When I lived with my brother in a small town called Lytton Springs, we were real big into 4 wheelers. I had a Yamaha Blaster and Greg (my sister in law's bro) had one of those Honda 4wd utility quads, it was really nice. Anyway we would go out every night after school and go riding down all the long empty roads that seemed to go nowhere, there wasn't much out there but land used for cattle and what not. Lytton Springs was a small community of houses, a church with a large graveyard adjacent to it, and a small locally owned old country store.
The place was called Les Spradling's General store, It was built entirely out of wood, had an old cast iron oven that they used to heat the place. A few years prior the founder and owner was shot dead behind the counter, being that it was a small town where everyone knew each other, this was a big deal. Les was a great guy, he used to give us free sodas for coming by to talk to him and helping him out around the store. Les had built the store himself from the ground up and was a great friend to the majority of the people in the area. The night he was murdered, a drunk had stumbled into the store and as he went to pay for his alcohol he pulled out a gun and ordered Les to empty the register. Les gave him the money and being a generous and friendly man had told him he could always come to him if he needed someone to lend him some money for whatever reason. The man pulled out a gun upon receiving the cash and shot Les in the chest and left him to bleed to death, all alone in the store he had built to support his family.
Since Les died, everyone assumed that the store would be closed down which meant all the ranchers and people in the area would have to make the long drive to the next town to get things they needed. This town pretty much depended on his store for gas, feed, food etc... Things just weren't the same after he'd been killed and some strange things started happening in the area. Greg and I would still ride our quads all over at night, riding with our lights off with nothing but the moon out to light the dark lonely roads. We came across a lot of strange things, some that are hard to explain.
Near our place we found 2 abandoned grave yards, one was a Mexican grave yard, it had small faded statues of the Virgin Mary and crumbling graves with strange engravings on them, they didn't seem to be in Spanish like one would assume. When we discovered this place we were excited, I mean its not everyday you just discover something like this especially when you know the area real well. It was tucked away on a small dirt path that lead off through some brush on the side of the road quite a ways down. There was an old rickety fence made out of mesquite and barbed wire, it had a strange smell to it I can't really describe, the air felt musty and cold, usually when its cold the air is crisp. We were walking through the graveyard looking around, trying to read the tombstone and looking at the dates all of which were dated from the late 1700s to mid 1800s. There was a total of about 20 tombstones.
One of which was separated from the rest with a three foot high stone barrier surrounding it, all the rocks had been stacked around it and there was a faded hue of black paint on the top section of the rocks. They appeared to be limestone chunks, probably gathered from the local area back then, completely natural, in no way were they cut or shaped. The tombstone inside of this barrier was an old Spanish cross, the startling part of all this was a snake twisting in and out of the gaps in the tombstone, I don't know what kind of snake it was, it didn't look indigenous to the area.
We mostly have rattlesnakes, copperheads, water moccasins and garter snakes. This one however looked like any of those, it appeared to be 4 or 5 feet long about 5 inches in diameter but it was hard to tell with it twisting around the way it was. I have never seen a snake do anything like this before, it was like it was defending the tombstone and was completely oblivious to our presence there. The only thing I can think it might have been doing was trying to shed but its scales weren't flaky and showed no signs of molting. It was a glossy pitch black, had a vipers head with the big puffy cheeks (probably heat pits) and its belly was also the same glossy black as its scales. After watching it swirl around this tombstone for a few minutes we decided to see if we could scare it off, we grabbed a fallen branch and reached out to poke at it. It was completely unresponsive, no signs of aggression or even trying to avoid the branch, it just kept swirling around the tombstone like that was its sole purpose in life. We gave up messing with the snake and decided to get going, that was all that happened that day.
On another night when the moon wasn't out and it was almost pitch black outside, we were out having fun following cars with our lights off then getting up real close and turning them on suddenly to mess with people. It was fun in a bored redneck sort of way, we had a few people try and chase us after doing this which made it even more fun! After about 12:00 am, you have maybe a 5% chance of seeing a car go by, so we rode into Lytton Springs to see if we could find any other people driving around. We were riding around Les Spradling's store and around the church and graveyard just looking around, it was the first time we had actually taken the time to look around the small town. There was a water tower and a ton of enormous oak trees that had to have been hundreds of years old. There was also this giant gazebo looking thing in this clearing of land. It was made entirely of wood, had dirt floors, a small stage, some stalls, chairs and things. The people in the area called it the tabernacle, it was were my brother got married.
We started circling the graveyard admiring how large some of the tombstones were and even though we felt a strange feeling of guilt we decided to see how exciting it would be to creep through the gate and walk around the graveyard at night. The place was huge but nothing strange happened until we left, we were going down the road behind the church, we could see the back door to the church, and the small volleyball court behind it. We slowed down to look back at the graveyard, when I noticed the back door to the church starting to open. A woman in a sickly white dress peered through the darkness at us, she just stood there. We were pretty sure we weren't just seeing things, they lock that place up every night and I doubt anyone would sleep over.
We started to talk about who it might be and when we looked back to get a better look she was gone but the door was still open. This kind of creeped us out so we started to drive off to go back home. When we got to the 4 way crossing there she was again, standing in the middle of the road arms dangling at her side, she seemed to glow just a little bit and was very sickly looking with an expression of devastation. She scared the crap out of us so we went full throttle and sped right past her. I didn't notice any change in temperature or smell but then again I was going 60mph and had the wind blowing against me. We trucked it about 5miles back to the house and never saw her again. But it makes for a good story.
A lot of other stuff happened out there, like the ghost dog that would always come flying out of the bushes barking chasing us off yet we NEVER saw it, every night this thing would come out of the ditch on the side of the road next to where this Muslim cemetery is but only if we actually stopped there, we tested this theory many times to try and see if it was just a local stray but would never get a glimpse of the thing, on one occasion I actually got off the quad to look, as soon as I heard the bushes rattle and the barking I'd jump back on and take off, while Greg would be parked a few yards ahead watching to see if he could see it. NOTHING! My older brother grew up in the area and when we told him about this dog he said ,that when he was a kid him and his friends had this dog that got attacked by another dog that was notorious for being vicious and apparently unkillable. His friend Joe shot the murderous dog 4 times and it didn't die, it walked off like nothing had happened it at all. Maybe the thing in the bushes was the same dog but only a faded spirit? He recounted many of his memories of how him and his friends were out to kill this dog for killing their pet but every attempt to injure it or capture it were fruitless. So who knows?
I have more stories to tell of Lytton Springs but I'll save those for another post Enjoy
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