Lately you might have noticed a red-headed woman wandering around in Denton muttering to herself. Don’t be alarmed; it’s only me practicing ghost stories. I promise I am not just answering the voices in my head. In fact, stop me and I might tell you one ghostly tale.

Better yet, join me for a ghost tour of Denton on Memorial Day Weekend. I’ll be thrilled to tell you lots of stories.

I told y’all back in October about the Denton Haunts Tour that “Doc T” offered. His tour was one of my favorite ever except perhaps The Ghost Tours of Galveston with Dash Beardsley … but then, Dash has Galveston as a backdrop and you can’t beat that. Doc T (aka Shaun Treat) did an outstanding job of weaving history with mystery.

In Denton during the dead of winter it’s too dang cold to do a walking tour. I wondered if the tour itself was dead. It was only sleeping. I saw Shaun at the coffeehouse and asked when the next tours would be; he said he was “busier than a three-legged dog” as he prepared his final articles to receive his tenure from UNT. Though Shaun still writes on the Denton Haunts blog, he wasn’t planning any tours until next fall.

I couldn’t stand for that, people. The stories are too good to just let them languish. So, I begged, and whined, and promised to scrub his toilets if he would let me take people on the tours this summer. He agreed! Hot dog!

Most of the stories I will be telling were collected by Shaun, but he gave me his notes. I’ve been doing more research to be able to tell the stories my way. I loved hearing Shaun’s versions of the stories, but every storyteller is different. I need to make the stories fit my mouth, and I hope to “do him proud,” as we say in these parts. Don’t worry, I am a professional storyteller. I don’t brag often (even though I AM a 5th generation Texan … which means braggin’ is in my blood), but the National Endowment for the Arts named me an “American Masterpiece.” That and $5 will get me a cup of coffee.

So, here is “the scoop:”

WHAT:

WHEN:

• On Friday, May 25th there will be a Denton Haunts Ghost Tour at 7:30 p.m.
• On Saturday, May 26th there will be a tour at 5:00 p.m. and another at 7:30 p.m.
• Thereafter, through the summer, tours will be offered on Saturday nights at 7:30 p.m.
• IF you have a group of 10 or more and want to make special arrangements, I can offer tours from Sunday through Thursday.

COST:

WHERE:

CONTACT:

There you have it. Be there, on the square, on Memorial Day weekend. While you are thinking about it, I won’t be offended if you go to Facebook and “like” Denton Haunts. In fact, you can share it with 100 of your closest friends. Here is hoping that I see some of you as we share some mystery and history with the ghostly tales of Denton.

© Shelly for This Eclectic Life, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Denton, ghost tours, Ghostly--Mostly

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You must have local roots if you want to be “planted” in the Old Alton Cemetery. With over 600 souls laid to rest there (though some folks say they aren’t all “resting”), this graveyard is just about full. Old Alton Cemetery is one of the earliest graveyards in Denton County, with graves dating from at least 1852. Alton, which no longer exists, was the second county seat before the city of Denton was established. Most of the people buried here are the earliest settlers of the county and their descendants. Today, one can’t just go and choose a plot here … you have to be connected. It’s not like in the last century when a family who was passing through “up and died of the plague,” and got a proper burial with cement crosses. Though no one knew the names to put on them, at least they got markers.

Over 80 of the graves were only marked by sandstone rocks (if they were marked at all) until the current groundskeeper gave them iron crosses. It’s a melancholy sight to see them scattered across the lawn. The groundskeeper isn’t going to like it, but I left stones on several of the tombstones to signify that I honor the memory of those who have gone before. Maybe, with all the sandstone, he won’t notice?

I know a little more about the cemetery because that groundskeeper stopped mowing long enough to talk to me when I visited the cemetery today. I’m sure that he was just curious about why some silly woman was taking pictures and writing notes. He was kind enough to share what he knew of the history of this graveyard. He thinks that there are more people buried here than the records show. In fact, he said that there were some people who were buried outside the fence of the cemetery — you see, some of the settlers owned slaves who were not allowed to be buried there. He pointed to two different stands of iris and said, “That’s about where I think they are buried. I figure that the iris are the markers.”

