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

sounded as if all the pots and pans were being thrown across the kitchen and knocked down from their racks. They knew the place was closed for the day, and that no one was inside. Mark says that even now Janet will not go into the kitchen, and she’s always uneasy even in the cheerful restaurant and bar section of the building.
    And Julie Caraker said that whenever she goes into the little room behind the bar in the old building she gets “prickly sensations” and knows that the ghosts are still there!
    Paula and Steve Bonillas told me about a recent visit they made to Beulah’s. As they were enjoying their meal, a door near their table suddenly flew open from the inside. Although there was no breeze, no person to open the door, and no reason for the door to open, it just did. When they questioned their waitress, she matter of factly stated it was “just the ghost.” Paula told me I would just have to see for myself why that particular door cannot open by itself. Well, I did. And it can’t.

The Graveyard Ghost
    Julie Caraker, whom we met at Beulah’s Restaurant adjacent to the Tarpon Inn, had an interesting ghost encounter when she first came to Port Aransas. She rented a little white frame house that had once been a church. It washed ashore after a storm, was renovated and converted to a house, and now is located on Oaks Street, just a short distance from the inn. Right in front of the house, just a few feet from the front porch, is a tiny little private graveyard that belonged to a family named Mercer. Since the graves are old, they must have been early settlers to the area. The mother, Emma, her husband John, and their son John, plus two infants, are all buried there. Emma’s dates, “Born, Jan. 24, 1856, Died, Jan. 28, 1906” are clearly discernible. Some of the other markers are harder to read. Emma was apparently the last person to be buried in the small plot.
    Soon after Julie moved into the cottage, strange things began to happen. She said she was very tired the first day, after moving, and wanted to take a bath to freshen up. She dreaded cleaning up the bathroom, however, because leaves and debris had blown in the partially opened window and accumulated in the bathtub. Imagine her surprise when she opened the bathroom door and found the tub all cleaned up! She says now she is quite sure the “ghost” did the cleaning!
    A collector of antiques, especially vintage clothing items, Julie said often her little displays of old gloves and fans and accessories would be rearranged, quite noticeably. Nothing was ever missing or harmed, however.
    Julie said both she and her young son, who was about eight years old at the time, had actually seen the ghost. The apparition was the figure of a woman, wearing a long white petticoat that showed from under a long black hooded cape. It was on a dark, foggy evening the first time she saw the figure walking between her house and the little cemetery. She said she had talked with other people who also had seen the same figure.
    Her little boy was never afraid of the ghost, nor was she. He often referred to her as “our guardian angel.”

    Home and little cemetery, Port Aransas

C HAPTER 2
Ghosts of the Lower Rio Grande Valley

THEY ARE HERE
    Docia Williams
    Graceful fronds fan tall palm trees
    That gently sway in the evening breeze,
    As twilight falls on far-flung reaches
    Of coastal swamp land and sandy beaches
    The sunlight fades, and darkness falls
    And ghosts come out, to make their calls
    Back to where, in the days of yore
    They lived, and breathed, and walked the shore;
    And dreamed their dreams, as now we do,
    And loved the homes that they once knew . . .
    Their stories now I bring to you.

Fort Brown, Where Old Soldiers Never Die
    Way down at the very bottom of the Rio Grande Valley at what one might call the “jumping off place,” lies a beautiful city of some 95,000 souls, called Brownsville. The city