HOPE SPRINGS
Location: Located in Grimes County, Texas, Hope Springs is an abandoned
ghost town beyond the end of Route 13 off Highway 21, 37 miles southeast of Austin
and 25 miles west of College Station. Route 13 runs a southerly path across flat
dry prairie land toward Interstate 290, running into a dirt road after eleven miles that extends another
two into the town.
Description Of Place: A small decrepit town surrounded mostly by
open pasture, abandoned farms and the collapsed foundations of old homesteads, Hope Springs now
consists of eleven mostly intact wood frame buildings including a bank, a hotel
with a saloon, a general store, two barns and a church with an accompanying
cemetery reaching to the town boundaries. Several of the interiors are nearly
preserved, including old liquor bottles in the saloon, forgotten town papers in
the sheriff's office and personal belongings in the hotel rooms. A deserted
upright piano still rests in the saloon. Route 13 was originally going to go
through the location, leading to its destruction, but the roadway was never
finished. As a result, motorists often get lost out there and stranded. State
police tend to irregularly check the area for misplaced motorists.
Ghostly Manifestations: It would probably interest many people that
there are numerous towns and former settlements through the United States that
lay abandoned or deserted. The reasons for their present states are likely as
diverse as the towns themselves. Farm communities deserted by younger
generations heading to bigger cities, Old West settlements soured by remote
sites or diminished resources and small villages falling victim to time and
fate, all of them now suffering under the pangs of the elements. Seemingly
forgotten by the Texas Highway System, Hope Springs rests at the end of a dirt
road that was going to be Route 13 linking Highway 21 with Interstate 290 to the south. Despite seeming as if its at the end of the world, the old ruins
seem almost as if they're hiding from the world.
Unlike many of the ghost towns of the Old West, Hope Springs is one of the few not converted into a historic site or a tourist attraction with daily recreations of forgotten shoot-outs between the local law and traveling outlaws of the area. However, it is one of the few to share a paranormal population with the likes of Bodie, California and Rhyolite, Nevada. Several of the experiences from Hope Springs have been collected by retired truck driver Frank Gerard, who has been assembling the stories and accounts from witnesses who have reported strange experiences at the derelict ruins going back more than fifty years. The stories include myriad accounts of apparitions, strange sounds and other unexplained activity by more than thirty people from every walk of life. Even Gerard confesses he has experienced strong feelings of a haunting presence at the site, forcing him to make visits as rare as possible to the remote town.
"My brother-in-law, Tom, and I visited Hope Springs and the old hotel there during a working vacation one crisp August morning in 2008." He begins. "It was an overcast blustery day, and I was wearing a heavy coat and hat with gloves, but he wanted to see the site and take a few pictures. We headed straight to the hotel because it was in the best shape, but I went on alone into the place because Tom said he wanted to get some other photos and would catch up with me.
"The heavy front wooden door of the place opens inward. Upon entering the front door, one finds the lobby and reception area with a curving staircase which winds up to the second floor where the guest rooms were located. Looking straight ahead is the large dining room with a side room off the wide hallway. Other rooms where food was prepared and the kitchen also also are found off this main hallway.
"I walked alone around the spooky downstairs, trying to imagine how grand it once was, waiting for Tom to join me. No one else who was living was in the building with me. I thought I'd be polite and quietly talk to whomever unseen entity was there as I admired the various rooms as if I was visiting as a guest, talking to the host.
"While studying the various dining rooms, kitchen area, what have you here and there, one sees glimpses of fine flooring, wallpaper and other evidence of how nice this place was in its heyday. The main staircase in the front lobby area has an intense wood carving on the rails and had at one time fancy steps, which must of been inviting for tired travelers. During this tour of the downstairs, I didn't feel a presence, but then again I usually don't. While the downstairs was cold, so was the outside and I was warmly dressed. So, if there were cold spots, I didn't notice them. After taking a look around the very quiet, still chilly downstairs, I decided to see where Tom went because there was something really spooky about going up to the second floor alone. There was something about the shadowy staircase leading up to the second floor from the kitchen that made me decide not to go up there just yet. I turned into the main hallway and walked through the lobby toward the large front door of the building which I had left open.
