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Patterson Road in Houston, Texas may be haunted. This road borders Bear Creek Park and runs between Highway 6 and Eldridge Road. [Google Maps]
It’s a lovely location. Arrive in the afternoon and plan a picnic or barbecue in the park. Visit the zoo, read the historical markers, and get a sense of the landscape and its heritage.
Some of Bear Creek Park’s ghost stories are related to Civil War activity.
Others are from 1900, when the infamous hurricane displaced an entire community. After that, county workers literally changed the landscape to prevent future disasters.
Homes were lost. Landmarks and memorials vanished. The area was safer from future floods, but at a terrible cost.
After a heavy rainstorm, this location still floods before other areas. Always check road conditions before driving to Bear Creek Park.
Marching in the woods
Much of Bear Creek Park is overgrown with dense foliage. At night, frogs make noise too loud to ignore.
You’ll hear other sounds in the woods, too. They’re probably woodland animals, but they are very odd noises.
To some, they sound like people marching or trudging. Lots of people, and heavy steps. Soldiers…? People fleeing the hurricane that came in from Galveston?
No one knows.
That’s why, one evening in early May 2005, two of us investigated Patterson Road.
First, we visited it during the day, to check it for EMF, and so we’d be familiar with anything odd – but easily debunked – after dark.
Compass anomalies at Langham Creek bridge
Right away, we saw anomalous needle swings in excess of 30 degrees on the right side of the Langham Creek bridge as you’re facing Eldridge Road.
That’s significant. The most likely explanation was EMF, but we couldn’t find a logical source. That area is very rural.
Most of our daytime photos were normal, except at this location:
The sun was quickly setting when I took this photo with a digital camera.
There was no light to create that “misty” effect at the upper left corner of the photo. There was no fog, no rain… nothing to account for that mist.
Could it have been breath? Possibly, except that others have captured a similar white mist at that same stand of trees.
So, we have no reliable explanation.
I have no idea if any “hanging tree” legends exist at that location.
One friend – more familiar with the area – said he’d heard that kind of legend, related to a soldier who wanted to desert his military group. But he wasn’t certain of the exact location.
Langham Creek soldiers?
Langham Creek bridge has the most haunted reputation.
According to local legends, ghosts of Civil War soldiers tap on your car if you park on the bridge with your lights out.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS!
Patterson Road is busy at night with sporting events at nearby Bear Creek Park. Traffic is intermittent, and some people drive faster than they should.
In other words, it’s a dangerous place to stop your car.
But, yes… on that evening, we did pause on the bridge after dark. (Our headlights remained on.)
At that bridge, we heard tapping noises.
All of it could be explained by the car settling and the bridge shifting slightly under the weight of the car.
So, please do NOT pause your car on Langham Creek bridge, or on any road, with your lights off.
Our next stop was Bear Creek bridge and that’s where things got weird…
ive been there many times and have expirienced too much for life itself the place realy is haunted and if you dont beilieve me go there your self and expirience
No it’s not silly haunted . But one time I parked on the bridge in the day time . I got out and stood by the car . All the sudden a freak gust of wind come from the Woods north. I would not park at night on that ROAD ITS pitch black.
Agreed: No one should stop – or worse, park – on that bridge, at night. And I’m not sure what “silly haunted” is, but if anyone can explain the tapping noise we heard, I’m interested in anything credible. The tapping was on my car door, or the rear door (but very near my window) and both distinct and loud. My side mirror showed nothing, and I put my head out the window and looked around and – later – tried to duplicate the noise, from outside the car.
Hey there is no tapping , no scratching . There on the bridge. The last time I got on Patterson road, some one nailed a cross on a tree. Ant no civil war bisket eaters neither. There is no lights on that road. In fact I saw some weird os park on the side and walk a trail to the blue light cemetery. Once some one was back there and the sun was going down. It gets real creepy then .
moon dance, it’s okay to say that you didn’t experience any tapping, scratching, civil war soldiers, and so on. But others have encountered those things, and their experiences are as genuine and legitimate as yours.
