Spooky Galveston: Ghost Tours, Haunted History & Real Paranormal Encounters

Welcome back, spooky friends! In this chilling episode of Dairyland Frights, John sits down with GIn from Spooky Galveston Tours—a lifelong paranormal experiencer, historian, tarot reader, and one of the most knowledgeable ghost tour guides in the entire state of Texas.

From pirate legends to the hauntings of the 1900 Storm, and from shadow figures to headless apparitions roaming the train yard, this episode delivers a jam-packed journey through one of America’s most haunted coastal cities.

Whether you love ghost stories, true history, or eerie firsthand encounters—this is an episode you cannot miss.

👻 Episode Highlights

• Gin’s haunted childhood home — mobile toys turning on by themselves, doppelgangers, shadow figures & more

• Why Galveston is one of the most haunted cities in the U.S. – the 1900 hurricane, plagues, pirates, shipwrecks & historical trauma

• The real story of Jean Lafitte — pirate, legend… vampire?

• The heroic ghost of the Hutchings-Sealy Building, which saved 50 people during the storm

• Galveston Railroad Museum hauntings, including the famous headless William Watson

• Horrifying industrial tragedies at the Armour Meat Packing Company

• The mysterious “face in the UTMB building” that kept returning

• Why Galveston has the most haunted Walmart in America

• Jen’s scariest personal ghost encounters — including a vanishing man who ran straight at her

• How ghost tours preserve true history—not myths

• The challenges of being a ghost tour guide in a highly competitive (and sometimes inaccurate) market

🏝️ Why Galveston Is So Haunted

Galveston is home to:

• The deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history (1900 Storm)

• Multiple yellow fever epidemics

• A port that brought in over 750,000 immigrants

• Civil War battles, pirates, industrial tragedies, fires, and more

The result? A city layered with trauma, heroism, and decades of reported hauntings.

Jen takes listeners deep into the real history—not the sensationalized myths—to reveal why certain buildings, blocks, and streets remain paranormally active.

🔮 About Gin & Spooky Galveston Tours

Gin blends historical research, personal paranormal experiences, and years of ghost tour guiding to deliver some of the most accurate and compelling tours in Texas. She specializes in:

• Ghost tours

• Historical walking tours

• Hurricane 1900 tours

• Cemetery tours

• Architecture & red-light district tours

• Tarot readings

• INSTAGRAM Spooky Gin
• FACEBOOK Spooky Gin

Episode Transcript

Speaker A (00:00):
Foreign.
Welcome to Dairyland Frights, the paranormalpodcast that covers everything spooky, creepy
and mysterious in the Midwest and beyond.

(00:20):
And today I love having guests like this onthe podcast who doer ghost tours.
Excuse me.
And this one is in Texas,
which is awesome because I've been in Texasmany times.
I've been to Austin, Dallas, Houston, blah,blah, blah.
I have taken a tour in Austin, but not inGalveston, where Jen, welcome.

(00:43):
You're from Spooky Galveston tours in Texas.
Welcome.

Speaker B (00:48):
Hi.

Speaker A (00:50):
Thank you for coming and thank you.
I can't wait to hear some stories and talkingto the audience about how you guys do things
because everybody does everything a littledifferently.
I've been on so, you know,
about 15 ghost tours all over the country.
Some do really good jobs,
some I'm a little bit like,

(01:11):
really?Do you even do any research?
So let's talk about that.
How long have you been giving ghost tourshere?
And like,
when did you start?And like, why did you start it?

Speaker B (01:24):
Well, I've always been fascinated in the paranormal.
I grew up in a haunted house,
so that's always been in the realm of normalin my life.
But then we've also had other circumstancesthat are going on where I've just always been
interested in,
you know, all the supernatural stuff.
You know, I got a children's classic book of

(01:46):
Dracula when I was little and my grandmotherwould read me stories that she would make up
and they were always fancy and had ghosts inthem and things.
It was just always something I was interestedin.
But roughly about 10 years ago, I was lookingfor a part time job to supplement my income
with, and I had a friend who was managing aghost tour company in Galveston and she said,

(02:08):
look, we did the Rocky Horror Picture showtogether years ago.
I know you're really into this stuff and I, Iwould really love it if you would come and be
a tour guide with me.
And you know, I know that you're reliable,
you're dependable, you know, you can tell thestories.
I'm like, great, I'd love to try and see.
And I, I went out and I auditioned for Dash
Beardsley, the ghost man of Galveston.
And he was the very first person to ever do a

(02:31):
ghost tour in Galveston, period.
The end.
We have the second oldest ghost tour company
in Texas and I mean, we're just like a coupleof months shy of, of Austin actually.
And anyway, he was really great and he hadincredible stories to share and I really got
into it and so I worked for him for a coupleof years.

(02:52):
I was doing his Promotions, his marketing.
I was doing all of his scheduling forcelebrity appearances and things like that.
And I was also tour guiding.
But after every single tour that I did for
him,
the one thing that everybody wanted to ask meabout was the 1900 storm.
Not really a big deal, because, you know, Imean, a lot of our ghost stories are about

(03:14):
that, sure.
But it's known to be the worst naturaldisaster to ever happen in U.S. history.
And that threw me down an entire rabbit holeof needing to know more about it, because I
hate to be the dumbest person on a tour.
And when somebody wants to ask me a question
about something, I want to be able to tellthem.
Well, Dash was all about, you know, he was allabout the historical ghost part of it, right?

(03:34):
Like, he wanted to tie the ghosts and thehistory.
And I started telling more about thehistorical stuff and less about the ghosts,
because that's what people were asking meabout.
So I branched off and started doing historicaltours.
I was doing that for about five years with mybusiness partner who had been the lady who had
been managing his company.
And then she started having some health

(03:55):
problems and couldn't do the tours anymore.
Well, when that happened, I stepped out withSpooky Galveston, because I. I have a weird,
spooky little heart by nature, and I find thatmost history is really spooky.
So I started doing Spooky Galveston, and I'vebeen in operations as Spooky Galveston for
almost four years.

(04:16):
But then this is where it gets interesting.
Dash Beardsley decided he was going to retire,
and he reached out to me and he said, I reallyrespect what you're doing, and I have always
appreciated your honesty and your help andeverything, and I'd really like it if you
would step in and take over ghost tours ofGalveston Island.

(04:36):
He said, I know that you'll keep my legacyalive.
And I was absolutely honored that he asked.
And I love the ghost stories where I got to
start.
So I was like, this is a no brainer.
Of course I'm going to do it.
And so I got to go home and do ghost tours ontop of all the historical tours.
And now we do the ghost tours at the NavalMuseum.

(04:59):
We do the ghost tours for Carriage HouseRentals, which is a golf cart company on the
island.
I do all of the walking tours downtown.
I do ghost tours at Moody Mansion now.
And I just get to live the dream and talk
about ghosts and history all the time.

Speaker A (05:16):
Oh,
I love it.
I love it, Jen, because that is the ultimate
dream, right?To do something you love and Especially
something you really have a passion forbecause it really shows when you're out there
that people are like, wow, she's really intoit.
This, this is really cool.
I get, I get more out of it.
Before we get into the stories and you Talkingabout the 1900 storm,

(05:38):
let's back up a second because I love people.
I've had numerous people who have lived in a
haunted house and their stories vary.
Tell me about your haunted house.
Was, did you feel threatened?
Was it just kind of goofy like, you know, yourkeys would be missing or your shoes put out
somewhere?You're like, come on,
knock it off.

Speaker B (05:59):
Honestly, it's a little bit of all of it.

Speaker A (06:01):
Oh, okay.

Speaker B (06:02):
The house that my parents,
my parents brought me home to the hospitalfrom when I was a baby, my mobile would turn
itself on when I would cry.
So I had somebody looking out for me, right?
Making sure that I would be a happy child andbe quiet.
But I also had imaginary friends, but I'm notsure if they were imaginary or if they were

(06:23):
ghosts.
I don't know.
They all had very real names and stories and
they had very real likes and realconversations were happening.
And I mean, I don't have conversations withghosts today very often.
But you know, but it is one of those thingswhere I know children are always more
susceptible to being able to see things.
And I think I was.

(06:45):
But then, you know, growing up, my mom was,you know, she was very in tune with all of her
abilities and I would get grounded for stuff Ihadn't even done yet.
So I mean, that's just how my life was.
But you know, like I was sitting in the living
room one night.
This is years after I, you know, had beengrown and married and I was sitting in my

(07:08):
parents living room and I was watching TV onenight.
And as I was sitting there in the dark, youknow, like all spooky people like to watch TV
in the dark.
The television show shifts and it becomesvibrant with commercials and color, right?
And I heard my parents bedroom door and itjiggled.
Like the door opened, opened and shut.
And my dad was the kind of guy who loved

(07:29):
Halloween and spooky stuff and he would watchscary movies with me.
He's where I got a lot of that.
But he also loved to do a jump scare.
And I figured he was hiding in the shadow and
he was waiting for the correct moment to jumpout at me and get me.
But when that moment passed and he didn't comeout, I was a little concerned.
However,
a shadow figure person then emerges Out.