"When I was about fifty yards from the door in the main lobby, the heavy wooden door suddenly was pushed hard from the inside with a hard slam. I jumped back out of surprise, but I don't think I was scared. There was no wind outside, and the only explanation was that an unseen presence wanted to let me know that I wasn't as alone as I thought on the first floor, and wanted to see me jump for a few laughs. Or perhaps this spirit wasn't pleased that I didn't come up to the second floor for a visit, or maybe upset that I left the door open in the first place. I apologized out loud for leaving the door open and made a hurried exit. I almost expected Tom to have shot a few pictures in my absence and seen something from the second floor, which would have made the experience more interesting, but he never said anything."
Gerard goes on to add that the Old Tisdale Store in town has been a hotbed of activity, although not by him. Three witnesses have described hearing voices from inside and seeing shadows moving around the shelves and counters in there. In its day, it was a gathering place for the old-timers to gather around, play checkers and swap stories between buying supplies. They may still be bonding in there today. Photos taken inside the building are notorious for capturing foggy mist-like apparitions or just developing with a thick haze over the interior. However, it is not the only place known for apparitions.
"If any place deserves the title of "ghost town," it's definitely Hope Springs." Mavis Tobolowsy is one of the witnesses who have shared experiences with Gerard. A resident of nearby Northrup, she was interested in visiting a real haunted location when she heard about the place from an acquaintance, but instead of waiting for a guided tour, she confesses she made the mistake of going by herself.
"In October of 2008," She tells her story. "I was visiting relatives in Eagle Lake around Halloween, and like a lot of families, we started talking about experiences we had had as kids or at heard from friends and family and before I knew it, they were telling me about Hope Springs. It sounded like an interesting place, and I certainly wanted to visit it, but my husband's relatives were hesitant or too distracted to go out there. I don't know if they didn't want to go, but they had promised to drive me out there. On the other hand, I thought I knew the area well enough and I had an inkling where it was, and I knew I'd prefer having the time to really explore the site without someone telling me it was time to go so one morning after breakfast, I headed out for a drive promising to meet everyone else at Shenanigan's Restaurant for lunch.
"Anyway, it was a longer drive than I had expected, way out beyond the interstate and beyond all these old deserted homes and ruins of old barns off Route 13 which gave way to a lone dirt road. Gradually, I began to see the ruins of the town like the dots of random buildings in the middle of all these open fields. Appropriately, what had started out as this nice sunny day had become overcast, and I was thinking it was a good atmosphere to see ghosts, but I didn't really expect to see anything. I thought it would be like those tales that end with, "Oh, you must be mistaken. Old Mr. B died such and such a year ago." but what I really encountered was more like a George Romero movie.
"First off, I pulled into town and drove through the center of it, turning in a circle at the far end and parking facing out just before the church. Funny it turned out that way, I didn't plan to get out in a hurry, it just happened that way. I peeked in the church, and was a little disappointed. It looked empty and in shambles, all the pews knocked to the floor and the pulpit down on its side. The cemetery outside was depressing, the majority of names on the tombstones were barely able to be read. I thought I heard a voice in the distance, but I quickly passed it off as my imagination.
"Now, I'm a big fan of antiques," Mavis adds. "I like owning and reselling them, and seeing all the relics left deserted out there in the stores and structures there kind of set something off in my mind, and I started picking things up along the way. A child's wooden toy left in a doorway, a period oil lamp from a table, some wooden poker chips from here, a rusted fire arm from the sheriff's office, I really didn't think anyone would notice, but in the saloon... I think I went a step too far. Behind the bar of the town saloon was still this large collection of period drinks and ales. I couldn't believe it was all still left behind. Covered in thick shells of dirt and dust, their labels coated with decades of neglect, it was around fifty to sixty forgotten of non-drinkable beer from before the turn of the century. I'm pretty sure it had all turned into vinegar or worse, but I picked and examined several bottles before I found one that seemed worthy. However, as I turned to leave, I felt as if something had grabbed my other arm and was squeezing it. I couldn't see anything, but I felt something touching me. It was hurting me pretty bad, and I was waving and shaking my arm trying to lose the feeling, and I put down the bottle to try to relieve the feeling, and as I did, I felt pushed by two hands on my back. Like I said, I was alone as this was happening, and it kind of shook me up and scared the hell out of me at the same time. Long story short, that long drive out there seemed a lot shorter on the drive back to Eagle Lake. It took me a month or so before I shared the story with anyone, but everyone I talk to says the same thing. Something out there got angry with me trying to take those objects.
