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Visitors from beyond

On this Halloween, with nothing much on my mind, let me share some ghostly goings-on in Houston.

Haunted house houston

A houseful of visiting relatives – it's a classic mixed blessing.

Just ask businessman Tony Barton and his wife, Kim.

First came a relative, then the relative's friend, then relatives of relatives who lived with the couple. Soon, the trim, three-bedroom house at the end of a Pearland cul-de-sac was packed and life was a nonstop romp.

The real problem with these kinfolk, though, was that they were all dead. Tony Barton, 43-year-old ex-military man, salesman, and connoisseur of craft beer, was haunted.

It's the type of tale – filled with woooos, boos and goosebump-popping fright – that you'd expect to hear around Halloween, which, of course, is Monday. The Bartons say their woes started in the sunny days of summer.

"Nothing big happened right away. It was little accumulations," Barton says. "The wife and I both disregarded them – maybe hearing something, shadow movements, feelings of being watched. … Only when things really escalated did we look at each other and say, 'Something's going on here.' "  (more here)

The Houston – Galveston area abounds with stories of hauntings. One of the more famous supposedly spooky sites here is the historic Hotel Galvez in Galveston.

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5 responses to “Visitors from beyond”

  1. Norman Costa

    @ Ruchira:
    I may be uniquely qualified among my fellow writers at AB to comment. About 18 years ago I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast inn that was haunted. I was unaware of the stories associated with it’s haunted history until the day after my encounter. Let’s just say the event scared the shit out of me at 3 AM. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was told the ‘entity’ was a traumatically jilted young woman who never married and lived there till she died – her hope chest and trousseau intact. The B&B was in Massachusetts, West of Boston and outside the 128 ring. One of the buildings on the property is the very first public school house in Massachusetts.
    About 29 years ago I moved to Vermont and bought a house in South Royalton. My wife attended Vermont Law School which was located in SoRo. Throughout the three years I stayed there, any number of my wife’s fellow law students told of ‘haunted’ experiences in an old inn that housed some students. It was owned and managed by a retired Episcopal priest. The story goes that someone was murdered and buried in the basement, over 100+ years earlier.
    Frankly, today I could take a ‘haunted’ house in stride. What I fear the most is a visit to my home by my own relatives. They are more scary and evil than a typical candidate for exorcism. They do horrible things, and they will hurt you. A floating disembodied spectre, that goes “Boo!” and bumps in the night, is preferable.

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  2. Ruchira

    Thanks for sharing, Norm.
    Actually, you may not be the only qualified person here. A very strange incident took place in a very unlikely place when I was around twenty two years old. My sister will vouch for it and there were other witnesses. It was very scary and very weird. To this day, I do not know exactly what happened. The story is so bizarre that I will not relate it here. Perhaps later by e-mail. And I do not believe in the supernatural. Oh, make that “two” incidents. The other one was in broad daylight in a crowded college campus! Still do not know if I saw what I think I saw or whether the mind was playing a terrible trick on my eyes.

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  3. Dean C. Rowan

    They say the essence of comedy is timing. The same applies to ghost stories. I’m afraid (pun!) these two spooky accounts time-stamped November 1 hardly put a chill up my spine. Shouldn’t we be discussing how to stuff a turkey?
    Ruchira, if the crowded college campus was Berkeley, then yeah, you saw it.

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  4. Ruchira

    Dean,
    There was no Halloween in India and no Thanksgiving either. So, every day was appropriate for a paranormal experience. What is funny is that despite widespread superstitions in the public square and having grown up on a steady diet of chilling ghost stories both by word of mouth as well as in my childhood reading of popular Bengali lit, I was never particularly scared of “visitors from beyond.” That is why perhaps, the two incidents left me completely befuddled. I will include you in the e-mail I write to Norm later.
    Ruchira, if the crowded college campus was Berkeley, then yeah, you saw it.
    :-)))

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  5. Norman Costa

    @ Dean:
    My relatives are frightening all year around. If I’m up to it, I’ll give more detail here on my ‘encounter.’ Like Ruchira, I don’t believe in supernatural intervention.

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