Chapter 1: What dark narratives shape Texas folklore?
Texas, the lone star state whose mythic image of wide-open plains, rugged cowboys, and heroic independence is woven into the fabric of American culture. But it also bears a shadowy ledger of tragedy, violence, and lingering hauntings.
These dark chapters are not merely footnotes, they are narratives that have shaped local identities, inspired folklore, and even filtered into popular media, reminding us that history is as much about loss and fear as it is about triumph.
Take, for example, the case of the poor colonel who haunts the halls of the Presidio La Bahia, sitting in a chair in the corner waiting for a death sentence that has long since been executed.
His presence is a reminder of the terrible massacre that occurred near the fort nearly two centuries ago, and of the terrible decision-making that he showed at a crucial moment in history and how it has echoed throughout time.
This story, and so many others like it throughout the state, form a tapestry of darkness that underscores a central truth about Texas, that the same landscape that nurtured legends of bravery also gave birth to stories of suffering, injustice, and the uncanny. And by looking at them, we can gain insight into how trauma is remembered, reshaped, and handed down through the generations.
It influences everything from local folklore to Hollywood cinema. They say that everything is bigger in Texas, and that includes its legends. It seems there's a rich vein of dark tales in Texas history. Tales that continue to haunt the Lone Star State's collective consciousness in an equally big way. I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore Legends.
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Chapter 2: Who is the Donkey Lady and what is her story?
There is a bridge over the Medina River, just outside of San Antonio. It's secluded, and the dense trees of the forest crowd the river that it crosses. If you look at a map, you'll see that its name is the Old Apple White Bridge. Although, if you speak to the locals, they'll give you a different, much stranger nickname. The Donkey Lady Bridge.
For those who are curious, the donkey lady is said to be a disfigured specter. Her frame might be human, but her head and hooves resemble those of a donkey. Where she came from, though, is a matter of fierce debate. In one version of her tale, she lived with her husband and children on a farm not far from the Old Apple White Bridge.
Her husband was horribly abusive, and in an act reminiscent of the Amityville Horror, he snapped. One by one, he killed his entire family, leaving his long-suffering wife for last. When he finally burned the house down, she was still inside.
Chapter 3: What eerie encounters have been reported at the Donkey Lady Bridge?
The fire disfigured her, but somehow she was able to escape. Running to the river, she jumped in and was never seen again. Well, alive at least. But ever since, she has stalked the land, seeking to exact vengeance on her violent husband. Some variations on her story do include an actual donkey, though. In one, the family owns a donkey that a stranger beats.
He's ultimately chased off by the woman who lived there, but he returns later that night to burn the house down. Even after the house is reduced to ashes, the woman, now disfigured, treats the donkey as her own child. In another version, her donkey bites a child who taunts it.
When confronted by the village, the donkey lady blames the boy and the villagers, enraged, drown both the woman and her offending beast. Whatever the variations, though, most of the stories typically end the same way. A woman survives a fire in which she loses everything and then haunts the place where it happened, whether due to enduring pain or a bottomless desire for revenge.
As a result, locals have believed the area around the bridge to be haunted ever since. Various witnesses have reported a strange change in the air as you approach the bridge, as if the air were heavier, or as if someone was watching you. It's common for visitors to the bridge to hear strange sounds, too. A woman wailing, or the brain of a donkey.
Sometimes it's the sound of approaching hooves in the dark. In one incident from 1989, a group of friends were out joyriding when they decided to pay the legendary donkey lady a visit. Pulling up to the bridge, they turned the headlights off. Slowly advancing across the river in near-black conditions, there was suddenly a figure in front of them.
When they advanced, perhaps trying to nudge the figure out of their way, it suddenly just disappeared. As his passengers shouted conflicting directions, things like go or reverse, something heavy landed with a thud on the hood of the car.
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Chapter 4: What are the details of the Moonlight Murders in Texarkana?
In a panic, the driver reversed, casting the dark figure off the hood. When they finally got to safety, they took a look at the damage. The hood was gouged with two deep dents. It was so bad, in fact, that the entire thing had to be replaced. Another sighting proved to be a little more gruesome.
When a teenager returned home from a night out with friends, his car was battered, the windshield cracked, and, most troubling, there was blood on the hood. The driver, obviously shaken, told a harrowing tale. He claimed that he had been hanging out with some friends at the Donkey Lady Bridge, with the hope of summoning her. To do so, they began honking the horn, shouting for her to appear.
After a few minutes with no results, though, they decided to go into the woods. They figured if she wasn't going to come to them, then they would go to her. But inside the woods, the driver, named John, began to feel as though they were being watched from the dense foliage. And then he saw the eyes, a single pair, reflecting the moonlight toward him like a mirror. Obviously, they ran.
