The real and original Austin Ghost tours throughout the years often have had people tell us about experiences they’ve had at places that are believed to be haunted. This is one such story.
Jeanine Plumer.
I live in Beaumont, which is 30 miles away from the Big Thicket Forest in east Texas. Near the small town of Saratoga there is a road that runs through the forest. Locals believe the road is haunted because of the inexplicable recurrence lights that appear after the sun has gone from the sky. Bragg Road, nicknamed Ghost Road, is an 8-mile long, straight as an arrow, narrow, sand road that was once a railroad track. Fort Bragg, for which the road is named, no longer exists. When the railroad relocated in the 1930s the tracks were pulled up and the town withered away.
The legend is that a railroad worker somehow was decapitated in a train mishap, and the lights are the result of “Joe,” as he’s come to be known, swinging a lantern back and forth over the missing tracks looking for his head.
In February my sister Shannan and I made plans to drive to the supposedly haunted road to see for ourselves what was happening.
I had never been to that part of the Big Thicket so I drove there during the day to scope it out. That night we left my house in my husband’s car, which is much smaller and much more maneuverable than mine is. Shannan and I arrived at around 10 o’clock. The road was very narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other. We drove midway down the sandy road, the tires sometimes slipping on the loose sand, before we made a clumsy U-turn, pulled over and turned off the car and waited. There were a few other cars out, also waiting, but it was very quiet, and once we turned off our headlights, it was as black as pitch. So dense is the Big Thicket that it felt as though we were in a tunnel, surrounded by trees.
It was a clear night, and the crickets and other insects were buzzing in the woods.
We could tell when a car was approaching, because of the enormous dust clouds that were illuminated in their head- and taillights. It would easily take over 15 minutes for the dust and sand to settle, as Shannan and I observed several times as other cars passed by. Therefore, I feel I can state with certainty that I know the difference between a cloud of dust brightened by headlights and any other phenomena.
As we sat in the darkened car, we kept conversation to a minimum. Around 11:15 PM Shannan and I began to notice a blinking greenish light, at a height of about 8-10 feet above the road.
Another one was approaching us from behind, and it was much larger than the one in front of us. (Interesting observation: I saw two blinking green lights, blinking in tandem, in front of us, whereas Shannan only saw one, and it appeared to be blue to her.) I could see with my peripheral vision the light behind us in my rear-view mirror, but I was much more mesmerized by the lights in front of us. Shannan was much more interested in the one approaching us from the rear.
The light would blink, go out, when it blinked back on again, it would be closer. We watched the lights for about five minutes or so. As the lights got closer and closer, we became quite frightened and Shannan yelled, “Go!” at which time I turned on the ignition, fired up the headlights and hauled ass out of there, kicking up a sandstorm that would rival one from the Sahara desert.
Facts that Shannan and I noted from this experience:
1) Fireflies, or lightning bugs, do not naturally occur in Southeast Texas. I don’t know why, but they don’t. Therefore, we eliminated that as being the ghost lights. Besides, these lights were coming toward us in a straight line, and fireflies don’t do that.
2) There was absolutely no dust in the air at the time of the appearance, and no headlights were on from any other cars in the area.
3) Even if there were headlights on, these lights appeared 8-10 feet above the road, not 3-4 feet where headlights would be.
4) The very notion that these lights were different in appearance to each of us is puzzling. I saw two lights in front of us, while Shannan saw only one. The colors were different to each of us, too.
5) When we turned on the headlights and floored it, there was nothing illuminated in our headlights other than trees and other such brush. Also, we didn’t pass any other cars until several miles past the site where we had been parked.
We were quite unnerved by this experience. We are still puzzled by it. There are skeptics, which will claim that the lights are only swamp gases. Shannan and I are not aware of any swamps in the middle of a forest. Besides, does swamp gas blink? Anyway, although we definitely agree that we saw something, we can’t say what it was.
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Second visit by Tracey and others:
On a Saturday night in April of 2000, three friends and I went out to Bragg Road again.
They were visiting from Houston. I told them about my experience a few months earlier and they wanted to see these mysterious lights for themselves. We arrived around 10:30 p.m. and passed a couple of cars sitting quietly on the side of the road, no doubt waiting for the ghost lights, as well.
The moon was so full and so incredibly bright that we could see Bragg Road as if it were lit with streetlights. In fact, it was so bright that a few cars passed without any headlights on at all. We waited for a good hour and a half, constantly remarking on the brilliance of the moonlight, but we saw nothing. That night proved to be a bust. We wondered if perhaps the moon was too bright for Joe to shine his light?
On May 27, 2000, my brother Jack and I went back to Bragg Road.
As we turned onto the dirt road we passed a car that was exiting. We saw one other car, which was one in front of us, and we slowed down to let it get as far ahead as possible. Just like the previous times, we drove about four miles down the road, turned around, stopped, rolled down the windows and turned the engine off.
Other than the car in front of us there were no other cars on the road. There was no moon, and it was black as pitch.
The woods around us were alive with buzzing insects and croaking toads. At approximately 11 PM the noises ceased altogether, and then the “light show” began. This time, the lights were quite different from those I had seen with Shannan.
As Jack and I sat there in total darkness, we noticed an unusually faint glow way up ahead on the road. We attributed it to someone holding a flashlight. It was not car headlights, as the light was so faint. Gradually it faded away altogether. We dismissed it; someone must be out there with a flashlight.
Then we noticed the faint light down the road re-appear. This time the light brightened in intensity before slowly fading away to nothing.
Like the old TV sets that when you turned them off for the night, a circular ball of light in the middle of the TV screen would shrink away to nothingness? That is how I would describe the light. At no time did it ever draw closer, but it did appear for us many, many times. Always, Jack and I would huddle together and whisper about what we thought it could be, yet we could never find the one answer that satisfied us both. The light happened over and over, and at one point it veered off toward the right and into the woods.
Twice we that night we had noticed a far away airplane in the sky, its lights flickering through the leafy canopy of the trees overhead. So when we saw a light around the tops of the trees we immediately thought they were lights from another airplane. It soon became obvious that it wasn’t because the flickering light was blinking in front of the tree leaves, and it appeared as though someone were running down the road holding a light! We watched this with fascination, because it was happening right outside my driver side window! It buzzed through the canopy in a straight line, never wavering in intensity.
I pulled my eyes away from the flickering light to watch the light that was down the road that was still blinking on and off, when suddenly, close to the light, appeared two red, square lights. The tail lights of a car? Curiosity got the better of us this time, and we started the car and drove quickly toward the red lights, determined to find out where they came from. We drove very fast, but at no time did we ever catch up to, or pass another car. Nor, did we see any dust in the air, which would also have been an indication that a car had passed by.
Jack and I reached where Bragg Road intersects with the highway and stopped, totally mystified. We passed no cars, no pedestrians… what was causing the light that we saw come on and off over and over? What were the red lights? What are these mysterious lights in the Big Thicket?
Bob
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