On The Prowl.......Casper-style

Recently, I went on a Ghost Hunt with a group of about 20 people from one of my meetup.com groups. We went to several places around the Metroplex, guided by our ghost hunt expert, Lisa.

The first place we went was a big park in Arlington where there is an area called "Hell's Gate". This sounds awful intimidating, but really it was just two wood posts that supposedly have ghosts around them often. The 'folklore' story that Lisa told is that those posts were a gate where in the Civil War, confederate soldiers would take union soldiers that were spies through this gate and over to a tree nearby to hang them. She pointed out the 'hanging tree' and several others on the trail....but I was a little skeptical about the authenticity of the story since the wood posts don't look like they are 150 years old! Anyway, we didn't see any ghosts there (although Lisa said that she had a headache when we were there and that indicates 'activity'.

Here is "Hell's Gate":

Here is one of the 'hanging trees' where the union soldiers would (allegedly) be hung if they were spies:

Lisa showed us two big bags full of her ghost-hunting equipment, as well as techniques, rules and tips.....however, we didn't use any of that equipment until the very end at night. Ugh.

Anyway, our next stop was in Fort Worth - at my favorite place, the Stockyards! We ate lunch at Cattlemen's Steakhouse (which is supposed to be haunted in the basement, but we couldn't find anything...):

Here's a cool picture of the saloon upstairs:

On a totally unrelated note, here are some bikers that we saw amongst the horses and cowboys!

The next 'haunted' place to visit was Miss Molly's Hotel - an old brothel, but is still open as a hotel. They had no vacancies, so we couldn't go in and see rooms. Apparently there is a ghost of one of the 'ladies of the night' in Room 7.

Here's the view looking up the stairs - the entrance to Miss Molly's Hotel:

After the Stockyards, we drove west of Fort Worth to a little town called Boyd, TX. It looked like a regular cemetary, but I guess it's extra haunted?? Anyway, it was kind of creepy because there is a serial killer buried there - he got the death penalty and was executed in 1997. We saw his grave - CREEPY! But yet....still no ghosts to speak of......

After the cemetary, we treked northeast of Boyd to Denton (that's why I posted pics of the Denton county courthouse last week). There is a haunted bridge where some old cowboy spirits hang out, as well as Comanche native Americans as well. FINALLY, we whipped out the ghost hunting devices and waited......and waited.....and we actually got some readings off them! That was the best part of the day - and it finally felt like true ghost hunting because we were in the dark! We had a lot of fun on the bridge!