Post by omw on Mar 29, 2009 15:10:33 GMT -6
***First of all, this is not related to Wisconsin. I just wanted to post this here to get you opinions about this story and the research that I have done. So if you not interested in hearing this story out of Texas and giving your opinion about what I have found out so far, this is probably a good spot to stop reading.
Back in October I was looking through all of the "Weird" books. One story in particular caught my eye. Here is the story from the book "Weird Texas".
"Howdy,
There's a county in Texas called Brazoria that is home to over a hundred eerie things going down. If you take County Road 218 past the Primitive Satanist Church (wait it gets worse), and turn right just before Dead Man's Curve (which got its name due to the fact that so many people drove into the river on the hairpin turn they would wait until the cars stacked over the water before they fished all the dead bodies out), you will be on a small country road with no name. Along one side of the road is a full-on swamp with alligators, snakes, and about a foot of fog covering the ground. To your right are old Spanish Oaks with Spanish Moss hanging down to the ground, just like the opening credits of Scooby Doo.
At the end of the road, you have to get out and walk about another half mile. Remember you can't see your feet due to the fog, and there are wild noises coming from the virgin Texas forest. You'll know when you get there, because it's an abandoned 1700th century Gothic church. I am talking gargoyles and the whole bit. It was built by Spanish Missionaries who were later killed and eaten by the local Indian tribe. There is a cemetery in the back with Gothic tombstones, all with burn marked on them from where the Indians tried to burn it to the ground.
Now for the scary part – there are two sets of ghosts who hang around this structure:
1) The Ring of Children – During the wilderness days, as the story goes, a group of children were all playing ring around the rosy in the woods. A sect of Black Magic people, some say the descendants are still practicing at the Primitive Satanist Church up the road, came upon them and slayed them all. You can still see their ghosts if you and all your friends stand in the middle of the graveyard and play ring around the rosy. I've seen the fire in the distance and heard what sounded like small voices singing, but my nerves broke and I ran.
2) The Banshee – A local deputy actually saw the Banshee and unloaded his revolver into "her." She is rarely seen, but more often is heard screaming in the woods when you are at the abandoned church. I have also heard this, but in another part of the same woods. It sounds like a lady constantly being strangled to death at the top of her lungs. My dad, who was with me, said it was a panther stalking us. Either way, we left immediately.
– Ran Scot"
I thought that this sounded totally awsome and I wanted to so here someday. I immediately started trying to find the location on google maps (I have a tendency to try to locate locations I want to go to on google maps satellite view so that I can have exact directions when I go there). I wasn't having much luck. There was no county road 218 that made sense. I tried to google satanist churches in the area. If there are any, they weren't advertising online. I couldn't find any "Dead Mans Curve" in the area that fit either. I basically gave up. Then last week I was bored so I started searching for information again. I located an article written by the same person who wrote the exert for the book.
"In the heart of the Ring of Ghosts by Ran Scot
The best way to get directions to the Ring of Ghosts in the Dark Forest of Brazoria is to ask the elders who always gather under the Masonic Oak. They may plead ignorance, but that is for your sake, because unless your blood is Brazorian, you have no business out there. But since it is Halloween, I will give you directions to where the grass doesn't grow and the eagles do not dare, the scariest place on Earth.
You might want to start off with an easy ghost experience first, since it is on the way to River's End. I speak of the local hardass who has never left us, Brit Bailey. Like many other old school families around these parts, he owned the land since Spain sold it to us, and he has still not taken it upon himself to leave. This is because when they gave him his Christian burial, which was a farse to begin with, his wife refused to bury him with his whiskey jug as he had wished. Now he roams the prairie outside of the Dark Forest looking for a spot of the old rot gut to wet his whistle, and maybe even scare a few people. But at least he won't kill you, or hasn't killed anyone yet.
