| Forget the haunted houses with their fake ghosts and the man with the chain saw noisemaker this Halloween - just visit Old Richmond to get a good scare. Even if nothing happens, well, the stories themselves are spooky enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck.
The Jane Long-Smith Cottage
Cathy Tagliabue said she had her fair share of paranormal experiences as a tour guide for Fort Bend Museum 11 years ago.
On the weekends, she and a fellow tour guide would give tours through the Jane Long-Smith Cottage, home to the “Mother of Texas,” and, after a while, she said a peculiar event began to occur. As a rule, the cottage is locked and the alarm is set each night to prevent break-ins, but someone or something was getting in and making itself known.
“We'd go turn off the alarms to begin the tour, but one day it looked as if someone had been sitting on Jane Long's bed,” Tagliabue said. “At first, we thought nothing of it. We just smoothed it out and it remained that way all day long.”
But the next day the indentation was there again. And it returned every weekend for months. Everyone's first reaction was to blame one of the tour guides.
“We thought he was pulling a prank,” Tagliabue said.
But something happened that changed everyone's minds. One day, a stain appeared around the indentation and continued to darken as the days went on. No one could figure out what the stain was or what was causing it, so the decision was made to replace the quilt - and when a new one was purchased the incident stopped, and no other occurrences have been reported.
Rick Taylor, special project coordinator for the museum, remembers that tale and can recall others around Old Richmond.
The Tyree House and McFarland House
“You know, the Tyree House is built on top of a cemetery,” Taylor said.
And it is because of this that many people say they hear people upstairs walking or running around. And on other days someone can be heard walking around and jingling keys.
“The house is home to a lot of old artifacts that were dug up,” Taylor said. “And you know what they say, the owner of an artifact will sometimes stay with it.”
As far as the McFarland House, Taylor said it is considered “the most haunted area in Fort Bend County.”
A return to the past would detail the Jaybird-Woodpecker bloody shoot-out in 1889. The Jaybirds and the Woodpeckers were two feuding political parties that eventually clashed in a violent climax, leaving several men dead.
Some were actually killed in the McFarland House, and some say the bodies were never recovered - supposedly those ghosts haunt the house to this day.
The Moore House
But it is the Moore House story that creates a spine-tingling chill.
Taylor said years ago, a tour guide was giving an early routine tour through the home and a little girl in his tour group interrupted his speech.
“The little girl asked, ‘Why is that man sitting in the chair over there?' while pointing to a chair down the hall,” Taylor said. “No one else should have been in that house, much less that chair.”
The tour guide did not stop to investigate. Instead, he ended the tour with a firm command, “That's it, everybody out now,” Taylor said.
There is speculation about who could be haunting the Moore house, but no one has come up with a definitive answer.
Taylor said he even had the Texas Paranormal Researchers visit the historical home to determine if ghosts did reside there.
One of the tools the researchers use is a meter that measures temperature; if there is a significant drop in temperature, that is an indicator that a ghost is present, said Taylor.
“They kept passing over this bench and the temperature kept dropping about 20 degrees,” Taylor said. “They said there might be a little girl in the house.”
In fact, just about all of Old Richmond, especially off Morton Street, is supposedly quite haunted.
“Oh, yes, there is something going on all the time around there,” Taylor said.
Taylor, employees, owners and other residents who visit downtown Richmond's shops and restaurants frequently have reported experiences that fall into the category of the paranormal.
In fact, so many instances happen in Old Richmond that Taylor is planning for Historic Richmond Ghost Tours within the next year or so.
“Other cities have ghost tours, and it's time we get ourselves one,” he said. “Might as well.”
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