Volume 3: Ghost Stories from Texas (Joe Kwon's True Ghost Stories from Around the World)

by Unknown

  So many clues we missed. Then my daughter and her friends started messing around with an Ouija board. She came into my bedroom one night and crouched down by the side of my bed and with tears in her eyes said she had some bad news for me. When I asked her what it was she said that my youngest brother Billy came through on the Ouija board and said he had died of a drug overdose.

  Billy had been missing a few years, but he was over 21 and could go where he wanted and wasn't legally obligated to inform anyone. Well I got angry and told her to stay away from that board because it would lie like that to get a toehold in her life. I told her I would prove it to her by praying to the Good Lord about it to find out the truth. That next night Billy called from Florida where he had spent the last year in jail and wanted to know if he could come stay with us. He had a ride with a trucker that would bring him all the way to San Antonio.

  I proved that Ouija wrong, but I still did not recognize the danger we would soon all face.

  Almost every thing I saw in that dream was true about that house. Even one night when someone climbed in through the window of the room my brother slept in. The guy said he was looking for my teenaged daughter Becky. Which that used to be her room until we found out she was sneaking out. So we changed her to a room with burglar bars. The only room that did, actually. Evidently she had been sneaking people in as well.

  The last straw for that house came when the first time we all left the house together to go out to eat. At the time we had 8 people in the house.

  Someone tried to bust into the back door. It had a hasp and padlock on it and it was just our luck to come home and see someone running from the corner of the yard past the low hung branches of the weeping willow tree.

  Note: we also found out that the previous owner had died in a car accident just down the road. It happened a few days after he finished building the den with fireplace and wet

  bar onto the back of the house and the roof was made of tar and gravel.

  We used to hear a sound like someone walking around on that roof and sounds like somebody doing carpentry work. That was before the next door lady told me about the owner dying.

  I talked out loud to his spirit one time and told him as long as I lived there I would fix things. After that the odd sounds went away. I think he was the reason that whoever tried to break the back door open was not able to, because the screws were almost out of the door jamb and it seemed like one good yank would have pulled that door right open.

  I just say thank you to whoever was watching over us until we could get a new house.

  Angry Motel Ghost

  Temple, Texas

  My father-in-law passed away just days after Thanksgiving in 1992. When he was diagnosed with cancer, the doctors said he had less than a year. It came as no surprise, as both my husband's parents were heavy smokers. He smoked big old cigars, and she smoked at least two packs of cigarettes a day.

  We live in Texas, but most of our relatives live in Arkansas, so I told my mother-in-law that if she needed her son, to call and I would make sure he got leave from his Air Force job to go help her. Plus I wanted him to spend those last days with his father. I knew what it was like to lose someone and not be able to say goodbye. My uncle that raised me died when we were stationed in Germany and it was hard on me. I didn't want my husband to go through that.

  My mother-in-law called and told me her husband had fallen from the hospital bed they set up in their den. She wasn't able to get him back in the bed and she couldn't get ahold of anybody, so he had to lay there for hours. I called my husband at work and told him he needed to go help his parents, now. He got the next flight out.

  I drove down for the funeral, spent a few days with family, and then he and I drove back home to Texas.

  After the funeral my mother-in-law loaded our station wagon with things she wanted my husband to have that belonged to his Dad. They were also clearing out her house so she could move closer to her daughter. We had one of those big old Brady Bunch station wagons, the kind with wood grain on the sides. Or as my husband called it, an "Uncle Buck-mobile" after the John Candy movie.

  We made good time going back home until we got just past Waco. Then the station wagon started acting up. The engine started backfiring and fire would shoot out from the tailpipe . It was like the motor had hiccups. Well, about an hour into this the engine backfired one last time and shut down. We had been driving through freezing rain for the last two hours, and when the motor quit it didn't take long for the heat to dissipate.

  By chance, some guys in a wrecker came by and worked on the engine. They charged us a hundred dollars, the last of our cash. We got going again and not more than 10 miles down the road and BANG!! The engine backfired again. Fire billowed out the tailpipe, and we pulled off the road once again. My husband got out, raised the hood, fiddled with something, and then hollered for me to turn the key on. This time a little flame shot up and scared the wits out of me. Finally it started again. But 10 minutes later, Kablooey! Another half an hour's wait.

  We continued to just drive in these ten-minute increments. We finally saw a LaQuinta motel and slowly limped the wagon into the parking lot. My husband rented us a room and I was relieved to be out of the freezing cold. By now the roads were getting near impassible. Ice was everywhere.

  The room had two twin beds, but I didn't care, I just climbed under the covers and conked out. I was sawing some serious zzz's, when suddenly I couldn't breathe. I thought I was having a panic attack, which I get from time to time. Considering the circumstances I wouldn't have been surprised to have one now. I tried to get up to get a glass of water from the bathroom. I was thinking that maybe the heater was on too high, as causing me to choke.

  Just as I started to sit up, I felt myself slammed back onto the mattress. Again I tried to rise and couldn't move. Only now I could feel something holding my wrists above my head.