So after your realize you are in ghost country, you should mosey on down to River's End, which is also where civilization ends. For beyond it is the Out Yonder of the middle coast of Texas, home of wild animals, men and mysteries. The folks here are pretty nice, and will make every attempt to let you know that dirt road leading out of the village and towards the Dark Forest is not for the weak of heart, and if it was all the same to everybody involved, why don't you just turn back? But you won't, because you don't believe just how far down into the depths of Hell that rabbit hole can go.
So you will know you have reached the edge of the woods when your car dies. Look off to your right, the would be the Hanging Tree. Many a woman, man, child and goat have been found hanging from that tree, but no one ever has figured out who they were, and where they came from, all dying a Jane or John Doe death. And why something or someone took the time to skin them, is also something we have never figured out. But whoever or whatever it is, the work is craftsmen level. The worst episode was when two young lovers were found, and their respective skins had been artfully sewn onto the others body, hands and lips fastened with the strings of made of cat guts. We don't much like to talk about it, but it happened.
You might as well get of the car, because for some reason they all quit working here. Back in the olden times, the axels use to pop clean off wagons and carriages, which would explain why the road ends just around the bend anyway. Not like much people come out here, especially considered what happened at the Mansion.
Like something out of a Faulkner nightmare, this ruined antebellum masterpiece has never been occupied, at least by the living. A young man had built this place for his wife, who should her gratitude by dying the second she walked in. The dude went mad, and slaughtered all his slaves, and it gets worse. He got their bones, burned them clean, and fastened a bed of nails using their femurs and humerus instead of metal, creating a baroque scene in his front lawn. And as a local merchant came up to see what all the comotion was about, the young man swan dove off the roof and impaled him on the sharp remains of his slaves he had so painstakingly set up for his last, and greatest act. Rumor has it, if you try and spend the night in the Mansion, he will carve you up and use your bones in the same way, forever in a cycle of trying to further his madness.
It just gets worse from here, because now your only option is to go into the Dark Forest and face the actual Ring of Ghosts, and maybe even make it to the scariest place on Earth.
The Dark Forest requires guns, preferably a high gauge shotgun and pistol with stopping power. This is just for the animals. We got some wicked nuts in this forest. Huge black panthers who scream like dying ladies, waiting to jump from tree branches to make a meal of you. Huge javelinas who have taken it upon themselves to mix with Russian boar whose tusks I have seen pierce radiators in trucks. At least seven kinds of deadly snakes, and huge pythons usually reserved for covers of National Geographics. And there is even rumors of jaguars and bears still roaming the deepest parts, but rumors of the other animals if far worse.
Take the people bats for example. Don't let the name fool you. Supposedly there are six foot bats, with human features about their faces that scavenge the land for blood and flesh. Though none have been killed or capture, they have been sighted numerous times as they swoop out of the air to take some poor cow away for God only knows what. They are supposedly cousin of the Jackson devils that also roam this forest, both of whom answer and serve the unspokeable horror who leaves at the place I am leading you to.
Not all the ghosts and specters are malign in the forest, take Lily Brown for example. She rides on her trademark Palomino, whose spots are those of the stars in the north end of the sky, looking for those foolish enough to enter here. She will gladly lead you out since she lost her soul here long ago.
Or the Ghost Dogs of Orozimbo, who during their time on Earth captured Santa Ana himself when he tried to escape from our local prison. They are mostly harmless, though when it comes to ghost dogs, discretion is the better part of valor.
What you need need to look for is the glowing fire of Der Kinder, because they lie next to the bayou you are looking for to lead you to the very heart of this darkness. But for God's sake do no approach. Der Kinder are a group of young children of the old Prussians who settled this area before Spain bothered to put a flag up. One night when the Comanche Moon shown in all its glory, said Comanches found these kids playing around campfire. They ruthlessly slaughtered them all. Now the children are waiting for their parents, who have long since passed, to come lead them in song and dance. If they catch sight of you, you will be enchanted to play with them in their games, where you will join them by the fire forever and ever and ever.
