Here is the story behind the Newport edition you have been waiting for. In the year that the movie Poltergeist came out on the big screen there was another similar drama playing out in a town in Texas. In the early 1980 a new housing edition went in called Newport. Sam and Judith Haney purchased a home in the Newport area of Houston. The family decided to have a swimming pool put in the back yard. As they began to get started an elderly black man showed up out of nowhere and told them that they was about to dig up human remains. The reason he gave them this information was that he knew they were buried because he had seen them years before. They decided the old man was crazy and started digging for the pool anyway. As they were digging the two bodies were just where the old man said they were. Scared they began doing research and found a man named Jasper Norton who as a young man had worked as a gravedigger. Norton told the Haney’s that their home and the surrounding houses were built on top of an old cemetery called Black Hope. He also told them that most of the deceased were former slaves.

They found out that last burial had occurred 1939 and that there as many as 60 people were in graves. Norton identified the two people buried in the Haney’s backyard as Betty and Charlie Thomas who former slaves. They had died sometime during the thirties. As they lived in their house the activity became more negative. They heard disembodied voices, an unplugged clock in the began shooting sparks and glowing, sliding glass door open but there was nobody there and the door was locked. The next morning after to door incident Judith couldn’t find her red shoes. When she finally located them they were outside miraculously sitting side by side on top of Betty’s grave. They also realized that the date was Betty’s birthday.

Unable to keep all of the information to themselves they had a neighborhood meeting. They found out neighbors whose houses were built on top of the abandoned cemetery also had all kinds of activity. They reported lights, televisions/water faucets turning on and off, unearthly sounds and apparitions. Sam and Judith decided right then to fight back. They sued the developer for not disclosing that their home was built over a cemetery. They won and were awarded $142,000 by a jury. The judge ruled on legal grounds that the developers were not liable and reversed the decision. He then ordered the Haney’s to pay $50,000 in court costs. Unable to pay and plagued with health problems they were frightened of remaining in their house. They made the decision to file bankruptcy and abandoned their home.

One of the other families lived right across the street with similar problems to the Haney’s. Ben and Jean Williams lived there with their young granddaughter named Carli. They reported activity that the house was cold year round, the feeling of being watched, toilets flushed by themselves as well as the garage door and other household appliances would operate on their own. They even had rectangular sinkholes open up in the yard and for whatever reason they couldn’t be filled in. As soon as she thought she would have the problem solved the sinkholes would reappear within a few days. Another oddity was Jean couldn’t get any new plants to live on the property even though she always had a green thumb. On their property they noticed strange markings on an old oak tree by the sinkholes. It was an arrow pointed downward with two horizontal slash marks beneath it. They attended the meeting and discovered their lovely home was built over the cemetery. As they began to research a long time resident of the area told them he had marked the tree as a way to identify where his two sisters were buried. The activity began to increase and they would hear phantom footsteps in the hall, an apparition hovering over them when they slept and six members of their extended family were diagnosed with different cancers where three of them died within that year.

The Haney’s were not the only family to try legal recourse. They were all told that without definitive proof of a cemetery on their property nothing could be done. Ben and Jean Williams decided to prove their home was built over a cemetery. So Jean began to dig in one of the sinkholes beneath the oak. When she became overwhelmed from exhaustion to her daughter Tina took over. After digging for about a half-hour Tina collapsed and was dead 2 days later. Jean was convinced their desecration of a grave had precipitated their daughter’s death. They decided to leave no matter what it cost them. The loss they already experienced was more than they could bear. They abandoned their house and escaped to Montana. After a period of time passed they later moved back to Texas.

Subsequent owners of their homes say they have noticed no unusual activity. They seem content to live in the houses even with the negative history. Would you buy a home here? If you google the story you will find some people report activity and some say they never experienced anything. The fire department will tell you there are more alarms that go off in the part of the neighborhood that covers the cemetery. Do you think some people are more sensitive than others and this is why the new owners do not have activity? Do you think that the Williams or the Haney’s would make up such activity to give them a reason to loose all the money they had invested in their homes? These are some the same types of questions my group puts to the test every day as we deal with homeowners. Is it real or imagined? Can we find evidence to back up the claims? I spent time in Newport on several occasions. I can tell you that the area has a strange vibe to it for me. The woods have shadows that dart about even when nobody is there. I believe the place to be haunted. I will be uploading photos and other evidence I collected while there in the future.

Go see the Black Hope photo gallery here

[singlepic id=63 w=320 h=240 float=right]You can ask anyone who knows me. I have always been very busy. It hasn’t just been me in my family either. My kids were always very busy with their activities. I would drive them to dance, soccer, football, track, swim, musical theater etc and wait for them to get done. I spent much time in the car waiting. While waiting instead of doing crochet I would pull out a cake decorating stash and make gum paste flowers. Oh yes I did! Once I had a project that required me to make 350 hand made gum paste roses. That took me some time to get done and the car time was perfect. One of the kids best loved activities was being on the swim team of the Timberlane Tigersharks. I could not make flowers during this activity unless it was only practice. I was required to stand on the side lines every Saturday and scream as loud as I could for them to win.