(07:51):
And it turns into the apparition of a man who
walks all the way through the living room inthe light of the television.
Television.
And disappears into the kitchen wearing a long
jacket.
And I was like, I don't know what to do with
that.
I sit there like, I'm not moving because I'm
not chasing after that.
It's not happening.

Speaker A (08:07):
Right.

Speaker B (08:08):
And my dad comes out a few minutes later and says, hey, did you see the guy walk
through the living room?And I said,
yeah.
He goes, that was one of your grandpa's
friends.
He died.
He just wanted to come by and.

Speaker A (08:17):
Say, man,
see, that's so interesting, Jen, because Ihear that all the time.
Because people say,
like, one of our stories was someone wassitting there in their bedroom, and they could
see their grandfather by the curtains in thebedroom.
And they were younger at the time, and theywere kind of a little scared.

(08:39):
And their mom came in and they said, oh,
it's Grandpa.
Just wants to see you're okay.
Hey, Grandpa, you're scaring her.
You need to stop.
You know?
And she said it like, okay.
And then, you know, things kind of stop, youknow, because he was just kind of looking out
after her and just making sure she's okay.

(09:00):
And then it never.
She said it never happened again.
Yeah, but she knew he was there.
Yeah, she had feelings.
She did not see him, but she said, I knew he
was there in the.

Speaker B (09:11):
Yeah, weird.
Weird things like that happen all the time.
You know, there are mimics or doppelgangers
that are there as well.
My husband,
when we were dating, he came to the house.
He was waiting for me to get home from school,
and he and my mom both saw me walk in theliving room from the front door, walk through
the house to one of the back bedrooms, andheard me open and shut the door and thought

(09:34):
that I just went in there.
Like, I was mad or something.
And he calls me and he's like, hey, like, areyou mad at me?
Like, why did you ignore me when you walked inthe house?
And I said, what are you talking about?
I'm still in Alvin. Like, I'm.
I'm not even home yet.
They both saw me,
so weird happens.

Speaker A (09:50):
Wow.
I've heard and read a lot of those storieswhere people talk about, like, their mom is
still alive, but maybe she's at the hospitalor something.
You know what I mean?She's not feeling well or whatever.
And then they're like,
mom just walked into the.
To the bedroom.
And, you know, father or whoever is like, no,no, no, Honey, you're just dreaming that

(10:13):
because she's hostile right now.
We were gonna go.
So you're probably just thinking about her.
And somebody goes, no, that was mom.
Or people coming down the steps.
And they're like,
hey, Bill.
Or whatever, you know, and they're.
And then Bill disappears.
And then Bill walks back in.
Hey, guys. I. Sorry I'm late.

Speaker B (10:33):
Yeah.

Speaker A (10:33):
What?

Speaker B (10:34):
That kind of stuff happens.
There's a lady in white.
She's wearing a white gown.
She looks just like my mom.
She stands in front of my mom's dresser.
You'll walk in my mom's room and be like, hey,Mom.
She turns around, looks at you, and shedisappears.
And then you're like.
So then you have to go looking for mom, figureout where mom's at, right?
And mom's usually, like out in the backyardor, you know, in one of the other rooms.

(10:55):
Maybe she's in the kitchen cooking orsomething.
And it's like,
mom, I saw a lady.
Like, she was standing in front of your
dresser, and she's like,
sorry,
I'm in here.
This is kind of normal.

Speaker A (11:06):
You know, I love that your parents adapted it because some parents didn't, you
know, because they didn't.
And you understand that from being a parent
now, and I'm a parent, is you don't want totell your six year old.
Oh, by the way, there's a shadow person thatis walking down the halls and going to the
rooms.
Honey, I just want to let you know that.
Good night, hon.

(11:26):
Slam?

Speaker B (11:27):
Yeah. No, no.
You know, we were always told not to talk tothe ghosts.
We were told to talk about them as much as wewanted, but not to talk to them.
Because if we talk to.
Then more of them would come.
So.
Because, you know, because then you cancontact, you know, you make connection.
And then when you do that, then more of themthink they can flow through.
And then before you know it, you have a reallycrowded house.

(11:50):
And so they didn't ever want us to do that.
But, yeah, you know, I won't say I didn't
break the rules a few times and talk to them.
I did.
And then, of course, there's always theexceptions to the rules where you have to talk
to the ghost, you know, and just set the tonefor whatever it is that's happening.
But.
Yeah, but by and large, my parents were veryaccepting of unusual things.
And,
you know, I mean, my.

(12:11):
My dad loved a good ghost story just as muchas the next person, you know, like, I remember
for one of my birthday parties, I think IMight have been six, six or seven years old.
We had a slumber party and my sister tookeverybody into the bathroom to do ****** Mary,
and I refused to do it.
I was terrified of that story.
Still am.
I don't like mirrors.
And so, like, everybody went into the bathroom

(12:32):
with her and they all run out screaming,
and they're all talking about the weird stuffthey saw in the mirror.
And I'm like, that's why you don't do that.
It's a little.
I was like, no. That's a big no.

Speaker A (12:41):
Yeah.

Speaker B (12:41):
Meanwhile, my dad's setting up shop in the backyard though, right?
Because we're all going to sleep in the livingroom on the floor in our sleeping bags.
So he put the water hose through the chimneyand then starts talking and, like, sing
songing and stuff.
Through the hose, which then echoes down
through the chimney.
Terrified everybody.

Speaker A (13:01):
I love your dad.
I love my dad.
That's awesome.
And please tell me, Jen, that you never, ever
use the Ouija board.

Speaker B (13:12):
Well, I mean, I did because I was dumb and I was, you know, a teenager.

Speaker A (13:17):
Come on.

Speaker B (13:19):
Well, I mean, okay, but to be fair,
my grandma had had a Ouija board when she wasyounger, and she told us all about her
experience and everything and about how it hadworked.
And it was very helpful.
It was a useful tool until it wasn't.
She said that the things that came through,
they seemed very,
very nice, and it seemed very helpful and,like, it gave her information that she needed.

(13:44):
And then one day she went to use the board andinstead of it being kind or, you know, being
helpful, it started spelling out profane wordsand, you know, it just wasn't giving her nice
information anymore.
So she got rid of it.
So in our house, it was.
It can be good, but it also could be bad.
So. Yeah, I don't think.

(14:04):
I think I was, like, 12 or 13 the first time I
ever used one.
Somebody gave me one for my birthday.
You know, it was a birthday gift.
And, you know, it was really one of those coolones that, like, was the glow in the dark, you
know, for the spooky effect.
And.
And we all piled around and we all tried it.
Here's the weird thing about that, though.
The Ouija board never worked when I touched
it.

Speaker A (14:23):
Really? What do you mean, never worked?

Speaker B (14:24):
Like, but with me, it was never effective.

Speaker A (14:29):
Yeah, really.
So the.
What do you call it?The starts?

Speaker B (14:34):
The planchette.

Speaker A (14:35):
Planchette. Thank you.
Would not move.

Speaker B (14:37):
It wouldn't move if I touched it.

Speaker A (14:40):
Interesting.
That's very rare.
Yeah.
I've not heard that before.
Again, you know, I have a love haterelationship with Ouija boards because I.

Speaker B (14:51):
Know the artwork is incredible and beautiful.
Yes,
it is.
They are truly just works of art.
But,
you know, I mean, they get a bad rep.
But I have to wonder, is it.
Is it necessarily that they need to have a badrep, though?
Because if the person that was using the boardhad, you know,
been trained on all of the things, you know,occult, supernatural, whatever, and they were

(15:16):
educated and they knew exactly what they weredoing, and they walked in it and they had, you
know, cleansed themselves and purified thespace and did all the things that they were
supposed to do before they did this thing.
Would they have the same effect as, you know,some teenage girls who just,
you know, I mean, there's definitelydifferences.
And, you know, I would.
I would never encourage anybody to use

(15:36):
anything that they don't understand.

Speaker A (15:38):
Correct, Correct.
It's just like anything when you do an
investigation, you're doing tours, you're.
You're maybe having a haunted house.

Speaker B (15:48):
Yes.

Speaker A (15:49):
Ghosts were people wants 100%.
Now, I'm not.
We won't get into the whole demons thing, andI get that.

Speaker B (15:55):
All right, but in general, that's an entirely different thing.

Speaker A (15:59):
Yeah.

Speaker B (15:59):
Yeah.

Speaker A (16:00):
But in General, ghosts were people1.
So if you're this mean teenage girl andtreating someone with disrespect, what do you
think's gonna happen?

Speaker B (16:12):
Exactly.
Yes.

Speaker A (16:13):
Right.
Like, yeah.
So it's just one of those things I findinteresting.
So it sounds like your house had some reallyinteresting stories, but it doesn't sound
like.
And correct me if I'm wrong, Jen,
doesn't sound like you were fearing for yourlife, like, running out in the middle of the
night kind of thing.

