Replies

Ghosts are hard to find, but if they exist, Arlington cemeteries may be home to more than a few tortured souls

By O.K. CARTER
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Sometimes late at night when the first norther of winter arrives, some people say that they can hear a baby crying in old Arlington Cemetery. It's rumored to be the wailing of 1-year-old Mattie Luna Cooper, left alone back in 1875 as the first burial in the cemetery. She never forgot being there all alone and occasionally finds voice, as if being given some brief presence through the power of a frigid and howling wind.

Or that's the legend, anyway. It has been difficult to find people who have actually heard lonely little Mattie. Maybe the wail comes from the wind working its way through the tombstones and frost-stripped trees.

Or maybe it's not Mattie wailing at all, but the ghosts of 10 former Arlington mayors buried in plots all around her. Maybe, every Tuesday night _when the council session kicks in _ they begin muttering at how their little prairie village ended up sprawling across a hundred square miles.

One of those mayors, William Rose, once counted all the residents of the cemetery as being part of a residential addition overlooked by census takers. The extra "body" count qualified the city for its own post office. So maybe that sound is really Mayor Rose having yet another last laugh.

But, since it's Halloween eve, here's another thought: If there are indeed ghosts among us, what more likely place would they be than in residence at Arlington's 40-plus cemeteries? The city's burial grounds range in size from a few plots occupied by old pioneer families to more recent cemeteries that are the final resting place -- at least for the mortal remains -- of hundreds of people.

Death rarely comes easy, but there are many buried in Arlington cemeteries who came to particularly untimely ends. Perhaps they were ground to oblivion by an onrushing train, or shot to death in a Main Street gunfight, such as the three men killed in such a confrontation in 1892. Spirits such as those can't be resting comfortably in their graves.

And while some graves lack a ghostly presence, their inhabitants nevertheless continue to make their past presence felt in a philosophical way through their choice of epitaph.

Consider the passing advice of legendary Arlington physician Zack Bobo, whose grave marker advises, "Sing a song and keep a stepping."

But the topic here is ghosts and where they hang out. With a little imagination, who could deny that maybe -- just maybe -- there's a ghost or two or perhaps a bunch of occasionally visiting spirits at some of those cemeteries? This could be particularly true considering that modern development sometimes inadvertently paves over unmarked graves.

For example, consider the final resting place of Pantego, the Caddo Native American for whom the city of Pantego is named. Vague records indicate that he was buried under an oak next to a small creek that now flows under Park Row Drive just east of Bowen Road. Pantego was slain by marauding Comanches or Kiowas, which couldn't have made him happy. Nor could his spirit be thrilled about those buildings and that concrete parking lot indifferently sealing his mortal remains.

Once upon a time, Bowen was a tiny country road, near which it was common for Boy Scouts to camp in the 1930s and '40s. Ghost stories are a ritual around Scout campfires, and one of the most common was of a ghostly phantom Indian seen lurking near the creek bottom. Was it Pantego? Or just overactive boyish imaginations? Or maybe only people with imaginations can see ghosts?

Or perhaps only hear them. Those who live near the Trinity River bottoms swear that they often hear the baying of Watch, a faithful dog belonging to Hamp Rattan. In 1842, Indians killed Rattan, who is buried in an unmarked grave -- along with four other pioneers -- near old Bird's Fort in far north Arlington. Watch would only leave the grave to forage for food and water. Although the spirits of the men buried there seem to be at rest, the baying ghost of Watch is not.

Then again, maybe that noise is simply raccoon or possum hunters with their dogs in full pursuit.

And what happens when the spirits who reside together in a cemetery have something of a bone to pick with one another?

Consider the Col. Middleton Tate Johnson Plantation Cemetery on Arkansas Lane near Matlock Road. Although the good colonel was nearly elected governor of Texas, he was -- before the Civil War -- also the owner of more slaves than anyone else in Tarrant County.

And there's the rub. The colonel and his family are buried on the east side of the cemetery, slaves and descendants of slaves on the west side, integration rare for the times. Since in death all are free, all are equal and none have masters, the nightly encounters between the ghost of the colonel and his former slaves must be both fearsome and everlasting. Or so one can hope.

But Arlington's saddest little cemetery, that for the Berachah Home for erring girls, as in unwed, is also one of its most obscure. Located in what is now Doug Russell Park next to the UT-Arlington campus, it contains the remains of a number of infants who died either in childbirth or shortly thereafter.

Only a single adult -- a Berachah matron who died during a great flu epidemic of the early 1900s -- rests in the cemetery, with perhaps a dozen infants. Those who believe in such things say that she occasionally sings to her ghostly babies, giving comfort to children who never knew their fathers and never grew to know their mothers either. Life -- and death -- can be very unfair.

Every cemetery plot, of course, is a story in itself. Maybe even a ghost story.
O.K. Carter's column appears Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays. Carter also co-hosts P3: People, Politics and Possibilities at 9:30 nightly on Comcast cable channel 16. (817) 548-5428 okc@star-telegram.com