As a young boy during the summer I would visit family who lived in the Piney Woods of East Texas. Occasionally at night during full moons we would see visions of ghostly apparitions. Granny and several other family members would say that all this was, was an off gassing of decay material in the woods. The area we would see these apparitions in was somewhat swampy and potholed with pools of quicksand. So as a child I never put what they said to rest.
As I grew older and was able to make my way around the woods I decided that I would investigate these sightings. So on one of those hot summer nights under the light of a full moon, my cousins and I decided we would make the trek through those woods just to see what was there.
Around midnight, a low ground fog began to swell. We heard what sounded like a loud moaning about one hundred yards ahead. As we drew closer we stumbled across what appeared to be an old stone foundation which measured about 20ft square. To the right looked what might have been an old wrought iron fence that had rusted away where it made contact with the ground and was covered in bramble vines. We made our way over there to find several wooden and limestone markers.
What was strange was that this area had been overgrown for years and the little cemetery and what presumably was a small church had gone un-noticed. That night we made our way back home. The next morning we asked Granny what she knew about the area and told her what we had found. She didn’t know much about what had happened but that her family had moved to the region prior to the start of the Civil War shortly after Texas had gained its freedom from Mexico. This was one of many paths that African-Americans had taken trying to gain their freedom from slavery.
Granny later told us some of the tales that her grandfather had told her about the area and some of the families that had settled there. This was an area that was huge in the timber business after the War and up until the mid 1890’s. It was about that time numerous families either moved closer to the San Jacinto and Trinity rivers which flowed through the region as they tried to get closer to the ever growing town of Houston.
What I later found out was that the building was a way station for those trying to escape the bonds of slavery. The family that originally owned the land had been banished from the area during the War for harboring runaway slaves. Those slaves that were found were lynched by a group that was known as “Riders of the Southern Cross” which was an offshoot of the Klu Klux Klan. The bodies were then buried in a mass grave and those who survived attempted to leave some way of marking the area.
In the twenties the land was taken by a massive flood of men who were looking for black gold (oil). But the land that surrounded this area went untouched seeing every time someone tried to clear the land accidents would take place.
The land surrounding that area has been cleared as small pockets of houses sprang up. The general area remains wooded, but as time marches on more land is cleared. Relatives of mine deep within the family now own the land where these poor souls are buried. About five acres stand protect by several groves of trees. The ground has been restored and maintained and a marker placed recognizing those who died.
My granny (great- great grandmother) who died in1989 at the age of 108, told me before she died was that what we saw as kids was not off gassing but the souls of those that had died an untimely and horrible death looking for peace as they walked the ground where they had died.