The Grove, Haunted?
Perhaps the scariest haunted house in Texas, the Grove has a long history and reputation of being haunted. The ghost stories go a very long way back through the various people who have owned the property, starting with Miss Louise Young, who lived in the house in the early 1900s until her death in the 1980s. She used to tell her friends that there were “haints” which lived in the house with her.
However, the fun ghost stories took a dark turn. In her later years, she became very terrified of the spirits and even had a security light installed in the garden because she reported having seen people outside walking around. She said that these figures would disappear the moment she would turn the lights on.
In her later years, she would call the police several times to report intruders in the house with her but the officers never found anyone. She finally moved into just a few rooms of the house and left the rest of the place deteriorating.
When the Grove family were still the owners of the property, Mrs. Grove reportedly brought a Bible to bed so that she and her husband could pray but she fell asleep. She awakened to a black mass engulfing the entire bedroom. She also heard disembodied voices and footsteps.
Sudden odors have appeared in many rooms in the property. Some reported smelling a woman’s perfume while others have encountered the more unpleasant smell of body odor, as if coming from someone who has not taken a bath for a long time.
Patrick Hopkins, one of the property’s many former owners, was getting ready to finally open the restaurant, when a lady in white walked down the hallway into the powder room and never came out. When the powder room was checked there was no one there at all. During Patrick’s time, a waitress was also suddenly attacked by a black and white dog while walking out of the kitchen into the hallway. After she regained her composure she ran back to the kitchen to get help. No dog was ever found in the property.
Unexplainable wet footprints have appeared in the hallway, even though it was not raining outside and there were no leaks. Drops of water have also been found on the staircase and on one certain mirror in the house even though the atmosphere was completely dry.
History
The Grove was also known as the Stilley-Young House. Built in 1861, it is now listed on the National Register for Historic Places and is a landmark in the state of Texas. It’s often called the most haunted house in Texas. The land where the house stands on was originally given to Lucy and Daniel Alley in a land grant, the co-founders of Jefferson.
The property was purchased by Amos Morrill in 1847 and he built a log cabin there. The property was later sold to Caleb Ragin and his wife in 1855. Finally in 1861, Frank Stilley purchased the land and built a house there called, The Grove. Between 1870 and 1880 Frank and his wife encountered some bad luck. Their cotton brokering business was destroyed by a flood and the Great Raft from the Red River was removed making the business unprofitable. After his wife’s death in 1879, Frank put the house up for sale and moved to Weatherford, Texas.
Since them the house passed through the hands of many owners, including the Rock family; Burks family; the Charlie Young family; Louise Young; the Grove family; Patrick Hopkins and its present owners, Tami and Mitchell Whitington.