Haunted Stagecoach Road | Marshall, Texas
Posted: 11.14.2024 | Updated: 11.14.2024
Stagecoach Road was the only way in or out of the ominous East Texas Pine Curtain for over a decade. This thick layer of Pine Trees marks a portal between worlds, a division between the expanses of Texas and the Deep South. Consequentially, not everyone survived a dangerous journey through this imposing tree line.
Well, hidden in The Piney Woods are numerous spine-chilling tales. The isolation has created Texas-sized legends that are hard to forget. The hauntings of the Jefferson Hotel, Huntsville Prison, Dick and Charlie’s Tearoom in Caddo Lake, and the Turner Auditorium in Nacogdoches are pure nightmare fuel.
But the eight-mile stretch of road between Marshall and Karnack is among the most haunted places in East Texas. The imposing 12-foot walls surrounding this holloway remind brave visitors of its sinister past. Bandits once hid out amongst the nearby pines. Bodies swung from ropes along their branches. It was a place where you could disappear, whether you wanted to or not.
Stories of a crazed woman, an escaped Voodoo Queen, and the dull thud of a hanged man’s body atop passing cars make Stagecoach Road a place only the bravest explorers will venture.
Take a Dallas ghost tour with Dallas Terrors or more Texas ghost stories the next time you’re in The Big D. Hopefully, you won’t have to travel Stagecoach Road to get there.
Who Haunts Stagecoach Road?
Stagecoach Road is home to numerous hauntings and bone-chilling stories. The crazed ghost of a woman who drowned her children still seeks revenge against the townsfolk who murdered her. An escaped Voodoo queen from New Orleans, killed by a Marshall priest, is said to roam the side of the road still. She appears under the full moon carrying various Voodoo items. Cars driving on the 1850s road have found children’s hand prints on their windows. Some have heard the sound of a dead man’s body hanging from a tree hitting their roof. The horrors of Stagecoach Road are seemingly endless.
Old Stagecoach Road
Stagecoach road was as a dangerous path even before iron wheels and horse hooves wore down its shape. William Bradfield, a cotton plantation owner and soon-to-be Confederate quartermaster, opened his stagecoach line in the late 1850s.
Bradfield and his son, John Bradfield, ran the stagecoach for over a decade, ferrying people to Shreveport, Louisiana, via Marshall, Texas. Along the way, small towns like Earpville (now Longview), Rusk, Henderson, Crockett, and others. It was a service much needed when first advertised in the Rusk Texas Enquirer in April 1859.
Just a few years prior, in 1844, Harrison County, of which Marshall is the county seat, was a place of lawlessness and violence. The Regulator-Moderator War had spread across all of East Texas. It was a bloody affair over land disputes that took its violent character from years of the Sabine Free State.
The Piney Woods, Stagecoach Road, and the surrounding areas saw many years of death and destruction. After the dust had settled, the Pine Curtain became a hideout for those unwilling to give up their criminal ways.
So when Bradfield opened his stagecoach line with the promise of “the best that can be procured, drivers sober and accommodating,” it was a welcomed prospect.
John Bradfield took over his father’s business at the start of the Civil War. When William returned, a Confederate Major and a provost Marshall, his son, expanded the family business. Stagecoach rides were now available all the way west to Dallas.
By 1872, Bradfield sold his stagecoach company due to the Texas & Pacific railroads connecting Marshall, Texas with San Diego, California. The old road slowly fell out of fashion with all those except the dejected, deranged, and those wishing to dissapear.
Hauntings of the Old Stagecoach Road
The soft clay of Stagecoach Road stood no chance against the poundings of horse hooves and wagon-laden wheels over the years. Today, the road has become a holloway, an old English term for a road pushed below the surrounding land. 12-foot-tall walls follower travels along a majority of this road through the dark Pine Curtain.
This makes the many stories of ghosts, apparitions, and demonic forces on Stagecoach Road even more terrifying. For many years, it has become a hotspot for paranormal investigators.
