Ghosts along the Texas Coast (4 page)

Almost directly across from Galveston, on the mainland side of West Bay, there's a place called Virginia Point. In 1929 a Beaumont newspaper published a “Forty Years Ago” item in which it quoted the
Galveston Civilian
as saying that a hurricane in 1818 had driven several of Jean Lafitte's ships ashore on Virginia Point. The item went on to say that several years later some guns were found at Virginia Point whose muzzles had been stuffed with gold coins, presumably from the wrecked ships. It was said that the finding of the guns had long been kept secret in hopes that more treasure might be located. The story of Lafitte's treasure at Virginia Point persists in legend, but Penfield said there's scarcely a point between New Orleans and Corpus Christi that doesn't have its own legend of buried Lafitte treasure!

Harris County is home to La Porte, in Trinity Bay. Lafitte is said to have sailed a ship into La Porte and taken a treasure chest ashore, where it was buried. Lafitte was accompanied by two trusted lieutenants, who helped carry the chest inland a short distance. Lafitte is said to have returned to his ship alone. Supposedly, the lieutenants were blindfolded as the treasure was buried, but Lafitte saw one lift his blindfold to note the location of the buried chest. In a rage of anger, the pirate chief killed both of the men. They say the treasure chest lies under an old house which was built over it without the owner's knowledge of the treasure's being there.

Another place where Lafitte sometimes anchored his ships was called Seabrook, on Galveston Bay (still in Harris County). It's said the
pirate buried treasure near three large trees on the banks of the Lone Oak Bayou. The belief stems from reports that early settlers in the area found strange markings on some of the trees along the Bayou.

Just north of Galveston, we come to Chambers County. The small historic town of Anahuac is situated on Galveston Bay opposite the mouth of the Trinity River. It was well known to Jean Lafitte. About 1900 several doubloons dated 1803 were found on the banks of the bay near Anahuac. For years it has been known to residents that a strange ship, partially submerged in the sands of the inlet, could be seen on clear days. No one thought much about it until 1940, when a man sought permission from the state to salvage the wreck. When denied permission, he explained that this was one of Jean Lafitte's ships, wrecked when the pirate was forced to leave Galveston. It was a secret, he said, that his family had kept for 90 years. He claimed to have proof that this particular vessel had carried the major portion of Lafitte's vast treasure, a sum estimated at more than $12,000,000. It is little wonder nobody paid much attention to the treasure seeker, because all up and down the Texas coast, Lafitte treasure stories are a “dime a dozen,” according to Tom Penfield.

An even wilder story concerning Lafitte's treasure ships also comes from Chambers County. According to Penfield's book, when Jean Lafitte was ordered to leave Galveston and his “Campeachy” domain, he is supposed to have loaded up his flagship, the
Pride
, with five bearskins of gold and sailed somewhere into the back reaches of Galveston Bay to bury them. The ship ran aground and developed such a leak that it settled to the muddy bottom of a small lake before the treasure could be removed and buried. Well, in 1833 the hulk of a sunken ship was located in Lake Miller, near the community of Wallisville. It was hidden just below the surface of the murky water in about eight feet of quicksand-like mud. By means of using a long pipe as a probe, a party of treasure seekers was able to determine the outline of the hulk, and the measurements fit those of the
Pride
. A man named John Lafitte showed up and claimed the treasure, if any was found, on the basis he was a “direct descendant” of the famous pirate. However, the search had to be called off because the state-owned lake had not been properly leased, and the searchers were ordered to leave. This section of Lake Miller has now been filled in. The
Pride
, and the treasure, if indeed they exist, are under dry ground today.

