Ghosts along the Texas Coast by Docia Schultz Williams Read Free Book Online

squeeze bottle of mustard literally flew off the shelf and crossed a narrow hallway to the center of the kitchen floor. Sue said it did not fall from the shelf; it was hurled! While it wasn’t scary, she said, it definitely succeeded in “making a statement.”
    It has been a number of years since the Indian man appeared in Sue’s guest room and the kitchen cupboards went berserk. But then, no one has disturbed the final resting place of the Karankawas again, either.

Someone’s in the Kitchen at Beulah’s
    The Tarpon Inn, located in the waterfront area of Port Aransas, has long been a favorite resting place for visitors to Padre Island. In fact, the historic inn has already celebrated its 100th birthday!
    The town of Port Aransas sits on the northernmost tip of Padre Island, a barrier island which protects the bay and harbor of Corpus Christi. The harbor was discovered by the Spanish on Corpus Christi Day in 1519, hence its name. It was not fully explored until a Frenchman mapped the area in 1720. Padre Nicholas Balli acquired the title to the land, which is a 100-mile-long strip of sand dunes and grass, for the sum of 400 pesetas paid to King Charles IV of Spain in 1880. The padre set up a cattle ranching operation on the island, and in time, the land took on the nickname “Padre Island” rather than its official name of Isla de Corpus Christi.
    According to Rand McNally’s
Weekend Escapes, Southeast Texas Edition
, in about 1855 an English settler built a ranch house up at the northern tip of the island. He established a small town, eventually to be called Port Aransas, which sprang up around his homestead.
    During the Civil War, the site of the Tarpon Inn was occupied by a barracks for Confederate troops, and in 1886 the Tarpon Inn was built from materials which had been salvaged from the old barracks. The inn was named for the tarpon, huge game fish with extraordinarily large scales that were found in the waters around Port Aransas.
    The first Tarpon Inn was destroyed by fire in 1900. It was rebuilt in 1904 and was destroyed by a hurricane in 1919. In 1923 it was rebuilt in its present form, a two-storied, long frame building, with long galleried porches both upstairs and down. The original building was painted white. Today, it is sky-blue. Mr. J.M. Ellis, the builder in 1923, wanted to assure the hotel would not fall victim to another hurricane, so he sank pier pilings in sixteen feet of cement for the foundation and then put a full pier at the corner of each bedroom for added strength incase of a storm. Hence, the hotel has withstood many storms and quite a few rambunctious young people on spring breaks as well!
    A lot of well-known personalities have stayed at the inn, but the one they still talk about most frequently is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who came down for a few days of tarpon fishing and left his signature on a tarpon scale which is proudly displayed in the hotel’s lobby.
    Right behind the inn is a lovely little garden area. Here there are two frame buildings, each a part of what is called Beulah’s Restaurant. The long building at the rear of the property, which mostly serves as a bar and overflow dining room for the larger Beulah’s, was at one time the original Tarpon Inn’s location, the site that burned.
    Beulah’s Restaurant has had several names over the years. At one time it was the bar to the original Tarpon Inn, and after this, it was known for a time as the Silver King. Since mid-1992 it has been called Beulah’s. The head housekeeper at the Inn for many years was Beulah Mae Williams, and it is in her honor that the restaurant was named. She resided in a very old, long frame building that still stands behind the restaurant on a little side alley. Beulah is currently living in a retirement home in Lamar, Texas.
    Ms. Julie Caraker, who manages Beulah’s, describes the place as one in which the atmosphere is “upscale,