But look past the fire and see that glow on the water? That would be Beacon's Bayou, which finally leads to The Place. This would be a good time to reload, because the Beacon Clan has been out in this Dark Forest for generations, with no new blood in their veins. Some say they are responsible for the horrors of the Hanging Tree, other say they are responsible for much worse. Distant relatives of the family of chainsaw massacure fame, which really did happen, they have desire for your parts, because theirs are so degraded by inbreeding.
Legend has it they will remove your hands and feet, which they dry and taxidermy before your eyes to fit various members of their family with prosthetics. One particular gruesome tale is of a bootlegger who emerged out of the woods in 30s, missing various parts with a gauge in his belly. As he laid dying, he told of a tale where the river people would eat part of his liver, believing that it would grow back quickly again. When asked how long this had been going on, he looked up and said his last words, "years."
So if anything humaniod comes your direction, kill it. People Bat or Beacon Clan, you want no part of it. Now along this bayou you will see a black sand trail leading to a grove of ancient Spanish oaks, about a half mile away. Now watch out, since there is a perpetual foot to two feet of fog here, you can never see an alligator coming up to snatch you by the ankles and drag you down to a watery death. Or the various venom snakes ready to take a bite out of you hours away from anything that remotely resembles modern medical care. When you finally see the Spanish moss hanging from those hundred foot ancient oaks like a curtain, you are finally there.
In the middle of that grove is a burned out Spanish monastery, where several priest and dozens of monks might a violent doom. The local Indians had a legend, which said The Lady in Blue Dress warned them that if someone came bearing a cross offered them blankets, they were to kill them all. She said it would happen, at the forgotten and now forbidden Altar of Ah Puch.
The Spaniards, doing what they do, torn down that pagan structure and built this small modest monastery. The local Indians suffered this indignity, but when the monks came out with their small pox blankets, the ugliness happened. The Spaniards were not just killed, but they were brutally sacrificed to Ah Puch who is said to have returned and found his altar defiled. It was then he plunged the whole forest into darkness, which drove the Indians to the gulf, and brought madness to all who stayed, and opened a portal to macabre dimensions from which the People Bats and Jackson Devils are said to have emerged.
If you are brave enough to enter the blackened shell of the walls of the old monastery, you will find an old charred tabernacle which smells of death itself. If you kneel, a smokey apparition will appear before you. This, if you have balls of steel, is when you say "Ah Puch" three times, and he will appear in all his vile totentanz glory. He will then harvest your soul, your very essence, and drag you to his empire outside of the veil of time where you will toil for all eternity building him a temple of unspeakable horrors in honor of the defiled one from which you called him.
If you don't believe me, go unto the Dark Forest in Brazoria where the Ring of Ghosts lies, and find this unholy place and rattle of his name at the brimstone altar. I dare you, I freaking dare you."
I was excited to have new information to help me on my search, but as you can see there are not any real landmarks in this article, only references to other legends. I started following the story. The reference to asking the elders that gather under the Masonic Oak won't help. The Masonic Oak that they speak of in Old Brazoria is actually in a cemetary. So unfortunately I can't pester the elders and beg them to tell me how to get there; they're all dead. Regardless, this did serve as a starting point, which is good. The next instructions are to mosey on down to rivers end. there is a river road right near the cemetery. If you follow the road to the south it keeps going a long ways and then turns into another road. If you follow it north, it does end but not before a sharp curve, and there are a number of houses out there, not an old abondoned mansion. So I was stuck. I looked for info on the tree and the mansion to have a new starting point. I found out that there is a "hanging tree" and a legend of a mansion in Brazoria but could not find directions or locations for either of them. I tried looking up other legends referenced in the story and ended up with a bunch of pin points on the map not a general line or way to the final destination. After hours of searching and not really getting anywhere, I said screw it and called the historical museum in Brazoria to ask them some questions. They said that they have heard of the story but didn't know where it originated and they also stated that there were no structures/ruins that date back that far in the area. So the story could be a total fabrication? This morning I emailed Heather Shade, one of the authors of Weird Texas to find out if she could offer any more details. Someone from The Weird US Message Boards said that even if she did know directions she wouldn't give them to me (I guess that's how they roll on the the Weird US Blogs
). I've got to figure this one out. What do you all think? Is it just a legend or is there a Cemetery and the ruins of a church somewhere out in the forests near Brazoria Texas?