Our team song still rings in my head at times. Why does it get stuck in my head? Has anyone conducted research about this yet? Here are the words to the song:  “Everywhere we go, people want to know, who we are, so we tell them, we are are the Tigersharks the mighty mighty Tigersharks … keep repeating and get louder and louder each time”.

[singlepic id=56 w=320 h=240 float=left]One of the teams we would go against was Newport. It was a huge team that dwarfed ours. I still remember their pool right across from the golf course. The kids enjoyed their time there swimming. They would sit with with their arms and bodies all doodled on with a blue magic marker. The shark and Eat my bubbles! were things they liked to have drawn on their back. They didn’t realize that while we were there we were at a famous housing edition that made national headlines. They didn’t know the housing developer ignored a fence and markers signifying that part of the area was a cemetery. Sometimes in life you will spend time in a haunted location without knowing it. If you would have known at the time you may have treated your time there differently. I wonder if the kids would have known would they have refused to get in the pool thinking it was haunted? Have you ever swam in an a haunted pool?

[singlepic id=58 w=320 h=240 float=right]I will be posting an an article about my experience investigating Newport soon. For now I will leave you with the information that the story about this subdivision has been featured on Unsolved Mysteries, has been the subject of several books and has been made into a movie for television. Alarms trigger the local fire department and nobody is home and no fire is present. These alarms seem to come more from the part of the neighborhood that covers the old cemetery. Are there restless spirits triggering the alarms to go off? Some
in the fire department seem to think so. Neighbors have also reported activity from the time they have moved into the neighborhood. I will cover a few of these stories next time.

[singlepic id=7 w=320 h=240 float=right]One place that is very active according to several paranormal groups is located in Humble Texas and known as the 1960 overpass. If you read through the forums online you will read that people call this area the doorway to hell. You can read the stories of businesses that have failed as a result of the activity. One place was a dollar movie theater that failed because the employees would quit after encountering what they called a demonic presence. The place shut down and has been broken into by many times by thrill seekers wanting to encounter it for themselves. Today the dollar theater has been purchased and breaking in would land you in jail if you were caught. People don’t know what the ruins are next to the cemetery behind the old dollar theater.

[singlepic id=1 w=320 h=240 float=left]Through my research I found “the ruins” to be an old kerosene refinery that was closed when the need for kerosene diminished. The area is in an unincorporated part of Harris county Texas commonly known as Bordersville. Humble had decided to pass laws making the area all white and forced all people of color out of town thus Bordersville was born. It was the most poverty stricken of the whole Houston metro area. The train went through the east side and this is where residents decided to have their cemetery. The cemetery is said by some to have been moved out of the way when the railroad came through. I found that it was never moved from it’s current position. It was never cared for and had fallen into a horrible state. It is today a secluded spot where the homeless have taken shelter on and off over the years. They could jump onto a passing train or jump off and stay at this location unseen.

In the years before commerce had taken over this spot was where the area train station was located. On December 13, 1922 there was a train wreck that claimed 19 lives and injured many others. The Southern Pacific train #28 was crowded to full capacity and was bound for Shreveport when it came into the station. There was a freight train stopped on a nearby track that happened to be too close. The engineer tried to stop the train before the collision and was not able to do so. All the destruction was caused by a 2″ pipe leading from a water tender to the boiler which had been stripped of it’s mooring along side the engine. This caused the pipe to break through the windows of the passenger train which was attempting to stop. The pipe burst through the windows releasing deadly hot steam and water. This sprayed the passengers and filled up the coaches with steam causing 19 to be scalded to death. The newspapers of the day reported skin had fallen off from hands and faces and was clinging on the backs of seats, window latches and laying everywhere.

In 2008 three privileged teenagers from nearby Kingwood decided desecrate a grave. Kevin Wade Jones and Matthew Richard Gonzalez who were both 17 as well as a 16-year old dug up a grave with shovel. They removed the skull of Willie Sims from his coffin and converted it into a bong in their home. Willie was 11 years old at the time he died on September 11, 1921. The teens were charged with misdemeanor abuse of a corpse and Willie was laid to rest again. They were unable to locate any of Willies relatives to participate. This is also the same area where the body of a child was found murdered. Secluded areas are usually places for crimes to be committed. I wonder how many other things happened here that we do not know about.

Perhaps the pain from segregation, poverty, tragedy and disrespect has the spirits of the area up in arms? Many times we find activity at sites with such pain. While I was investigating I had a sense of the tragedy of the past. To me it hung around like the thick humid air.
Sometimes I will go into an area and my senses will be heightened. Many people have experienced this but don’t understand what that feeling is. Your gut tells you that you need to leave. As a paranormal investigator I wonder if there is high emf provoking this feeling. Instead of going with “fight or flight” I pull out meters to try to collect the data. If I was by myself I would go with my gut instinct and leave because I know it is possible that I had disturbed someone and they were watching me from the woods. Perhaps I had disturbed something else that I couldn’t see. I am still reviewing evidence collected and will share what I find with everyone

Go see the photo gallery for 1960 Overpass