept a mare penned up. It certainly scared the mare, which jumped the fence and tore off into the safety of the darkness!
The light continued to appear periodically up until the time of Luther Wilburn’s death in 1882. His widow moved off to Tarkington Prairie in Liberty County. The light followed the family there and did not return again to Cove until Elizabeth died in 1918, at which time it seemed to “adopt” one of their sons and appeared to him from time to time up until his death in 1939. The light was last documented to have been seen in Cove during the 1970s.
The Ghost of Turtle Bayou
Another story sent to me by Kevin Ladd, Director of the Wallisville Heritage Park in Wallisville, is interesting to me for more than one reason. For one thing, I am interested in the history of that part of the state, and I had not previously known of Turtle Bayou. Secondly, I found the ghost in Ladd’s story very closely correlates with two stories you will read in the final chapter. Perhaps the Turtle Bayou story serves that part of Texas as a good folk-legend, just as “La Llorona” is well known among the Hispanic families of far South Texas and “Sara Jane” is known around Port Neches. That they all carry a similar central theme is a fact I found extremely fascinating.
Turtle Bayou is a narrow stream that connects with Turtle Bay (now Lake Anahuac) a few miles from the old town of Wallisville. It rambles on north into Liberty County and plays out near Moss Bluff. It figures prominently in the early history of the Texas Revolution. After local residents, aided by colonists from Liberty and Brazoria, marched upon the Mexican fort at Anahuac in 1832 and freed William Barret Travis and Patrick C. Jack, they retreated to Turtle Bayou and drafted a set of resolutions that were the first written complaints lodged by Texans against their Mexican overlords.
In later years, a couple of kinsmen, Robert D. White and Monroe White, operated general merchandise stores on opposite sides of the bayou. A shipyard and a couple of sawmills operated there for a while. A small but thriving community developed at Turtle Bayou during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
One day many years ago, a lady by the name of Exie Green drowned her child in Turtle Bayou. For years and years afterward, folks could occasionally hear the cries of the mother, mourning for her lost child and her own actions. When conditions are just right, and the moon is full, you can often hear her still.
The Mysterious House at Browndell
An article that ran in the Jasper, Texas, News Boy just before Halloween in late October 1993 interested me enough to do some investigating. It was written by Diane Cox, managing editor of the paper, and was sent to me by my sister-in-law, Juanita Williams, who lives in Jasper.
On a recent trip to visit in that interesting and pretty old town, I managed to meet with Diane, and she took me to see her house, which she wrote about in her story.
The old Browndell Community, some 13 miles north of
Jasper, was once a well-established mill town, consisting of 143 buildings. There were houses for the mill workers, a post office, general store, depot, and various other buildings. The town was built by the Kirby Lumber Company. In 1903 they built a large house for the mill manager and his family. The sawmill eventually burned down and was rebuilt. The mill burned a second time, and this time the company did not rebuild. The community rapidly dissolved as workers had to move elsewhere to seek other employment. Today only the mill manager’s house remains, although a sign on the highway still states it’s the “Browndell Community.”
The old house, which originally consisted of two large rooms located on either side of an open gallery, or “dog trot,” has changed hands, and appearance, numerous times in its long and rather colorful history.
The Walker family purchased the place in 1928. It was used, over the years, for various purposes: as a residence, a rental property, a hotel, a rooming house, and even for a time, standing unoccupied, was used as a place to store hay! The house finally underwent extensive remodeling and restoration in 1965.
Today, the rambling structure sports a new tin roof, which has replaced the original. The “dog trot” has been sealed in, becoming a long and spacious central entry hall. A large kitchen, a laundry room, and a bathroom were also added during the restoration period, as was a large carport at the side of the house.
Diane Cox, who is the present owner, is a very interesting storyteller and a talented artist as well. The old house is filled with her paintings, mostly beautiful landscapes and still lifes. Cox says many people in the Jasper area lived in, or visited, the old house at one time or another, and it was the scene of many memorable, and sometimes turbulent, events. She feels there is a lot of “energy” attached to the house and the land where it is situated.
Ghosts along the Texas Coast Page 17