Ghosts along the Texas Coast (5 page)

It is difficult to say who or what that vicious dog is, but Felipe said that it could be a cursed crew-member of the pirate's ship who now has to suffer for his greed.

One strange thing usually happens. If someone returns to the place where he had found the grotto before he had run away in terror, he will find the whole area looks untouched, as if someone has covered up and camouflaged the hole. No matter how much the individual will dig a second time, it will be useless.

When Clouis and Marilyn Fisher moved into their “new” Victorian home in 1979, little did they know the charming old house was already occupied! The Fishers first saw the house while they were driving around Rockport, a quiet little town on the Texas Gulf Coast. A yard sale was being conducted in the front yard of the place and the Fishers stopped to browse. Of even more interest to them, however, was the “For Sale” sign on the house. The place was pretty run-down, but Clouis, a dedicated “fixer-upper,” and Marilyn welcomed the challenge of restoring the place back to its circa 1881 splendor.

The previous owners neglected to tell the Fishers that the house came complete with a ghost, but it wasn't long before Clouis figured that out for himself!

At the time the Fishers and their three children moved in, the house was badly in need of rewiring. The wiring would not even support an air-conditioner, which was badly needed during the hot summer of '79. One July night stands out even now in Clouis' memory. It was about 1:30 a.m. when he awoke with a start and realized that a light was faintly glowing in the room. He described what he saw to be a “glowing fog” that floated into the room, sort of circled around, and then went out, and into a large room next to the bedroom. The night had been unusually hot. But suddenly, Clouis felt an arctic blast of cold air enter the room. He said he was literally petrified.

Clouis did not mention the strange incident to Marilyn, who had slept soundly through the night. Nor did he mention his strange experience with any friends or other family members. He just tried, with little success, to put the occurrence out of his mind. Soon after this initial encounter, Clouis also began to hear strange, unexplainable noises as well.

Several weeks after the purchase, Clouis, who is a Realtor, attended a company sales meeting in nearby Corpus Christi. A new employee, a woman he had never seen before, walked into the room. After she was
introduced to Clouis, she very matter-of-factly inquired, “Have you seen the ghost in your house yet?” It was then that Clouis realized, with some relief, that he hadn't been imagining things.

The lady went on to explain that in 1946 she had come to Rockport as a young single school teacher. She had rented a small upstairs apartment in the spacious old house that Clouis had bought for his family. Soon after she moved in, she came home from school one afternoon and went straight upstairs to her apartment. She heard footsteps of someone walking outside her room, and then the footsteps went down the stairs and out the front door. Frightened, because she thought she was alone in the house, she cautiously went to the front window and peered out to see who had exited the house. No one had come out the front door! A careful search revealed no one was around. She mentioned what she had heard to the daughter of the owners from whom she had rented the apartment. She told her it was just “our ghost.” The family thought it might be the spirit of a woman.

After Clouis and Marilyn learned they had a ghost, they began to understand why they had heard the sound of footsteps, and why other unusual things had been happening at the house. Clouis says the antics of the spirit are actually more annoying than frightening. While the Fishers have never seen their resident ghost, except for an occasional glow of light, Clouis and Marilyn both believe it is the spirit of the first man who owned the house, Leopold Bracht.

It seems the Bracht brothers came to Rockport back in the mid-1800s. Leopold ran a successful mercantile business and thus was able to provide a large and spacious home for his growing family. The house was actually built at another location by a builder who hoped to sell it. Today we would refer to it as a “spec house.” But the house did not sell right away, standing unoccupied for several years. When Leopold Bracht bought the structure, he had it cut in half and moved to its present site by mule train! This was in 1889, when the structure was about eight years old. Here it was reassembled and made ready for occupancy. In the early 1900s, Bracht remodeled the house considerably, modifying the mansard roofline into a two-storied, gabled-roof house with wrap-around porches on two floors. Space was added to the living areas until it reached its current size of over 4,000 square feet . . . the better to accommodate the Bracht family of six daughters and one son!

Marilyn Fisher told me that a few years after they had moved into the house, one of the Bracht daughters, then a very elderly lady past
ninety, called and asked if she could have someone bring her over to see the house in which she had spent much of her childhood. Marilyn said they had a wonderful visit, and the lady told her many interesting stories about the family and the old house. She said her father, Leopold Bracht, was very strict with his daughters. He kept very careful watch over them. In fact, two of the girls never married. It seems the girls had to observe very strict curfews or Leopold would be very angry.

Soon after the Fishers moved in, their daughter, Laura, who was in high school, started dating. She had several dates with a very nice young man from Rockport and always tried to be in by the deadline that Clouis had set of 10 p.m. Several times as she arrived at the house, just in time, the front porch lights would start to flicker on and off, off and on! Laura found this both annoying and embarrassing, and when she went in the house, she went upstairs to tell her father she didn't appreciate that, only to find that Clouis was in bed, fast asleep! The same thing happened numerous times, and they had no explanation, except that Leopold Bracht was keeping tabs on Laura just as he had on his own daughters!

Almost from the time they moved into the house, Marilyn said, the side door, which enters the kitchen off the front porch, would open every afternoon at 5:15 sharp. Even if the door was locked, it would somehow manage to swing open! Now, Mr. Bracht had owned a mercantile store a few blocks from his home, in the business section of Rockport. He apparently closed at five o'clock, and it would be just about 5:15 when he would arrive at home, using the side entrance. Even after they installed new locks, the screen door would often still shake as if someone were trying to gain entrance. A good “talking to” with Leopold finally put an end to that particular problem.

