The Black Hope Cemetery: The Real Events That Mirror Poltergeist — Ep. 29

In the early 1980s, new homeowners outside Houston started finding coffins buried beneath their freshly built yards.

Lights flickered, water ran on its own, and fear spread through the neighborhood—until they learned the truth.

Their subdivision had been built over a forgotten cemetery known as Black Hope.

The story of what followed—graves unearthed, strange activity, and a family tragedy—sounds eerily similar to the plot of Poltergeist, which hit theaters around the same time.

But this wasn’t a movie set. It was real life.

This is the story of the Black Hope Cemetery: a Texas haunting rooted in history, a fight for recognition, and a reminder that some places never truly rest.

🎙️ State of the Unknown tells true stories of hauntings, legends, and the unexplained from across America—where history and mystery blur.

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Some stories don’t stay buried.
We go looking anyway.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
It's after midnight when Jean Williams wakes up to
the sound of running water.
At first, she thinks it's thebathroom sink.
Her husband must have left thetap on again.
But when she gets up and walksdown the hall, she realizes it's
louder.
It's every faucet in the house.

(00:21):
The kitchen, the bathrooms, eventhe outside spigot by the garden
hose.
All of them.
Full blast.
She shuts them off one by one,water splashing over her hands.
And that's when she notices thefootprints.
Wet, bare footprints across thetile.

(00:42):
Small, like a child's.
They lead straight through thekitchen, across the living room
carpet, and stop at the frontdoor.
She unlocks it, steps outside,and there's no one there.
Just the sound of frogs and thebuzz of the Texas night air.
And that's when the lights inthe house turn back on.

(01:04):
Every single one.
That was the night she startedkeeping a Bible on her
nightstand and the phone numberfor a priest on the fridge.
Because by then, the Williamseshad already been told what they
were living on top of.
The neighborhood was calledNewport, a quiet little

(01:27):
subdivision just outsideHouston, Texas.
Brand new homes, small yards,chain link fences, the hum of
sprinklers in the summer.
Nothing about it looked unusual.
But the land beneath thosehouses had a history nobody
talked about.
Long before the developers camethrough in the 1970s, the ground

(01:51):
here was part of an old burialsite, the Black Hope Cemetery, a
segregated graveyard where freedslaves and their descendants
were buried in the late 1800sand early 1900s.
Over time, the markersdisappeared.
The property changed hands.

(02:11):
And by the time anyone thoughtto check, it was already paved
over.
When people moved in, they hadno idea what was below their
lawns until they starteddigging.

(02:45):
Tonight's story takes us toCrosby, Texas, a quiet
neighborhood built on freshground, new homes, new lives.
And underneath it all, somethingno one was meant to disturb.
This is the story of the BlackHope Cemetery and what happens
when the past doesn't stayburied.

(03:07):
This is State of the Unknown.
When Ben and Gene Williams movedinto their new home in Crosby,
Texas, it felt like the start ofsomething steady.
Quiet streets, kids ridingbikes, box fans humming against

(03:29):
the summer heat.
They'd saved for this house.
It was supposed to be the rewardafter years of renting.
The first few weeks were normal,just settling in, figuring out
which light switch did what.
Then Jean started noticinglittle things that didn't make
sense.

(03:50):
The kitchen clock stopped everynight at 3.12 AM.
Light bulbs burned out the sameday they were changed.
Water pressure dropped, thenroared back up without anyone
touching the handle.
They blamed new constructionquirks.
But soon the noises startedmoving.

(04:12):
Footsteps in the hallway whenboth of them were in bed.
A faint dragging sound along thewall, like someone tracing a
hand over the paint.
Once Jean heard her namewhispered from the laundry room.
When she turned, no one wasthere.
Ben laughed it off.

(04:32):
Old pipes, Texas humidity, mayberaccoons in the attic.
Then, in early 1982, theirneighbor Katie James went out to
plant a tree.
Her shovel hit wood.
She thought it was a root untilthe dirt caved a little and the
metal edge rang hollow.

(04:52):
She cleared the soil away andsaw the curved lid of a coffin.
Inside lay the outline of a bodywrapped in fabric so old it fell
apart in the breeze.
The sheriff came, took photos,and called the county.
Workers marked the spot withstakes and promised to relocate

(05:14):
the remains.
They said it was probably aforgotten family plot, nothing
to worry about.
For a week the neighborhoodstayed quiet, until Jean woke
one morning to find two neatmounds of freshly turned soil
right where the coffin had been.
No footprints, no tools, justthe smell of wet earth.

(05:39):
From then on, the house neverfelt right.
Doors opened on their own.
The television flipped ecstatic.
At night, Jean saw blue-whitelights gliding across the yard,
slow and deliberate, likelanterns moving between
invisible markers.

(05:59):
She started keeping a Bible onthe nightstand and the phone
number of a priest on thefridge.
By midsummer, she'd stoppedsleeping through the night.
One afternoon she went outsideto smooth the dirt near one of
the graves.
Just to tidy it, she said.
She bent down with the shovel,straightened, took a breath, and

(06:21):
fell.
Neighbors found her momentslater.
The coroner called it a heartattack.
Jean Williams was forty-five.
Ben buried her in a propercemetery a few miles away.
When he came home, the house wassilent.
He said it wasn't grief quiet,it was the kind that listens.