They made it back to the car while something terrible wailed behind them and strange sounds of what may have been a horse approached. As the car peeled out, a figure appeared on the road, and too afraid to stop, John collided with it. It rolled off the hood, and the teenagers escaped. A second investigation into the site later showed a large amount of blood on the bridge, but no monstrous figure.
There are theories about her origin. Some people believe that she is very real, whether ghost or beast. Some say the sound of nearby rapids is responsible for that telltale sound of donkeys' hooves. And some point out the similarities between her and other well-known legends. Bloody Mary, for instance, who you can call by saying her name three times.
And La Llorona, another story of a mother losing all and turning to revenge.
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Chapter 5: How did the community respond to the Phantom Killer?
Stories that all feel like they're cut from the same cloth and then dyed in a horrifying shade of red. Not every legend that haunts Texas is supernatural. Some come from a darker, more human place. Such was the case with the infamous Moonlight Murders. It was 1964, and the country was still reeling from the recent war.
And Little Texarkana, population 50,000, was in for yet another terrible shock. On the evening of February 2nd, 25-year-old Jimmy Hollis picked up 19-year-old Mary Jean Larry, and together they went and saw The Three Strangers at the local movie house. Following the film, the two decided to head over to Lover's Lane to continue their date.
Parked in a secluded area, the couple did not see the masked man approach the car until it was too late. Armed with a gun, he ordered the couple out of the car, and then the attacker clubbed Jimmy in the skull so loudly that Mary Jean thought that her date had been shot. With Jimmy knocked out, the attacker then forced her to run and chased behind her.
He caught up with her on the road where he attacked her as well, slugging her with a gun in the head and leaving her on the side of the road. Both had serious head wounds, and Jimmy Hollis' was life-threatening, placing him briefly in a coma. Both survived to tell the police their stories, however. The attacker's next victims, though, wouldn't be so lucky.
It was March 24th of the same year, mere weeks after the first attack, when he would strike again. Polly Ann Moore, a 17-year-old girl who worked late nights as a telephone operator, agreed to go on a date with Richard Lanier Griffin, a military vet who had served in the Navy's construction battalions in the South Pacific.
The plan was dinner and a movie, a meal at the Canary Cottage, and a screening of the film Snafu at the theater. Following the movie, though, they went to West 7th Cafe for a late-night bite, leaving there around 2 a.m. It was the last time that anyone would see them alive.
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Chapter 6: What mistakes were made during the investigation of the Moonlight Murders?
Just like the previous victims, Polly and Richard decided to park somewhere secluded to continue their date. And just like the previous victims, they were confronted by a masked attacker armed with a .32 revolver. This time, though, instead of knocking out the young man, the killer shot him. Richard was found kneeling beneath the dashboard with two fatal wounds. Polly was found in the back seat.
She had also been killed. While the February attack had seemed chaotic, the victims both had lived to report to the police, after all, this attack suggested a more organized offender, one who had clearly learned from the previous attack, one that had left no witnesses. But this time, he left evidence behind, that single .32 bullet casing.
The next murder would happen within three weeks, on April 14th of 1946. Two high school juniors, Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin, had known each other since they were small children and had been going steady for a while. That evening, Paul had picked up Betty Jo from the Veterans of Foreign Wars Club, where she played in the band.
When she failed to drop her saxophone off at home, Betty Jo's mother became concerned and notified the police when it started getting late. As a result, a search was called. But it was a couple out driving early that found the body on the side of the road. It was Paul Martin's. He had been shot four times. Betty Jo Booker's body wasn't found for many hours after that.
Her body was three miles from Paul's. At 15, she was the youngest of the killer's victims. A fourth attack broke from the established pattern, though. On May 3rd, Virgil and Katie Starks were at home at their farmhouse. Virgil was sitting in the living room reading the paper when two bullets entered from the window behind him, catching him in the back of the head.
When his wife Katie ran into the room to investigate, she too was shot twice, but was able to escape and run to a neighbor's where she told them to call the police before passing out. And like I said, this crime was different from the three that preceded it. For one, the Starks were markedly older than his previous victims, 37 years of age to be exact.
They were also shot with a .22, a departure from the .32 caliber that the killer had used in previous murders. And of course, he didn't find them parked. They were safe at home. Until they weren't. Four brutal attacks in four months time.
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Chapter 7: What haunting experiences are associated with the Goliad Massacre?
