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Ghosts in
East Texas
by Bob Bowman |
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To paraphrase
a quote by the Marquise de Deffand in 1774, I don't believe in ghosts,
but I have a healthy respect for them.
You would, too, if you've ever stood on the banks of Bouton Lake
when the fog rolls in from the Neches River bottomlands. Looking
across the still, tree-shaded waters, you can almost see the outlines
of a young girl wearing a long flowing gown.
The ghost of Bouton Lake is one of several with whom I have developed
close friendships over the last 30 or so years. I don't necessarily
believe in them, but they've become as much a part of East Texas as
the pine forests they haunt, so I accept them in the same way that
I accept the fact that gravity works.
Bouton Lake's ghost is as old as the lake itself. The story goes that
a man and his daughter were hauling cotton to town when the earth
collapsed beneath them. He and his daughter disappeared forever. Bouton
Lake's ghost is mild compared to Oonie Andrews, the ghost who
lives in Lady Bird Johnson's family home at Karnack.
She is as much a part of the old mansion that Jett Jones, who grew
up with Oonie, simply considers her "a lady who lives in the house
that nobody else can see."
In 1843, Milt Andrews built a splendid plantation-style mansion near
Karnack. Sometime in the l880s, Andrews' 19-year-old daughter, Eunice,
sat alone in an upstairs bedroom when bolt of lightning from a stormstruck
the chimney, raced down a fireplace, and hit Oonie. She was burned
to death.
Over the years, stories arose that the ghost of Miss Andrews never
left the bedroom. Eerie noises, odd happenings, and ghostly apparitions
soon became common. When the Andrews family sold the house to T.J.
Taylor -- Lady Bird Johnson's father -- in 1902, the ghost
went along with the sale. While Lady Bird said she never saw or heard
the ghost, she admitted feeling a sense of apprehension and unease
in the house as a child.
A more contemporary ghost -- an East Texas phantom of the opera
nicknamed Chester -- haunts the Turner Fine Arts Auditorium on
the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches.
No one has ever actually seen Chester, but dozens of students and
instructors swear they've felt his presence with signs like rustling
stage curtains, footsteps on the scaffolding, dust sifting down on
the shoulders of actors, and cold fingers on the back of the neck.
Chester apparently tried to make himself visible in a 1987 production
of Macbeth. In a scene where eight ghosts were projected on a stage
screen, a ninth face somehow appeared.
East Texas' most beautiful ghost may be Diamond
Bessie, who was murdered at Jefferson
in 1877, supposedly by Abe Rothschild, although he was acquitted after
two controversial trials. For years, there have been reports of Diamond
Bessie's ghost rattling around the Excelsior House, but it
certainly hasn't hurt business at the old hotel. When Bessie isn't
haunting people at the Excelsior, she can usually be found at Oakwood
Cemetery.
Other cemeteries in East Texas also have their special ghosts.
At Dabb's Cemetery, near Frankston, there's the story
of "the cage," where legends claim that a man was buried twice, once
alive and the second time dead.
Locals claim the man was buried the first time because he was thought
to be dead, but dug his way out of his earthen tomb and crawled to
a nearby home, where he died. To assure he would not be able to crawl
out again, a cage of wooden stakes was built around his grave. It
apparently served its purpose, but there are still stories of a ghost
roaming the graveyard late at night.
East Texas' best-known "ghost light,"
belongs to Bragg Road in Hardin County. There, Big
Thicket residents have consistently reported sightings of a strange
red light in the forest, supposedly the lantern of a railroad switchman
who was killed by a freight train more than 50 years ago.
Another Angelina County ghost haunts the banks of Popher
Creek. The story goes that an old Indian chief named Popher
had a son who killed a white man in an argument and was scheduled
to be hanged. Popher went to the white men and pleaded, "I am an old
man, and my son is still young with his life still before him. Please
let me take my son's place." The old chief was hung along the creek
which bears his name. |
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