Ghosts along the Texas Coast Read Online Free PDF Page A

unseen and icy gripped him! The man was seized with such a nameless horror that he fled the place. So terrified was he that he lost his voice entirely, and he is said to have died a few days later, without ever speaking a word to anyone!
    Meredith later obtained the map, but he decided he wouldn’t undertake the treasure search alone. He enlisted the help of a man known only as “Clawson,” a crusty old woodsman with a bit of pioneer salt throbbing in his blood.
    The two men set out down the Neches River and, following the map, they soon discovered the ancient, rusty chain. Pointed in a certain direction by the chart, they searched for a tree with a heart cut into its bark, as was noted on the map. Sure enough, they found it with no difficulty.
    From the marked tree, Meredith and Clawson paced off a certain distance and soon found themselves high and dry on a small island in the marsh. They found the tools that Meredith’s unfortunate neighbor had left behind him, and the hole that he had begun to dig. Meredith grabbed a pickax and eagerly started to dig. It wasn’t long before he found a human skeleton, still wearing rotting clothing and boots. Meredith and Clawson put the skeletal remains aside, and Clawson jumped into the hole in order to dig deeper. Suddenly, he leapt from the hole, his eyes wild in a face as white as a sheet. “For God’s sake, man, let’s get out of here,” he told Meredith. Meredith didn’t understand, but Clawson begged him to go, saying, “I’ve just seen hell and all its horrors! We have to leave this place.”
    The two men fled, leaving their digging tools on the little island.
    Several years later, Meredith ran into Clawson in Beaumont. He recalled the day that they had gone digging to Clawson. The man never would reveal to Meredith what he had seen, but he did tell him that “that day” had haunted him every day of his life since then! It truly had to have been a horrifying experience!
    Meredith later returned to the spot to retrieve his tools, but taking Clawson at his word, he did not attempt to dig again. Instead, he carefully reburied the skeleton, then hid the map away and never again went near the little island at the mouth of the Neches.
    Once, when some young men approached Meredith and asked him to lead them to his “treasure island,” he told them, “I’ll take you out there, and I’ll even watch you boys, but there ain’t enough money in Texas to get me to dig that damned hole.”
    Nobody knows what became of Marion Meredith. It was a long time ago. Maybe he finally learned the secret of just what is guarding that pirate treasure, or maybe he really didn’t want to know what that dreadful unknown thing was that his friend Clawson saw and described as the “dark side of hell.” He was probably content to just let well enough alone. No doubt the treasure is probably still out there.
    There is, without a doubt, a lot of buried or sunken treasure scattered all along the Gulf Coast area of Texas. Maybe someday some of it will be found, since now there are metal detectors and other devices that can aid in such searches. I learned in speaking with Dr. Joe Graham, of the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M in Kingsville, that “ghost lights” are said to shine around an area where treasure isburied, also. He said this belief is especially widespread among the Hispanic population of South Texas.
    From time to time somebody finds a doubloon from a wrecked ship. An occasional gold coin will turn up in a sand dune somewhere, proof that there is still some gold out there. Whether or not there are pirate guardian ghosts at all those purported treasure sites, we have no way of knowing. Since we haven’t seen any publicity about pirate treasure being discovered, we’re reasonably sure that there are a few “sentries” on duty. After all, it was tough work, dragging those treasure