Speaker B (16:31):
No,
no. We. We were always told to face whateverit was we were.
We were always told never to let anythingscare us, you know?
Now, that doesn't mean there weren't spooky orscary things that happened.
My sister was traumatized in our house.
My experiences were very light and casual.
My sister had terrible experiences.

(16:51):
One night, she was laying in bed, and she saw
a man with a knife come out of her closet andcome at her,
and he disappeared.
One night, she had a doll that was hanging onher wall, and she looked over at the doll, and
it appeared to be a person hanging from thething that was on the wall, not the doll.
So her experience is very different than mine.

Speaker A (17:12):
Yeah,
very different.
Yeah. That's interesting.
I hear that a lot, too, from people being in
haunted house.
Some people say it traumatized me.
I Couldn't wait to leave, but we couldn't dueto financial reasons.
And that's what people don't understand is,yeah, you want to.
You want to get the hell out of there,
but where are you going to go,
right?For something.

(17:32):
Where are you going to go?And maybe bring the spirits with you.
Right.

Speaker B (17:36):
Well, and again, you know, we're talking about, you know, two kids.
We're five years apart, Right.
And our circumstances are.
Our situations are completely different.
We're very different people.
And her experiences are very different thanmine.
Now, does she play with Ouija boards andstuff?
Absolutely, she did.
Was she respectful about it?
Probably not just based off of how I know mysister, but,
you know, but she's more mindful about thingsnow, and she's, you know, more respectful

(18:00):
about things now than she ever was before.
When I read tarot cards, which I do,
she goes with me to a lot of the events.
When I'm reading tarot cards, I don't like to
be influenced by a lot of outside sources.
And one of the things that I find is that it's
very helpful for me not to touch money on thedays when I'm reading for people,

(18:20):
because money carries energy,
and I don't want to be influenced by any ofthe energy that comes from the money that I
touch, because people have to deal with moneyfor all kinds of reasons, and it's good, it's
bad, it's, you know, whatever.
And I don't want that to interfere with what'scoming through for me while I'm reading tarot
cards.
So she collects the money, she talks to thepeople, she does all the things.

(18:41):
They sit down at my table and I read for them.
I don't ask questions.
I don't even want to know your name.
I just want to be able to tell you whateverthe cards tell me to tell you.
So that's how we handle it.
Yeah.

Speaker A (18:52):
Yeah. I love that.
That's a great attitude.
Because a lot of guests I've had on who doretero are kind of the same way.
It's.
You want to go in that you don't want the
information beforehand.
Nope.

Speaker B (19:06):
I don't want to know anything about you.
Yeah, I don't want to know anything about you.
Yeah.
I want to know everything that card say.
That's it.

Speaker A (19:14):
Or gets.
Or you'll get a person that's not open, that
they're closed off.
And that does not help from my experience.

Speaker B (19:21):
Well, and that's the other thing, too.
Don't. And this is just Kind of a pet peeve ofmine.
Don't go to like a metaphysical fair or to aperson who reads tarot cards.
Table, sit down and then shuffle the cards andkeep yourself and all your energy so closed
that we can't get anything off of the cards.

(19:42):
Because basically what you're doing is you'resaying, I don't want you to know anything
about me and therefore I don't want thesecards to know anything about me.
And then the cards are going to go, well, wedon't really know what they want to know
about, so we can't tell you anything.
And then you have handed me money and wastedyour time and mine for information that I
could have given you if you had been receptiveto it and you weren't.

Speaker A (20:05):
Yeah, yeah.
So hear that spooky friends.
If you do that, you know, please be openminded and please just listen to the.

Speaker B (20:13):
Yeah. Tarot reader.

Speaker A (20:14):
Follow her or his instructions.

Speaker B (20:16):
You don't have to give us any information verbally.
You don't have to say anything.
Just think about whatever it is you want to
know about while you're shuffling the cardsand then hand them back.
That's it.

Speaker A (20:24):
Right.

Speaker B (20:25):
Don't sit there and be like, don't give anything away.
Don't do that.
Because if you do, the cards aren't going to
pick anything up.
I'm not going to be able to tell you anything.

Speaker A (20:32):
Yeah, absolutely, Absolutely.
That makes perfect sense.
So let's get back to the tour.
You kind of mentioned that and everything alittle bit earlier on in the conversation, but
what kind of stories do you tell?
And you already said they are based onhistorical facts for the most part, I'm
guessing.

Speaker B (20:51):
Yes, yes.

Speaker A (20:53):
So if you could kind of maybe a couple stories relate to my spooky friends and
you know, kind of what they expect on a yeartour.

Speaker B (21:02):
So Galveston is home to the worst natural disaster to ever happen in US history.
There's been like nine yellow fever epidemics,countless other hurricanes.
We had pirates on the island, the Civil Warhappened on the island.
There's a whole bunch of different things thathave happened.
And so basically when you take a ghost tour,it's kind of like an alternative history tour

(21:24):
of sorts.
You're going to get a lot of historical
information about the events that havehappened in the city, but also the stories
that have been passed down and,
or have been accounted for through alldifferent types of medias over the years.
So like for instance, there's a story aboutJean Lafitte and how he,

(21:46):
you know, he comes to the island, and heslaughters the majority of the Kronkawa
Indians as soon as he gets there.
And then from there, he takes over.
He's there for about four years, and then hegets run off the island because he had some of
his men had double crossed him and went out,
robbed a ship.
And when they came back,
he found out, had those men hanged on thedocks.
But the US Navy shows up and says, you got toget out of here.

(22:08):
Well,
it said that he asked for three days to gethis affairs in order.
And in those three days, his pirates startdrinking with these naval officers and these,
you know, navy men who have come to tell himto leave.
And as you know, as will happen, a drinkingcompetition of sorts begins.
And the story goes that, you know, the piratesare pretending to get drunk while the navy men

(22:31):
are actually getting drunk.
And then the pirates carry them back to their
ships.
Well,
this is over the course of three days, this ishappening.
And then, like, you know, by the third day,these men are like, blackout drunk, right?
They're all passing out.
So these pirates carry them back to theirships, they put them back on there.
And Lafitte's men,
they.
I mean, they're very kind.
They put them back where they belong.

(22:52):
But then they make quick work of loading up
their own ships.
And when these men wake up the next morning,
hungover,
probably on the wrong vessels,
definitely in the wrong bunks, not knowinganything about what's actually going on,
because they are so drunk from hanging outwith these pirates,
they wake up realizing that they're smellingburning thatch and wood.

(23:12):
And this is problematic because that meansthat it's very possible their ships are on
fire.
And they run topside to see what's happening,and they find out there that they aren't
necessarily in peril.
It's not going to be a fiery death or a watery
grave for these men.
Instead, they see the entire encampment ofCampeche island, which is what Lafitte called

(23:35):
Galveston, is in flames.
And Lafitte and his men have sailed away,
never to be seen or heard from again.
And in truth and in history,
we have no idea what happens to this man whenhe leaves Galveston.
There is no record of him beyond that point.
But there are theories,
and that's why we talk about him.
One of the theories is that he moved off toNew York City and he became a businessman.

(23:58):
Died under an alias.
And the headstones in New York are talking.
Which makes perfect sense when you think thatLafitte and his brother Pierre ran the
blacksmith shop in New Orleans, one of theoldest bars in America, and it's still in
operations today very closely to how it ranback then.
He was a very good businessman.
This is definitely a possibility.
He could have gone to New York, but it's notall that likely for a pirate to change course

(24:23):
so drastically.
So maybe he moves off to Cuba, becomes aprivateer, dies at sea, has a burial at sea,
and that's the end of Lafitte.
That's a pretty good end for a pirate.
It's not really necessarily all that spookyfor a ghost tour, but,
you know, it is definitely fitting for the endof a pirate's life.
But then there's the third option, which is myabsolute favorite,
and that is that Jean Lafitte, even to thisday,

(24:47):
still roams between the city of New Orleansand the city of Galveston, watching over them
both as a vampire.
Naturally, if you can be a vampire, yourspooky tour guide is always going to tell you
to do that.

Speaker A (24:59):
Yeah, definitely.
I love that.

Speaker B (25:01):
Yeah, we shared stories like that on the tour.

Speaker A (25:05):
That's awesome.
That's really cool.
Do you have what you consider the most hauntedspot on your tour?

Speaker B (25:14):
So there are many,
and they're all haunted for different reasons.
Right.
So one of my favorites is the Hutchings SeeleyBuilding.
And one of my favorite stories is 1900 stormrelated.
There's a woman who is caught up in thecurrent of water.
The water was raging about 17ft deep down 24thstreet heading out towards the bay.

