Hazalum’s Haint
This is a story that originated in a historical book written about Titus County Texas History. If you can’t make it to Mount Pleasant Texas to look in their library the only other resource to find the legend or ghost story of Hazalum is from Rebecca Kelly’s book East Texas Towns and Their Ghosts.
Haslam was a thief. during the Civil War, Haslam stealing from the families and farms around Southwest of Mount Pleasant Texas.
When the soldiers returned and discovered the swindling that had been done to the family’s they had to leave behind they decided on retribution, and they decided that Hazalum was going to be hung. So a posse was formed and they headed out on horseback to the rural isolated area where Hazalum and his wife lived. They didn’t want to kill him quickly, target practice is what they were thinking for starters.
Haslam saw them coming from the front of the house and ran out the back of the house. One of the ex-soldiers saw him and they gave chase. He climbed a tree where he stayed until he was shut down. Blood spread all over his body from the gunshot wound and all the men presumed he was dead.
Not long after a neighbor saw the blood spattered Haslam alive and in that very small town word quickly spread that Haslam was still alive. His wife had high -tailed it out to the tree where he was shot and loaded him up into the buggy where they planned on getting the heck out of town.
With the new the men regrouped and caught up with a couple as they were escaping. They pulled Hazalum from the buggy and shot him many times just to make sure he was good and dead. Then they dug a hole put his body in it filled it back up and waited a while to make sure he wouldn’t claw his way out. Later his wife returned and put a marker on his grave but it has not stood the test of time and no one knows where Haslam is buried just somewhere Southwest of Mount Pleasant Texas.
His ghost. though, roams the hill and woods of southwest Titus County.