(06:50):
After Gene's death, fear spreadthrough Newport.
Some families packed up andleft.
Others began digging, hoping tofind proof that what they'd
heard was true.
They didn't have to dig far.
More coffins surfaced, plankscollapsing, nails rusted,

(07:11):
fragments of fabric stillclinging to bones.
County officials eventuallyadmitted the truth.
The subdivision sat atop theBlack Hope Cemetery, a burial
ground for freed slaves andtheir descendants from the 1800s
and early 1900s.
At least 60 graves wererecorded.

(07:32):
No one knew how many remained.
Old timers around Crosby saidthey'd try to warn the builders.
They remembered funerals outhere decades earlier, hymns
under the trees, small woodencrosses.
But by the time the developmentbroke ground, the markers were
gone and the paperwork was lostin courthouse archives.

(07:55):
In 1983, Ben Williams and 11neighbors filed suit against the
developer and the county.
They argued that their homestood on top of unremoved graves
and that no one had told themthe land was once sacred ground.
Court dates stretched intoyears.
Families took time off of work,sat in folding chairs waiting

(08:19):
for hearings that were postponedagain and again.
The developers had lawyers andpaperwork.
The homeowners had photographs,memories, and the coffins
themselves.
Every delay made it feel likethe past was being buried all
over again.
Ben sat through every hearing.

(08:40):
He said he wasn't looking formoney, he wanted recognition
that the people buried theremattered.
But when the ruling came down,the court sided with the
developers.
No damages, no injunction.
The graves stayed.
The houses stayed.

(09:01):
The legal loss hit harder thanthe haunting, because now the
families had proof of what wasbeneath them and nowhere else to
go.
After the court decision, someof the families tried to make
peace on their own.
A few held small memorials intheir yards, candles, flowers,

(09:21):
short prayers for the peopleburied below.
Local ministers came out tobless the ground, reading
whatever names they could findfrom old records.
For a while, things seemedcalmer.
The sound stopped, the lightsstayed steady.
Some said it was coincidence.
Others said the land had finallybeen acknowledged.

(09:45):
Not everyone stayed.
Some families moved out forgood.
Others said they couldn't affordto.
By the late 1980s, unsolvedmysteries aired their story.

(10:11):
In 1991, the book The Black HopeHorror laid everything out.
The graves, Jean's death, thecourt battle, and the lingering
activity neighbors stillwhispered about, faucets turning
on, lights blinking in unison,the sense that something beneath

(10:31):
the soil still wanted attention.
Today, Newport looks ordinary.
Mailboxes in neat rows, childrenchasing each other between
yards.
But the people who live therethrough those years say it never
really felt ordinary again.

(11:01):
But maybe it's really aboutrecognition.
Skeptics have theirexplanations.
Rapid-build wiring can makelights flicker.
Poor grounding can triggerradios.
And Crosby's clay soil swellsand shifts enough to rattle
pipes and make floors creak.
And once a coffin comes out ofthe ground, every sound after

(11:24):
feels deliberate.
That's suggestion, not lying.
Just how fear edits what wenotice.
Still, none of that explains theway that people describe the
same things or why it quietedonly after memorials were held
and names were spoken again.
Believers say that was the landsettling because it had finally

(11:47):
been acknowledged.
Maybe they're right.
Maybe both things are true.
And it's hard not to notice howfamiliar this all sounds.
In 1982, the same year GeneWilliams died, a movie called
Poltergeist hit theaters.
A story about a new subdivisionbuilt on an old cemetery, where

(12:10):
the builders moved theheadstones but not the bodies.
Different setting, same idea.
Some locals have wondered eversince if the film borrowed from
stories like Black Hope, or ifit just tapped into a collective
guilt that was already outthere.
A quiet fear that maybe we'vebuilt too much over what was

(12:32):
never ours to claim.
Across the country, black andindigenous cemeteries have been
paved over, forgotten, orrelocated on paper.
Each one is a piece of historyburied twice, once in the ground
and once in memory.
Maybe what the families inNewport felt wasn't ghosts at

(12:54):
all.
Maybe it was the weight of allthat forgotten history pressing
up from underneath.
A reminder that progress builton silence will always creak
when the winds change.
Places hold memory.
Sometimes we call it haunting.
Sometimes it's conscience.

(13:14):
Either way, it's the past askingnot to be ignored.
Drive through Newport today, andyou'd never guess the story.
Lawns trimmed, porch lightsglowing, kids tossing footballs
in the street.
But now and then, on stillevenings, the air changes.

(13:38):
The cicadas go quiet.
The breeze stops.
It lasts maybe ten seconds, justlong enough to make you notice.
And maybe that's the truest partof the legend.
Not ghosts, not curses, just theland.
Remembering what's beneath it.

(14:05):
This has been State of theUnknown.
A new neighborhood built for theliving.
Fresh lawns, bright porches, anda history that never really
left.
Beneath those foundations, aburial ground, names scattered
by time, stories quiet untilsomeone dug too deep.

(14:29):
For more than 40 years, BlackHope has remained.
Not as fiction, but as proofthat the past doesn't vanish
when we pave over it.
Maybe the most human kind ofhaunting isn't a sound in the
dark, it's memory finally heard.

(14:49):
If you've been enjoying State ofthe Unknown, thank you for
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I read every single one.

(15:12):
Until next time, stay curious.
Stay unsettled.
And if you pass a quiet stretchof ground, tread lightly.
Some memories still move in thedark.

(15:41):
Tonight's story is a shorterone, kind of a mini episode.
But next week we'll be back witha full length story.
That's the new rhythm.