(25:37):
And as she is caught up in the water,
she realizes that she's coming up on thisreally tall building on the strand.
And she manages to reach out and grab thewindow ledge of the building second story
windows.
She manages to break out the glass and climbinside.
She ties a rope around her waist, ties theother end to one of the safes in the building

(25:57):
because it was a banking building on thestrand.
And once she does that, she finds the rope,she ties that around her waist, ties the other
end of the safe, and jumps back out into thewater,
feeling around for any persons she might beable to save that are out in the water.
All in all done.
This woman saved about 50 people this way.

Speaker A (26:15):
Wow.

Speaker B (26:16):
Now, after the water recedes to an unsafe level for her to keep jumping out into
it, she winds up running down the stairs inthe front of the building and pulling people
in off the street who were just exhausted frombeing out in the storm all night.
And ultimately injuries and illness take overand she crashes.
She's fatigued and she never regainsconsciousness.

(26:36):
She dies in the building about two weeks afterthe storm.
No one ever thought to get her name.
We have no idea who she is, but her death is
reported in the Daily News.

Speaker A (26:46):
And she haunts the building then.

Speaker B (26:47):
Or they say that you can see her apparition on the second and third floor, and
she's been heard out in Riondo's, which is arestaurant on the first floor.
She's called out when managers have come in.
In the morning, sometimes the front doors are
unlocked, and when they walk in, they'll heara woman's voice say, hello, is anyone there?
But there's nobody there.

Speaker A (27:07):
Wow. I love that.

Speaker B (27:09):
I have had the privilege of having a store in the Hutchings Seeley building.
Had the spooky Galveston shop, was in therefor about two years.
And when we were there,
paranormal stuff happened all the time.
Like,
the place where my store was at was thecoldest spot in the entire building.
Like, period, the end.
And after a day of being in there justworking, I would be exhausted.

(27:31):
It was just emotionally draining to be in thespace.
And, you know, I couldn't figure out why.
I mean, I would have energy, but I would just
be so tired.

Speaker A (27:40):
Yeah.

Speaker B (27:40):
And,
you know, like, you would see things.
There is a man who works on the second floor
in a place called Stabby Granny's, and he cameup to the third floor to go into the attic
space to get their inventory out, becausethat's where they keep it.
And when he walked up to go to the attic door,he came right across her apparition.
She walked right through him.

Speaker A (28:02):
Wow.

Speaker B (28:04):
Yeah. So,
I mean, there's lots of sightings.
There's pictures that people have caught of
this woman on the staircase.
Like, people have all kinds of experiences,but she's not alone in the building.
There are children who have been spotted.
There have just been a lot of different thingsthat have happened in the area.

Speaker A (28:20):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And that's what makes for a good haunted
building.
Well, trauma and maybe some happiness, too.

Speaker B (28:33):
Well, I like to look at her story, though, and,
you know, and really think about it from theposition of,
you know, this is how the people of Galvestonreally do care for one another.
I mean, when she's jumping out in the water,
it's a pitch black outside.
She can't see you.
She doesn't know what color you are, how muchmoney you have, what gender you are.

(28:53):
She just reaches for a hand or a body part andtries to grab you and save you.
And really and truly, that's how people inGalveston are towards one another in times of
crisis.
They don't care.
They'll reach out and they'll help everybody.
Could have been her mortal enemy.
Wouldn't have mattered.
She still saved this person.

Speaker A (29:08):
Yeah.

Speaker B (29:09):
And, I mean, I think that we should all aspire to have that kind of mentality, to
reach out and help the person,
you know, whether we like them or not.
And, you know, and I'd like to say that I
would be as brave and courageous as her andjump back out on the water and feel around for
people and save them, but there's things inthat water, and it's real deep.
I don't know if I'm getting back in.

Speaker A (29:28):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
You don't.

Speaker B (29:31):
But I'm hoping.
I'm hoping I would.
I'm hoping.

Speaker A (29:34):
Yeah. Nobody knows until they're in that situation.

Speaker B (29:37):
100%.

Speaker A (29:38):
You can talk a big game.
Yeah.
I do it.
And then you see the water rushing down, and
you're like, I don't.

Speaker B (29:45):
I don't know that ruler.

Speaker A (29:49):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
What other places on the tour do you like?And it kind of stands out.

Speaker B (29:58):
I really love the railroad museum.
We have an incredible railroad museum.
They have an awesome exhibit in the back.
And Mary Moody Northen brought the railroadmuseum to Galveston because her father had
created an opportunity for the railroad inGalveston.
And so that legacy lives on right through themuseum itself.

(30:20):
And it's incredible to see it.
They have statues that are scattered
throughout the exhibit, and they call themghost passengers.
So there's always that.
Right.
But people always have paranormal experiencesin the actual train cars.
And there's the story of a man named WilliamWatson, who was a ships engineer from.

(30:41):
He's actually from New York.
And he came down to Galveston thinking maybehe could make a fortune there.
And a lot of people came to Galveston and gotwealthy, so he wasn't really wrong about that.
But he wore the latest fashions of the dayfrom New York, which meant, you know, like,
wool suits,
and it was August 1st in Texas.
It's really not the best day to wear that.

Speaker A (31:03):
No.

Speaker B (31:03):
Well, he winds up going into town, and he has a great day.
But at the end of it,
he realizes that, you know, he's overheatedand it's hot, and he's wearing brand new
clothes and brand new shoes.
And he decides he's gonna go try to hop on a
train moving down towards the shipyard and seeif he can catch it so that, you know, he can
just ride back to the.

(31:24):
To the shipyard where he needs to go.
Well, when he Goes to the train tracks.
He sees the train is moving in the right
direction.
But when he runs to catch it, he basically
overcompensates for how far he's going to haveto jump.
And when he does that, he winds up gettingexecuted.
In his execution,

(31:44):
you see, he slipped, he stumbled, he fell, andhe was decapitated on the tracks.
Now, the next day, the newspaper says it best.
Headless body smeared along the tracks from
14th to 29th Street.
And people got.
They couldn't find his head anywhere.
Like, people are looking for it and they can't
find it.
And they're like, well,
Galveston's a swamp at this time.

(32:04):
Maybe wild animals took off with it.
I mean, that's not an uncommon situation.
So maybe that's what happened.
But, you know, the morbidly curious and thelooky loos, they're still wanting to find it.
They're trying to get into the railroad depotand see if it's back there in the active train
yard.
Well, security's running them out.
Three days go by, and this head, they justhaven't found it.
And security is finally starting to calm downat the railroad depot because people are

(32:28):
losing interest.
They're getting on to the next story.
And the security guard is making his patrols,and he sees somebody,
their shadow, run by on one of the walls inhis lantern light.
And he runs after them to tell them to get outof the train yard.
But when he gets to the end of the fence line,there's nobody there.
It's a dead end.
So he turns around and he's thinking, man, Ijust.
I'm working too hard.
There's too much going on.

(32:49):
You know, it's just been a crazy week.
And that's when he sees somebody crouched down
by one of the engines of the train.
And he runs over to tell that person, get outof the train yard.
But when he gets over there, he realizes it'snot a person at all.
It's William Watson's head sitting perfectlyat top.
The cow catcher of the train with his hat.
Now, the next day, the newspaper again says itbest.

(33:11):
It was Watson in bold print.
They bury the head and body in LakeviewCemetery, which is behind our Kroger by the
seawall.
And once they do that, you think that'd be theend of the story.
But quite literally, 125 years later, we'restill talking about this man because his
headless apparition still gets seen all thetime in the train yard.

Speaker A (33:31):
Wow. I love old newspapers because they do not mince words.
Right.
They're like,
person gets shot in the head and bleeds allover the.
You know, and you're like, yes,
okay,
okay.
Someone bleeds.
The dead, someone's decapitated.
And you're like, well, yeah, I guess theywere.
I mean, maybe a little more sensitive.

Speaker B (33:53):
But we have a story.
There's a place.
It was the Armor Meatpacking Company is whatit was.
And we had a lot of people don't really thinkabout Galveston when we think about
immigration.
Right.
I mean, most people are going to think aboutEllis island, for instance.
Right.
But Ellis island doesn't really technically,like, their port doesn't really do what it

(34:13):
does until, like, around 1892.
But Galveston's port opened for immigration in1840 and ran from 1840 to 1920.
There were 750,000 immigrants that camethrough the Port of Galveston.
And tack onto that an additional 10,000 Jewishimmigrants for the Great Galveston expansion
by Rabbi Henry Cohen.
But nonetheless,

(34:34):
you're going to look at these numbers, Right?This is a lot of people that are coming in
through the country.
In Galveston and at the Armor Meatpacking
Company.
In the 1910s, there were strikes happening for
safer working conditions because the ArmorMeat Packing Company wasn't the safest place
to have a job.

Speaker A (34:51):
Yeah.

Speaker B (34:51):
Chinese migrant workers crossed the striker line, and one of them went in and
actually was told to go and unbound the fansup at the top,
because, you know, the cows come in, the fansare doing what they do, all the machinery is
working, and, you know, then you get hamburgermeat.
Well,
he wound up unbounding the fans, which thenshook back to life.
And when that happened, this man fell into themeat grinder below.