Straight-faced, I said, “So, the iris are a dead giveaway?” When he recognized that I was being “punny,” he shot me a disgusted look that would have given a lesser woman a heart attack. Guess he doesn’t like graveyard humor, bless his heart.

At one point, the man wiped the sweat from his brow and laughed. “You wouldn’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head in bewilderment, “but some crazy ghost-hunter lady came out here with all kinds of cameras and contraptions to see if this place was haunted.”

GULP!

I am so glad I didn’t tell him my true motive for being there! Instead, I played along with his skepticism as if I too were skeptical (it’s called “pretexting” in the private investigation business) and questioned him about what that other “crazy ghost-hunter lady” found. He told me a couple of hair raising tales. One of them involved a mimosa tree that had been growing near a child’s grave. He had just cut that mimosa down last year … supposedly because a storm damaged it, but I can’t help but wonder if he was a bit afraid of it after hearing her tales!

If you have read this far, you might be wondering why I am not telling you the stories. After all, Shelly always tells you the stories! Later this week, I will tell you why I won’t be telling them to you here (that should be a dead giveaway that I’m ready to start blogging again!). Until then, you will just have to guess.

© Shelly for This Eclectic Life, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Denton, Ghostly--Mostly, History, photos

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She had to sit down to tell me her story because even though it happened some time ago, it still made her weak in the knees to think about the ghosts. I asked B. if she had ever encountered a ghost while she worked at the Emily Morgan Hotel. The look of fear on her face told me that she had … and that it had not been “pleasant.” To hear her tell it, she encountered several at one time.

“I had only been working here a few months when it happened,” she said. “I was working the late shift and it was 10:45 at night when a call came for me to take towels to the 11th floor.”

From what I could tell, B. worked as a cross between “hospitality” and “housekeeping” at the Emily Morgan Hotel in San Antonio. She said that she didn’t clean the rooms, but if one needed amenities, (such as towels, coffee, soap and the like) she would possibly be the one to bring it to one’s room. I’m not familiar with hotel jargon, but I suppose that is just called “room service.”

If you have never seen the Emily Morgan, it is in downtown San Antonio near the Alamo, and it’s a beauty to behold. It’s a tall, Gothic Revival style building that once housed the Medical Arts Building. I had been told that there was, at that time, a morgue in the basement, and that there is a lot of ghostly activity there. That’s why I had queried B. about the place on the night we stayed there. I hoped that she knew something about the ghosts there, and I was not disappointed!

On the night in question, B. had been asked to take a large amount of towels and other amenities to room 1108. Her shift was almost over, her children were at home needing attention, and her ride was already waiting for her outside. She really wished she didn’t have to do this last minute chore.

B. rushed upstairs with her load of goodies for the guests. The hall on the 11th floor was deserted when she arrived. She remembered that the silence on the floor registered in her mind, and disturbed her a bit. It wouldn’t be silent for long!

She knocked on the door of room 1108, but there was no answer. She knocked again and called out “room service.” Still not hearing an answer, B. decided that the guests had gone out for the night. She stepped into the middle of the hall to put down her armload of towels and fumbled in her pocket for the room key.

While she stood in the hall, she heard the sound of footsteps. “It was as if children were running all around me, you know how they play?” she said. “I could hear children giggling, and they called out ‘Knock, knock. Knock, knock.’ They were funning me, you know?”

B. didn’t think it was much “fun.” In fact, she was so frightened that she left the towels in the floor and took the stairs down to the lobby as fast as her feet would carry her. She didn’t return to the 11th floor that night!

Although B. has been back on the 11th floor since that time (she has to go to that floor if she wants to keep her job) she is always nervous about it. She told me that she is not the only person who has heard the children playing and calling out “knock, knock.” It has happened many times.