Gerard has heard a lot of similar stories like this. Several of the stories from Hope Springs are about people trying to take home souvenirs and relics. Within days of taking stuff home, people start experiencing voices, shadows and strange activity in their homes until the objects are taken back. One witness Frank talked to tried to toss in the trash a rock with crystals in it he had picked up at Hope Springs, but the object kept returning even after he tossed it into a pond near his house. It wasn't until he drove back to Hope Springs from Las Vegas, Nevada that the activity stopped.
In a similar story, Gerard received a second-hand story from a former co-worker whose family had relatives in Austin. In this story, the family had a daughter interested in piano lessons, but they couldn't afford to buy a piano for her. Speculating that there might be one going unused out at Hope Springs, they drove the sixty miles east to the deserted old town, dragged the piano out of the saloon and loaded it up in the back of their pick-up, taking the time and effort to strap it down.
"They were barely halfway up Route 13 back to the highway when they swore some force took over the steering wheel and wrenched it out of their hands, making a hard left turn at over forty miles an hour and rolling the truck over three times off the road." Gerard repeats the tale. "Luckily, they had their seat belts on and survived, but the truck was totaled and the piano was shattered over more than ten feet. I imagine they must have hitch-hiked back to town for help.
"No one travels ever out to Hope Springs to keep an eye on it, but it's not unusual for motorists confusing Route 13 with Highway 113 and getting stranded out there." Gerard continues. "Seeing as its a town, and no one lives out there, I imagine people think its logical to try and stay the night in the hotel, but according to a few tales I've heard, a few people who have a funny feeling about the place do try to sleep in their cars overnight before trying to drive the way out of there.
Murray Cooper, an East Texas urban explorer, disagrees. He heard about Hope Springs from a group of urban explorers out of Huntsville, and although he doesn't believe in ghosts, he describes encountering "an inexplicable feeling of anxiety " within the old Carr Brothers Land Office.
"I've been to several abandoned houses and mansions as well as other ghost towns like Bodie and Silver Springs, and some of them I confess are supposed to be haunted, but at Hope Springs, it was the first place I've been to that I actually felt as if I was being watched." He begins.
"My rule like any urban explorer is "Take only photos, leave only footprints." I visit locations with digital cameras for filming and taking photos, and while my initial start at Hope Springs started routine, I have to confess that after fifteen minutes I started getting the feeling I was being watched. I've never had that feeling before anywhere. I quite literally couldn't shake the feeling I shouldn't be there and that something was wanting to me to leave. It started in the hotel and followed me across the street to the church, but it really bothered me in the Carr Office. Out of all the structures, that was the one that seemed to be locked up tight, but the back entry in the office was ajar so I went in with my camera going and my team taking photos. I think I was only in there for five minutes before we started looking toward the room in back we had passed thinking someone was in there. My buddy, Russ, even felt compelled to call out, "Is anyone back there?" and he's never done that before... not even in locations we knew were supposed to be haunted, but the one thing that really freaked us out was when we realized we could see our breath in there. It was a blistering hot day in May, and the sweat from outside was freezing to our skin. That's when we realized we had to get out of there before the gates of hell opened up.
"The weird part about that structure is none of our photos of the items in there came out right." Cooper adds. "All of them have this strange haze on them that thickens to the center, completely blocking out the photos. All our other photos came out all right, except those eleven images, but yet, the video came out perfectly normal. After researching the town a while, I learned those offices were where one of Halland's outlaws had tossed a Molotov cocktail through the door, violently incinerating seven people who had rushed in trying to hide from his wrath."
The most recent stories to come out of Hope Springs occurred on October 13, 2009 when a tour bus from Carmel College out of College Station made the mistake of accidentally turning down Route 13 and getting stranded on the site. Fifteen students with two teachers and their driver ended up stranded in the ghost town over night, and while most of them claim they never experienced anything, several of them got their fill of activity that they couldn't explain including glimpses and flashes of shadowy figures wandering or waiting beyond the structures, inexplicable cold drafts on occasion in the saloon, the sounds of whispering from empty rooms and the overwhelming sense of being watched.