  I was struggling just to get a breath of air because whatever was happening, it was putting pressure on my chest. It felt like something was pressed over my nose and mouth. This was no panic attack! Something was on me. Then I felt whatever it was trying to actually enter my body.

  That was the most awful feeling I have ever had in my life. It was like this force wanted to take over my body and push me out. And there wasn't enough room for two people in one body. I've had a spinal myleogram and when they inject die into your spine it starts feeling like a pressure like when your ears pop in changing elevation, but ten times worse. This felt a hundred times stronger. I kept pushing against whatever was holding me down and finally I gritted my teeth, and pushed up with all my might and coughed out, "Get off of me!"

  My husband was snoring away in the other bed and I hoarsely called his name. I was still short of breath, so I scrambled off the bed I was on and climbed in on the other side of his bed. My husband woke up and held me until I calmed down. Then he got up to get me a glass of water from the bathroom and when he turned on the light I could see a swirling black mass above the bed I had been in. I yelled at my husband to look and he saw the same thing. My heart is pounding right now as I am recalling that night.

  The mass got thicker and darker and started moving towards my husband. I was terrified. I didn't know what this thing was, but I could feel emotions in the air.

  Thick sadness, grief, anger, revenge, all those emotions were settling onto me and I suddenly realized that someone had been strangled to death on that bed. I could feel that the presence was male and more than any other emotion, anger was the strongest. This presence was extremely angry. It wanted whoever else came into it's aura to know it was mad.

  I shouted to my husband to come back to the bed and leave the lights on. The presence seemed to be confined to that second bed. Right now I was ready to go back to the station wagon, freezing cold or not. I wanted so much to be home. My husband pulled aside the heavy curtains on the window and thankfully it was now daylight.

  We went to the lobby and ate breakfast and we managed to get a
tow truck to take our vehicle and us home,

  I have no idea what happened in that motel room but I do know this, I will never stay there again.

  The Church, the Priest, and My Son

  Laredo, Texas

  In 2002 I ran away from home with a boy my parents did not approve of. I was 18 at the time (and pregnant). My boyfriend, Johnny, was almost 21. We stayed at a friend's house for about a week then started house hunting. I was broke but Johnny had a small amount of money coming in from his extremely supportive parents.

  The first two houses we looked at were perfect, but extremely out of our price range. When we drove up to the third house, I automatically noticed the cross on the roof. The real estate agent began telling us about it.

  It was a small abandoned church. The outside was messy with twigs and dead plants everywhere, but the inside was beautiful. Wood floors, and pretty red carpeted stairs to a second floor. I walked up the stairs while Johnny talked with Todd, the real estate agent. I immediately got a bad feeling.

  There were only two rooms. I walked into the first and saw crosses everywhere. On the walls, painted on the floor and even hanging from the fan. I shut the door quickly and went to room number two. This one was completely empty except for a Roman Gothic window which was open. This room gave me chills too. Johnny came up and stood behind me, he looked and said it would be a perfect room for the baby.

  He walked to the other room and looked. The crosses didn't bother him. He said we could remove them all. I said nothing and walked back downstairs. I walked through the small kitchen and to the potential living room. There were two pews and a statue of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus. I told Johnny I didn't like it and I wasn't going to live there. He told me it was in our price range and perfect. Reluctantly I agreed.

  A week later we moved in. Everything was normal until the first night. I was upstairs trying to remove the crosses when I heard Johnny calling me from downstairs. I yelled back at him telling him I was busy. "Dani! Dani! Danica! Get down here now!" he yelled, sounding scared and angry. I went down and he started yelling at me telling me how I wasn't funny and that I need to stop playing childish pranks on him. I had no idea what he was talking about. He told me that he saw a Rosary lift off the statue of Mary and into the air then drop again. I got very nervous after that.

  We removed everything. The pews, the crosses, we took it all out and gave it to a local church. Everything seemed normal after that.

  About a month after that I had the baby. We named him Anthony. We set up his nursery in the room upstairs - the one that had been empty when we moved in.

  For the first few months nothing happened. Johnny got a job and was gone a lot of the day at work. I stayed home with Anthony. One day I was downstairs making myself lunch when I heard Anthony cry from upstairs where he was taking a nap. I assumed nothing was wrong as I went up to check on him. When I did he wasn't in his crib. He was sitting on the floor. I called Johnny, and he thought I was losing my mind.

  We began fighting a lot when all these incidents would happen. Anthony kept escaping his crib according to Johnny. I knew something was moving him because a baby that is only five months old can't crawl out of his four foot tall crib.

  One night I woke up in the chair that I had fallen asleep on with Anthony in my arms. It was the day before Christmas Eve and we were sitting in front of our brightly lit tree. Then I heard something. I turned around to see a priest in black standing there. I thought I was dreaming but then I realized I wasn't when he walked toward me and reached for Anthony. I screamed and Johnny ran downstairs, but he didn’t see anything.