Ghosts of Old Stagecoach Road
- A woman in white
- A New Orleans Voodoo Queen
- The hanged body of a man
- Satanic Cults
- Ghost children
The Ghost Woman and Her Children of Stagecoach Road
One of the most famous tales is of a young woman who walks the side of the road dressed in white. It is said that she went with sinister intent along Stagecoach Road one night. The woman, suffering from mental illness, brought her children along. But they weren’t going to return.
She drowned both of them in a marsh off the side of the road. She planned to commit suicide to join them in the afterlife, but she couldn’t bring herself to it. Wracked with grief, she returned to town. Word quickly spread of her misgivings. A vigilante committee was quickly formed. She was captured and brought out to Stagecoach Road to be executed.
Many ghost hunters and adventurous travelers report seeing the whispy figure of a woman in white wandering the side of the road. Those unlucky enough to meet her are met with a hollow face contorted into a silent scream. For most, she disappears without a trace.
Her children, many believe, haunt the old road as well. A woman named Stephanie Watkins braved the road on her way to Karnack. She and her husband recorded a video of how dusty the road was while driving at night. The following day, a fine layer of red Texas dust covered their car. Marked on the side of her vehicle were numerous outlines of a Child’s handprint.
Perhaps they were attempting to push Watkins and her husband away from their mother’s madness. Or they have seen what lurks above the ground, off the branches of the Loblolly pine.
No Man’s Land
Other drivers traversing the old stagecoach road, now CR 2116, have heard a distinctive thud across the top of their cars. While many strange things can fall from the tall trees, this distinctive sound is much too loud to be a falling seed or animal.
Bandits once claimed the Pine Curtain as their own. Harrison County and the surrounding area once fell under what was called The Neutral Ground, No Man’s Land of Louisiana. This Neutral Strip was created through boundary disputes between the American army and Spanish Texas in 1806.
It was a lawless place. Settlers on either side were initially forbidden from moving into the ungoverned land. But, by 1821, when the United States gained ownership through the Adams-Onis Treaty, it had been sparsely populated.
However, lawlessness continued even after the Sabine Free State, as it was called because the Sabine River was its main demarcation line, entered the United States.
Vigilante gangs, who feverishly squabbled over cattle rustling, land affairs, and other more trivial pursuits, enforced the law. Assassination, ambush, or lynching killed thiry men during the Regulator-Moderator War. It only ended when Sam Houston called in the Texas Republic’s militia, over t. Many took place away from prying eyes in the darkness of the Pine Forest.
Many believe that the loud thud heard on the top of their cars is a hanging body from this tumultuous time. Apparitions from the past frequently bring their physical properties with them. Very few do anything but drive faster after hearing the dreaded thud.
Satanic Cults and Voodoo Queens on Stagecoach Road
More mysterious matters take place on Stagecoach Road than simple murder. There are rumors of Satanic Cults that use the isolated thoroughfare for religious meetings. Some have seen them in the darkness in tall, dark, hooded robes.
There is also a Voodoo Queen, a runaway from New Orleans that occupies the imagination of every adventurer. A local priest murdered her, wary of her foreign ways and ceremonial items. Now, she walks the side of the road in torment.
Haunted Dallas
Stagecoach Road may be one of the most haunted places in Texas, but it is far from the only. Luckily, you don’t have to take a stagecoach to Dallas anymore. But the terrors of the old West still live on. Learn about them on a Dallas ghost tour the next time you are in the heart of Texas with Dallas Terrors.
In the meantime, keep reading our blog for more haunted roads and restaurants in Dallas, Texas. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to see the best spooky content directly on your phone.
Sources:
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/neutral-ground
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/regulator-moderator-war
https://www.southernliving.com/travel/texas/most-haunted-roads-texas
https://www.reddit.com/r/texas/comments/17qvbhc/marshalls_stagecoach_road_has_anyone_else_visited/
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