(35:15):
Yeah.
Now, his apparition is said to haunt in thatspace.
He's been seen in the windows and theelevator.
He's been seen in the ladies restroom on thesecond floor of the building.
Like, he's been seen all throughout,everywhere.
But his.
His widow sued the Armor Meat Packing Companyfor, you know,
wrongful death, basically.

(35:35):
And they countersued her for slander.
They counters course in defamation ofcharacter, and they won.
She had to pay them reparations for the restof her life.
Is there any reason why this man is hauntingthis space?
He's angry.

Speaker A (35:55):
I'd be angry, too.
Like, how did that happen?

Speaker B (35:58):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Exactly.

Speaker A (36:00):
That's a shame.
I mean, yeah, you hear that all the time of
people being killed, and they're like, well,he shouldn't have,
you know,
but near the meat grinder, be like, yeah, butyou had no Guardrails or nothing.

Speaker B (36:14):
Well, that was the whole job, but okay,
you know.
Yeah, no, there's another story, too.
It's actually one of Galveston's most famous
stories, and it's about a face on the UTMBbuilding.
Now, I'm not going to go into all thebackstory of it and everything, but I will
tell you that when the University of TexasMedical branch put this great big, beautiful
building up, there was a face that appeared atthe very top.

(36:37):
And the school, they didn't really like thatso much.
They power washed it and got rid of it.
Well, the face came back just below where ithad been this time.
Students that were going there got reallyinterested in it, and so they started taking
their cars and putting them behind thebuilding and taking pictures of the face.
One lady went back there and she put her carin the boat dock ramp, and when that happened,

(36:57):
she had her headlights up, shining onto theface.
Her friend got out to get the pictures of thecar.
Somehow her car wound up rolling back inneutral into the bay,
and her automatic seatbelt locked her inplace.
She wasn't able to get out.
So,
you know, she died.
And the school got very serious.
Nobody was allowed to go back there again.
They power washed and got rid of the face,

(37:18):
thinking that would take care of the problem,too.
And the face came back just below where it hadbeen.
Now it sits above an exit door.
But this case, this story is the reason why we
don't have automatic seat belts in our cars.
Because her family sued the makers of the carmanufacturer, and that's why we don't have
those anymore.

Speaker A (37:36):
Oh, wow.
Yeah, I used to.
I used to have one in my car, and I hated it
because we'd always, like.
You'd get in and be like, chonk and, like, pin
you.

Speaker B (37:45):
Yeah.

Speaker A (37:46):
And I said, yeah, I don't like.

Speaker B (37:48):
This, but how wild is it that, you know, it's attached to a ghost story in
Galveston?The reason why we don't have those.

Speaker A (37:54):
Now,
that is wild.
I love that, Jen.
You know, to see.
Now we learned something new.
Spooky friends.
This is why you listen to this podcast.
That's awesome.
I never knew that.
I thought it was just because people werelike, I don't like it.

Speaker B (38:10):
This woman lost her life, unfortunately, and her family sued the makers
of the car, and they found that was, you know,it wasn't.
It wasn't just this one particular type ofcar.
It was literally across the board.
This was not a safe thing for us to have,
especially in instances where you'd Findyourself in, you know, a body of water.
And so they got rid of it.

Speaker A (38:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm sure you probably had enough of these,but maybe you can share your favorite or a
couple.
Whatever you'd like to do.
Have you ever experienced a supernatural eventwhile on tour?
And, like, how often does this happen?

Speaker B (38:46):
Okay, so my favorite story happens when I'm very first starting out as a tour
guide for Dash Beardsley.
And I was really, like, this is, like, my
first or second tour tour.
And, I mean, I love ghost stories and spookythings, and so I.
You know, I. I just love it.
And so I. I never thought or saw myself or
felt I would ever be a ghost tour guide.

(39:08):
Like, I never thought that was going to be my
life.
Okay. But I always loved it.
So I'm guiding a tour.
I think I had, like, 40 or 50 people behind
me, and I'm just, like, really rethinking mylife choices.
Like, did I make a good decision being a tourguide?
And as I'm crossing the street from HenleyMarket over to where Hubcap Grill was, as I'm

(39:29):
making that cross, a television came on inHubcap, and it was kind of like, there's your
sign.
The place was empty.
It was closed.
There wasn't anybody in the space.
Everybody on my tour saw it happen,
and it happened right at that moment where Iwas like, did I do, like, did I make a
mistake?Like, am I like, is this really, like, a good
idea for me to be doing this?

(39:50):
And the television came on, and I was like,okay, I'm.
This is a sign I'm on the right path.
I'm doing the right thing.
That's,
you know.
Yeah. So that's my favorite one.

Speaker A (40:00):
Yeah. Anything scary, though? Have you had anybody just you, like, you know,
just like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
What's going on?

Speaker B (40:07):
Okay. So I've had.
I've had a few experiences,
and I'll tell you about a couple things, acouple other things.
Remember in my house when we grew up, we weretold not to talk to the ghosts.
We were told to talk about the ghosts.
Well, at Mystic Hats, which is a shop on theStrand, the owners are so gracious.
And when I first became a tour guide, theyallowed us to come in and do spirit box

(40:30):
sessions in their shop with them becausethey're paranormal investigators.
They do all of this kind of stuff.
And Mike, when he told me to come in, he toldme to go over to the computer, press record,
say my name a quick sentence, and that way hecould tell my Voice from anything else that
came through that night.
I walk over, and I must have been feelingreally full of myself, because I press record

(40:50):
and I say, hi, friends.
I'm jen.
And about 12 different disembodied voices saidhi back.

Speaker A (40:56):
Wow.

Speaker B (40:56):
I didn't say anything else for the rest of the night.
I was done.
Like, that was.
That was enough for me.
But.
But, yeah, no, that.
That freaked me out quite a bit.
But, yeah, that was an experience that I had.
A good friend and I were out on the beach one
night.
We were waiting for the very first cold frontof the season to blow in.
And as we were standing there, it looked likesomething grabbed her by her ponytail and

(41:17):
jerked her head backwards away from me.
And she's literally, like, telling whatever itis to let go.
And there wasn't anybody else on the beachexcept for the two of us.
When it finally subsided, I'm like, are youokay?
I mean, that whatever that was, was literallyattacking you.
She's like, no, I'm fine.
You know, ghosts.
It's okay.
She's like, let's just hang out and, you know,wait for the cold front.

(41:40):
And I'm like, okay.
She's a tour guide like me.
Ellie's tough.
Like,
Ellie is tough.
And we're all right.
So we're hanging out.
We're waiting for that cold front to blow in.
And the wind and the water got very, very
still, which never happens when the first coldfront blows in.
It's roaring, and it just gets louder andlouder and louder as the.
As the cold front blows in.

(42:01):
And, you know, the waves get choppier andchoppier as it's coming in.
And that wasn't happening.
And we both got creeped out, and we both said
we were going to go back up to the sea wall,and we're going to sit there and we're going
to, you know, kick the sand off our feet andgo home.
We're sitting there on the bench, kicking thesand off our feet.
We get lost in conversation like besties do,and Ellie looks at me and she goes, jen, I

(42:22):
don't want to alarm you, but there's anexceptionally creepy man across the street.
And I think on the count of three, we need tostand up, get in our cars, and we need to
leave.
I'm like, okay, yeah, no, you're right.
He's exceptionally creepy.
And he was.
He had sandy blonde hair, brown eyes, whitetank top, khaki shorts, flip flops.
Standing across the street,

(42:42):
looked angry.
Like, not a good.
Not a good look.
Yeah,
the problem is, is that we were parkeddiagonally across from each other.
So I would have had to cross in front of Ellieto get to my truck, and she had to cross
behind me to get to her car.
And on the count of three, we stood up.
That drew his attention, and he ran right atme.
Now, I was closer to where he was at acrossthe street because of where my truck was.

(43:05):
So that's why he made a beeline for me.
And he should have got me.
By all means, he should have got me.
But I managed somehow to get into my truck.
I locked the door, and I turned the engine
over.
The headlights come on, which blinds Ellie in
her rear view because she was in front of me,
and she can't see where the guy went.
I can't see where the guy went.
And I'm thinking, oh, God, like,
if I drive forward, I might hit him.
If I back up, I could hit him.

(43:26):
I don't know if he's stuck in front of mytruck behind it, you know, I don't know where
he's at.
But I grew up in Houston,
so I carry a crowbar, specifically for thesetypes of occasions, right?
I have horses I'm not really scared of much.
And so I hop out with my crowbar, ready to dobusiness, and the guy's not anywhere to be
found.
And he's not running down the seawall either.

