April Slaughter

by Ghosthunting Texas

  When Allen and I arrived at the Texas and climbed aboard, I was only half-serious when I asked him if he’d ever seen a ghost aboard the ship.

  “Come to think of it, I think I actually may have,” he said. “One summer we’d had family come out to Houston to visit us, and whenever we had family come out, visiting the Texas was just something we did.

  “I don’t ever remember hearing that the ship was haunted when I was a kid, so I didn’t visit thinking I would run into anything strange while I was there.”

  “How old were you when you had a strange experience here?” I asked.

  “Thirteen or fourteen, maybe. I can’t remember exactly.”

  Allen pointed out the enormous gun barrels jutting out toward the front of the ship as we walked along the top deck.

  “On this particular visit, I wanted to crawl up into one of the main turrets that housed one of these fourteen-inch guns,” he continued. “No one else wanted to crawl up in there with me because they knew it was going to be extremely hot in there. It’s an entirely enclosed space, and on a hot summer day it wouldn’t be fun in there for long.

  “I decided I wanted to go up inside anyway, so I crawled up the ladder. When I got into the turret area, there was an older gentleman sitting on a small steel seat inside. I said hello, and just started looking around at everything. I was in awe of how much stuff had been crammed into such a small space, and I made mention of how large the gun was.

  “That apparently sparked his interest, and he told me that the very spot we were standing in was his duty station during World War II. His entire naval career was spent manning that gun, and as I asked questions about the various controls and whatnot in the room, he calmly explained to me how each and every one of them worked.

  “He told me how hot it would get in that room, and his only reprieve from the heat would be when he stripped down to his underwear to keep as cool as possible. These guns were not automatic. They’d shoot one huge round and then have to be reloaded. It was seriously hard work to keep that gun firing when it needed to be.”

  “I wonder how it felt for him to be back in that space,” I said.

  “He had a very solemn but peaceful look on his face during our entire conversation,” said Allen. “I could tell that he was proud of the time he spent there, but he also looked very worn by the experience.”

  “I got distracted by something and for a short moment my attention was pulled away from him,” Allen continued. “I turned back toward him to ask about something, but he was gone.”

  “Gone? You mean he just up and left the room?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I didn’t hear or see him leave. He just wasn’t there anymore.”

  Allen did not suspect that he might have carried on a conversation with a ghost. He had no idea the ship was reportedly haunted. He was just interested in seeing the mechanics of it. When he crawled out of the turret, he mentioned the man to his family but none of them had seen him. He continued with his tour of the ship, and didn’t think much more of the incident until now.

  “I wonder if you interrupted the spirit of a sailor stopping in for a visit to his old duty station,” I said.

  “I don’t know. He was there one second, and the next he was gone. He was an older guy, so it’s not as if he could have just taken off that quickly without my noticing.”

  As ghosthunters, I think we tend to forget that not everything works according to our timeline, or in the way we would most like them to. We’re preoccupied during the day with our lives and the things we need to get done, but how often do we stop to think that perhaps those on the other side have schedules or routines as well? We want ghosts to give us signs of their presence when we’re lurking about in some dark place, not necessarily when they want to give them to us.

  It’s something I have thought about for years—how often are we seeing and experiencing the spirits of those who have passed on during our regular, everyday lives and not realizing it? It is possible that Allen met and spoke with an individual who had died years earlier, but because he seemed real and physical at the time (and appeared in the middle of the day), Allen automatically perceived him as a living, breathing person. I truly believe that the dead are all around us, and that seeing and interacting with them is not exclusive to those with psychic abilities.

  I don’t think that every ghost we encounter is “earth bound.” In fact, I think spirits often make nostalgic visits of their own to people and places that meant a great deal to them during their lives. I don’t presume to know for sure, but part of me thinks the sailor Allen encountered probably lived a long and happy life once he left the Texas. He may have died somewhere else in the country, or on the opposite side of the planet, but this ship probably meant enough to him to revisit it.

  Sailor after sailor came and went on the battleship Texas. They saw times of peace as well as times of war. They suffered through being separated from their families, working long, hard hours, and probably endured rather frightening moments on numerous occasions. The entire spectrum of human emotion, from devastation and loss to victory and elation, was experienced on this ship. Is it any wonder that a sailor or two might still be “manning the rails” long after the battleship’s days at sea have ended?

  Spotlight on Ghosts: Ghost Dogs of Orozimbo Plantation

  The Battle of San Jacint occurred on April 21, 1836, and lasted a mere eighteen minutes. Sam Houston led the Texas army to fight Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, resulting in the loss of hundreds of men, only nine of which were Texas soldiers. San Jacinto was the victory that ende the Texas Revolution and secured Texas’ inde endence from Mexico. Santa Anna was caught dressed as a common soldier the day after the battle, and he was held prisoner at several plantations in the south while his captors negotiated his fate. He was eventually transported to the Orozimbo Plantation on the Brazos River, less than a dozen miles north of West Columbia.