Back in October I was looking through all of the "Weird" books. One story in particular caught my eye. Here is the story from the book "Weird Texas".
"Howdy,
There's a county in Texas called Brazoria that is home to over a hundred eerie things going down. If you take County Road 218 past the Primitive Satanist Church (wait it gets worse), and turn right just before Dead Man's Curve (which got its name due to the fact that so many people drove into the river on the hairpin turn they would wait until the cars stacked over the water before they fished all the dead bodies out), you will be on a small country road with no name. Along one side of the road is a full-on swamp with alligators, snakes, and about a foot of fog covering the ground. To your right are old Spanish Oaks with Spanish Moss hanging down to the ground, just like the opening credits of Scooby Doo.
At the end of the road, you have to get out and walk about another half mile. Remember you can't see your feet due to the fog, and there are wild noises coming from the virgin Texas forest. You'll know when you get there, because it's an abandoned 1700th century Gothic church. I am talking gargoyles and the whole bit. It was built by Spanish Missionaries who were later killed and eaten by the local Indian tribe. There is a cemetery in the back with Gothic tombstones, all with burn marked on them from where the Indians tried to burn it to the ground.
Now for the scary part – there are two sets of ghosts who hang around this structure:
1) The Ring of Children – During the wilderness days, as the story goes, a group of children were all playing ring around the rosy in the woods. A sect of Black Magic people, some say the descendants are still practicing at the Primitive Satanist Church up the road, came upon them and slayed them all. You can still see their ghosts if you and all your friends stand in the middle of the graveyard and play ring around the rosy. I've seen the fire in the distance and heard what sounded like small voices singing, but my nerves broke and I ran.
2) The Banshee – A local deputy actually saw the Banshee and unloaded his revolver into "her." She is rarely seen, but more often is heard screaming in the woods when you are at the abandoned church. I have also heard this, but in another part of the same woods. It sounds like a lady constantly being strangled to death at the top of her lungs. My dad, who was with me, said it was a panther stalking us. Either way, we left immediately.
– Ran Scot"
I thought that this sounded totally awsome and I wanted to so here someday. I immediately started trying to find the location on google maps (I have a tendency to try to locate locations I want to go to on google maps satellite view so that I can have exact directions when I go there). I wasn't having much luck. There was no county road 218 that made sense. I tried to google satanist churches in the area. If there are any, they weren't advertising online. I couldn't find any "Dead Mans Curve" in the area that fit either. I basically gave up. Then last week I was bored so I started searching for information again. I located an article written by the same person who wrote the exert for the book.
"In the heart of the Ring of Ghosts by Ran Scot
The best way to get directions to the Ring of Ghosts in the Dark Forest of Brazoria is to ask the elders who always gather under the Masonic Oak. They may plead ignorance, but that is for your sake, because unless your blood is Brazorian, you have no business out there. But since it is Halloween, I will give you directions to where the grass doesn't grow and the eagles do not dare, the scariest place on Earth.
You might want to start off with an easy ghost experience first, since it is on the way to River's End. I speak of the local hardass who has never left us, Brit Bailey. Like many other old school families around these parts, he owned the land since Spain sold it to us, and he has still not taken it upon himself to leave. This is because when they gave him his Christian burial, which was a farse to begin with, his wife refused to bury him with his whiskey jug as he had wished. Now he roams the prairie outside of the Dark Forest looking for a spot of the old rot gut to wet his whistle, and maybe even scare a few people. But at least he won't kill you, or hasn't killed anyone yet.
So after your realize you are in ghost country, you should mosey on down to River's End, which is also where civilization ends. For beyond it is the Out Yonder of the middle coast of Texas, home of wild animals, men and mysteries. The folks here are pretty nice, and will make every attempt to let you know that dirt road leading out of the village and towards the Dark Forest is not for the weak of heart, and if it was all the same to everybody involved, why don't you just turn back? But you won't, because you don't believe just how far down into the depths of Hell that rabbit hole can go.