(43:49):
He's just gone.
He's gone.
So I got back in the truck.
Ellie's blowing up my phone.
I answer the phone.
She's like, let's get out of here.
And I'm like, let's get out of here.
Because this guy was nowhere, and he wasn'trunning down the beach.
So we leave, and we come back to Galveston thenext night,
and there's about six of us.
We all go out to ihop, and we're, you know,
having dinner, and we're talking to thesecurity guards at the San Luis who managed

(44:13):
the entire complex.
And we had been parked and sitting across fromthere the night before when this happened.
And we're telling the security guard about itand how weird it was, and he's like, we've had
a lot of ladies tell us the same kind ofthing, but if we could find the guy,
we trespass him, like, okay, well, you know,that.
That sounds good.
If we ever see him again, we'll let you know.

(44:34):
So you can trust.
Well, he walks us out to our cars because he'stelling us ghost stories about the San Luis,
which is really, really, really haunted, andwhere we're all talking and everything, and
all of a sudden Ellie says, hey, you saidyou'd trespass them if you could see him.
And he's like, yeah.
She's like, well, he's right over there.
And he was.
He was walking across the street from us.

(44:55):
He was walking down the sidewalk from behindthe San Luis Hotel, going back down towards
the seawall.
And all six of the female security.
Well, all six of the female girls, the tour
guides that were there with the securityguard, we could all see him,
but the male security guard could not.

Speaker A (45:11):
What? Whoa. That's interesting.
Did you guys ever find out who he was or.

Speaker B (45:23):
You know, we're not sure who he actually was.
There was a time where there were a bunch ofaddicts who wound up overdosing behind the San
Luis.
Within the last 15 years, this happened.
There was a big epidemic of just a bad batchof drugs that some of the addicts had gotten a
hold of.
And they were.
And it was centrally located in that area iswhere they were doing their drugs.

(45:45):
And that's where they were being.
That's where they were dying.
And we think that maybe he might have been amodern day ghost.
Someone who did not know he was dead.
Yeah.

Speaker A (45:53):
Yeah.

Speaker B (45:54):
Now, we generally on the tours, we don't usually tell stories that are, you know,
within the last 50, 50 years,
unless it's a personal antidote of some sort,because we don't want to impact somebody who
might be attached to a person or a situationthat has happened that, you know, would then
cause an issue for them.
So we generally limit that.

(46:16):
But. Yeah, but that.
That's my personal story of what happened.

Speaker A (46:19):
Wow.
Yeah. That's scary.
That's scary to even.
And to not know where that person is and
thinking, you know, whether it's a real personor was a ghost, most likely.

Speaker B (46:30):
Oh, definitely, definitely was not an actual person.

Speaker A (46:34):
Yeah.

Speaker B (46:35):
Because I tell you that.
I mean, he should have had me pinned up
against my truck.
He ran over that fast.

Speaker A (46:40):
Yeah.

Speaker B (46:41):
And I managed to get in the truck somehow,
and he wasn't anywhere.
There was no trace of him.
He wasn't running down the beach in eitherdirection.
And he wasn't behind the truck, in the bed ofthe truck, under the truck or anything.
He was nowhere to be seen.

Speaker A (46:54):
Yeah.

Speaker B (46:55):
Seems like he was just gone.

Speaker A (46:58):
Those stories just bring chills up my spine and everything because you, you, you
hear them from around where, you know, peopleare like in a parking lot late at night or
something, their security guard or justworking late.
It doesn't matter.
And they'll see someone and they'll be like,
what are they?It's like three o' clock in the morning.
What are they doing here?You know?

(47:18):
And they'll walk over to them.
Like a security guard would be like, hey, you
need to leave?And then there's nobody there.
I'm like, oh,
yikes,
that's scary.
So let me ask you this too.
What I always like to ask is,
what is the most stressful part of your job?
Or is it there?

(47:40):
You just love your job?

Speaker B (47:42):
Well, okay, I love my job.
Okay.
Everything about my job is amazing.
I get to meet new people from all over,
everywhere,
and I get to share incredible and amazingstories about Galveston with people that are
interested in the same things that I'minterested in.
I have the best job in the whole world.

Speaker A (48:00):
Yeah, it sounds like it.

Speaker B (48:02):
But there's a lot of competition.
And unfortunately, there are people who willmarket themselves as tour companies that will
then hire people.
Usually it's,
you know, it's Internet based companies thatthis happens with,
where they will then send tour guides out todo whatever, and these people will buy their

(48:25):
tickets online and they'll show up at alocation waiting for a tour guide that never
shows up.

Speaker A (48:30):
That's the worst I've had that happen.

Speaker B (48:32):
Yeah, we see it all the time.
Another problem is that we have people that
think that running a tour company is easybecause you should just make up a bunch of
stuff and then, you know, and label it ashistoric, and then you can just, you know,
tell those stories and whatever.
And the problem is is that then we have peoplewho go out into the world believing things
about a place that aren't true.

(48:54):
There is a story that a lot of my competitorstell where they talk about how there's 3,000
bodies buried in Zangerfest park or over on23rd street, and, you know, they're all
supposed to be victims of the 1900 storm orwhatever, and it's not true.
There are not 3,000 bodies buried anywhere onthe island from the 1900 storm.

(49:14):
That's not how they disposed of the bodies.
And the bodies that did get buried in a massgrave, there's only one.
And they weren't buried at the time when theywere found in that mass grave.
It was an entirely different situation.
It was the Women's Health Protectiveassociation that moved them to their final
resting spot.
And there is a marker that signifies that's

(49:35):
exactly what it is.
And it just really hurts my feelings when
people get our history wrong or when peoplemake stuff up, you know,
There's a national chain that likes to tellpeople that there were beheadings at
Sangerville West Park.
There were never beheadings in Galveston.
And more than that, wrong continent for that.
Right.

(49:55):
And definitely, you know, wrong timeline,because that wasn't the Galveston timeline.
But, yeah, it's.
It's things like that.
Those things make my job stressful and really,
really hurt my feelings just because I workreally hard to be historically accurate.
I. I deep dive and go down all kinds of rabbitholes.
I do.
I don't just do ghost tours.

(50:16):
I do storm tours, architecture tours, red
light district tours, Women of Galvestontours, People of Galveston tours, Captains of
Industry tours, historic cemetery tours, andghost tours in the cemetery.
World War II tours for the Galveston NavalMuseum.
Women of World War II tours for them as well.
I deep dive into a lot of different things,
and I love it.

(50:37):
And, you know, I'm working on more tours.
I'm working on a flora and fauna tour, and I'm
working on a church tour.
I'm always busy doing something becausethere's always someone who's interested in the
things that, you know, asks me about them andthey want to know,
and I want to be able to provide that service,those opportunities.
I partner with the county museum.
I do all their 1900 storm talks and tours, and

(50:58):
I love our city.
I love the opportunities that I get to talkabout it and that I can show the ghosts the
respect and give them the dignity that theydeserve.
We don't have boogie beasts that are runningaround and, you know, nobody wants their great
great grandmother to be, you know, a ghosthaunting the 10ft and under store on the

(51:19):
Strand.
Nobody wants that.

Speaker A (51:20):
Yeah.

Speaker B (51:21):
And, you know, and it's generally not usually, especially on the Strand, you're
not going to get a lot of active, sentientghosts in that way.
You're going to get a lot of residual energy.
Because what happens is these people Woke upon September 8,
they thought they were going to have a regularday.
There was no warning the storm was coming forthem.
And by the end of it, they're all fighting fortheir lives in water that's 17 to 25ft deep,

(51:45):
depending upon where they are on the island.
And they're not all going to make it, butthey're going to give every single thing they
have to their last breath to try to survive.
And when they die,
they leave a bit of that energy behind.
And that's where that residual energy comesfrom.
I mean, that's.
That's what it is.
And they deserve the respect and the creditthat they deserve because they were really

(52:07):
heroes.
They were trying to do the best things that
they could.
Yeah,
we see that story, too.
If you go on YouTube and you type in Haunted
Walmart, Galveston,
we're gonna come across the most hauntedWalmart in America is in Galveston.
And it is said to be because of The Sisters ofSt. Mary's Orphanage of the Incarnate Word.

(52:27):
And the orphanage wasn't even there.
The orphanage was actually across the street
on the beach side, the side on the other sideof the seawall.
But it was a girl's dormitory and a boy'sdormitory, a church, 10 nuns and 93 children.
And the nuns, Daisy, chained all the childrentogether with their clothesline, and they tied
them to themselves, thinking this would savethem during the storm.

Speaker A (52:48):
Sure.

Speaker B (52:48):
Unfortunately, it was not a good situation.
Three boys wiggled out of their ropes andclimbed up into the rafters, and those three
boys were the only ones to survive.
Well, since they were Catholic,
when the bodies were found, they didn't wantto put them on the funeral pyres that were
being burned to get rid of the bodies and thedebris, and they didn't want to take them 20
miles out to sea because that had provedineffective.

