Today the old Eanes Ranch on Bee Cave Road is owned by St. John Neumann Catholic Church. The old ranch house was moved to land next to Eanes Elementary School. The Marshall family house is the food pantry.
It was this article written by Bruce Marshall, who was a columnist at the Houston Post, that began all of the stories of the Haunted Eames Marshall Old Ranch House. The article was published. On Monday, May 16th, 1966. The title:
Two Contacts made by Ghost Hunters reported by Bruce Marshall.
I volunteered my property this weekend for a ghost hunt conducted by a group of persons who feel they have extrasensory perception, and I may end up regretting it, for they turned up not 1 ghost but two, and there were many others. And what is more, they say, one GHOST may be a murderer.
They turned up this possibility when seeking the identity of another murder victim who is buried on the property. The Old House, in which the experiment was conducted, lies seven miles southwest of Austin on the old Marshall Ranch. The Ghost Hunters, an informal group of seven psychics, came from San Antonio.
The crime they hoped to shed light on, according to the few facts remaining in the memories of living people, happened somewhere about the turn of the century, perhaps earlier. The facts were sketchy, perhaps garbled with time. Even the name of the murdered man was unknown to those, including myself, who had inherited the property. After spending almost a whole night in the deserted house on the ranch, they felt they may have made contact through automatic writing with the victim.
But in a surprise development, they say he confessed to them that he himself was guilty of a murder of which they were not aware.
And in another unexpected development, they met a second ghost so violent in temperament that they found it prudent to abandon their plans to spend the entire night in the house, and spent the last part of the night in their cars. The slim facts concerning the murder have been handed down through three generations.
As recalled by Cecil Johnson, 1500 Bee Caves road, Austin, who lives a long stone’s throw from where the crime happened. The facts are this: A farmer who had journeyed beyond to Austin with a load of cotton, was killed for his money while returning along Bee Caves Road. The body was thrown into a thicket on the Marshall Ranch property, and it was some time before it was discovered the corpse was buried. Where they found it. The killer, believed to have been a hired hand of the victim, was not apprehended. The Ghost Hunters, Don and Dan McGee, Frank and Eva Gibson, John and Clara McDonald and Mary Kay Irwin felt for vibrations in a dense thicket near a stream just inside the ranch gate.
They also visited a private cemetery near the back of the property containing the graves of seven members of the Eames and Marshall families, owners of the ranch for more than 100 years. When night fell, they moved on to the old ranch house. Not much vibration at the site of the grave, Don Mckee reported other. Felt they got a powerful reaction from one of the graves in the cemetery, that of Robert Eanes, original owner of the property, was the strongest personality once said. We may have trouble from him. After nightfall, the group assembled in an upstairs room and attempted to contact Spirits with the automatic Writing, a method, with which they say they have had past success in reaching spirits. One person holds a pencil lightly with his arm not touching the table. A pad of paper is on the table. In order to permit the pencil holder to be relaxed, another person gently holds the elbow. As it was explained, each feels the other is causing movement, but actually neither is. The ghost, if one is contacted, is supposed to be the actual force guiding the pencil. Sometimes the movements, if there are any, make unintelligible scribblings, sometimes pictures.
Almost immediately, Joan Mckee, the first to hold the pencil, reported a contact. In response to questioning, the ghost said his name was Burns and that he had been shot on the property under a tree. Several of the persons present, including this reporter and Don Adams, a reporter for the Austin paper, asked questions. The pencil moved in response.
Who shot you?
Men. How many men?
Three men.
Did you know them?
No.
Were you in a wagon?
Yes, hauling hay.
How did it happen? Were you ambushed? I
got down to pick up a rock. My back was to the hill.
What were you killed with?
A rifle.
*There was some difficulty in keeping burns to the subject. He seemed more interested in sorrowing over someone named Margaret. Margaret is my love. The pencil wrote over and over. Many loved Margaret. I loved Margaret. Margaret was my love.
Who was Margaret?
Margaret Owens.
Did Margaret cry for you when you were killed?
No.
Did you ever cry for her?
The writing ended abruptly after. Some coaxing, it resumed.
Margaret is dead now. She loved another.
How did she die?
I killed her.
How did you kill her?
Water.
Was Burns the victim? According to Don Adams, who has spent considerable time himself in the past week trying to Get the facts of the murder story, a newspaper account of 1871, bears a certain similarity. According to the account, a farmer with a load of hay returning from Austin to his home was murdered, shot several times in the head and body. He was buried near the spot of his death. His killer or killers was never found. But the stories do not match exactly. In the newspaper account, the name was Barnes and although both accounts have the murder happening seven miles from Austin, the newspaper file shows it was north of the city. The ranch is southwest of Austin.
Also according to the spirit writing. Burns answered 04 when asked when he was killed. Though, interestingly enough, When asked where he had lived, his answer was nine miles north of here.
Burns now sketched a picture. It was the head of a man. It wore a large western hat. There was a bushy mustache and one huge ear shaped like a Figure 8.
What does that ear mean? Someone asked.
A deaf man was the explanation.
Who was the deaf man?
A helper. He worked at this ranch. He was made deaf when butted by a cow.
Frank Gibson asked me if I remembered such a man. And I recalled that there had been an old cowboy who had worked on the ranch years before. He wore his Stetson hat in an old style, uncreased just as it came from the box, like the sketch. I could not recall his last name, but his first name had been Dolph, short for Adolf. He had been deaf and had a mustache. But again, inconsistencies cropped up. Burns further described the deaf man as a Mexican man named. MATEREZ. Dolph was not a Mexican person.
In answer to another question, Burns indicated that more ghosts were in the house.
Many are here, he said.
At that moment, Jane McGee reported a new personality, a very strong one, had taken over. It identified itself as Robert.
The writing seemed to become violent, aggressive. The words came. My time is over now. Nobody will listen. At that point, the woman handling the pencil shook with emotion and began sobbing uncontrollably. It was some minutes before she was snapped out of what appeared to be a trance. When she came around, she was so shaken by her experience that she was not able to continue. I felt his personality, a violent one, was trying to enter my body. Trying to take over, she explained.
One of the men next took over the pencil. But it seemed to move with such violence that the point was broken off again and again. At one point, when the personality identified as Robert took offense at a particular question, the pencil spun in wild circles, tearing the paper and snapping the point. At the same time, to the surprise of everyone present, the house began to shake. The windows rattled violently, and from outside came the sound of a tremendous wind. This lasted about a minute. The ghost hunters were visibly shaken, and the ghost hunters weren’t given time to recover from the surprise. They watched as the pencil slid from the fingers of the holder and he slumped back in a trance. From his mouth came hardly audible words, mostly unintelligible. By the time he had been revived, enthusiasm for the continuation had evaporated. Everyone trooped outside. And the ghost hunters spent their night in their cars.