So you will know you have reached the edge of the woods when your car dies. Look off to your right, the would be the Hanging Tree. Many a woman, man, child and goat have been found hanging from that tree, but no one ever has figured out who they were, and where they came from, all dying a Jane or John Doe death. And why something or someone took the time to skin them, is also something we have never figured out. But whoever or whatever it is, the work is craftsmen level. The worst episode was when two young lovers were found, and their respective skins had been artfully sewn onto the others body, hands and lips fastened with the strings of made of cat guts. We don't much like to talk about it, but it happened.
You might as well get of the car, because for some reason they all quit working here. Back in the olden times, the axels use to pop clean off wagons and carriages, which would explain why the road ends just around the bend anyway. Not like much people come out here, especially considered what happened at the Mansion.
Like something out of a Faulkner nightmare, this ruined antebellum masterpiece has never been occupied, at least by the living. A young man had built this place for his wife, who should her gratitude by dying the second she walked in. The dude went mad, and slaughtered all his slaves, and it gets worse. He got their bones, burned them clean, and fastened a bed of nails using their femurs and humerus instead of metal, creating a baroque scene in his front lawn. And as a local merchant came up to see what all the comotion was about, the young man swan dove off the roof and impaled him on the sharp remains of his slaves he had so painstakingly set up for his last, and greatest act. Rumor has it, if you try and spend the night in the Mansion, he will carve you up and use your bones in the same way, forever in a cycle of trying to further his madness.
It just gets worse from here, because now your only option is to go into the Dark Forest and face the actual Ring of Ghosts, and maybe even make it to the scariest place on Earth.
The Dark Forest requires guns, preferably a high gauge shotgun and pistol with stopping power. This is just for the animals. We got some wicked nuts in this forest. Huge black panthers who scream like dying ladies, waiting to jump from tree branches to make a meal of you. Huge javelinas who have taken it upon themselves to mix with Russian boar whose tusks I have seen pierce radiators in trucks. At least seven kinds of deadly snakes, and huge pythons usually reserved for covers of National Geographics. And there is even rumors of jaguars and bears still roaming the deepest parts, but rumors of the other animals if far worse.
Take the people bats for example. Don't let the name fool you. Supposedly there are six foot bats, with human features about their faces that scavenge the land for blood and flesh. Though none have been killed or capture, they have been sighted numerous times as they swoop out of the air to take some poor cow away for God only knows what. They are supposedly cousin of the Jackson devils that also roam this forest, both of whom answer and serve the unspokeable horror who leaves at the place I am leading you to.
Not all the ghosts and specters are malign in the forest, take Lily Brown for example. She rides on her trademark Palomino, whose spots are those of the stars in the north end of the sky, looking for those foolish enough to enter here. She will gladly lead you out since she lost her soul here long ago.
Or the Ghost Dogs of Orozimbo, who during their time on Earth captured Santa Ana himself when he tried to escape from our local prison. They are mostly harmless, though when it comes to ghost dogs, discretion is the better part of valor.
What you need need to look for is the glowing fire of Der Kinder, because they lie next to the bayou you are looking for to lead you to the very heart of this darkness. But for God's sake do no approach. Der Kinder are a group of young children of the old Prussians who settled this area before Spain bothered to put a flag up. One night when the Comanche Moon shown in all its glory, said Comanches found these kids playing around campfire. They ruthlessly slaughtered them all. Now the children are waiting for their parents, who have long since passed, to come lead them in song and dance. If they catch sight of you, you will be enchanted to play with them in their games, where you will join them by the fire forever and ever and ever.
But look past the fire and see that glow on the water? That would be Beacon's Bayou, which finally leads to The Place. This would be a good time to reload, because the Beacon Clan has been out in this Dark Forest for generations, with no new blood in their veins. Some say they are responsible for the horrors of the Hanging Tree, other say they are responsible for much worse. Distant relatives of the family of chainsaw massacure fame, which really did happen, they have desire for your parts, because theirs are so degraded by inbreeding.
