East Texas ghosts. (original) (raw)

So, you don�t believe in ghosts?

Well, read on and we may make a believer of you, especially since this week brings Halloween.

• On Bragg Road, near Saratoga in Hardin County, many people have seen a ghostly light that appears out of the woods and often perches on automobile hoods, Hundreds have seen �the ghost of Bragg Road.�
• At Bethel Church at Bold Springs in Polk County, you can hear the stumbling of a man walking in the church. Supposedly, the ghost is that of a man whose leg was cut off after he raped a girl. The sound resembles a man walking on one leg and dragging the other.
• Around the 1970s, a group of workers, acting on the orders of county officials, tried to cut down Center�s famous hanging tree on the courthouse square. A photographer for the Center Champion said when a worker�s chain saw bit into the tree�s seasoned wood, the still summer day was pierced �by the most horrifying, bloodcurdling scream...that seemed to originate deep within the old oak.� Some said it was the scream of a former hanging victim whose spirit lived in the tree.
• West of Lufkin, you can reportedly hear at night the cries of an infant who died with its mother when their car ran off an old wooden bridge. The creek is known as �Crybaby Creek.� A similar story exists on a creek near DeKalb in Bowie County.
• An Patriot�s Hill, which stands beside the Sabine River, soldiers in the Civil War guarded the hill to keep Union soldiers from entering Texas. The men stayed at their posts until the war�s end, but some died from starvation and sickness, and, reportedly, their voices can be heard on the hill and some people claimed they have seen men in Civil War uniforms standing guard in the woods.
• At Danville Cemetery in Gregg County, a story claims a woman was killed by radiation while working at a power plant in Oklahoma. She was buried in the cemetery and some claim that her grave glows at night.
• At SFA State University, a ghost known as Chester haunts the Turner Fine Arts Auditorium. His face reportedly has been seen on a stage curtain and even in a play while it was in production.

Bob Bowman's East Texas October 25, 2009 Column
A weekly column syndicated in 70 East Texas newspapers
(Bob Bowman of Lufkin is the author of more than 40 books about East Texas. )
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