Sabine Pass, over in Jefferson County near the Louisiana border, was a thriving village in the days when Lafitte and his pirates roamed the Gulf Coast. Tales of buried treasure abound in this area. According to a story that appeared in the
Houston Post
many years ago, one of Lafitte's ships was chased across Sabine Lake and anchored in Port Neches at the mouth of the Neches River. To prevent the treasure aboard the vessel from falling into the hands of Spanish pursuers, it was carried ashore and buried in a marsh. Maps purported to show where this treasure was secreted have appeared from time to time and there has been much digging for it, according to Penfield in his Texas treasure guide. It is supposed to have never been found, but maybe, just maybe, an article that ran in the
Port Arthur News
on October 28, 1984, will shed some light on this tale. The writer, Denny Angelle, related the story of a man named Marion Meredith. It seems many years ago Meredith told a Houston newspaper reporter about a neighbor of his who had bought a map from an old Mexican woman. It was supposedly a pirate's treasure map. Now Meredith lived over near Port Neches, and the buried loot was supposed to be somewhere near the mouth of the Neches River, not far from his home. Here, pirates led by Jean Lafitte were said to have escaped their pursuers into the shallow waters of Lake Sabine. This one particular ship, bearing a fortune in treasure, was supposedly floated into the headwaters of the Neches where the crew cut the anchor chain, leaving the anchor as a marker. The treasure is supposed to have been buried in the marshy land nearby.

Well, Meredith's neighbor found the rusty old anchor and located the spot where the treasure should be. Naturally, he began to dig! But before he got too deep, something unseen and icy gripped him! The man was seized with such a nameless horror that he fled the place. So terrified was he that he lost his voice entirely, and he is said to have died a few days later, without ever speaking a word to anyone!

Meredith later obtained the map, but he decided he wouldn't undertake the treasure search alone. He enlisted the help of a man known only as “Clawson,” a crusty old woodsman with a bit of pioneer salt throbbing in his blood.

The two men set out down the Neches River and, following the map, they soon discovered the ancient, rusty chain. Pointed in a certain direction by the chart, they searched for a tree with a heart cut into its bark, as was noted on the map. Sure enough, they found it with no difficulty.

From the marked tree, Meredith and Clawson paced off a certain distance and soon found themselves high and dry on a small island in the marsh. They found the tools that Meredith's unfortunate neighbor had left behind him, and the hole that he had begun to dig. Meredith grabbed a pickax and eagerly started to dig. It wasn't long before he found a human skeleton, still wearing rotting clothing and boots. Meredith and Clawson put the skeletal remains aside, and Clawson jumped into the hole in order to dig deeper. Suddenly, he leapt from the hole, his eyes wild in a face as white as a sheet. “For God's sake, man, let's get out of here,” he told Meredith. Meredith didn't understand, but Clawson begged him to go, saying, “I've just seen hell and all its horrors! We have to leave this place.”

The two men fled, leaving their digging tools on the little island.

Several years later, Meredith ran into Clawson in Beaumont. He recalled the day that they had gone digging to Clawson. The man never would reveal to Meredith what he had seen, but he did tell him that “that day” had haunted him every day of his life since then! It truly had to have been a horrifying experience!

Meredith later returned to the spot to retrieve his tools, but taking Clawson at his word, he did not attempt to dig again. Instead, he carefully reburied the skeleton, then hid the map away and never again went near the little island at the mouth of the Neches.

Once, when some young men approached Meredith and asked him to lead them to his “treasure island,” he told them, “I'll take you out there, and I'll even watch you boys, but there ain't enough money in Texas to get me to dig that damned hole.”

Nobody knows what became of Marion Meredith. It was a long time ago. Maybe he finally learned the secret of just what is guarding that pirate treasure, or maybe he really didn't want to know what that dreadful unknown thing was that his friend Clawson saw and described as the “dark side of hell.” He was probably content to just let well enough alone. No doubt the treasure is probably still out there.

There is, without a doubt, a lot of buried or sunken treasure scattered all along the Gulf Coast area of Texas. Maybe someday some of it will be found, since now there are metal detectors and other devices that can aid in such searches. I learned in speaking with Dr. Joe Graham, of the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M in Kingsville, that “ghost lights” are said to shine around an area where treasure is
buried, also. He said this belief is especially widespread among the Hispanic population of South Texas.