Don’t be surprised if you go to the Emily Morgan Hotel and knock on a door. You might hear giggling ghosts running around you making fun of you for knocking. They will be “funning” you. Perhaps, unlike B., you would consider that your kind of fun?

© Shelly for This Eclectic Life, 2011. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ghost story, Ghostly--Mostly, San Antonio Texas

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A line of lighted carriages stood outside our hotel last night as if waiting for Cinderella. It was tempting, but we did not take a ride through downtown San Antonio. I guess we weren’t feeling like Cinderella last night, and we didn’t want to take the time. We were waiting for something else …ghosts! Although we heard some good ghostly stories about our lodgings, the Emily Morgan Hotel (which is reported to be quite haunted), we didn’t see any ghosts. However, we did see one odd occurrence.

Do you see the stone wall behind the carriage? I’m told that is one of the most haunted places in San Antonio. It is on East Houston Street, and is part of the wall bordering the shrine of the Alamo. We were told that apparitions have often been seen there, and that photographers regularly capture pictures of “orbs,” which are supposed to indicate the presence of spirits.

We sat outside the hotel snapping pictures in anticipation of those orbs, enjoying the view of those lovely carriages on the street … and enduring the very fragrant aroma of horse manure. Suddenly, one of the horses began to skitter away from that wall into the street. While the driver and another person tried to calm it, all of the horses in the line began to grow agitated and try to get away from that wall! The drivers finally had to take them down the street to another parking place to wait for Cinderella.

One of the waiters at the hotel restaurant (who often captured orbs on his camera) told us that the horses often sensed paranormal activity at the wall. When I remarked about the horses becoming upset while we watched last night, he said, “That’s nothing! You should have seen the night they stampeded down the street! One of them nearly came through the front window of the hotel. Yes, those horses know when the dead are walking!”

Did the horses spook because they saw a “spook?” I really couldn’t tell you.

We saw no “walking dead,” although I was looking, that’s for sure (and in case those “walking dead” were zombies, I was ready with a tire iron). I captured no orbs on my camera. But, as I said, I got a few good stories from folks at the hotel (which I’ll probably share in the next week or so). We also had an excellent stay at one of the finest hotels in San Antonio.

Our room at the Emily Morgan Hotel (a Gothic Revival masterpiece that once housed the Medical Arts Building) overlooked the Alamo. San Antonio at night is absolutely beautiful and I hope you all get a chance to see it one day. I can safely say that our room at this hotel was one of the most elegant hotel rooms I’ve encountered in my travels. It could be that I was enamored of the jacuzzi tub … but, that room had everything going for it. I didn’t even want to leave it to explore downtown San Antonio!

The best part of our stay was the staff. Without exception they were helpful, friendly, and ready to share a ghost story! Just in case you don’t get to go there, keep in touch. I’m working on getting the stories I heard written down for you. Now, it’s getting late in my neck of the woods. I’m going to bed before I “turn into a pumpkin,” as Daddy used to say. I never get to be “Cinderella!”

© Shelly for This Eclectic Life, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ghostly--Mostly, San Antonio Texas

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Quite often, when I tell ghost stories, an audience member wants to share their own ghost tale with me. Usually in schools I don’t have time to stop and listen because the next class is already on the way in the door. One day, however, I had free time between classes. When I felt a tug on my sleeve, I looked into the earnest eyes of an eleven year old girl who said, “Can I tell you about when we lived in Mexico and my Papá saw La Chusa?” How could I resist?

I’ll call this young girl “Lydia,” because I shouldn’t be sharing her name. As we sat down together, Lydia told me that her story was about her Daddy’s encounter with the old woman who lived down the street and with “La Chusa,” a winged female figure in Mexican folklore (resembling an owl) who steals the souls of dying people. Believe that I was chomping at the bit to hear her tale. But, first I wanted to know about the main characters.

Because Lydia was only eleven, I wanted to define “old woman.” She said, “Oh, she wasn’t old like you … she was old old … she was antique!” I was relieved to know that I was not considered “antique.”

