Wright Place
Prelude to a Haunt
Did you ever wonder what it would be like to camp out in a real
haunted house? Now may be
your chance to experience a real life haunt without leaving the
comfort -- or security -- of your own
home.
The Local Paper is sending a staff writer to a hotel believed
to be
haunted. As they have for the last 10 years, a story detailing
their experiences will run in the next
day's newspaper.
The event will take place Saturday, October 19 and will start
around midnight or when the last
patrons pass thru the haunted house.
A brief history:
For this years haunt ,the local paper has chosen the Wright Place
in Cleburne, Texas. Research
shows that the building was originally constructed in 1874 as
the Hamilton House, a twenty-five
room hotel. The South half of the building was destroyed by fire
in 1916, after which the building
was purchased by A. J. Wright and converted into a drygoods store.
Today, the building is being used as a Halloween haunted house
called "The Death Express". The
following excerpts are recounts from Donna Davidson, the present
owner of The Wright Place:
Late July, 1995 - Meeting with members of Vorta
(the group that puts together the
Halloween haunted house) regarding the possibilities
of building a haunted house, I was
asked if we were haunted. My reply was "no".
The following day I asked Karen Cowen
(a co-worker) if they had ever noticed anything
"strange" like a ghost. Her reply was,
"I've never seen anything, but the kids who
work here swear we have a ghost".
A few days later - I told a customer I wouldn't
have time to do a custom ring job,
because we were going to be working on this
Halloween project and on top of that we
thought we really were haunted. Her reply
was a surprise. "Don't let anyone go up there
until I get a chance to, because I can talk
to them."
A few days later she returned with a lady friend.
We three went upstairs and as we
walked I took a definite chill. Thinking it
was just me I was surprised when she said "Did
you feel that?" to her friend. My question
was, "What did you feel?" She replied, "That
chill!" Her friend replied "yes" and I said
that I had felt it too. She said that was one of
the spirits. As we proceeded around the upper
floor she identified several different
spirits. George, the young man who liked to
dance and spent the happiest days of his life
here dancing. An elderly German man who smoked
a cigar and was a cobbler. A lady
we think was named Katherine, two small children,
and a young girl in her 20's who
"worked upstairs". She also mentioned white
flowers and a lady who sews and a small
dog.
Early September, 1995 - Renee Spahr, the lady
responsible for our meeting with
Vorta and a gifted psychic in her own right,
brought a visiting psychic friend from New
Mexico to experience our haunting. She identified
the "working girl" as follows:
reddish-brown hair, blue dress, flowers in
her hair, fell from window, broke neck, 27 or
28 years old, carried a broom, didn't like
dirty floors, played zither well, could read and
write, read letters to cowboys and train men,
she was proud of this, 1882, came in on
first train, from South or East of here. The
first train did in fact come in February of 1882
and it came from Galveston.
August 13, 1995 - Renee brings another friend
to visit our haunting. Her name was
Diana and she was from Arizona. They went
upstairs and as I joined them [later. Diana
]was telling Renee, "They must be having a
party. This is the most active haunting I have
ever seen." Diana felt a scandal, a political
figure, a respected man. He was pompous,
carried something in his hand. He was responsible
for the girl's death.
August 19, 1995 - Diana and Renee return once
again before Diana returns home. The
following is a quote from the note Diana left
for me.
"Fall was accidental. Getting her away from
me I slapped her too hard - she fell. I'm a
respected man - she was a whore. I only took
the pleasures of the company she gave -
things should have been different. I hate
this place - this window is my hell." As Diana
left she turned around and said "Oh, by the
way, the girl's name is Joy."
During the year that has passed, many contacts
have been made. Several people have
experienced actual "touching". Odors have
been detected by persons knowing nothing
about them before their visit. The energy
is evident almost every day, sometimes
definitely stronger than others.
© 1998 Star-Telegram -- Terms and Conditions -- Send us your Feedback.
Ghost Chasing, '96
By Johnny Johnson
Recently I attended a ghost chase with Star-Telegram writers Jeff
Guinn and Andy Grieser. This is
something they have done for the last 10 years, and I was looking
forward to being a part of a real
haunt.
The event took place at the Wright Place in Cleburne, Texas on
a Saturday night. I arrived at 10
p.m. with gear in hand. I had brought along a laptop and digital
camera and planned to post live
reports on the World Wide Web throughout the evening, as well
as photos that I would be taking
with the digital camera. Unfortunately I was unable to post the
reports into an actual Web page,
but was able to post to an InterAct forum that had been setup
for the event, as well.
After setting up the equipment I took a brief tour of the place
before we got started. The Wright
Place is a two-story building with small store fronts on the
lower level. Upstairs is a Halloween
haunted house operated by VORTA, a Dallas entertainment group
that puts the event together.
We were going to be staying upstairs once the haunted house had
closed down for the evening.
Rather ironic that a haunted house is setup in a building that
is actually haunted, don't you think?
After we toured the upstairs, we met back downstairs to determine
our game plan. Andy decided
to split everyone up into groups. I was going to be staying with
Kathy Harris and Patti Ennis. Once
we finally figured out where we were supposed to be staying,
we setup our sleeping bags and
prepared for what we hoped would be an eventful evening.
As soon as everyone settled in the lights were turned off and
the adrenaline began to flow. Feeling
more anticipation than fear, I really wanted to see something,
anything. I wanted something to
convince me that there was life after death. Then about 2 a.m.
it happened. Our first sighting.
Really more of a feeling than a sighting. Jennifer Packer felt
a cold rush. And let me tell you, it was
unusually hot upstairs so when she reported feeling cold there
had to be something to it.
A little bit later Kristen Sullivan felt a poke on her foot as
she was laying down. Perhaps she just
felt the end of her sleeping bag. Perhaps it was one of our ghosts
making his presence felt (pardon
the pun). Then Ron Ennis reported feeling a draft as he walked
down the hallway. When several of
us went to the spot he felt the chill, no one could feel anything.
And we checked for drafts coming
from the ceiling. There were none to be found.
A few minutes later another draft was reported right outside the
room I was staying in. Now I'm
getting excited. When we walked out to the hallway to investigate,
Jeff stuck his hand out and said
there was a definite chill. I didn't feel anything, but the person
next to me did. Perhaps the ghosts
were wanting to play now.
Unfortunately this turned out to be our last interaction with
the ghosts. We waited and waited but
neither felt nor saw anything else. Finally, around 4 a.m., Andy
said that unless something happens
in the next 30 minutes we were going to call it an evening. Having
not slept all night I had to agree.
And, as expected, nothing more was reported. We packed up our
gear and headed for home.
One interesting note: We had to leave through the alleyway because
the building had a self locking
door. As I walked outside and around the corner a Cleburne police
officer was driving by. So here
I am with my sleeping bag and gear in hand when he pulls up.
"What's your story?" he asked. After
I told him why I was coming around an alley with a sleeping bag
he looked at me kinda strange but
figured I couldn't have made that story up so he was on his way.