From time to time somebody finds a doubloon from a wrecked ship. An occasional gold coin will turn up in a sand dune somewhere, proof that there is still some gold out there. Whether or not there are pirate guardian ghosts at all those purported treasure sites, we have no way of knowing. Since we haven't seen any publicity about pirate treasure being discovered, we're reasonably sure that there are a few “sentries” on duty. After all, it was tough work, dragging those treasure chests ashore and digging those deep holes in which to bury them. We can't blame the pirate-specters for not wanting to give up their loot! They must still be out there, patrolling the beaches, guarding their treasure, so that neither you, nor I, nor even the IRS will discover their secret hiding places!

The pirates' gold is still around

The legends will not die.

In holes dug deep within the ground,

Their treasure chests still lie.

I am indebted to Yolanda Gonzalez, librarian at the Arnulfo L. Oliviera Memorial Library at the University of Texas at Brownsville, for sending me this story. It was told by a fisherman, John Garreau, on Padre Island's levees to a group of fishermen in 1967, in the presence of Peter Gawenda, who wrote it all down. Later the story appeared in
Studies in Brownsville History
, edited by Milo Kearney.

“When the full moon lights up the sky, when the Gulf is choppy, and when shreds of clouds chase each other through the sky, it is possible to become witness of a beautiful but ghostly sight.

“Several times in the past century, fishermen would return from the Gulf with the following story:

Usually at a distance between two to three miles off the coast, straight to the east of the entrance to the former port of Brazos de Santiago (close to today's Port Isabel), a strange object would appear from the direction of the Rio Grande's mouth, moving swiftly towards the open sea. It would seem to be very large and high, and the absence of any noise would make the vision very mysterious. It would move as if pushed or carried through the water. No living soul would be seen. Then, when it would come close, one could clearly recognize a three-master, or French corsair, with every sail set. All the cannon hatches would stand open. The ship would be loaded so heavily that the choppy sea could not influence its course. At one time, the fisherman said, a lieutenant with the U.S. Army from the former Fort Texas saw that spectacle and described the scene to him, saying, “. . . on it went, glacial white, mountain high, deathly still, a spectral, gliding glory of moonlit space . . . it passed, vanished, and made no sign . . .”
Whose ship it was, nobody knows. Some people say it carried Jean Lafitte's ghost to the place where he had buried his (never-found) treasures. Other people who saw the ship insisted that it was a Spanish galleon having three masts. It is very possible that it was returning to the area where it was sunk by a storm centuries ago, or that it really did carry some soul's ghost that was not able to find its rest.

Another story having to do with pirates and treasure appeared in the collection of stories entitled
Studies in Brownsville History
edited by Milo Kearney. The story, as told by Felipe Lozano in his Brownsville barbershop to his customers, was written down by Peter Gawenda. I am indebted to Yolanda Gonzalez, librarian at the Arnulfo L. Oliveira Library at the University of Texas, Brownsville, for sending it to me:

It is common knowledge that many treasures are still hidden along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and maybe in some of the riverbanks of the Rio Grande, Nueces, or San Antonio rivers. But nobody knows the exact locations where those treasures were hidden by pirates like Jean Lafitte, by Spanish nobles who had traveled along the coast like Cabeza de Vaca, and others.

Some small valuables have been found and one large treasure has been stumbled upon at several times, but it has not been recovered. And if someone finds it he will try to take it only that one time. This treasure, so it is told, is in a large iron chest, a type of chest that was used by the people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To find this chest you would have to dig into the riverbank until you come into a grotto. But everyone who has succeeded in finding this large chest has not dared to get close to it. The chest is more than full, and obviously cannot be closed. In fact, gold chains and jewels have fallen out of that chest and cover the surrounding floor.

But the reason why no one dares to get close to the treasure chest is a large black dog that sits on the chest's cover. It looks as if it is ready to jump. It has reddish, glowing eyes, and growls viciously, baring its long yellow fangs. If anyone has dared to bother the dog by throwing a stone or has tried to shoot the dog, immediately that person has been attacked himself.
Usually the growling alone has caused people to just leave everything and run. Whoever dares to stay longer would become hypnotized by the horrible reddish eyes. This would account for the many skeletons that are said to be lying in the grotto.