Legend has it they will remove your hands and feet, which they dry and taxidermy before your eyes to fit various members of their family with prosthetics. One particular gruesome tale is of a bootlegger who emerged out of the woods in 30s, missing various parts with a gauge in his belly. As he laid dying, he told of a tale where the river people would eat part of his liver, believing that it would grow back quickly again. When asked how long this had been going on, he looked up and said his last words, "years."
So if anything humaniod comes your direction, kill it. People Bat or Beacon Clan, you want no part of it. Now along this bayou you will see a black sand trail leading to a grove of ancient Spanish oaks, about a half mile away. Now watch out, since there is a perpetual foot to two feet of fog here, you can never see an alligator coming up to snatch you by the ankles and drag you down to a watery death. Or the various venom snakes ready to take a bite out of you hours away from anything that remotely resembles modern medical care. When you finally see the Spanish moss hanging from those hundred foot ancient oaks like a curtain, you are finally there.
In the middle of that grove is a burned out Spanish monastery, where several priest and dozens of monks might a violent doom. The local Indians had a legend, which said The Lady in Blue Dress warned them that if someone came bearing a cross offered them blankets, they were to kill them all. She said it would happen, at the forgotten and now forbidden Altar of Ah Puch.
The Spaniards, doing what they do, torn down that pagan structure and built this small modest monastery. The local Indians suffered this indignity, but when the monks came out with their small pox blankets, the ugliness happened. The Spaniards were not just killed, but they were brutally sacrificed to Ah Puch who is said to have returned and found his altar defiled. It was then he plunged the whole forest into darkness, which drove the Indians to the gulf, and brought madness to all who stayed, and opened a portal to macabre dimensions from which the People Bats and Jackson Devils are said to have emerged.
If you are brave enough to enter the blackened shell of the walls of the old monastery, you will find an old charred tabernacle which smells of death itself. If you kneel, a smokey apparition will appear before you. This, if you have balls of steel, is when you say "Ah Puch" three times, and he will appear in all his vile totentanz glory. He will then harvest your soul, your very essence, and drag you to his empire outside of the veil of time where you will toil for all eternity building him a temple of unspeakable horrors in honor of the defiled one from which you called him.
If you don't believe me, go unto the Dark Forest in Brazoria where the Ring of Ghosts lies, and find this unholy place and rattle of his name at the brimstone altar. I dare you, I freaking dare you."
I was excited to have new information to help me on my search, but as you can see there are not any real landmarks in this article, only references to other legends. I started following the story. The reference to asking the elders that gather under the Masonic Oak won't help. The Masonic Oak that they speak of in Old Brazoria is actually in a cemetary. So unfortunately I can't pester the elders and beg them to tell me how to get there; they're all dead. Regardless, this did serve as a starting point, which is good. The next instructions are to mosey on down to rivers end. there is a river road right near the cemetery. If you follow the road to the south it keeps going a long ways and then turns into another road. If you follow it north, it does end but not before a sharp curve, and there are a number of houses out there, not an old abondoned mansion. So I was stuck. I looked for info on the tree and the mansion to have a new starting point. I found out that there is a "hanging tree" and a legend of a mansion in Brazoria but could not find directions or locations for either of them. I tried looking up other legends referenced in the story and ended up with a bunch of pin points on the map not a general line or way to the final destination. After hours of searching and not really getting anywhere, I said screw it and called the historical museum in Brazoria to ask them some questions. They said that they have heard of the story but didn't know where it originated and they also stated that there were no structures/ruins that date back that far in the area. So the story could be a total fabrication? This morning I emailed Heather Shade, one of the authors of Weird Texas to find out if she could offer any more details. Someone from The Weird US Message Boards said that even if she did know directions she wouldn't give them to me (I guess that's how they roll on the the Weird US Blogs
). I've got to figure this one out. What do you all think? Is it just a legend or is there a Cemetery and the ruins of a church somewhere out in the forests near Brazoria Texas?