Here is what Lydia told me:

Back when we lived in Mexico, there was an antique lady who lived down the street. She had so many cats that she couldn’t keep track of them. They were in her house, on her house, all over the yard … everywhere. That’s why she didn’t seem to like kids in her yard. We scared the cats.

My Papá always helped that antique lady when he could. He mowed her lawn (when she would let him), he took her to town to buy groceries, he carried out her trash. She liked my Papá, so she sometimes let my sisters and me pet the cats or help feed them.

Papá had gotten really busy at work; some days he worked two shifts so he was always tired. He hadn’t been helping that antique lady as much. He felt bad about that, but there wasn’t anything he could do, because he didn’t want to get fired.

One evening, he was driving home from work. He was so tired he could barely stay awake. When he was about a mile from our house, he saw that antique lady walking on the side of the road carrying grocery bags. He thought, “Oh, I should have taken her to the store!”

Papá pulled over and helped the antique lady into the back seat of the car to give her a ride home. He apologized for not taking her to the store. She frowned at him and said, “I have to get home! My cats are hungry and they didn’t have any food.”

Papá drove down the street talking to that antique lady, but she was mad and wouldn’t talk back to him. Out of nowhere a white owl swooped down and flew right into the hood of Papá’s car! He stopped the car and got out to look. The owl was nowhere to be seen! When he got back into the car and looked into the back seat, the lady was gone!

Papá was shaking. He thought that maybe he had been working so hard that he was dreaming while he was awake.

When he got home, Mamá met him at the door. She had been crying and she said, “Oh, I have to tell you that there was a terrible accident today.”

Papá closed his eyes and sighed, “I know. It happened to the old lady down the street, didn’t it?”

Mamá’s eyes got as big around as tortillas, “How did you know that?”

He told her about giving the old lady a ride, and how the owl hit his car. Right then Mamá fainted. When she opened her eyes again, she told Papá, “That old lady walked to town to get cat food. When she was walking home, she got hit by a car. That happened this morning! She died on the street right where the owl flew into your car! Was that owl La Chusa?”

Lydia was a master storyteller and had me on the edge of my seat. She had to go to class then, so I didn’t get to find out more. I shared the tale with the librarian and we chuckled about it, wondering if Lydia had a big imagination. A week later, the librarian e-mailed me to say that Lydia’s mother had confirmed the tale!

I think I am going to have to start scheduling breaks between storytelling sessions, so I can get some more tales like this one!

© Shelly for This Eclectic Life, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ghost story, Ghostly--Mostly

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Years ago a librarian in San Antonio shared a story about her own grandmother’s ghost in Dime Box, Texas. I took the information she gave me and wrote a story. When she read it, she gave me permission to tell the tale, but asked that I change the names, so as not to upset her family members. The story below is her account. Although the house in the picture is very much like the one in the story it is not. I can’t show you that house, for a family still lives there.

A house just like The Nest

East of Austin, Texas between Giddings and Caldwell on Highway 21, there is a tiny hamlet called Old Dime Box. That was the first site of the town, but when the railroad was built it bypassed the town. The merchants who could afford it (and anyone else who fancied themselves as “important”) just picked up and moved to the new location. If you head south on Farm to Market Road 141 you’ll find New Dime Box.

Just before you get to town, the road splits, and there sits an old farmhouse. It doesn’t look very fancy house to our eyes these days, but when it was built in the early 1900s, it was the dream home for Ada Dubina Sokol.

Ada Dubina married Frank Sokol when she was only 17, and at first they lived in a very small house in Old Dime Box. But, Frank’s fortunes as a cotton broker and as a fledgling banker improved quickly. They hadn’t been married long when he built Ada the house of her dreams on acreage in prestigious New Dime Box.

It was everything a woman of Ada’s day could want: a two-story white clapboard house with long, shady porches across the front and the back. The upstairs was one big room shaped like a cross. Each section was curtained off to make four sleeping cubbies in the upstairs … each with it’s own window looking out on the yard. Downstairs were two more bedrooms, the parlor, the dining room, and a state of the art kitchen.