"Oh, I know I was being watched," College senior Jenna Fischer remarks. "Because when I looked up to the hotel, I noticed the curtain in one of the rooms on the second floor suddenly drop down. As fast as I could scream, "I saw someone," Professor O'Hara and the coach stormed the building trying to find them, but by then, whoever it was had vanished."
Professor William "Bill" O'Hara was one of the adult chaperones on that date. While his experiences of the old ghost town aren't as spirited as the students, he does confess that certain things about that weekend just didn't make sense.
"You think keeping fifteen students preoccupied is tough, just try keeping them together when they think every strange noise is someone trying to reach out from the dead." O'Hara adds. "I had two students who disappeared in the barn for over an hour who came storming out it afterward claiming they say a figure watching them who vanished into a wall. Two more who went exploring in the hotel and came out reporting they heard voices, and then Coach Jackson himself who kept telling me he felt we were being watched."
Next door to the old mortuary in an old alley way, both O'Hara and Jackson found piles of wood and wood scraps piled up and scattered next to the building. Amidst this debris, Jackson had pointed out and noticed an old wooden coffin bleached and warped from the elements. He commented that it was the type used to bury paupers who could not afford full burials, and that it was likely left there since the town had been abandoned. For some reason, after noticing it, he couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. His eyes and gaze continued to turn not to the hotel, the bank or the second floor of the hotel but back to that one alley in town expecting to see someone there. After Jackson and O'Hara left together to hike back to town and get some help, driver Roy Willis takes over the stories of what happened as night took over the town.
"First off, I never figured out what caused the bus to break down. I've been a driver for several years for everything from a limo to a bus and in between, and I can figure out most problems within minutes. If it's a temporary job or a big one, I always know what's going on, but this time, we had to tow the bus out with a truck and haul it back to College Station. Two days later when I got round to looking at it again, I tried to start it up to see if I had missed something, and it turned over on the very first try. No electrical problem, no fuel problem, no mechanical problem.... When we reached that town, it just shut itself off."
In addition to the bus problems, the students noticed that cell phones didn't work in the town either. Everyone's watches failed as well. Stuart Murray, one of the students, theorized an electronic pulse might have knocked out their devices as well as the bus, but it was quickly pointed out there were no electrical lines in town.
"With the problems we were having," Willis continues. "It was kind of obvious we might be stuck there over night and we started camping out in the saloon in the first floor of the hotel. The upstairs seemed kind of intact with old beds and furniture, but then we started hearing creaking noises up there and no one wanted to go up in case of ghosts. At that point, at least to me, it was getting kind of silly, you know, strange noises and shadows, but then several of the kids started screaming they saw a ghost."
Sitting at a remote table in the saloon, several of the students described remarkably the same character. Their descriptions were all of a large figure huddled at the table with a large brimmed hat concealing his face. Clad in period clothes in shades of dirty brown, light gray and shimmering pale blue, the figure seemed to be watching and observing them until several of the girls screamed in unison and forced him to fade away to nothing. Before that point, it seemed he was trying to speak, his weighted hands clamped to the table with invisible restraints as his weary face tried to talk before vanishing. Carl Hallstrom, one of the school hockey players on the trip, was the only one to notice the figure had a priest's collar.
This was not the only figure the students would see. As the sun was dropping on the day, Eric Goodman, Harvey Kinkade and Josh Kelso, three of Carl's hockey comrades, were exploring the ruins of an old supply tent for supplies when they were surprised by a figure that had slipped in on them. Harvey was the first one to see it, describing it as a "movie-style gunslinger with the face of one of the stars from Night of the Living Dead." Josh described the figure as more cadaverous, comparing it to one of the unwrapped Egyptian mummies from Discovery Channel. Unsure what kind of specter they had encountered, they crashed around trying to catch the figure or hit it with one of their hockey sticks, but it still managed to elude them. Eric, however, thought there was actually two more figures than they thought appearing and disappearing on them as they tried to attack it.
