Halloween is a time for fun, dressing up and candy. But for the few brave souls that love a little adventure and a bit of fear, there’s plenty of “haunted places” around DFW that come at no cost, except maybe your screams.
The Daily Campus went out and investigated places with haunted histories that range from fearing for your life and tributes to dead celebrities.
Spider Lady (Lancaster, Texas)
Within the gates of Edgewood Cemetery, lies many graves and statues of angels. But deep in the middle of the grounds stands a statue of a woman with no hands: Spider Lady. There are many legends that follow this woman, the most prominent being her hands that once held spiders came alive on a past Halloween night. A word-of-mouth legend is that if you climb upon the statue and touch her eyes, spiders come crawling out and you take the place of the Spider Lady. Legend has yet to be personally confirmed.
Greenwood Cemetery (Dallas, Texas)
Right off of Hall Street and 75, Greenwood Cemetery is a dark contrast against the bright lights of the Dallas sky. The gates seemed to be locked shut at all times, but if you’re feeling like trespassing, hop the fence into the darkness. Multiple prominent people of the city, state and nation rest here, in addition to casualties and verterans of every American military involvement since the War between the States. The spirits are said to haunt the grounds, and it’s even creepier because there’s absolutely no light in the cemetery.
Smiley’s grave (Garland, Texas)
According to the legend, the Smiley family died on same day and it seems the family was killed in a murder/suicide. The father killed his entire family, then killed himself. Or, something less exciting, a natural disaster killed them. The grave holds the entire family, and supposedly if you lay down on the grave on midnight (some say on halloween), it becomes extremely hard to get up due to invisible ghost arms trying to add one more member to the family grave.
The Mickey Mantle Mausoleum (Dallas, Texas)
This one has a creepy element, but is not as scary as the rest. Mickey Mantle was a Hall of Fame Major League Baseball Player for the New York Yankees. Originally from Oklahoma, it’s odd he’s buried in Texas at Sparkman-Hillcrest Cemetery. But in June of 1995, he received a liver transplant at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas after learning that he had inoperable liver cancer. Soon after, his cancer had spread and he died in Dallas at the age of 63. Fans young and old come set baseball cleats and gloves at his grave as a symbol of respect. The creepy part is when the morning arrives, the objects are completely gone and the staff that mans the grounds says they don’t remove it.