The Bracht-Fisher home, Rockport

The Fisher family cat, Samantha, a big black feline, was just a kitten in '79 when they bought the house. But ever since she has been a resident of the place, she has been especially sensitive to Leopold's presence. At times, she just bristles, the hair standing up in a ridge behind her neck, for no apparent reason. And sometimes she will hiss and make a sharp swat with her paw at some unknown entity. Then Clouis will say, “Well, I see it's gotten to old Samantha again” (referring to the ghost).

The Fishers have just learned to accept the presence of Leopold, who has been with them the entire fifteen years they have lived there. Sometimes he doesn't make a sound for weeks at a time. Then, for no particular reason, he will make his presence known. He seems to get especially active whenever the Fishers are into a project, changing or remodeling some part of the old house. Leopold must have liked it just as it was when he lived there, and he doesn't want any changes made. Although he did not die in the house, Bracht spent most of his time there and was probably very happy there as head of the household. It is just the most natural place for him to turn up. Fisher says many times he and Marilyn have both felt someone was staring at them. This most often happens when they are in the kitchen standing in front of the kitchen sink. When they turn around, they feel as if they almost see something out of their peripheral line of vision, but then, there is never anything there. The strange feeling that something, or someone, has been watching them still remains, however.

Clouis told me about one night when he had just finished rewiring the house. The family was sitting around the dining room table having supper when suddenly the dining room lights went out. His daughter, Laura, looked up at the light fixture and said, “All right, Leopold, that's enough out of you tonight.” Evidently the ghost got the message because the lights came right back on again!

When the Fishers' son, James, was in high school, he had three of his friends over to visit one evening. The boys were around 16 or 17 at the time. One of James' friends had brought a Ouija board along to provide some entertainment. Clouis said all was quiet and peaceful
when suddenly he and his wife heard a terrible racket as the boys ran down the stairs and out the front door, slamming it hard behind them! When the youngsters calmed down, they explained that they had started talking to Ouija and asking it some questions, when suddenly the bedroom door, which they had locked from the inside, flew open! There must have been something else that happened, but they would never discuss it. Two of the boys would not even come back into the house. Clouis said one of the young men, the son of the local Baptist preacher and now a young man in his mid-20s, still tells the Fishers he will never, never, forget that night!

Currently, the Fishers are doing a lot of work around the house in anticipation of turning the spacious dwelling into a bed and breakfast inn. Leopold is not always happy with the new project! Recently, Clouis has been adding extra bathroom space to the upstairs area where the guests will be accommodated. He leaned the door for the new upstairs bathroom against the stairs, and went downstairs for a minute. He heard a tremendous crash, and felt sure the door had fallen over. A careful search revealed nothing was out of place; nothing had fallen. Yet the noise had been very real, and very, very loud!

Leopold has been destructive only once. When the Fishers hung a watercolor picture of purple iris in the newest bathroom, they came home to find it on the floor, the glass shattered. The heavy multistrand wire on the back had stretched taut and broken at one end, but the picture hanger was still in the wall. Now, the picture had hung for some time in another room. It was just after it was moved to the new location that it was forcefully removed from the wall.

The Fishers have both resorted to talking to Leopold, telling him that the place is going to be nicer and more attractive than ever when the work is all done. They stress that they are trying to bring it back to its original state of elegance, when Leopold and the rest of the Bracht family lived there. They hope by acknowledging his presence, and making him feel a part of the project, that his spirit will be happier. They hope maybe he will calm down so that the bed and breakfast guests can spend peaceful, restful nights in the pretty old home that's painted a cheerful yellow with white trim. Its spacious rooms and cool, inviting porches will offer a wonderful haven for Gulf Coast visitors.

If you would like to stay with the Fishers, and Leopold, of course, you might call them at (512) 729-3189 for rates and reservations.

Sue Casterline lives in a small community known as Estes Flats, just south of Rockport. Her house is situated in a stand of very ancient, very large live oak trees. She told me that early settlers in the coastal plains area usually tried to locate their homes around large live oaks. Because salt water will kill them very quickly, when a stand of very large oaks is found, it is a good indicator that the land is sufficiently high enough not to flood during hurricanes, which so frequently hit that part of the state. Sue believes the coastal area's first settlers, the Indians, might have located their village near large oak trees for this same reason.

A short distance, something like a couple of city blocks, from Sue's home, a landowner decided to build some boat storage barns about twelve years ago. The ground had to be leveled first before the actual building process could begin. One portion of the land formed a good-sized hill. No one realized at the time that this had been an old Indian burial mound until the bulldozers came in and uncovered some skeletal remains and some artifacts. Archaeologists were dispatched from a nearby university, and they determined that the mound probably represented the sacred burial grounds of a community of Karankawas. Nothing was actually removed from the mound, and the bones were resettled into their previous resting place as carefully as possible.

Soon after the mound was disturbed, Sue's mother came to visit her. Sue said that both she and her mother were a little bit psychic, especially when it came to feeling or seeing something concerning one another. One night Sue's mother was awakened very suddenly from a sound sleep. She distinctly saw the figure of an Indian man standing by the side of her bed. He was bare-chested, and had long hair. He seemed to be bending towards her, intently studying her. She cried out, and the figure disappeared immediately. When she told Sue why she had cried out, she said the figure she saw was so real that she did not think she could have possibly dreamed it.