S. E. Schlosser - Spooky Texas: Tales Of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, And Other Local Lore

S. E. Schlosser has been telling stories since she was a child, when games of lets pretend quickly built themselves into full-length tales acted out with friends. A graduate of Houghton College, the Institute of Childrens Literature, and Rutgers University, she created and maintains the award-winning Web site Americanfolklore.net, where she shares a wealth of stories from all fifty states, some dating back to the origins of America. Sandy spends much of her time answering questions from visitors to the site. Many of her favorite e-mails come from other folklorists who delight in practicing the old tradition of who can tell the tallest tale.

Artist Paul Hoffman trained in painting and printmaking, with his first extensive illustration work on assignment in Egypt, drawing ancient wall reliefs for the University of Chicago. His work graces books of many genreschildrens titles, textbooks, short story collections, natural history volumes, and numerous cookbooks. For Spooky Texas, he employed a scratchboard technique and an active imagination.

SAN ANTONIO

It all seems a bit of a dream now, like a fairytale that couldnt possibly come true. But all you have to do is look across the road at Seora Rosas brand-new house to know that it did happen and that I was a part of it.

It all began with the ghost. S. It is true. Although at the time, I did not realize it was a ghost. I was working in the local flower shop for Rosa and her husband, and when they were called away on business I would spend the night in Rosas house next to the shop watching her two small children. It was on one such occasion that I saw a lady dressed all in white wandering aimlessly in front of the bright display of flowers in the windows of the shop. She walked past the window and then right through the wire fence on the other side!

I gasped, unable to believe my eyes. The womans body had floated through the fence as if it were not there at all. The thought made me dizzy, and I sank down onto the stoop of the little house. Little Anna tugged on my skirt and demanded to know what was wrong. Before I could respond, the ghost was back, drifting through the wire fence, past the pretty window display, and then veering after a heart-shattering moment to go around the house. My whole body started shaking with fear of the thing, but little Anna was calm. Who was that lady, Mattie? she asked me. I shook my head, unable to speak. Then I said, Go play with Juan in the house, Anna. She studied my pale face with her wise, dark eyes, then nodded obediently and went into the house. A good child, and a perceptive one.

GUARDED BY A GHOST

I rose, clutching the railing beside the stairs for a moment, my legs shaking with fright. Then I straightened my shoulders and marched around the side of the house, determined to confront the ghost and make it leave before it frightened the children. But the ghost was gone.

I decided not to say anything to Rosa when she came home with her husband. What was the use? There was no proof of a ghost. No strange perfume in the air, no cold breezes, no furniture moving around by itself. Just a woman in white walking through the wire fence. Thinking about it made my hands shake, and I had to clutch the railing of the porch to support my treacherously weak knees. Rosa asked me if I were ill, but I shook my head and tried to smile. I wondered, as I hurried back to the home I shared with my parents, if I would dare go back to the flower shop. But it was a good job, and we needed the money to feed all my little brothers and sisters. So I returned.

Sometimes, while I was cutting roses or arranging flowers in a vase, I would look through the bright windows at the front of the shop and see the lady in white walk past. Sometimes, when I was watching little Anna and Juan, the lady would amble down the small lane between the house and shop and then vanish before my eyes. I gradually grew used to seeing her, but my stomach would clench and my throat would seize up whenever she appeared.

I finally mentioned the ghost to Rosa and her man, but they just laughed and told me I was working too hard. Obviously, it was a neighbor I had seen wandering around the area. The notion of her walking through the wire fence was dismissed as nonsense.

This situation went on for several years, as Anna sprouted up into a happy schoolgirl and little Juan learned to walk and talk and tag along after Rosa and me as we worked in the shop. Then one day, Rosa came running through the front door of the flower shop and banged it shut so hard a vase fell off the counter and broke, spilling water and roses everywhere.

Madre de Dios, Rosa, what is wrong? I exclaimed, skirting the glass on the floor to catch her by her shaking hands.

The lady! The lady in white. She... she... Rosa could not go on.

She walked through the wire fence? I asked, understanding at once. Rosa nodded her head, unable to speak. She went around the house and vanished? I continued. Rosa nodded again.

As I spoke, Alberto came running from the back room, clutching a handful of ferns. Rosa gasped out the story to him in high-pitched Spanish, while I corralled little Juan before he could cut himself on the glass shards littering the floor. By the time I was done cleaning up the mess, Alberto had decided that the ghost must want something from us. Perhaps she was trying to show us where her treasure was buried.

I straightened up with my dustpan full of green glass shards and stared at Alberto in amazement. The thought had never occurred to me. But it made sense. I had heard tales before of ghosts who appeared to people because they could not rest until their treasure was found.

Alberto went at once to the local curandero, a folk healer and shaman who specialized in both natural and supernatural methods of healing the sick and driving out malevolent spirits. This particular curandero happened to be the father of my Enrique, the man to whom I was betrothed. The curandero came at once and performed a ritual first in the flower shop and then in Rosas house. At last, he proclaimed that Albertos theory was correct. The ghost had hidden some money under the house. To exorcise the spirit, we would have to remove it. To my surprise, the curandero also said the money was to be given to me, not Rosa and Alberto, because it was to me the ghost had first appeared. To my further surprise, Alberto took the news calmly. It turned out he was more concerned with getting rid of the frightening spirit then he was with finding the money.

The next day was a cold and drizzling Saturday. Four men, including Alberto and the curandero, gathered by the foundation of the house and began to dig where the curandero indicated with his stick. It was hard, messy work, made worse by the drizzling rain, which created a slick, sticky mud. Down and down they dug as Rosa and I watched from the rim of the ever-deepening hole. It was growing darker as the storm clouds thickened above us. Rosa lit a kerosene lantern to give the men more light.

Suddenly, I saw a white figure rise up from the ground right beside Alberto. The familiar shaking began in my knees and spread to the rest of my body, and my stomach clenched in response. Al... Al... Alberto! I shouted around the knot in my throat. Alberto whirled around and the handle of his shovel went right through the body of the ghost. Without warning, his eyes rolled up in terror, and he fainted into the mud at the bottom of the deep hole. The ghost vanished immediately as the curandero clutched at the cross around his neck and shouted out a prayer.