That kitchen had an enormous wood-burning stove, the biggest anyone in the county had ever seen (brought all the way from San Antonio), and it had a sink pump that brought in water from the cistern that caught the rainwater out back. Behind the house there was not one, but two outhouses! Indeed this was a house that every woman in the area envied.

Ada and Frank settled into their home, and began raising their family. Ada happily went about the tasks of making her little corner of the world productive. Think for a moment of all the work a housewife had to do in Ada’s day just to have a good life:

She had a vegetable garden, of course, with every vegetable you can name growing in it and some vegetables you couldn’t name! Frank planted a vineyard to grow grapes for Ada’s special wine. He planted an orchard for her that included peach trees, pear trees, pecan trees, grapes, and a jujube tree. Ada spent her summers canning vegetables and making jams and jellies. She even canned jar after jar of jujube, even though not many people in the house would eat them! A jujube is a hard, oblong fruit, that doesn’t have a lot of appeal, but Ada canned them anyway, because nothing should go to waste.

She raised her own chickens for the eggs and the meat; the cows she raised supplied her with cottage cheese and butter from their milk. As their family grew, she had a lot of work to do. They had seven children who survived childhood, although there were several miscarriages and a set of twins who died in infancy.

That many children create a lot of laundry. Ada made her own lye soap from the pig fat they saved when they butchered hogs. She washed clothes in an iron pot over the fire every Monday, and ironed with her kerosene iron every Tuesday.

With so many mouths to feed, there was a lot of cooking, too. And Ada was a master at that. She cooked all of the Czechoslovakian pastries her grandmother had taught her to make, such as poppy-seed kolaches, strudel and breads. She also made sauerkraut, baked chicken, and boiled fresh vegetables. That fancy wood burning stove was blasting the heat into the house day and night during winter, when the heat was welcome, and throughout the Texas summer when that stove made the kitchen feel like an inferno.

Obviously, Ada had a lot of work to do, but she still found time for her passions. She loved playing with her children, she adored cats (there were scores of them running around the farm), and she enjoyed flowers.

In fact, her front yard had no grass … just beds of poppies, cockscomb, gladiolas, roses, larkspur, honeysuckle. In spring, the place was a feast for the eye.

Ada was content in her home. She called it her “nest,” and she hated to leave it even to go to church on Sundays. Ada loved the evenings spent sitting on her shady porches watching the children play in the yard while she petted her cats and enjoyed the perfume from her garden flowers.

The years passed. Ada and Frank grew old while their children grew up and moved to Austin and San Antonio where there was work to be had. They raised families of their own. Ada didn’t feel abandoned, for still her life was full. She had her flowers, her cats, and always had grandchildren visiting.

After Frank died, Ada was a little lonely at times. But, she almost refused to leave her nest. She was worried that something would happen to her home if she left. Mostly Ada spent her time fretting about what would happen to her home and her cats and flowers after she died. She knew that none of her children or grandchildren would want to live in Dime Box. She made them promise that they would take care of the place after she died. Of course, they assured her that they would.

Gradually, Ada’s health began to fail. In her 90’s, she passed away peacefully in her sleep. Then her worst fears were realized. The family couldn’t keep that house in Dime Box. No one wanted to live there. There wasn’t anything realistic that they could do but get rid of it.

The family came to the house and cleared out Ada’s belongings, including jar after dusty jar of jujube. Then, they sold the place along with some of the furniture to a couple from out of state.

Strangely, that couple only stayed at the house three months before they sold it again. It seems that they had been seeing the apparition of an old woman wandering through the house rearranging things. That apparition had even fussed at the new owners, telling them to get out of her house and leave her things alone! It proved to be too much excitement for them, and they were glad to be rid of the place.

The next family that bought it knew about the ghost, but weren’t too worried about it. It was a man and wife with their children and their foster children … seven children in all. Yes, they saw Ada wandering through the garden working with the plants and petting her cats. They heard doors rattling and saw Ada rocking in her chair on the porch. She rearranged things all the time. However, they knew that she was just a kindly old woman when she was alive, so they weren’t afraid.

