Centuries of violent history have laced Bell County with a potent compound of haunted activity. Spectral conquistadors stand guard over the Treasure of the Golden Bull, hidden in Salado caverns by the Coronado expedition. Countless frontier skirmishes, bank robberies and stage holdups echo along thoroughfares from Stillhouse Hollow to the Maxdale Bridge. Author Chet Southworth lies in wait for the Killeen Watchman, the Fort Hood Phantoms, the Wedermeyer Wraiths and other Bell County spirits.
"The indefatigable T. Lindsay Baker has now turned his enormous mental and physical energies to the subject and has brought to view - if not to life -eighty-six Texas ghost towns for the reader's pleasure. Baker lists three criteria for inclusion: tangible remains, public access, and statewide coverage. In each case Baker comments about the town's founding, its former significance, and the reasons for its decline. There are maps and instructions for reaching each site and numerous photographs showing the past and present status of each. The contemporary photos were taken, in most instances, by Baker himself, who proves as adept a photographer as he is researcher and writer....Baker has done his work thoroughly and well, within limits imposed by necessity. He obviously had fun in the process and it shows in his prose."---New Mexico Historical Review
Things that go bump in the night, disembodied voices, footsteps in an empty stairwell, an icy hand on your shoulder ... let your imagination run wild as you read about Texas's most extraordinary apparitions, sinister spooks, and bizarre beasts. You may know of Crazy Man's Tower or San Antonio's haunted railroad crossing, but perhaps you haven't heard about: the White Sanitarium, an abandoned mental institution in Wichita Falls plagued by ghostly forms and spectral noises; the Lady in Green of the McGloin house, who floats persistently over the lake, spurned from unrequited love; and Lake Worth's monster, a mysterious creature inhabiting the area that looks half-human but acts like a feral animal.
More than 13,000 historical markers line the roadsides of Texas, giving drivers a way to sample the stories of the past. But these markers tell only part of the story. In History Ahead, Dan K. Utley and Cynthia J. Beeman introduce readers to the rich, colorful, and sometimes action-packed and humorous history behind the famous (Charles Lindbergh, Will Rogers, The Big Bopper, and jazz great Charlie Christian) and the not-so-famous (Elmer "Lumpy" Kleb, Don Pedro Jaramillo, and Carl Morene, the "music man of Schulenburg") who have left their marks on the history of Texas. They visit cotton gins, abandoned airfields, forgotten cemeteries, and former World War II alien detention camps to dig up the little-known and unsuspected narratives behind the text emblazoned on these markers. Written in an anecdotal style that presents the cultural uniqueness and rich diversity of Texas history, History Ahead includes nineteen main stories, dozens of complementary sidebars, and many never-before-published historical and contemporary photographs. History Ahead offers a rich array of local stories that interweave with the broader regional and national context, touching on themes of culture, art, music, technology, the environment, oil, aviation, and folklore, among other topics. Utley and Beeman have located these forgotten gems, polished them up to a high shine, and offered them along with convenient maps and directions to the marker sites.
This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society has something for everyone. The first section features a good bit of occupational lore, including articles on cowboys—both legendary ones and the relatively unknown men who worked their trade day by day wherever they could. You’ll also find a unique, personal look at a famous outlaw and learn about a teacher’s passion for encouraging her students to discover their own family culture, as well as unusual weddings, somewhat questionable ways to fish, and one woman’s love affair with a bull. The backbone of the PTFS series has always been miscellanies—diverse examinations of the many types of lore found throughout Texas and the Southwest. These books offer a glimpse of what goes on at our annual meetings, as the best of the papers presented are frequently selected for our publications. Of course, the presentations are only a part of what the Society does at the meetings, but reading these publications offers insight into our members’ interests in everything from bikers and pioneers of Tejana music to serial killers and simple folk from small-town Texas. These works also suggest the importance of the “telling of the tale,” with an emphasis on oral tradition, as well as some of the customs we share. All of these things together— the focus on tradition at our meetings, the fellowship among members, and the diversity of our research—are what sustain the Texas Folklore Society.
Visitors to Market Square Park can pause on their stroll through the downtown centerpiece for a palpable experience of its past. Houston's first four city halls laid their foundations here, and relics of the square's heritage remain embedded in the sidewalks of the park. Chalk up a chance sneeze on Milam Street to the final ghostly gasp of dust from Robert Boyce's sawpits. Step from Congress Street into La Carafe, Houston's oldest commercial building, for the kind of atmosphere that even deceased bartenders are reluctant to leave. From the phantom tailors above Treebeard's to the forgotten mysteries of the town's founding, Sandra Lord and Debe Branning resurrect the history humming through the four blocks surrounding Market Square Park.
Folklore is everywhere, whether you are aware of it or not. A culture's traditional knowledge is used to remember the past and maintain traditions, to communicate with other members within a community, to learn, to celebrate, and to express creativity. It is what helps distinguish one culture from another. Although folklore is so much a part of our daily lives, we often lose sight of just how integral it is to everything we do. If we look for it, we can find folklore in places where we'd never think it existed. Folklore: In All of Us, In All We Do includes articles on a variety of topics. One chapter looks at how folklore and history complement one another; while historical records provide facts about dates, places and names, folklore brings those events and people to life by making them relevant to us. Several articles examine the cultural roles women fill. Other articles feature folklore of particular groups, including oil field workers, mail carriers, doctors, engineers, police officers, horse traders, and politicians. As a follow-up article to Inside the Classroom (and Out), which focused on folklore in education, there is also an article on how teachers can use writing in the classroom as a means of keeping alive the storytelling tradition. The Texas Folklore Society has been collecting and preserving folklore since its first publication in 1912. Since then, it has published or assisted in the publication of nearly one hundred books on Texas folklore.
