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Texas
Historical Ghost Story
The McDow Hole by
Bob Hopkins |
| | Erath
County near Alexander
Photo by Ken
Rudine, July 2005 |
One
hot and humid morning during the summer of 1855, a group of commissioned Texas
scouts, searching for a band of raiding Comanche rumored to be in the territory,
rode their horses along a creek bed in the northern section of the district of
Milam, later known as Erath County. They stopped at a large water hole
to rest and water their tired animals. Suddenly, from the protection of the lazy
creek, the men could see black smoke rising over a hill about 300 yards to the
southeast.
Quick to investigate, the men, found a young couple brutally
murdered, laying in the yard of their small burning cabin. Not far from the couple
lay the body of a small boy. All three had been savagely tortured, killed, and
scalped. The naked body of an infant was later discovered about 50 yards from
the house. Her small lifeless body, was found full of thorns, with a rope tied
around her feet. She had been drug to death through the cactus.
Outraged,
the patrol quickly found the trail of the fast moving raiders and followed them
to an area along the Leon River where a battle ensued. The marauding Comanche
were no match for the group of Tennessee woodsman. Texas style justice was handed
out as all nine Comanche warriors lost their lives.
The scouts rode back
to the water hole on Green’s Creek and buried the remains of the pioneer
family who lost their lives in such a cruel and senseless manner. However, the
traumatic event would not be the last to take place at what would become known
as the “McDow Hole”.
One
summer afternoon in 1921, Jewel and Dieletta Hickey, were gathering water at Green’s
Creek, located near their home. On their way back to the house, nine-year-old
Jewel dropped both buckets of water from her hands. She began to run, looking
down and behind her with an expression of horror.
After reaching the
house in a state of terrified exhaustion, the child explained, as she cried, that
a dog had chased her. When her six-year-old sister told her she never saw a dog
as she ran behind her, the terrified Jewel explained that she never saw it either,
that’s what was so scary. She said the “thing” was growling and snapping at her
legs”. “I could hear it snarl and gnash it’s teeth together”. “It was panting,
loudly, like it had been running”. “I kept walking faster and it kept striking
its teeth together, right at my heels”. I dropped the buckets and ran”.
The Hickey family would witness such strange events in and around the McDow water
hole on Green’s Creek, south of Dublin
in Erath County, for the next three decades. These and many more ghostly happenings
have been recorded over the last 135 years at McDow Hole, the first being recorded
after the murder of a young mother and her baby about 1865.
In
her book “Hickey Pioneers, a partial history of the Captain Wesley W. Hickey
Family”, Dieletta Hickey Watson, recounts the days her family lived near the
spot of the old Papworth cabin on Green’s Creek, from 1916 to 1940. She recorded
several strange events and encounters, by one family member or another, with the
mysterious ghostly woman who was seen several times on or near their property
over the course of her childhood. |
The
water hole, located about three miles north of the ghost town of Alexander,
is basically a deep part of a creek bed lined with a natural bedrock bottom. The
hole is spring fed which assured local pioneers water year around. The McDow Hole
got its name from the Jim McDow family who came to the area in January 1860 purchasing
189 acres. The McDows built their cabin not far from the water hole. When pioneers
began to come to the region they would go down to the “McDow” place to get water
referring to the location on the creek as “McDow” Hole.
The story
of the original McDow haunting has been written about by several writers, magazines,
and newspapers but was first documented in 1900 by Stephenville
resident Joe Fitzgerald. Mr. Fitzgerald’s daughter, Mary Joe Clendenin of Stephenville,
to whom most of this work is credited, has written several stories about the murder
of Jenny Papworth and her infant child at the McDow. ... next
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