At least they weren’t until the re-modeling began.

They needed an indoor bathroom. The family hired workers to come and tear out walls and build a modern bathroom for the house. Someone who was at that house did not like the changes to her nest. She made it abundantly clear in the only way she could.

Soon the workers complained that boards just fell right off the walls for no reason. Nails went flying across the room and stuck into the walls. They said that if they put their tools down and turned away, the tools moved to different locations. Soon, those carpenters decided they could make better money (with less disturbance) elsewhere. They quit the job. More workers were hired, but they didn’t last long. It took three sets of carpenters to finally get the new bathroom built.

The workers weren’t the only ones experiencing the disturbance. Throughout the entire experience, the family felt Ada’s anger. At night as they nestled into their pillows to sleep, loud hammering sounds began inside the walls! Dishes, flung by invisible hands, flew from the tables and smashed on the walls. The rocking chair rocked furiously on the porch. It didn’t take long at all for the children to become terrified. They knew it was Ada expressing her rage at the changes.

One day when the children were at school, the mother saw Ada’s ghost in the yard smelling the roses. She decided that enough was enough. It was time to put an end to these shenanigans. She couldn’t have the children terrified, and they needed an indoor bathroom. That woman took off her apron and marched into the garden to confront the ghost.

She called out to Ada, “Old woman, I’m taking good care of your plants, and I’m taking good care of your cats. You don’t have a thing in the world to worry about! Why don’t you go rest now?”

A slow smile spread across the face of Ada’s apparition. She turned and walked into the garden and vanished. Ada was never seen by that family again. They thought that perhaps Ada could rest in peace knowing that her nest was in good hands, and that it was covered with flowers, cats, and children. Hopefully, any new owners have recognized that they shouldn’t make any changes to the house … and that they had darned well better take care of Ada’s nest.

© Shelly for This Eclectic Life, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ghostly--Mostly, Storytelling

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I had no clue that the courthouse in my hometown had a resident ghost (or two, or three). I just thought that Denton had one of the most lovely courthouses in Texas. I didn’t know it had a ghost story!

Sure, I knew there was a tiny cemetery-for-one on the lawn of the building. I was aware that it was the third gravesite for John B. Denton who was a minister/lawyer/soldier/politician (does that seem like an unlikely mix to you?) back in the early 1800s. I had heard that he was killed in an Indian raid … but I didn’t know about his ghost!

In fact, I didn’t know that nearly every doggone building on the Courthouse Square has a ghost story — until I took the Denton Haunts and Ghost Tour last week. “Doc T,” who is really a University professor named Shaun Treat, led us around the courthouse sharing fascinating mystery and history. He has more ghost tales about Denton than Carter has liver pills, and he can back those tales with historical fact. I could listen to him for hours!

If you haven’t taken this tour (and are going to be in my neck of the woods), you really must schedule it among your Halloween activities. Doc T offers you the perfect spine-tingling “Treat.” {Note: If you read the comments, Doc T is offering a special deal just for reading this post!} You will not be disappointed. It’s one of the best ghost tours I’ve taken … and Doc T has only just begun! He will make you shiver more than once before the night is through.

To tell the truth, I’m still feeling a bit shaky two days later. I want to go get a bacon donut at that favorite donut shop I told you about, Square Donuts, but there is a ghost in there! I knew the donuts were devilishly delicious, and now I know why.

You can join Doc T on that tour this weekend (Thursday through Sunday … and probably on Monday), and all you have to do is show up at John B. Denton’s grave on the Courthouse lawn. Check the website for more information or visit Denton Haunts on Facebook. The tour is $10, and it would be “cheap at twice the price.”

I suggest that you park your car under a streetlight. You don’t want to walk through the shadows after Doc T gets through with you … else you will be screaming like a girl!

© Shelly for This Eclectic Life, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Denton, ghost tours, Ghostly--Mostly

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