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The 'Black Hope' Horror

MrRING

Android Futureman
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Anybody ever hear of this fairly "Poltergeist"- type haunting? I just got through seeing a movie called "Grave Secrets" that is based on the book "The Black Hope Horror".

This site is the best report on it that I've read, and I'll quote from it:

whatwasthen.com/black_hope.html
Link is dead. The MIA webpage (quoted partially below) can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20031211115006/http://www.whatwasthen.com/black_hope.html


In 1980 Ben and Jean Williams brought a new home in Newport a subdivision just outside Houston, Texas. They moved in with their young granddaughter expecting to have all the satisfaction of living in a house that was built to their specifications. The neighborhood was beautifully designed and the house roomy and comfortable with the entire modern convinces they could want. But almost from the first day they began to have experiences that one would expect more in a drafty castle than in a brand new suburban house in southeast Texas.

The family began to have other more serious problems. Poisonous snakes began to find their way onto the property and into the couple’s home. Their daughter became seriously ill. Their neighbors reported similar incidents and problems with their own homes, but none of them could offer any explanation.

The frustration was exacerbated by a nagging doubt they could not put their finger on. When they moved in they had noticed that a tree in the back yard had strange markings carved into it. The terrain in the subdivision seemed oddly dotted with what looked like sinkholes. They could not shake the feeling that some clue or history of the area was being withheld from them. Unintentionally a neighbor discovered the horrible truth. Workers digging a swimming pool in the back yard unearthed the remains of two people.

Facts began to slowly emerge. They were able to locate an elderly man named Jasper Norton who as a youth had worked as a gravedigger. Not only could he help identify whom the graves belonged to, but he also told them how they came to be there. The subdivision was built over the graves of an abandoned cemetery that had been called "Black Hope." Buried in pauper and often unmarked graves were the remains of at least 60 people most of whom had been former slaves.

Considering the date (this occured in 1980), did this mean Spielberg's Poltergeist is based on this event?

And what about the story? I hadn't heard of it before, but I wonder if it's because the racism in thes tory makes it less palitable to audiences?
 
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Just checked, and noticed that the book based on the case was published in 1991 or 1993 and was 'an as told to'. Could it be that 'Poltergiest' the movie influenced the story?

'Poltergiest' was 1982, so it's odd how Stephen Speielberg and Tobe Hooper got hold of the story within a few months of it's happening, scripted it, shot it and released it....and that a spectacular 'true story' like this didn't get out till 10 years later.

This is recent review of the book:
http://www.rambles.net/shoemaker_blackhp93.html

Edit: this one gives the story as happening in 1982.
http://www.unsolved.com/0229-Blackhope.html
 
It's definately possible that it was influenced by the film.... although with the whole "lets build over an old graveyard and not tell anybody" angle, at least that part isn't faked.

But then again, it seems like a seldom-written about event. Anybody find any more info on it?
 
In this review for the book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0425139107/102-8415103-9635335?v=glance

It has it occuring in 1980, just in time to have been an influence for the film... This is the review that is on Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly
In 1980 the Williamses, middle-aged parents of three married daughters, bought a lot and built a house in the Newport subdivision of Houston. Soon after they moved in, odd things began to happen, involving not only Ben and Jean Williams but most of those close to them. Besides what could be called poltergeist activity (e.g., the repeated flushing of a toilet), there emerged more serious troubles. Every time they came to visit, the Williams daughters and their husbands, presumably happily married, would quarrel; all three marriages ended in divorce. Five family members died. The Williams' pets behaved strangely, and the family weathered virtual plagues of ants and snakes. Their neighbors, without exception, encountered similar freak events. When it was discovered that their homes were built over a cemetery, some members of the community sued the developer and lost, but the case was recently reopened. For their part, Ben and Jean Williams stayed until 1987, then moved to Montana. Writing here with freelancer Shoemaker, they recreate a bizarre tale that only credulous readers will respond to. Photos not seen by PW.


edit to add this cool link, has a picture of the general area: http://thebrgs.homestead.com/crosby.html
 
A Texas group investigates:

http://www.lonestarspirits.org/investigations/poppetsreport.html
Our first investigation began late on the 14th of November, 1998. When we found the correct end of the street, we noticed a negativity that was not present elsewhere in the subdivision. We proceeded into the woods beyond the barracade at the east end of the street. about 200 yards into the woods we spotted one of the black figures reported by the Williamses. The only way to describe it is black-on-black. Terri Higgins and Dean Phillips were standing only about 10 feet from it but they didn't spot it. Pete Haviland, Nichole Dobrowolski and Katie Phillips spotted it immediatly. Pete made eye-contact with it and felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck. He, Nichole and Katie immediately left the area. By the time they had reached the street Pete was doubled-over in pain. We left soon afterwards. Pete's photographs revealed 2 hazy black figures, and they would be posted here but they don't scan well. He nicknamed them Bob Duckandcover and Bob Jr.

