Posted on 10/28/2005 8:28:35 PM PDT by hispanarepublicana
Ghosts, Haunted Places Part of "Weird Texas" LAST UPDATE: 10/28/2005 6:28:16 PM This story is available on your cell phone at mobile.woai.com.
This tale begins with a larger-than-life bronze statue of Christ, arms outstretched, resting atop a concrete pedestal above a family plot in the tree-lined gloom of the Oakwood Cemetery.
The statue's hands are palms up during the day. At night, so the tale goes, the statue's palms turn downward. And, the eyes follow any movement in the graveyard, home to the remains of Sam Houston, the father of Texas.
Known to locals as the "Black Jesus" because the bronze quickly weathered to ebony years ago, the sculpture marks the grave of prominent Texas lawyer Benjamin Harrison Powell, who died in 1960.
The yarn is featured in "Weird Texas," a new book of legends, mysteries, oddities, haunted places and ghostly tales of the state.
Over nearly 300 pages, the trio of writers Wesley Treat, of Arlington; Bob Riggs, of Austin; and Heather Shade, of El Paso, cover one end of Texas to the other in pursuit of unexplained phenomena, quirks and oddballs.
"Texas is an eccentric state," said Treat, who supplements his writing as a photographer and occasional actor. "Few people would disagree Texas has its own personality, quite a few eccentric people, a lot of tall tales, a lot of braggers. So stories get around."
Stories like a lost gold mine near El Paso. The crash of an alien airship in 1897 outside Aurora, north of Fort Worth. Ghost lights at Marfa in West Texas and in the Big Thicket of East Texas.
"I don't like to write about things I haven't personally visited," said Treat, 31. "I'll actually go and visit these things, track down people or local experts and talk to them. That's part of the fun, finding out real stories."
The book, an offspring of New Jersey publishers Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman, who turned their "Weird NJ" magazine into a "Weird U.S." book, includes a disclaimer that says while the authors attempted to present a historical record of legends and folklore, many of the anecdotes couldn't be independently confirmed or corroborated.
"Some of it's complete myth, urban legends," Treat said. "But some have a ring of truth to it."
Some of the truthful weird sites and phenomenon are easy to verify - like the thousands of Mexican bats that fly out from under the Congress Avenue bridge over Austin's Town Lake during warm nights, or the famed Cadillac Ranch, where 10 classic Cadillacs are buried face down, tail-ends up in a wheat field near Amarillo.
Others, however, require some imagination, which adds to the mystery.
Ghost sightings, for example, are plentiful in Texas, from the Lockhart firehouse, the railroad tracks in San Antonio, White Rock Lake near Dallas to the ghost nun of Loretto's Tower in El Paso and the Ring of Ghosts in Brazoria.
Ghosts apparently haunt Waco's Cameron Park, where supposedly a pair of horse thieves were hanged in trees by vigilantes, and at Arlington's Screaming Bridge tombstones reportedly glow in the Trinity River where a carload of teenagers were killed in a traffic accident in 1961.
The book's section on "creepy crypts and telltale tombs" tells the tale about the glowing grave in Kilgore of Karen Silkwood, a whistleblowing union activist and the subject of the movie "Silkwood" who mysteriously died in a 1974 traffic wreck in Oklahoma, and the concrete grave marker of a woman in a fetal position over a plot in the Old Fairview Cemetery in the Panhandle town of Memphis. What's weird about this one is no one's sure for whom the marker is intended.
Co-author Riggs is particularly familiar with East Texas, where he grew up in Sour Lake in Hardin County and now publishes a health magazine in Austin.
"People who live in the big cities don't have any clue how weird it is out in the woods and swamps of East Texas," said Riggs, 60.
He points to Ghost Road, otherwise known as Bragg Road, legendary in the Big Thicket as home of a playful basketball-sized ball of light.
"People sometimes see a light there and the light exhibits unusual behavior," Riggs said. "What I'm seeing in my work is this light is a genuine scientific anomaly, not just swamp gas, but a genuine unknown. I've been hearing stories about this stuff since I was a kid."
Riggs likes to tell about meeting a game warden who talked about people making repeated reports of seeing strange creatures or unexplained livestock killings in East Texas.
"This is a Parks and Wildlife Department game warden telling me this, but it wasn't hard for him to believe," he said. "I've done a lot of research, had enough things happen, been scared a few times myself."
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On the Net:
www.weirdus.com
Try this website for information on the "rock wall".
http://www.s8int.com/page22.html
Rockwall is close to Dallas.
"My grandpa used to tell creepy stories of ghosts he saw around the San Antonio area (of course, they might have been tequila-inspired)."
There are many, many ghosts in and around SA. I may have a tle or two... ;-)
tle = tale
The Aggies may be fixin' to lose. Iowa State just scored again.
that is one WIERD deal!
free dixie,sw
he's supposed to be LUCIFER.
free dixie,sw
Several years ago my mother woke up in the middle of the night and saw a bright light at the bedroom door. The light stayed for a few seconds and then faded away. She woke my dad up but he told her to go back to sleep. The next morning he went to check on my grandmother (his mom) who lived next door. She had passed away during the night.
Just south of Saint Jo, up in Montague County, there is another example of automotive art in a field. Somebody has painted eight VW bugs orange, with black spots, and placed them in a field...as if they were ladybug decoys.
The Devil's Backbone near Wimberly is reportedly one of the most haunted areas in Texas.
The Aggies took a dirt nap today but it was no surprise. Carl Torbush is about a lousy defensive coordinator as I've ever seen and despite all the hype, Franchione is mediocre at best. (Just as a side note, he also looks very much like Howard Dean. Too bad he doesn't have some of Dean's energy and enthusiasm.)
UT RULES!
free dixie,sw
That's a neat story. I'll bet your mother took real comfort in that.
I've never heard of this "feet of rooster" thing....tell me more.
There is a similar story in Balmorhea.
"hisssssssssss" to you both.
Even though I'm an Aggie, I've been cheering for Texas this season since they have a good chance to play for the national championship. Sure it would be nice for A&M to beat them but since it is highly unlikely, might as well lose to a team that will be playing in the Rose Bowl.
My father was murdered in Houston in 1992. His mother, who was near 90 and had dementia, was in a nursing home in Brookshire and had no clue what day it was nor who anyone but my dad was. Dad visited at least twice a week. We instructed the staff not to tell her as she would not remember the next day in any case. Two days after he died she went the the nurses station near midnight and said " what's going on here? My son just came to see me and said he was OK but wouldn't be able to visit anymore, and I want to know what is happening?"
SORRY!
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
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