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Ghosts
of Old Waverly
and the Old Waverly Cemetery
An East Texas Tale of Two
Hills Illustrated
with Waverly Cemetery Tombstone Art |
| It’s easy to reach
New Waverly since it’s on the state map just
off Interstate Highway 45 about 55 miles north of Houston.
Much harder to find is Old Waverly, just
a few miles east but not on the state map. With no town center and only a church
and cemetery left (and those spaced
far apart) it’s a challenge to find without a local guide. |
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The town of Waverly
once straddled the county line, but even that fact is little help. The difference
between Old Waverly and New
Waverly was, of course, the arrival of the railroad in the 1880s. It’s a very
familiar story in Texas. One town gets the railroad,
and the other town gets forgotten. Adding insult to injury, the left-behind town
is sometimes branded with the word “old.”
Back when there was a single
Waverly, the town was thriving, with a youthful population freshly arrived from
Alabama, Georgia and other southern states. An “institute of higher learning”
was established and the town seemed to have limitless horizons. But along came
the Civil War and Waverly’s antebellum hopes turned into sacrifice, immense hardship
and finally “death by railroad bypass.”
Old
Waverly’s fade into oblivion may be short of tragic elements, but two
separate stories were enough to have it included in the late Ed Sayer’s Ghosts
of Texas. When one considers the cottage industry that spooks and spirits
have become in recent years, it’s an accomplishment to be included as one of the
fifty-odd stories in what is considered to be the first volume written on Texas
Ghosts.
The sites of the stories
are several miles apart in what remains today of the dense forest that was laboriously
pushed back by slave labor to plant cotton.
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Waverly
Cemetery tombstone
TE photo |
Soldier’s Hill
A knoll in the vicinity was once named Soldier’s Hill. It was (relative) high
ground that was once occupied by Union troops although the author doesn’t mention
if it was held during the war or in that unhappy period called Reconstruction.
For the sake of the story, it hardly matters. Part of the land patrolled by the
troops from their base camp of Soldier’s Hill included a desolate cabin – one
of the first built by settlers.
The incident that occurred at the cabin
has few details. One version has it that a young girl was killed there and three
Federal troops may have been involved. Guilty or not, the one agreed on fact is
that the three were murdered – perhaps in retaliation for the crime. Fearful of
incurring the wrath of the main contingent, the killers hurriedly buried the soldiers
beneath the cabin floor.
Ever since, anyone who attempted to live in the
cabin was driven out by strange nocturnal sounds. A fiddle was sometimes heard
playing, and men were heard coughing. On some occasions the sounds of a screaming
girl were heard. The landowners built another house, although they let the older
building stand. The cabin went unoccupied but its reputation grew.
If
additional proof of a haunting was needed, it was provided by animals who balked
at entering the now-deteriorating building. According to Sayer’s account, cats
and dogs “would stand in the rain” rather than cross the cabin’s threshold.
One local newspaperwoman who attempted to spend the night in the cabin in the
1970s quitted her project early on. Her contribution to the legend was seeing
a strange fog around the site, even while a stiff breeze was blowing.
In respect of the owner’s privacy, the location of the site has been kept a secret.
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Sentry HillThe
second haunted site near Old Waverly was
described as being just northeast of what had been the town. This spirit seems
to be single and is thought to be either a Union soldier who perhaps took his
duty a tad too seriously and never left his post – or a sawmill operator who perhaps
took his work not seriously enough and left behind his head.
No one has
fully described any detailed sightings, but there have been many “auditory” encounters
– nearly all of them occurring at night. Sayers reports a local man who is drawn
to the site and on one occasion brought a witness. He and his skeptical friend
were exploring the site when they heard something running toward them through
the underbrush. The friend was amused and as his partner ran toward their car,
he (laughing) yelled: “it can stop the car’s engine!” When his friend got in the
car and indeed, it didn’t start – the friend stopped laughing and together they
jump-started the car, thankful to be able to escape whatever “it” was.
The
story had an anticlimactic end with Sayers’ investigation coming to a halt when
his guide canceled on him. He then attempted to go it alone but was bogged down
in mud up to his wheel wells.
These stories are presented here not for
their quality, details, or the goose-flesh factor, but mostly to provide text
for their accompanying Waverly Cemetery photographs. |
Waverly
Cemetery & MarkerTE
photos, 2006 |
Waverly
Cemetery historical marker
TE photo | |
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