(53:10):
So they bury them where they find them, whichwould have been close in proximity to where
our Walmart sits today.
That's the best guess anyone has.
But,
you know, then you get these stories of, youknow, children haunting the toy aisle, and you
have,
you know, stories of these nuns being seen andall this other kind of stuff.
And that's fine.
I mean, it's okay to talk about those kinds of

(53:30):
things when those things happen.
But the way that these nuns get portrayed asif they were monsters, for Daisy, chaining
these children together, when really thesewere immigrants who had come from places that
had never had hurricanes before, and they hadno idea the capability of what the storm could
do, because they weren't even prepared.
They weren't warned,
and they were really heroes.
They could have.
They could have cut bait and run.

(53:52):
They could have left those children to their
own devices, but they didn't.
They stayed with them until the very bitter
end.
And they watched after them.
They tried to comfort them, and they did the
best they could.
They deserve to be more than just a scary
ghost story at a Walmart.
And so I try to paint that picture in abroader form so people understand this is the
story.

(54:13):
And, yeah, there are hauntings at the Walmart,true.
But there's so much more to it than just that.

Speaker A (54:20):
I love that when there's Modern hauntings.
Well, past hauntings at a modern place, Ishould say,
where people go in there and they're like,
wow, I think I just saw something.
Oh, yeah.
You know,
we have places like this around in Wisconsin,where I live, where.
Yeah. Oh, hey,

(54:40):
you know, going to a lot of bars, and there'shaunted places, I was sure in Galveston.

Speaker B (54:45):
Oh, yeah, Many hotel bars.

Speaker A (54:48):
Yeah. Yeah.
Where they'll see a number of differentapparitions,
shadows, so on and so forth.
And, you know, people work there, like,
yeah, it's Charlie again.
Don't worry, Charlie's okay.
And it's just so funny.
I just laugh at that because we have a bar
called Shaker Cigar Bar in downtown Madison,the capital of Wisconsin, and it's haunted,

(55:11):
and people have seen stuff, and I've been inthere.
I've not seen anything, but other people have,including the ghost of Al Capone, because he
would be there from time to time.
Why?
I don't know, but he was there, and it wasjust.
Again,
it's so interesting.
It's just.
I just love that.
Just.
It's.
It's not a modern bar, per se, but it was not

(55:33):
built in, like, the 1600s.
Like, when I talked to my UK friends,
and they're like, oh, this bar is from the1500s.
And I'm like, well, no wonder it's haunted.

Speaker B (55:42):
Right?

Speaker A (55:43):
You know, but around.
You know, they did everything there.
They did probably beheadings at that bar, and.
They probably did.

Speaker B (55:50):
Probably.

Speaker A (55:51):
Right? They did.

Speaker B (55:53):
I had some people come in from England on.
They were doing a cruise, and they came infrom England, and they're like, oh, we're
interested in your architecture.
And I'm like, okay.
I mean, I'm happy to show you all of thethings and tell you all this stuff,
you know, but it sounds like, just based offof your accent, that the stuff that you have
at home is much older than what we have here.
And they both just kind of laughed at me and
said, yeah, we want to see the more modernstuff.

Speaker A (56:15):
That's hilarious.
From the 1700s.

Speaker B (56:18):
Yeah. You want to see these? Okay, I've got you.

Speaker A (56:20):
Yeah, ours is 1400s.
And, like, oh, come on.

Speaker B (56:24):
Yeah, right.
Like, how am I supposed to compete with that?

Speaker A (56:26):
How am I supposed to compete with that?
Like, yeah, they have furniture older thanour.
Our entire country.
And.

Speaker B (56:31):
Yes, yes.

Speaker A (56:33):
UK And Ireland, you know, they.
Someone's sitting in a chair that is older
than our entire country.
That's always cracks me off.

Speaker B (56:39):
I know.

Speaker A (56:41):
Yeah, they view that like that.
So before we wrap up, I Have a. Just a couple
other questions for you.
Would you rather give a tour to a group ofskeptics or believers?

Speaker B (56:53):
That is a good question.
Honestly, I usually get a good mix of both on
my tours.

Speaker A (56:58):
Okay.

Speaker B (56:58):
And. And. And I'm gonna go ahead and just full disclosure.
When I start my tour,
I ask everybody on the group.
I say, you know, how many are believers in
ghosts?And I'll have however many people raise their
hands.
And then I say, okay, how many of you are
believers in history?
And then we'll get a lot of people that raisetheir hand.
I'm like, I know it seems like a question,like a very unusual question, but some people
say birds aren't real.

(57:19):
And so then everybody laughs, breaks thetension, and I tell them, look, I'm.
I'm not a wizard.
I cannot cons or ghosts on demand.
That's not my job.
But I am here to tell you the stories of theplaces, the things that happened and why we
believe that there are supernaturaloccurrences in these locations.
And from there, then we get started, andeverybody usually has a pretty good time.

(57:40):
And my favorite are not necessarily theskeptics,
not necessarily the believers, but the peoplewho bring along their Dr. Google mentality.
And they start typing in and asking Google thequestions about the things that I'm saying,
because they're like, oh, my God, she's notlying.
And I love that.

Speaker A (57:59):
Yes.

Speaker B (58:00):
It's validation that what I'm saying is true.
I'm like, well, you know, Google's not gonnasteer you wrong, right?
Here you go.

Speaker A (58:05):
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Have you ever had then to kind of piggyback
off that question?Have you ever had someone who was like, I
don't know, I'm kind of exaggerating here,but,
you know, hey, do you believe in ghosts?And.
No, they're fake kind of attitude.
I'm exaggerating.
But then at the end.

(58:25):
End of the tour, they go,
jen,
you convinced me.

Speaker B (58:29):
Okay,
so I actually have a story kind of like that.
There was a lady.
I was a baby tour guide.
I had not been tour guiding for very long atall.
And this lady did not like the ghost storiesat all.
Like, she was so mad.
Like, her family brought her out for this tour
because they were doing a whole family outing.
There was like 12 or 13 of them.
Like, there were a lot of them.

(58:50):
And she was so mad.
Like, really mad.
And like, every time I would tell a story,she'd roll her eyes, she'd mutter under her
breath.
She was rude.
And then, you know, I was, like,
stopping at mysticatz.
I was telling the stories there, and she got
up in front of the entire group.
I don't even remember how many people were on
the tour.
There were a lot.
And she goes, you ought to be ashamed ofyourself for telling people all these lies.

(59:13):
And, you know, perpetuating these stories arenot true, and disrespecting the dead and just,
like, jumped all over me.
And I was a baby tour guide.
I didn't know how to handle that.
I was like, oh, my go.
Like, oh, my God. I'm like, look, I'm sorrythat you don't enjoy this.
The stories.
You know, I literally get paid to tell thesestories.
They've been researched.
I'm researching them.
Like, I know these are.

(59:34):
I said, I'm sorry that you don't like it.
Please just try to focus more on the history.
That's all I can tell you.
I mean, you know, or if you're free to leave,
I'm not holding you here.
You can go.
She pouted for the rest of the tour, but shestarted taking pictures at the different
locations and everything.
At the end of the tour, I asked,
does anybody have any questions for me?Even something as simple as, how do I get back

(59:57):
to my car?Because I'm always happy to try to get that
information to you if I can.
And this lady, no joke, walked up, shoved herphone in my face, and said, what is this?
And right at that stop where she had accostedme, she had gone up and taken pictures of a
stairwell,
and she had gotten a picture of a womanstanding on the stairs.

Speaker A (01:00:15):
Oh, wow.

Speaker B (01:00:16):
And I was like,
you got the shy ghost.
Remember I told you the story about the shyghost and how she ran up the stairs and this
lady followed her, and she's like, that's whatthat is.
I'm like, yeah.
Well, so then she sent me that picture, so Ihave a copy of it.
I show this picture on my tours now, ofcourse,
but then,
like, years later, like, years later,

(01:00:37):
there was another group of ladies that cameout on my tour,
Psychic Mediums.
And one of them says, yeah, you see the lady
standing there on the stairs?But did anybody notice the little girl
standing next to her?
I had never noticed her,
but now I can't unsee her.
So she's there.
Yeah.

Speaker A (01:00:54):
Wow. Wow,
that's.
That's amazing.
Oh, I love that.
I was going to ask you.
I've been on tours, and the.
The tour.
The tour guide,
most of them will say, you know, take as manypictures as you want,
by the way, if you do see something later onand would like to send it to me.

(01:01:14):
I'll post it on our site.
Is that what you do for Ask people to do or
not?

Speaker B (01:01:20):
We ask people to send their pictures so that we can perpetuate the stories
going forward, so that we can show theevidence that people have caught.
And if people are gracious enough to sendtheir pictures, I include them on my phone,
and then I show them on.
On the tours going forward.
Sometimes we post them online, but mostly wejust share them.
We keep them for the tours.

Speaker A (01:01:39):
Nice. Nice.
So before we wrap up here, I got to tell youmy ghost tour story that you.
I think you'll find funny, Jim.
So I was in Savannah, and I did a ghost tourthere.
It was a pretty good one.
Not as good as yours.
I got to go and get to Galveston.
This sounds awesome.
I love history.
I'm a big history nerd.
Absolutely love history.

