Haunted Austin

Haunted Austin PDF

Author: Jeanine Plumer

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2010-09-01

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 161423373X

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Discover the spirits and ghosts that have been keeping Austin weird for centuries in this guidebook to the city’s supernatural residents. A killer lurks in the dark streets, victimizing servant girls throughout 1885, and Austin becomes the first American city to claim a serial killer. The spirits of convicts wander amidst the manicured grounds of the Texas State Capitol, while inside a public servant assassinated in 1903 still haunts its corridors. These are just a few of the strange and frightening tales of Haunted Austin. Within these pages lies evidence that the frontier bravado legendary in so many Texas men and women lives on long after death. Author Jeanine Plumer explores the sinister history of the city and attempts to answer the question: Why do so many ghosts linger in Austin?

The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict

The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict PDF

Author: Austin Reed

Publisher: Modern Library

Published: 2017-01-24

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0812986911

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The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer—recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars—sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America. “[A] harrowing [portrait] of life behind bars . . . part confession, part jeremiad, part lamentation, part picaresque novel (reminiscent, at times, of Dickens and Defoe).”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE In 2009, scholars at Yale University came across a startling manuscript: the memoir of Austin Reed, a free black man born in the 1820s who spent most of his early life ricocheting between forced labor in prison and forced labor as an indentured servant. Lost for more than one hundred and fifty years, the handwritten document is the first known prison memoir written by an African American. Corroborated by prison records and other documentary sources, Reed’s text gives a gripping first-person account of an antebellum Northern life lived outside slavery that nonetheless bore, in its day-to-day details, unsettling resemblances to that very institution. Now, for the first time, we can hear Austin Reed’s story as he meant to tell it. He was born to a middle-class black family in the boomtown of Rochester, New York, but when his father died, his mother struggled to make ends meet. Still a child, Reed was placed as an indentured servant to a nearby family of white farmers near Rochester. He was caught attempting to set fire to a building and sentenced to ten years at Manhattan’s brutal House of Refuge, an early juvenile reformatory that would soon become known for beatings and forced labor. Seven years later, Reed found himself at New York’s infamous Auburn State Prison. It was there that he finished writing this memoir, which explores America’s first reformatory and first industrial prison from an inmate’s point of view, recalling the great cruelties and kindnesses he experienced in those places and excavating patterns of racial segregation, exploitation, and bondage that extended beyond the boundaries of the slaveholding South, into free New York. Accompanied by fascinating historical documents (including a series of poignant letters written by Reed near the end of his life), The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict is a work of uncommon beauty that tells a story of nineteenth-century racism, violence, labor, and captivity in a proud, defiant voice. Reed’s memoir illuminates his own life and times—as well as ours today. Praise for The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict “One of the most fascinating and important memoirs ever produced in the United States.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, The Washington Post “Remarkable . . . triumphantly defiant . . . The book’s greatest value lies in the gap it fills.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Reed displays virtuosic gifts for narrative that, a century and a half later, earn and hold the reader’s ear.”—Thomas Chatterton Williams, San Francisco Chronicle “[The book’s] urgency and relevance remain undiminished. . . . This exemplary edition recovers history without permanently trapping it in one interpretation.”—The Guardian “A sensational, novelistic telling of an eventful life.”—The Paris Review “Vivid and painful.”—NPR “Lyrical and graceful in one sentence, burning with fury and hellfire in the next.”—Columbus Free Press

The Ghosts of Austin, Texas

The Ghosts of Austin, Texas PDF

Author: Fiona Broome

Publisher: Schiffer Publishing

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780764326806

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Austin, Texas, is filled to the brim with eerie tales of phantoms and creepy happenings. Read about Ben Thompson, Austin's ghostly gambler and sheriff; meet Blanche Dumont, a famous "boarding house madam" ghost; explore the early days of the notorious Jack the Ripper and his killing spree in Austin; and find out how to observe the very strange and scary emergence of 20 million bats! Even better, this book tells you their exact locations, so that you can encounter Austin's ghosts.

Weird Encounters

Weird Encounters PDF

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781402754616

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"Weird Encounters" features more than 75 supernatural stories contributed by writers from across the country. This chilling anthology tells of Historic Haunts and Hostel Environments and conjures up a host of phantasms and destructive spirits.

Haunted Austin

Haunted Austin PDF

Author: Jeanine Plumer

Publisher: History Press Library Editions

Published: 2010-09

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 9781540205063

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A killer lurks in the dark streets, victimizing servant girls throughout 1885, and Austin becomes the first American city to claim a serial killer. The spirits of convicts wander amidst the manicured grounds of the Texas State Capitol while inside a public servant assassinated in 1903 still haunts the corridors. These are just a few of the strange and frightening tales of Haunted Austin. Within these pages lies evidence that the frontier bravado legendary in so many Texas men and women lives on long after death. Author Jeanine Plumer explores the sinister history of the city and attempts to answer the question: why do so many ghosts linger in Austin?

Weird Hauntings

Weird Hauntings PDF

Author: Mark Moran

Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9781402742262

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Discusses the hauntings of various houses throughout the United States.

The Ghostly Tales of Austin

The Ghostly Tales of Austin PDF

Author: Carie Juettner

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2021-08

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 146719820X

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Ghost stories from Texas's capitol have never been so creepy, fun, and full of mystery! The haunted history of Austin comes to life--even when the main players are dead. Chat with the ghosts who roam the hallways of the capitol building downtown. Or visit Mount Bonnell and learn about Antonia, who threw herself from the cliffs after her fiancé perished trying to rescue her. Learn the history of the great flood of 1900 and then witness the ghostly orbs at Lake McDonald. Are they the spirits of the dead? Dive into this spooky chapter book for suspenseful tales of bumps in the night, paranormal investigations, and the unexplained; just be sure to keep the light on.

Haunted Austin, Texas

Haunted Austin, Texas PDF

Author: Scott A. Johnson

Publisher: Schiffer Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780764332982

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Provides accounts of reportedly haunted places in Austin, Texas, each with information on the history of the location, and its ghosts.

Tales from the Haunted South

Tales from the Haunted South PDF

Author: Tiya Miles

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2015-08-12

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1469626349

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In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of "ghost tours," frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain. "Dark tourism" often highlights the most sensationalist and macabre aspects of slavery, from salacious sexual ties between white masters and black women slaves to the physical abuse and torture of black bodies to the supposedly exotic nature of African spiritual practices. Because the realities of slavery are largely absent from these tours, Miles reveals how they continue to feed problematic "Old South" narratives and erase the hard truths of the Civil War era. In an incisive and engaging work, Miles uses these troubling cases to shine light on how we feel about the Civil War and race, and how the ghosts of the past are still with us.