No two researchers are likely to report the same activity in the exact same ways. It varies with personal interpretation, even when the people are side-by-side at the same place and at the same time, when something paranormal happens.
I “see” things. My friend Alan – the one we jokingly call “ghostbait” – hears things. That doesn’t mean either of us are wrong, or that there are no sounds because I don’t hear them, and so on.
Real ghost hunting can be very personal. We filter what happens in our own ways. Different things are more obvious to different people. Other phenomena can seem completely missing. That doesn’t make any investigator “wrong.”
In fact, if every member of a team reports the exact same things – and nothing else – I’ll suspect that we all witnessed a prank. Real paranormal research isn’t that uniform.
Let’s all be respectful of each other’s experiences, okay?
I went to the cemetery off patterson rd in Houston and im not too sure that its haunted. I snapped two photos of an area where i was seeing what looked like soldiers. There was a giant snake hanging from a tree and apparently what looked like a marine in the tree. While walking thru the woods i was running echovox. I thought i saw several times men in yowies or camouflage in the fields, behind trees and logs ducking down, and im 100% certain one guy was laying on a log and got startled by my echovox. He was soo well blended in i could barley see him. It was getting dark and i had no idea if it was a ghost or real person. Im actually leaning towards there having been marines in the woods playing war games. Which could account for the seemly haunted place.
at approximately 2.12 in the video, you hear a walkie talkie come thru the echovox saying ‘get back where you belong, your risking your life, get out’, further supporting the theory of marines being in the woods. So i kinda wonder if perhaps echovox was intercepting the radio frequencies that the marines were on. ‘the app is hopefully out of a eastern iraquish onslaught’ and ‘we’re in the bushes’. sounds like something marines would say
The thumping on the car windows is the marines shooting air at your car to get you to leave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVJ9RZd_12k
The problem with the old civil war soldier legend is there were never any civil war battles, troop movements or encampments anywhere near what is now Bear Creek Park. The area was a backwater well inside Confederate territory of no strategic importance and very sparsely populated.
Likewise, this rubbish about modern day “marines” conducting war games and warning civilians off is even more foolish. The nearest military installation is a national guard armory quite a distance away and on the other side of I-10. And the military doesn’t use public parks for tactical training, they have military reservations for that.
Mark, I’ll defer to your superior knowledge of history. However, my library, online, and on-site research suggested something different.
Putting that aside for the moment, what matters is the hauntings.
Since you have spent extensive hours studying Bear Creek Park and its history, perhaps you’d like to share your explanation for the paranormal activity there.
Sincerely,
Fiona Broome
I have work in bear creek park for almost 11 years and eight of those on nights. Not once have I ever experience any type of paranormal activity out there. I’ve even spent several nights out on a four wheeler looking for lost ghost hunters.
That’s interesting. My question is: Were you looking for paranormal activity? (Meanwhile, thanks for looking for lost ghost hunters. No matter how many times I advise against wandering around Bear Creek Park in the dark – or going far off the trails, even in the daytime – people still want to see things they’ve heard rumors about.)
So it would be foolish to check out the Patterson Rd. area with a metal detector to locate Civil War artifacts. I hard a batoon of Rebel soldiers marched through the area and camped there.
That’s good to know, Bill, thank you!
We pulled off on the side of the road with hazards and turned our cars off. The first time nothing happened when my friends car was on. The second time with both cars off and only my friends car with hazards and I started to hear what I thought was tapping so we rolled down the windows. We realized it was not tapping but sounded like someone tapping on a drum in the distance coming from the woods. Then a strong gust of wind came out of no where and we left.
Well, I had an uncle that was stationed In Galveston during the Civil War, he came from the Independence/Brenham area, so it’s possible soldiers could have traveled through that area. Also, what about Texans on their way to fight in the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836?
In regards to drums in BCP at night…the Order of the Arrow part of Scouting is known to use the park to perform Scouting ceremonies for the Cubs Scouts earning their Arrow of Light badge
This ceremony does include the use of Native American costumes and drums.