  A Mexican officer accompanied by several of his men made plans to advance on the plantation and free their president. The thick trees bordering the river provided an excellent cover as they advanced one stormy evening, taking advantage of the sound of the pouring rain to conceal their approach to the farmhouse in which Santa Anna was held prisoner. Just as they were about to rush the guards, an eerie and unmistakable sound of howling dogs came quickly towards them, and the Mexican men were forced to retreat. Those keeping guard at the farmhouse went to investigate, but found no animals in the area.

  The howling dogs had been heard by many, yet no one could explain where they had come from as they had not been seen. Speculation arose that they may have belonged to a man who went off to war and never came home, forever leaving his faithful friends to search for him.

  It has been well over a century since Santa Anna was held at Orozimbo, yet stories of the phantom dogs never seem to fade away. In fact, many people still claim to hear the pack roaming through the dense jungle of trees near the property, letting out an eerie howl as they approach. While Santa Anna was eventually allowed to return to his country, the ghosts dogs are still—and might forever be—keeping watch over Orozimbo Plantation.

  South Texas

  Corpus Christi

  USS Lexington

  Grey Forest/Helotes

  Grey Moss Inn

  San Antonio

  The Alamo

  CHAPTER 28

  Grey Moss Inn GREY FOREST / HELOTES

  Patio seating at the Grey Moss Inn restaurant (River Rock Photography)

  FOR TWENTY-THREE YEARS, Nell Baeten has known there are ghosts in her restaurant.

  “I have never set out to convince anyone that there are spirits here, and I never will,” she said. “Strange things happen all the time and the spirits here have become part of my life. Fact is, it’s my job to run the restaurant, not to try and make anyone else believe it is haunted.”

  That was how my conversation with Nell began when I made my first trip out to the Grey Moss Inn and expressed my desire to include it
in a book about Texas haunts. Several of my friends had dined at the restaurant over the years, and had suggested to me that it had a resident ghost or two.

  Anyone can claim to have ghosts, and I have found it is not at all uncommon for places of business to conveniently become “haunted.” Let’s face it—ghosts are intriguing, and have the potential of drawing in a crowd. It’s a great marketing tool if you can pull it off, and I have seen it happen often. What impressed me most about Nell and the Grey Moss Inn is that she acknowledges that the resident ghosts are there but doesn’t use them to attract customers.

  Texas is big state, and I had scores of locations I could have chosen to include in this book, but in the end, I wanted to bring attention to the places I most believed in. The Grey Moss Inn is one such place. The restaurant is well-known for its delectable menu and impeccable customer service, and not so much for its ghosts, but the more I got to know about the paranormal goings on there, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit and share its story.

  The restaurant was built just outside of Grey Forest, Texas, in 1929 and was originally run by Mary Howell. She lived in a small cottage on the property and took great pride in serving her customers. Up until recently, little had changed in the main dining room of the restaurant over the years except for the occasional change in paint color. In early 2009, the Baetens decided it was time for a bit of an overhaul and hired contractors to remodel the restaurant.

  “I knew before we even started on it that the spirits here would be disturbed,” said Nell. “I didn’t mention it to any of the men that came in to work on the remodel, but I wasn’t at all surprised when they mentioned they had seen things in the restaurant.”

  “What did they see?” I asked.

  “There were three or four guys sanding down some of the wood who said they saw several different people moving around as they worked. They also caught sight of a woman in the garden room who just up and disappeared.”

  The contractors also noticed several people they had not seen before wandering around the restaurant, as if they were busy working on their own tasks. As soon as their attention was drawn to them they were no longer there.

  “Is this place haunted?” they asked Nell.

  As soon as the dining room renovation was completed, Nell began putting up her own personal touches on the walls and shelves.

  “I had a beautiful plate I wanted to display on one of the shelves. It didn’t exactly go with the room’s décor, but I really liked it,” she said. “It was red and had these beautiful gold foil streaks running through it. As soon as I put it up on the shelf and made sure it was secure, I thought to myself, I wonder how the spirits will like this plate, as it’s so different.”

  Just as the thought crossed Nell’s mind, the plate began to fall forward. She quickly reacted to grab it, but it toppled over the back of her hands and smashed to pieces on the floor.

  “I guess they answered that question,” she remarked.

  “How do the employees feel about your ghostly residents?” I asked her.

  “Well, one of our servers was spooked a little one night,” Nell answered. “At the end of the day, he would walk around the restaurant to make sure everything was shut down and locked for the night before leaving. On this particular night, as he walked to the office area, he glanced back in the direction of the main dining room and noticed there was a light on. He knew he had just turned that light out moments earlier. As he walked back in to turn it off, he reached for the switch and glanced across the adjacent dining room, where he saw a face staring back at him. He moved slowly and watched as the face mirrored his movements exactly.”

  “Was he seeing his own reflection in something?” I asked.

  “He said the man looked nothing like him, and it was just a face—nothing more,” she replied. “He had been such a doubting Thomas before that happened. Needless to say, he believed the stories a bit more after that incident.”

