Tag: Scare

History, Haunts, and Heart Beats

A new form of entertainment has manifested in Fredericksburg, Texas. It is the Fredericksburg Ghost Tours. This new venue is a walking tour of Fredericksburg starting  and ending at the Nimitz Museum (National Museum of the Pacific War). It is filled with interesting, little known stories and histories of many places along Main Street and it’s  alleyways.

Your host/tour guide is dressed in 1800’s attire as he leads you around town, regaling your with stories, not found in the normal Fredericksburg history books. Each account given is tied to a place along the tour and the residing ghosts of that area.

The tour itself is not scary, but rather entertaining and informational. Though the stories are a historical basis for ghosts, there is much humor in them as well. Derrick  Spence coordinates the guides and tours. He has also done the research and compiled the stories shared on the tour. The guides are cheerful,  and they do their best to see you learn a little and have a good time. Daniel was our guide this particular evening, and he was knowledgeable, entertaining and fun.

Be sure to bring your phones, or other cameras and take pictures. It is highly encouraged and if you find you have visitors in your photos  you can send them in to their website at fbgghosttours@gmail.com and they may feature them on their website.

The stops currently on the tour, are just a handful of the many haunted places in town. Your guide will mention a few not on the tour at this time and encourage you to go investigate them on your own.

Tours run Thursday through Sunday evenings with tours at 8:00, 8:30, or 9:30 p.m. It is encouraged to meet at the Admiral Chester W. Nimitz statue at least 10 minutes before the start of your tour, with your previously purchased ticket in hand.

You may purchase tickets online at https://www.fredericksburgghosts.com/ , or call 830-383-3122 and speak to founder Rick Koch or one of his employees, they will be happy to help you reserve your tickets and then pick them up at the Vintage Vault at 406 West Main Street, next to the Amish Market.

My friends and I embarked on the tour at 8:00 this past Sunday evening, October 7th. We had a wonderful time and are ready to do it again with other friends and family who have not gone yet. We were encouraged to take pictures along the route. During the tour we really didn’t see much more than Fredericksburg sites and allies in the dark, but as the guide explained, what you do not see with your eyes, may be watching you, and may not be camera-shy.

They do encourage you to share photos to their page if you think you have caught a ghostly  image, or just a really interesting photo from the tour. They may feature it on their site. That being said, I will share some here and will probably send them in after this  post.

After reviewing mine the next day, I definitely think I caught some images to share. I hope you can see what I see, but you may have to enlarge the photos, that is how I confirmed my sightings.

My best possible sightings were the ones from the Nimitz, Keidel Hospital, and one of the back alley stops.

Here are a few of mine. In all of them, my friends and I see something. Do you? Share your thoughts in the comments. I would love to hear what you think.

Here is the Nimitz. Pay close attention to the dark window on the middle section, just below the window that is lit up, in the first and third photos.

  

 How about a creepy back alley to look down? Look closely, there is more than meets the eye.

And last, here is the old Keidel Hospital building (home to Der Kuchen Laden and Rathskellar Restaurant).  Pay close attention to the large window at the top, above the door. A ghostly pair looks back at you.  Then look at the window to the left of the large window, in its bottom left pane, and also the column to the right of the door, there are ghosts in all of these. Two frames are provided so that you can compare. Most of the visitors appear in the right frame. Honestly we did not see these things as we looked at the places that evening, but then there they were in the pictures.  That definitely gets you thinking and your heart beating a little faster.

Let me know if you see them.  Maybe this is a coincidence, but also in the Keidel photos, there is a very strange water mark in between the two bottom windows. It is quite a creepy creature looking back from the rocks.

There are many other stops along the tour, I just wanted to give you a glimpse.

I hope  I have peaked your interest and you and your friends will come take the tour. The ghosts are waiting to greet you!

The Best Haunted Thrill-The 290 Haunted House vs. The Theater of Terror

This year, the Fredericksburg area boasted two haunted houses for our Halloween enjoyment. The first and original for the area was Audelia Delacruz’s Haunted House,also know as The 290 Haunted House, which started at her house in Stonewall some years ago, but has been housed in the large white building on 290 East across from Trade Days for at least the last 3 years. The second, Theater of Terror, was hosted by the Freddyburg Youth Theater and the Fredericksburg Theater Company and took place at the Steve W.  Shepherd Theater or in reality the store-room there on the FTC facility grounds.

First let me say that I do not scare easy at these events.  I am more likely to get spooked walking around in my own house, or outside in the pasture in the dark than I am at a Halloween event. My own imagination and fear of animals that might attack, etc. in the dark are more likely to get me to jump. But that being said, I am always looking forward to the event that might scare me. To this end, I was very excited to attend these two events, just to see if they could scare me.

Both houses are put together by a collaboration of adults and teens/children and participation inside is both as well. One has several years experience of putting on a haunted house production, where the other is in its first year, unless I have somehow missed it in past years. If that is the  case please correct me. The latter has years of experience putting on theater productions. Both have the resources available to put on an exceptional production. Both have smoke, strobe lights, and dimly lit rooms. One also had other lights,  flashing or glowing things to add to the effects as well of lots of sound effects. Each also had a bit of narration.

Here is the major difference, props and costumes. One far out did the other. Any guesses on which one you think it was?

In one house, every participant was well costumed and fully make-upped so that they were the character they were playing and could not be easily recognized as themselves. In the other, this was not the case. I readily recognized several of them, though in costume, not nearly as well as the other house, and make up was little to none other than a bit of blood on the hands and maybe face.

One made full use of props and decorations, and created a unique theme for each room of the house, covering a multitude of creepy specters to incite your fears. There were people, scary statues,  and any number of things that left you waiting and wondering, “is it a real person or not and is it going to move and get me when I go by?” The other house had little difference between sets from room to room, and had almost the same theme in each.

One house also made much more use of the space they had available making the experience last longer, the other was considerably shorter. Sadly, in this second house, I was surprised to already be at the end. A literal, “that’s it???,” moment.

Another big difference was price, $5  for the 290 Haunted House verses $12 for the Theater of Terror.

I do give the participants props for all their hard work during the hours of operation  they made a valiant effort to scare their guests.  Even there when you consider one was a house of family and friend participants that are out to have a good time and provide the community some entertainment, and the other a theater arts group with the same goal, perhaps with a bit of fund-raising thrown in,  there was still a night and day difference between the two.  They do all deserve praise for all the before work organizing and setting these houses up, and now tearing them down.

Now before I tell you which was which  I have a question for you.  Think about the two groups,  which group would expect it to be?

The winner for me, this year was Audelia Delacruz’s  290 Haunted House. To answer the question, did it scare me? No it didn’t scare me, even though I was quite impressed with what all they had done and I did quite enjoy going through. It did make me jump and laugh at myself at least once, and it has done that every year. I will be back again next year.

So now to both groups, I can’t wait to see how you raise the bar next year.