"At this point," Willis adds. "I wouldn't say we were scared. It was more like uneven waves of confusion, frustration and anxiety... At least from what I observed. Some of the kids were scared and wanting to hitch-hike out while some of them thought we were being harassed by squatters trying to scare us away from the place. As we waited for Bill and Cliff to get back, night fell and we were trying to find places to camp out on the bus as that was the only place we actually felt safe, but it didn't last long. Over night, we all woke up hearing the sounds of horses from somewhere and the sounds of voices calling and wailing. It was a partially clear night, but it was practically pitch black, and without lights or heat on the bus, we heard these sounds hitting us all at once for, I don't know, ten to twelve minutes before gradually dying away as if someone was slowly turning the light down on a speaker or a circus getting further and further away. I've never believed in ghosts in my life, but I've never had an experience like that before in my life with sounds like that and a cold fog pouring through town, you can bet it was a very difficult night for all of us. All I can add is that when Bill and Cliff rode into town with the tow truck and two rental vans to pick us up, we charged at them exhausted and terrified trying to explain the experiences we had."
When the story reached Frank Gerard, he was not surprised the kids had such a trying ordeal as his notes on Hope Springs show that the activity there is more prevalent in months with a Friday 13.
As student Carl Hallstrom is quick to
point out: "This town is not a museum... it's a morgue."
History: Founded somewhere between 1840 and 1850, Hope Springs was
one of the stopovers between New Orleans and Houston for travelers heading west.
It was little else but a stagecoach stop, but a few people did stay there and
started raising horses, pigs and livestock here, but it fell out of favor after the Hope Springs Massacre. It was entirely
deserted by 1870, and was going to be demolished in 1987 by the Highway
Department running Route 13 through the grounds, but the project was never
completed. Local legend claims activity halted the work in some form or another,
but the truth is the money just ran out on the project. Although not a historic
site, the area is under the custody of the county works department.
Identity Of Ghosts: The activity in Hope Springs is almost entirely
linked to the Hope Springs Massacre of October 13, 1866. Thirty-three locals
were shot down and murdered in the streets and their homes and businesses by
outlaw Reb Halland, a former Confederate Captain who escaped Union Troops in
1865 and began terrorizing the area between Shreveport, Louisiana and Houston,
Texas, mostly robbing Federal transports and passenger trains heading into
Texas. Largely felt around Hope Springs, Halland probably fits the equivalent of
an 18th Century serial killer, a psychopath obsessed with murder and an interest
in the occult. For this latter reason, he tends to resemble cult leader Charles
Manson inasmuch as he was followed by a small gang of outlaws known more for
murders and sadism than actually robbing banks and stagecoaches. In Hope Spings,
Halland was mostly kept at bay by Ewan McCready, a former preacher turned town
sheriff. When Halland heard that McCready had been granted Federal assistance in
hunting him down, he turned up in town and murdered McCready; his gang wiping
out the entire town out of hubris. Less than fifteen survived the bloodshed by
hiding in closets and under furniture, but after the gunshots died down, locals
found Halland and his gang all dead from single shots. Whether they killed each
other out of some suicide pact or in a gunfight is unrevealed. Afterward, their
remains were not buried in the cemetery with the innocents but carted out of
town and dumped into a ravine for scavengers. According to legend, McCready and
Halland are still reliving the bloodshed of that day along with the outlaws and
the murder victims.
It should be noted that isn't the last
of the deaths to be connected with the town. Three more bodies have been recently
discovered in the town unrelated to the massacre. One of the bodies is that of
Isaac MacCready, who came looking for his missing father in 1905, and seems to
died under unknown means in the town church. In the old sheriff's office, the
bodies of Joseph Fitzgibbon and his wife, Erin, were found having died of
hypothermia after being stranded in town in February 1957. Rumors of the two
being murdered by phantom ghosts is sort of a local urban legend, but no one
knows why their bodies took so long to be discovered. The last of the three is
that of Wyatt Crosby, a young man who vanished the week of December 13, 1983
while driving from Austin to Houston for a job interview.
Source/Comments: Ghost Town (2009)/Sinister Sites (Episode: "Ghost
Town) - Activity based on the Birdcage
Theater in Tombstone, Arizona, the Old Goldfield Hotel in Goldfield, Nevada, the
Delta Saloon in Virginia City, Nevada, Colfax Ghost Town near Cimarron, New
Mexico, Bannack Ghost Town near Dillon, Montana and Rhyolite Ghost Town near
Beatty, Nevada.
Sinister Sites from "House of Bones"(2009)