  The next night, Christmas Eve, we had some friends over. Anthony was sitting with Johnny and we were just talking. Then I saw him again. The priest was standing at the bottom of the steps. I didn't scream this time. Instead I tapped Johnny on the shoulder. He turned and saw him too and jumped up. Then the priest vanished. Our friends thought we were drunk, so they just laughed off Johnny's reaction.

  They left a little later and we decided to have Anthony sleep with us that night. We woke up Christmas morning only to find that he was gone. Me and Johnny began panicking and searching for him. We heard him cry from downstairs. We ran down and saw Anthony lying down unharmed on a pile of hay under the Christmas tree. We grabbed him and left the house. We went back a few days later to get our stuff, then we moved out. We never could explain the things that happened or why they happened. We thought the priest had set Anthony up on a pile of hay on Christmas to make it seem like the birth of Jesus Christ.

  We never were sure. We tried very hard to forget it.

  Now, 8 years later I'm 26 and happily married to Johnny. And Anthony has grown up to be a happy normal 8 year old. He doesn't remember or know about the church, and we won't ever tell him, but every Christmas Day while Anthony opens his gifts me and Johnny can't help but look back on the incidents that took place in that horrible church.

  Shawn

  Dallas, Texas

  When I was younger I used to experience a lot of things in my grandmother's house. When I lived there I used to have a little ghostly friend I would play with named Shawn.

  We eventually moved out of my grandfather's house to another house about an hour away. My mom and dad also decided to have more children.

  I started school and completely forgot about Shawn. Well when my brother turned about the age I was when I started to see Shawn, he would tell us about it. But it was only when we visited Grandma.

  One night at dinner my little brother told us that Shawn wanted his help. I didn't catch on right away, but my mother instantly remembered who Shawn from my experiences with him.. At first we kinda ignored it, until he started getting bruises and scratches on his face and arms when he went over there.

  The weird thing is my grandmother didn't have a cat or anything that could make claw marks on his face like that.

  The thing that bothered us the most though, before we had the house blessed, is that my brother came to us and told us at the age of four (and I do not know how a four year old would know or come up with this), that Shawn told him he fell in a pool and drowned. He added that his body is under ground and there are bugs crawling in his body. And Shawn told him that he needed his help to feel better. And, that dying wouldn't hurt my brother. We never let him be by his self in that house ever again.

  It gives me chills still thinking about it...

  To Grandmother's House I Go

  Plano, Texas

  Due to the difficult economic times my father lost his job back in '08, forcing my mother and I to move into an apartment complex in Plano, Texas. I was 18 and on my way to college, but the living arrangements had always been a difficult situation. I was able to get in using scholarships, but I still had nowhere to live.

  After countless arguments, something changed. My grandmother passed away, leaving me her house near the college I would be attending. It was a mixture of pain for her death and relief on my parents' financial burden.

  My grandmother was a very strange woman. She had lived in that house ever since my mom moved out to college. But after her husband (my grandfather) died, she became unstable and was ultimately institutionalized a few years back due to hallucinations of ghosts or spirits or whatever. She lived out her final years back at home, alone.

  I remember when I was 7 years old I was staying at her house.

  Early in the morning my mom had woken me up, looking terrified and said that we had to leave, and I was forbidden to ever go into that house again.

  My mother tried to stop me from moving into that house, but ultimately gave in, knowing that there was no choice. To this day she has never explained to me what happened to her in that house.

  This house was just off a dirt path. It was a one story with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Toward the end of her life my grandmother had boarded up all of the windows. The house was beautiful; white shutters, a white door, with bricks that seemed to shine under the right light. It was intoxicating. I co
uldn't understand why my mother wanted me out of it.

  The first thing I did was take the boards down. The evening sun shone through the windows making the room dazzle with the reflection of all the colors around the room. I was ready to spend the next 4 years here. I never knew I would only last one week.

  I set up my sleeping bag, brushed my teeth and tucked myself in, falling asleep instantly. I woke up around 3 in the morning to scratching on the bathroom floor, and a muffled cry. I ran to the bathroom and swung the door open, no one was inside but there was a pool of blood behind the door, scratch marks on the back of the door, and what looked to be a few teeth. I screamed and ran to call 911. I realized I hadn't hooked up the phones and my cell had died. (How cliché right?)

  I went back over to the bathroom to close the door and everything was gone. I froze, not knowing if I was dreaming or crazy. I chalked it up to dreaming. School was started next week, this is when I'm supposed to be relaxing.

  The next few nights I slept peacefully but didn't set foot in the bathroom. But the fourth night, I heard it again, louder and more distinct. The moaning turned to a muffled cry, barely audible to understand that this person was crying for help. I knew that voice! It was Grandma's!

  I ran to the bathroom and swung the door open and this time I saw her, her legs cuffed to the toilet seat and her hands bound, her mouth gagged. Someone had punched her face because she was bleeding and a tooth had been knocked out. In hysterics I called my mom, she told me to come home immediately.

  She explained to me that my grandmother had been murdered and was found chained in her bathroom.