April 25, 2017
Day 14
Terlingua, Tx
Ghost Town Terlingua
Miles driven: 1,534
Currently Reading: Texas Poetry (various writers)
Currently listening to: The wind whistling through the cacti.
Ghosts.
I have encountered my fair share of ghosts in my lifetime. Now if we want to have the argument on whether ghost are real or not, let me stop you right now. Ghosts are real. I have lived in enough haunted places to know for a fact that they are real. I have been haunted in the darkness of the night as these invisible spirits somehow manage to manifest themselves in a variety of ways: knocking things over, choking me, causing my dog to bark at a corner for no reason to name a few. But nothing I have experienced in the supernatural could prepare me for what happened in Ghost Town Terlingua, Tx. Ghost Town was a journey into the thin veil that separates the natural from the supernatural.
After leaving Marfa, I was inclined to travel south to the Texas border. I heard that there was a picturesque drive from Presidio, Tx to the Big Bend National Park. Had someone not stolen my GoPro, I would have been able to film this majestic drive, but alas, life on the road brings many unexpected challenges.
I drove down the 60ish mile stretch of road from Presidio along the US-Mexico border. I was enthralled by its magnificence. I have driven the Amalfi coast and will take US-1 up the California coast in a few weeks, but as far as picturesque drives go, this one stands alone. It is so powerful in its vastness. On the top of a hill you can see for a hundred miles easy. The deep reds and browns of the mountains will humble even the most prideful of men. The road twists and turns parallel to the Rio Grande and offers an experience that I will be telling my grandchildren about in 50 years.
I pulled into Terlingua, Tx at around 5 o’clock. I had heard about this Ghost Town just outside the city and I had to check it out. Of course, I will cover the details of this pirate-artist community in another post, but believe me, it was like stepping back in time into the old west. It is as if history stopped there in the 1850s and, besides for a few tourists and some updated amenities, it hasn’t changed. There, a rowdy group of drunkards, transients and whores live in semi-peaceful harmony, that is until someone starts drinking whiskey and starts quarreling.
I managed to weasel my way into a dilapidated stone shack that is owned by one of the locals. It sat on a back road and faced the vast emptiness of the Texas desert. Roadrunners and snakes scurried around everywhere and I had to make sure Boss kept out of trouble. Despite his urban upbringing, he will pick a fight with just about anything that perturbs him, not matter the size or danger. I stayed in this rock shack for two nights and experienced the infestation of supernatural like no other place I have ever been. This place is called Ghost Town for a reason.
The first night Boss and I rolled into bed at around 9 pm. We had had a long day and wanted to get up early to check out Big Bend in the morning. We both drifted off to sleep and I could hear Boss snoring as my heavy eyelids closed another day on the road.
Around 2 am, it started. At first it was like there was a breeze blowing through the shack. But there were no windows and the door was closed and locked. But this breeze kept blowing through. Then there was a strange knocking sound all around the shack. It would circle the shack and knock on the rock walls. I opened my eyes and began to listen to the knocking. The knocks kept circling the building and the tapping grew louder and stronger. I started to freak out and opened up my Buck knife in case we were about to be robbed (downtown Houston instinct kicking in). Then lights started flashing intermittently through the cracks in the rock wall. Then more knocking. I was officially concerned at this point and stood up at the door, knife in my hand ready to fight.
“You better come in or back off because I am not interested in being bothered anymore!” I yelled through the door.
Then it stopped. I could feel something was different. I cannot really describe it other than just an absence of something that was once there. The night was calm and dark and the chirping of crickets could be heard in the distance. I went back to sleep.
The next night was even more intense. Same routine, we went to sleep around 9 pm. We had been at Big Bend all day and were both tired. We both went to sleep. The difference between the night before that this night was that it was brutally hot all day. The stone shack was a dusty oven with stale, dry air suffocating us inside. Around 2 am the breeze blew through again. It wasn’t air, just some sort of flow through this stuffy cabin. Then, I heard a small clacking coming from inside the room. It sounded like someone was dropping small wooden chips into a basket and it happened every 30 seconds or so.
Clack.
Silence.
Clack.
Silence.
Clack.
I started to get nervous again. I shined my flashlight around the room and there was nothing out of the ordinary. There was also nothing that would be able to make a clack-clack sound. I shut off the light and tried to go back to sleep. Then, I felt this weird feeling, like someone had tossed an infinite silk blanket over me and was pulling it off slowly just behind my head. Almost like there was something trying to pull the thoughts out of my mind.
Then I noticed a correlation. This thought-pulling feeling brought about more and more thoughts into my head. I recalled so many memories from my life. Whenever I would recall a good memory, nothing would happen. However, whenever I would recall something that I did that was bad or mischievous, the clack sound would follow. I went on for about 30 minutes testing this theory. And for 30-minutes, like the accuracy on a swiss clock, it would happen. Good thought: nothing. Bad thought: clack.
Now I don’t know what any of this means, but I have a ghost theory that involves two different ghosts who work as a team. The first, I call the Fisher-Fiend. The Fisher-Fiend pulls thoughts of your history out of your mind for the second ghost to see. The second ghost, I call Bosquarra (but you have to say in in a shady middle-eastern shopkeepr's voice - Bosss-Quaaa-Raaaa), tallies up all the bad things that you have done in your life, marks them on some supernatural tallying device and saves them for later. Whatever that later is, I don’t know. Believe me, I will be writing a terrifying children’s book about the Fisher-Fiend and Bosquarra later on this trip.
Or maybe I was just dehydrated. Maybe the desert makes people crazy. All I can do is describe what happened. You can make up your own story. But we were up at the crack of dawn and got out of that town as fast as we could the next morning.