Our second investigation was conducted during the Christmas season with Dean, Katie, Nichole and her husband, Jeff. We did not see, sense or document any paranormal phenomena at that time.

Our third investigation occured a month later. Present were Dean, Katie and Terri, and the black figures were back. Katie spotted several of them circling the group as soon as the sun began to set. Then she noticed Dean standing stock-still, staring at something. She turned to see what he was staring at and spotted 2 of them staring back at him. Neither said a word at that time. Later comparison of notes revealed that they had seen the exact same thing. Dean left to borrow Terri's camera to photograph them and when he returned they had ducked behind some foliage. Terri's photographs revealed nothing unusual. Katie's camera malfunctioned during the investigation. We left soon afterwards.

Current residents claim no paranormal activity in their homes, but we have been contacted by one person who lived across the street from the old Williams home and she said she constantly felt as though she was being watched. We have also been contacted by a peace officer who used to patrol the area. According to him, the agency responsible for keeping the peace in the Newport Subdivision sometimes gets false alarms from the homes on the east end of Poppet's Way. They'll respond to the call only to find no one in the house, nothing amiss, and the television set turning itself on and off.
 
I read this book out of the library years ago, and though the supernatural explanations aren't ridiculous (unless you automatically read supernatural explanations that way), my continuous reaction as I read was that a massive run of bad luck combined with psychological factors and family dynamics accounted for everything just as well. I read the "haunting" as an explanatory fable the family told itself to avoid facing the chaotically unfair nature of the universe. Unfortunately, once they all believed in the haunting, they locked themselves into a feedback loop and only drastic action (i.e., moving) could break them out of it. A different family with identical experiences might have decided they were being punished by God for some sin, or scapegoatd a member of the family as possessed/evil, or simply accepted that they had a lot of random bad crap raining down on them and needed to soldier through it.

Many hauntings can be read in a similar way, and doing so doesn't prove anything one way or another.
 
I saw an episode of a talk show a few years back that featured the Williamses talking about their experiences. Also present as the "voice of reason" was CSICOP's Joe Nickell, who accused Mr. Williams of exaggerating his story, and insisting that he hadn't experienced any of what he was claiming.

Mr Williams did not take kindly to being called a liar on national television, and promptly suggested that he and Mr. Nickell settle the matter outside.

Mr. Nickell declined. Whatever the truth of the story, the Williamses seemed sincere in their conviction that something extremely bizarre and paranormal had taken over their lives for that period.
 
I own the book, and grain of salt or not, it's a damned scary read. I tend to believe most of the events largely because of how the things progressed. The dreams of several of the residents/relatives were probably what scared me the most. I'd look up a quote, but I just packed the book yesterday and it's in Janesville now.
 
ignatiusII said:
Mr Williams did not take kindly to being called a liar on national television, and promptly suggested that he and Mr. Nickell settle the matter outside.
Ah, yes, the Subtle Riposte ploy again!

I like it! :D
 
PeniG said:
"....a massive run of bad luck...."

Yes, but mightn't "massive runs of bad luck" be in themselves paranormal?
 
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Music Hall

Cincinnati's world-famous Music Hall was built atop the the city's early 19th Century Afro-American burial ground. While this was never any great secret the story was brought to the fore again in the 1980s when excavators enlarging the basements ran into several remaining burials.

Numerous ghost-sighting reports followed.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
PeniG said:
"....a massive run of bad luck...."

Yes, but mightn't "massive runs of bad luck" be in themselves paranormal?


The might - or they might be the result of a chaotic mess of contingency, free will, natural laws, and brain chemistry. You know, like everyday life.

It all comes down to how good the evidence of the paranormal is in a given case. In this case, as I recall the book, it really is about 50-50. I always come down on the side of "no weird entity with intent" in cases like this, partly because it's more parsimonious, but also because the idea of life being ruled by disembodied entities like God, the Devil, or angry ghosts instead of by the elements listed above distasteful.

However, the universe is under no obligation to be to my taste, or parsimonious, for that matter. It's not under any obligation to be particularly complicated or ruled by the taste of people who prefer that their lives make some sort of cruel sense, either. In this regard, this is an ideal case (again, as I recall it) because the existing evidence can as readily be interpreted one way as another.
 
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PeniG, I too dislike the idea of forces ruling the things that happen to people (eg. God, Devil, Angels, Demons). So I subscribe to the American Indian idea of Guardians that, good or evil, look after a given place. The way the book tells it, I dare say that (if true) it would seem that a guardian or watcher was using the souls of those buried in the area for its own goulish ends.