  More than one apparition has been seen in the restaurant, and no one knows exactly who they are. According to one psychic who visited the Grey Moss Inn, the foundation of the building belonged originally to a church. She could see a group of people as they sat in what she described as church pews. She had the distinct impression that Mormons had once wanted to settle in the area. Though the church building was no longer there, was its faithful congregation from the past still coming here to worship?

  “Even when I say things are calm and uneventful here in the restaurant, they’re not,” Nell continued.

  “I’ll be sitting in the office when I am the only one here,” she continued. “And I’ll feel this strange need to scoot my chair up closer to the desk. I feel this sense of someone needing to get by me and then think to myself, wait, there isn’t anyone else here.”

  Wherever there is a good ghost story, there is a paranormal investigator hot on its trail. Eddie Hill of After Dark Paranormal in San Antonio had come to the Grey Moss Inn with his team to see what activity they could capture with their array of technical tools. During one of their investigations, they set up motion-triggered photography equipment and watched from the porch as several flashes went off inside the restaurant. Confident they had captured something anomalous on film, they reviewed the pictures and found that there was no obvious explanation for the cameras having gone off.

  One of the greatest frustrations among investigators is experiencing paranormal phenomena without the ability to record it for everyone else to see. Scientific tools are invaluable, and there are indeed times when we get lucky and catch something with it, but unexplained things can and do happen that science has not yet been able to prove. Does that mean the phenomenon we’re experiencing doesn’t really exist? No. In my view, it is an indication that science needs to evolve just as our theories and perceptions have evolved since the dawn of human existence. No one piece of equipment is the say-all-end-all answer. Everything we do in the paranormal field is purely experimental.

  Why not begin creating different equations to determine what the final result will be? That is exactly what Eddie and After Dark Paranormal did. Christine Sollers is a psychic sensitive who works with the team, and on her very first visit to the Grey Moss Inn, she indicated that the energetic environment was a bit too much for her and she would not be staying. She did, however, return on other scheduled visits to the restaurant and would eventually relay some interesting impressions about the property to Nell.

  As she entered the kitchen, Christine felt as though that space was occupied by a male spirit who was not very pleasant. Oddly enough, the kitchen has always been an area where a lot of freak accidents happen. Glasses sitting securely on their shelves have often flown into the air before smashing into pieces on the floor. A pot of boiling water once spilled onto a cook with no apparent explanation. Christine felt as though the presence in the kitchen was an angry spirit that didn’t like others being in his space.

  In further discussions with Eddie Hill, he described a bizarre incident that happened as Nell escorted him to the wine cellar.

  “The door to the wine cellar was locked,” he said, “and as Nell went to open it with her key we heard what sounded like glass hitting the ground. As she opened the door, we saw about five bottles on the floor that had broken. One of them was still intact and was rolling straight toward us.”

  I imagine it would become rather frustrating for a restaurant owner to have things like this happen, not just because it indicates something paranormal may be happening, but because having to replace glasses and bottles of wine tends to add to the cost of running a business. However, Nell doesn’t seem to be fazed by the Grey Moss Inn ghosts. She is content to have them around, and accepts that ghosts are a part of her everyday life.

  A portrait of an unknown woman hangs on the wall in the main dining room. It has hung in the restaurant for years, and Nell has always thought that there might have been another portrait of someone underneath that of the woman. It would be impossible to verify without destroying
it, though, so she never paid much attention to it.

  One evening, a group of women seated in the dining room near the portrait mentioned to Nell that she thought she saw a man faintly standing in the background of it. Luckily, they had brought a digital camera with them and had offered to take a picture. The viewfinder clearly showed the man in the portrait just before a photograph was taken, but once the picture was stored and reviewed in the camera, he was no longer there.

  When Eddie Hill and his wife came to the restaurant for dinner a short time later, Nell asked him to take another series of pictures. He snapped six consecutive shots; the first five showed nothing out of the ordinary, but the sixth was a success. The man only a few people had noticed and had been unable to photograph finally appeared in a picture. Who was he, and why was he visible only part of the time? No one has yet been able to offer an explanation.

  “My physical self makes space for the spirits here. My higher self is aware of them being around as well, and I just carry on with what I need to do,” said Nell.

  When in south Texas, visit the Grey Moss Inn for a wonderful dining experience, and remember—it’s what’s both on and off the menu that just might keep you coming back for more.

  Spotlight on Ghosts: Ghost Tracks of San Antonio

  This is perhaps one of he most well-known ghost legends in the San Antonio area, and while some disagree on what is actually happening at the “ghos tracks,” it is difficult to dismiss the story altogether. It all began between the 1930s and 1940s when a school bus full of children approached an intersection of road and railway in a nondescript San Antonio neighborhood. The bus stalled while crossing the tracks and the driver was unable to get the engine up and running again before a train quickly approached.

  Realizing the danger he and the children were in, the driver urged them all to exit the bus as quickly as possible to reach safety. Unfortunately, the train collided with the bus before most of the children had the chance to make their getaway, and several of them perished. Over the decades since the incident, many people have visited the tracks in hopes of encountering something paranormal.