Texas has always been full of ghosts, from spirits that supposedly haunt The Alamo to the mysterious Saratoga Lights on “ghost road” in the woods of East Texas.
This time of year, it’s only natural that we gather round a (metaphorical) campfire to share the spookiest stories in the Lone Star State. To that end, The Barbed Wire culled stories from the far reaches of the internet, and we reached out to some verifiable experts in supernatural stories: ghost tour operators.
Are they true? We’ll let you be the judge. Read on, preferably with a flashlight under a blanket.
(Editor’s Note: Some of the responses have been minorly edited for brevity and clarity.)
The Watching Shadow
Gretchen Upshaw, Spell Caster Ghost Tours
October 2022 was the first Halloween season for Spell Caster Ghost Tours in Georgetown. I was a one-woman show and gave all of the ghost tours myself. I remember it was the Saturday night before Halloween, and I had a lovely group of 20 folks out with me on my Adults-Only Ghost Maker Tour. The tour is a blend of true crime, history, and hauntings, with a few drink stops for cocktails along the way. It’s always a great time.
We were about midway through the tour and stopped at the Palace Theatre to give the history and lore of the historic landmark. I told the group about the days when the Palace was a cinema and then let the group know that the ghostly claims seemed to be more legend than proven active hauntings. I explained that while doing research, I was having a hard time connecting the ghosts folks claimed to see with actual people from the location. Just then, a woman on my tour stepped forward and said, with absolute certainty, that “the Palace is totally haunted.”
I was thrilled! Finally, I would have a first-hand experience to add to my ghost tour repertoire. Tour guests always love local experiences; they add a little credibility to the story, and even the skeptics appreciate it. “Oh great! Are you willing to share?” I admit my tone was probably a plea of desperation, hoping she couldn’t refuse my ask.
She took a drink of her libation in a to-go cup, confidently faced the group, and told me and the crowd that both of her children did Summer Acting Camp at the Palace, and at the end of the camp, the kids put on a production.
“I loaded my kids up after the show, and my daughter said from the back seat that they had seen a ghost,” the woman said. She took another drink.
“Oh wow! Where?” I was ready to hand over the rest of the tour stop to her.
“She told me that they were sent out into the alley to change into their costumes, and all the kids saw a shadow behind a dumpster watching them.”
I scanned the crowd, and we all had the same expression of shock and confusion. The woman proudly took her place back in the group as I took about ten seconds to ponder a response. I asked, “Do you ever watch Nightline or 48 Hours?”
A man from the back chimed in, “Or Law & Order: SVU?”
After the uncomfortable chuckle, we started to our next stop when I heard another woman in the crowd say, “I think I would’ve called 9-1-1 on that ghost.”
‘That Was a Ghost’
Anita Carrera, New Braunfels Ghost Tours
My daughter, Alayna, used to work at The Faust Hotel, where people are familiar with the original owner Walter Faust. Alayna checked a couple in. The couple took the elevator upstairs and after a few minutes, the man came down and asked her to “give this $5 tip to the elevator man.”
My daughter explained that the hotel didn’t have an elevator man, but the man thought she was kidding and left. He came back down a little later and said, “That was a ghost.” She asked how he figured it out. He told her he was looking through a pamphlet about the hotel and saw a picture of the same man inside it. The label underneath said Mr. Faust died in 1934.
The man then tells my daughter, “That is exactly who was in the elevator with us.”
‘Darker Than the Dark’
Brandy Herr, Granbury Ghost Tour
There have been a couple memorable occurrences from investigating with my team, Research and Investigation of the Paranormal. The only time I can really remember being scared during an investigation happened at a building just off the square in Cleburne. We were on the third floor, standing in the front room, and looking into the back room. Each floor only had two rooms. I could see the outline of a man standing in the corner of the back room. He was a shadow that was darker than the dark of the room.
Suddenly, the shadow took a very deliberate, menacing step toward us. Simultaneously, I and the camera operator became short of breath, our hearts racing, as we both said, “We need to get out of here!” Luckily, the threat passed quickly because the stairs were located in the back room, so we would have had to go toward the ghost in order to leave.
One time, we were investigating a building just off the square in Granbury that has since been torn down. This building used to house a hospital. The entire night, I felt something following me around and touching me. Now, it’s easy to creep yourself out during these investigations, making yourself believe that things are happening when they really aren’t. However, every time I would feel myself being touched, the EMF detector, which detects the presence of energy, would immediately start lighting up near that part of the body, confirming that something was there. I felt something brush the side of my face in a gentle, stroking manner.
I asked the leader of the group to move the EMF detector near that side of my face, and it lit up brightly and strongly. Throughout the rest of the night, I would feel something touch my elbow, and when I moved the detector over near the elbow, there went the lights again. It’s important to note that I would feel these touches before the lights would flash. Oddly enough, I never felt scared during this investigation. Nothing felt malevolent. It was just exciting and intriguing.
The Pig in the Shed
Reddit user westlake76
For the spooky aficionados who want more, there’s a Reddit thread on r/texas with some truly harrowing ghost stories, including ones from a restaurant in Llano, a South Texas ranch, and another (allegedly) from a Houston-area medical facility: “I’d sometimes hear what I thought were patients out of their rooms and find no one there, or see something out of the corner of my eye that looked like a patient. The place always gave me the heebie-jeebies.”
But this one might be the most terrifying.
“A friend of mine worked for a guy who had inherited an old farmhouse, way out in the woods in deep East Texas,” wrote westlake76 two years ago. “The home had been abandoned for some years and the guy wanted to sell it, so they went out on a work trip to chop down some weeds and make the place viewable to potential buyers. My friend was a teenager at the time and agreed to go out there for a few days. They took a chainsaw, weed wacker, pruning shears, and headed off in the guy’s work truck.”
“The place was way back in the woods,” they wrote. “It took them a couple of hours to get there from Houston and an hour or so to cut trees off the driveway. When they got back to the house, they saw signs of someone living there. There were trails around the yard and forest; the guy got a handgun and went inside the house. Once inside, it was obvious someone was living in there, food was being cooked and the bed was slept on. They found lots of wild hog and catfish remains. Whoever was living (there) was eating them.”
“Then things got real weird,” they continued. “They found a domestic pig alive in the shed, there was a closet in the shed with some women’s nightgowns and bras. It seemed as if whoever was living there was dressing the pig up in a bad way.Then they started to find weapons all around the place, a machete, axe, and sticks. It was obvious whoever was living there had just left when they got there. They were probably close by in the woods.”
“My friend and the guy he was working for left to get some more guns and help,” they added. “My friend would not go back to the place. They guy offered him another dollar or two an hour. He told him, ‘No thanks.’
When another commenter asked, “What happened when the other guy went back?” westlake76 replied, “I am not sure. My friend doesn’t like to talk about the entire situation. It really disturbed him.”
Other spooky stories in the thread took place in Brownsville, and one in San Angelo featured a deer walking upright on its hind legs.
Another Reddit user commented, “I’ve met Ted Cruz once. That was pretty horrifying.”