However, I am highly unreliable on these matters. ;)
 
I found an interesting article on African American slave burials in America, and thought it might be of interest in this thread considering the history of Black Hope Cemetary!

LINK

Thomas Chaplin, a Sea Island cotton planter on St. Helena Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, mentions the making or purchasing of coffins for black slaves on only two occasions. He describes only one African-American burial, on May 6, 1850:

Got Uncle Ben's [slave] Paul to make coffin for poor old Anthony. The body begins to smell very bad already, had it put in the coffin as soon as it came. Buried the body alongside of his son about 11 o'clock at night.... There were a large number of Negroes from all directions present, I suppose over two hundred.
At another nineteenth century South Carolina slave burial reported by Creel:
The coffin, a rough home-made affair, was placed upon a cart, which was drawn by an old Gray, and the multitudes formed in a line in the rear, marching two deep. The procession was something like a quarter of a mile long. Perhaps every fifteenth person down the line carried an uplifted torch. As the procession moved slowly toward "the lonesome graveyard" down by the side of the swamp, they sung the well-known hymn:

"When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I bid farewell to every fear
and wipe my weeping eyes."
.... the corpse was lowered into the grave and covered, each person throwing a handful of dirt into the grave as a last farewell act of kindness to the dead.... A prayer was offered.... This concluded the services at the grave.

Yet another slave burial, on Georgia's Butler Island, was described by Frances Anne Kemble in early 1839:
Yesterday evening the burial of the poor man Shadrack took place.... just as the twilight was thickening into darkness I went with Mr. [Butler] to the cottage of one of the slaves ... who was to perform the burial service. The coffin was laid on trestles in front of the cooper's cottage, and a large assemblage of the people had gathered round, many of the men carrying pine-wood torches .... the coffin being taken up, proceeded to the people's burial ground.... When the coffin was lowered the grave was found to be partially filled with water – naturally enough, for the whole island is a mere swamp, off which the Altamaha is only kept from sweeping by the high dikes all round it. This seemed to shock and distress the people ....

All of these slave burials are similar. They seem to have invariably taken place at night, possibly to allow slaves from neighboring plantations to attend, but just as likely because no other time was available. This may help explain why so many African-American burials continued to be held on Sundays even into the early twentieth century. All of the accounts suggest that the burials were rather significant affairs, with prayers, singing, and sometimes even an air of a pageant. Sometimes the service was reported to continue until the morning. Many accounts from the mid- and late-nineteenth century reveal that African-Americans were uniformly buried east-west, with the head to the west. One freed slave explained that the dead should not have to turn around when Gabriel blows his trumpet in the eastern sunrise. Others have suggested they were buried facing Africa.

Even where the slaves were buried seems similar. All seem to represent marginal property – land which the planter wasn't likely to use for other purposes. The burial spots have been described as "ragged patches of live-oak and palmetto and brier tangle which throughout the Islands are a sign of graves within, – graves scattered without symmetry, and often without headstones or head-boards, or sticks ...."
A more recent researcher, Elsie Clews Parsons, observes that the African-American cemeteries were:
hidden away in remote spots among trees and underbrush. In the middle of some fields are islands of large trees the owners preferred not to make arable, because of the exhaustive work of clearing it. Old graves are now in among these trees and surrounding underbrush.

Frances Anne Kemble reported that while an enclosure was erected around the graves of several white laborers buried on Butler Island, the graves of the African-American slaves were trampled on by the plantation cattle.

A black cemetery in the South Carolina up country was described by John William DeForest shortly after the Civil War. He commented that while a few marble and brick headstones were present, most were "wooden slabs, all grimed and mouldering with the dampness of the forest...." At the time, some of the wooden slabs had painted names and dates. The paint likely flaked off only shortly before the wood itself rotted away.

Graves were marked in a variety of ways besides wood or stone slabs. Sometimes unusual carved wooden staffs, thought perhaps to represent religious motifs or effigies, were used. Some graves were marked using plants, such as cedars or yuccas, and anthropologists have suggested this tradition may reflect an African belief in the living spirit. This tradition can be traced at least to Haiti, where blacks, probably mixing Christian religion with African beliefs, explain that, "trees live after, death is not the end." Yuccas and other "prickly" plants may also have been used "to keep the spirits" in the cemetery. Other graves were marked with pieces of iron pipe, railroad iron, or any other convenient object.

At times shells were used to mark the grave. One anthropologist in the early 1890s remarked that "nearly every grave has bordering or thrown upon it a few bleached sea-shells of a dozen different kinds." This practice has been traced back to at least the BaKongo belief that the sea shell encloses the soul's immortal presence. There was a prayer to the mbamba sea shell:
As strong as your house you shall keep my life for me. When you leave for the sea, take me along, that I may live forever with you.

Even into the twentieth century some Gullah explained the use of shells on graves as representing the sea:

The sea brought us, the sea shall take us back. So the shells upon our graves stand for water, the means of glory and the land of demise.