There wasn't a term for it at this point in history, but today we've built an entire genre around the concept. It seems that Texarkana had a serial killer. It was the spring of 1946, and the tiny town of Texarkana, Texas, was paralyzed by a deep terror. A Fort Worth Star-Telegram article described a populace with drawn shades and doors double-barred.
Neighbors armed themselves and invited guests to stay the night for extra security. Some members of the community took to patrolling the streets and setting traps themselves for the Phantom Killer, as he'd come to be known. People began trailing strangers, and even placed themselves as decoys to try to tempt the killer to attack another person.
And for the authorities, that string of murders kicked off a massive investigation with many branches of law enforcement working together to find the killer. Local police and the Texas Rangers, even the FBI became involved. But even with all that manpower, the investigation was plagued with mistakes, beginning with the very first attack.
Those victims, Hollis and Larry, had conflicting memories of the evening. Larry said that the attacker was a black man wearing a pillowcase with slits cut out for the eyes, whereas Hollis, when he regained consciousness, described the man as white.
Police found this suspicious, believing at first that perhaps, given the brutality of the crime, Larry knew her attacker and was protecting him for unknown reasons. And it was this assumption that convinced police that they should be looking for a respected member of society, and to use that as their working theory for the investigation.
They would only admit that the attacker was a stranger once it was too late. After the second attack, the mistakes continued to pile on. For one, police neglected to secure the crime scene, allowing it to be contaminated. Further, both victims were given funerals and buried before a pathologist was able to lay eyes on their bodies. Moore was even buried with bullets still inside her body.
To this day, we don't know why she was not given an autopsy. We do know that, at the time, the first attack and the second attack were not viewed as even related. It was largely believed that the original attack was from someone the couple had known, and so there was little real concern about future threats. But Mary Jean Larry knew better.
She had moved to Oklahoma, and when she learned of the other victims, she couldn't help but connect it to her own traumatic experience. She was so convinced that she returned to Texarkana to speak to the police in person. And yet it fell on deaf ears, and she returned home.
Over the course of the investigation, over 400 persons of interest were brought in for questioning, although only two of them would be considered serious suspects. The first was H.B. Tennyson, a local teenager who took his own life in 1948 and left a note admitting to the crimes. Despite this written confession, though, Tennyson's friends came forward with an alibi for the Martin Booker murders.
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Chapter 8: How do legends and trauma intertwine in Texas history?
He had been playing cards with them at the exact same time. The second suspect was one Ewell Swinney. You see, each attack had coincided with the report of a stolen car, and each car was found abandoned after the crimes were committed. Swinney was well-known around town as a prolific car thief. When his girlfriend was seen driving around town in a stolen car, they were both arrested.
When questioned, the girlfriend gave details of the murder that had not been made public. Frustratingly, though, her story's details changed as she retold it. And during the investigation, she married Swinney, meaning that she cannot be compelled to testify against him in court. And so law enforcement decided to not prosecute. Many have argued that she may have been purposely unreliable.
She'd known things about the crime scene that could only have been known by someone who had been present. She knew where bodies had been found, even the location of the saxophone that Swinney had cast away. But it turns out that she hadn't been the only one questioned who made an incriminating statement.
When arrested, Swinney himself came extremely close to admitting guilt when he asked, Do you think they'll give me the chair for this? Once he realized through further questioning that the authorities had less information than he realized, though, he calmed down and refused to cooperate further.
Despite all the details and the confusion, no charges were ever brought against Ewell Swinney, or anyone else for that matter, in the Moonlight Murders. To this day, the case remains open. Although, after 80 years without progress, that case is more than a little cold. It's hard to move past trauma, whatever form it might take.
As you'd imagine, the people of Texarkana were deeply affected by their unsolved murders. Although, over the years, they've come to embrace their town's dark past in a strange way. For instance, when the Phantom Killers crime spree later inspired a film in 1976 called The Town That Dreaded Sundown, the city began a tradition.
Every year on Halloween, the town gathers to watch it together as the season finale of their Movies at the Park. The Moonlight Murders also inspired two other very famous horror films which rose to the level of cult classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween. But beyond the films borrowing from the very real crimes, other shadows have been left by the attacks.
A number of local myths persist. One concerns the wooded area where the murders took place. In the legend, the wooded area remains haunted by those victims. It's said that if you stand against the right tree, you will feel the invisible rope that bound the victims. Although it should be noted here that none of the victims were ever tied up. But why ruin a good legend, right?
But one other tale associated with the murders is one that you have probably heard before. It's the legendary story of a couple out parking on Lover's Lane. But when they hear something scraping against the side of their car, they speed away in terror. It's only when they reach a place of safety and get out to inspect the car that they discover something horrifying.
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