Sipe Springs
This is my haunted house experience from a few years ago.
A little background here will help this story go smoother. I have an uncle who has small lapses of ESP. One night while sleeping he dreamt him and a friend were driving done some old dirt roads outside a small Texas town called Rising Star. They took a road which led to an even smaller speck called Sipe Springs, and after several twists and turns they came to a house. It was your basic looking haunted house of course: two stories, door right in the middle that looked like a mouth. In the dream, though, he walked towards the house, and as he placed his hand on the door handle he awoke drenched in sweat. He placed this dream into the weird category and thought nothing of it until about a week later, he and the friend were out driving, and they came to the Sipe Springs exit. They took it, and from memory my uncle led his friend to the house. They went up to it and looked around and finally found the name Jessie Jones and the year 1894 on it. My uncle was of course a little freaked so he went to the county courthouse to find any records on this house or this name. What he found made this even more strange.
The information he found from court records and old newspapers told the story of Jessie Jones. He had moved to Sipe Springs in 1893 and began building this house. It was finished in 1894, and his wife and twin sons. On the twins 1st birthday (in august I forgot the exact date) for reasons unknown Jessie killed both children. The next day he killed his wife with an ax. When he was found out some of the local men formed a mob and threw Jessie, still alive, into the well behind the house. They then covered the well and left him to die. This all sounds kinda fishy I know, but now I can get to the real story.
Now drawn to the house, my uncle, Mike, began to go there quite often trying different ways to contact any spirits dwelling there or find anything that would prove this story to be true. He took a picture of the well and in it two distinct faces can be seen. This of course can always be dispelled by the shape of the stones that the well was made of. A ouiga board was used and spelled out the name of Jessie's wife, but this can be dispelled by peoples fingers. Once as they mounted the stairs to enter the children's room a black bird attacked the entire party, but the bird cold have been simply guarding its nest. The true proof came one night when I returned to Rising Star for a visit in the summer on 1994.
Whenever I went, we always went out "ghost-hunting." This consisted of going to deserted houses and graveyards. There are many tales of free spirits around this small town. We ended up in Cisco in an old abandoned hospital, and as we sat in an old operating room and iron beds that had seen many deaths, Mike weaved his story of Jessie. We were all exited by this new adventure and immediately headed for Sipe Springs.
Our party consisted of Mike, my aunt Lisa and two of her friends (male and female), and myself. The guy invited us all to his birthday party in August on the ride there (this is important later). And after a ride that seemed like forever we arrived.
I saw the well and could faintly make out the two faces that were seen in the picture. We looked around outside and finally went in. The bottom floor was nothing spectacular: broken floorboards, caved in walls, and faded, ripped wallpaper, so we quickly headed upstairs where al the action had taken place. Let me emphasis here that this was Texas in the summer. It was late at night, somewhere between 11-12, but it was still hot, and in this old moldy house it was even hotter. I led the way up the stairs, and as I reached the mid-step a small bird flew past my head then fluttered above us as we quickly ascended to the top. My heart was now racing a million miles a minute, so we entered what had been the master bedroom of the house. As we entered this room we passed the door to the nursery where all the murders had taken place. Jessie had locked his wife in the room after killing his children. In the bedroom the heat was even more intense than the rest of the house, and after everyone caught their breath we entered the nursery.
Instantly the temperature changed. It was almost ice cold in the nursery. The remains of a wooden crib lie smashed in the corner. Mike said he had never had the nerves to touch the battered pieces, but I was still not convinced so I knelt a looked through the rubble. Buried under the wood, was a small wooden toy carved in the shape of what seemed the be dog. We decided the best way to contact any spirits would be to use this item, so Mike placed two pieced of wood in the shape of a cross in front of him, and he then placed the toy on top. He began to ask Jessie to join us, and he asked jessie's wife to join us. The ceiling of the room was covered with yellow jacket nests, and as he asked for the spirits of the house to join of the wasps above his head began to stir. Then suddenly the guy that was with us collapsed onto the floor holding his stomach. His girlfriend took him downstairs and out of the house, leaving Mike, Lisa and me in the room. As soon as the couple left the room, an estatic calm came over me, and I could tell by their faces Mike and Lisa felt it too. All my fear and apprehension seemed to melt away, and I felt completely relaxed. We decided this must be the spirit of Jessie's wife looking over us as she had done with her children in this same room. Then almost as suddenly as the calm had touched us, a great dread and impulse to run smashed into my mind. I looked up and Mike and Lisa were already headed out the door. As I stepped though the door the small toy flew across the room, and the door slammed shut behind me. I was struck with the intense heat of the house and ran down the stairs and out the front door.
The girl explained to us that as soon as she and her boyfriend left the house he had felt fine. Mike asked him when he said his birthday was. He pulled out his drivers license, and Mike looked at it with a shocked expression then explained it was the same birthday as Jessie's children. This is where my belief began to sway. Even though I had experienced the house, this just a little to convenient, so we drove to the cemetery where the townspeople had buried the wife and children and found the same date on the headstone as on the license.
This sounds far-fetched but is completely true. I have of course forgotten the exact dates and the wife's name. I never knew the children's name even thought I saw them on the headstone, the weight of everything that had just happened has hitting me, and I didn't even want to know the names. The house has been torn down now. The couple told several people and it quickly became a party hang out. The people who owned the land grew tired of beer bottles and the messes that the kids left behind, s they had it knocked down. I always wondered what would have happened had he stayed in the house, or had we stayed in the room instead of fleeing. I can honestly say I believe every ghost story I hear now, because once you go through one, its a whole lot easier to believe.