Probably the most commonly known African-American grave marking practice was the use of "offerings" on top of the grave. One of most detailed discussions of this practice is provided by John Michael Vlach, in The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts. He notes that the objects found on graves included not only pottery, but also "cups, saucers, bowls, clocks, salt and pepper shakers, medicine bottles, spoons, pitchers, oyster shells, conch shells, white pebbles, toys, dolls' heads, bric-a-brac statues, light bulbs, tureens, flashlights, soap dishes, false teeth, syrup jugs, spectacles, cigar boxes, piggy banks, gun locks, razors, knives, tomato cans, flower pots, marbles, bits of plaster, [and] toilet tanks."

This practice may be traced back to Africa, where a wide variety of items used by the dead individual were placed on the grave. Some believe that the symbolism is that of the body destroyed by death. Others trace the practice to a belief that the practice guards the grave, preventing the dead from returning to direct the lives of those still living. Some suggest the symbolism of the various items is particularly important – with reflective items, like glass and mirrors, used to show the "mirror image" of this life compared to the next. Other items focus on water as symbolism, both as representing how African Americans were transported as slaves and also as representing how they will be transported into the next world. A number of the grave goods are also "killed," or deliberately damaged. This is to perhaps help the item to stay in the afterlife with its owner.

In truth, we really don't know the meaning of this practice, although it was recognized by whites at least as far back as Dubois Hayward's day, when he wrote about the practice in the short story, "Half Pint Flask."

Writing in the first quarter of the twentieth century, Elsie Clews Parsons commented that African-American cemeteries did not typically preserve family groupings. Although generations of related kin would be buried at the same graveyard, the tie was to the location, not to a particular 3 by 6 foot piece of ground. The Bennett Papers, in the South Carolina Historical Society, reveal several stories of African-Americans wanting to be buried in very specific graveyards, although specific plots are never of concern. In one case a black was reported to have specifically warned his friends, "don't bury me in strange ground; I won't stay buried if you do. Bury me where I say." A somewhat similar account is provided in an article from the Journal of American Folklore. An article recounts the legend of a slave who begged not to be buried in the graveyard of his mean-spirited master. When his dying request was ignored, he found retribution by haunting the plantation.

Creel offers one of the more detailed explorations of African-American beliefs toward death during slavery, noting that many of the spirituals provide rare glimpses of the slaves' belief systems. One, in particular, was especially telling:
I wonder where my mudder gone;
Sing, O graveyard!
Graveyard ought to know me;
Ring, Jerusalem!
Grass grow in de graveyard;
Sing, O Graveyard!
Graveyard ought to know me;
Ring, Jerusalem!
Creel observes that while the anguish is clearly conveyed by this song, so too is a sense of hope – most clearly revealed in the line, "Grass grow in de graveyard." She relates this to the BaKongo tradition that although there is certainly death, there is also life and rebirth. She wonders if the line, "Graveyard ought to know me" is a reference to the many trips slaves took there burying their friends or family, or whether it might have a deeper meaning, perhaps referring to the slaves' previous journeys to the world of the dead as "seekers."
 
All of these slave burials....seem to have invariably taken place at night, possibly to allow slaves from neighboring plantations to attend, but just as likely because no other time was available.

One explanation I've heard for Southern burials being held at night in the Old South (before the days of embalming) was that the corpse was liable to be already decomposing before burial and was thus less offensive out of the heat of the day.

This may help explain why so many African-American burials continued to be held on Sundays even into the early twentieth century.

I didn't know that.

All of the accounts suggest that the burials were rather significant affairs, with prayers, singing, and sometimes even an air of a pageant. Sometimes the service was reported to continue until the morning.

There is a long Afro-American tradition of weeping at births and celebrating at funerals, because we are born into a world of woe and at death go home to Glory. This is the motivation behind New Orleans Dixieland band funeral processions.
 
The :Black Hope" Horror

I'm in Houston, not far from Poppet's way in Crosby. Maybe I can swing by and get some photographs.

There's also an interesting legend concerning a graveyard in Humble, TX (just north of Houston), which was (allegedly) relocated deeper into the woods to make way for an overpass. The legend (which I first encountered in TheShadowlands.net) included ghosts, a haunted church, a haunted movie theater, zombies... all sorts of cool stuff! I even visited the graveyard in the woods, and met the caretaker, who scoffed at the whole "The graveyard was moved!" tale.
 
Here are Ben and Jean Williams talking about the events:
Ben and Jean Williams moved to a peaceful Houston neighborhood in hopes of escaping the dangers associated with big-city living. What they didn't know is that their idyllic new home was built on a cemetery and had attracted some most unwelcome guests.Original airdate: May 21, 1991
 
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