(01:02:00):
I would have been one of those historyteachers that would dress up like George
Washington if I teach.
And the parents would be like,
what a weirdo.
You know,
I'd be like, no, you guys have.
You know.
So that's why I didn't become a historyteacher, because the students would be like,
Mr. Radke is like some weird dude.
He's dressing up like Attila the Hun.
Like, you know, I'm like, yeah, yeah, come on.

(01:02:22):
Anyway, so I went on this tour.
Then after the tour, I walked home by myself,which I found out in Savannah it's not the
smartest thing to do because actually, at thattime, it had one of the highest crime rates in
the United States.
So people are being mugged and stuff.
Anyway,
so I'm walking past the cemetery and thecemetery, and you may have this similar to

(01:02:45):
Galveston or.
No, similar places.
Like, this is in the center of Savannah.
Like, it's right in the center, like you do
when you go around the circle around Savannah.
It's right there.
And it was used in this.
A lot of people forget.
The Savannah didn't have a lot of.
Sorry to go on this tangent.
There wasn't a lot of battles in Savannah in

(01:03:07):
the Civil War.
However, Sherman, on his way to the march to
the sea,
burned.
Savannah burned.
So this town,
the soldiers there desecrated the graveyard.
They would throw the bodies out of the
mausoleum and go and sleep in there.

(01:03:27):
They would throw the fresh bodies out of the
grave and sleep in the graves because it wasunnaturally cold at that time when they were
in Savannah.
So they desecrated the whole place.
So. And there's been Other things happened in
the cemetery that.
It's really bad.
So I'm walking past and they would not let usin.
The guy, the tour guy would not let us inbecause they said there's been too many people

(01:03:49):
who have been harmed, like, have been pushed,shoved, hair pulled, bruises, scratches.
So they said we don't do.
We don't do it anymore, you know, because of
litigation and just.
We don't want anyone suing us.
We don't have the money or the time to dealwith that.
Because it was a smaller tour,
probably like yours or medium size.
Walking past, I get.
I can't go in, but I get out my iPhone and I

(01:04:11):
start to take pictures.
Well,
nothing worked.
Like, my iPhone shut down.
And I know it was charged,
I know it was started to take more and more.
It would just freeze on me.
Freeze on me, freeze on me.
Okay.
So I get in my.
Get in my car also.
I felt like someone watching me.
I felt like someone was like watching me.
So I kind of hurried along.

(01:04:31):
And this was at night.
This is because the tour ended at like 10 o'clock at night.
So it was dark and everything like that.
So I got my car and I went home.
And what the funny thing is, I go to.
I'm staying at like a Marriott, you know,
I go to the manager and I tell her, ah, I justwent on a tour.
And she's like,
great, great, great, great.
She goes, wait a minute, did you come home

(01:04:53):
alone?
And I'm like, yeah.
She goes, oh,
sweetie, you do not do that.
She goes, here, I'm gonna sage you.
And I'm like, what?She goes, oh, I'm feeling something bad here.
And I'm like,
she's a manager of a Marriott.
And she's like, come here, sweetie.
And I come around and she's like saying some

(01:05:14):
stuff.
And she goes, I'm a psychic.
I'm a medium in my.
You know, I don't do this.

Speaker B (01:05:18):
You know, in my other life, I was psychic.

Speaker A (01:05:20):
Yeah, my other life.
Yeah.
So she goes, there's something bad, bad you.
Whatever.
I'm like, okay.
I felt a little bit better after that.
I get into my room,
take my phone, I'm like,
stupid phone.
And I just start taking pictures of the room.
It worked perfectly.
No problem at all.
No problem.
So I. I asked the lady the next day, and shegoes, sweetie.

(01:05:41):
She call me sweetie for whatever reason.
And she said,
yeah.
She said, well, they're so friendly there.
They're so nice to you.
And she just said,
well, it's because they didn't want you to.
She goes, they didn't want you,
so that's why you didn't get any pictures.
She goes, that cemetery is very haunted.
It is very.
She goes, very.
She said,

(01:06:02):
can be very difficult.
She used another word I didn't.
But, you know, to get pictures and just to go
into.
She says,
you know, she goes,
you're lucky nothing came home with you.
She goes, I don't feel that, by the way,
you're fine.
Nothing came back with you.
You're fine.
So that was my thing and it was justinteresting because, you know, again, I just

(01:06:25):
was like,
wow, you know, I just.
That was just again,
so interesting to me.
So,
yeah. So I love tours.
Please go on them, my spooky friends.
I do have a lot of audience in Texas.
So if you are near Galveston and want to take
a tour,
Jen sounds awesome.

(01:06:46):
I love it.
You're going to get a great tour.
And she does many tours.
Please reach out to her.
All the links will be in the episode notes, so
don't be afraid.
Reach out to her.
But let me ask you this, Jen,
what is coming up?Do you have any special things for the end of
the year or the beginning of the year orwhat's going on?

Speaker B (01:07:06):
Well, we're already starting to work on what we're going to do for next year,
for next October,
because that's what we always do.
You know, we try to work on that as best as
possible.
We are going to be doing specialty Christmas
tours throughout December.
So we'll have the Holiday Hex tour and a fewother different ones.
We'll have one in the cemetery.
We'll have one through the Easton Historic

(01:07:27):
District.
We'll have one downtown where all thebeautiful Christmas decorations are at.
So we'll have a few different holiday themedtours to take.
But,
you know, we, we just ask that, you know, ifyou should decide to take a tour, whether it
be with me or in a different part of thecountry, anywhere, please try to support the
local, small, independently owned and operatedbusinesses like mine.

(01:07:49):
I know that there are national chains andeverything and some people like that.
That's fine.
But you'll get so much more if you go with a
local.

Speaker A (01:07:59):
Absolutely.
I cannot,
I cannot stress that enough.
I always do that because it's kind of like
when you go to a new place, the first thing Iwould always do to go out to dinner,
I asked the locals, hey, what's a good seafoodplace?
What's a good steak place?
I wouldn't like, get on my phone.

(01:08:20):
I know it's easy to get on your phone and be
like, what's Yelp say?Right?
You know, like, give me a break.
I'd rather just be, you know.

Speaker B (01:08:27):
Yeah.

Speaker A (01:08:27):
But I've never, never been, never been turned wrong.

Speaker B (01:08:31):
Yeah.

Speaker A (01:08:32):
It's always been right.

Speaker B (01:08:33):
Yes.

Speaker A (01:08:34):
And always been right.
There is never steered me wrong.

Speaker B (01:08:37):
There's an entire group of professional ghost tour guides that are
locally owned, independently operated, youknow,
vendors just like me, and they work just ashard as I do to retain historical accuracy and
give you accurate stories.
And we're never going to have the advertisingbudget of a national chain anywhere.
But we all love our communities,

(01:08:59):
and when you spend your dollars with us, youare legitimately keeping dollars within the
community and protecting and preserving andgiving us an opportunity to give back to our
community.
So we definitely want for that to be a thing.
So if I had one thing to say, I would say
that.

Speaker A (01:09:14):
Okay, well, you had many things to say and it was amazing.
I would love to have you back on again becauseit was amazing.
I learned so much.
And,
you know,
maybe near Halloween again, we can talk and,you know, talk about, you know, some sweet
tours because I love,
love my tours back on.
Because again, like I said, please,

(01:09:36):
really quickly,
please go to.
And it doesn't have to be Jen's tour.
It could be another independent tour.
That's okay as long as you're supporting the
local tours.
But on my show,
my podcast, I always have the best people wholove to hear from you.
So reach out to Jen if you're just like, hey,
you know, what's it?Who are involved?
Do we walk?How long it is and everything.

Speaker B (01:10:00):
I don't just do walking tours.
I also partner with Carriage House Rentals.
So I have golf cart ghost tours and we do themin model T looking golf carts.

Speaker A (01:10:09):
Wow.

Speaker B (01:10:11):
They have the a horn and everything.
Like, we do the whole thing.
Okay.
We have the walking tours, we have the golfcart tours.
We do a nice tour of Moody Mansion, which is abeautiful historic mansion that was built in
1895.
I mean, we have a lot of incredibleopportunities and the community has really
embraced what I do because I give back to thecommunity as much as I can.

(01:10:35):
And so I love it and I love sharing ourhistory.
So you'll never have to worry about beingghosted by a tour guide through spooky
Galveston.
We will always.

Speaker A (01:10:45):
I love that.
Love that.
Okay, well, thanks again so much for going alittle overtime with me because like I said, I
just love talking to you.
You're amazing.

Speaker B (01:10:54):
My pleasure.
Thank you for having me.

Speaker A (01:10:55):
Oh, so much fun.
So much fun.
I love it.
So again, you know, please go check her, Checkthe links out and reach out to Jen.
You know, ask questions.
And it sounds like it's a fun time,
great time.
So, again,
thank you, everyone, for listening and stayspooky.
All right, thanks, Tim.

Speaker B (01:11:15):
Thank you.

Speaker A (01:11:16):
Bye. Bye.